Custer County Republican. (Broken Bow, Neb.) 1882-1921, 1906-03-29
SOME COSTLY BAkQUtTS
Many Thousands of Dollars
Spent by People of Wealth
for Single Repasts.


Three hundred dollars. half a years
income for hundreds of thousands of
clerks, for a single meal! Such was
the regal hospitality with which Mr..
and Mrs. John Hanan entertained
forty of their friends at house-warm-
ing dinner in New York few weeks
ago. The dinner, we are told, was an
exact reproduction of a banquet given
in Paris during the seventeenth cen
fury by the Duke of Alva in honor Of
the birth of the Prince of Asturias
The forty guests at this Lucullan
feast dined off plates of solid gold;
and for souvenirs of such a memoir
able banquet each lady carried away
a small clock of gold and each man
sported a gold flower-holder in his
buttonhole.
Such costly hospitality as this
raises the interesting question, "How
much of the $500 per guest was spent
on the food alone?" and the answer
is rather surprising M. Escoffier, a
chef of worldwide reputation, says:
"As far as the food itself is concern
ed, and apart from wines and decora-
lions, you could not make a menu
cost more than SIS a head for four
people without being eccentric" Such
a menu, which would satisfy the most
exacting of epicures, would include
the most costly delicacies the world
can supply, such as swallows nests
from China; oursins, a kind of cray
fish caught in the Mediterranean
caviare from Russia, sturgeon from
the Volga, and terrapin.
Another famous chef fixes $40 as
the cost of the most expensive din.
ner he could provide-in food alone.
I'm any dinner in which common
sense is taken into account" he says,
the food alone would not cost you
more than $40 cover; that is, with
out wines, decorations or attendance"
1t is thus clear that any one who
is prepared to entertain his friends at
the cost Of SIS or 500 head could
provide for them as good a dinner as
the man who counts his fortune in
tens Of millions of dollars, and that
any expenditure beyond this relative
ly modest figure is, apart from wines,
lavished on externals, and principally
on decorations.
Thus, at a dinner which cost $50 a
head, given not long ago by million
aire to celebrate a remarkable run of
luck at Monte Carlo, the walls of the
dining room were surrounded by
peach trees and vines, from which the
guests gathered the growing fruit for
dessert; and in the center of the ia
BILE a fountain of rose-water FLASHED
in veritable orchard of dwarf fruit
trees.
At another dinner of eighteen Gov
ers, which cost in all $4,000, or over
1920 a cover, the dining room was
converted into a natural grape arbor,
from which the fruit hung in hundreds
of tempting punches. There were
dwarf trees from Japan, each bearing
its burden of seductive fruit, the rar-
est eXotics from all parts of the world
and fountains in which fish swan.
Not long ago a western millionaire
entertained thirty of his friends at a
banquet for which he paid $4,000, at
least fifteen times the actual cost of
the dinner Itself One charming fea-
ture of the meal was a centerpiece Of
5000 American Beauty roses nesting
among maidenhair ferns. Each rose
of the 5000 cost the host IS cents.
A notable dinner of this extrava.
CANT type was given at Delmonico's
some years ago by Mr., Luckmeyer.
In the center of the table was a min
iature lake with islets, among which
swans floated. The dinner consisted
of nine courses only, but they com
prised the rarest and most costly deli
cacies the whole world could provide;
and the cost of the feast was $125OO,
or about Sl66 for each of the seventy
five oIIaSts