THE NEW CALIGULA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1748, 6 September 1905, Page 2

THE NEW CALIGULA.

, (From Our Special Correspondent.) s LONDON, July 8. Mr George A. Kessler, an eccentric American with more money than he knows what to do with, dazzled the Londoners this week by ordering the costliest and most gorgeou© dinner ever given in an hotel. One knows not which to wonder at the most —the inanity of the project or the resource, the promptitude and the skill of the Savoy management in carrying it into execution. Mr Kessler, who staying at tlie Savoy. Hotel, wanted to give a record dinner —something absolutely original and unique. Happy thought ! He would have a gondola banquet. There was no need for him to worry about details. • Being a rich man, the best brains in the entertainment world were at his service: He simply ordered a gondola-banquet at twentv-fouf hours’ notice, and left the rest to the Savoy. On the following evening a magnificent banquet awaited Air Ivessler and his twenty-three guests, amongst whom were . Madame Jane, Miss Edna May and Signor Caruso. As the Savoy manager said afterwards, one would ha*re to go back to ancient Rome for parallel to this amazing culinary pageant! / - ■ 4 ' /■; From a purple sky there .hung great bunches of carnations and Chinese lanterns, caught in' festoons of smilax. The great white gondola was outlined and banked with roses and carnations. Single flowers were strewn over prow and stern. Water to the depth of six inches flooded the court way. : A full moon shone over the Cathedral of St. Mark’s. Six live, ducks made a pleasing pretence to swim about, the great white gondola. White doves fluttered over the gauzy canopy which covered the vessel. In the gilded reception room every square inch of the walls was covered with blossoms. Great baskets of roses and orchids. hung from the Avails, and pink carnations- crept up the green trellis work which had been placed against the Avails. The guests as they arrived stepped across a crimson covered landingstage adorned Aidth gilded "Lions of St. Mark’s” and into tlie great white gondola Avith its glittering table piled Avith gardenias and carnations. The Savoy ivaiters, trained to be surprised at nothing, Availed at tlie gondola table in Venetian boatmen’s costume. A banquet of sixteen courses included tiro special inventions by the SaA'oy chef, the famous Thourand. One of these masterpieces consisted of fillets of sole actually cooked in transparent paper boxes, beautifully decorated, through Avhich electric lights cast a delicate glow. A ivonderful cake, five feet high, lit with electric lights and set on a revolving platform Avas carried to table on the back of ‘‘Baby Jumbo,” a midget elephant from the Royal Italian circus. A second gondola Avas filled Avith gaily-dressed Neopoliran singers, who ©upplied the music for the banouet, and the great Caruso sang after dinner for a trifling fee of £450. The Gondola dinner will cost Air Kessler about £4OOO or £125 a head. But he is quite happy at tlie prospect—his freak dinner is a “record.” “Truth” this week breaks into verse on the subject of the Kessler banquet, and administers to the millionaire a lyrical rebuke:— “All- Kessler, Air Kessler, you may take it, sir, from us. That if you possess the gold of Eldorado. For advice how best to use it you should go to ‘General’ Booth. Ur consult that East End doctor— named Barn a rdo. They can tell you how by spending what you threw away last week. A'on can cheer unnumbered homes with lavish plenty; And can bring a beam of sunshine into thousands of A-oung lives; ' Instead of. merely cloying four-and-twenty.”