THE NEW CALIGULA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5678, 28 August 1905, Page 6

THE NEW CALIGULA.

(Prom Oar Special Correspondent.) 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 gorgeous dinner ever given in an hotel, Ono knows not which to wonder at the most—the inanity of the proiect or the resource, the promptitude and the skill of the Savoy management in carrying it into execution. Mr Kessler. who is staying at the Savoy Hotel, wanted to give a record dinner—something absolutely original and unique. Happy thought I 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 twenty-four hours’ notice, and left the rest to the Savoy. On the following evening a magnificent banquet awaited Mr Kessler and his twenty-three guests, amongst whom were Madame Jane, Mb's Edna May and Signor Caruso. As the Savoy manager said afterwards, one would have to go back to ancient Rome for parallel to this amazing culinary pageant.

XVom a purple sky there hung great hunches of carnations and Chinese lanterns, caaght in festoons of amilax. The groat 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 tho courtway. A full moon shone over the, Cathedral of St. Mark's. Six Jive ducks made a pleasing pretence to swim about the great whit© gondola. White doves fluttered over the gauzy canopy 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 walla, and pink carnations crept up the green trellis work which had been placed against the walls. Tho guests as they arrived stopped across a crimson covered landingjStage adorned with gilded "Lions of St. Mark’s” and into the great white gondola With its glittering table piled with gardenias and carnations. The Savoy waiters, trained to be surprised at nothing, waited at the gondola table in Venetian boatmen's costume. A banquet of sixteen courses included two special inventions by the Savoy chef, the famous Thourand. One of these masterpieces consisted of fillets of sole actually cooked in transparent paper boxes, beautifully decorated, through which electric lights cast a delicate glow. A wonderful cake, five feet high, lit with electric lights and set on a revolving platform was carried to table on the back of "Baby Jumbo," a midget elephant from the Royal Italian circus. A second gondola was filled with gaily-dressed Ncopoiitan singers, who supplied the music ror the banouet, and the great Caruso sang after dinner for a trifling fee of .£450. The Gondola dinner will cost Mr Kessler about .£4OOO or J 3126 a .head. But he la quite hnppy at the 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:— "Mr Kessler, Mr 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. Or consult that East End doctor—named Bamardo. They can tell you how by spending what you threw away last week. Sou can cheer unnumbered homes with lavish plenty; ind can bring a beam of sunshine into thousands of voung lives; Instead of merely cloying four-and-tirenty."