In recent days I have been, don`t you know, to what must be the ultimate social event for any American.
No, no, it had nothing to do with the ghastly Trumps, or the oh-so-provincial Passavant Cotillion or anything at all involving Palm Beach or, gasp, Southern California.
It was in fact a British social event-the British Embassy`s Queen`s Birthday garden party.
As you know (and you do know, don`t you?), the queen`s actual birthday is April 21, but the event is always celebrated in June, for reasons I think having to do with British weather.
Princess Margaret`s birthday is Aug. 21, but I think it`s celebrated on the same day, if at all.
(Did you know Queen Elizabeth is also the Duke of Normandy?)
A mere 2,000 of us were invited, but, my dears, that`s 2,000 out of 250 million or whatever it is Americans, and not one of them was a Trump.
Visions in white
Dress for the do, hosted by the very dashing British Ambassador Sir Antony Acland, was not ”Alice In Wonderland,” as I had hoped, but standard garden party. For me, a child of Newport summers, this meant blue blazer, striped tie, white pants and white shoes. My date for the afternoon, a Washington socialite who just happens to be the grand-niece of Mary, Lady Curzon, Vicrene of India, wore the de rigueur wide picture hat, flowery print dress, white shoes and, of course, white gloves. That most of the men wore dull business suits and many of the women lacked hats and gloves of any kind is just what you`d expect in a middle-class town like Washington.
A card accompanying the invitation said that ”chauffeur-driven cars”
could drop guests off at the ambassador`s front door. (Imagine the British using a tacky middle-class word like ”chauffeur” instead of the upper-class ”driver.” But then, I suppose the phrase ”driver-driven cars” might have been confusing.) But, comme moi, my friend the grand-niece abhors the tacky use of automobiles as status symbols, and so decreed that we should arrive in her Honda Civic, chauffeured by her daughter.
Well, there we were, in the line of ghastly Lincoln limousines and what not, when a lackey or footman or someone tried to shunt us off to the side, saying, ”You can get out over there, madam.”
The grand-niece of Lady Curzon would have none of it, of course, and so we proceeded to the porte-cochere and dismounted in proper fashion.
(Did you know none of Queen Elizabeth`s four maroon Rolls-Royces have license plates? When she`s in one, a little blue light is placed on the roof- which in Moscow would identify her as a taxicab.)
Invitation only
An air vice marshal at the door, who I don`t think has ever summered at Newport, took one look at my blazer and whites and airily demanded to see my invitation. Once it was proferred, however, he became as meek and submissive as all good air vice marshals should be.
We proceeded thence out onto the terrace, where we encountered all manner of embassy ministers, counselors and the high-ranking like who were stationed like department store floorwalkers, complete with boutonnieres, to greet and give directions: ”The bar is there, the ambassador is there and another bar is there.”
Sir Antony and the beautiful Lady Acland were down by the first bar, and in remarkably good spirits, considering they would spend approximately half of the soggy afternoon shaking hands with arriving guests, and the other half shaking hands with departing ones.
There were, actually, lots and lots of ladies in picture hats. A Royal Marine band on the lawn played lots of 1930s dance tunes, and the scene was rather something like the English Club in Upper Peshtar in the days of Empire. I wouldn`t have been surprised at all to see the Duchess of Windsor crawling out of the bushes-doubtless having arrived in one of the ghastly Lincoln limousines.
A no-show as usual
Now, you`re going to ask, aren`t you, whether the queen was actually there? And, of course, she was not. This was strictly a colonial affair.
But Queen Elizabeth is never really there at the Queen`s Birthday parties she herself tosses back in England. At those, thousands of people simply mill and swarm about a royal garden, and when Her Majesty does finally appear, it`s among a favored few and rather briefly, rather like a glimpsed apparition.
(Did you know that the British Royal Family`s real last name is Saxe-Coburg und Gotha?)
But there were lots of generals and air vice marshals dressed up in spurs and red-striped pants, with so many medals on their tunics they looked as though they had stepped out of Smirnoff vodka ads.
And the conversation was delightfully sparkling. For example, the ambassador of Paraguay informed me that the winters in his country are only a month and a half long, and that, yes, it`s true that deposed Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza once really did hire a bulldozer to flatten three Mercedes-Benzes belonging to a rival in a feud over a Paraguayan cabaret dancer.
Rain of terror
In keeping with the colonial ambiance of things, the party was hit by a torrential downpour, which sent the band scurrying, forced us into the pastry tent and rather dampened the celebratory toasts to Her Majesty and President Bush.
But the sun came out in time for us to watch the Royals Blues (a marching band, not a jazz ensemble) ”beat retreat” on the terrace. I had last seen this ceremony performed while attending a party on the Royal Yacht Britannia in Long Beach, Calif. There was much less milling and marching about this time, but the Blues still were certainly up to the standard of the halftime bands at the Super Bowl.
The highlight of the afternoon for me, though, was when a most ladylike lady I shall call simply Lady Jeanne-a vision in picture hat and Laura Ashley garden party frock and certainly the loveliest woman I`ve ever encountered in any garden-came up to me and said, ”Hold these, dear boy,” handing me with one hand both an umbrella and a glass of champagne, which I somehow managed also to grasp with one hand. She then added, ”While I fix the catch on this friggin` purse.”
(Did you know that Princess Anne was the first female member of the Royal Family to wear slacks in public?) –
