It was dressed-up show and tell, and it cost $225 for each player.
But, even for a crowd that yawns at yet another tablespoon of caviar, this was opulence overload.
”Now I`ve seen it all,” said bandleader Stanley Paul, gawking at the 40-foot ceiling in the front hall of the main house of the 75-acre Cuneo estate in Vernon Hills, where the September Ball of the Children`s Home & Aid Society of Illinois unfolded on Friday night. ”My band said, `For once you`re speechless.` ”
Standing beside a suit of armor given his father by William Randolph Hearst, John Cuneo Jr., son of the man who made his millions mostly in milk cows and printing, played signpost.
Arms flailing north, south and southwest, he pointed out a variety of sightseeing routes through the 35-room manse he moved into when he was but 7 years old. And, as master of show and tell, he answered every question, even the ones asked nearly 800 times.
To the north, there was the English Room, where his late father, John, had installed the captain`s cabin from an English sailing vessel. To the northeast, there was the indoor pool encased in Carrara marble and the ”piece de resistance of ladies` rooms,” where gold and mirrored tiles surround what appeared to be a gold throne, but was not.
Directly south, there was the chapel, complete with an altar from Potter Palmer. And southwest of the scion was the dining hall, where a table for 12 was set with 48 knives, 48 forks, 24 spoons and 12 dinner and bread plates-all goldplate over sterling.
After checking the place cards and not finding hers among all the gold, milliner Mary Lou Maher, like many of the other 800 guests, exclaimed: ”Darn, I must be out in the yard!”
Out in the yard was not exactly lawn chairs and coolers.
There, just beyond the marbled wishing well from which champagne-and-peach nectar cocktails were being served, rose a billowing white tent with poles that appeared to have netted swarms of fireflies as tiny bulbs twinkled beneath endless bolts of gauze.
”Every table has a beautiful view,” said Nancy Klimley, the woman charged with making art out of each tabletop. (She achieved that with 2,000 Madame Delbar roses, about 400 pounds of champagne grapes and enough votive candles to light Holy Name Cathedral.)
Indeed, swans glided across a pond at the south end of the tent, lighted statues of warriors stood to the west, and to the east were flower beds thick with begonias and rhododendron.
Benefiting from all this beauty: the 6,500 children served annually by the 107-year-old child care and family service agency.
