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Show I GEORGE A. KESSLER'S LONDON DINNER. My London correspondent furnishes me with some interesting details of the dinner given by Mr. G. A. Kessler of New York, under the auspices aus-pices of Mr. Henry Pruger, manager of the Savoy Sa-voy Hotel, London, of which New York has heard more or less in a general way. At the good old dinner the manager of the Savoy had the old courtyard of the Savoy turned into a blue lake, and the walls hung with scenes from Venice, including the Piazza of St. Mark and the Campanile, while two gondolas floated on the water, one for the guests and the other for the musicians. To complete the illusion, white pige-i pige-i ons flew about above and around the canopy of I the large gondola. The decorations consisted mainly of pink flowers, there being as many as j 12,000 choice carnations, 2,000 Malmaisort carna tions, 17,000 roses, 2,500 cattleyas, and 5,000 yards of smilax. The menu was as follows: Melon Cantaloup a la Savoy. Tortue Claire en tasse. Souffle de Homard a l'Americaine. Filets de Sole en Caisse a la Venitienne. Cherubine de Chapon a la Gondoliere. Agneau de Pauillac a la broche. Petits Pois Bonne Maman. Coup d'Or au Moet. ! Supreme de Caneton de Rouen au Sang. Salad Coeurs de Laitues. Asperges froides Vinaigrette. Bombe St. Marc. Buisson de Peches de Montreuil au Dauphin. J Chateau Mille feuilles a la Vierge. Friandises. Diablotins a la Nana. Corbeille de Fruits. A baby elephant from the Royal Italian Circus Cir-cus was among the contributors to the entertainment, entertain-ment, he carrying on his back a birthday cake, lighted with candles, while dolphins sculptured in ice held iced fruits in their tails. After the dinner there was a reception in the hotel's Venetian room, which was decorated to represent the Doge's Palace. It is staged that this feast cost $15,000. Another dinner at the Savoy, which was something of an imitation of Mr. Kessler's, was given by Captain Kaburaki, the naval attache of the Japanese embassy, to the Prince and Princess Prin-cess Arisugawa and a large number of English and Japanese guests. It differed from Mr. Kessler's Kess-ler's gondola dinner in that the menu was essentially essen-tially Japanese. The extraordinary feature consisted con-sisted in its being served in what was made to represent a Japanese garden. The dining table, shaped like an elongated figure "8," was intended to represent a Japanese basket. The space enclosed en-closed by the inner line of the figure was occupied occu-pied by a miniature representation of a Japanese landscape. A tiny river flowed in at the upper end, meandered past diminutive mountains, formed a little lake near the center of the picture, and disappeared dis-appeared down a pretty valley. At each end of the table was a little Japanese village scene, a lighted tea house, a fountain and miniature trees. Trellis work ran around the courtyard covered with lovely and unostentatious flowers and plants, while fine old Japanese furniture had been borrowed bor-rowed for the occasion. In short, the scene was everything that was beautiful and charming but what an expenditure of labor and money for one evening's enjoyment! Perhaps New York has something to learn in the art of expensive and eccentric dinners. The New Yorker. |