How did the great hosts become an endangered species? William Norwich investigates. By WILLIAM NORWICH
Beware of nostalgia. Understand that you are officially old the first time you hear yourself say, "Things were so much better in the old days." People who spend too much time in resorts like Palm Beach, where almost any amount of time is too much time, are always saying, with a pained sigh, "Things used to be so much more glamorous back then." Fashion also has been invaded by the nostalgia beast. Someone, please, punch the monster in the nose. Reviving the 1980's before the silhouette was even cold was ghoulish, regardless of how much the cut was tweaked by the newest designer talents.
But in a last-gasp effort to save entertaining from its ultimate demise, nostalgia for parties of the past might be the only hope left. If we can only glean a few needed clues ...
You have heard, and no doubt experienced, the evidence firsthand: Entertaining, c'est mort. Everyone says it is so. And, of course, for the kind of entertaining that would provoke a Mrs. Ronald Greville, one of England's most celebrated hostesses, to declare, "One uses up so many red carpets in a season," or for the Duchess of Windsor to opine, "Any form of international gathering, even a small dinner party, is bound at some stage or another to reflect the world situation, and the world situation, as everybody knows, is as murky and difficult to fathom as black bean soup," well, life just isn't like that anymore. That's O.K. Let it go.
We should, on the other hand, feel free to both laugh and cry that "things used to be better" when we invite an otherwise accomplished friend for what used to be called "a civilized dinner at home" and he, or she, speaks in decibels one is conditioned to expect in trendy restaurants. How can anyone know better? Very little in modern public life reinforces the civilities of private life.
Here are some of the culpable factors that qualified witnesses cite in the conspiracy to murder entertaining in New York: the lack-of-space problem, the trendy-restaurant problem, the noise problem, the not-enough-time problem, the nervous-host problem, the rude-guest problem, the public-versus-private-life problem, the lack-of-interest problem, the too-much-interest problem and the "I'm too tired" problem. Then there is the traffic problem, the fussy food problem, the political-correctness problem, the fit-or-fat problem, the feminist problem, the dumb-male-and-useless-husband problem and the help problem, both the lack-of-help and the help-usually-is-more-attractive-than-the-host problem. Beyond that, there is the money problem: the wrong people with too much and the right people with too little, to paraphrase Cleveland Amory, whose groundbreaking case study, "Who Killed Society?" was published in 1960.
With the exception of cafe-society forays to the Stork Club or El Morocco, nice people used to lunch in restaurants but dine at the houses of their friends. Houses were organized to function around this unifying fact of metropolitan life. During the 1970's disco craze, people began to sleep through dinner so they could dance until dawn at Studio 54. It was then that the publicity party began to trump the dinner party as the romantic ideal of what a sophisticated New York grown-up did to enjoy oneself. The party that did it, and launched a thousand others like it even to this day, was Yves Saint Laurent's party for his Opium fragrance in 1978, a wild bash held on a Chinese junk docked in the East River. A night to remember. Some people probably are still there.
Eventually, New Yorkers paid the piper for their disco nights. During the yuppie era of repentant hard work, trendy restaurants replaced discos. An emerging meritocracy, restless and impatient, always in a hurry, took great delight in the instant status conferred by landing a good table in a happening restaurant. Canal Bar, 150 Wooster, Indochine, Punsch -- remember Punsch? -- Bowery Bar, Nobu, Balthazar and Pastis, among others, became a habit. Why would you want to entertain at home when, on any given night in a trendy restaurant, you could rub elbows in a mix of people ranging from RuPaul to Joan Didion? Thanks to trendy restaurant dining, anything goes. You can arrive late to dinner, leave early, talk on your cell phone, act outrageously, dance on the tables, smoke at the bar and order whatever you want, including, but not exclusively, some very average food.
"I think the popularity of going to restaurants rather than to the houses of one's friends for dinner is what killed entertaining, certainly the sort of entertaining I documented in my photographs," said Frederick Eberstadt, whose black-and-white pictures accompany this article. Some of Eberstadt's work, shot in the 1950's and 1960's, appeared last year in the "Social Register Observer." "When I was growing up," recalled Eberstadt, a practicing psychotherapist, "we only lunched in restaurants, and then rarely."
John Galliher, a seasoned guest and host of note, said: "I think it is laziness. Even people who can afford it no longer can be bothered to organize their houses properly. They entertain in restaurants.
"A friend's cook recently quit because he wasn't being given enough to do," Galliher continued. "I think the greatest luxury nowadays is to have a delicious spaghetti and salad at someone's house rather than go to La Grenouille, or wherever. And one mustn't think it is about money. Surely, that spaghetti and a good bottle of wine is less expensive than dinner in a fancy restaurant. I remember years ago, in Paris, how well Françoise de la Renta entertained at home even before she married Oscar. Maybe, some nights, she had one maid in the kitchen who helped. Françoise always served something simple and delicious, and all the grand and interesting people came because it was so cozy and easy."
Sean Driscoll, a founder of Glorious Food, the caterer, blames the New York syndrome. "There's so much perfectionism in New York that when someone entertains at home, no matter how rich or secure, it is still like an opening night," he said. "The host knows the critics will be giving their reviews the next morning."
Nervous hosts aren't the only suspects. Guests are culprits, too.
"There's so much business entertaining during the cocktail hour, two or three pit stops a night, if you'll excuse the expression, that by the time people get to dinner, they are exhausted and grumpy," Driscoll observed.
Blaine Trump offered: "In Seattle, I don't think they have this problem. In L.A., they don't go to dinner parties during the week for fear that someone might think they are not working. But here, in New York, people are inundated with business entertaining, and they're exhausted by it. Still, that doesn't excuse poor behavior. If you commit to going to someone's dinner, make an effort. Comb your hair. Look pretty. Talk to someone you don't know."
In "The Rituals of Dinner," the author Margaret Visser equates our disdain for formality with our obsession with time. She believes that "all we feel we can manage in our rushed and exhausted state" is "casual manners."' "Eating a homemade meal with invited guests, or even with one's family, cannot be entirely 'casual,' at least in the accidental aspect of the word," Visser explained, "because preparations and forethought are necessary, and all those present have had to turn down competing events and commit themselves in advance to appearing on a certain date. They have to sit down, face each other and not get up and leave before everyone else is ready to do so." Eating together with friends can "come to seem a formal, implacably structured and time-consuming event," writes Visser, "even for those who do not have to cook. We are conditioned to think that even a low level of formality is a constraint just because it entails participation with other people, whereas being in one's own personal hurry must be free and preferable."
In this state, you certainly won't meet your perfect mate. And for that reason, perhaps if only by necessity, to meet and marry and perpetuate the species, young people are coming to the rescue of entertaining, expressing keen interest in how things used to be done, from flirting to fondue. "For a long time, parties of almost any sort weren't politically correct," explained Robert Isabell, the special-events designer. "But the new generation is longing to go to a great party like the ones they've read about."
Isabell predicted the return to popularity of the masked dance and costume party. There used to be some beauts given in Europe, anticipated for months and talked about for years afterward. One of the best times I've ever had at a party in New York was the Halloween night I went out in costume, the only time I'd done so since I was 10. Farrah Fawcett's 1987 mini-series "Poor Little Rich Girl" -- about Barbara Hutton, the dime-store heiress whose driver would carry her to her car because she was too rich to walk -- was a big deal that season on television. So two friends dressed me up as Barbara Hutton -- Porthault bathrobe, Herms scarf, sunglasses, Delman sandals and a Ziploc bag filled with pills and cigarettes. They costumed themselves as Miss Hutton's hangers-on -- resort clothes and lots of gold chains -- and off we went to Patricia Kennedy Lawford's for Halloween supper. Since I was channeling someone "too rich to walk," we slumped down on a sofa for the majority of the evening. What bliss.
"In real life, as it is called, our desires are always to some extent inhibited," wrote James Laver, the British fashion historian. "We live in houses which we would have designed quite differently if we had designed them ourselves, we wear clothes which are decided for us by tradition, fashion or a combination of both. But our unconscious desires are still unsatisfied. We dream of living in other countries at other times. We would like to be clothed in scarlet and fine linen, wear crowns or helmets or turbans, put a feather in our hat or even in our hair. A paper cap at the Christmas party is all that most of us attain to, unless of course we can organize, or get ourselves to, a fancy-dress ball."
So the jury is in. Meaningful, and amusing, social intercourse must continue. Alas, the verdict will be appealed by that special-interest group, shortsighted publicists. Whatever happens, even if entertaining dies, there will always be parties. They are part of human nature. Wasn't it Igor Cassini, the gossip columnist, or was it Khrushchev, who said that parties are inevitable? If an atom bomb dropped, and there were only three survivors, sooner than later two of the people would give a party and not invite the third.