The Hostess with the Mostess

One of our all time favorite tomes is How to Do It, or The Lively Art of Entertaining, by the indefatigable Miss Elsa Maxwell. Miss Maxwell was, in her own words, "...a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background, [who] decided to become a legend and did just that." Yet for all her unloveliness and lack of Social Register standing, through her ingenious flair for ingratiating herself with the "right" people, Maxwell became society's premiere party giver, hobnobbing with the eclectic likes of Maria Callas, Bernard Baruch, Prince Aly Khan, the Duke of Alba, and practically every other Hollywood and Broadway celebrity, blue blood, and bona fide royal of the last mid-century. Truly, by the 1950's, when How to Do It was first published, Maxwell was every bit as famous (if not more so) than the people she gave parties for and wrote about in her syndicated gossip column.





Unfortunately, Maxwell also had a self-destructive streak which may have found its perfect outlet in the rise and advent of television. As a "name," Maxwell was a frequent guest on the various talk, chat and news programs of the day. The medium gave Maxwell the largest possible audience to whom she could dispense her views and opinions; but it also put into sharp focus the real woman beneath the Patou and Jean Desses gowns. While Maxwell's columns and books had presented her as a basically benign, starstruck name-dropper extraordinaire, Maxwell's television appearances showed a loud, garrulous, inelegant woman with, conflictingly, an intense dislike and distrust for anything outside of her very small realm of "right" society. Armchair psychologists might suggest that Maxwell's loud protestations against those she considered "bores" and "vulgarians" was, in some way, self-flagellation for her own less-than-pristine roots. Widely considered among her friends and enemies as a lesbian, Maxwell also railed vehemently and viciously against homosexuality - which certainly must have been an interesting topic of conversation when she palled around with Noel, Cole and Cecil. (For more on this subject, we direct you to our friend Brooks' fascinating site, An Open Book.)


When Maxwell died in 1963, there were only a dozen mourners at her funeral; she had alienated many of her true friends, and those fair-weather acquaintances who had only wanted a coveted Maxwell party invitation had long outgrown their use for a woman who had become an anachronism by that point. Hindsight being 20/20, though, we can be kind to Elsa Maxwell. She was, after all, "a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background," and most likely a lesbian, to boot. One can only imagine, given the times and the crowd she desperately wanted to be a part of, how that affected her psychologically, and the obvious conflict it caused within her. With another half-century's worth of perspective behind us, let's simply celebrate the fact that a short, fat, homely piano player could find herself, albeit temporarily, at the very pinnacle of fame and glamour. So throw a party today, for no reason at all, and raise your glass to Miss Maxwell on her birthday. We'll even give you a menu from some of her favorite recipes for the event.

ELSA MAXWELL
May 24, 1881 - November 1, 1963

AN ELSA MAXWELL BIRTHDAY MENU

Mrs. T. Reed (Diana) Vreeland's Consommé Vert-Pré
Mrs. Edgar Leonard's Trout
Valerian Rybar's Artichokes a la Greque
Clare Boothe Luce's Cumberland House Orange Pancakes

Consommé Vert-Pré

Make a very good rich bouillon. Add enough spinach juice to color it green, and just before serving, add finely chopped fines herbes. Serve hot or iced.

Trout

Put juice of 1 lemon in ice cold water. Dip trout into this, then dry with a cloth rubbed in garlic. Salt and pepper the trout inside and dust lightly with flour outside. Saute trout in butter, shaking pan to prevent sticking. Cook about 3 minutes on each side. Remove trout from pan and keep warm. Add more butter to pan and saute 1 medium onion, thinly sliced, until onion is transparent but not brown. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice, salt and pepper, 1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar, 4 or 5 tablespoons white wine, 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh herbs. Pour sauce over the trout.

Artichokes a la Greque

Clean 6 choice, large artichokes, and snip off the tip of each leaf. Mix 1/2 cup of bread crumbs with salt, pepper, 1/2 clove of finely chopped garlic, and 2 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley. Then stuff each leaf. Place the artichokes in a pan and 1/2 cup of water, taking care not to spill any on the artichokes. Pour 3 tablespoons of pure olive oil over each artichoke. Salt and pepper lightly, and let simmer for 2 hours, replenishing water when necessary. Serve lukewarm.

Cumberland House Orange Pancakes

Cream 1/4 pound sweet butter with 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar. Gradually beat in the juice and grated rind of 2 oranges. Turn this orange hard sauce into a jar and let it harden in refrigerator. Beat 3 egg yolks lightly, and add a pinch of salt and 1 cup milk. Stir in gradually 3/4 cup sifted flour, and continue to stir until batter is smooth. Finally fold in 3 egg whites, stiffly beaten. In heavy iron skillet heat a generous amount of sweet butter over a low fire. When butter foams, pour in 1/2 cup of pancake batter. When the pancake sets, loosen it carefully with a turner and keep it afloat in the butter until the underside is golden. Turn the pancake, add more butter, and keep pancake loose by shaking the skillet constantly until the pancake is crisp and brown on both sides. (Keep fire low or the butter will burn.) Repeat until all batter is used. Drain the pancakes on absorbent paper, then fold each quickly around 1 tablespoonful of the cold orange hard sauce., and serve them on a piping hot fireproof dish - so hot the butter sizzles. A dash of Cointreau added at the table enhances the flavor.

Darlings...

...it's so true! But your patience is greatly appreciated.

And in This Corner...

Find me a primitive man,
Built on a primitive plan.
Someone with vigor and vim.
I don't mean a kind that belongs to a club,
But the kind that has a club that belongs to him.

Luxe Lager

Despite the persuasive copy, we can't quite picture Cole Porter or Miss Irene Dunne knocking back a few brewskies; yet, for some odd reason, it seems quite right and plausible to imagine Bea Lillie doing so...

Just the Perfect Blendship

When other friendships have been forgot,
Ours will still be hot.

Posh Promiscuity

Oh, those randy royals. Lady Louis (Edwina) Mountbatten, later Countess Mountbatten of Burma and the last Vicerine of India, scandalized high society when she engaged in an affair with a well-known black entertainer. In 1932, the British newspaper The People printed a blind item, in which it alleged

'a scandal which has shaken society to the very depths. It concerns one of the leading hostesses in the country - a woman highly connected and immensely rich.
'Her association with a coloured man became so marked that they were the talk of the West End. Then one day the couple were caught in compromising circumstances.

'The sequel is that the society woman has been given hints to clear out of England for a couple of years to let the affair blow over and the hint comes from a quarter which cannot be ignored'.

Nearly everyone in Britain knew that the hostess with the mostest in question was Edwina Mountbatten; and soon, the "coloured man" was named as Paul Robeson.


The ensuing libel trial and media circus played out to a salivating throng; in the end, The People could find no evidence to support its claims, and was forced the issue a humble apology and pay full damages to Lady Mountbatten. The irony was that the shady Lady was, indeed, embroiled in an affair with a black entertainer -- but not Paul Robeson. Instead, she was getting royally ______ by the elegant, sophisticated, and sensationally well-hung nightclub entertainer, Leslie Hutchinson.


Hutch, as he was known, besides being the darling of cafe society, was also an astonishingly prolific cocksman who managed to father seven children by various women, and found time to have affairs with Cole Porter and Ivor Novello.



He certainly cast a spell over Lady Mountbatten, who reportedly commissioned a diamond-encrusted penis sheath from Cartier for her ivory-tickling lover, and who, according to legend, became inextricably sexually "locked" with Hutchinson, requiring the services of private surgeons! It all must have been rather appalling for her handsome, dashing, cuckolded husband, Lord Louis Mountbatten; however, the good Lord was involved in extramarital affairs of his own -- and, much like his wife, was none too fussy about the gender. In fact, his whispered nickname was "Lord Mountbottom."


Eventually, Lady Mountbatten's passion for Hutch receeded, as she continued to voraciously take new lovers. Plagued by scandal, and unprotected by family connections and royal titles, Hutch sadly drifted into professional obscurity and social ruin. At the end, he was an alcoholic, bloated, penniless, sad remnant of his once glorious and gorgeous self; his funeral, in 1969, was attended by only 42 mourners.


As for Edwina and Louis Mountbatten, their curious marriage continued until her death in 1960; no shrinking violet in her advancing years she, Edwina continued to court scandal with an intense relationship with India's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.


According to sordid gossip, the Prime Minister was no stranger to bisexual escapades himself, and Mountbatten, now Viceroy of India, engaged in a bizarre ménage à trois with his wife and her lover in a last ditch attempt to maintain some sexual contact with a woman whose physical need for her husband had vanished long ago.


In a ghastly, ghoulish coda to the Mountbattens' decadent tale, Louis Mountbatten died in 1979 as the result of an IRA assasination plot. A bomb was detonated on his 30-foot sailboat; his grandson and his elder daughter's mother-in-law were also killed in the attack. The fourth victim was "a 15-year-old youth from County Fermanagh who was working as a crew member." At the time, Mountbatten's close relationships with teenage boys were raising more than a few eyebrows.

We've given you most of the good bits, but you can read the whole sticky mess here.