Around the World With Auntie Mame (29 page)

I started to tell her, but she was opening a big green envelope that I knew was from Mrs. Mont d'Or. “Oh, dear,” she said, reading aloud. “
Monsieur et Madame. H. Jules Mont d'Or
vous prie d'assister à diner ce soir à huit heures. Le smoking
.”

“Le smoking?”
I said. “What are we going to do, sit around and puff on reefers?”

“No, my little love,” Auntie Mame laughed, “it's just one of those French-English affections. It means wear a dinner jacket. But, oh dear, are we really going to have to gabble French platitudes all night. I'm not sure that I'm up to it, yet.”

“I shouldn't think so. They're Americans. I met her son today. He's very nice.”

“Well, I suppose we might as well go. I don't think a few cocktails and a square meal would tire me too much. Ito,” she called, “I want you to run next door with a note. Let's see, ‘Madame Burnside'—how the hell do you say ‘accepts with pleasure'?”

I WAS ALL DRESSED AND WAITING SHARPLY AT EIGHT when Auntie Mame appeared in a cotton dinner dress and no jewelry except for her wedding ring and the bracelet that was wedged above her elbow. “Well, let's be off, my little love.”

“Do you think you're quite—well, quite
elaborate
enough, Auntie Mame? I mean, didn't you want to put on any ice?”

“Nonsense, Patrick,” Auntie Mame snapped. “You know nothing of
haute couture
. In a simple little mountain resort like this I don't want to look gauche. I'm sure these Mount Kiscos, or whatever they're called, are a nice, modest family who just want to share a little supper. . . .”

“Okay, okay, okay,” I said. “Let's get going.”

I'm not certain just what effect Mrs. Mont d'Or had striven for, but the inside of her Moresque house looked exactly like the lobby of Loew's Alhambra. We were admitted by two enormous Berber servants, whom I halfway expected to strip down to breechclouts and bang on a gong by way of announcing our arrival. Auntie Mame's eyes opened wide at the hideous grandeur of the reception hall, but they nearly popped out of her head when Mrs. Mont d'Or heaved into sight, covered in cloth of gold and diamonds. Automatically, Auntie Mame flashed her big uncut emerald ring, only to remember, too late, that it was at home in her jewel case.

With a maximum of
enchanté
-ing and
la-la
-ing and
après-vous
-ing we were ushered into the grand
salon
, which looked like some sultan's seraglio, except for an enormous Capehart in a Chippendale cabinet. There, among the orchids and the servants, were Sammy, H. Jules Mont d'Or, and one Mlle. de Chimay, a pretty but dim French girl who was, as Mrs. Mont d'Or confided to Auntie Mame, a likely prospect for a daughter-in-law—“
bien
elévée
” and with a “
dot
.”

I must say that H. Jules seemed an unlikely consort for Mme. de Mont d'Or. He was a sweet, sad, round little man with large moist eyes and a bald pink head. He seldom spoke, and when he did he never seemed sure that what he was saying might or might not displease his wife. He was wearing a cloth of gold mess jacket, to match his wife's dress, I suppose. Seymour-Sammy was in a baby-blue dinner jacket that set off his tan nicely, but seemed to give him a severe case of embarrassment. One felt that Mme. Mont d'Or had more to say about what her men wore than they did themselves.

There was champagne (French) and caviar (Russian) and then quite a long hike to the dining room, which was about the size of Madison Square Garden and fairly writhing with mosaic, twisted columns, and filigree work. A native servant stood behind every chair. The conversation at dinner was conducted in English, as Mlle. de Chimay spoke it fluently—fortunately for everyone concerned, especially Mrs. Mont d'Or, who talked endlessly about having her clothes flown direct from Paris, about her jewels, about the chef she had stolen from La Rue, about having her portrait painted by Marie Laurencin, about the white Citroën (“
pour
le sport
”) she was having built, about the redecoration of her winter house in Damascus—in short, about herself. In a flashier way I found her almost as tiresome as Mrs. Cantwell, but at last she took the ladies off to what she called “the
I'Imperatrice Salon
” and I was left, exhausted, with Seymour and H. Jules.

An impressive parade of servants brought in liqueurs and a bottle of Dr. Brown's Celery Tonic for H. Jules. For the first time that evening, H. Jules Mont d'Or spoke an entire sentence, and then another. “You boys forgive me if I don't drink liquor. I get this sent to me from New York.”

“That's all right, Papa,” Seymour said, “enjoy it.”

“Cheers,” I said, hoisting my brandy balloon in H. Jules's direction.

“New York,” H. Jules said, fastening me with a dark, liquid gaze. “Tell me, what is New York like?”

“New York, sir? Well, that's quite a large order. Its population is . . .”

“No, no, young fellah. That I know. I was born in New York. Almost I was born on Ellis Island. But ten years already I been away.” With a sad, sweet smile, H. Jules looked deep into his celery tonic. “Yes, those were happy days—a little flat on Mosholu Parkway. Of course when the business did better Sadie wanted Central Park West. And even that was nice— lovely view, close to the subway, just around the corner from Columbia Grammar School for the boy . . . Yes, a wonderful country,” Mr. Mont d'Or went on dreamily. “You know Pollack's Restaurant on Delancey Street? Every time I have a glass of celery tonic I think of the hot pastrami at Pollack's. Sometimes I dream of a big plate hot pastrami. And the Luxor Baths—every Friday night I'd take a Russian bath. Five buckets I could take! Yes, New York's a wonderful place. Where else could you arrive with nothing—of course Sadie comes from educated people, two brothers she's got, a doctor and a lawyer—and end up a rich man?”

“Gee, Mr. Mont d'Or,” I said, “just how did you happen to end up in the, um, Arab League?”

“Silk,” H. Jules said. “Back home I was in fancy dress goods. Then Sadie's brother—the lawyer—found this silk mill in Damascus, the finest quality silks, very cheap labor, no union. So, here we are. Sadie likes it. We go every year to Paris, to Milan, It'ly, all the places Sadie likes. We got no home. Now I do a little wool, essences, gold threads, fancy trimmings, a little bit oil. I can't complain, but when I think of New York and a big plate hot pastrami . . .”

“Zhuuuuul!” Mrs. Mont d'Or's strident voice called. “
J'at
tend!
”

“WELL, I NEVER!” AUNTIE MAME SAID AFTER WE GOT back home. “I didn't dream that anyone like Sari Mont d'Or existed.”

“It just goes to show what a book of Berlitz tickets will do.”

“Oh, Patrick, I feel so sorry for that poor, sweet little husband. He made me think of my osteopath. And the son's a darling. But of all the shallow, pretentious, power-driven females I've ever seen . . .”

“Wait till tomorrow,” I said.

“What happens tomorrow, darling?”

“Mrs. Cantwell's Tuesday.”

CHEZ CANTWELL WAS, IF ANYTHING, WORSE THAN Villa Mont d'Or. While Mrs. Mont d'Or reveled in Oriental ostentation, Mrs. Cantwell had steadfastly ignored the Eastern architecture of her house and had tried to turn it into Lowell, Massachusetts. The twain did not meet. Horsehair love seats and American Chippendale chairs lurked among the tiles and arches, ruffled Priscilla curtains hung at the keyhole windows, and the walls were liberally salted with samplers and clipper ships and portraits of grim ancestors who looked as though they had terrible trouble with their bowels. Placed on a piecrust table, ever so casually but where no one could possibly miss it, was a copy of the Boston
Social
Register
—many years out of date—which sprung open, as though by some complex mechanism, to the page where the Cantwells were listed. With a certain amount of amusement, I watched Auntie Mame calmly turn the book face down, only to have it instantly righted by Mrs. Cantwell.

Humiliated by having been dressed too simply at Mrs. Mont d'Or's the night before, Auntie Mame went to some pains to Look Right at Mrs. Cantwell's. She turned up in a black linen sheath, a huge black hat, long gloves, and all her pearls. Again she was Wrong. When she entered Mrs. Cantwell's frumpish circle it was as though Mata Hari had dropped in for tea with the Eastern Star. I could see that Mrs. Cantwell, in her pongee two-piece with “grandmother's lovely, lovely opals,” rather disapproved, and the opals certainly suffered by comparison.

Mrs. Cantwell's set—and there was no question that she was the absolute
Führer
of it—was made up of lackluster Americans and English of middle age, middle income, and middle class. There were an addled old English vicar, an ancient archaeologist, a couple of American engineers with pregnant wives, a widow from the Isle of Wight, a reedy young Philadelphian who taught English at the American University in Beirut, a toothy spinster who was doing her damndest to lead the remaining Moslem population to Calvinism, a stuffy young New Yorker with a hot-potato accent and a name that was something like Chauncey Lawrence Whitney Brooks or Lawrence Chauncey Brooks Whitney or Whitney Brooks Chauncey Lawrence—well, it was one of those exhaustive collections of family names that nobody can ever remember in proper sequence, not that many would want to. He was something like a third-assistant-sub-undersecretary at the embassy in Damascus and gave Mrs. Cantwell her sole excuse for saying often that she traveled in “diplomatic circles.” However, she practically thrust him at poor Lucia.

Well, people both undistinguished and undistinguishable kept coming and going all afternoon. Their only common bond seemed to be the English language and that they were insecure enough to endure Mrs. Cantwell's bullying for the sake of society and a cup of Lipton's. And what a despotic hostess! Mediocre as the assemblage was, Mrs. Cantwell endowed each guest with a spurious fascination, which embarrassed everyone. “I know you'll want to meet Mrs. May-berry,” she would bellow in stentorian tones, shoving a helpless stranger into an alien group, “she does such lovely dried arrangements. A real green thumb!” “Miss Trout comes from Shaker Heights and has a lovely soprano voice. Perhaps you can coax her to sing for us.” “Mr. Hewlett's mother was a Hoare.” With each unwelcome introduction, the brief biography, the thumbnail sketch, grew grander, for everything that Mrs. Cantwell possessed—and her guests were merely her chattels—had to be exceptional, if only by association.

And I had noticed before that, once removed from home soil to a place where a large house, a retinue of servants, and three square meals a day could be had for less than a hundred dollars a month, many of my countrymen gave themselves certain airs and graces they would never have dared to attempt back in Glendale or Forest Hills or Oak Park. Forgetting all too soon the tiny apartments and suburban bungalows whence they sprang, the expatriate civil servants and foreign representatives tended to become languid, lordly, and loquacious, patronizing of the native population, snappish at the vagaries of their cooks and nurses and gardeners—they who had never before had a charwoman to wait on them. Mrs. Cantwell spoke lengthily about her circle of friends being “terribly cosmopolitan.” They weren't. They were hopelessly parochial, scared silly that someone might discover their true backgrounds, and they were living testimony to the fact that you can be just as big a hick in the Middle East as in the Middle West. None of the Mont d'Ors had been invited.

Knowing enough about Auntie Mame to be intrigued and not enough to be worried, Mrs. Cantwell obviously felt that she had a lioness on her hands. What she didn't realize was that she
also
had a tigress.

“Dear Mrs. Burnside,” she gushed, flashing the shark smile, “dew let me introduce you to some of My People. You know My Tuesdays are famous both in Lebanon
and
Syria.”

“
Famous
, my dear?” Auntie Mame said, with a smile that was pure barracuda. “They're notorious—even as far away as Transjordan.”

“W-why, yes, I-I suppose they are,” Mrs. Cantwell said. “Humphrey, do come and meet nice Mrs. Burnside. Lee-ew-sha! Lucia, dear! Mother wants you.”

Mr. Humphrey Cantwell—or the Mr. Chipps of the Middle East—came forward with the booming false heartiness of a headmaster or a camp director. Mr. Cantwell's phony “Give-me-a-boy-and-I'll-give-you-a-man” approach reminded me of the masters at St. Boniface Academy. He was the kind of man who ran an obscure private school not through any love of youth or learning, but because he wasn't fitted for anything better than diluting his own inadequate education. Terms like “Good Stock,” “Real Gentleman,” and “True Aristocrat” were the cornerstones of his conversation. And I could almost see him in assembly hall, substituting his dusty social connections, his petty snobberies, his insignificant family tree as blatant counterfeits for quality, intelligence, and leadership, as he harangued a student body too far removed from better seats of learning to do more than suffer in silence. Humphrey Cantwell was a pompous old fraud. But compared to his wife he was Prince Charming. I couldn't help wondering just when, how, and why, a girl as lovely as Lucia had been born to them.

“NOW YOU MUST RUN OFF WITH MY YOUNG PEOPLE,” Mrs. Cantwell said, as though she were directing traffic at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. “But don't make Chauncey jealous. He's one of Lucia's most attentive beaux. (His mother was a Lawrence.) These young diplomats, you know.”

Auntie Mame rolled her eyes dramatically and put down her teacup. She looked as though she'd commit arson for a drink.

Lucia seemed almost relieved that I was horning in on her tête-à-tête with Brooks Whitney Lawrence Chauncey, or whatever his name was. “Ackcherlly,” he was saying in a New York voice that made me think he was having digestive difficulties, “I'm the only white man in the embassy. The rest of them are just a pack of New Dealahs. Oh, hel-laow,” he said, looking at me as though I'd just crawled out of the plumbing, “I heah that you've beaten me out of taking Lucia to the club dance tonight.”