Spectacles: See You in Portugal

In an age of increasing affluence, the rich not only get richer but become more jaded in the process. And yet the high life somehow must go on. The challenge is to create an event so special, so sumptuous, so unequaled that it cannot be missed. Everybody must talk about it for months, charter yachts, planes and limousines, book hairdressers, order new ball gowns, do and dare anything just to be there. No matter how boring it is once they get there, just having their names on the guest list automatically makes them Beautiful People.

All summer long, the word has been out: the target for September is Portugal, the occasion the twin parties to be given by Franco-American Oil Millionaire Pierre Schlumberger and Bolivian Tin King Antenor Patiño. The Schlumbergers began getting ready for their bash four years ago, when they bought the 20-room 16th century Quinta do Vinagre (Vinegar Villa) at Colares, a coastal resort an hour’s drive west of Lisbon. For months, architects and decorators have been transforming the grounds into an illuminated Eden, complete with a chandeliered pavilion for dancing. Rumor had it that it was all costing $3,500,000. Nonsense, snorted Schlumberger; the sum was only in six figures. And if 1,200 seemed a large guest list, Mme. Schlumberger could only protest that she originally intended having 800 for the housewarming. But, she added, “people from all over the world begged on their knees to come.” Naturally, she could not refuse.

Candles and Cake. Neither, it seems, could anyone who got an invitation. Of notable names, there was no end: Umberto, ex-King of Italy; Juscelino Kubitschek, ex-President of Brazil; Stavros Niarchos, ex-husband of Charlotte Ford Niarchos. For titles, there were the Maharanee of Baroda, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Princess Ira von Furstenberg and Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes. Salvador Dali materialized, so to speak. So did Hollywood Director Vincente Minnelli, Sonja Henie, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Audrey Hepburn, Françoise Sagan and Penelope Tree.

To bar crashers, 250 members of the mounted Guarda Nacional Republicana were on hand at the Quinta do Vinagre: inside, 200 blue-liveried servants passed around flutes of champagne and a midnight snack of lobster salad. All night, the local Portuguese crowded to get a closer look at Gina Lollobrigida in a plunging pink ballgown, the Begum Aga Khan’s colossal diamond necklace and Sukarno’s ex-wife Ratna Sari Dewi in a tight red gown. Someone remembered that it was Henry Ford II’s 51st birthday, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday, dear Henry,” while he blew out the candles. It was 7 a.m. before Princess Irene of The Netherlands and Spain’s Prince Carlos de Bourbon accepted a cup of coffee and called it a night.

Embrace and Exclaim. Two nights later, it was Patiño’s turn. At his 240-acre Quinta Patiño, five miles away in Alcoitão, he had four bands, instead of the Schlumbergers’ two. The moon was bright, the night clear and cool, as Patiño had hoped. And all the same people were there, the ladies in different gowns, to embrace and exclaim. No one could bear to miss a moment. As Iran’s ex-Queen Soraya explained: “I’m very pained over what happened in Iran. But an earthquake can happen anywhere. That’s no reason for me not to go to a ball.”