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It was a rush to change after the Drexels and still get to the pre-dance dinners on time. Janet had 260 of her age group; others were entertaining VIPs. Mrs. Bruguière had 80 for dinner at Wakehurst, including the Peruvian and Spanish ambassadors. Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse entertained the Belgian ambassador and Winthrop W. Aldrich, former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. The Australian ambassador dined at the Harvey Fire-stones'; the Greek ambassador joined the Charles C. Patersons; and the Italian ambassador was at Mrs. C. Oliver O'Donnell's. There were enough lions to go around—seven ambassadors, two U.S. Senators, a retired Supreme Court Justice (Stanley F. Reed), Sir Peter Rawlinson, Solicitor General of Great Britain, and Angier Biddle Duke, the State Department's chief of protocol.
Pink but Dashing. As Janet's big but very private party (no outside photographers allowed) began, a jeweled river of taillights wound down Ocean Avenue and up the long, Japanese-lanterned driveway of Hammersmith Farm, built in 1888 by John Auchincloss Jr.—Janet's granduncle—whose father, a commission merchant, was the first Auchincloss to come to Newport, nearly a century ago.
Inside, the partygoers found themselves in a Venetian whirl. At the end of a long marquee, two tents were a riot of pinks, oranges and yellows, their striped poles hung with clusters of Venetian lanterns or festooned with flowers and tiny lights like fireflies. Around the dance floor, supper tables were covered in orange, amethyst, turquoise and blue, lit with frosted hurricane lamps. A sunken garden under the stars winked with candles in many-colored glass globes, and fruit-filled miniature gondolas graced red-draped buffet tables. There were red-ribboned gondolier's hats for the boys, gold masks on sticks for the girls. Even Meyer Davis and his 24 musicians wore the garb of Venice. ("Did you ever see a Jewish gondolier?" chuckled society's favorite bandleader.) In front of the orchestra stood a 30-ft. black gondola, piloted by a window-dummy gondolier in Renaissance finery, leaning on his oar with a glassy stare that, as the party wore on, blended right into the background.
Uniform of the evening was the black dinner jacket, but at least one veteran Newporter, Rhode Island's young socialite Senator Claiborne Pell, 44, was elegant in a black jacket and white flannels. ("It was my uniform when I first started going to parties here," said Pell.) The Senator's garb bothered no one. Exclaimed one matron: "Oh my dear, he may be a pink [Newportese for Democrat], but he is dashing."