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The bars overflowed with champagne. There was also Queen Anne Scotch, Kentucky Tavern bourbon, Bacardi rum, almost every conceivable drink. "Thank God they've got some real booze," muttered a seasoned stag, and the cool blonde debutante on his arm batted a languid eye in sympathy: "I know—champagne does get so boring." Flowers from Washington. Just after 12:30 the music stopped, and onto the floor swept pretty Janet Auchincloss, young and lovely in white silk organza with green leaves, lilies of the valley (a Dior trademark), and a bouquet of white orchids and Stephanotis, "from my brother-in-law" (otherwise known as the President of the U.S.). Around her neck was a choker of pearls; a circlet of flowers crowned her high brown hair. She was on the arm of her 66-year-old father, Hugh D.—shy, elegant, and hugely proud to waltz her alone around the floor. The chore of greeting the 1,000-odd guests on the receiving line was over, and Janet could begin to enjoy the biggest night of her young life.
Off the main dance floor, in the sunken garden, three red-and-gold-liveried musicians played songs under the stars for sentimentalists who just wanted to sit and listen. Inside the house, Pianist George Feyer was arpeggioing his way through music to drink by when Janet arrived to exchange her wilting bouquet for one of the fresh ones on the mantlepiece. Suddenly Feyer was accompanying Janet in a surprisingly expert rendition of I Could Have Danced All Night, followed by a rich barroom version of After the Ball Was Over from Randolph Churchill.
Meanwhile, the breakfast of hamburgers, pancakes and scrambled eggs was disappearing fast. A young man from Greenwich engaged three girls in a discussion of Plato. Another had to be extricated from a giant flower pot.
But bad drinkers were few; the majority of the young and not so young behaved as well as they danced ineptly. When one exuberant youth started to steal a lantern as the party dissolved into the rainy dawn, his girl deftly doused him with the teenagers' squelch supreme: "How immature can you get?"