LI's Coming-of-Age Party

AS A chauffeur's son, Stewart Donaldson wasn't likely to be invited to many Gold Coast soirees, unless it was a servants' ball. But on Sept. 6, 1924, when the fabulously rich Clarence Mackay feted England's wildly popular Prince of Wales, the 17-year-old Donaldson had a window on the most glorious party of all.

Perched atop the main house of Harbor Hill, Mackay's 600-acre Roslyn estate, he took in the sweep: the mile-long driveway shimmering with tiny blue candles, the two-story ballroom set with thousands of American Beauty roses, the tables of lobster piled 6 feet high. As he watched, Donaldson helped wield four giant spotlights, which were set up to bathe the Italian gardens in alternating hues of red, yellow, blue, green and white.

"And when the Prince of Wales arrived, all the spots were put on and pointed at the gardens, fountain and rose trellis," Donaldson recalled in the meticulously typed diaries he compiled decades later. "It was some show. I'll never forget it. That night they said there were over 1,000 people on the floor of the ballroom. That's hard to believe, but it is supposed to be true." And, indeed, it was true. But that's not all.

It was the most gilded party of Long Island's most gilded age, the capstone of the prince's 23-day Gold Coast holiday and the personification of the era when America's mightiest families transformed the North Shore into a playground for the rich and richer. Surely, flashy parties were nothing new -- the mansion set was as competitive in the ballroom as it was in the boardroom -- but no one ever matched Mackay's audacious bash: 1,200 guests, an army of servants and four frantic weeks of preparation, down to the last white light bulb fastened to the last Mackay (pronounced Mack-EE) rosebush.

Everyone clamored for a piece of it. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was there. So was World War I Gen. John J. Pershing and much of haute New York, from (Mr. and Mrs. Frederick) Allen to (Mr. and Mrs. Payne) Whitney; there also were enough counts, countesses, lords, ladies, marquis and marchionesses to populate a small duchy. But the real prize was the prince, whose appearance cemented the Gold Coast's coming-of-age, branding it, at last, a rival worthy of the more established Newport. "I don't know whether the people of Newport would agree, but if this party didn't bring Long Island to the same level, it certainly put it on the same playing field," says Nassau County historian Edward Smits.

Even the prince, who ostensibly had come to watch the international polo matches at the Meadow Brook Club, was awed. As he recalled in "A King's Story," his 1947 autobiography, "My American hosts spared no expense in demonstrating the splendor of a modern industrial republic." Certainly none more eagerly than Mackay, whose father, John W. Mackay, made his fortune in the Comstock Lode and who, with a $500 million inheritance, was every bit the profligate son. The dance music alone, the prince noted, "was provided by two bands directed by the great Paul Whiteman, who at a later stage was inspired to lead his musicians in a march around the hall, weaving in and out of the shadowy figures in armor."

To understand the seismic impact of the prince's visit, it's important to remember that, at the time, Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David was, quite simply, the most popular man in the universe, a blond, waif-like figure who combined the androgynous sexiness of Leonardo DiCaprio with the megawattage of Princess Diana. Of course, this was his age of innocence. It would be nearly a decade before he would fall in love with Wallis Warfield Simpson and a dozen years before he would become King Edward VIII, only to give up the throne 11 months later to marry the twice-divorced American -- a decision that threatened the future of the monarchy and left Edward with the meaningless title of Duke of Windsor.

IT WASN'T only power and riches that made him so attractive. With his melancholy blue eyes, his hunger for bathtub gin and his love of parties and polo, the elegant 30-year-old prince was the quintessential guy's guy, the ultimate ladies' man. HERE HE IS, GIRLS -- THE MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR YET UNCAUGHT, screamed a headline inside the New York Daily News on Aug. 29, 1924, the day Edward arrived in New York aboard the liner Berengaria.

Actually, the frenzy began even before he set sail. Traveling under the name Lord Renfrew, the prince slipped aboard ship and into his five-room, $5,400 suite at 4 a.m. -- 14 1/2 hours early -- hoping to avoid "that ubiquitous fraternity of photographers," as the New York Times called the paparazzi following him. It was a fleeting victory. Daily came shipboard reports of all things royal, from the prince's clothes (the world's best-dressed man wore only two suits, one gray, one brown) to his exercise routine (the ship's boxing instructor declared him so limber "he can touch his knuckles to the ground without bending his knees").

Even more enticing to the tabloids were the ship's sweet young "debbies," the blushing society girls vying for a royal nod. Only Lenora Cahill, a dark-haired St. Louis girl, succeeded, spinning around the dance floor with the prince not once but twice in a row. The next day, she was front-page news.

And by the time Edward landed in New York with two tons of luggage, the press was panting.

"Have you become engaged to an American girl?" one of the 150 reporters who met up with him asked.

"Would you marry an American girl if you fell in love with one?" asked another, with eerie premonition.

IN FACT, the only thing the prince wanted was to be left alone. Not a chance. The more he demanded privacy -- he even threatened to run off to his Canadian ranch -- the more the press and public jockeyed for another glimpse. As Edward boarded the yacht Black Watch for the final leg of the journey to Long Island, more than 10,000 locals waved him on, filling bay and inlets with rafts and yachts and North Shore landings with buntings and bands.

Finally, he stepped onto a float at the Pratt estate in Glen Cove, then sped off to the 140-acre Syosset home of James A. Burden, who had, graciously enough, decamped to New York. Though Edward and Wallis would later develop reputations as world-class freeloaders, it was apparent even in 1924 that this wasn't a guy who paid his own way. Besides, who would ask him to? "These people were in cutthroat wars over dahlias and who grew the best," says Glen Cove historian Dan Russell. "This was even better -- who could get to the Prince of Wales to stay at their house or come to their party."

Yet, for all his press-dodging -- there were so many reporters covering him that Western Union opened temporary press headquarters at the LIRR station in Syosset -- the prince did as he pleased. And, for the most part, that meant he played polo, sometimes at the W.R. Grace estate, other times at the Howard Phipps estate or anywhere else he was invited. In between, the "indefatigable vacationist," as the papers dubbed him, swam, raced speedboats and rushed off to Belmont Park to watch as Epinard lost to Wise Counsellor.

To be sure, Edward was an eager sportsman but hardly a graceful one. The press relentlessly poked fun at his inability to stay on his horse -- and those weren't his only disasters. One day, an opponent's polo pony kicked a clod of dirt into his right eye, conjuring one heck of a royal shiner. Another day, Clarence Mackay's 17-year-old son, John William, beaned him with a tennis ball. "The prince was so nice and so wonderful about it, but my husband was so embarrassed he almost died," John's 90-year-old widow, Gwendolyn, said recently.

But not even an eye patch could keep Edward from the parties -- swim parties, polo parties, lunch parties, dinner parties, supper parties, middle-of-the-night parties -- that were thrown in his name, usually two or three a day. One of the most raucous was the dinner at the Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley to honor the British contenders for the international polo title. While Edward and the others supped on cantaloupe, lobster Newburg and vanilla ice cream, Ziegfeld Follies star Will Rogers roasted the prince's polo foibles and late-night escapades.

In a New York Times column the following week, Rogers admitted to a bit of stage fright. "I didn't get scared until just before it came time to go (on). Then I happened to think of the Tower of London and remembered its whole reputation was built on obituary notices of people who had displeased Princes and Kings." But Edward laughed loudest of all, and Rogers admitted it was easier to tease the prince than keep up with him. "Say, no foreigner comes to America to sleep. He can sleep when he gets to England," the humorist wrote. "A man leaving England for this country should have enough sleep stored up to do him a lifetime."

Indeed, the royal party boy seemed hell-bent on cramming in every last dance, to the endless delight of the princess wannabes lined up to be his partner. At a party at the Oyster Bay estate of Rodman Wanamaker, they literally wore out the floor, and so, at 1:30 a.m., a car was dispatched into town, where, the Times reported, "druggists were rousted out of bed to turn over all the floor wax and talcum they had on hand," all to smooth the way for "the shuffling of royal feet."

BUT, IN THE end, those were merely dress rehearsals for Mackay's ball. Planning began early that summer when Mackay -- whose mother, Louise, had often entertained the prince's grandfather, Edward VII, in London -- announced he would fete the young king-to-be. And, truth be told, there could have been no more regal setting. Situated on the second-highest spot on Long Island, Harbor Hill was twice the size of the principality of Monaco and offered breathtaking views of Hempstead Harbor and Long Island Sound.

The interiors were just as fabulous. The main house, a French chateau designed by the renowned McKim, Mead & White, spared no expense -- indeed, Stanford White was accused of pillaging any number of European palaces to furnish it. The two-story main hall bulged with tapestries, ancient battle flags and the finest collection of armor this side of the Atlantic. Outside, an extravagant Italian garden unfolded, its fountain set off with Paul Manship statues, its terrace with the horses of Marly, copied from the Champs de Elysees.

And Mackay -- Clarie, as everyone called him -- was determined to show off Harbor Hill's grandeur at its glittering best. There were blue-lit Chinese lanterns set into the maple trees along the main drive, orange lights in the trees lining the walk to the mansion, spotlights trained on the gardens and, towering above the rooftop, the Stars and Stripes done in red, white and blue bulbs. In his diaries, now stored in the Bryant Library in Roslyn, Stewart Donaldson recalled how "the power company had to dig up the electric cable and spot transformers at certain locations and put a fence around each one." In all, he wrote, "it took many electricians, carpenters, laborers, plumbers, etc., and L.I.L.Co." four weeks just to finish the electric work.

For the floral arrangements, Mackay turned to head gardener Frank Demak and New York florist Wadley & Smythe. Indoors, they filled the galleries with American Beauty roses snipped from Mackay's private greenhouse. Outside, Donaldston wrote, they transformed the north terrace into "a pavilion of flowers. No one could believe that it wasn't an integral part of the house."

Mackay left no detail untended. The tables were set with pieces from the $125,000 service that Tiffany & Co. had created for the elder Mackay, using nearly 15,000 ounces of silver from his mines. Cars were fetched using a relay system involving telephones wired to the trees and chauffeurs positioned at holding stations, waiting for their cars to be called. And the music was provided by society's bandleader of the moment, Paul Whiteman.

"About 3 PM that day, two large moving vans pulled up to the front and out came two baby grands and all of the trunks of musical instruments," Donaldson wrote. "... The pianos and instruments were taken up to the balcony above the ballroom ... and at 4 PM, Mrs. Louise Mackay seated herself in the great hall and had Whiteman and his 45-piece orchestra play Strauss waltzes just for her." Later that night, Whiteman split the orchestra in half, so one band could spell the other.

The final tab: $1.5 million -- serious bucks to impress a guest of honor who reportedly skipped the 3-foot-wide salmon in favor of a simple sandwich, then bowed out at 11 p.m.

Still, there was no doubt the party, like the prince's three weeks on Long Island, left an indelible impression on Edward. "By the time I had to return to Great Britain," he wrote in his autobiography, "I had picked up quite a full line of American slang, acquired a taste for bathtub gin, and had decided that every Briton in a position to do so should make a practice of visiting that great country at least once every two or three years."

Unfortunately, his father didn't agree. With stunning swiftness, reports of the prince's frolicking had sped across the ocean, to the great displeasure of the Teutonic King George V. And although the prince tried to wave it away as nothing more than "uninhibited journalism," George was furious. It "would not be correct to say that he actually banned my returning to the United States," Edward wrote. "Yet, whenever my brothers and I tentatively advanced some project that would take us there, a series of vague but irremovable obstacles always appeared to block us." Others, though, needed nothing grander; it had been the party of a lifetime.