Identifier: cu31924032492773 (find matches)
Title: Our Philadelphia
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, 1855-1936 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926
Subjects:
Publisher: Philadelphia and London, J. B. Lippincott
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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At many partiesI got to know what a delightful thing a Philadelphia partywas, and if I had gone to one instead of many I shouldhave known as well. Philadelphia had a standard for itsparties as for everything, and to deviate from thisstandard, to attempt originality, to invent the freak entertainments of New York, would have been excessivelybad form. The same card printed by Dreka requested thepleasure of your company to the same Philadelphia house—the Philadelphia hostess would not have stooped to inviteyou to the Continental or the Girard, the LaPierre Houseor the Colonnade, which were the Bellevue and the Ritzof my day—where you danced in the same spacious frontand back parlours, with the same crash on the floor, to thesame music by Hasslers band; where you ate the sameTerrapin, Croquettes, Chicken Salad, Oysters, BonedTurkey, Ice-cream, little round Cakes with white icing ontop, and drank the same Fish-House Punch provided bythe same Augustine; where the same Cotillon began at
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;S^S THE NEW RITZ-CARLTON; THE FINISHING TOUCHES THE WALNUT STREET ADDITION HAS SINCE BEEN MADE THE SOCIAL ADVENTURE 151 the same hour with the same figures and the same favoursand the same partners; where there was the same dressing-room in the second story front and the same Philadelphiagirls who froze me on my arrival and on my departure.There was no getting away from the same people in Phila-delphia. That was the worst of it. The town was bigenough for a chance to meet different people in differenthouses every evening in the week, but by that arbitraryboundary of Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine, ithas made itself socially into a village with the pettiness andlimitations of village life. I have never wondered thatPhiladelphians are as cordial to strangers as everybodywho ever came to Philadelphia knows them to be—thatPhiladelphia doors are as hospitable as Thackeray once de-scribed them. Philadelphians have reason to rejoice andmake the most of it when occasionally they see a f

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