It may be of interest to those who care for the cakes and ale to read the comparison between the “refreshments” served then and now.
In 1749 and throughout the next decade the supper consisted of nine shillings’ worth of milk biscuit and five gallons of rum, added to two hundred limes for a punch. And, mind you, this punch was served to only a few people.
The supper served this last winter was as follows:
CHAUD
Bonne Bouche Assembly
Gumbo Passe
Terrapin
Poulet de Grain Supérieur
Pommes de Terre Nouvelles Rissoles
Jambon de Virginie
———
FROID
Chaufroix de Grouse
Cœur de Laitue
Filet de Bœuf
Salade de Chapon
———
Pudding Montrose
Croquants Marrons Glacé
Bonbons
Café
Instead of forty shillings for eighteen dances, each subscriber now pays ten dollars for two. These two balls are given after New Year’s and before Lent, and because of their exclusiveness, remain the most unique function in Philadelphia life.
Old families who take admission into the Assemblies as a matter of course will tell you how stupid they are, how tiresome, how foolish the rules of admission are, and that really everybody can get in now; but you would almost have to take their own invitations away over their dead bodies.
As in Charleston, one sees at these balls men and women who rarely put on evening clothes except for these affairs. It is a witticism attributed to the dashing captain of the First City Troop of Philadelphia that when asked why he didn’t like the Assemblies, he responded: “I never could stand the smell of camphor and tar balls.”
If the rules were always consistently kept, there would not be such a happy fund of anecdote around the Assemblies. The five managers, who are called “czars” by the irreverent, do their best through the decades to use judgment and consistency for the admission of new members, but it is also true that some “queer” people have been admitted and that some of the most delightful, with pedigrees as old as the hills, have been kept out.
New rules have been constantly made in the attempt to meet new emergencies. Everything tends to the same aim, which is to keep out all new members except the children of parents who are already subscribers. And it is also true that peculiar rules, which in many cases are only known to the “czars” themselves, are made as an excuse to drop those who for certain reasons may not be considered desirable.