Evian to the Rescue! (Vanderbilt Would Have Understood.)

My family and I recently returned from a visit to Newport, R.I. At this time of year the weather alternates between brooding melancholy and wondrous full sun.

With crag and bluff, the rugged isthmus between playful Narragansett Bay and the brooding Atlantic brings to mind the Scottish Highlands. Traipsing up to the lighthouse, you notice the wizened, vine-entangled trees agelessly defying the headwinds. All about you is water.You cannot help but contemplate the stuff.

Water again came to mind during our tour of the Breakers—the 70-room, Italian Renaissance-style palazzo of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. In the magnate’s marble bathroom, I marveled at his 3,000-pound, hand-carved marble bathtub with its four polished nickel taps for hot and cold running salt water as well as fresh water.

It reminded me of a calamitous Mother’s Day incident at the Ryland Inn, involving conspicuous consumption of expensive water.

Before this trip, the last time we visited Newport was in high season. We had sailed our boat through some very rough seas; several expensive fittings had cracked, and I had remembered the sailor’s adage that “ocean racing is like standing under an ice-cold shower, tearing up thousand-dollar bills.”

Generally we avoid high season. The best way to multiply one’s vacation dollars is by traveling off season—for this I cannot highly enough recommend Newport in March or April. It is a place of unending contrasts between restraint and excess.

A mere century ago, Newport was the very emblem of “conspicuous consumption” vilified by Thorstein Veblen in his “Theory of the Leisure Class.” It has since become a summer playground for people of all incomes.  If you go, there is no finer place to stay than the Castlehill, way out on a 40-acre parcel of Brenton Point. It is the only Relais & Chateaux property in all of Rhode Island, and the new Food & Beverage Manager is a veteran of the Ryland Inn

Newport is a living history book—one that will engage children thanks to its nautical and sporting legacy.  Our guide at the Breakers was a charming man, whose quiet, alternately compassionate and sardonic humor we found irresistible.

“It must be pointed out that the wealth of the Vanderbilt family at the time was without equal today,” he told us. “This was the era before income tax, before sales tax, before inheritance tax. The Vanderbilt wealth exceeded that of the entire United States Federal government! Bill Gates is positively poor in comparison.”

He pointed out the twelve different types of gold veneer accounting for the unequaled sophistication of the dining room.  He led us through the library, the loggias, the great room, the music room, the private rooms, and even to the single guest room.

Why only one guest room in such a vast mansion?

“Despite [the Vanderbilts’] extravagant hospitality during the daylight hours,” our guide said, “the Preservation Society has been able to verify only one guest ever being asked to spend the night—that being the daughter of Count Laszlo Szechenyi of Hungary.”

Somewhere along the way, we were shown that the house had been built with both gas and electric lighting, Mr. Edison’s invention having not yet proven itself.

When we came to the marble bathroom, my thoughts leaped back to the time immediately after the horrors of 9-11.  For one brief period, all Americans seemed to put aside their petty differences and work together.  Weekly there were security admonitions to prepare for unknown catastrophes, to create home “survival kits.”

We at the Ryland Inn responded to these same messages. In January, 2002, a feeling of duty or paternalism (or self-importance) came over me, and I ordered 250 two-and-a-half-gallon jugs of Poland Spring water along with our normal complement of 40 cases of Perrier and 40 cases of Evian water. We stored these in the various cellars of the Ryland.  We also stocked a huge array of canned goods there as well.

Mother’s Day arrived, our busiest day of the year. Sixty staff members had polished every piece of silver and crystal; they had checked and double-checked linens, valets, and reservations; the cooks had submitted more than a thousand items of mise-en-place for approval by the sous-chefs.

The doors opened and in short order every seat was filled. Orders flew into the kitchen. Adrenaline pumped, complications and custom orders were deftly handled. Out of public view, waiters and busboys practically sprinted, regaining their composed gait just at the threshold of public view, wiping their brows before crossing over.

Then suddenly we lost all power.Ruin.Shouting of commands:

"Break out the candles!”

"Bring out the portable gas grills!”

Constant phone calls to the power company finally produced the information that a worker had been dispatched. Armed with $200, a cook was sent to find the workman and “persuade” him of the direness of our guests’’ situation.

We later learned that a squirrel had made its Mother’s Day feast on a power main cable, disabling the entire grid for over one full day.

Meanwhile, the cooks were in full battle mode, preparing food outdoors on the grills. Then the Maitre d’ caught up to me:

“We have a real crisis now – none of the toilets work!”

“Oh my God! Of course! They're all pressurized.”

Then we remembered that the toilets on the second floor were the normal, gravity-powered, residential-type toilets.

I made a command decision: “Quick, get a detail to bring up as much of the Poland Spring Water as you need.  We can flush the toilets with that.”

Problem solved – at least temporarily.  Then within the hour:

“Chef, we’ve run out of Poland Spring Water!”

“Well, use the Evian.”

By the end of service, we had exhausted all the Poland Spring, all the Evian and all the Perrier. But we had saved the day.

Afterwards, we sat around recounting the excitement, the difficulties, the failures and the successes.

“I’ve just never seen anything like it.  The minute people discovered we were flushing the toilets with ‘designer water’ it was a frenzy.”

“The profits of an entire month flushed down the drain in a single day – literally”

“Yes, but the show went on!”

On that one particular Mother’s Day, in one restaurant in Central New Jersey, a number of guests were able to experience the sort of conspicuous consumption which was the norm for “The 400” of Newport society.

 

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