The Big Weekend

After a pause for the midsummer dog days, the trips to Europe or the work at summer school, the debutantes are beginning to swarm again along the Eastern Seaboard. Last week, for instance, Banker Stephen C. Clark brought out his daughter Susan in Cooperstown, N.Y.; this week Fernanda Wanamaker Wetherill, daughter of Philadelphia's Francis Bring Wetherill and Mrs. Donald Stewart Leas Jr., will have a huge party in Southampton; Cynthia Phipps, daughter of horsy Investment Banker Ogden Phipps, will entertain 1,000 guests with Lester Lanin's music on Long Island Sept. 9; and two days before that, Mr. and Mrs. Irenee Du Pont Jr. will throw one of the season's biggest balls at their Wilmington, Del., estate for their debutante daughter Irene.

But nothing on the deb circuit this year is likely to top the three-day bash at Newport that celebrated the debuts of Effie Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy's half sister, Janet Auchincloss.

Blue & Silver. All Friday afternoon, Newport's little airport was like a vestpocket Idlewild, with private planes circling for landing clearance before disgorging cargoes of sun-bronzed men and long-necked beauties, chiffon scarves swathing their high-piled hairdos.

The weekend began with Effie Taylor's party. Host was her uncle, Beverley A. Bogert. One of the dinner parties that night was given by Effie's mother, Mrs. John R. Crawford, and her husband for 250 of Effie's young friends at grey, sprawling Bailey's Beach Club; there were other dinners for "young adults"--and some for less young ones, such as Winston Churchill's ebullient son Randolph, 52, who flew over from London with an eight-week-old pug puppy he had brought for Janet Auchincloss's mother.

As blonde Effie Taylor swirled to Meyer Davis' tunes, some 800 guests danced the night away in a fountained fantasy of silver and blue at Beverley Bogert's many-gabled Anglesea. Bubbled Effie, a freshman next month at Bennett College in Millbrook, N.Y.: "I really had a good time." So, agreed her guests, did everyone else.

Lions Galore. It was quiet the next day as the Bloody Marys gurgled into glasses at Bailey's Beach; those who were dutiful and those who were able went over to the Casino to watch the tennis. Mrs. Louis Bruguiere, Newport's multimillionaire grande dame, was privileged as usual to watch the play from her Rolls-Royce.

At the airport, the planes were buzzing in again, bringing guests for that night's Auchincloss party and taking guests from the night before off to Manhattan for a quick comb-out before hurrying back to Newport. The hairdressers imported for the weekend were downright frantic: Hugh Harrison from Claude's was kept busy all day at the Bogerts, and Mr. and Mrs. John R. Drexel III (who gave a tea dance at their house that afternoon) supplied a man from Kenneth's.

It was a rush to change after the Drexels and still get to the pre-dance dinners on time. Janet had 260 of her age group; others were entertaining VIPs. Mrs. Bruguiere had 80 for dinner at Wakehurst, including the Peruvian and Spanish ambassadors. Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse entertained the Belgian ambassador and Winthrop W. Aldrich, former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. The Australian ambassador dined at the Harvey Fire-stones'; the Greek ambassador joined the Charles C. Patersons; and the Italian ambassador was at Mrs. C. Oliver O'Donnell's. There were enough lions to go around--seven ambassadors, two U.S. Senators, a retired Supreme Court Justice (Stanley F. Reed), Sir Peter Rawlinson, Solicitor General of Great Britain, and Angier Biddle Duke, the State Department's chief of protocol.

Pink but Dashing. As Janet's big but very private party (no outside photographers allowed) began, a jeweled river of taillights wound down Ocean Avenue and up the long, Japanese-lanterned driveway of Hammersmith Farm, built in 1888 by John Auchincloss Jr.--Janet's granduncle--whose father, a commission merchant, was the first Auchincloss to come to Newport, nearly a century ago.

Inside, the partygoers found themselves in a Venetian whirl. At the end of a long marquee, two tents were a riot of pinks, oranges and yellows, their striped poles hung with clusters of Venetian lanterns or festooned with flowers and tiny lights like fireflies. Around the dance floor, supper tables were covered in orange, amethyst, turquoise and blue, lit with frosted hurricane lamps. A sunken garden under the stars winked with candles in many-colored glass globes, and fruit-filled miniature gondolas graced red-draped buffet tables. There were red-ribboned gondolier's hats for the boys, gold masks on sticks for the girls. Even Meyer Davis and his 24 musicians wore the garb of Venice. ("Did you ever see a Jewish gondolier?" chuckled society's favorite bandleader.) In front of the orchestra stood a 30-ft. black gondola, piloted by a window-dummy gondolier in Renaissance finery, leaning on his oar with a glassy stare that, as the party wore on, blended right into the background.

Uniform of the evening was the black dinner jacket, but at least one veteran Newporter, Rhode Island's young socialite Senator Claiborne Pell, 44, was elegant in a black jacket and white flannels. ("It was my uniform when I first started going to parties here," said Pell.) The Senator's garb bothered no one. Exclaimed one matron: "Oh my dear, he may be a pink [Newportese for Democrat], but he is dashing."

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?"

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