Strolling Through an Edwardian ‘Sunday in the Park’

0-acre canvas was turned over to amateur conceptual artists to sketch an extraordinary and wonderful “Sunday in the Park II,” given June 5 at the Ernest and Jean Hahn estate.

These 30 acres, a little less than a quarter of the Hahn’s Eden-like private park, were used as the setting of a UC San Diego Cancer Center fund-raiser that took its inspiration from Georges Seurat’s famous impressionist landscape of French bourgeoisie enjoying a Sunday afternoon in the country. But Seurat merely provided the first, tentative outline of the inspiration, since the scene, as it unfolded, revealed touches of Lewis Carroll, Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg.

The idea, as explained by co-chairman Jody Honnen (who shared the position with her husband, Earle, and Alyson and George Goudy), was to carry the 350 guests back to the turn of the century, to the elaborate Edwardian garden parties that in the computer age have become faint memories recalled mostly in period films. However, what began as an English interpretation of a French concept took on an international patina through the inclusion of pavilions from other countries, each of which offered refreshments, decor and entertainment of no more recent vintage than the year 1900.

George Goudy, who like many of the men topped his garden party blazer with a boater, glowed almost as noticeably as the sun-washed fields and hills that surrounded the scene.

“I’ve never been to a party like this before--I don’t think there ever have been any,” he said. “A lady who read about this party in Town & Country called from Pittsburg to ask me how she could give one like it. I told her to find a 130-acre park with five private lakes and then call back for details.”

To describe the details over the telephone would be to considerably enrich the telephone company. The people in charge of each of the seven pavilions had been directed to create living pieces montees ( tableaux vivants ) in which a definite atmosphere of leisured comfort was to set the tone. This meant not just choosing appropriate decor and menu, but offering some sort of elevated entertainment--the French term divertissement really describes the situation quite nicely--to make the mood convincingly anachronistic. The general committee strung it all neatly together, providing details that gave unity to a day spent wandering midst copses, lakes and brooks.

The guests cooperated by turning out in not so much period dress as costumes that matched the mood, which meant broad-brimmed picture hats and sweeping skirts that fell to the ground for the women, and blazers and white ducks for the men. A station at the entrance to the park offered bright parasols to the women, who used them to balance themselves as they climbed into the horse-drawn barouches and cabriolets that transported guests from pavilion to pavilion. Flutists in full evening dress--which is to say white tie and tails--provided a little daytime music while guests queued at the carriage stop.

The pluckier took the route on foot, hiking stone-bordered drives and grassy paths to reach the white tents that dotted the park like sheep in a Yorkshire landscape. One could go in any direction at all, but the party seemed to flow clockwise, with the first stop the Viennese pavilion designed by Biddy Collins and Dottie Radcliffe. Here, chefs from the Westgate hotel rolled fresh crepes around a rich apricot filling and offered them with sips of schnapps or Riesling. More formally dressed musicians played here, joined occasionally by an accordionist who lured couples onto a garlanded dance floor to step to his lively mazurkas.

The path next led to Fan Foley and Anne Otterson’s Scandinavian pavilion, staffed by women crowned with circlets of flowers of the style traditional at Swedish Mid-summer Night celebrations. Gustaf-Anders catered the menu of gravad lax canapes and assorted tarts. Yet another flute, this time with a harp accompaniment, played quietly in the background while the guests sipped aquavit and contemplated the scene in a nearby lake, where a young man lazily rowed his lady companion in serene circles, going nowhere slowly on a Sunday afternoon. The couple and boat were there for the illusion, the impression, indeed the Seurat-like vision that they presented.

Lest the day seem too languorous, there was a bit of mischief at play, too. Just as the harpist at the Scandinavian tent completed a particularly airy piece, a pack of hounds followed by riders in hunting “pinks” came crashing over the brow of a nearby hill. Chasing an entirely imaginary fox, they galloped furiously, then meandered languidly, then headed off in the direction of a distant bugle call, the whole masquerade conducted under a sky that was not quite Wedgwood blue and was flecked with courtesy puffs of cloud that gave it depth and definition. Altogether, it was quite a scene.

The hounds and horses later came hurtling through the site of the Italian pavilion, another lakeside setting that in this case featured grilled vegetables and hot Italian breads. The cavalcade transformed a live performance of Verdi--sung to the accompaniment of a grand piano parked on a spit of land, no less--into a moment straight out of opera buffa . Judith Smith, Joan Fisher and John Baylin provided the arrangements here.

The carriage rides proved to be pleasant intermissions among the diversions, and it was rather pleasant to roll along at a gentle pace, savoring the landscape and contemplating the horses, which, viewed from a passenger’s perspective, inspired thoughts of past acquaintances.

A kind of 19th-Century quartet of bearded village musicians rocked out at Judy Adams’ Russian pavilion, where guests sipped pepper and honey vodkas and nibbled pierogis and blinis.

The mood continued to change with every stop along the grand tour, with the ritual tea ceremony and fan dancing offered as entertainment at Emmy and Bud Cote’s Japanese Pavilion. Exhibition croquet, played on the private golf links, set the mood at Ginger Warrick’s British tent, which guests reached by negotiating stepping stones across a lively brook. This stop offered tea and scones, as well as sherry poured from cut glass decanters--even the smallest details were not overlooked--which guests consumed while the Cameron Highlander bagpipers played lustily.

The circuit concluded at Sue Raffee’s French pavilion, nestled in a hidden glade bordered by a pond carpeted with waterlilies and an impassable waterfall; the path that led into this Gallic Shangri-La was narrow and difficult to find. Those who made the journey received champagne and oeufs a la neige (meringues in custard sauce) as their reward.