The Great Mistake

The first time I ever spoke to Maud Wainwright was in her boudoir at the Cloisters. She was sitting in front of her famous expanding table, the one at which she seated her dinner parties, with a bunch of place cards in her hand and a completely baffled look on her face.“Come in and sit down, Miss Abbott,” she said. “I can’t get up. If I move, this wretched table collapses. I’ve seated this dinner three times already.”I didn’t wonder that the table had collapsed. It was drawn out to its full length and there must have been a hundred slots around its border. You know the idea. The table can be made large or small and the cards, already written, are placed upright in the slots. It is a sort of bird’s-eye view of the party in advance, supposed to make for harmonious arrangement later. Although there was a general belief that Maud Wainwright merely shuffled the cards and dealt them out. I know she once placed old Joseph Berry next to Mrs. Theodore Earle, who had not spoken to him for years.