From under my hat (1952)

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The following morning thousands of auratum lilies in full bloom were around the bungalow in a bed six feet wide. How they got there I'll never know. They must have been flown in from San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, wherever the gardener had been able to track them down. W.R. was pleased as a child. I've known him to move one tree a few feet at a cost of thousands. The palace housed treasures and antiques that Kubla Khan would have envied. Gobelin tapestries adorned the walls, banners of English kings stirred gently overhead in the dining hall. I used to gaze at the ceiling and wonder what would happen if a little toe of one the cupids in the carving should fall and hit an honored guest on the head. In the vaults my eyes bulged at Georgian silver; W.R. had cornered the market. The bedrooms would make a princess of the Arabian Nights pale with awe. The bed I occupied once belonged to a De' Medici, and I spent half the night imagining what foul deed had been hatched in the spot where I lay. Once a starlet, visiting San Simeon for the first time, entered her room on a dead run, forgetting that her bed was cradled on fullsized lions of carved wood jutting out a couple of feet from the four corners. One paw caught her on the big toe and split it. You never heard such a scream. She thought a lion from W.R.'s hilltop zoo had got in by mistake. At San Simeon two household rules were made to be obeyed: 1. Unless you were ill, you came down to breakfast. (But that was no hardship, since it was served until 11 a.m. ) 2. No liquor in your room, no bottles brought in suitcases. ( Cocktails, as many as you wished, were served before lunch and dinner, and wine during both meals, with an occasional highball while you played cards or worked a jigsaw puzzle. If a bottle of whisky were found in your room, you got your marching orders down the hill.) If you happened to be visiting the ranch on your birthday, you were given a party. It happened to me once. There was a cake with my name on it. I was toasted in my favorite pink champagne and received a small Carrier diamond bracelet, a fitted traveling case, and a huge bottle of perfume. There was no distress shopping at the 157