Excerpt from Sin in the Second City (about the Everleigh sisters & their Club):
"Debate raged in the Second City, meanwhile, over an approrpriate itinerary for Prince Henry..[including] an elaborate banquet at the Auditorium Hotel. There he would dine with 165 'representative men' of Chicago...The visit, all told, would cost teh city $75,000. But the committee nixed a tour of the gory Unnion Stock Yards...and remained ambivalent on whether visiting royalty should enjoy 'the old feudal privilege' of kissing Chicago's debutantes...If Prince Henry did kiss the debutantes, he never told. The sight Prince Henry most desired to see, however, was neither discussed...nor detailed in the press. Such discretion benefited the Everleigh sisters...who were in the midst of frenzied planning. None of the Everleigh butterflies [girls who worked in the Club] had heard of Prince Henry of Prussia...so the sisters prepared lessons--not about the German royal family (who cared?) but about how to entertain them properly. Minna stood in front of her thirty courtesans, arms waving...and told them how it would be done. Prince Henry...was the sort of man who knew exactly what he wanted. So as Everleigh girls their job was go give him something he'd never even considered. They would enact a mythological celebration centered around Dionysus...She'd contacted an old friend from her threater days and ordered real fawnskin outfits for them to wear, with nothing--that's right, nothing--underneath. No petticoats, no stockings, no corsets. Not even shoes--at least not right away....The ritual was complex, commemorating the dismemberment of Zeus's infant son at the hands of the Titans. There would be a cloth bull and some raw meat involved."
"Around midnight on March 3, Prince Henry and his party rang the Club's bell. A tall man, the prince had...skin like a cracked egg. High, shiny black boots hugged his legs...The members of his entourage wore sweeping capes and frowns that stretched to their necks. Expressions improved markedly once Minna greeted her boys and escorted them to the Pullman Buffet for dinner. At 1:30 am, Minna came to round everyone up, telling the girls the show was about to start...and don't forget they weren't to wear shoes. The harlots yanked pins from their hair and shook it out, slicing strands with their fingers, the messier the better. They rushed down the spiral staircase and into the parlor, where they found Prince Henry and his entourage at at a long table. The girls whooped and swirled in circles, kicking, backs arching like drawn bows. The decisive clang of cymbals punctuated every move. One girl thrashed her way across the room, heading directly for Prince Henry, and just as she reached him, she leapt, turned a half circle in midair, and landed on his lap, latching on to his neck. The others followed suit, and soon every man at the table was grappling with an Everleigh butterfly."
