Society columns: social media of 1920s

A January 1925 edition of The Palm
Beach Post was filled with society
news and advertisements like this.
(Source: newspapers.com)

We seem to live in a weird version of the Roaring Twenties of a century ago. Everything is frenzied and fast-paced. Development races along. The famous and super-rich party on. Social media influencers drool over it all.

I wanted to learn how upscale folks partied during the wild times of the 1920s. And learn how newspaper society columnists - the social media influencers of their day - wrote about the celebrities of that era.

Where else to look in pioneer Florida but Palm Beach. It was as famous then as now for money and status. But only during the season, generally January to March.

The January 18, 1925 issue of The Palm Beach Post gushes about the winter season. And I mean gushes. Social-media influencers today have nothing on those old-time newspaper society writers.

Breathy articles about people and places are interspersed with numerous large ads for housing and hotel developments. It was the high times of the1920s Florida Boom. There was so much to write about and advertise that the newspaper edition had 66 pages that day.

Let's turn to the glee sprinkled through that edition's society pages. It'll give you an idea what the rich and famous of 1920s Florida did in world that was spinning quickly and crazily. Much like ours is today.

The hyperbole is all there in print. All I did is quote it and add my occasional note. Enjoy!

• "The Royal Poinciana welcomed many additional guests yesterday and everyone was on the qui vive to see the register and note who had come and who was with them and so on."
•  I had to look it up: qui vive means "on the alert or lookout."
• "All records for the opening of the Coconut Grove, the dear old Coconut Grove, beloved of Palm Beach and world famed as its greatest attraction, were absolutely smashed yesterday. ...before the first bar of music was heard the Coconut Grove was like a great garden full of fluttering, vari-colored flowers, and all Palm Beach in gala array had filed through ..."
• "Mrs. Mc_ was looking very charming in a petunia printed silk frock with a small cloche to match; Mrs. M_ was a symphony in sky blue; Miss W_ was a poem in rose ..."
•  I omitted their full names.
• "Whitehall welcomed for the season today Mr. and Mrs. R_ of Chicago, who will spend the entire season here and are known to all the smart colony here."
• People didn't just visit Palm Beach. Members of the elite social circle considered themselves a colony.
• "One hardly knows where to begin in the chronicle of the day's events at The Breakers yesterday, for so many celebrities appeared upon the scene that it is difficult to know to whom to give this place of honor."
• The honor went to author Ring W. Lardner, responsible for penning "the most delightful description of Palm Beach and its hectic life that has ever found its way into print." I'll have to go seek out his book. BTW, I never heard of him or any of the other celebrities mentioned in that article.
• "Dr. Bertha Scher, whose wonderful work in restoring youthful contours to face and neck ... has brought her a large clientele of society women in New York, Virginia, Hot Springs and Hollywood, Cal., where she has lately achieved a great success among motion picture stars... Many in Palm Beach are now availing themselves of Dr. Scher's treatments which remove ravages of sun, wind and sea..." 
• Hard to think of a time when Hollywood needed a state identifier, even in that silent-movie era.
• "The beautiful rooms (at Whitehall) made a perfect background for the rare jewels and lovely gowns of the women and everyone was quite lost in admiration upon entering the rooms of the superb collections of canvases, an exhibition of rare distinction and beauty."
• This was about an art exhibit at Whitehall, where the "great foyer made a wonderful promenade and the patio with its roof of star-pierced sky and" (many other superlatives) "combined to make the whole scene one of such rare loveliness that everyone was entranced..."

Where were the editors?!

I skipped the abhorrent (to me) enthusiasm for an upscale retail furrier business that opened a shop for the season at one of the hotels. And I couldn't help but note that entitled people act the same no matter what the year. One day, a woman and her daughter staying at The Everglades Club informed management at 11 o'clock in the morning to prepare for the daughter's exclusive wedding - that was to take place that morning!

"... in a limited time," the newspaper columnist wrote, "the drawing room was transformed into a bower of beauty, with white roses, calla lilies and lilies of the valley with a wreath of ferns and greenery."  After a wedding breakfast, the lovely couple motored off in a Pierce-Arrow limousine for their honeymoon in Miami and Cuba.

The fun and festivities faded in Florida by the end of 1926. Bank crashes and hurricanes shut down the state's boom long before 1929's Black Friday struck the entire nation. 

By 1933, height of the Great Depression nationwide, the Palm Beach Post's Jan. 22, 1933, Sunday paper had only 16 pages. Advertisers had vanished along with the yacht owners and jet-setters (actually, railroad-setters, ha ha) who formerly spent the winter season seeing and being seen. Society writers devoted column inches to dressmaking patterns.

And I can't help but remember that history repeats itself.

Passing the time

Cookouts in pioneer days often included the catching of the
entree, as at this 1906 fish fry. Credit: FloridaMemory.com

I'm watching the Oscars pre-show, at least until Downton Abbey comes on, and I wonder what early settlers did for entertainment. Turns out, they did a lot, with less than we have at our disposal today. There are many similarities. The pastimes just weren't as embellished or as high-tech as ours.

Music resonated with all social classes. So did various excursions and get-togethers that included meals. Differences could be vast, though, particularly between wealthy winter visitors and backwoods settlers.

Emma Gilpin and her husband and teenage son spent three months annually in the Palm Beach area in the 1890s. Excerpts from her letters and journals in Karen Davis's 1990  Public Faces - Private Lives (Pickering Press) highlight details of the social life they enjoyed. Emma once compared contents of her "plebian" picnic lunch with that of the neighbors, whose basket contained  deviled crab on the shell, whole rolls, and white grapes, among other delicacies (55). On another day, young women had an outdoor"afternoon chocolate" (56) in a piazza. Sailing parties, musicales with violin and piano, and card parties featuring such games as whist and euchre were enjoyed. Moonlight sails on Lake Worth were popular, as were daytime dips in the ocean.

Cracker settlers, on the other hand, would be more likely to gather at what archaeologist Dana Ste. Claire describes as a perleu, "an extended cookout of sorts" (Cracker, the Cracker Culture in Florida History, 94). The women brought chicken, rice, biscuits, and the pot to cook it in. The food stewed over an open fire, and was served with coffee brewed over the same fires. Other times, the men and boys would hunt game that was then cooked for the crowd. Grits and palmetto cabbage might be served as side dishes. In between the cooking and eating, "sings" took place. In his book, published in 1998 by the Museum of Arts and Sciences, Ste. Claire elaborates on another Cracker leisure-time activity, the evening dance. These get-togethers occasionally lasted for days (100). Fiddle music ruled, and the steps ranged from square dancing to clogging.

Both these popular Cracker activities were powerful draws among settlers. No one wanted to miss a gathering. People lived far apart, and spent most of their waking hours working at the business of living. Social breaks were treasured, and neighborliness appreciated. We may partake in many of the same types of pastimes as our pioneer counterparts, but we have a lot more leisure time in which to enjoy them. And perhaps, not quite as much appreciation for them.