A neighborhood group in St. Louis recently held an event to commemorate “what many have claimed as the first cocktail party: the legendary 1917 soirée hosted by Mrs. Julius S. Walsh Jr. at her Lindell Boulevard home.”
As with other “legendary” events, the passage of time has blurred some details.
First, as the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported, Clara Bell Walsh’s cocktail party was no soirée, but instead was held at noon on Sunday, March 25, 1917:
The hour at which the cocktail party is given is high noon, that interval between the morning promenade, or Sunday worship, and the 1 o’clock dinner. Mrs. Walsh invited about fifty friends and the affair was conducted largely along the line of the merry morning parties, which were known a decade ago as ‘Egg Noggs.’
Clara Bell’s bar was described as “commodious and well stocked,” and she employed an “expert mixer” skilled at “producing, in a moment, any kind of cocktail called for by fancy.”
Over the next two months, other newspapers reported on the St. Louis cocktail party, including the St. Paul Pioneer Press, whose account was republished by several newspapers. “Positively the newest stunt in society is the giving of ‘cocktail parties,’” the Pioneer Press reported.
Not everybody was impressed. The socialist Appeal to Reason republished the Pioneer Press story, with this introduction:
Next to promoting wars our capitalist newspapers delight in giving space to the doings of the idle rich. Below we print a story of the very latest in the daily press. To any man that has even a thimbleful of brains this news item should bring home the fact that America is going the way of Rome and that nothing but a social revolution can possibly save it.
The Appeal headlined the item “Our Parasite Class.”
At the time of the “first cocktail party,” Julius and Clara Bell lived at 4499 Lindell, a residence that has since been demolished. Two years later, they moved to 4510 Lindell — the current home of the Roman Catholic archbishop of St. Louis — and that led to some confusion, including a 2007 story by the Wall Street Journal that identified the archbishop’s residence as the site of the inaugural cocktail party, an error that was repeated more than once.
The party wasn’t the first time Clara Bell, a wealthy Southern socialite, gained fame as an accomplished party hostess. In December 1916, she attracted national notice for organizing a “baby party” at the St. Louis Country Club. Invited guests showed up dressed as toddlers and sipped cocktails from small nursing bottles. The Post-Dispatch reported:
They all went dressed as children, children from every walk in life, poor little waifs, poor little rich girls, sunbonnet babies, romper kids, sailor boys, Peter Thompson girls and every imaginable kind of dressed-up child. Henry K. Lackland, who was dressed as a big fat Mammie with a gray checked frock, white apron, kinky wig and bandana headkerchief, was all over the place, telling everybody how hot his stays were.
Clara Bell’s antics drew some criticism. The Rev. Dr. John L. Brandt included the “baby party” in a sermon titled “Things That Occurred in 1916 That We Should Feel Ashamed Of”:
When they stoop to such antics as reported in the papers, such conduct has a tendency to widen the breach between the rich and the poor, to make anarchists and to set a bad example for our young men and women.
Julius, a prominent banker’s son, and Clara Bell divorced in 1923. (She kept his surname. Julius died of a heart attack in 1929; the following year, Clara Bell described herself as a widow to a census taker.) Clara Bell, who spent much of her time at the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York, became famous there for hosting parties, dinners and dances. For instance, in 1935, she organized an “Amos and Andy Ball” for her friends Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the white actors who created the radio program. “Guests came dressed in calico, and many of them represented the characters created by the guests of honor in their radio skits,” the Post-Dispatch recounted the following year.
Clara Bell maintained her ties to St. Louis, often visiting the city, hosting guests from St. Louis, and supporting the St. Louis Zoo. When the zoo’s flamboyant director, George P. Vierheller, called on her in 1941, he and Clara Bell went riding in Bronx Park, where they spotted four flamingos. Vierheller said he always wanted flamingos in St. Louis; Walsh got him a dozen.
Clara Bell Walsh died in 1957 of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 74.— Roland Klose, June 8, 2024.
Roland Klose 