The cocktail party , derisively defined by the New York Times in 1922 as “a gathering of persons who can have a ‘good time’ only when highly stimulated by strong waters,” did not have its start in a great metropolis. The credit goes neither to New York nor London (where, apocryphally, Alec Waugh was supposed to have invented the cocktail party in the 1920s). No, the first cocktail party so conceived and so called was held in the American Midwest—in St. Louis, Missouri, on a Sunday afternoon sometime in the first few months of 1917. (We may set aside the after-theater hotel-room “cocktail party” documented in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1903 and the “cocktail party” a Brooklyn, New York, schoolteacher held for her pupils in 1906 as atypical of the genre, and not just because both ended in deaths.) Mrs. Julius S. Walsh Jr., a socialite, was “responsible for the innovation,” according to a local newspaper. Clara Bell Walsh had tried out other party themes before hitting on the cocktail idea (her notion of having guests dress up as babies and drink from bottles wasn’t quite the enduring success that her “cocktail party” would be).
Some fifty guests attended the to-do at the Walsh mansion, where cocktails were served from noon to 1:00 p.m. (when “dinner” was then served). The drinks on offer were mostly of the moment—Bronx cocktails and Clover Leaf cocktails (Clover Clubs with mint leaves floating on top). See Bronx Cocktail and Clover Club. Mrs. Walsh, we might note, was up to date in her knowledge of cocktail fashion, living as she did half the year in New York’s Plaza Hotel. Also served at the party were highballs (“some with Scotch and some with rye or Bourbon whisky”), Gin Fizzes, Martinis, Manhattans, and even, for the hide-bound oldsters at the event, a few Sazeracs and Mint Juleps. See Highball; Gin Fizz; Martini; Manhattan Cocktail; Sazerac cocktail; and julep.
“A Cocktail Party: Mrs. Walsh of St. Louis Has Hit on a New Feature in Way of Entertainment.” Wichita Beacon, April 3, 1917, 12.
Dietler, Michael, and Brian Hayden, eds. Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001.
“An Innocent Word Is Maltreated,” New York Times, June 27, 1922.
“Killing Results from Cocktail Party.” Decatur (IL) Daily Review, November 16, 1903.
By: Eric Felten