Evening Guests

At the onset of 1918, two US Navy hospital corpsmen wearing white service dress uniforms were pictured carrying a patient up the marble stairs of Alfred House, Park Lane, London. Built in a Jacobean style in the 1890s for the Anglo-German gold and diamond magnate Alfred Beit, it was later purchased by Frederick Edward Guest, first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill. Overlooking Hyde Park, and considered one of the finest residences in London, it was at the behest of Guest that it was transformed into the “American Red Cross Hospital for the United States Navy.”

He was an immaculately dressed nobleman who, in addition to giving his house to the allies for the war effort, served as Chief Whip of Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberal Party from 1917 to 1921, and won a bronze medal with the British polo team in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris for his country; he enjoyed life in all its declensions. He was an amateur racing driver and aeroplane pilot, enjoyed big-game hunting in East Africa, and was a member of the River and Links Clubs of New York and the Piping Rock Club in Long Island, although it was arguably Palm Beach that eclipsed any other location in terms of leaving such an indelible legacy, which was only tremendously enhanced by his offspring.

However, none has left a more profound impact on Palm Beach than Henry Morrison Flagler, the co-founder of Standard Oil. Stemming from Mark Twain’s 1873 satirical novel The Gilded Age, it was midway through that unparalleled era of opulence that Flagler sought to develop the Atlantic Coast of Florida. St. Augustine, on the northwest coast, was the recipient of the trailblazing Spanish Revival style Hotel Ponce de Leon, while the Hotel Alcazar and Hotel Cordova were also famed monuments. However, further south, it was The Breakers Palm Beach, still under the ownership of Flagler’s heirs, that last month was the venue for the 64th International Red Cross Ball. Charles and Amanda Schumacher, chairman and chairwomen and renowned philanthropists, hosted what is arguably the world’s most exclusive and chic charity ball. For the third season, it paid tribute to Bonnie McElveen-Hunter – a cherished philanthropist in her own right and the first female chair of the American Red Cross.

Palm Beach society has long been renowned for its illustrious matriarchs, such as the British actress Celia Lipton, daughter of Mayfair’s lionised bandleader Sydney Lipton of the Grosvenor House Hotel – only a stone’s throw away from Alfred House, which, incidentally, despite its grandeur and national legacy, was demolished in 1929. In 1955, Celia, panting at the door of a friend’s house in Manhattan, only just evaded collision with a ladder and, at a glance, thought the ‘plumber’ was rather good-looking. The chap up the ladder was in fact Victor Ferris, inventor of the paper milk carton; they married the next year and, like other actresses such as Arlene Dahl, Marylou Whitney and the scandalous Roxanne Pulitzer, her wedding to an industry mogul propelled her to the forefront of Palm Beach’s social pyramid, where she remained until her death in 2011.  

Unfortunately not all had such longevity. In 1986, Dominick Dunne, a pioneering American journalist, featured The Women of Palm Beach in the April issue of Vanity Fair. One lady he had dialogue with was Gregg Dodge, a former model and socialite, who reported to Dunne that she and her once great friend Mary Sanford, then the Grand Dame of Palm Beach, would practically run Palm Beach socially – until her catalogue of life-curdling misdemeanours led to her downfall, as with Roxanne, whose incomprehensible actions when married to newspaper heir and sublime dresser Peter Pulitzer created a veritable media circus, the like of which has not been seen even to this day.

Amado, “beloved” in Spanish, was the name of the oceanfront Spanish-revival mansion at 455 N. Country Road designed by Addison Mizner and built circa 1920 for Charles Alexander Munn and his wife Mary Astor Paul Munn, and it more than lived up to the seductive air of its name. It would be a mise en scène of sophistication and debauchery, but conducted only in the best attire and attended by society with a capital S, including royals, aristocrats, tycoons, bold-faced socialites – and fourth wives who were virtually regimental.  Charles, Mary, and later Dorothy Speckels, the granddaughter of a San Francisco sugar baron and Charles’ second wife, would encourage guests to sign the guest book. And this was no ordinary signing-out book; the signatures of the era’s haute monde would not only adorn 80 pages, but ladies such as Rose Kennedy and Mary Sanford would embellish it with their lips, thus tastefully and secretly leaving a romantic trace of Amado’s illustrious guests.

Rose Kennedy (left) and her husband, American financier Joseph Kennedy, with their daughter-in-law, Jacqueline Kennedy, at the Everglades Club, Palm Beach, Florida. Jacqueline wears a belted strapless gown. March 1954. (Courtesy of Alamy)

Next door to Amado was Louwana, home of Gurnee, Charles’ brother, also masterminded by Mizner. And considering that Charles was influential in raising money for overseas hospitals for the American Red Cross, was the founder of the American Federation of Arts, the Seminole Club, the Poinciana Club of Palm Beach and, last but not least, the Everglades Club, there wouldn’t be much ground to dispute Charles earning the monikers “Mr. Palm Beach” and “The Grand Seigneur of Palm Beach”.

Vestige of a bygone era, the Everglades Club, known for its interior splendour, mystery – and history of improper rumours – was commissioned by Paris Singer, the heir to the famed Singer Sewing Machine Company, and designed by the aforementioned Mizner, America’s foremost society architect of the era. Originally to be called the “Touchstone Convalescents’ Club” for returning WW1 American veterans, it wasn’t complete when the war ended, and so morphed into a private club, one that, along with the Bath and Tennis Club, called the B.&T., and Palm Beach Country Club, is still a refuge for old money, who maintain the polite society etiquette that their forebears carried with their membership at the clubs.

Inevitably, as new wealth relegates old money, the historic high-society bastions or haunts will diminish, even in Palm Beach. However, these monuments in that stretch attest to the fact that, although change has been brewing for forty-odd years, in the last twenty there has been a sort of retrieval for inherited money. And when Cole Rumbaugh, grandson of Dina Merrill, joined Peter Dunchin’s orchestra at the 56th International Red Cross Ball to serenade her, it was a poignant moment connecting memories from its beginnings to more recent ones.

This 56th edition in 2013 – the first at The Breakers Hotel since 2004 – honoured Merrill. Her mother, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was not only the founding chairwoman of the ball in 1956, but also the money, taste and owner behind the now-infamous palatial mansion, Mar-a-Lago, which is documented in the Historical Society of Palm Beach County archive donated by Speckles. Recorded in the aforementioned archives are Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Mar-a-Lago bedroom assignments for ambassadors attending the Red Cross Ball.

Friends with Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, like many heiresses who resided in Palm Beach, were Alice De Lamar and her school friend, Evangeline Johnson Merrill, daughter of Robert Wood Johnson, co-founder of Johnson & Johnson. Both were prominent figures in the arts and charity worlds – the latter was decorated by President Woodrow Wilson for her services in the Red Cross in World War 1. But back to De Lamar; in 1927 she appointed and funded Ida Tarbell to write the seminal book, Florida Architecture of Addison Mizner, documenting the architect’s original designs for his Palm Beach houses.

Aside from spawning the architectural beauty of the Everglades Club, Mizner was the mastermind behind La Querida, also known as Castillo del Mar (“castle by the sea”). Serving as the “Winter White House” during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, there’s unlikely to be another Palm Beach estate where such widespread and important American affairs have been devised, and equally the gravitas of personal tales stemming from the Kennedy’s residence on Ocean Boulevard is unquantifiable. That fine architectural beauty that Tarbell’s book enlightens is thankfully commemorated and promoted in physical form today at the Preservation Foundation Ball, which takes place on February 28 at Bradley Park. Along with the International Red Cross Ball and Planned Parenthood of South Florida, which was also staged last month, these grand affairs are positioned at the top of the hierarchy, with an invitation to buy tickets an indisputable acceptance of your social position in Palm Beach.

Born in 1847, Cornelia Henrietta Maria (née Spencer–Churchill) was the daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and through her marriage to Ivor Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne, she would become the mother of the aforementioned Frederick Edward Guest. And it was Guest’s cousin Winston’s son, Randolph Churchill, who at the end of his first dinner with Pamela Digby proposed. A social lightbulb with wealthy, important figures, if there ever was one, Pamela famously recounted her time as a Paris correspondent for the Daily Express in the late ‘40s by saying, “Every night then was lived in black tie. There was less money than in New York or London today, but far more luxury; there were fewer names and far more taste.”

London, New York, or Paris; today, in January and February, it would be Palm Beach that would still closely oblige with Pamela’s assertion of living in black tie. When not opting to attend and host convivial parties at Pitti Uomo, Florence, Alexander Kraft is a youthful snowbird to Palm Beach. Returning to his Provence estate from his winter getaway after close to a month, it is thought that his discerning AK MC black tie collection is not yet to be conceded now for the winter.

But returning to Palm Beach, and specifically the grand mansions where bold-faced names invite guests to black tie soirées at their discretion, and of course the renowned social establishments such as the Everglades Club, The Breakers Palm Beach, and The Colony Hotel, it’s a setting where one feels enabled to concoct eveningwear with a stronger nonchalant aura. This is certainly not to diminish well-fitted garments, but one where it’s more appropriate and even encouraged to thoughtfully experiment with a more creative black tie outfit yet is still deemed as classic variations.

When surrounded by tropical splendour, white truly shines. Now, aside from a handcrafted white evening Marcella bibbed dress shirt made from 2-fold Egyptian cotton poplin, which in this instance is in the AK MC collection, dress shirts are usually the only white aspect of your outfit. White jackets are in fact either ivory, off-white, or cream, thus exposing the details and quality of your jacket, which are most often constructed in a peaked lapel and shawl collar. Today, notch lapels aren’t considered covetable. For an impeccable warm-weather black tie rendition, imagine the ivory self-facing shawl collar jacket and black trousers that Humphrey Bogart sported in the iconic picture, Casablanca, 1942. It portrays a more relaxed elegance of formality, perfect for tropical climates. If you have the appropriate well-made apparel and accoutrements, then strike with a reversal tuxedo look, considering a black jacket and white trousers. We are in an exciting era of sartorial menswear, experimenting and concocting unthought-of outfits that work with classic distinction and then giving it a whirl in Palm Beach this winter.