Charleston and the Cocktail Party

   by Harlan Greene

Charleston, SC, the city that gave the country the Civil War, its first preservation laws, Porgy and Bess and the dance the Charleston, should be known for something else, as well. In the 1920's it developed (and finessed) the idea of the cocktail party.

Bon vivant Schuyler Parsons, born of an old Knickerbocker New York family, traveled the East Coast, Europe, and everywhere else the wealthy went in these years. Like many, he was attracted to the picturesque city of Charleston; although it seemed to belong to another time, it was on the cutting edge artistically; many famous writers and artists either lived or visited here in the period. (Most people do not realize that the first showing of Solomon Guggenheim's collection of non-objective art would be held at the Gibbes Art Gallery in the next few years, for instance. Guggenheim owned Daniel Island and had a large house on "High Battery.") Parsons was so taken with the town, he moved here.

In his autobiography, Untold Friendships (Houghton Mifflin, 1955), he speaks of attending cocktail parties in Charleston; nowhere else, he decreed, was there anything like this sort of entertainment. Why had Charleston developed this unique form of entertainment? He offered his theory.

All white Charlestonians of the "downtown" set had black help. Charlestonians ate their main meal at 3:00 in the afternoon. (One of the best novels to come from Charleston is Josephine Pinckney's Three o'Clock Dinner.) It was an odd custom, those from "off" (the word given to those not from Charleston) thought. When the poet Amy Lowell visited Charleston in the early 1920's, she was hurt that no one asked her to supper in their homes—that was, again, due to the fact that Charlestonians ate their main meal in the afternoon and dismissed their help early.

To entertain these Northerners, and all the other artists and intellectuals coming to town (and to show off their liquor supply, despite Prohibition), Charlestonians evolved the cocktail party. Before they left, black maids cooked hams and turkeys, which the Charleston hostess could then just put on the sideboard, along with other small things served cold. People would be poured drinks upon entering, and they would be welcome to move about the rooms, eating and gossiping. With no servants around, and no need for a big evening meal, Charlestonians started this practice, Parsons believed. So it's not just Planter's Punch, supposedly named after the Planter's Hotel on Church Street, that gives the city a claim to fame in the drinks department. At least one resident of the time was adamant in his memoirs that the cocktail party is another gift to Western Civilization from the civilized old city.