Extending invitations to a fancy party but telling certain guests the wrong dress code to embarrass them is a staple Hollywood trope you might expect to find in TV shows like Bridgerton.
New Brunswick had a highly dramatic dramatic – and, frankly, rather low stakes – example of deliberate Victorian high-society hijinks and fashion faux pas at the luxurious Grand Opening of the iconic Algonquin Hotel in St. Andrews.
The final days before the grand opening of the Algonquin were chaotic. The project was running slightly behind schedule, and the Boston investors who had funded the project were not happy.
The investors agitation must seem remarkable for modern people today because it only took eight months to build the towering Tudor-style ornate Algonquin Hotel overlooking St. Andrews.
St. Andrews had been enjoying a reputation as a playground of the rich and famous for some time, but in the past two years before its 1889 opening, it had gone to a whole new level.
A consortium calling itself the St. Andrews Land Company, with New Brunswick’s Lieutenant Governor Tilley as its figurehead but financially backed by wealthy Boston businessmen, had transformed the town.
The Saint John Progress newspaper noted the Company had bought up “a cedar swamp” and “made it into one of the most beautiful spots imaginable.”
Among the myriad of projects funded by the Boston investors was the Algonquin Hotel.
Reporter R. E. Armstrong toured the mostly-completed hotel two weeks before the opening, and wrote with amazement that it “commands an outlook of sea and island, river and mountain, which cannot be surpassed anywhere on the American continent.”
“Its external appearance is at once imposing and attractive,” continued the reporter. “Entering the main floor from the broad piazza, one steps into a hall 20 feet wide by 46 feet long, running at right angles with which … are a pair of handsomely-carved ash pillars on the four corners where the corridor crosses the hall with broad spaces at their base for statuary or vases of flowers.”
He noted the accoutrements were hypermodern for 1889, including “an electric button in every room,” gas jets; hot, cold and salt water faucets; and “ice cream tanks operated by machinery.”
“The culinary arrangements are most complete,” Armstrong commented, adding: “And so they should be where there a chef is getting $240 a month.” (That would be nearly $10,000 a month in today’s money!)
Not everyone was quite so thrilled about The Algonquin. The Woodstock Dispatch snarked that “the prices asked … is enough to terrify the everyday man.”
That newspaper went on to complain that “The Algonquin set an example for big prices” and other hotels and cottages in St. Andrews had jacked up their prices in anticipation of its completion. The Algonquins’ prices back then started at $3 a night. (That price actually compares quite favourably with today’s hotel prices, coming in at only around $100 a night.)
The Algonquin’s first manager was Saint Johner Fred A. Jones, who had been freshly poached from his old job running the Port City’s luxurious Dufferin Hotel.
Jones arrived in St. Andrews to discover that the Bostonian investors’ priority was getting the hotel opened to paying guests as quickly as possible, and hadn’t given much thought to the grand opening.
As the new manager, Jones quickly accomplished his first task of getting the hotel opened to paying customers. Its first-ever guests were Mr. and Mrs. Hudson T. Frisbe of Houlton, Maine.
The Algonquin’s early slogan was “an incomparable resting place,” a perhaps somewhat awkward choice in light of the later ghost stories surrounding the place.
Despite having successfully opened the Algonquin, Jones was saddened that there had not been a grand opening party.
So, he decided to throw one.
Jones’ didn’t merely want to throw a luxurious Grand Opening for the sake of a party. He felt it was important that the new hotel integrate into the community. His priority was that the grand opening should invite not only eliters and celebrities from across the Maritimes and New England, but that all the local people in St. Andrews needed to be invited as well.
However, because he was himself an outsider, Jones decided to outsource the invitations to a group of young women who were the social butterflies of St. Andrews.
And this is where the drama began.
The St. Andrews Beacon newspaper later explained that, because of the last-minute nature of the opening, “there was no time for any formal invitations to be distributed. Mr. Jones accordingly impressed a committee of young ladies into his service.”
It appears that the “committee of young ladies,” to use a modern phrase, got up to some “mean girl” tactics because, according to the Beacon, “many St. Andrews people who would otherwise have been invited were not.”
It seems that the young ladies had taken the opportunity to only extend invitations to their own clique, and not the wider community of local people.
Which, it appears, was not a very big clique, as very few invitations were distributed.
Jones discovered what the young ladies were up to, and with time running out before the grand opening ball, Jones demanded that the young ladies go around and personally invite the local people they’d deliberately left out.
The Committee of Young Ladies followed his instructions to the letter.
In fact, they followed Jones’ instructions much more closely than he wanted. They indeed personally told the people they were invited, but neglected to mention the dress code.
According to the Beacon: “It was given out that the affair was to be of a purely informal character” – they told the invitees not to dress up; that the ball’s dress code was informal.
On the evening of the Grand Opening Ball, the members of the committee of young ladies “appeared in full dress. Low-necked dresses, short sleeves and claw hammer collars predominated.”
The Saint John Progress newspaper wrote fawningly of their elaborate gowns, noting that most of these women wore satin and silk with gold trim, pearls, and diamonds.
Meanwhile, according to the Beacon, “Those people who had been deluded into the idea that the affair was to be altogether informal, and who had not come decked out in ball costume, felt considerably nettled.”
While we’ve all probably made the mistake of not dressing entirely appropriately for some social occasion, and can recall the painful embarrassment of the realization, imagine how much higher the social stakes would be at a Victorian high-society ball for the grand opening of a sumptuous luxury hotel!
In the end, though, according to the Beacon, it seems the informally dressed group overcame their embarrassment and anxiety, let the music wash over them, and danced their problems away:
“As the evening wore on, and the exquisite music of the orchestra tempted them into the many dances, they forgot their grievances and were soon enjoying themselves like the rest.”
