Unusual Theme for W. & L.'s Fancy Ball

South Carolina In Pre-War Days Theme of Event

By Payne Hall

It was cold and there was a touch of snow in the air, but light bespeaking warmth shone through the high windows behind the tall, white columns, casting blurred shadows on the already snow-covered ground. Music, sometimes soft and sauntering as if played for maids and gentlemen of olden times, filtered from within the long, porticoed building.

A streamlined automobile drew up to the entrance and a duke and his duchess alighted and hurried in. Another car followed, and a prince helped his princess up the broad steps. Came other automobiles and other dignitaries--Governors and their ladies; generals and admirals; even kings and queens.

A conglomerate group, they glittered in the pageant-like brilliance of their costumes as they doffed overcoats and wraps once they had found the warmth behind the tall lighted windows. Then, gay and carefree, they strolled or marched onto the ballroom floor, and danced to modern music.

Fancy Dress Ball Recalls Old Days

It was fancy dress time at Washington and Lee University. It might have been any W. & L. fancy dress, at least any of the fancy dress balls held in recent years, when costumes have become more and more elaborate.

The characters: all make-believe for a night. The scene: Washington and Lee's Doremus Gymnasium, transformed for the night into a royal garden of old Italy; or a ballroom of the Russia of czarist days; or a court pomp of Elizabethian times.

Or, as it will be on January 28, the garden of an old Colonial home at Charleston, S. C., in the happy days preceding the War Between the States.

"I want something a little more modern, a little more American, this year, and I think the students will like it," William M. Rogers Jr. of Petersburg, Va., president of the fancy dress ball of 1938, said. "We are not exactly tired of the glitter of European themes of past days. We just think it might be appropriate now to have a Southern theme for the ball."

And so, on the night of January 28, 1938, Rogers will become Governor Pickens of South Carolina, host at a reception.

As governor and host, he will lead the figure, highlight of the ball, with Miss Margaret Woods of Bronxville, N. Y. Miss Woods is a sophomore at Sweet Briar College.

The annual Washington and Lee fancy dress ball, now one of the best-known collegiate social affairs in the nation, had its inception back in 1907, when Miss Annie Jo White, then the university librarian, gave a private costume party for a group of students and their girls. But the private costume party became an idea, and the idea "caught on," with "Miss Annie" continuing for a number of years as director of the ball.

"The boys took the party right out of my hands and have been carrying out the fancy dress idea ever since I started it,"  "Miss Annie," as she had been known affectionately on the campus, said not long ago.

"But I didn't mind," she said, "because I still get as much fun out of it."

Miss Annie Attends Annually

And yearly "Miss Annie" has attended the fancy dress ball, sitting as an honored guest and far from forgotten as the "eternal queen of fancy dress" at Washington and Lee. The years have begun to pile up on "Miss Annie," who still lives at her home on the university campus, but if her health permits she will find a box especially reserved for her on the night of January 28, when "Governor Pickens" plays host.

Starting with the idea given them by the then librarian, Washington and Lee students of succeeding generations have placed the ball in an enviable position in the spotlight of social prominence, concentrating at the same time on authenticity in reproduction of famous periods and events in history.

This effort for conscientious reproduction will be concentrated in this year's ball on the following historical note, "Charleston on the Eve of Secession," prepared by Professor Ollinger Crenshaw of the Washington and Lee department of history:

"Since the close of the seventeenth century, the little city of Charleston, S. C., had been a mecca in the rural civilization of the Old South, pre-eminent for its social and intellectual life, commerce, cosmopolitanism and authentic urbanity. While by 1860 new economic forces had dimmed somewhat the material prosperity of Carolina civilization, Charleston retained much of its prestige till the fall of the Confederacy. Although there is some difference of opinion among critics as to the merits of antebellum Southern civilization, Charleston represented the best of that civilization. It was the metropolis which attracted gifted politicians--in the production of which the old South excelled at this time Robert Barnwell Rhett, secessionist par excellence, Governor Francis W. Pickens, ex-Governor W. H. Gist, Senator James H. Hammond, able apologist of "the peculiar institution" slavery, his colleague, Senator James Chestnut Jr., and the eminent lawyer, James L. Petigru, almost the only Unionist in the State.

"Others prominent in various fields of activity and associated with the city in the years before the war for Southern independence included Louis Leconte and the Ravenels, scientists, poets like Paul Hayne and Henry Timrod, Basil L. Gildersleeve, classical scholar, and the foremost Southern novelist of the age. William Gilmore Simms, at last accepted by Charleston society.

"While momentous events took place, and South Carolina prepared secession, the best people of Charleston enjoyed life in their magnificent homes, attended concerts and balls of the famous St. Cecelia Society, and church at old St. Michael's, whose spire remains a landmark to this day. Supremely confident of the future and remarkably unanimous politically, these Carolinians were seemingly oblivious to the dark shadow of the future: they saw not the grave and well-nigh insuperable problems of the new Southern Confederacy, which through war led to the collapse of King Cotton civilization, and finally to bitter days of Reconstruction."

The fancy dress ball of 1938 will be projected against this picturesque and romantic backdrop of Southern history.

The various persons who were prominent in Charleston society of the middle nineteenth century--including politicians, writers and others--will be portrayed by the students and their girls.

Time was, it was recalled by some who have been to fancy dress balls of past days, when a white shirt, open at the throat, a pair of black tuxedo trousers, and a red scarf tied about the waist may have constituted sufficient costume to represent any period of history. But things have changed in the past decade. All of the costumes are authentic now, created and fitted by professional costumiers. Orders are placed weeks in advance for costumes for both men and women.

Members of the Washington and Lee faculty and distinguished guests usually are the only ones on the dance floor without costume, and it's white ties for them.

The date for fancy dress varies only slightly each year; it always comes just after examinations that mark the end of the first semester at the university. The ball is the highlight now of the winter dance set opening this year on Friday evening, January 27, with the annual junior prom formal--after which decorators will tear down the decorations for the prom and effect a complete transformation in the interior of Doremus Gymnasium's appearance. Another formal dance will be held Saturday evening, January 29.