Origins
The event had its roots in the agricultural and mechanical fairs held in St. Louis beginning in 1856. These languished in the years after the American Civil War, however, and the Veiled Prophet Fair was in part an attempt to reclaim pre-eminence for the city as a manufacturing center and agricultural shipping point from rapidly growing Chicago. On March 20, 1878, Charles Slayback, a grain broker, former Confederate cavalryman, and New Orleans native, called a meeting of local business leaders at the Lindell Hotel. Together with his brother Alonzo, Slayback invented a mythology for an annual fair meant to revive interest in the commercial fairs, and especially to increase participation in harvest-season events. From Irish poet Thomas Moore, the Slaybacks borrowed the name of the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, adapting features of their home-city's Mystick Krewe of Comus. In their version, the Prophet was a world traveler who had made St. Louis his home base. The first parade and grand ball were staged on October 8, 1878, attracting over 50,000 spectators.
The fair was also intended to re-assert the social hierarchy which had been challenged by the general strike of 1877, claimed by Spencer (p. 18) to have been the first and most successful of its type, involving large numbers of African American workmen as well. Though the fair has regularly been characterized as "a way of healing the wounds of a bitter labor-management fight," Spencer (8) suggests "the first Veiled Prophet parade was more a show of force than a gesture of healing."
The Prophet was selected from among St. Louis's business and civic elite. The first prophet was Police Commissioner John G. Priest (who had been energetic in suppressing the 1877 strike). Although the identity of a given year's Grand Oracle, or Veiled Prophet, was officially a secret, early holders of the office were reported to include Col. A. W. Slayback, Capt. Frank Gaiennie, John A. Scudder, Henry C. Haarstick, George Bain, Robert P. Tansey, George H. Morgan, Col. J. C. Normile, Wallace Delafield, John B. Maude, Dr. D. P. Rowland, Charles E. Slayback, Leigh I. Knapp, David B. Gould, Henry Paschell, H. I. Kent, Dr. E. Pretorious, Win. H. Thompson, and Win. A. Hargadine. Today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch speculates each year on the identity of the Veiled Prophet.
The Queen of Love and Beauty, and later maids of honor, would be selected by the Veiled Prophet from among the debutantes who had received invitations (the list of invitees determined by a process never made public, though the supply of tickets was limited to members of the VP organization, also of murky constitution, and the assignment of these non-transferrable tickets required the organization's approval). The Veiled Prophet would dance the "Royal Quadrille" with the Queen, and then award her some keepsake of the occasion. Over the years, the Queens and their courts received pearl necklaces or silver tiaras, which became family heirlooms (as did the elaborate invitations themselves). The 1928 Veiled Prophet Ball illustrates the seriousness with which the event was regarded as an instrument of social control. For the fiftieth anniversary celebration records list "no queen," as Mary Ambrose Smith had secretly married Dr. Thomas Birdsall days earlier, violating the rule that the Queen of Love and Beauty must be a "maiden." In a 1979 interview with the St. Louis Times, Smith recalled how the Veiled Prophet "gave her travelling money and told her to 'begone, don't register at any large hotels, and don't use your real name.' ... Smith was 'made to feel she disgraced her family. None of her friends stuck by her (she was told she could not visit their houses), she was never invited to another VP ball, her picture was removed from the collection of queens' portraits at the Missouri Historical Society, and her name was deleted from the Social Register.'"
The ball was suspended between 1943 and 1945, due to World War II. Upon its resumption, there was increasing objection to the use of a civic facility for such a socially exclusive event. In the 1950s, the exclusive Chase Park Plaza Hotel constructed the opulent Khorassan Ballroom specifically for the purpose of hosting the annual debutante ball, and it was moved from the former venue, Kiel Auditorium. In recent years, the Ball has been held at the Downtown St. Louis Hyatt at the Arch.
Read more about this topic: Veiled Prophet Ball
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