The secretive Twelfth Night Ball was a post-holiday highlight on Chicago’s society calendar

The location of the Twelfth Night bash was once Chicago’s equivalent of a state secret. Invitees had to leave a phone number where they could be reached at dinnertime on a date in early January and be given the address. Absent that provision, a social climber might slip in unnoticed — it was a masked ball, where revelers arrived in costume.

Being noted in a society column for attending a Twelfth Night ball was the ultimate upper-class merit badge. It was impossible to campaign for one. Invitations were issued anonymously by “The Committee.”

“No one knows who the ‘bidders’ are, and even the ‘bidden’ can only guess about who their fellow participants will be, although they well know that many of the same ‘old faces’ will be hidden behind the masks,” observed Thalia, the pen name of the Tribune’s society columnist, in 1953.

When one half of a married couple was getting properly attired for a Twelfth Night bash, a senior member of society would entertain the uninvited spouse — bereaved for the day, as it were.

“It is stated on excellent authority that the bridge game which the widows and widowers will play this afternoon will take place at the residence of Mrs. Potter Palmer,” the Tribune reported in 1909.

“Those who were absent were not missed,” said both men and women in attendance, one a wife whose husband “was wandering who knows where in the great city.”

Thalia cautioned that this didn’t mean Mrs. Palmer “was a member of the committee of seven, which on good authority is said to be in reality a committee of one and his assistant. These are ‘Billy’ Gamble and his friend and roommate ‘Billy’ McClure.”

Gamble, described by the Tribune in 1949 as “the most popular bachelor in Chicago society of 30 and 40 years ago,” was credited with starting the ball. Born and raised in Louisville, he came to Chicago, where he found the Christmas season bashes hosted by the Bachelors and Benedicts society deathly stuffy.

In 1905, he created a Widow and Widowers Ball, subsequently known as Butchers, Bakers, and Candle Stick Makers Ball, then becoming Twelfth Night in 1920, scheduled roughly 12 days after Christmas and dedicated to having fun. The guest list for those initial soirees included “maids” described as “milk, parlor, or upstairs.”

Musicians wore white hats. Guests were costumed, and the bash took its final name.

“Part of the fun of Twelfth Night parties is their air of mystery, and part of the mystery is getting ‘dressed up’ in one of those fancy costumes guaranteed to release pent personalities,” Thalia observed in 1950.

Gamble became the adopted court jester of the posh Gold Coast neighborhood. In 1916, that almost saved his day job.

He had been appointed secretary of the city’s Fire Department by Mayor Carter Harrison. The two were related. He had an office in City Hall and was paid $3,000 a year.

In 1915, William Hale Thompson was elected mayor, and went on a budget-cutting spree, his own boodling notwithstanding. Gamble’s relaxed work style made him vulnerable. “One of the reasons Mr. Gamble lost out,” the city’s comptroller said, “was because he has been coming and going at his own leisure.”

The city decided the work he supposedly performed could be done by a clerk paid $1,320 a year. Among Gamble’s friends on the Gold Coast, that calculation seemed coldhearted.

“North side friends of Mr. Gamble last night began a campaign on Mr. Gamble’s behalf,” the Tribune reported. “Many were not even aware he had a city hall position, but they all took up the slogan: ‘Let’s do something for Billy.’”

“This is one time Gamble lost out on the gamble,” Mayor Thompson said.

Gamble countered by offering to work for free. “If this had happened fifteen years ago, it might have been a good thing for me,” he said, “but now I would like to have someplace to go besides out.”

An alderman made an unsuccessful effort to restore Gamble’s salary. But while bounced from the city payroll, his role as party-maker to the blue bloods remained intact, and he mounted his last Twelfth Night ball in 1921, the same year he died.

“One of the most attractive costumes was worn by Miss Annette Washburne who impersonated ‘fire.’ Her draped frock of flame color crepe georgette was topped by a becoming wig of smoke blue and she carried a wispy scarf of black tulle,” The Tribune reported. “Mephistopheles was on hand early in the person of Harold Bradley.”

Six months after that ball, Gamble died suddenly in his home at 1210 N. State St.

“Many of Billy Gamble’s friends will turn and gaze into the night into which he has suddenly gone and will recall the many qualities and acts which made him one of the most original personalities in the large social circle which was his,” wrote another anonymous Tribune society chronicler, Mme. X, after his Aug. 23, 1921, passing.

“On Twelfth Nights for all the years that are left to his friends, they will recall the Butchers and Bakers and Candle Stick Makers Balls which for many years have been one of the winter’s most enjoyable functions.”

Missing nary a beat, the hush-hush committee perpetuated Gamble’s work. Through the 1920s, Twelfth Night galas continued to be fit for the over-the-top shenanigans of the “Jazz Age.”

For Gamble’s finale at the Chicago Lincoln Club: “The large ballroom and the overflow room were decorated in spring blossoms and hedges of southern smilax, numbers of apple-green balloons nestled against the ceilings and batches of them were tied to the chandeliers, from which depended myriad of snowy apple blossoms.”

“Russian Ladies in glittering boots and cloth of silver tunics rubbed elbows with bandits in fierce whiskers and black eyes and Weary Willies tripped the light fantastic with crowned princesses.”

There were “gay troubadours with mustaches slightly askew, and Spanish ladies smoking Turkish cigarettes.”

The decade closed with an equally fanciful Twelfth Night ball with an 18th century Venetian theme. Thalia noted the usual array of elaborate costumes, although one partygoer had his own standards. “A wife, on questioning her husband on what he planned to wear was greeted with an explosive: ‘I don’t care so long as the pants are comfortable.’”

The ball game changed 10 months after that year’s Twelfth Night, when the stock market crashed.

“Old man Depression has been teaching us that simpler parties can be more fun than elaborate affairs, " the Tribune reported on the eve of the 1932 Twelfth Night.

“There will be no decorations in the Germania ballroom tonight save the red and green Christmas festoons, which were hung before the holidays. The rule for costumes is ‘wear what you please’ so everyone will have a chance to express their ingenuity without much necessary expense.”

Eventually the American economy rebounded, and so did Chicago’s Twelfth Night balls. But Thalia, Mme. X and their successors would nostalgically compare the latter-day galas to those of yore.

“No matter how glamorous this year’s Twelfth Night, it will not erase from the memory of the old guard the famous Twelfth Nights of the past,” Thalia wrote in 1956. “Old-timers still burble about the Jungle Ball for which the Sherman Hotel’s ballroom was turned into a veritable jungle, and guests came as creatures in fable as well as fact — unicorns, mastodons, and all sorts of monkeys (and everyone acted like one).”

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