JOHN WARREN
Contributing Writer
Long before subreddits and social media feeds, there were “personals” columns, newspaper columns that documented the hyper-local.
Personals columns were often mundane recitations of who showed up for Sunday dinner with his new bride and in his dress uniform. Not coincidentally, the subjects were often relatives of the column writer. But at their best, personals columns were chock full of lively anecdotes and reflected — even created — connectedness.
The Chautauquan Daily — which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year — and its predecessors the Chautauqua Assembly Daily Herald and The Chautauqua Assembly Herald had a long history of personals columns, dating back to the 1890s “Walks and Talks” column followed later by “Arrivals,” “Personals” and “Chautauquans.”
The columns were arguably in their heyday from the mid-1930s into the 1950s, when Chautauqua Institution was intimate enough that readers knew the people mentioned or could hope to know them in the space between Saturdays.
Remarkably, these lengthy columns composed of many blurbs were published daily during the season. The titles changed with some frequency, as did the writers. The assignment was surely a grind and seems to have been mostly assigned to cub reporters. But these midcentury columnists handled the assignment with aplomb.
Here, you would find out about concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff’s sleeplessness on account of a noisy refrigerator. And about Col. Theodore Hall, who paddling on Chautauqua Lake, engaged a swimming deer in a race, “out-distancing the eight-point specimen by a narrow margin.” There was a plea for someone — please — to help poor Elmo Lowe and his wife, Dorothy Paxton, find baskets for their bicycles so they could go to the grocery store. “There’s a war on … Yes, I know… are all the baskets gone?”
The first of these columns came in 1935 with “Off the Plaza,” first written by Virginia O. Williams, who produced flourishes such as:
Dancing on their own floor which they “purchased” Old First Night, members of the College Club and their friends enjoyed their regular Wednesday evening party at the Golf Club. Decorations for the affair were furnished by a beautiful full moon, which had been hung up in a suitable position just for the occasion.
The next “Off the Plaza” columnist, from 1936–38, was Dorothy Osborne, who offered this tale, worthy of a routine on The Burns & Allen Show:
As the season draws to a close, many mothers have really busy days. One of them has a small son who was returning from Boys’ Club, and came in with his pants torn. His mother helped him change to another pair, but in an hour or so, he was back, his pants torn again. This was too much to be borne. “You go right upstairs, remove your pants, and mend them yourself,” his mother ordered. Some time later she thought of him, and went upstairs to see how he was getting on. The torn pants were lying on a chair, but there was no sign of Johnnie. Returning downstairs, she noticed that the door to the cellar, usually closed, was open, and she called down, loudly and sternly. “Are you running around down there without any pants on’?” A deep voice answered, “No, Madam, um, reading the gas meter.”
It was followed by “Ups and Downes” in 1939 by Dorothy Wynn Downes, a freshly minted Penn State grad who was keen on chronicling the romantic (romance? Chautauqua? It was a thing…), answering for readers what became of her predecessor, Osborne. Downes wrote:
Soon after the front gate turnstiles were tucked away last season our 1936, ‘37, and ‘38 columnist, Dorothy Osborne… was wed to John A. Bates, Jr.. amid white satins. bridesmaids and Lohengrin. When last noted she was filling the wifely role in Erie. Pa… Another staffer went the way of most flesh last month when our editor, Lucian C. Warren, middle-aisled it with Katherine Smith at Ashland, Va. Airs. Warren is the daughter of Prof. and Mrs. Edward E. Smith, the former of the Summer Schools staff. The beauty of it is that Editor Warren’s brother, George of the local bank, had the foresight to wed the new Mrs. Warren’s sister, Harriet (our drama critic), which, if you follow, makes the Warrens and the Smiths something of one-big-happy family.
In another column, Downes quoted a harried postmaster who referred to Chautauquans as “the writing’est people I ever knew,” with a daily average of one letter per day per resident.
Beginning in 1941 was a long run of column titles that would not have withstood the scrutiny of a modern-day focus group.
“Grounds of Gleanings” column writer Carolyn Tunstall wrote at the start of the 1941 Season that the column title was a “stop-gap name” until something better came along, which it never did. She’d announce, “Let’s glean a bit,” before she launched into the day’s column. Two gleanings:
When Warren Lee Terry prances around Norton Hall stage tonight as the Major-General in “Pirates of Penzance,” he will be wearing shoes that once belonged to Douglas Fairbanks. The two-toed Japanese sandals he wears in “The Mikado” were also owned by the actor. Mr. Terry is a friend of Douglas Fairbanks’ brother, and upon the actor’s death received several of his possessions.
Something gay and cool in the way of service uniforms are the broomstick skirts and white blouses worn by waitresses in the Pipin’ Hot … whose hostess is a newcomer to Chautauqua, Mrs. A. R. Ray from St. Petersburg. Florida.
There must have been many more than the anticipated 150 guests at the Woman’s Club Hobby Show Tea Saturday afternoon… Stretched out to greet guests on the white steps was Susy Q., Scotch terrier belonging to Miss Harriet Howe. Susy was dressed in a red, white, and blue bow and wore a corsage of scabiosa, cornflowers, and baby’s breath . . .
In the 1942 Season, enter multisyllabic “Chautauquotations” by Roberta Clark, also prone to fashionable observations.
In the way of fashions and clothes, some of these attracted our attention . . . Mrs. Julian Richmond’s wide-brimmed hat of deep green straw with a knitted crown of beige . Mrs. Carl S. Winters’ red sandals, with chic Cuban heels and metallic studs… Mrs. Harrison Potter’s blue earrings, designed like flower petals.
At the start of the 1943 Season, new Chautauquotations columnist Mabelle Myers wrote about Normie Becker’s (son of Chautauqua’s lone police officer) goat “Frisky,” who furnished the entertainment for residents of Cookman Street by nibbling on the ears of his improbably compliant companion-rabbit, “Mr. Thumper.” And Clark wrote that season:
FLASH … Manpower shortage hits younger theater group. Needed: men from 12 to 30 for children’s theater . . . John Zilliac is as present the sole male element in the newly formed children’s players . . . He is doing quite well, thank you… among all the lovely litttle ladies. . . but how about the ladies?
K. Virginia Wood, an author and longtime Chautauqua theater critic-writer, took over the column by the 1944 Season and demonstrated an eye for the aesthetic.
At the College Club We found the landscape pleasingly dotted with male figures and a brand new director, Miss Margaret Anderson of Jamestown, all full of newly minted ideas. She won’t let us announce them yet, though, so please stand by for startling disclosures in the future.
There are three animated and eye-pleasing damsels inhabiting the… Episcopal Cottage, who are distinctly not in their summer doldrums. We met them last night at the Star Cafeteria. They are: Sue Crobaugh, Celeste Rosenthal, and Marguerite Wickersham.
By the 1945 Season, the Daily opted to replace the unnavigable Chautauquotations with the tongue-tripping “Chautauquacade.” By the 1947 Season, K. Virginia Wood was gone, and the coming years saw a progression of names. The most enduring of which is Carol Wyman, who first appeared in 1948, and continued to write off and on until 1956. Wyman, from July 1951:
INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE. (From) Douglas McCallister and Jimmy Houseman. While cruising around last Thursday evening, trying to prove their prowess as fishermen, a two pound, 10-inch bass came shooting up out of the water and landed in their boat. Triumphantly they carried it to the McCallister home and deposited it in the pool but suddenly realized the bass season didn’t open until Sunday. Sheepishly and chagrined they carefully carried it back to its rightful home in the lake.
By 1956, Carol Wyman had left and was replaced by Dorothea Eggers Smith, a lifelong Chautauquan and member of the Chautauqua Opera Chorus, who in one column shared an experience riding out a storm with her “small fry” at the College Club.
The Clubroom there, with its windows on all sides, was quite an exciting place-to ride out the storm. We had a close-up view of boats adrift and capsized, docks breaking up, branches crashing down, and rain, rain, and more rain. Then a mad dash home to hot baths, by flashing light.
She also shared an experience encountering “a very large gray elephant walking down Route 17 (in Mayville), led by a rather bored looking man.”
There is a progression of Margarets through the ‘40s and ‘50s: Margaret Bruce Horn, Margaret Hood, Margaret McMillan and Margaret Foley. Alfreda Locke Irwin takes turns at Chautauquacade; she was the Daily’s longtime editor and one of the Institution’s defining historians. Other column writers through the years include Dorothy Bates and Janice Herberger.
Throughout the 1960s, Chautauquacade continued. In this later incarnation it was shorter, often running without a byline. The personals became less personal, more utilitarian — a soft landing for content that didn’t fit elsewhere. Of course, the shift was a product of larger societal change, and conversational local columns seemed to many newspaper readers quaint, or even amateurish.
In the early 1970s, the Daily got a groovy ‘70s graphic makeover — think “School House Rock” — with the editors’ discovery of the joy of clip art. In 1973, Dorothea Eggers Smith, who by then owned a home at 8 Simpson, had returned after many years for the last hurrah of Chautauquacade. She offered a glimpse of what was on the Daily’s pages.
When Affiliate Artist Julia Lovett told a group of local school-children that she would be singing the lead this summer in Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” at an opera matinee for young people only, one boy asked if there would be popcorn. Julia rashly promised that there would. Later she told the story to the Westfield Rotary Club, which generously offered to supply no less than three popcorn machines for the Norton Hall lobby for that day!
Referencing Palestine Park, she wrote:
Mrs. Walter Lissfelt saw a man packing his car after a recent weekend here and heard him shout to his wife, who was in an upstairs window: “Don’t forget that Morgan is in the Sea of Galilee with his alligator; but by this time he may be in the River Jordan!”
Do you have connections to the columnists (or others) mentioned above? Please share. Also… that elephant in Mayville?
For a future column, please share remembrances of the cafeterias that once populated Chautauqua’s streets. The cafeterias I am aware of include Glen Park, Tally Ho, Star, Thompson, Pipin’ Hot, the Muncie Tea Room, and The Waffle Kitchen, which occupied the building where the Borg-Sundstrom family’s 2 Ames restaurant is now.
Column writer John Warren’s family landed in Chautauqua in 1956. He has been a writing coach and writer for the Daily since 2014. Reach him at chqhistoriographical@gmail.com.
