Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine

15. The Season in St. Augustine, 1892–1893

265 15 ∑ The Season in St. Augustine, 1892–1893 Every one in St. Augustine has the same cure for ennui . . . “Wait till the Ponce opens.” —New York Times reporter, 1892 Anna Marcotte had something new for winter sojourners in the 1892 season: a sprightly little society magazine called the Tatler. She got the name from a copy of an eighteenth-century London coffee house gossip tabloid in Dr. Anderson’s library. Visitors tarrying in St. Augustine could read about themselves and their friends in its pages, while hotel and railroad operators might advertise their services to their most likely customers. In her premier issue she stated her purpose as “recording the movements of the travelers, where they are and what they are doing, and in a pleasant, chatty manner; describe the entertainments and amusements they attend and enjoy.” The Tatler cost ten cents a copy or one dollar for a season’s subscription. Mrs. Marcotte set up her office alongside her husband’s desk in the Florida Times-Union room on the ground floor of the Alcazar. Here she kept a register of guests at the hotels so that visitors trying to locate friends might find out where they were staying. Prior to formal balls, ladies could have descriptions of their costumes dropped off for use in stories by both the Tatler and the Times-Union.1 Mrs. Marcotte styled herself “editor and proprietor” of the Tatler and published it in Jacksonville at a prominent print shop. If Flag­ ler had anything to do with establishing this little magazine, there is no evidence of it. In fact, during the journal’s first season no advertisements by Flag­ ler enterprises appeared in its pages, but from 1893 onward Flag­ler’s hotels and railroad purchased full-page advertisements in every issue. As might be expected, Mrs. Marcotte acted as a 266 · Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine cheerleader for both Flag­ ler and the St. Augustine community, although she would occasionally scold her readers for some shortcoming she perceived in society . Nevertheless she published only morally uplifting stories in her magazine. The 1892 season opened auspiciously, with yellow fever scares receding into distant memories and the annual migration southward by Pullman car becoming a matter of comfortable routine. The Ponce de Leon opened on January 18, while the opening of the Cordova was delayed until January 26 since by this time Flag­ ler could reliably calculate that its rooms would not be needed until the season was well advanced. Some regulars returned for their fifth season. A reporter from the New York Times recorded his impressions of January in the Ancient City: “Every one in St. Augustine has the same cure for ennui when he finds a Northerner afflicted with it early in the season. He fills his soul with the joy of anticipation, by saying to him: ‘Wait till the Ponce opens; wait till the Ponce opens.’ And this is so constantly reiterated in your ears that you begin to imagine that the opening of a hotel in Florida is quite beyond the run of such things. The great event occurred last Monday afternoon, and if Scott had been describing the affair he undoubtedly would have said that ‘the gates flew open and the horsemen entered.’ When the great iron gates leading to the court of this pet hobby of Henry M.Flag­ler’s were thrown open, the multitudes poured in. To have seen the people one would have thought nothing short of Barnum’s circus could have attracted such a crowd. . . . The report of a cannon told the people of St. Augustine and to the rest of the country for several miles around that the Hotel Ponce de Leon had opened for the season.”2 The social calendar commenced with the nationally publicized Hermitage Ball to raise money for the restoration of President Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee home. Just three years earlier the Ladies Hermitage Association had acquired custody of Jackson’s long-neglected country plantation house, and they needed money to fix it up. In Florida the leader of the Hermitage cause was Ellen Call Long, “a large woman of commanding presence.” Her father, two-time governor Richard Keith Call, had been the only prominent politician in Florida to speak out against secession. After the war Long had written a popular novel called Florida Breezes that offered a romanticized fictional history of the state. She had contacted Flag­ler and recruited his assistance in staging this charity event...