The Reign of Gilt

by David Graham Phillips

If there are any persons in official life in Washington who do not attach importance to precedence, do not resent being seated out of rank at table, or being in all other ways given their exact official amount of deference, those persons keep extremely quiet. In Washington one ceases to be surprised at hearing men of national reputation complaining fiercely because they have been subjected to some trivial slight in this matter of precedence. It irritates a Cabinet officer to be put a shade out of his rank just as much as it irritates a Congressman from nowhere or a Government clerk.

Precedence is killing Washington as a place of residence for sensible people. It is destroying its chief charm. If one thinks of going there to live it is because he expects to meet in the easy circumstance of social intercourse those who are interesting or amusing or curious. That sort of social intercourse is becoming practically impossible. No one giving any sort of entertainment, however informal, dares to arrange his or her guests according to congeniality. The same people must always be put next each other. The same man must take the same woman in to dinner. The same youth must dance with the same girl. And as official life expands the blight of precedence spreads.

It is difficult for an outsider to listen without laughing or showing irritation as the Washingtonians discuss precedence and relate incidents of national and international catastrophes almost brought about by violation of it. But as some of the persons who most strenuously insist upon it are otherwise high above the human average, it would be well, before utterly condemning the Washingtonians, to reflect whether the craze for precedence is not a universal human weakness, latent—happily latent—in most of us because it has no chance to show itself.

There is a certain officer who, in the official lists, is called Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds. In fact he is “Lord Great Chamberlain” to the President. Perhaps there was once a Lord Great Chamberlain who was merely Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds at the lower end of Pennsylvania avenue. But that was a long time ago.

For many years the Major of Engineers assigned to that title with the rank and pay of Colonel has been actually the chief officer of the President’s court, the manager of what might be called his public household. Whenever the President entertains on a grand scale he is obviously in command, directing the ceremonials, superintending the evolutions of his staff of dancing and small-talk army men, overseeing the assiduities of the court retinue of servants. When a new ambassador or other eminent personage, domestic or foreign, arrives, he is the functionary who puts on a gorgeous uniform, drives in state in the President’s carriage to the visitor’s lodgings, escorts him to the President, introduces him, takes him away and escorts him back to his lodgings. Also, he in large measure directs the expenditures from the White House privy purse.

The Constitution and the Statute Book make no provision for a Lord Great Chamberlain. But constitutions and institutions are vastly different. Part of the President’s time is given to matters contained or supposed to be contained in the written laws, the larger part to matters set down in the unwritten laws and nowhere else. When we broke away from Europe and European political and social ideas, we did not get rid of those customs for high executive officers which had been established among us by royal colonial governors, although they were simple compared with the growing dimensions of our present-day ceremonial.

Thus the unwritten laws say that the President must have a court like a king or other royal reigning person. It must be disguised and modified, but it must be “the real thing” in its essence. A court involves a place to hold it, officers to conduct it, an etiquette to guide it, and money to keep it going. The written laws provide for a Presidential residence—they permit the President to sit rent-free. That provision readily stretches to cover a place to hold the court.

Again, the written laws permit the President to detach certain public officers for rather indefinite purposes. There you have a Lord Great Chamberlain and a Lord High Steward, and so forth, provided with comparative ease.

As for etiquette, that part of the unwritten law need not be reconciled to written law, because etiquette costs nothing but headaches and heart-burnings—and the only reason for attempting to reconcile written law and unwritten is, of course, the matter of money expense. Finally, the written laws provide, or can be stretched to provide, the money for all the bigger items of court expenses—furnishings and repairs and alterations, linen, china, flowers, cooks, scullions, butlers, coachmen, footmen, door-openers and door-closers, card-carriers, light, heat, everything except what is eaten and drunk. As yet no way has been found to stretch the written law or the good nature of Congress to cover the court appetite. It must be appeased out of the President’s salary.

The most important, though by no means the most expensive, item in the court budget charged against the public, is the Lord Great Chamberlain who conducts the court and executes, either directly or indirectly, all that pertains to the social side of life at the White House. He is always an officer of engineers. He must be a person of knowledge, of tact, of good appearance.