White House gossip

by Edna M. Colman

ALICE LONGWORTH IN HER WEDDING GOWN

One would suppose that the decorator’s art would be taxed to its limit in the beautifying of the Pension Office each fourth year for these historic functions, but each setting in turn seems far to surpass all of its predecessors. The artists always manage to find some new feature upon which to concentrate their skill, and lo!—the result is beautiful beyond description. There is no building in the Capital City so well adapted for the purpose of the ball or so susceptible of transformation into such a fairyland picture as the big Pension Office with its open court, tiers of balconies, tall columns, and ample floor space.

For the Roosevelt inaugural ball the room resembled a Venetian garden so lovely as to rival even a tropical moonlight scene. Some of the huge palms that were used reached forty feet from the floor.

Mrs. Roosevelt won golden opinions from the public during her seven years as First Lady of the Land; she gave more private entertainments of all kinds than any of her predecessors. Official mourning for President McKinley was observed at the beginning of her régime, and when that was concluded, the condition of the mansion limited social activities for a time. The floors, which were not safe, had been braced and shored up. But after the remodelling, so long deferred, the entertainments, official and private, followed each other with a frequency that delighted society. Mrs. Roosevelt gave more than two hundred teas, luncheons, musicales, receptions, and dinners, outside of the regular state affairs. In these, her own personal and semi-official functions for all sorts of people whom she considered interesting or to whom she felt White House courtesies due, she followed her husband’s example of touching all circles and classes.

While meeting admirably every official demand, Mrs. Roosevelt protected her private life with the same tactful cleverness by which she had early evaded the rigours of reception handshaking. The First Lady made it clearly understood that it was her husband who was President, and that his family did not belong to the public.

Mrs. Roosevelt kept no housekeeper, but gave personal supervision to the entire establishment. But she made immediately a much-needed and highly important addition to the White House staff, a social secretary for herself. For this position she chose Miss Belle Hagner, long a friend, who was so thoroughly identified through resident and family connections with Washington’s peculiar social etiquette and the much more intricate code of procedure that governs the White House that she quickly became invaluable.

Since the mail of the First Lady of the Land has come to rival that of her husband in the number and variety of demands and requests that besiege her, Mrs. Roosevelt had at once seen the necessity of organizing the handling of this volume of correspondence in a systematic way.

Mrs. Roosevelt shared her husband’s tastes and was a writer herself, even when her children were small, but she so planned her time as to be able to devote a part of it both to her husband and her children, and to her step-daughter during the time Alice spent with her father. Until the death of her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Lee, Alice spent the greater part of her time in the Boston home of her grandparents or in travelling with them.

The President’s wife always found great delight in horseback riding, and she and the President would drive to the outskirts of the city, where their riding horses would be awaiting them, and enjoy frequent rides through the country roads leading from the city. Thus they escaped the gaze of the curious. She was accomplished in many ways, even having trained herself as a nurse, a qualification of utmost value to the mother of such an active family.

Early in their establishment at the White House, luncheon became the important political function. Like the Hanna breakfasts in the “little White House” across Lafayette Square, where the chosen were invited to partake of country sausage and hot buckwheat cakes, maple syrup or honey, coffee, and a flow of political reason, for luncheons the White House pantry was always prepared to serve from one to a dozen or more additional guests. No one, least of all the President himself, knew how many he would invite to join him at lunch. Whoever the man might be that happened to engage his deep interest in a morning call, he was likely to be asked to stay. When a subject pressed its claims upon the President’s mind, a telephone call was sent to the best-informed individual to request him to come to supply the desired data.