Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

“Mr. Taft,” he said, as he gave my husband’s hand a cordial grasp, “I knew your father. I was in the class of ’37 at Yale and he had graduated before I entered; but he was there as a tutor in my time and I valued his friendship very highly.”

Then the visitor came straight to the point.

“Mrs. Evarts and I are giving a dinner to-night for my former partner and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Choate. Mr. Choate is in Washington for a short time to argue a case before the Supreme Court. Now, unfortunately, one of our guests has sent word that he can’t come and I thought, perhaps, considering my long-standing friendship with your father, you might consent to waive ceremony and fill the place at our table at this short notice.”

My husband accepted the invitation with almost undue alacrity, and when his guest left started in on his new duties feeling that, after all, Washington might afford just as friendly an atmosphere as Cincinnati, once he became accustomed to it.

There is just one incident in connection with the dinner party which Mr. Taft adds to his account of that day. As he sat down to dinner the ladies on either side of him leaned hastily forward to see what was written on his place card. “The Solicitor General”—that was all. Of course neither of them knew who the new Solicitor General was and it didn’t occur to him to enlighten them until it was too late to do it gracefully. So he allowed them to go on addressing him as “Mr. Solicitor General” while he, having them at an advantage, addressed them by the names which he had surreptitiously read on their place-cards. They were Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge and Mrs. John Hay.

MRS. TAFT, WITH ROBERT AND HELEN, WHEN MR. TAFT WAS SOLICITOR GENERAL

When my husband had been in Washington two weeks I joined him and we took a small house on Dupont Circle where for two years we lived a life, sometimes amusing, sometimes quite exciting, but, on the whole, of quiet routine.

Washington society was much simpler then than it is now. Since that time a great many people of very large means have gone to Washington to live because of its unusual attractions and its innumerable advantages as a residential city. They have changed Washington, by their generous hospitality, into one of the most brilliant social centres in the world, where large dinner parties, balls, receptions, musicals and other entertainments are of daily and nightly occurrence throughout the season. The very character of the streets has changed. The small, red brick houses, closely grouped together and neighbouring, even in fashionable quarters, on negro shacks and cheap tenements, are being everywhere replaced by marble and granite residences of great beauty and luxury.

In 1890 Society in Washington still consisted, chiefly, of the “best families” of the old city, the Diplomatic Corps and the highest among the government officials. A dinner party of twelve was still considered large, and only a few people had weekly evenings At Home. There were occasional big receptions, but for nobody was society the mad rush that it is to-day. We ourselves lived very simply even for those simple days.