Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

© Harris & Ewing.
THE EAST ROOM

For my first dinner I chose pink Killarney roses for table decorations and it would be difficult to express the pleasure I felt in having just as many of them as I needed by merely issuing instructions to have them delivered. The White House greenhouses and nurseries were a source of constant joy to me. I had lived so long where plants are luxuriant and plentiful that a house without them seemed to me to be empty of a very special charm and the head horticulturist remarked at once that during my régime his gems of palms and ferns and pots of brilliant foliage were to be given their due importance among White House perquisites. I filled the windows of the great East Room with them, banked the fireplaces with them and used them on every possible occasion.

The state Dining Room is one of the many splendid results of the McKim restoration and, next to the East Room, is the handsomest room in the White House. It is not so tremendously large, its utmost capacity being less than one hundred, but it is magnificently proportioned and beautifully finished in walnut panelling with a fireplace and carved mantel on one side which would do honour to an ancient baronial hall. A few fine moose and elk heads are its only wall decorations.

We had table-tops of all sizes and shapes, but the one we had to use for very large dinners was in the form of a crescent which stretched around three sides of the room. For any dinner under sixty I was able to use a large oval top which could be extended by the carpenters to almost any size. Indeed, I have seen it so large that it quite filled the room leaving only enough space behind the chairs for the waiters to squeeze their way around with considerable discomfort. On this table I used the massive silver-gilt ornaments which President Monroe imported from France along with his interesting collection of French porcelains, clocks and statuettes which still occupy many cabinets and mantels here and there in the house.

These table ornaments remind one of the Cellini period when silversmiths vied with each other in elaborations. Based on oblong plate glass mirrors, each about three feet in length, they stretch down the middle of the table, end to end, a perfect riot of festooned railing and graceful figures upholding crystal vases. Then there are large gilded candelabra, centre vases and fruit dishes to match. In their way they are exceedingly handsome, and they certainly are appropriate to the ceremony with which a state dinner at the White House is usually conducted.

The White House silver is all very fine and there are quantities of it. It is all marked, in accordance with the simple form introduced at the beginning of our history, “The President’s House,” and some of it is old enough to be guarded among our historic treasures.

When I went to live at the White House I found, much to my surprise, that this silver had always been kept in a rather haphazard fashion in chests, or boxes, in the storeroom. I decided to remedy this even though in doing so I was compelled to encroach somewhat upon the White House custodian’s already limited quarters. These quarters are a good-sized office with the house supply rooms opening off it, and a smaller room adjoining. They are on the ground floor just across the wide corridor from the kitchen. At one end of the smaller room I had built a closet with regular vault doors and combination locks. I had the space divided into compartments, with a special receptacle for each important article, and velvet-lined trays in drawers for flat silver, each one of which could be slipped out separately. This silver closet became the joy of Arthur Brooks’ life, he being the War Department Messenger who was my right hand man all the time my husband was Secretary of War and who was appointed White House Custodian at our request a short time before Mr. Taft was inaugurated.

I was “at home” informally at the White House about three afternoons a week when my friends came to see me and when I received many ladies who wrote and asked for an opportunity to call. I always received in the Red Room which, with fire and candles lighted, is pleasant enough to be almost cosy, large and imposing though it be. I usually had twenty or more callers and I found this a delightful way of meeting and getting close to people as I could not hope to do at the great formal receptions.

As an example of one of these, I might cite my first afternoon reception to the Congressional ladies for which something like four hundred invitations were issued. I intended to carry this off without assistance, other than that rendered by the ladies I had asked to preside over the refreshment tables, but in the end I asked Mr. Taft to receive with me, a task never very difficult for him. There were no men invited, so he had the pleasure of shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with several hundred women, and he did it without a single protest. I made the mistake on this occasion of receiving in the East Room as the guests arrived, thinking that by so doing I could make the party somewhat less formal. But I only succeeded in having the stairway leading up from the east entrance overcrowded and in making the affair much more formal than it would have been had I followed the usual course of permitting the people to assemble in the East Room and to be received in the Blue Room on their way through to the Dining Room. It amuses me to find that Captain Butt in the Official Diary has carefully recorded all my mistakes as well as my successes for the supposed benefit of other Mistresses of the White House.