By this time there were sixty or seventy ladies in the group, including good Queen Bess. Some took private Spanish lessons on the side. Mrs. Truman was one of the few who was really serious and wanted to learn the language. Most of the others apparently came to the meetings because the Professor had the personality to hold “menopause Minnies.” Among the students were a few who thought they should come along for the ride without paying for lessons or the luncheon, because of their social position. One was Mrs. Robert Patterson, wife of the then Secretary of War. Mrs. Truman always paid.
When the Professor began to get too much publicity, Gussie busted it up. After all, the whole purpose was to make Gussie a figure, not the Professor. Gussie even went so far as to ask newspaper society writers to use her name instead of his, saying Mrs. Truman had complained about the Professor’s publicity, which was not accurate.
Anyway, no one learned much, but that wasn’t the Prof’s fault.
In the absence of Madame Mesta, Gwendolyn Cafritz is ballyhooed as Washington’s leading hostess. She is a social climber who invites only those in office or who she thinks are due to be in. She sadly misjudged the 1948 elections. She excommunicated the Democrats. So she had a hell of a time recouping her position. She still has her eye on the Republicans in 1952.
Compared to Madame Mesta, Mrs. Cafritz is a good-looking woman, in early middle age. She may have been a raving beauty when she was a slim, black-haired girl.
Her husband, Morris Cafritz, is a millionaire Washington real estate owner. His office, in the Ambassador Hotel, which he owns, is next door to the hotel’s High Hat cocktail lounge, which is favored by the pick-up gals as a hunting preserve. Gwen drives her husband slightly nuts with her parties. He would prefer to play poker, at which he is adept. A lot of hogwash has been written about the Cafritzes since they zoomed into political and social prominence. Gwen was born in central Europe and may or may not have been the daughter of a college professor or a nobleman, as the stories go.
Cafritz’s father ran a grocery store in Washington. The son’s early days were spent in a bowling alley which he owned and operated. Then he turned to real estate in boomtime and found the Midas touch.
Gwen’s enemies spread catty stories about her. One says she was a Broadway chorus-girl before she met her husband. If she was, she must’ve been a beaut. The other is that she was employed in Cafritz’s bowling alley. The researcher finds it difficult to separate the truth from the chaff. There are no clippings about her early days in the Washington newspaper morgues. Cissie Patterson was her close friend. It is reported she destroyed the clippings in her own library and asked the publishers of Washington’s other papers to do likewise.
Meanwhile, Mmes. Mesta and Cafritz had better look to their laurels, because a new assault is being made on Washington’s social citadel, this time by a bullet-proof princess—Tawhida Halim, a cousin of King Farouk of Egypt, and immensely rich. She and Frank Rediker, a denizen of Gotham’s cafe society set, were recently wed, repeat engagements for both.
The princess then acquired a mansion at 2339 Massachusetts Avenue, in which she and her bridegroom began to give lavish parties, designed to outdo any of the Cafritz woman’s, with the elan that goes only to those born to the purple.