SOCIETY IN PROSPECT AND REVIEW
Never has a Washington season begun so early as this one. The middle of December finds the White House dinners in full sway, the President and Mrs. Wilson having dined with the Vice President and Mrs. Marshall, and the first state reception of the season in the White House due in two days.
President and Mrs. Wilson already have had three large and formal dinner parties, the first one on December 7, in honor of Mr. Vance McCormick, chairman of the Democratic national committee; and on Tuesday of last week they entertained the Vice President and the members of the cabinet and their wives, with a number of other distinguished guests and a few young people. After this dinner a programme of music was given in the east room and the evening was a charming success. The First Lady of the Land never was more lovely than she was on this occasion. The President's niece, Miss Alice Wilson, of Baltimore, came over with her father for the evening. Miss Nataline Dulles, niece of Mrs. Lansing, made her first appearance at a state dinner, and Miss Margaret Wilson and Miss Bones were among the guests. On Thursday evening the visiting governors, former governors and governors-elect here for the conference this week, and their wives, were dined, with an interesting company. Friday evening the Vice President and Mrs. Marshall gave their annual dinner to the President and his wife, and had a senatorial company to meet them.
The debutantes are in the full splendor of their glory, and the next three weeks will give them a supreme test of endurance, for luncheons, teas, dinners and dances not only follow one another closely, but pile up, with several in a day and not one to be neglected. There are no diplomatic buds, no cabinet buds, and few army, navy and congressional buds. But it is a strong residential year, with a number of debutantes in the smartest and most exclusive of the substantial old families. During the Christmas holidays the buds of the future, some of a year hence, others of two years, are vying with the older girls for busy days, and the social calendar shows scarcely a resting moment from the day they come home from school until they rush back to their studies in time to reach the first recitation class. And as for beauty sleep, there will be none. There will not be a night during the Christmas vacation when this younger set will not be dancing. Time was when dinner parties were composed of elderly, or at least middle-aged, people only, but now even the near-debutantes and their circle have a steady round of "dining out," with no fear of being considered "along in years," for there are dinners for all ages.
Washington has given three of her most distinguished, most beautiful and most popular girls to foreign lands within two months, two of them having become princesses and the third a baroness. The first to wed was Miss Margaret Draper, heiress to several millions of her father's estate. She is now Princess Boncompagni of Rome, and her mother is now just about joining her and the prince in Paris, the three to proceed to the prince's home in Rome, where they will spend Christmas together, after which the prince will return to duty with his regiment.
The second of these brides of foreigners was Miss Catherine Birney, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Theodore V. Birney, who was married December 2 to Baron von Schoen, of the German embassy staff, and is just back now from the wedding trip. They returned for the marriage of Miss Catherine Britton to the Prince zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst, of the Austro-Hungarian embassy staff. Baron and Baroness von Schoen will spend Christmas with the latter's sister, with whom she has made her home since the death of her parents, and then they will proceed to Mexico, whence the baron has been transferred.
The marriage of Miss Britton and Prince zu Hohenlohe was not unexpected, but the wedding date was hurried about three months, the prince becoming an impatient wooer. He was assigned to duty at the Austro-Hungarian consulate in the summer and agreed to remain away for a year. He stood it as long as he could, and then returned to claim his bride. The consent of the prince's family has not been forthcoming, but the marriage has the sanction of the embassy, presumably by order of the new emperor, and it was a happy wedding scene. The bride is one of the famous beauties of Washington society. She was never lovelier than in her singularly simple wedding gown of satin with pearl trimmings, tulle sleeves, and enormous wedding veil.
Society is dancing its way through the season. The fever is making inroads even upon the incessant auction-bridge playing, and he or she who neither dances nor plays auction has a dull time of it. Washington society is rather methodical in its dancing. Monday nights are given up to the subscription dances at the Playhouse, and another set at the Willard. Tuesday night the army dances are given at the Playhouse. On Wednesdays are the regular Chevy Chase Club dinner dances, and on Thursdays are those at the Navy Club. On Friday nights, beginning on January 5, will be the ten subscription dances at the Willard, and on Saturday nights there are dances everywhere. The private dances are scattered all through, afternoons and evenings, until there is scarcely a date left vacant on the calendar until Ash Wednesday.[46]
[46] Washington Post, December 17, 1916.
256. Clubs.—The particular attention of the prospective society editor may be called to club news. The work in literature, education, community betterment, general social relief, and kindred subjects now being undertaken by women's clubs is sometimes phenomenal and offers to live society editors a vast undeveloped field for constructive news. Too frequently the society page is filled with dull six-point routine, forbidding in style and still more forbidding in content, when it might be made alive with buoyancy and interest by added attention to new studies and interests in the women's clubs. What the women are doing in their study of the garbage question, in their campaigns against flies, in their efforts to provide comforts for unprivileged slum children,—such topics, properly featured and given attractive individual heads, may be made interesting to a large percentage of the intelligent women in the community and may be made instrumental in building up a strong, constructive department in the paper.