The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, December 6, 1928, Page 14

£5 oy ~ races eames reres cots) WASHINGTON-DEMOC Where Socially Obscure Can Get First Foothold {Continued from last Sunday.) ASHINGTON has ever been W the brilliant battle ground of social conflict. Founded by British born subjects and grounded in the reaction- ary amenities of an English court. but nurtured by the adventuresome ideals of a new democracy, the na- tion’s capital has furnished, through: out the years, a fascinating and an inevitable mosaic of a cavalier and a pioneer. Unele Sam. in a Washington draw ing room, has dressed up his home- spun with gold braid The stylish bow of royal has bern elbowed by the gesture of a casua) commune The front door has always stood open, but he who entered was ex- Fected to know well his catechism of etiquette, his creed of precedence. eR A Social Battle Ground. For more than a century now, Jef- ferson’s free-for-all social code and Monroe's imported tricks of ceremony have walked their contradictory but interweaving ways down Pennsyl- vania avenue. As a result, today, your nation’s pivot city is the fairest routine informal spot in all this land of liberty for the hitherto obscure countryman to get a first foothold. But it ts the most difficult in the United States for the social free lance to feel really se- cure. ‘The history of our country is usual- y set on a battle field or in a con- sressiona] hall. But there is also a aistory that swings gracefufly about a Yrawing room and a dining table. Nor s it any pale, pretty echo of more stern events. For in between the Anes on the national calendar of balls und dinners are written bitter struggles, battles of nations, and ‘Uplomacies. = - There was Abigail Adams and her now famous washing. There was Ty- ler’s gold dessert service and Harriet Lane's wit. There was Dolly Madison, vivacious hostess to a growing coun: try; there was Mrs. Taylor's corncob pipe. And there was Princess Alice. Each reign added a new motif to the pattern the capital was weaving on the national loom. Each new motif supplied new color schemes to the design. The picture of social Washington changed from the frugal outlines of a sleepy village to the fuller curves of a shabby, happy town; {t grew brighter as southern hospital ity flowered, and dimmer when the civil war fired its shots; it blossomed In radiance at the turn of the century and changed into a puzzling diagram, ponfused and crowded, when the world war cast its shadow. And now it has merged, still a gorgeous tapestry in royal purple and ancient silver; in shining new gold, in khaki, and in a thread or two of conservative gray. Hamilton Made the Rules. Our first capitol wasn't in the pres- ant capital at all. The social code wag established by our first President after a serious conference with John Adams, James Madison, and Alexan- der Hamilton. It was the suave Hamilton, however. who made most of the rules. The other revolutionary fathers sat around the table and thought up the by-laws. This new sountry of theirs may have been a wilderness. but they wanted it to have the suits and trappings of a republic: an court. This was not displeasing to George Washington. nor to his wife. A picture of Martha before her spin- ning wheel is all very well for the text books, but she found a drawing reom every bit as attractive as a sewing alcove. Across her breast she twisted a white fichu; but to many of her guests it had the authority of a tegal toga. George Washington brought to the presidency the hospitality of a Vir- ginia planter. His enemies declared he brought also the airs of a British lord, They objected to his liveried servants, his formal receptions. They even criticized his, bow. The first President, nettled by this comment, wrote: “. . . that I have not been able to make bows to the taste of poor Col. Bland (who, by the by, I believe, never saw one of them), is to be regretted . + + Would it not have been better to throw the veil of charity over them, ascribing their stiffness to the effects ef age. or to the unskillfullness of my teacher, than to pride and dignity of @ffice, which, God knows, has no charms for me?” ‘Then he added this pregnant sen- was conducted into the dining room “at three o'clock or at any time within a quarter of an hour after: ward." He was taken up to Wash- ington, who stood with his back to the fireplace bowing to eaeh guest, but also contriving to be so engaged that handshaking was impossible. As the callers were presented they stepped back {nto a circle formation. At a quarter past three the doors were closed. Then the President, be- ginning at the right, made the rounds, speaking a few words to each. When he again reached the fireplace he stood silent as his guests in turn came forward, bowed, and withdrew. It was all over by four o'clock, the inner hour. This dinner hour in Washington has climbed 240, sometimes a good 270 minutes in the years. Where the modern capital hostess waite 15 min- utes for the laggard guest, the first President grudgingly aliowed a lean five minutes, explaining, “I have @ cook who never asks whether the com- pany has come, but whether the hour has come.” n * Washington's Public Dinners. Once a week, usually on Thursday, the Washingtons held what was called a “public dinner,” to which they in- vited as many as the table would hold. Ten, possibly twelve, was the eatura- tion point then, whereas the present formal dining table at the executive mansion can be stretched to seat ninety-six about its bulging crescent sides. ‘That these public dinners were none too jolly seems to have been the opinion of at least one of the guests, Senator W. Maclay, who wrote in his diary: w'Dined this day with the Presi- dent. It was a great dinner—all in the tastes of high life. T considered it as part of my duty as senator to submit to it, and am glad it Is over. The President is a cold, formal man. It was the most solemn dinner I ever was at. The President played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table with it.” 3 At the evening levees, more exclu- sive than the afternoon assemblies, it was Martha who invariably, with blunt directness, enunciated the clos- ing rule, saying: “The general always retires at 10 o'clock, and I usually precede him by fifteen minutes.” It was a stupid guest indeed who hadn't found his hat by 9:45. When the nation’s capital was moved to the Potomac wilderness. the public guardians of official etiquette determined that it was more than ever necessary for the manners and modes of metropolitan centers, like New York and Philadelphia, to prevail. But it was like rehearsing a sophisticated drama at the cross-roads. Most of the stage properties were lacking. ee Adams Cold and Formal. President and Mrs. Adams were rather cold and formal. Their house was very cold and formal. They moved into the “ People’s Palace” in the summer of 1800 and found a rude structure in a crude town: a big, bare house, that required twen:y servants, and not a bell in the place. The East room, once the fall came, was too chilly for even a stilted levee. So Ab!- gail Adams strung across it a clothes line that has wound its way into his- tory, and on that line hung up her washing. To get into her home Mrs. Adams had to climb up temporary and un- steady stairs, on to a teetering plat- form. But all Washington climbed the stairs and came a-ealling. The reason was climate, not conversation. Everybedy in Washington that frst winger was literally freezing almost to Geath. The government officials, most of whom had come without their families, piled two, four and even eight, into icy rooms to sleep, and Tugistatore “were perpetual pilerisa after the radiance, not of « hostess" smile, but of her stove. And by the central heating was introduced the vogue of caleng, which so def- nitely ; JENNY LIND, THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE, WAS OUT & WHEN FILLMORE CALLED. and an oyster house. whole of the fed with the capitol.” As a matter of statistics, there were, besides the “ President's house," exactly 370 other dwellings The first public event celebrated was when the town, on June 5, 1809, tendered a formal reception to Presi dent and Mrs. Adams. It wasn’t very gay. Helen Nicolay, daughter of Lincoln's friend, John G. Nicolay. herself an old, time Washingtonian, after surveying old documents, sums up that first sea- son in these words: “So Washington's first winter of of. ficial life dragged along with the tacit EE This makes the ‘al city as connected assumption that everything was com- fortable and satisfactory, when every: body knew quite well that it was not.” Slowly and half heartedly Mr. and Mrs. Adams built up a social system. Slowly, because everything was so new, so green; and half heartedlyebe- cause they were in mourning for their son and cared little for society just then, at Jefferson's Simplicity. . Barely had the foundations of the system settled when the whole struc: ture was knocked topsy-turvy by the coming of that vigorous apostle of simplicity, Thomas Jefferson. Th oretically his rule of péle-méle ma have been the basis of democratic simplicity, Actually it caused bicker ings that were complicated. The the- ory was: no special place for any one. The practice was: grab first place. One vivid instance of this, and one which had an international reflex, the story of Anthony Merry, mini ter from Great Britain. As envo from the mother country, Mr. Merry felt bis-clalms to distinction sufficient- ly great to make it proper for the President to escort Mrs. Merry to the dinner table. But Jefferson, with non- chalant carelessness, took out a pleas- ant but officially unimportant woman who chanced to be dining in the party. Mrs. Merry was humiliated; her hushand, furious. He offered his arm to his wife, seated her, then cast about for a partner for himself, His eyes fell upon the charming American wife of the Spanish minister. He started over to her side. A brisk, busy little fellow blocked the way, and snatched the vacant chair. Mr. Merry’s agile and successful competi- tor wasn't even a senator; he was a congressman, and such an obscure congressman at that. Democracy, the envoy reckoned, has its drawbacks. So he sat down that night and wrote a letter to his home office, protesting the incident in the name, of course, of injury to his gov- ernment’s prestige, and not at all of injury to his own pride. It is a cus- tom that is still invoked when an un- skilled hostess seats her guests in- correctly. * * Mr, Merry’s Predicament. Great Britain set in motion an in- vestigation, thorough but slow. Mean- while, Mr. Merry discovered many Pleasant things in this unpleasant land. and it is reported that he was considerably dismayed to learn, many months after the congressman had sngtched hig place at dinner, that his government, acceding to his earlier re- it, had removed him from the ob- ntious post. Then, so capricious can " even gn envoy be, Anthony Merry, so the story goes, protested his recall. England, for many subsequent years, sent to this strange country only bachelor representatives. Later days and other nations have found it convenient to adopt a similar policy in times of social crisis, Jefferson drew a blue pencil through the fortnightly levees, and substiwted Gaily ‘dinners, casual and informal; and two quasi-formal receptiona a year, on New Year's and the Fourth of July. “And he always shook hands. Calling at the White House was taboo, 90° Waahingtoniana, not.to be thelr ‘tradition, called on each other, THE , BARON = \ RENFREW of 1860 (EDWARD UI of RACYS DRAW ZZ277. SqaneeneNss Wille Le ENGLAND) WHO HELPED BUCHANAN RECEIVE. at all hours of the day and evening. * Enter Dolly Madison. The city of Washington was but nine years old when, on the first Sat- urday in March, 1809, a blithe woman in a buff colored velvet gown and a twisted turban of velvet walked into Long's hotel (the present site of the Library of Congress) as ‘the band began to play at this, the country’ first inaugural ball. But under the warm and spontaneous hospitality of Dolly Madison, for it was she in the buff colored gown and the turban, Washington grew up, socially. She regarded the nation’s guests as her guests, and when she sajd, “ My prov- Ince ‘begins at the drawing room door,” she was mindful of her duties. Mathematics, with a curious fore- shadowing of later developments in New York, decreed that society, to the o precise number of four hundred, should attend the ball. This first four hundred was based on breeding, achievement, and official position. Wealth was not yet a criterion, The party was a swank affair, with a courtly setting, for had not every American in the room over the age of 32 been born subject of a king? The diplomatic corps, in ful! uniform, stood, in formation. It consisted of seven secretaries of legations and three heads of missions. Local celebrities included John Peter Yan Ness, the wealthy congressman from Kinder- hook, New York, who had stayed on to marry Marcia Burnes, daughter of old David Burnes, owner of much of Washington; and John Tayloe of Mount Airy, Va., owner of the famous Octagon house at 18th street and New York avenue, and John Law, son of Thomas Law. The ball began at 7. About 10 o'clock the chairman invited Madison to stay for supper, and he said he would be glad to. Then, turning to a neighbor, the fourth President of the United States, in weary words that his successors may have echoed. whispered,’ But I'd much rather go home to bed.” x % When Dolly Went Calling. Ddlly Madison, most beloved of all mistresses of the executive mansion {for all that rome voters criticized her annual-turban bilf of $1,000}, met her official duties with enthusiastic carefulness. Her Quaker ancestry made her punctilious about even so- cial obligations; her Virginia -back- ground made her enjoy those obliga- tions, One of the biggest chores was the returning of all calls made at the mansion. It was still some years be fore geographic difficulties and inter- national jealousies were, virgually to forbid the President or his: wife to make any call save on a visiting ral- ing monarch. : ‘As the wife of the secretary of state, Dolly Madison, for eight years, had returned al! her calls, with com: parative ease. But Washington war spreading out and the task grew more difficult.. True, the vogue of the’ call- ing card helped some, but many women forgot to pencil their addresses. The President's wife would, how- ever, stop her carriage and make in- quiries until ske had located every name on her list. Calling started early in the morning. for there was much to be done. ter in the day she attended congressional debates and was voted a seat on the floor of the house. Society dined, formally, at 4: and supped, simply, at 8. Dolly Madison's “dove parties” were famous. When her husband heid his cabinet meetings she would invite the wives of these ininisters, together with a few other women, in for an informal party. Not even the war of 1812 could crush the resilient spirit of this val- fant first lady whose courageous flight from the President's palace, that Au- gust day in 1814, as the flames of Brit- ish fire licked at her skirts, is a mat- ter of national history. Those same tiames did such damage to the presi- dential residence that, in the rebuild- ing, its sandstone walls had to be splashed generously si the: white paint which gave the ailing, in- formaily, the name ‘ White House,” a name whieh’ nearly one hundred years later way made official. * & President Monroe's Wife. Dolly Madison fought war and fire to widen and deepen the dimensions of national ‘hospitality, but, she had to step down from the center of the pic- ture with the coming of James Mon- roe and of his wife, who seemed ever conscious of her European training. One of her contemporary critics de clared that Mrs. Monroe had “cos- metics but no cordiality.” She was never at home to callers. She put the servants in livery. She wanted to put the cabinet in uniform; but happily, doubtless, for the later rotund: figure, the President's official toaily won out over the President’s wife. Of course she. made enemies, Many a Washington matron vowed she'd never enter the executive mansion if that was the way its mistress. felt about it. But one spring morning a van drew up to the back dour of the White House with a if the figurines on the French clocks were vonty nude. So they accepted invitations; wooed them, in fact, to find that it was an exaggerated ru- mor, that yarn about the nude figur. ines. f ‘Mts. Monroe shoved the dinner hour up sixty minutes to a fashionable five o'clock. Candid guests admitted the dinners weren't much. fun, but, with a social reasoning that is still a po- tent factor, they argued that it wes more comforting to go and be béred gigs new. baby. ed Ae _ HUNCLE SAM, IN A WASHINGTON -| DRAWING ROOM,HAS DRESSED — 7 UPHIS HOMESPUNS WITH GOLD BRAID. than to be left out of the party. Propriately, it was during the Monroe administration that the emphasis en betioreng=d began to strike with aU- thundered his ultimatum—he proposed rity. PRESIDENT POLK INTRODUCES THE PRESSURE GRIP. se meet et a ee A NG ROOM dinners, Here, as in the earlier case of Merry, the bachelorg had the best of.it; they had no wives to whom they bad to explain their courtesy to a woman the women disliked. So Van Buren,.a widower, found it not un- pleasant to carry out the presidential command and be nice to Mrs. Eaton. The Benediks had a harder time. The wife of the, Dutch minister left the table one night. Mrs. Calhoun, wife of the Vice President, refused to call ‘on the bride. g * Jackson's Ultimatum. About this time Andrew Jackson Wives of cabinet members to fashion a cabinet for a nation, not prince umes Jackson, ° if 2 * % How Adams Settled Quarrel. ‘Wives of the senators said that such dent. One, at least, Attorney General a theory was all wrong. They were John M. Berrien, took his stand and entitled, they maintained, to first calls, declared that Jackson might be Prest- for didn't their husbands have to rat- dent of the United States and com- ify the cabinet appointments, else an mander of the army and of the navy. attorney general would have no more but he was not the governor of any authority than Mr. Coolidge’s friend man’s hearth and that he, Berrien, pep oreo pao but hi t ready to have another uarrel was going strong when but he was no! ly to scuntouisey Peieie making a jest of man meddle in his own family affairs. the whole controversy, wondered, lich if the senato' rush around and call on all members of their respective state legislatures since, in those days, the legislatures elected the senators. The cabinet wife won the fight, but egmplained two years later when her radical besband went as minister to Spain. to this day an occasional senate wife renews the debate. ‘The diplomat, at this early date, a youthful Italian dancing master and was shaping into a social magnet; returned to Washington, to this, in’ spite of the fact that the obscurity, and to die in meagern Monroes had rebuked the foreign en- voys for'the easy, unannounced man- ner in which they had been wont to drop in at the White House. Par. contrasts that the Emily Posts and ticularly powertul was the lure of Torq Chesterfields of early Washing- the British: diplomat, and this piqued ton swung the curves from the wide pe Ranmapan Heer nh? Gould sweeps of simplicity to the narrow still hear i For instance, to choose one incident from many, Secretary of State Adams accepted an invitation to attend th christening, of the, British minister's Softly gossip whispered that Adams waste act as prozy for regent; . loudly gossip shouted that. such a procedure was “too damn friendly to England.” ** . John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams had to. watch House vestibule, as much to keep out his invitations ‘even more’ closely the drafts as inquisitive visitors, they when, a year or #o later, he went to proclaimed him a veritable monarch. the White House,.as the nation’s pub- ‘ought not. to back was broken when the cabinet insisted that they should receive the ¢or the ladies. And he ordered his courtesy of first calls from the wives friend, Richard M. Johnson, to order of senators, since their husbands were the cabinet members to order their members of the President's official gives to be courteous to Margaret family. O'Neill Timberlake Eaton. This put the cabinet ministers .in the middle, between wife and Presi- was ready to turn in his portfolio, The quarrel dragged along, but its was disrupted in 1831. In 1834 it was found expedient to transfer Eaton and his controversial lady to the Florida tarritory, of which he was made kov- enor. She complained here; and she» Gen. Eaton died; his widow married live in ee en The Scene Changes. It is with a dramatist's flair for) bands of exclusiveness. ‘So the Jeffersonian sturdiness which characterized Jackson's hospitality ended, sharply, with the inauguration of Martin Van Buren. Van Buren was the first President who had not been born .a British subject; yet they called’ him “royal.” His son, just heme from Europe, they christened “Prince John.” “And when he bought a few gold dessert spoons, and had a glass: screen erected in the White .If you came too early in A acalling As <it. grew ‘older, the the morning, you couldn't get.in. This 4nd running inig'in-a day.’ “Dinsers were 2 little smarter, whi meant a. little, Jater- ‘rules rank“ and precedence . we! Chains so. strong.:that ‘not-eyen a Farmer-Labor SBipstead could later Toward: the ‘erjd sof. this warm, duette. hospitable, fulsome epoch came sick- ness, epidemic, and. migery. With sick- the’ social code acquired from the ad- ness cam@ charity; and with’ charity ministration of William Henry Har- came the social..climber, . More than rison, unless it-be the trio of mutually one woman, kindly enough but on the antagonistic inaugura] balls which made. a ushered in his reign. Harrison’s rule strategy of a virture and. visited the of ceremony was simple and singular. poor, hopeful that:she was casting a It was this: Whoever calls is asked Dolly Madison threshold, The Eaten, President. Adams’ administration not grayer. The marine ing. more elg- border, line of society, oa re! not, 50 to 100 persons call- Back and forth the social pendulum poral particularly irked a certain Pennsyl- + vagia congregsman, who. made im- in the time of the pther Adams, had passione played sedate hymns at the capitol. court. fashion of sleeping out the day was now bidden by-the sgn to'come ang walking out the night.” up to the mansion and play dante tunes. The town was gant. There were pew buildings and new: faces: ‘customs from -Lopdon and 8 from: Payis. Mrs. Andrew despgiring of the® city's ned. speeches against ‘the the New Year's levee actu- ‘ally omitted refreshments [the crowds at Jefferson's receptions had ground the food’ into“the lawn and: spilied wine over the best furniture), Van Buren’s enemiés read over the Dec- laration..ef “Independence and won- dered what the country was com- ing to. Cours oscillated from formality to informal- ich ity, and back to formality: Nor did pf the pendulum swing quite clear each re forging time. Each reign of formality-left a deposit of ‘social silt which added to the:mound already there, and dropped & few. more rules in the book of eti- ‘There wam’t much, however, that shadow across. .the to stay to dinner. Controversy. For the purpose of this brief survey of 25,000 when John Tyler brought the Jackson régime is’ important for large the Eston. controversy, me See O'Neil}, 2 ‘3 > which was to i th | 3e7 sf White House Becomes s Home. Washington was an expanding city in April, 1841. Roosevelt régime. the Ty! Following the death of his first wite in 1842, Tyler married young Julls Gardiner, whose father had lost his the life in'the:Princeton disaster, Julia. made the most of her new ’ ed - - = GENEVIEVE FORBES HERRICK Battles Around Dining Table as Fierce as on Field walked across the room and up onto the dais, where she received. Again the pendulum swung rapidly. Mrs. Polk, successor to Mrs. Tyler, wore no purple robes, no waving feathers. Under her competent, busi- nesslike direction the mansion, says Helen Nicolay, “sank into austere and immaculate order once more.” Her chief contribution to.our story ts her remark: “I never discuss a subject on which my sex is supposed to be ignorant.” ; Mr. Polk’s gift to the national pageant of pomp was his technique of the handshake. For now, with a pop- ulation of 25,000 at the capital, the handshake was assuming those vast proportions that it was later to take when Mrs. Taft said of it: “The chief occupation of the Presi- dent of the United States is, of course, shaking hands.” * © President Polk’s Handshakes. Here was Polk’s formula: “If a man surrender his arm to be shaken by one horizontally, by an- other petpendicularly, and by another with a strong grip, he cannot fail to suffer severely from it; but if he will shake and not be shaken, grip and not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as his adversary squeezes’ his, he will suffer no inconvenience from it. Now I can generally anticipate @ strong grip from a strong man, and I then take advantage of him by being quicker than he and squeezing him by the tip of his fingers.” IntePnational ritual. too, seemed a rather senseless bit of perfunctory labor to this President, for he wrote: “I confess the practice of announc ing officially the birth of foreign princes to the President of the United States has always appeared to me su- premely ridiculous.” Zachary Taylor and the social pro gram? His wife smoked a corncot pipe! Mrs. Fillmore gave the White House its first library and its first bathtub. Mf. Fillmcre had no pa tience with the unwritten mandate just then beginning to be expressed, that a President should not go calling, When Jenny Lind came to town he hurried over to the Willard hotel. The singer was out and he left his card. ‘This is said so to have excited her that she was all for rushing over to the executive mansion immediately. And, for once, it was Barnum who played the réle of the conservative and per- suaded her to delay the visit until the following day. ‘The Franklin Pierces, who had seen their son killed in a railroad wreck on the way to inauguration, had small desire for any entertainment. * * . Buchanan's Wet Inauguration. It was a great day for statistics when James Buchanan took the oath of office in 1857. Some 15.000 guests, gathered at the National hotel for the inaugural ball, consumed $3,000 worth of wine. The tower of cake was four feet high, and there were at least 400 gallons of oysters. The dance lasted until the shocking hour of 4 o'clock in the morning, and feminine com+ mentators, in describing the gownt the music and the ceremony, qui squeezed dry the sponge of adjectives. Harriet Lane, gracious and witty niece of America’s only bachelor Pres- ident, was well liked. So was the President, who initiated two pleasant observances. One was the Mayday parade and picnic for the children from the’ Protestant Sunday schools, ‘This is no longer in vogue. The other was the egg rolling contest, formerly carried on in hit or miss fashion on Capitol hill, but now the most im- portant official event on the White House grounds on Easter Monday. ‘This ceremony fell by the way during the hard days of the vivil war, but was revived, against the advice of landscape gardners, by Cleveland, and now flourishes to the happiness of al) ‘Washington's children. * ® Washington Dresses Up. Slowly the town was changing. Mra, William M. Gwin gave the first cos- tume ball. Dress suits were ‘coming in, and the.dinner hour was making {ts continental way around and up the clock. Visiting celebrities paraded ey streets, today a prince from the’ Orient, tomorrow a potentate from the south. The climax was the ar- rival of Baron Renfrew who, at the behest of his mother, Queen Victoria, came down from Canada long enough to set the natjonal capital agog. For exercise he went, properly chaperoned, to play a game of ten pins at a girls’ schools. For entere tainment, he stood by the President's side at at elaborate evening reception and did. the bowing as the President did’ the handshaking. And for rest, he went to sleep that night in the President's own bed while the coun- try’s chief executive, so runs the tale, stretched out on a cot in an anteroom. It came time, presently, and in evitably, for James Buchanan and a ry , a . >