The Right People

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  There is also the possibility of getting into Washington Society by making politics a hobby. The young Washington housewife, if she is willing to devote a few hours a week to the furtherance of the career of a favorite Senator, perhaps helping him organize a campaign or speaking tour, helping him solicit funds, will find herself—like her Scarsdale sister who spends an afternoon a week hemming sheets for the hospital—swept into the Washington social whirl. In fact, because of the nature of American government and politics, Washington is a town where everyone is given a fighting chance; in Washington, everyone is essentially nice to everyone else—even to total strangers who wander in. Those strangers could, if nothing else, be voters.

  Unlike the visitor to New York, Philadelphia, or Boston, the visitor to Washington—who would like to go to Society parties—can simply telephone his Senator or Congressman. Immediately, a little snowfall of invitations will descend upon his mailbox. Or he can just crash. The noted hostess Mrs. Gwen Cafritz admits that all her parties contain crashers. If they behave themselves, they are allowed to stay. They may even be invited back. But it would be a mistake to think of Washington’s determined hospitableness as true “friendliness.” “Remember,” warns the capital’s leading social arbitress, Carolyn Hagner Shaw, “that personal friendships do not count in official Washington.” They never have counted. Washington friendships are business friendships, instantly breakable, just as they were when Dolly Madison was giving the parties.

  Perhaps it is because the pattern of Washington Society never really changes that everyone looks for change wherever possible. With each new administration, a new and vigorous search for change begins. Possible signs of it become the major topic of conversation. The New Frontier, under President Kennedy, was said to have “changed everything.” But Scottie Lanahan, the blond daughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald who has lived in Washington during several administrations and was considered a full-fledged member of the “New Frontier Set,” says, “The only change I remember is that when the Peter Lawfords came to town, the Sargent Shrivers had a party and had Lester Lanin’s orchestra flown in from New York.”

  One reason why Washington Society changes little is that its tenets were established—albeit accidentally—by the United States Constitution. Another reason is Oshkosh. To the Oshkosh politician and his wife, Washington is the end of the rainbow. Arriving in Washington at last, they want exactly the kind of social life they have read about, with its cocktails, Gulf shrimp, black-tie dinners with five courses and three wines, and with—more than anything else—its traditional gaiety. “Boy, if the folks back home could see me now!” said the wife of a recently arrived young Senator as she turned, in her sequinned ball gown, admiring her image in a pier glass before leaving for a ball.

  Washington has had somber periods, but they haven’t lasted long. Gaiety comes bouncing back, and even national disasters can do little to dampen it. Betty Beale, a chatty columnist for the Washington Star, stated the situation accurately not long ago in a whole column devoted to gaiety. She observed that Washington was so gay one might think the town was caught up in “the excitement of a war.” For anyone who is active in political life, or who “takes the town seriously” and enjoys feeling that he is close to the pulse of things, there is enough required gaiety to keep an engagement calendar solidly booked. An up-and-coming State Department man, for instance, who feels he ought to attend foreign embassy parties, finds that there are over a hundred foreign embassies in Washington, most of which have one important function a year—on their national days—if not two. This is already quite a lot of gaiety. Then there are the parties within his own department, the parties of other departments and agencies, the military parties, the press parties—and many more.

  Also, as a matter of form, each newcomer is given a party. “It sometimes seems to me as though we could keep busy going to nothing but Welcome-to-Washington parties, and farewell parties,” sighs Mrs. Archibald Roosevelt. Prominent out-of-towners also add to the load of essential entertaining. “They come, they expect a party, and of course they want to meet a lot of big shots,” says Mrs. Longworth. “So people here throw something together for them—a few dining-out Senators, a Cabinet member, a couple of ambassadors—it’s like putting together a salad.”

  Not every newcomer to Washington finds the gaiety buoying. Mrs. McGeorge Bundy, for example, a member of an old Boston family, found the change from quiet New England to busy Washington initially “a little frightening.” She says, “All those parties—I wasn’t used to it, you know. It took a lot out of me.” “I’m afraid we shortened his poor life at least ten years,” says another woman sadly, referring to a diplomat who, after an unusually heavy dose of farewell parties, collapsed on the gangplank of the ship that was to take him to his new post. “It’s not easy,” a Washington man confessed, “to be perpetually charming.” And those who cannot be, or who simply do not wish to be, have often had to resort to desperate solutions. One of the more ingenious of these is offered by a Washington woman, the mother of nine, who says wryly, “Washington Society is to blame for all my children. I decided the only way I could avoid them was to be perpetually pregnant. Still, when I offer that as an excuse, people say to me, ‘But that doesn’t stop Ethel Kennedy.’”

  Another visitor, a Philadelphian, finds Washington’s gaiety “all rather mechanical and cold-blooded.” He had been invited to a party at the Francis Biddies’—“charming people, but I hardly had a chance to say hello to them”—and found himself cornered by a young man “who proceeded immediately to explain that he had seven parties to go to between six and eight that evening, and he had them all ranked. The Biddies’ was going to get nineteen minutes of his time. The next people would get only eleven minutes—and so on, down to the last two parties which he would only pop in on.”

  One unfortunate aspect of Washington parties is that they tend, like Washington social schedules, to become quite crowded. Often there seem not only to be too many people but too many important people, so that the effect of seeing so many dignitaries packed together is dizzying rather than impressive. Only in Washington can one become numbed by the sight of famous faces, weary of shaking famous hands. “At the Stewart Alsops’ one night,” a guest recalls, “I got caught in a jam between Hubert Humphrey, Walter Lippmann, and what’s-his-name, the French ambassador. The Secretary of the Treasury was behind me, trying to push through, and in front of me were three people named Roosevelt. The only thing I could think of was how to get out.” Later, this same man says, “A girl lost an earring, and when I stooped to look for it I saw that the Alsops’ rug was covered with stamped out cigarette butts.”

  The best-known way of getting into Washington Society, if one is not elected or appointed to it, is to party-throw one’s way in. The late Evalyn Walsh McLean did so. Peggy Eaton, the wife of Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of War did so. So did Kate Chase, the daughter of Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, and dozens of others. The only necessary ingredients for success are determination, energy, and a great deal of money. To these might be added a few secondary requirements such as a thick skin, a shrewd eye for the value of publicity, and a sympathetic—or preferably absent—spouse. Washington has long been a city where wealthy widows and divorcees and other maritally displaced persons, who have been left out of things in other cities, can come into their own. It has also been ideal for the woman (the game of “Washington hostess” has only rarely been played by a man) whose money, for one reason or another, would not buy her a place in Society elsewhere.

  A smallish but very rich widow from Oklahoma named Perle Skirvin Mesta tried the party-tossing road to High Society first in Oklahoma, then in Pittsburgh and Newport, with minimal results. She then came to Washington, and the rest is musical comedy history. Washington provided a similar field day for a little girl from Budapest named Gwendolyn Detre de Surany Cafritz. To others who envied her success, she once warned, “It is not enough to be Hungarian. One must also have talent.” Yet also succ
essful were Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post Close Hutton Davies May, from Chicago, and Mrs. Patricia Firestone Chatham, from Akron, and they were not even Hungarian.

  The pattern is simple: a big new house on Foxhall Road, a refurbished Georgetown mansion, or “a vast apartment in Foggy Bottom; a stack of engraved invitations, a copy of the Washington “Social List,” the name of a caterer; and the hostess is ready to begin. It is not necessary, as in New York, that she first establish herself as a worker for worthy causes; politics is Washington’s favorite charity. It is not even necessary, as it certainly is everywhere else, that she personally know any important people. When her late husband, a real estate man, started on his way toward considerable riches, Gwen Cafritz set her sights, and she set them high. “I started out having little attachés,” she says. She then went on to bigger attachés. Then, “I worked my way up to the Supreme Court.” The late Morris Cafritz, an unassuming little man, was content to stand on the sidelines of his wife’s social career. At her parties, he often made himself helpful by holding open doors as the great and famous passed through, and one guest, thinking he had tipped a footman, realized he had pressed a five-dollar bill into the hand of Morris Cafritz. Typically, Mr. Cafritz did not remonstrate with the man, but merely smiled and thanked him.

  There are a few tricks that Washington hostesses have learned over the years. “There’s a way they have of inviting you,” Scottie Lanahan says. “It’s hard to put into words, but it’s a tone of voice they use over the phone. They ask you to a party in such a way that you’re terribly flattered. They make you think that you must have done something pretty important recently, or you wouldn’t even be considered.” A hoarier technique is that of giving a party “in honor of” someone. A call to the wife of the Attorney General, asking her to a party honoring the British ambassador, is almost certain to get an acceptance. Political necessity demands that such an invitation be accepted. Then, quickly, another call to the British ambassador’s wife, inviting her to a party for the Attorney General, will complete the ruse. Similarly, other important guests can be played off against each other.

  But guile is not really required of the Washington hostess because Washington uniquely needs its Mmes. Cafritz, Mesta, May, Howar, and all their spiritual sisters present and future. Washington has always looked for ways to make the running of the United States government more efficient but, as government agencies have multiplied, the job has become increasingly complicated. An official’s day is bound up in regulations, protocol, red tape, clogged telephone wires. But protocol and tape and switchboard delays blur and dissolve at parties. Parties become a tool for doing business and, therefore, an implement of government—for which, miraculously, the taxpayer does not pay. Gwen Cafritz was amused not long ago to read in her newspaper that a certain Supreme Court decision would be reached on “October 8.” This was a Sunday, when the Court would not be in session and, of course, the Court traditionally decides on Mondays. But the eighth was the date of Mrs. Cafritz’s annual Supreme Court party, the event Mrs. Cafritz likes to call “the real beginning” of the city’s social season. Though the date was a typographical error, Mrs. Cafritz felt that it unknowingly stated the truth. “That decision will be made right here in my drawing room!” she announced. Here one can sense again the feeling of power that Washington Society enjoys—the thrill of knowing that events are taking place at one’s dinner table that may, by morning, command the attention of the entire world, and that one may even have had a hand in helping to shape them.

  It is possible that, in a social situation, an embattled Defense Department man can buttonhole a stubborn Congressman and perhaps, before the evening is over, the two may come to an agreement on an appropriation that it would otherwise have taken months to reach. Also, it is important for men in divergent branches of government simply to meet one another. Parties provide the meeting places. The belief that they are helping the ponderous wheels of national government move an inch or two forward adds to the Washington hostesses’ sense of high calling.

  Politics may be in the back of everyone’s mind at a Washington party, but the political differences are almost never discussed, and, if they are discussed, they are almost never argued about. On the rare occasion that an argument does start, it is kept determinedly friendly—thanks to the hostesses. “No one ever fights at my parties!” Gwen Cafritz says grimly, and the others are with her to a girl. Political rivalries, they feel, should be subordinated to the greater cause of let’s-all-pull-together-for-the-good-of-the-country. Trying to tame warring factions after five o’clock may not produce any permanent results, but the hostesses feel that compromise is the best way to end a stalemate, that negotiation is a path to peace, and that dinner music can soothe the savage breast when Dove sits next to Hawk. Like jungle missionaries, they feel that their first task is to get the headhunters into Mother Hubbards.

  Parties are also an important news medium. A new crisis in the Middle East reaches the ears of Washington partygoers a full two hours before it reaches a network television screen, and twelve hours before it reaches the morning readers of the New York Times. Washington parties exist, among other things, for gossip and gossip in Washington is highly respected. Indeed, it has almost reached the level of an art form. Information, news, hard fact, rumor, hints, interpretations, analyses, innuendoes, and guesses pass from guest to guest with astonishing speed and with an even more astonishing degree of accuracy.

  “Secretary Rusk said to me just now …” a Washington hostess begins, and all ears turn toward her. She then pauses, framing her quotation carefully so as to relay an exact transcription of the Secretary’s words and tone and implication. Then, for minutes afterwards, the Secretary’s meaning will be dissected; possibilities will be weighed, examined, reassembled with laboratory care. Often, of course, the Secretary’s words may amount to a general observation of no importance or news value. But there is always the possibility that they will amount to something large and startling. A woman who is poor at passing along gossip properly will never become an important Washington hostess.

  There is always, too, the more titillating possibility that someone, somewhere along the line, may be made indiscreet by Martinis and reveal a full-scale secret. But the unwritten rules of Washington Society carry a built-in protective clause: the worst social gaffe that can be committed in the capital is to have too much to drink at a party.

  The power that Washington hostesses share with the officials of government is not always looked on kindly by the male population in the city. As they slump over their brandy and cigars in the library after dinner, Washington men often ask themselves: what is the psychology behind the “hostess drive”? Is it compensation for an ego bruised in childhood? Is it a sex substitute? Do these women really want to usurp the power of Washington men? The speculations bubble down to the general conclusion that, for a city in which social position is supposed to be determined by a man’s position in government, Washington women have gone too far.

  Women’s admission to the sacred second floor of the Metropolitan Club was bad enough. So were Congress-woman Clare Boothe Luce’s efforts to use the men’s gymnasium in the House of Representatives. “But I’m sure you’d think I looked so pretty in my little bloomers!” she was quoted as having said at the time. “I sometimes wish the girls would stick just to parties,” one man says sadly. But, on the whole, most Washington men are resigned to what Washington women do, and try to make the best of it.

  Like other cities, Washington has loved to think of itself as being divided into sets but, always, the lines separating most of them are tenuous and indistinct. It is hard to tell, for instance, where the “Georgetown Set” leaves off and the “Foggy Bottom Set” begins. But there are a few sets which really are sets, and which have managed through the years to retain an identity of their own, largely by removing themselves from the mainstream of Washington’s government Society.

  To be a member of the “Cave Dweller Set,” one must theoretic
ally belong to a second- or third-generation Washington family. The cave dwellers, needless to say, choose to think of themselves as “the real backbone” of Washington Society, distinctly above the city’s political and diplomatic comings and goings. Because of this attitude, the cave dwellers have been ignored by the Society of politicians and diplomats. As the latter’s ranks have grown in size and importance and influence, it often appears that the cave dwellers have merely been passed by—and today have no real importance, social, cultural, or otherwise, at all.

  Out in Virginia, in towns like McLean and Middleburg, there is a definite “Fox-Hunting Set,” and several branches of a family named Lee who also hover on the fringes of Washington Society. And in suburban Maryland there are well-to-do Washingtonians who live apart from the gaiety of politics. Indeed, members of the “Chevy Chase Set” seem unaware that any sort of life goes on in the capital area other than their own. “There are girls I’ve grown up with in Washington,” says Louise Gore, daughter of a family long prominent in politics, “I’ve gone to school and college with them, but when they marry and move to Chevy Chase, something happens to them. They gradually withdraw from things here, and then completely disappear.” Another woman says, “I think those Chevy Chase people are afraid to enter the real social life of Washington. They’re afraid that they don’t have enough to offer, and that if they mixed with the rest of us they’d be boring.” It is certainly true that when, on a rare occasion, a Chevy Chaser finds himself at a non-Chevy Chase party, curious things happen. Friends still tell the story of a young Chevy Chase matron who found herself at a party honoring Madame Hervé Alphand: she seemed unaware of who Madame Alphand was and, in fact, addressed her repeatedly as “Madame Elephant.”