Masquerade

Off to the Willard Hotel one evening last week rode President Roosevelt to sit with Cabinet members, Senators, newspapermen, miscellaneous bigwigs, hear his New Deal joshed at the semi-annual stag dinner of the Gridiron Club. Far more interested was Washington in the doings of 500 official and newspaper women left behind. Mrs. Roosevelt had invited them to a masquerade party--first in the White House since President Tyler entertained for his granddaughter in 1843. Guests arrived in taxis, slipped on masks as soon as anxious Secret Service men had scanned their faces at the entrance. Unmasked but brilliant in the red and gold of a Rumanian peasant, Mrs. Roosevelt greeted each guest at the door of the East Room. After balloting for most original and clever costumes, there were songs, skits, supper--all, like the highjinks at the Gridiron dinner, strictly "off the record."

First prize for costume went to five newswomen dressed as the Dionne quintuplets, with the Children's Bureau's new Chief Katharine Lenroot as their nurse. A battered Republican elephant took second; and the Three Little Pigs, one impersonated by Louis Howe's Secretary Margaret ("Rabbit") Durand were third.

Educational as well as spectacular was the costume of large, active Anna Wilmarth Thompson Ickes who appeared as a Zuni Indian matron. Long a student of Southwestern Indians and author of a book about them called Mesa Land, the Republican wife of the Secretary of the Interior knew exactly what to wear.

Other Washington women fancied themselves in the following roles: Mrs. Cordell Hull, a gypsy; Mrs. Homer Cummings, a Spanish matron; Mrs. Claude Swanson, a Dutch girl; Madam Secretary Perkins, a braintruster (cap & gown); Mrs. Donald Richberg, "The Mystery of the New Deal'' (an alphabet-spangled dress); Mrs. Henry Wallace, a Yugoslav peasant; Mrs. Daniel Roper, a court lady of the Second Empire; Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Jr., a court lady of the 18th Century; Mrs. George Dern, one of the wives of Brigham Young; Anna Roosevelt Dall, The Devil.

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