At the White House

For a Washington widow, for the wife of a New York surgeon and for the Dean of Bryn Mawr College, the Washington society news was nostalgic last week. Alice Roosevelt (Longworth) in 1902, Ethel Roosevelt (Derby) in 1908 and Helen Taft (Manning) in 1910 were the last three girls to "come out" in the White House. Last week that mansion was again turned upside down for a debut. The lucky girl was Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt--daughter of her brother Grade Hall Roosevelt by his first wife, now Mrs. John Cutter of Dedham, Mass. She had already had one debut in Boston and observed frankly that coming out is "a racket, but a pleasant one."

The invitations went out in Aunt Eleanor Roosevelt's name only, so that it would not be a "command performance." But the President attended. Niece Eleanor, pretty, lively, 18, was to have worn a dress sent her by King George of Greece whom she met while visiting the Minister Lincoln MacVeaghs in Athens. It didn't arrive so she made out very well in billowing white organdy.

Except for the White House military aides--a score of handsome bachelors who gave a dinner party beforehand on the Presidential yacht Potomac, and were each instructed to squire a girl who had never attended a White House dance--the guests were mostly youngsters. White wine punch was the official refreshment.* The orchestra was from New York, conducted by Irving ("Yes, We Have No Bananas") Conn. They danced the Eleanor Glide and Virginia Reel as well as the Lambeth Walk. An exciting moment came when Mrs. Roosevelt, leading a reel with her brother, tripped on her train and tumbled over backwards.

Reporters were barred, but Charles Graves, snooty young political columnist for the London Daily Mail wangled an invitation and wrote for his paper and the Washington Post (Republican):

"Oddly we were not introduced by name; we just filed along, shook hands with Mrs. Roosevelt, her brother and her niece . . . and passed along a corridor with two Negroes serving punch (nonalcoholic, I think) in the big ballroom. The first eight feet of the ballroom was crammed with the stag line of surplus young men. These young men varied enormously. Mass observation showed that only one in 20 wore hair lotion and that about one in ten had his hair cropped like a convict. The editor of the Tailor and Cutter would have burst into tears over the cut of the tails. Actually two of the men were in dinner jackets. The girls . . . were mostly small and often pretty, could be divided into two lots: those that danced seraphically with their eyes closed, in the middle of the room obviously with their favorite partner, and those dancing around the edge of the ballroom which is the shop-window of the stag line, so they chatted and smiled vivaciously at the surplus males. Yes, the American deb is obviously out to please, unlike the English deb. . . . Precisely the same plump little figures you see in Mayfair, their hair is neither as well cared for nor as well dressed, their complexions are often poor and their clothes also are dowdy by comparison."

* Among those present was Lucile Sheppard, daughter of the Texas Senator who sponsored the 18th Amendment. She made her debut three nights later at a bone-dry party of which her father said: "It's our custom."

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