Charmed, Senator Tiglon

If the tiglon* in Manhattan's Central Park Zoo ever got to the U.S. Senate he would receive a good many invitations to Washington parties, particularly from oil heiresses and South American embassies. As Senator Tiglon of New York he would also be invited to the White House, thus posing difficult, but not necessarily insuperable problems of security. And if he refrained from eating butlers (except at crowded cocktail parties), observed protocol and learned to growl softly at older women, Senator Tiglon might even--despite his mixed parentage --become a social lion.

The peculiarities which would cause Washington society to embrace Senator Tiglon are not immediately visible to the unpracticed eye. The capital's social swirl has a rich, full-bodied sudsiness all its own. Last week, with the Republicans in the majority, and with the top hat, the starched shirt and the powdered bosom fashionable again, Washington was the most glittering of world capitals. Its parties were not only lavish, but in many cases prodigiously decorous and restrained. The average Washingtonian invariably hopes that others will think he is discussing some new and ponderous fact of foreign policy; he eternally strives for a concerned and thoughtful expression.

The Happy Sturgeon. When President and Mrs. Harry Truman honored Senator Arthur Vandenberg with a White House dinner, a casual spectator would never have noticed that Manhattan Saloonkeeper Bernard ("Toots") Shor was numbered among the 90 guests. Shor, who looks like Gargantua* as a baby and who loves to greet his own clientele as "crum bums," was burstingly immaculate in white tie & tails, and acted as though he knew as much about the partitioning of Germany as Jimmy Byrnes.

Two other parties were just as imposing. Hostess of the first was diamond-studded Mrs. Perle Mesta, an Oklahoma heiress who zealously seines big names from Washington's social sea. The sturgeon which Mrs. Mesta had imported from Russia had every reason for congratulating itself upon the climax of its career. As it lay flanked by Mrs. Mesta's superior foods, it could eye Presidential Aide Clark Clifford, assorted Senators, Opera Singer Dorothy Kirsten, a countess, Netherlands Ambassador Alexander Loudon and Chief Justice Fred Vinson. Mrs. Mesta even served her 172 guests domestic champagne --a colossal gesture of poise and confidence.

Two nights later, Yugoslav Ambassador Sava N. Kosanovic, a relatively minor diplomat, had 120 guests in to hear his compatriot, Violinist Zlatko Balakovic, give a recital. He, too, had Senators and a minister, and his party had a fine international air--although his official hostess, one Dr. Mica Trbojezic, did run around popping little meatballs into her guests' mouths.

The Brass Check. While Washington society resembles that of St. Louis, San Francisco and Chicago in many of its skin-deep manifestations, there are differences. Washington's crowded beach is washed by the tide of politics, and every important official gets a social position to wear like a brass locker check. As a result the capital's reigning dowagers cannot really rule, but only sit above the high-water mark.

For Washington society lives by the precepts of protocol--the exacting science of weighing an official's importance and fitting him into his proper place in the social puzzle. Once an ambassador invited so many important men to a party for Arturo Toscanini that the Maestro was relegated to the foot of the table.

But if protocol can separate the strata of capital society, alcohol can make them run as gaudily as colored shirts in the wet wash. When the Italian embassy held a cocktail party last month in honor of Premier Alcide de Gasperi, traffic on arterial 16th Street was blocked for three hours by thirsty Washingtonians of every rank, station and political complexion. "Why do they have to ask us for a loan?" a lightly oiled dowager asked. "They could have taken up a collection here."

* A large but perpetually startled beast, half lion, half tiger.

* Pantagruel's pa.

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