Let 'em Eat Garlic

When Martha Rountree beckons, big people in Washington come arunning. As mistress of ceremonies of the television show Meet the Press, Florida-born, belle-like Martha controls a precious segment of Sunday evening air for which politicians yearn as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. Last week Martha had a party, the gaudiest since Marie Antoinette opened at the Trianon, or at least since the night when a foreign ingredient got into Mrs. Murphy's chowder.

The occasion was the first anniversary of Martha's marriage to Oliver Presbrey, a New York advertising executive. Millionaire Clendenin Ryan, who would like to be governor of New Jersey, footed the bill as a belated wedding present for the Presbreys. At first he planned a cozy little party at his Warrenton, Va. estate. "We asked 40 people and 60 accepted," said Ryan. Ryan and Martha were convinced that the scope of the enterprise should be expanded and brought to Martha's home in Washington.

Ryan, with a six-man staff, set up administrative headquarters in the Mayflower Hotel. An army of gardeners dug up rosebushes, chrysanthemums and shrubbery at the Presbreys' spacious place off Connecticut Avenue, and moved them back five feet to make room for a Parisian street scene, complete with sidewalks and sidewalk cafes. Carpenters built a 30-by-50-ft. dance floor over the lawn, covered it with a sideshow tent, which was decorated as and called the Moulin Rouge. Pressrooms, male and female, were set up with tickers and telephones.

Bouncers by the Fence. Inside the house some changes were also necessary. The living room was stripped of furniture to make room for a fullscale, club-car set, modeled after that on the Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional Limited. The Pennsy, blushing with pleasure, supplied standard lounge-car chairs from the Congressional, along with the road's finest glassware and all the other trappings. At the last minute someone noticed that the club car had no Pennsy rug. Executives of the railroad found they had none in Washington storage. Miss Rountree's friends knew what to do about that: they threatened to get a rug from the B. & O. Harried Pennsymen stripped a rug from a car standing in the Washington yards, and the club-car set was complete.

Martha's basement garage was made over into The Snake Pit, Washingtonese for the dark and cozy Mayflower Hotel cocktail lounge,* where lobbyists and politicians meet when the sun gets low. An eight-piece orchestra was hired, and a seven-foot-high fence was built (at a cost of $1,000) to bring order into the lives of six uniformed District of Columbia cops and four private eyes flown down from New York to keep out the uninvited. (Martha likes the fence and thinks she will keep it as a permanent addition to the property.)

Martha had enough guests without any gate-crashers: 428 Senators, Congressmen, ambassadors, admirals, generals, Cabinet officers, newsmen, lobbyists and some friends. Almost everybody who was anybody showed up, except the Supreme Court Justices, who were busy with life & death matters (see above). Joe McCarthy escorted his brunette ex-secretary, Jean Kerr. Asked by press photographers to pose for a picture with Miss Kerr, McCarthy snapped: "You know we don't pose for that kind of picture." A lot of guests went out of their way not to chat with McCarthy, yet he was not lonely. His committee counsel, little Roy Cohn, hovered around him like a pilot fish in front of a shark, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin saluted with a kiss Mrs. Robert Vogeler, as pretty a blonde as any there.

Martha and her husband, after a kiss (and seven retakes for photographers), cut an 80-lb. wedding cake with a sword borrowed from an admiral especially invited for that purpose. Then dancing began. Martha swayed out a stately tune with Korean Ambassador Dr. You Chan Yang. The orchestra switched to It's a Great Day for the Irish, and Yang and Martha finished by stamping out the Mexican hat dance (Yang has been moving in U.N. circles a lot lately).

Turkey in the Straw. After that, things got hotter, and Greek Ambassador Athanase Politis called a square dance. Said an admiring guest: "He never saw a turkey or knew about straw, but he is one hell of a caller." Senator Estes Kefauver, onetime presidential candidate, boyishly hooked his arm around a tent pole and spun three complete turns. The Tennessee statesman, as usual, had a word to say. "Whee!" was the word. Speaker Joseph Martin grinned his friendly, lumpy grin. Senator Styles Bridges rang a locomotive bell and shouted "All aboard!"

The British ambassador, shy Sir Roger Makins, deserved special mention in dispatches from the Battle of the Red Mill. He flinched slightly when presented with a plate of lavender-pink potato salad, flinched again when a lady guest impaled him with: "You're British, aren't you? You ought to know how to do the Lambeth Walk." Afloat or ashore, England expects every man to do his duty. For the first time in a quiet but crowded life, Sir Roger Mellor Makins, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, ate lavender-pink potato salad and danced the Lambeth Walk.

At 1:30 they got the last three dozen guests out by turning off the electric lights. Then they totted up the toll: 18 gallons of lobster Newburg, 450 hamburgers, eight turkeys, eight hams, a bushel of green salad, eight gallons of lavender-pink potato salad, six crocks of baked beans, eight gallons of sherbet, dozens of cases of bourbon, Scotch and gin, 120 bottles of champagne. Said Martha: "Everything came out even, except Clem Ryan." The evening had cost Millionaire Ryan something like $10,000.

Martha, with a knee slightly sprained from doing the Charleston, explained the social principle underlying the party: "Anybody can just invite a lot of people out of the telephone book. We invite people who are a lot of fun. Entertaining is like cooking--you've got to have a little pepper and a little salt and a little garlic."

* Washingtonians love the inelegantly deprecatory nickname for high-priced gathering places. Another: the exclusive Burning Tree Club, which is also known as Smouldering Stump.

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