upset to hear that Helen Taft intended to replace the White House’s frock-coated ushers with liveried black footmen. Mrs. Taft let it be known that she, as a frugal housewife, did not intend to continue the Roosevelt tradition of elaborate entertainments catered from outside. Her guests would be fed out of the White House kitchen, and like it. She also felt that her husband was altogether too much seen as Roosevelt’s “creature,” and urged him to demonstrate his independence. Alice Longworth, who was a gifted if cruel mimic, mounted her own propaganda by driving out in the Roosevelt surrey and rearranging her face into a terrifying caricature of the toothy Mrs. Taft.
IN MID-DECEMBER , Washington’s social season began with almost nightly receptions, dinners, and balls in and around the White House. The Roosevelts participated graciously, showing no signs of ennui on their eighth procession through the ritual calendar. Yet small signs of impending change darkened each event, like speckles on tired transparencies. Elihu Root announced that he was stepping down as Secretary of State, handing two months of token power over to Robert Bacon.The President’s annual Cabinet dinner on 17 December was attended, as usual, by Vice President and Mrs. Fairbanks, but “Sunny Jim” Sherman showed up, too, and so did PhilanderKnox—no longer as a stalwart of the old Roosevelt Cabinet, but as Taft’s rumored replacement for Bacon.
To the President, at least, this rumor did not suggest any abandonment of what he took to be a pledge by Taft to retain as many existing Cabinet officers as possible. He loved Bob Bacon, but the latter’s appointment was strictly stopgap. And Root (having been offered a seat in the United States Senate by Republican leaders in New York) would never have stayed on at State. Afterward, talking to Archie Butt, Roosevelt gave his first hint of accepting Taft’s right to proceed independently.
“I don’t feel any resentment at all,” he said. “Only I hope that he will take care of the men who served me here.”
ALL THE ROOSEVELTS gathered in the White House for a midday Christmas dinner, along with about fifty relatives and close friends. Bamie came with her drowsy husband, now Admiral Cowles, and their son, Sheffield, whose fondness for scrapple had made him an early beneficiary of the Pure Food Law; Alice brought Nick—a rather conflicted congressman these days, being the son-in-law of the President and a protégé of the President-elect; the Lodges were accompanied by their poetic son George Cabot (“Bay”) and his wife and family; the Roots were there, and various Meyers and Gardners and McIlhennys and Lowndeses and Eustaces, with their children; a few unattributable urchins, possibly gate-crashers from the White House Gang, seemed perfectly at home; and the indispensable Archie Butt, who had already been informed that the Tafts wished to keep him on, went about his business of observing and recording.
The Executive Dining Room moose looked down impassively on tables decorated with red leaves and ferns and Christmas crackers. Quentin wore a paper crown. Platters of roast turkey went round and round. Brandy-soaked plum puddings were carried in, flickering with blue flame. Little ice-cream Santas followed, each holding a tiny burning taper.
Afterward, gentlemen smoked in the Red Room while the women and children went down into the basement. There, in a specially darkened room, the White House Christmas tree stood out in colored radiance. The Jusserands and Bryces and Cabinet officers and their families came from other parties to give and exchange gifts (a volume of G. K. Chesterton’s
Heretics
for Captain Butt), and the President talked politics and kissed whichever child came within reach of his bear hug.
No sooner had the debris of this party been swept up the following morning than preparations began for a much more formal event on the twenty-eighth: the debut ball of Miss Ethel
IN MID-DECEMBER , Washington’s social season began with almost nightly receptions, dinners, and balls in and around the White House. The Roosevelts participated graciously, showing no signs of ennui on their eighth procession through the ritual calendar. Yet small signs of impending change darkened each event, like speckles on tired transparencies. Elihu Root announced that he was stepping down as Secretary of State, handing two months of token power over to Robert Bacon.The President’s annual Cabinet dinner on 17 December was attended, as usual, by Vice President and Mrs. Fairbanks, but “Sunny Jim” Sherman showed up, too, and so did PhilanderKnox—no longer as a stalwart of the old Roosevelt Cabinet, but as Taft’s rumored replacement for Bacon.
To the President, at least, this rumor did not suggest any abandonment of what he took to be a pledge by Taft to retain as many existing Cabinet officers as possible. He loved Bob Bacon, but the latter’s appointment was strictly stopgap. And Root (having been offered a seat in the United States Senate by Republican leaders in New York) would never have stayed on at State. Afterward, talking to Archie Butt, Roosevelt gave his first hint of accepting Taft’s right to proceed independently.
“I don’t feel any resentment at all,” he said. “Only I hope that he will take care of the men who served me here.”
ALL THE ROOSEVELTS gathered in the White House for a midday Christmas dinner, along with about fifty relatives and close friends. Bamie came with her drowsy husband, now Admiral Cowles, and their son, Sheffield, whose fondness for scrapple had made him an early beneficiary of the Pure Food Law; Alice brought Nick—a rather conflicted congressman these days, being the son-in-law of the President and a protégé of the President-elect; the Lodges were accompanied by their poetic son George Cabot (“Bay”) and his wife and family; the Roots were there, and various Meyers and Gardners and McIlhennys and Lowndeses and Eustaces, with their children; a few unattributable urchins, possibly gate-crashers from the White House Gang, seemed perfectly at home; and the indispensable Archie Butt, who had already been informed that the Tafts wished to keep him on, went about his business of observing and recording.
The Executive Dining Room moose looked down impassively on tables decorated with red leaves and ferns and Christmas crackers. Quentin wore a paper crown. Platters of roast turkey went round and round. Brandy-soaked plum puddings were carried in, flickering with blue flame. Little ice-cream Santas followed, each holding a tiny burning taper.
Afterward, gentlemen smoked in the Red Room while the women and children went down into the basement. There, in a specially darkened room, the White House Christmas tree stood out in colored radiance. The Jusserands and Bryces and Cabinet officers and their families came from other parties to give and exchange gifts (a volume of G. K. Chesterton’s
Heretics
for Captain Butt), and the President talked politics and kissed whichever child came within reach of his bear hug.
No sooner had the debris of this party been swept up the following morning than preparations began for a much more formal event on the twenty-eighth: the debut ball of Miss Ethel
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