by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets;History of the World's Most Famous Home
The use of military aides at White House social functions is considered part of their duty to serve their commander in chief. This is also true of the U.S. Marine Band, a group of extremely talented musicians in scarlet uniforms who provide the music for state dinners and receptions and perform on the South Lawn for the arrival ceremonies for foreign leaders.
The Marine Band is the country’s oldest professional musical organization. It was established by an act of Congress in 1798 and charged with providing music for the president of the United States and the commandant of the marine corps. Its first White House performance was for President John Adams’s New Year’s Day reception in 1801. A few months later, the band played for Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural, and it has performed at every presidential inauguration since. Jefferson, an accomplished musician himself, affirmed the unique status of the band by naming them “The President’s Own.”
The members of the Marine Band are graduates of the country’s most prestigious music schools. They audition for places just as they would for a major symphony orchestra. Some or all of the band members appear at the White House over three hundred times a year. They may be called upon to provide strolling violinists, a string quartet, or a dance band, and they can probably play “Hail to the Chief” with their eyes closed.
VIII
Entertaining at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue involves complications and potential pitfalls that are unlikely to bedevil the average host or hostess. Some of the thorniest problems involve visiting royalty. When Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth and her husband, the duke of Edinburgh (now Prince Philip), visited the United States in 1951, my father decided to meet them at the airport. The State Department had a conniption. According to protocol, the president only shows up at the airport to greet heads of state. Dad, being Dad, went anyway.
An early diplomatic crisis arose in 1877 when Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife, Lucy, arrived in the White House. Strong supporters of the temperance movement, they never served wine or liquor in their home in Ohio. They planned to continue this practice in Washington to set an example for the rest of the country.
The State Department feared the ban might provoke an international incident. The White House guest list regularly included diplomats and other representatives of foreign countries. They were used to having wine with their meals and would be noticeably unhappy if it were omitted.
The first test came early on when two emissaries of the czar of Russia, Grand Duke Constantine and Grand Duke Alexis, visited the United States. Protocol required that they be given a formal dinner at the White House.
The State Department immediately went on red alert. Secretary of State William Evarts regarded it as unthinkable to subject the two young men to a “cold water” meal. To forestall such a possibility, Evarts enlisted the aid of a distinguished attorney who was an old friend of the president’s.
In view of what they were accustomed to in their own country, the attorney argued, “a dinner without wine would be an annoyance, if not an affront” to the grand dukes and, by extension, an affront to Russia, a longtime ally of the United States. To Secretary Evarts’s enormous relief, Hayes was persuaded.
The dinner was a splendid affair. The State Dining Room was bedecked with flowers, the U.S. Marine Band played a Russian march as the guests filed in to dinner, the food was magnificent, and there were no less than seven glasses at each place, one for water and the rest for each of the six wines that were served. The grand dukes could hardly complain about being annoyed or affronted, although they may have groaned about being hungover the next morning.
IX
In addition to the various dinners that take place at the White House each year, there is also a full schedule of receptions. Some of the receptions start at 5:30 P.M. but the more formal ones usually begin at eight. The guest list numbers about fifteen hundred and everyone has a chance to shake hands with the president. On a number of occasions, I was invited to join Mother and Dad in the receiving line. I didn’t mind greeting their guests—most of them were quite pleasant—but I did mind shaking fifteen hundred hands. You can—and I did—incur serious damage to your fingers from pressing that much flesh.
“Handshakitis” is a common complaint among White House residents. Is there anything that can be done to avoid it? I’ve made a little study of the issue, with some help from several presidents. Early in his career Harry Truman examined the problem with the thoroughness that he brought to all aspects of any job he tackled. Dad decided that the essence of survival handshaking was timing. You should seize the other person’s hand before he or she grabbed yours. You should always slide your thumb between the other person’s thumb and index finger, so that you, not he or she, did the squeezing.
Some presidents and first ladies have devised alternatives to the handshake. Edith Roosevelt held a bouquet of flowers in both hands, exempting her from the need to endure mashing. Instead of letting his own hand get crushed, Bill Clinton often used both hands to deliver a friendly democratic squeeze— without getting squeezed in return.
X
It may be hard to believe, but the president used to hold receptions on New Year’s Day and the Fourth of July to which everyone in Washington was invited. I should hasten to add that they didn’t all come. The social elite were almost always on hand but the working classes, realizing that neither their clothes nor their manners were suitable, mostly stayed home.
In James Monroe’s era, New Year’s Day receptions attracted about a thousand people, but as Washington grew into a fullfledged city, the crowds grew progressively larger. By Grover Cleveland’s day, the number had risen to six thousand, putting an inordinate amount of stress on both the president and the White House floors. Calvin Coolidge, already on his way out of office, dispensed with the 1929 event and spent the holidays in Florida instead. I can readily identify with his excuse: He and his wife were sick of getting bruises from shaking so many hands.
Herbert Hoover revived the tradition and between noon and 3:30 P.M. on New Year’s Day, 1930, he shook hands with an incredible 6,348 people. Hoover repeated his performance in 1931 and 1932, but that was the last New Year’s Day reception at the White House. In 1933 the lame duck president followed Coolidge’s example and decamped to Florida for the holidays. Between the Great Depression, World War II, and the burgeoning population of Washington, the receptions were never revived.
Still, you can’t say they didn’t have a good run. One hundred and thirty-one years is pretty impressive. The Fourth of July receptions, on the other hand, never even came close. They were started by Thomas Jefferson in 1803 and ended by Martin Van Buren in 1839.
Van Buren hated the crowds that poured into the White House for his New Year’s Day and Fourth of July receptions, and his guests usually came away hating him. To keep them from staying any longer than was absolutely necessary, he refused to serve refreshments, which were the main reason most of them came.
Van Buren was particularly impatient with the Fourth of July receptions, which interfered with his summer escape to New York. Determined to find a way out, he let it be known that the president would be out of town on July 4, 1839, and the White House would not be open for callers. Presumably his successors were equally eager to escape Washington’s beastly summers. Never again was there a reception on the Fourth of July.
XI
About fifty thousand people attend White House dinners and receptions each year. I am convinced that the White House catering staff deserves most of the credit for their success. Usually, they have a little more lead time than Lyndon Johnson gave them in 1963. But they are used to working miracles on short notice.
When former prime minister Ehud Barak of Israel visited the White House in 1999, Bill and Hillary Clinton planned an official working visit that included a luncheon for eighteen people. When word of Barak’s arrival got out, so many people wanted to meet him that on five days’ notice the luncheon for eighteen turned into a dinner for five hundred.
Eleanor Roose
velt, who could never be called a social butterfly, was nevertheless a demon hostess. She was forever inviting supporters of the many causes she espoused to the White House for tea. There were so many of these gatherings that she frequently had two a day. One of my favorite White House staff members, Alonzo Fields, used to call them “doubleheader teas.”
Lou Henry Hoover gave Eleanor Roosevelt a run for her money when it came to inviting people to the White House. In 1932 alone, she presided at forty teas and held receptions for eighty different organizations. She and the president were also quick to extend luncheon and dinner invitations, often on very short notice. Once, after ordering food for a one o’clock luncheon for six people, Ava Long, the White House housekeeper, was informed a half hour before the guests were due to sit down that the number had changed to forty.
Mrs. Long instructed the cook to grind up every morsel of food she could find in the refrigerator and mix up a batch of croquettes. The end product was served with a mushroom sauce and several guests actually raved about it. When one woman asked what the dish was called, Mrs. Long replied tartly, “White House Surprise Supreme.” The housekeeper pulled off another surprise supreme when she handed in her resignation not long afterward.
XII
My favorite example of staff inventiveness was told by my friend Fields (the White House maître d’hôtel and butlers are always called by their last names) some years after he left the White House.
When the Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition was ratified in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was deluged with gifts from wineries all over the world. Little of it was good enough to serve at the table, but FDR was too much of a penny-pincher to throw it away, so Fields was instructed to find a way to use it up.
Punch is one of the standard drinks at White House receptions. For a crowd of 1,200 people, Fields and his staff would prepare about 45 gallons of fruit punch for the nondrinkers and 110 gallons of spiked punch for those who liked stronger stuff, obviously the majority. Fields uncorked a few of the gift wines and went to work experimenting with various combinations until he came up with several recipes that passed his taste test. One of the most lethal contained muscatel, sauterne, applejack, and scuppernong. Another, only slightly less dangerous, combined blackberry wine, claret, sake, and sherry.
It didn’t take long for the wines to disappear, but Fields occasionally had twinges of anxiety. “I could always see the headline,” he said. “President’s party has tragic end. Guests go berserk after drinking spiked punch at the White House. Chief Butler being held for investigation.”
Questions for Discussion
What purposes do White House social events serve?
Why do White House dinners have to be carefully planned?
What is the value of having an entrance ceremony for the president?
Dolley Madison personified the wise use of womanpower. Her warmth and wit won several political battles for her brilliant but reserved husband. Credit: White House Historical Association (The White House Collection)
6
Womanpower
I FIND IT amusing that the East Wing, which was built by Charles McKim in 1902 to provide a visitors’ entrance and coatrooms, and rebuilt by Franklin D. Roosevelt to add extra office space during World War II, stands on the site of Thomas Jefferson’s henhouse. I wonder what Jefferson would say if he could see the flock of females who are hanging out there now—the first lady’s staff and sometimes the first lady herself, plus the predominately female White House social office.
There is irony at work here. Thomas Jefferson did everything in his power to keep women, except for scullery maids and laundresses, out of the President’s House. Convinced that women should have nothing to do with politics, he hoped to inspire a tradition whereby all the social events in the White House were relentlessly male.
In the Washington, D.C., of his era, Jefferson’s attitude all but paralyzed the government of the United States. Politics is not an art form that can be confined to legislative halls. It includes a vast amount of personal give-and-take at social events where women can smooth the rough edges of quarrelsome males.
Aside from all this, the president’s deliberate exclusion of women infuriated them. They found their opportunity for revenge after President Jefferson gave a dinner for the new British minister, Anthony Merry, and his wife, Elizabeth. Ignoring the rules of etiquette, he let his guests find their own places at the table. When Mrs. Merry’s husband, the guest of honor, was seated far from the president, she persuaded the minister not to accept any further invitations to the White House.
Jefferson denounced Mrs. Merry and blamed her for the problem. But he soon discovered that the women of Washington took Elizabeth Merry’s side. Without quite saying so, they admired her refusal to let the “Democratic Emperor,” as some of Jefferson’s enemies called him, push her around. Prominent among the secret sympathizers was none other than Dolley Madison, the wife of the secretary of state.
Jefferson worked himself into a near frenzy defending his behavior. But the ladies of Washington flocked to Mrs. Merry’s dinners, and the president slowly realized he had lost his battle to keep women out of politics.
II
If Jefferson had any doubts about his defeat, they vanished when James Madison was elected in 1808 and Dolley became the first lady. Already well known as a hostess, she swiftly made it clear that ignoring the rules of etiquette and men-only dinners in the White House were as dead as the dinosaur bones ex-president Jefferson liked to collect.
For openers, Dolley staged the first inaugural ball at nearby Long’s Hotel. Attended by over four hundred people, it was heralded as “a handsome display of female fashion and beauty.” Next, Dolley turned the White House into a political and social power center, with the two ideas so intertwined that no one could tell the difference.
Womanpower. The term did not exist in the nineteenth century, but the White House came to personify it. The State Dining Room became the scene of weekly formal dinners for as many as thirty men and women, with Dolley at the head of the table, presiding over the conversation. At Dolley’s Wednesday evening receptions in the Elliptical Saloon, today’s Blue Room, she engaged in conversation that was often highly political but simultaneously amusing and informative.
Few doubt that Dolley was responsible for her husband winning a second term in 1812. The warm atmosphere at her parties and her ability to make each guest feel important worked wonders on the congressmen and senators who could have blocked his nomination. By that time, if Dolley were mean-spirited (she wasn’t), she might well have asked: “By the way, whatever became of that guy with the silly ideas about women—Tom Jefferson?”
III
Dolley Madison singlehandedly transformed the White House into a public platform for womanpower. The next first lady to take advantage of this breakthrough was Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams. Beautiful, charming, a gifted musician and writer, Louisa had only one problem: her husband. John Quincy had political ambitions, intense ones, but no political abilities whatsoever.
When Adams became secretary of state under James Monroe, Louisa decided she was his only hope of winning the White House. She plunged boldly into the swirling social stream and emerged as her husband’s campaign manager, or perhaps a better term would be party chairman.
Louisa began giving a weekly dinner party and launched “Mrs. Adams’s Tuesday nights” in which men and women mingled in a convivial atmosphere reminiscent of Dolley Madison’s drawing rooms. In 1822, Louisa topped everyone, including herself, with a New Year’s Eve party for five hundred.
Thanks to Louisa, John Quincy Adams won the presidency in 1824. I wish I could say the result was four years of triumphant happiness. Alas, the opposite was the case. John Quincy proved to be a poor president. A lot of his problems arose from the close election, which was decided in the House of Representatives. Louisa’s partying paid dividends there, but Andrew Jackson, who won the popular vote, accused
Adams of making a “corrupt bargain” with another contender, Kentuckian Henry Clay, to win his votes by making him secretary of state. The accusation wrecked Adams’s relations with Congress.
Still, no one could take away Louisa’s triumph; to this day she remains the only female campaign manager to put her candidate in the White House.
IV
The White House has empowered women other than presidents’ wives. Among the least recognized members of this group are the women who operated as substitute or stand-in first ladies for bachelor or widowed presidents or for those whose wives were ill or simply not interested in serving as White House hostesses.
The first of these stand-in first ladies was Andrew Jackson’s niece, Emily Donelson, who was married to her cousin, the president’s private secretary, Andrew Jackson Donelson. Although Emily was only twenty-one when she came to Washington, she had been born on a Tennessee plantation, and was unintimidated by either the size of the White House or its social responsibilities.
Despite her busy family life—three of her four children were born at the White House—Emily did a good job as hostess and household manager. In addition to being a model of tact, she was one of the few people who was not afraid to stand up to the notoriously fierce-tempered Jackson.
The next president, Martin Van Buren, was also a widower. He spent his first two years in the White House without a hostess. Then his son Abraham married a twenty-two-year-old South Carolina belle named Angelica Singleton, who soon took over the social side of the White House.
