Page:The New Yorker 0002, 1925-02-28.pdf/11

THE NEW YORKER

women wa HE can take a bridge hand and play it well, but young Countess with her European notions who dis- poker is her game. She is one of the few turbed the head of the family in the White House. Marguerite had been introduced to Washington as straights. Nick, of course, taught her this unfeminine the niece of the ambassador. She was beautiful and point. But Alice learned. That is the idea. As the she was clever. The imperial Russian embassy in sands of the desert are the loyal poker-playing hus- those days was the brightest spot in Washington. But bands who have thrown away the best years of their one day it came out that Marguerite wasn't Cassini's lives in the forlorn hope that their wives could assimi- niece at all-wasn't a countess or even a Cassini. late just such a precept of the game. This was too continental entirely. The Count ex- You must excuse the intimate "Alice" and "Nick.” plained, but left town and in a year or so the "Count- It is a way the Washingtonians have with Mr. and ess" was taking in sewing in Italy. Mrs. Longworth-or to be But Ruth Hanna re- exact, Mr. Longworth and mained, and remains still- Alice Roosevelt. If all the until March 4-in Wash- were like Alice ington. She is the wife of there would be no Lucy Medill McCormick, the Stone League. (1) No oc- retiring senator from Il- casion: Alice Roosevelt has linois. To her Alice turned been married for nineteen when dazed by her father's years and she is still Alice death. To her she turned Roosevelt, by operation of last summer when the re- natural phenomena. (2) cent birthday event first ac- No desire: She prefers the knowledged its approach. style of Mrs. Nicholas Announcement of the Longworth. When she Longworth baby's coming wishes to be Alice anything the biggest news in and can have her own way Washington since Teapot she is Alice Longworth, Dome. The buzz of gossip not Alice Roosevelt Long- before its arrival described worth. an interrogation point as This is not because she is tall as the Washington trying to live down her "How did past. It springs from a de- Alice Roosevelt Longworth Alice like it?" Ah, there licacy about trading on the was rumor on rumor, Fi- Roosevelt name. The Roosevelt-Robinson stuff does nally, one woman who could bear the uncertainty no not go in this quarter. longer went to Mrs. Longworth and asked her, Alice She is still the Princess Alice. It is astonishing in knew her woman, She concealed the delight which a way—how the capers of that vivid girl of twenty everyone who really knew her knew she felt, and re- some years ago have left their impress on the woman plied, in a quizzical way that she has, that she was of to-day who has her first grey hairs and her first always willing to try anything once. baby. Alice Roosevelt was the first woman in Wash- "And what in the world did she mean," demanded ington to smoke in public and the first to have her the estimable old ferret, "when she spoke of the ex- monogram on her cigarettes. She was among the first pected as her 'grand baby'?” to drive an automobile and to drive it too fast to suit The lady would have been worse con founded had the constabulary. she understood Alice rightly. The Countess Marguerite Cassini taught Alice to What Mrs. Longworth really said was her "gland smoke, and in a roundabout way the Count Cassini, baby." Russian ambassador and dean of the diplomatic corps, Washington's buzz of intense interest was echoed lost his job on that account. Alice, the Countess and by the country when the news of Paulina's birth Ruth Hanna, old Mark's daughter, were as thick as was broadcast. The A. P. flashed it from Chicago could be. T. R. and Senator Hanna didn't get along, as that ponderous service would the announcement but this wasn't held against Ruth. It was the Ay of a President's death. On the floor of the House monument,