A Washington DC Debut

The breakfast, with 35 tables at Raucher’s, was designed to outshine the famous Dolly Madison breakfast of last year and it would be almost a heresy to say it did not. —Public domain image of former American First Lady, Edith Wilson, photographed in 1915.

MRS. WILSON RECEIVED INTO WASHINGTON SOCIETY

WASHINGTON, April 5. When the first real official society function of the administration — the “debut” of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson — swung into being shortly after noon today, there was not one soupçon of politics to be found. Mrs. Wilson hates politics. and had refused to be a party to any event, however harmless and purely social, that had any political leaning. So when the introductory breakfast by the women of Washington was ar- ranged, the real opening of the White House season, the affair was as thoroughly representative of all factions that you could not say which or who was predominant. The breakfast, with 35 tables at Raucher’s, was designed to outshine the famous Dolly Madison breakfast of last year and it would be almost a heresy to say it did not.

Great care had to be employed to keep the tabooed political situation off the menu, because Mrs. Wilson had declined with polite armness any invitation to be chief guest at a breakfast of the Woman’s Democratic Club. So it remained for Mrs. Stephen B. Ayres to initiate a breakfast that would thrust all such entanglements far away.

Officially backing the breakfast were such organizations of women as the Daughters of the American Revolution. the Colonial Dames, the Washington Club, the Southern Relief Society and the Congressional Club, besides scores of individual women of official and social Washington.

Mrs. John W. Kern, wife of the senior senator from Indiana, was designated as toastmistress and at her right hand was seated the guest of honor. At Mrs. Kern's left was Mrs. Thomas Riley Marshall, wife of the vice president, and at Mrs. Wilson's right sat Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, wife of the secretary of state. The wives of other cabinet members were placed in carefully selected order beside these leaders of the administrative set great diplomacy having been employed to make the seating seem accidental, yet harmonious with recognized rules of the etiquette of the capital.

One of the little ceremonials at the One of the little ceremonials at the bead table was the pledging of one another by Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Bryan and Mrs. Kern with a great colonial mace from the house of burgesses of Virginia. This over, the attention of the guests was turned to the menu and table chat.

When the final morsel had vanished and last sip of coffee had gone the way of all coffee, the guests gave ladylike gasps of content and turned to listen to an illustrated lecture by Abby Baker on “The Historic White House.” This discourse told of previous chief ladies of the land and of the many social events that had their being in the executive mansion. Little sidelights on people and things, told in a delightful vein, made the talk more of a personal reminiscence than a report from historical data.

Those who helped Mrs. Ayres get up and execute the breakfast were Mrs. Matthew T. Scott, Mrs. James W. Pinchot, Mrs. Henry F. Dimock of Washington and New York, Mrs. Albert Covington Janin, Mrs. Richey. Mrs. John Hays Hammond, Mrs. J. Taylor Ellyson of Richmond. Va., Miss Nannie Randolph Reath, Mrs. Duncan U. Fletcher and Mrs. Albert B. Cummins of Iowa.

It was all very select and very proper yet more than 350 women had secured tickets. There was no particular restriction because it had been given out very early in the new administration that “swell” doings were not on the four-year social program at all. And yet some who have attended other like functions said it was just as recherche as any and that Mrs. Wilson's debut would stand in history in just as glowing colors as the introductions of a dozen other mistresses of the White House.

Mrs. Pinchot is one of the leaders of the movement to abolish the burdensome “duty calls” which have proved so confusing to society at the capital. She proposes to rouse sentiment among members of the Congressional Club to carry out its primary object of mutual improvement. In previous adininistrations, Mrs. Pinchot declares, the women have deluged one another with calling cards, which came to mean little. “A machine could do that work as well,” she said. With the prospective “simplicity” of this administration, Mrs. Pinchot believes much of this useless “calling” can be dispensed with. — United Press Association, 1913

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