Last week, in a richly furnished room overlooking the lights of Washington, the Vice President of the United States danced a little solo to the strains of an accordion and a guitar. Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder and Postmaster General Jesse Donaldson beat time, grinning appreciatively. With the Italian ambassador and the others, Senator Tom Connally and Colonel Louis Johnson, the new Defense Secretary-to-be, caroled My Old Kentucky Home and The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You. Mrs. Perle Mesta, all gotten up in a brown net Dior dress, was entertaining at "Uplands."
Perle Mesta is the capital's No. 1 hostess, a position she had inherited, almost by default, from a long line of free-spending, haughty, and sometimes charming dowagers. Hostess Mesta had discovered a useful and economical secret: her kind of guests like to entertain each other. At Perle Mesta's parties, Harry Truman has played the piano, General Ike Eisenhower has sung Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes (in a shaky baritone), Pat Hurley, without too much encouragement, has given his Comanche war whoop, and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt has whistled in a duet.
On such jolly occasions, the food is always bountiful, the liquor excellent and plentiful. A teetotaler herself, Mrs. Mesta sips Coca-Cola and warily watches the spirits rise around her. She likes everybody to be gay, but not to get out of hand. It is a kind of entertaining peculiarly suited to the plain Government of plain Harry S. Truman. So is Hostess Perle Skirvin Mesta.
The Cribbage Board. A hearty, goodfellow type of woman, Perle Mesta is an Oklahoma widow, whose wealth came from a marriage of Oklahoma oil and Pittsburgh machine tools. Not even her warmest admirers, who liked her liveliness, would credit her with overwhelming charm or notable wit. But ambassadors, Senators and Cabinet officers come at her beck. In a city where a hostess' success can be scored like points in a cribbage game by counting up the rank of her guests, Perle Mesta outscores them all. Unlike her predecessors, Perle Mesta won her position not by prestige and not alone by wealth. She won by 303 electoral votes —those that elected Harry Truman.
Professional society is based on entertaining people who are not necessarily your friends. Washington visitors are astonished at the ferocity with which it is practiced in the capital. Years of rigorous competition have produced a prototype of the hardy, or winter-blooming Washington hostess. She is a widow, past 60, of ample means and ample bosom. She must have enough forwardness to fight for her prey, enough toughness to withstand the fangs of her rivals.
Crossroads. She needs to know nothing about high policy, but she must know a lot about politicians. She is a master of the cross-phone invitation (tell the Chief Justice the Secretary is coming, tell the Secretary the Chief Justice is coming, get both).* She is a kind of social crossroads; her guests come not so much to see her as to see each other. Her satisfaction comes from hobnobbing conspicuously with the great and near-great.