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Washington society persists chiefly because the capital is one of the world's most boring cities. It is a city of history, monuments and no industry. Its big men are strangers to it and to one another. Its natives live in it like caretakers in a museum, scornful of the gawking tourists, keeping aloof from the public gaze, resentful of being crowded, vaguely proud of the privilege of darting through the doors marked "private." It has no theater, little music, no night life of note, no distinguished restaurants. Washington society is an exhaustive effort of Washingtonians to have fun.
Big Business. Next to Government, society is Washington's biggest business. Its annual expenditure runs to tens of millions of dollars. It absorbs the energies of 40 or 50 top-flight hostesses, debutantes, party consultants, 25 society columnists and writers, and assorted sycophants and camp followers.
Hubert's and Avignone Freres, Washington's biggest caterers, each handle up to 700 parties during the season, as many as 14 a day during the December peak. Ridgewell's can supply 200 silver table settings instanter. Hubert's even has Washington's drinking habits well measured—three cases of champagne for every 100 guests. Total costs for a little buffet reception of 1,000 people, including service, flowers, awnings and orchestra, run not less than $15 a head.
No Strangers. Once, when Washington itself was only a malarial outpost on the banks of the Potomac, Virginia society considered the Government its own social corral. The entire U.S. Government consisted of less than 50 officials, and few were strangers to Virginia's hostesses. The ladies called familiarly at the White House, and Dolly Madison, with bird-of-paradise feathers nodding from her famed turbans, drove through the muddy streets to return the calls.
Most First Ladies, thrust into power by their husbands' skill in electioneering, were either unfitted, disinclined or too poor for the expensive game. Young, dark-eyed Mrs. Grover Cleveland was the last White House mistress to exert social dominance (she frowned on the bustle and the bustle disappeared). The White House experienced a brief, last burst of gaiety when "Princess Alice" Roosevelt (now the widow of Speaker Nicholas Longworth) made her debut there and was serenaded wherever she went with Alice Blue Gown.
In Washington's gilded, gaslight age, the cave dwellers (native Washington society) took over. The last of their queens were wealthy Mrs. John R. McLean, a Virginia lady of formidable presence, and her convivial, raucous daughter-in-law, Evalyn Walsh McLean, who died in 1947. Evalyn wore a diamond (the Hope) as big as a tiger's eye, and called men impartially "darlin' boy." At her crowded parties (at the old and new "Friendship"), men had to bring their brains with them; Evalyn delighted in pairing mortal enemies at dinner. Said an old friend, admiringly: "Evalyn had spite."
By the time Mrs. McLean rose to her zenith, the cave dwellers had retreated one by one to the hills, to ride to hounds over the Virginia and Maryland countryside, to gather at the Warrenton Hunt in their pink coats, or to sulk in their silken tents.