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During next winter's White House social season Mamie must hold, at the barest minimum, six state dinners—at which as many as 100 formally clad guests are seated in the State Dining Room—as well as big, formal evening receptions for the Cabinet, the diplomatic corps, the judiciary, Congress, officials of federal departments and agencies and the armed forces.
Mamie is a woman who has always liked small, informal parties and the company of old friends. Henceforth, she will also entertain humanity in the mass—hundreds and often thousands of people are invited to White House garden parties, and the First Lady greets them all. As soon as she is established, the ladies of Washington will begin driving to the northwest gate of the White House to drop calling cards. From then on, the President's wife shuffles and sorts, picks and rejects, and entertains the worthiest (and the luckiest) at an endless succession of afternoon teas and receptions.
It is a prospect which has driven many another new First Lady to attacks of the vapors and an addiction to smelling salts. But life in the White House is what a woman can make it, and politics, too can be fun. Dolley Madison did not hesitate to use the "President's palace" as a stage from which she dominated Washington society, set styles, started fads, charmed and captivated the great men of the U.S. and the diplomats of the world, and held endless, glittering levees, dinners and receptions.
The Other Ladies. Dolley was not the only First Lady to leave her mark on the capital. Stately Elizabeth Kortright Monroe startled society by putting her daughter in pantalets, painted and dressed her self to the hilt (though she was a grand mother), ran the White House like a Eu- ropean court, weathering a series of female squabbles which would have sunk a lesser social frigate. "Lemonade Lucy" Hayes drew masculine scorn for refusing to serve wine. But she had an enthusiastic following, and not on temperance grounds alone. Women throughout the nation, especially that group now classified under the generic name of Clubwomen, thought she was wonderful.
Like everything else in American life, the First Lady's job has become more institutionalized in this generation. As a result, Mrs. Eisenhower will have less scope than her distant predecessors. Even so, she may, if she chooses, cut more swath than the last eight First Ladies.
The White House has not been truly "social" since the day of the first Roosevelts — who brought money, social position and gusto to Washington and, with unabashed swank, dressed White House servants in their family livery.