There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gather'd then Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men . . . —Lord Byron
The Duchess of Richmond's celebrated ball for Wellington's officers, on the eve of Waterloo, was a mere fish fry in comparison with the goings-on nowadays at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Jack and Jackie Kennedy's talent for serving up a dazzling concoction of beauty and brains, politics and culture, shamrocks and chandeliers is enough to boggle the most jaded eyes. Last week, at a couple of brilliant levees, the President and his First Lady did it again—and again.
High Octane. The week's entertainments got under way with the annual Congressional Reception—a duty date that is ordinarily the dullest of the six official receptions that protocol requires the President to give each year.* Reporting the party for the New York Post, svelte Marion Javits, wife of New York's Republican Senator Jack Javits, wrote that "the First Lady was stunning in a white satin sleeveless dress embossed with brightly colored flowers into which tiny pearls were sewn. She wore long diamond and emerald earrings and a diamond hairclip." Another fashionplate was Harlem's own Representative Adam Clayton Powell, strolling around in "a green Austrian evening jacket with a black velvet collar and, for buttons, Franz Josef coins."
As for the dancing, reported Marion Javits. ''no one did the twist, and, although no one let his hair down, the dance floor was far from grim. The cha cha and the waltz were the favorite dances." The repast in the state dining room was dominated by two huge, brimming silver punch bowls topped with floating strawberries. "I asked Senator Hubert H. Humphrey if he thought it was spiked. He said, 'And how—with high-octane gas!' But attendants said one contained rum and pineapple juice, the other bourbon and apple juice."
The First Lady was escorted to her private quarters by the President just before 11 p.m., but he returned to mingle with his guests and talk politics until the witching hours. "Before departing." wrote Reporter Javits, who lives in Manhattan while her husband commutes to Washington during the legislative season, "the President graciously asked my husband to bring me to Washington more often. With all respects to New York, he jocularly observed that Washington was a much jazzier town these days."