(3 of 10)
Oiling the Hinges. Ever since the first cave man sealed a tribal alliance over a haunch of charred flesh and a gourdful of fermented juice, such working sessions have been as much a part of diplomacy as the formal conference. Thanks largely to his wit and disarming manner at parties, Benjamin Franklin coaxed 55 million livres out of a nearly bankrupt French government during American Revolution. Bound for the Congress of Vienna, Talleyrand told King Louis XVIII, "Sire, I have more need of casseroles than of written instructions," and his success in softening the terms imposed on his defeated nation in 1815 was due in no small part to the superb table laid by his chef Caréme
"Entertaining," says one diplomat, "oils the hinges of a man's office door It is true that the whole party round can be a wearing process, and many a diplomat, trapped in a wall-to-wall crush, has recalled wistfully how Andrew Jackson climbed out of a White House window during his own Inaugural reception in 1829 and hot footed it across the Potomac to Gadsby's Tavern "But sometimes," says U.S. Ambassador to Poland John Moors Cabot, "there is a direct payoff, with an immediate discussion behind the potted palms." Some recent payoffs along Washington's champagne circuit:
>At a reception earlier this year, Mexican Ambassador Antonio Carrillo Flores got Vice President Lyndon Johnson and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann into a drawing room tor a two-hour talk, emerged with the promise of a settlement of Mexico's 52-year claim to the 630-acre Chamizal strip on the Texas border (TIME, July 26).
> During last year's Red Chinese border attacks, Indian Ambassador Braj Kumar Nehru entertained high State and Defense officials, ironed out at private parties many of the details involved in the offer of U.S. military aid.
>When the State Department was threatening to cut its foreign aid allotment to Spain, Madrid's Ambassador Antonio Garrigues appealed to Catholic Congressmen he had cultivated at luncheons and dinners, persuaded them to help block the cut.
Befuddled Nikita. In eclipse nowadays are the ladies who held social sway during the Truman and Eisenhower years. "I started out having little attachés," Gwendolyn Detre de Sunny Cafritz, Hungarian-born wife of a wealthy Washington builder, once said, "and I worked my way up to the Supreme Court." But while Gwen could once corral several Supreme Court justices for her annual October cocktail party lately she has been getting none. Her chief rival, Perle Mesta, used to make up guest lists "like Noah, who invited something of everything into his ark " But Perle has sold her ark, a mansion called Les Ormes, to the Lyndon Johnsons, now lives in an apartment less suited to serving regiments.