(See front cover)
In a front gallery of Washington's tacky old Smithsonian Institution stand the plasticine ghosts of 33 famed U. S. women. Once the hostesses of a nation, their attitudes are models of spectral graciousness. Sitting placidly in her painted rose silk, motherly Martha Washington has raised her head as though she has just recalled that another of George's huge hose is hanging by the fire and needs mending. Mary Todd Lincoln, who loved style as much as her homely husband detested it, enjoys an elegant moment of respite in her pansy velvet gown, serene in the knowledge that her exquisite little fan and parasol would be the envy of many a prairie lady back home in Illinois. Lucretia Garfield stands resolutely erect, prepared for tragedy. Edith Carow Roosevelt placidly reads her book. Only the faintest notes of discord jar the harmony among the ghostly ladies in the Smithsonian gallery. Pale Ellen Axson Wilson has joined Mmes Taft and Roosevelt in their glass case, while her successor, Edith Boiling Gait Wilson stands with Florence Kling Harding and Grace Goodhue Coolidge, whose short skirt and sorority pin would have mystified many in that quiet company.
Some day from a studio in the nearby National Museum Building will come another plaster figure to join the silent party. It will be a long-legged model probably dressed in Eleanor Blue and posed to suggest energy, cheer, simplicity. The face, which in the living original is dominated by a generous, tooth-filled mouth, receding chin and warm, humorous eyes, will be indistinguishable from the faces of all the other First Ladies. For Sculptor William H. Egberts of the Smithsonian avoids arguments with friends, relatives and the subjects themselves by giving all the Presidents' wives the face of Frances Pierce Connelly's bust of Cordelia, daughter of Lear. Her costume, contours and hairdress (a loose, high knot) will be preserved but completely lost will be the unrouged freshness, the amazing vitality of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt.
Until Eleanor Roosevelt came there, the White House's most energetic mistress had been Dolly Madison. She furnished the executive mansion with fine gilt chairs built in France, had the good sense to hide the Lansdowne portrait of Washington and fly to Virginia when the British invaded Washington. But when the British left, Dolly Madison came back home. As every reader of newspapers is by now aware. Franklin Roosevelt's Eleanor uses No. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. less as a home than as a base of operations. Mrs. Madison was limited to horses as her means of locomotion. Mrs. Roosevelt rides her horse Dot in Rock Creek Park for fun. To get herself places she has at her command airplanes, trains and a blue Buick convertible coupe. Since March 4 she has traveled incessantly up & down the nation, across it and back, visiting all manner of places and institutions. She has traversed its skies and its surface so thoroughly that, in epitomizing her ubiquity for the ages, the New Yorker pictured two coalminers at work in the earth's bowels (see cut, p. 12). One miner is saying: "For gosh sakes! Here comes Mrs. Roosevelt!"