Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who has been described as "Washington's other monument," is unique among Americans: daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, widow of House Speaker Nicholas Longworth (who died in 1931), personally acquainted with every President since Benjamin Harrison, indomitable doyenne on the Washington social circuit for decades. The nation's mighty court her, celebrities seek invitations to tea, Washington taxi drivers lean out and yell, "Hi, Alice!" Marking her 90th birthday this week, "Princess Alice," an affectionate sobriquet from her White House years, continues to survey the capital scene from her rambling mansion on Washington's Embassy Row. TIME'S Bonnie Angelo called on the irrepressible grande dame recently and found her in zesty good form:
"Being 90 is a bore," says Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She pulls a twisted ivory narwhal tusk (a gift from Rear Admiral Peary) from a corner of her drawing room, brandishes it like a spear, strikes a Brunhilde pose-then roars with laughter at her performance, flashing an abundance of Roosevelt teeth. At 90, she is as defiantly unconventional as she was in the opening years of the century, when the nation was never sure whether to be delighted or mortified by her then shocking antics-donning riding breeches, driving an automobile, smoking cigarettes, jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool. "Outrageous?" she asks. "Not at all. If I had jumped in without my clothes, that would have been outrageous."
In a 1957 interview, she observed that "you have to have a bit of malice to be a good hostess," and she has been a very good hostess indeed. "I'm afraid I'm rather malevolent about people," she says without a hint of contrition. Embroidered on a small pillow in a second-floor drawing room is her favorite maxim: "If you haven't got anything good to say about anyone, come and sit by me."
An invitation to her place for afternoon tea (which she serves at such choking strength that Comedian Bob Hope once quipped, "She is the only person I know who drinks pot") can include telling glimpses of her own haphazard personal museum-a four-story potpourri drawn from history, whimsy and a driving intellect. "Mrs. Longworth operates the most interesting disorderly house in Washington," an admiring guest once noted. Visitors encounter thousands of stacked books, a calendar of personal engagements from 1907, a 15-ft. tiger skin that was a gift from the Dowager Empress of China, a drawing of a Chinese tiger (she calls the beast "Dean Acheson" and notes, "He loved it when I said it looked like him"), an African voodoo mask slipped over the head of a replica of the Statue of Liberty.