Identifier: recollectionsoff00taft (find matches)
Title: Recollections of full years
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Taft, Helen Herron, 1861-1943
Subjects: White House (Washington, D.C.) Philippines -- Description and travel Washington (D.C.) -- Social life and customs
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead & Company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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il theplace at our table at this short notice. My husband accepted the invitation with almost unduealacrity, and when his guest left started in on his new dutiesfeeling that, after all, Washington might afford just asfriendly an atmosphere as Cincinnati, once he became accus-tomed to it. There is just one incident in connection with the dinnerparty which Mr. Taft adds to his account of that day. Ashe sat down to dinner the ladies on either side of him leanedhastily forward to see what was written on his place-card.The Solicitor General—that was all. Of course neitherof them knew who the new Solicitor General was and itdidnt occur to him to enlighten them until it was too lateto do it gracefully. So he allowed them to go on addressinghim as Mr. Solicitor General while he, having them at anadvantage, addressed them by the names which he had sur-reptitiously read on their place-cards. They were Mrs,Henry Cabot Lodge and Mrs. John Hay. When my husband had been in Washington two weeks 26
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Ji O 5 o si Si y Q y < y. RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS I joined him and we took a small house on Dupont Circlewhere for two years we lived a life, sometimes amusing,sometimes quite exciting, but, on the whole, of quiet routine. Washington society was much simpler then than it isnow. Since that time a great many people of very largemeans have gone to Washington to live because of its un-usual attractions and its innumerable advantages as a resi-dential city. They have changed Washington, by theirgenerous hospitality, into one of the most brilliant socialcentres in the world, where large dinner parties, balls, recep-tions, musicals and other entertainments are of daily andnightly occurrence throughout the season. The very char-acter of the streets has changed. The small, red brickhouses, closely grouped together and neighbouring, even infashionable quarters, on negro shacks and cheap tenements,are being everywhere replaced by marble and granite resi-dences of great beauty and luxury.

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