Sullivan republican. [volume] (Laporte, Pa.) 1883-1896, 1890-07-18
THE EXECUTIVE MANSION.
DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENT AT
THE WHITE HOUSE.


Cooks and the Kitchens-A Com
ssSplete Laundry-Table Linen.
= After breakfast, which always occurs
exactly at $50, Mrs. Harrison sees the
steward, McKim, and gives him the or
ders for the day, says Miss Grundy in the
New York World. This means that she
tells him whether there are to be guests
and whether she wishes any changes
made in the decorations of the private
dining room. He arranges the entire
menu for the day, does the marketing
and oversees the servants. Unless it is
the housekeeping season that is all the
time Mrs. Harrison gives to her kitchen,
but you may be sure she has just as much
interest in everything going well as a
young matron when giving her first din
uer, and she says that the only difference
between her cares now and when she was
a private citizen is that she does not need
to worry over the preparations for enter
tanning.
She has introduced numberless changes
which give home-like air to the private
dining-room. One of these is to have
the table for breakfast and luncheon
spread with napkins instead of with one
large cloth. 1t gives the table, which is
large round affair of very light oak, a
dainty effect. Every dish has a pretty
dolly and in the centre there is always a
bowl of flowers.
wonder if this country has any idea
where its china is kept. There isn't a
=, So fIo 1or1 hot hac
not better accommodations. There it is
all the elegant ware which the former
mistress of the White House gathered
with so much pride and in the face of
so many growls from the Congressional
Appropriation Committees which sup
piled the money-tucked, crammed and
jammed into an unfinished closet which
would hardly kennel two mastitfs. No
wonder that so much of it is broken and
nicked that each succeeding mistress of
the White House almost sheds tears over
the ruin of the thing most dear to wo-
mans heart, rare china. Until President
Arthur's day there was not even this
closet, all the valuable china being stored
in the basement; but he had this closet
cut from the little hallway by the ele-
vator. There are two rows of shelves
about three feet deep, and there the
three sets which belong to the service
are kept, one-third of them being on the
floor. Mrs. Harrison says that of the
1000 pieces, made at so great an expense
in the Hayes Administration, there are
not more than four hundred left. Wo-
men all over the land know how it is
not to have enough silver knives and
forks to go round, and they have all felt
the anguish of seeing the most distin-
guished guest get the plated one by mis-
take. But who would dream that the
White House would not have enough
knives and forks to go around, and yet
it is true. Every time fifty people set
down to a state dinner there two of them
take their bouillon from plated spoons,
their terrapin from plated forks and cut
the fillet of beef with plated knives.
1t is horrible thought, but there are
only four dozen genuine silver knives,
forks and spoons in the buffers pantry,
and by the most skilful ingenuity they
cannot be made to do duty for fifty people.
There is one set of knives and forks in
the sideboard which has history, for it
cost President his reelection. These
are the gold knives and forks which Van
Buren added, and when the people learned
that the public moneys were being taken
to put gold spoons in Presidents mouths
they promptly defeated him. Now, the
truth of the matter is that they are not
gold at all, and the people were hasty in
their judgment. They are solid silver
washed with gold, and it was only few
years ago-in President ArthIr's day
that they began to wear off, and disclose
the hoax. He had them rewashed, and
they are still used on state occasions.
They are small, fne-bladed and much
more delicate than those commonly in use
in this day. Many of the larger pieces
of silver date back to Madison's day, al
though no memoranda have been kept,
and it is hard to tell when things were
purchased.
The busiest place in the whole Execu-
tive Mansion is in the basement, over
which Dolly johnson, the colored cook,
presldes. Dolly is tall, fine-looking
woman, light of color and probably not
much over thirty. President Harrison
secured her short time ago from Ken
lucky, and, from all accounts, Dolly
knows how to suit Presidential appetite
much better than the former cook, Nine.
Pelouard, whose fanciful French cooking
was not at all to the plain American
taste. Mary Robinson makes the pies,
bakes the bread and fries the crullers,
and is the assistant of Mistress Dolly
johnson, who confines her ambitions to
brewing soups and basting meats. The
two can get up a dinner that would put
Phillipini, Nicolini and all the other
$40, 900 chefs to the test. Delmonico
has no more juicy meats than Dolly draws
from her oven, and Vanderbilt's own
chef cannot put up better pastry than
Mary. They both wear tidy dresses of
Dutch-blue calico and big white aprons
that cover them from head to foot, but
neither of them wear caps, as the last
suggestion of livery is unbelievable at the
White House.