New-York tribune., 1912-03-17
" ashington Impressions
Copyright. 1912. by GeOrs. w. small.y.)

sense, too late; by which mean that
had unwittingly offended acquaintance
whom 1 would have conciliated IL 1 had
known how. Their number was not,
hope great, and for all my carelessness
l found Washington enchanting.
With her 100000 inhabitants, the
capital has, and can have, but limited
society. If New York, rejoicing in her
four millions. has but Four Hundred, or.
when weeded, even less Washington IS
entitled arithmetically to less than forty.
The actual number is, Of course, much
, larger, the composition of the capital Of
American Democracy being essentially
aristocratic. Nevertheless, If you dine
out much you continually meet the same
people. or some OF the same. In the
! official world that is still truer, and it
was against this compulsory monotony
OF dinner table companionship that Mrs.
Hay protested. She broke it UP for the
time being. having both authority and
courage. In general society it cannot be
broken up: unless society itself is broken
up. What a hostess Of tact does is u
! rearrsnge her dinner table for each dim
ner. The same guests need not and do
not sit next each other.
| All this used 20 be done 10 perfection
at Mrs. Townsend's, whom may name
because of her social leadership. Mrs.
Townsend made a wise use of the re-
| sources at her disposal. That spacio Is
and beautiful interior gave her every op.
portunity, and no opportunity was
neglected. ono resource, one attraction
she and Washington have lost and New
York has gained since her daughters
marriage and since Miss Mathilde Town
send became Mrs. Peter Gerry II is a
good rule not TO mention a girls name,
! but no rules are always binding When
the fame of girls beauty is European
as well as American. when coronets and
millions lay neglected at her feet, when
Sargent has painted her. there are in
career so dazzling elements Of publicity.
We did not altogether refrain from men
tioning the Princess Patricia, and even
| in London a girls name sometimes gets
into print. Such scruples may be out of
~
However. with or without the daush-
! ter, Mrs. Townsend's house is still a CEN
tral point in Washington life.
like to embroider my page with these
names, and with others which add 10
the beauty of the pattern. The Wash.
ington Of the 90s and OF the last decade
was a garden Of flowers, as it still U.s.
Some Of them, like Miss Alice Roosevelt
and Miss Helen Hay. had celebrity
which is more than the celebrity of the
drawing room. The poems which Miss
Helen Hay wrote were a true express
nature: with An imagination which en-
abled her to conceive Of alien natures
and alien life in the South Seas and to
put them into picturesque verse. Later
poems are by Helen Hay Whitney since
in her case marriage and new ambitions
did not monopolize her. Miss Mary
Letter as a girl had the same qualities
which afterward shone In the dazzling
light Of a vice-regal throne. Miss Daisy
Letters brilliant girlhood blossomed
into an English wifehood, wearing
sedately an old title in an old Wiltshire
home; her husband the nineteenth Earl
Of Suffolk; with still older earldoms and
a dukedom and three beheaded dukes Of
the same name, as far back as the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, II
these and other girls graduated from
Washington they have left successors,
and the girl life of the capital to-day is
still delightful. There in as sweet per
fection as anywhere is to be seen the
American Girl whose fame has become
European. q. W. s.