The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-11-05
BY WILLIAM ENGLE
Times StaH Writer
Copyright. 1892, by the New York World
Telegram CORPORA tom

Telegram Corporation)
MRS. BENJAMIN HARRISON,
IVA brisk and merry, spoke ap-
provingly today of orchestral
music, James Branch Cabell, the
radio, Hendrix Willem Van Loon
and the chances of good beer
coming back, darkly Of futuristic
art, Sinclair Lewis, the war, the
peace and the Democrats.
In her Fifth avenue apartment
the diminutive and gracious IA
year-old widow Of the twenty
third President made herself as
manifestly a figure concerned with
contemporary affairs as her huS-
band used to be in the fall Of
1888, when he bagged Grover
Cleveland and the mugwumps.
But she made 1t certain, too,
that she avoids public notice. She
lives alone in suit opposite the
park, near the Metropolitan Mu-
scum. Prefers to rent her In
dianapolis house to some one else.
She no longer is the globe trot-
ter that for years she was, though
she bustles all over town, even
disbelieving traffic lights.
Focuses her political interest
upon the Republican committee
of one hundred, of which she is
treasurer. Ponders no more upon
the Chilean quarrel that fretted
the nation in the COS nor upon
the Canadian imbroglio over the
capture of seals in the Boring sea.
But once Chile and the seals
were her immediate concern. Once,
she recalled today, these made the
small talk for the family circle
sitting of an evening in the White
House.
She was the girl widow then of
Walter Erskine Dimmick, who had
died on their honeymoon. She was
living at the White House with
her aunt, the first Mrs. Harrison.
She gradually was finding that
the President, who was an icicle
in public, was warmly human at
home.
THREE years she lived there,
l. shared honors with her aunt,
received with her, and-the
records "glimmered prettily
in black silk trimmed with jet" at
the New Years reception in 1891,
when for the first time electric
bulbs Illuminated the White
House.
Her aunt died on Oct. "a, 1892,
in the same room where Garfield
had suffered in 1881. She and the
President and only a few others
were in the funeral cortege that
moved back to Indianapolis.
When the Clevelands came On
in 1898, it was she who with the
President and only five others
welcomed them as the new occu-
pants of the White House.
1t was not until three years
later, though, that her name
flashed up and down the country.
The newspapers announced that
on April 6, 1896, Mary Lord DIM
mick was to be married to the
former President in st. Thomas
church, New York.
Columns told of her quick hui
NOR, common sense, lack of pre-
tense.
Other columns recalled that her
father, Russell F. Lord, was gen.
eral manager and chief engineer
of the Delaware and Hudson
Canal Co.. that she had had two
years at Elmira college, that her
first husband had been the son of
a former attorney general of
Pennsylvania. Headlines called
her Home Body"
Music, embroidery and reading
were her pastimes. She was not
club woman, but she was genial.
ENERAL HARRISON'S visits
" to her fashionable boarding
house in East Thirty-eighth street,
New York, it then was revealed,
had grown increasingly informal
in that spring of 1896. The guests
had lost their feeling of awe.
They had even fallen into the
1rreverent custom of speaking
of the former President as Uncle
Ben"
1t was, the prognosticators
agreed, a good match, and they
were right.
Today, thirty-one years after
the Presidents death, his genial
and nimble-witted widow spoke of
him with affection. stood with
pride beside his portrait in her
dining room.
This year. she said, her para
mount interest has been Mr.. Hoo
yer. She has had time to read
Van Looms Geography. Vicki
Bam's And Life Goes On" the
strawberry Letters and "The
Outline of Human knowledge.
She had to get in some con-
certs and visits to the Metro
politan Museum, but it is Mr. Hoo
yer who has been heavy on her
mind.
Why certainly I've been active
| think it's duty. Our Repub-
hcan committee of one hundred
has held meetings, sent out lit
erature, really worked.
That was tremendous meet
ing when we had Ruth Pratt and
Colonel Donovan"