Letters from a Senator's Wife, by Frances Parkinson Keyes
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Library of Congress Letters from a senator's wife, by Frances Parkinson Keyes LETTERS FROM A SENATOR'S WIFE Copyright by Boyé, San Francisco Frances Parkinson Keyes LETTERS FROM A SENATOR'S WIFE BY FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES AUTHOR OF “THE CAREER OF DAVID NOBLE,” “THE OLD GRAY HOMESTEAD,” ETC. LC D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON MCMXXIV F199 .K46 Copy 2 COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 329953 '24 LC Copyright, 1921, by The Curtis Publishing Company Copyright, 1921, 1922, 1923, by International Magazine Company PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To The First Two Presidents of the Ladies of the Senate Lois Kinsey Marshall and Grace Coolidge with most sincere affection LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Letters from a senator's wife, by Frances Parkinson Keyes http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.12626 Library of Congress Frances Parkinson Keyes Frontispiece Baroness Romano Avezzana, the Wife of the Former Italian Ambassador facing page 24 Invitation to Mrs. Marshall's Last “At Home” 47 The First Two Presidents of the Ladies of the Senate facing page 48 Invitation to the White House 65 Mrs. Harding in Girl Scout Uniform, Taken with “Laddie Boy” at the Time of the Girl Scout Meeting facing page 78 Invitation from the Marie Curie Radium Committee 80 Invitation to Mrs. Harding's Second Garden Party 83 A Group of the Hostesses for a “Senate Ladies' Lunch” facing page 98 Invitation to the Burial of the Unknown Soldier on Armistice Day 136 An Invitation to the British Embassy 156 Invitation to the Diplomatic Reception at the White House 165 Madame Varela, the Wife of the Minister from Uruguay facing page 198 Invitation to a Cruise on the Mayflower 209 An Invitation from the Serbian Legation 229 Madame Grouitch, the Wife of the Former Minister of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes facing page 230 Letters from a senator's wife, by Frances Parkinson Keyes http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.12626 Library of Congress The President of the Congressional Club, Mrs. Byrnes of South Carolina facing page 310 1 LETTERS FROM A SENATOR'S WIFE Washington, D. C. December 6. Dear Mary, When I came home from the Capitol this evening I found your letter lying on top of about twenty others that were waiting for me on my desk. I have read it through twice, and now, though I'm pretty tired, I'm going to answer it before I go to bed. The first part of it interested me very much. But, after you'd told me what you were doing yourself, you finished your letter with a paragraph that made me feel very badly indeed. “I suppose all this seems very trivial to you now,” you wrote. “Every time I hear from you —and that's usually indirectly—you're doing some wonderful thing or meeting some wonderful people, and I'm afraid that the Connecticut Valley is beginning to seem pretty provincial to you, and that you'll forget your country cousins and your old friends. Yet not long ago you were living on a farm, just as I am, pretty lonely at times, after having grown up in a big city, trying hard to be public spirited and progressive in your own village but finding it uphill work, partly because you had 2 so much to do at home for the children, and partly because you hardly ever saw any women who came from the center of things, and could give you the benefit of their knowledge and experience and vision. I remember you said once that you felt as if you were ‘mentally starving’ sometimes; and that if the time ever came when you stopped being hungry, so to speak, you'd share your feast with your friends whom you'd left behind. Have you forgotten?” Mary, dear—first of all—I shall never forget my “country cousins and my old friends.” Wherever I go, and whatever I do, they will be very near and very dear to me always. Letters from a senator's wife, by Frances Parkinson Keyes http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.12626 Library of Congress Sometimes great waves of homesickness come over me, and I feel as if I'd give anything if I could drop all I'm doing and take the train for home. But of course I can't because my job is here now, just as much as yours is on the farm. And that brings me to the second thing that I want to say—I certainly haven't forgotten the years when I lived on a farm, too —most of all I haven't forgotten that I felt “mentally starved” sometimes, and longed for the encouragement and stimulation that comes from the contact with women who are doing what we call the “big things”—though, as a matter of fact, there's nothing bigger in my mind, than what you're doing every day of your life! I do want to share, now that I'm in “the center,” not only with you, but with all my old friends, for that matter. If I write to at least one of you every month, won't you send the letters to each other? And won't you all, in return, write to me telling me what you're doing, and what interests you most in what I'm doing? 3 My experiences as a new senator's wife began, I shall always feel, as I sat at the telephone, the cold perspiration running down my spine, taking in the primary returns from all over the state of New Hampshire, as they were sent in to me from Republican Headquarters on September 3, 1918. This was not the first time that I had taken an interest, too personal to be entirely comfortable, in the primaries, for, almost exactly two years earlier, when Harry was running for Governor of New Hampshire, I had gone through a similar experience. But this time the vigil at the telephone seemed a much longer and harder one than on the previous occasion; the returns, instead of being sent to me direct from the different cities and towns, were sent first to Republican State Headquarters, and then from there to me. There were intervals, sometimes an hour long, between reports; and my husband, instead of being safely occupied at the Town Hall, was pacing up and down the room, tired after a hard campaign—for it is no joke to be the “war governor” of a state and run for the United States Senate at the same time!—and inclined to take a gloomy outlook on life in general and on the primaries in particular. It was not Letters from a senator's wife, by Frances Parkinson Keyes http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.12626 Library of Congress until four in the morning that I answered the telephone for the last time, and turned to him almost sobbing out what I had to tell him. “They say at Headquarters that you've won by a handsome margin.” He snatched the receiver from me. “What do you call a handsome margin?” he shouted; and then we burst out laughing together. Not long afterwards he had the rather unusual experience 4 of signing—as governor— his own appointment—as senator; and on the 19th of May, 1919, he “took his seat” in the United States Senate. The “swearing in” of new senators is a simple and impressive ceremony. Each junior senator is taken by the senior senator from the same state to the Vice President, who shakes hands with him, and standing there he repeats the words of his oath of office—“I — — do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office in which I am about to enter. So help me God.” Then he goes and, literally, “takes his seat.” The Senate chamber, unlike the Supreme Court chamber, is far from being a beautiful or impressive apartment—it is very old, very dingy, and very poorly ventilated, as the new senator's wife soon discovers as she sits, glorying, of course, in her husband's achievement, but at the same time sweltering, in the gallery reserved for senators' wives. This “reservation” is not as strictly observed as it might be; and, unless she goes very early on the days when especially interesting speeches are being made or unusually noteworthy events are taking place, she is likely to find herself left out in the cold. I was rather amused, on my own first visit, to find six Sisters of Charity sitting calmly on the back row! And there is a story of one woman who went there, saying she was Senator So-and- Letters from a senator's wife, by Frances Parkinson Keyes http://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.12626 Library of Congress So's wife, only to be 5 told by the bewildered doorman that he could not let her in—that Senator So-and-So had three wives there already! But in spite of the bad air and close quarters, she misses a great deal if she does not go to her gallery often, for history is made fast in the United States Senate nowadays, and she never will forget the impression made upon her by the speeches she hears delivered, and the measures she sees passed (and, incidentally, she can learn more of practical politics and civil government there in one week than she can from any book written on those subjects in a year).