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Alice Roosevelt Longworth, wild thing
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June 7, 1999 | WASHINGTON (AP) --
Mrs. L, as many called her, didn't need a motto, but she had one,
embroidered on a sofa pillow: "If you haven't got anything good to say
about anybody, come sit next to me." In a city where gossip is currency, she
was rarely alone. She has been gone since 1980, when she died at 96, having been center
stage in Washington since her father, Theodore Roosevelt, followed the
slain William McKinley to the White House in 1901. The event filled Alice
with "utter rapture." But Longworth is having an active afterlife in the memoirs and
biographies of other people. She is mentioned 10 times in "Personal
History," the memoirs of Katharine Graham, the former publisher of the
Washington Post. She appears 64 times in Carl Sferrazza Anthony's 1998
biography of first lady Florence Harding, cited in the index under such
categories as "political informant," "spitefulness of," "unconventional
behavior of," "extramarital affair of" and "WH (Warren Harding)
disparaged by." Longworth -- whose husband, Nicholas Longworth, was a Republican
speaker of the House -- appears an additional 34 times in Anthony's
two-volume history of America's first ladies, weaving in and out of one
administration after another. Graham recalled her mother, Agnes Meyer, as "always ambivalent
about Mrs. Longworth," despairing at her "brilliant but sterile mind." "After one party they both attended early in 1920, my mother described
Alice as having been in a very carnal sort of mood," Graham wrote. "She ate three chops,
told shady stories and finally sang in a deep bass voice: Nobody cultivates
me, I'm wild, I'm wild." By the standards of Washington early in the 20th century, Alice Roosevelt
had been wild indeed. Her father, the president, said famously that he could
manage the government or manage Alice -- but couldn't possibly do both at once. Attracting enormous publicity, she smoked, drove her own car, plunged fully
clothed into a swimming pool, placed a bet at a race track, was seen in
public wearing a boa constrictor around her neck, set off firecrackers and
shot at telegraph poles from a train; she was universally dubbed "Princess
Alice" after she christened the yacht of Kaiser Wilhelm's brother. "In the Progressive Era there was no star like the princess," Carl Anthony
writes. "She became an idol to women around the world ... Shortly an
'Alice industry' was set in motion. When it was discovered that a particular
gray-blue was her favorite color, 'Alice blue' was born ... Sheet music for
the hit song 'Alice Blue Gown' became impossible to get because it kept
selling out." Longworth's East Room wedding to the Republican lawmaker was a spectacular affair. The
marriage itself was decidedly sour, but it did nothing to dampen her style. When her father was succeeded in the presidency by William Howard Taft
she planted a voodoo doll of Nellie Taft, the new first lady, on the White
House lawn. She honed an impersonation of the first lady in which she mocked her
"hippopotamus face" and "Cin-cin-nasty" accent. Years later, Longworth added to her repertoire an impersonation of her cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, whom she had tormented since youth. A congressman's wife, describing Alice at a White House party in 1911,
said she "held the very scant skirt quite high, and when the band played,
kicked about and moved her body sinuously like a shining leopard cat." At a
society ball about that time she bounced to the Turkey Trot while blowing
rhythmic puffs of cigarette smoke, causing some to liken her to a rocketing
locomotive. Five, six and seven decades later, Longworth was, in her words, "an
ambulatory Washington monument," still parading opinions. The stories are still being told, in print and at Washington parties. She forbade Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., to call her by her first name, saying the trash man had that privilege but he didn't. She adopted a
trademarked wide-brimmed hat and told President Lyndon Johnson she wore it so
he couldn't get close enough to kiss her. She had known every president since her father took her to the White
House at age 6 to meet Benjamin Harrison. Like many of Harrison's successors, he
left her unimpressed. "He was like a rather solemn bearded gnome," she recalled. © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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