Since Mr. Putin's Russia is quite conservative, ruling our country, Lithuanian Ex-Communists pretend to be liberal. They courted American liberals, ruled by Biden. Now after Trump's victory, Lithuanian diplomatic corps are lost. Let's help them. How is the work done?
"The Woman Who Knew Everyone
By Meryl Gordon
Grand Central, 496 pages, $34
Washington has known its share of prominent hostesses. As the sociable wife of the nation's fourth president, Dolley Madison brought together the warring members of Congress at her fabled Wednesday evening "drawing rooms." Then there was Alice Roosevelt Longworth -- the strong-willed, sharp-tongued daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt and the wife of Nicholas Longworth, speaker of the House. A throw pillow in her living room was embroidered with the words: "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."
But Dolley and Alice were pikers compared with Perle Mesta, the wealthy widow from Oklahoma who reigned over Washington's social scene from the 1930s until her death in 1975. One of the most recognizable women of her era, she is little known today -- unless you're familiar with Irving Berlin's 1950 Broadway musical "Call Me Madam," which was inspired by Mesta's exuberant personality and her 1949 appointment as U.S. minister to Luxembourg (de facto, the U.S. ambassador). The show's signature lyric refers to the star -- played by Ethel Merman in the original production -- as "the hostess with the mostes' on the ball."
In contemporary lingo, Mesta was the "GOAT" of Washington hostesses -- the Greatest of All Time. Author-journalist Meryl Gordon presents Mesta in delectable detail in "The Woman Who Knew Everyone," a lively and readable biography. Ms. Gordon has also written biographies of the style icon Bunny Mellon and the Manhattan socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor.
The "everyone" of the book's title encompasses presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Richard Nixon, as well as A-listers from other realms. Judy Garland, Wehrner von Braun, Supreme Court justices, and just about every politician and his wife who passed through the capital during her decades in residence showed up at Perle's place. Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson were close friends.
Born "Pearl" Skirvin in 1882, Mesta spent most of her youth in Texas and Oklahoma, where her father amassed a fortune in oil and real estate. Along the way, she changed the spelling of her name to the French "Perle," which she considered a more cosmopolitan rendering. In 1917, she married George Mesta, a Pittsburgh machine-tool magnate. When President Wilson appointed George to a government board during World War I, the Mestas began to spend time in Washington. It was during that period, as Mesta wrote in her 1960 memoir, "that I began to understand how a Washington hostess could be a factor in politics by having the right people at the right time." George died of a heart attack in 1925.
Mesta started off as a Republican supporting Calvin Coolidge before becoming a Democrat during FDR's administration, a switch that earned her the nickname "two-party Perle." She had a rocky relationship with JFK and Jackie, who viewed the 80ish hostess as "old news," Ms. Gordon says. The first lady put Mesta on her personal do-not-invite list. The misleading photo on the book's cover pictures the two women smiling sweetly at each other.
Ms. Gordon portrays Mesta as a friendly, warmhearted woman who treated people of all stations in life with kindness and respect. Above all, she loved politics. "She liked the role of gatekeeper," Ms. Gordon writes, "introducing influential people to one another and feeling she could shape events, at least at the margins."
But she rose to celebrity status in no small part because she went out of her way to cultivate ties with journalists. Her parties usually included members of the working press, who obligingly wrote positive articles about her. (She kept track.) Her annual shindig for female reporters was designed to give them the chance to hobnob with the political elite of Washington from whom they often were excluded because of their sex. According to Ms. Gordon, the database newspaperarchive.com offers up more than 98,000 references to Mesta between the 1920s and her death roughly 50 years later.
Not all of the coverage was favorable. In keeping with the sexism of the era, reporters focused inordinately on Mesta's age, which she wouldn't reveal, and her weight, which fluctuated. Somehow it was news when a slimmed-down Mesta appeared in public wearing a size-10 dress. At the time of her death, Ms. Gordon reports, no obituary got her age (92) right.
When President Truman named Mesta as the U.S. representative to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the intellectual snobs in the State Department were vicious in their attacks. Sen. Owen Brewster, a Maine Republican, rose to her defense: "She is neither senile nor a dipsomaniac, which is more than you can say for some of the members of the diplomatic corps." The Luxembourgians, for their part, adored her. Mesta accomplished exactly what Truman had wanted her to do: She enhanced America's reputation and built goodwill in a country that had been traumatized by war.
While Mesta's lavish parties put her on the map, she had a serious side too. Beginning in the 1930s, she was a passionate supporter and energetic worker on behalf of a proposed Equal Rights Amendment. She was a major Democratic fundraiser. She was a popular columnist for the New York Herald Tribune. She was a faithful Christian Scientist. By the end of her life, Ms. Gordon writes, she was "part of the national cultural firmament."
In her later years, Mesta told a reporter that Harry Truman "taught me everything I know. He told me never to be afraid to put people together who disagree. 'Get them together for a party. They'll be friends before you know it.' " Now there's a prescription for our own disagreeable political culture: Let's party!” [1]
1. Her Glamorous Guest Lists. Kirkpatrick, Melanie. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 22 Jan 2025: A15.
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