Word: longworth
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...President was in a lively mood at a party celebrating the 90th birthday of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. When his wife Pat gave the tart-tongued daughter of Theodore Roosevelt two jars of Iranian caviar, Nixon indiscreetly confided that it was a gift "from the Shah to Pat and from Pat to you." Advised by the President to "eat it with a spoon," the irrepressible Mrs. Longworth replied: "I'll wallow in it"-an allusion to Nixon's celebrated comment: "Let others wallow in Watergate." Asked later about the party, Nixon's Watergate resentments surfaced in an attack...
...Longworth has kept young by not being obsessed by the Washington scene," he said. "You know, if she spent all her time reading the Washington Post she would have been dead...
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who has been described as "Washington's other monument," is unique among Americans: daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, widow of House Speaker Nicholas Longworth (who died in 1931), personally acquainted with every President since Benjamin Harrison, indomitable doyenne on the Washington social circuit for decades. The nation's mighty court her, celebrities seek invitations to tea, Washington taxi drivers lean out and yell, "Hi, Alice!" Marking her 90th birthday this week, "Princess Alice," an affectionate sobriquet from her White House years, continues to survey the capital scene from her rambling mansion on Washington...
...Being 90 is a bore," says Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She pulls a twisted ivory narwhal tusk (a gift from Rear Admiral Peary) from a corner of her drawing room, brandishes it like a spear, strikes a Brunhilde pose-then roars with laughter at her performance, flashing an abundance of Roosevelt teeth. At 90, she is as defiantly unconventional as she was in the opening years of the century, when the nation was never sure whether to be delighted or mortified by her then shocking antics-donning riding breeches, driving an automobile, smoking cigarettes, jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool...
...afternoon tea (which she serves at such choking strength that Comedian Bob Hope once quipped, "She is the only person I know who drinks pot") can include telling glimpses of her own haphazard personal museum-a four-story potpourri drawn from history, whimsy and a driving intellect. "Mrs. Longworth operates the most interesting disorderly house in Washington," an admiring guest once noted. Visitors encounter thousands of stacked books, a calendar of personal engagements from 1907, a 15-ft. tiger skin that was a gift from the Dowager Empress of China, a drawing of a Chinese tiger (she calls the beast...