Word: longworths
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Such swordplay was what the world expected of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt's oldest child, widely described as the "other Washington Monument," who died in 1980 at the age of 96. Friends saw something more. Near death, she roused herself to reprove a guest for being too polite: "I will not have good manners in my house." But as this fascinating, sharply observed biography makes clear, courage and an edged wit were not Alice Longworth's only strong qualities. She was also unfailingly selfish and intermittently cruel. The ruling event of her life came shortly after her birth, when...
...dinner -- and a hardness to anyone who seemed less tough than she. Her shy, awkward daughter Paulina, for example, got little compassion. Alice let it be known that Paulina was the issue of her affair with Senator William Borah, not of her marriage to Speaker of the House Nick Longworth. It is not this home truth that evokes sympathy for Longworth, himself a philanderer and a drunk (as well as a superb amateur violinist), but the fact that he deeply loved the little girl. He died when she was six, however, and Paulina died of a combination of pills...
...alive." Vidal also throws in teasers to keep knowledgeable readers on their toes. Roosevelt's outspoken daughter Alice is quoted on her desire to leave Washington: "Scenes of former glory sort of thing. I don't want to be a fixture." That, of course, is exactly what Alice Roosevelt Longworth became for much of this century. When Oklahoma is admitted to statehood, Roosevelt rails that the new citizens have "in their infinite Western wisdom sent us a blind boy for one Senator." The Senator in question is Thomas Gore, Vidal's maternal grandfather...
...philanderer's nightmare unfolds in all its gruesome comedy. Rich, handsome Simon Longworth sneaks away to Paris for a weekend with his secretary. They are swanning around Fontainebleau when they encounter his wife's two best friends, both of whom believe that the Longworths, alone among their acquaintances, have a happy marriage. Can Simon, experienced lecher that he is, handle this? Certainly not. Rushing toward doom, he reasons that if he has managed to pull the wool over his wife Richeldis' eyes for 20 years, why not try to convince Monica and Belinda that they are blind...
Anderson was born shortly before the end of World War I in Cincinnati, Ohio, but he considers himself a Yankee. He says he's not from a "very old Harvard family," but he is the grand-nephew of Nicholas Longworth Anderson of local bridge fame. After graduating from St. Paul's in New Hampshire he came to Harvard and got married after sophomore year--"which was considered shocking," Anderson adds. Anderson devoted his undergraduate career to rowing: "I did no work whatsoever, I rowed... I had fun rowing," admits the naturalized Easterner. Anderson's interest in nautical behavior took...