Just so you don't think I've gone too soft-hearted about this whole Holiday season...

(Courtesy of the ever-startling Deven Green; if you've not yet been Welcomed to Her Home, well.. you're in for an experience.)

Yup, she's dead. I've been wracking my brains trying to remember something I'd read about the woman that resonated, that really explained the truth about her particular kind of pinchbeck allure. I'm ashamed to admit that it took until this afternoon to remember that it was, predictably enough, from the writings of the marvelous Mr. Leo Lerman.

I hope you'll pardon, Gentle Readers, the quality of this image, imperfect as it is, given the sheer treasurability of what it portrays.  The year is 1968, and Lady Bird is in Palm Beach as the guest of Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post, then wintering at her modest little cottage, Mar-a-Lago.  Why she has chosen to accessorize her swoop-ti-doo-sleeved gown and pearls with what appears to be a Play Wig is an enigma lost in the mists of social history.

A baby named Anne Frances Robbins was born on this day in 1921 in New York City, the daughter of a car dealer and an only middlingly successful stage actress.  That means that today, Nancy Reagan is 93.  So the old saying does have some truth in it, sometimes: only the good die young.

I woke up this morning thinking of Pat Nixon.  I have no idea why.

Stop time.  Have her remember why they need to leave.  Decide to fly out that night, back to the capital, fly back to the children.  Think of a reason.

Many happy returns today to two of the Café's favorite (for very different reasons) ladies...

Whatever their political opinions, the membership of the Ashtabula Literary Society thought Mrs. Roosevelt displayed admirable composure when she came to their monthly Book Night.

...and dishwashing.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily want to be held responsible for what I was wearing my senior year in college, but really - were those trousers ever acceptable?

Morgenstern

Lupino

McKinley

Tarbell

Beware the Idas of March.  Those ladies - sitcom matron, noir siren, first lady, and muckraker alike - will, without question, cut a bitch.

Forty-one years ago today, Pat Nixon looked at ducks, plucked and otherwise.  At times - and really China was not by a long shot the most surreal passage of her life - she must have wondered how and why things turned out exactly as they had.

I was struck by this picture not just because, well, it's Pat Nixon looking at some very wizened ducks, but because, despite her rather dire coiffure (side curls, Pat?  Really?), that is just about the most chic dress I've ever seen her in.  I wonder what Madame Mao made of it...

When it comes to a reasoned consideration of the new White House 'do, let's remember that Mrs. O. might have gone down paths far odder than mere bangs.  Seeing her here in the presence of Cette Coiffure Incroyable, I personally don't see how she had the strength to resist its hypnotic power.

Just been watching it all, of course.  We do do spectacle rather well, when called upon to do so, although a great deal less Kelly Clarkson would have raised the tone immensely.  And I can't wait for the James-Taylor-in-Aretha's-Hat gifs...

Stop time.  Have her remember why they need to leave.  Decide to fly out that night, back to the capital, fly back to the children.  Think of a reason.

It is San Antonio, Texas, November 21, 1963.  They still have to do Houston and Fort Worth.  In the morning, they go on to Dallas.  She plans to wear her pink; she hasn't worn it for a year or more, since the visit of the Maharajah of Jaipur.  She has no idea.

Hmmm... Mostly not terrribly surprising, but I have to admit that last one threw me for a loop.

Guess what - she is!  And so was the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.  It really is a small world after all.

Fifty years ago today, this lovely lady - then most commonly referred to as Mrs. John F. Kennedy (and which makes you feel older, that form of address or the phrase "fifty years ago"?) became a TV star.  She led Charles Collingwood of CBS News on a tour of the White House that was one of the most widely watched programs to date.  She even won an Emmy (well, an honorary one, but still).

Millions of viewers got a heaping helping of vintage Jackie, in a film that, seen today, seems almost as primitive as a Biograph two-reeler.  It's hard to imagine the country now glued to something as stately, sedate, and reverent as the factually titled A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy, and in 2012 it makes for curious viewing (you can see it,whole, here, although alas without contemporary commercials).

Mrs. K. won plaudits for banishing from the president's residence what were then seen as decades of bad taste - to paraphase that Ultimate Arbiter of Good Taste, June Bride, she gussied up the McKinley Stinker she moved into, making it into, if not a Kennedy Modern, then at least a paragon of American Elegance.  To today's eye, though, she replaced Teddy Roosevelt's moose heads and Taft's potted palms with something that looks very much like every middle-brow resort hotel lobby of the next decade (until mod swept away the last vestiges of Mid-Century Federal, sending smoked-glass mirror tiles and mud-colored shag carpet cascading up walls at Hyatts and worse across America). 

It's odd, too, to see so much of the future Jackie O; once her image was frozen forever a year and half after the broadcast, she was never again so present, in such abundance.  Watching her drift from room to room, her vaguely anaesthetized voice murmuring rapturously about "masses and masses of gold and glass..." or the night Pablo Casalas played the East Room, she is at once charming and disconcerting.  Her artless delivery recalls nothing so much as that of a supporting player in a John Waters movie, and the whole thing moves at an underwater pace. 

Her often parodied accent (the still-unfinished Treaty Room is "a chambah of HAAARahs...") is even more distinctive than one expects, an at times beguiling, at times giggle-inducing fugue of Boston (did she pick it up from the in-laws?), lockjaw, and the breathiness more associated with her famous blonde rival.  She smiles on cue, she nods her vast coiffure (Mr. Kenneth at his most cotton-candied), and says things like "It really is terribly good," (of a Van Buren-era portrait) in a way that calls forth the spectre of Gloria Upson.  When her husband joins in for the last few minutes, he seems by contrast to be speaking perfect Broadcast MidAtlantic.

We leave them there, that handsome couple, serene in the cluttered, half-decorated Treaty Room.  All these years later, we know more about them then they ever could have dreamed, a depressing amount of it not even slightly flattering.  The White House still looks much the same, even though it's survived being Ultrachintzed by Nancy Reagan and Little Rock Contempo'ed by the Clintons.  Bits of the Obama updates look even more Conference Center Classic than Mrs. Kennedy's Diplomatic Reception Room (there's a good article on presidential decorating, by the bye, here).

And yes, I am home sick from work today, with too much time on my hands.  Why do you ask?

Bourgeois (this interior), Bess (Truman, the lady deep in her magazine, left), and Birthdays.  Today is hers; she would be, in a better world, 127 today.

Few would argue that she was the most exciting of first ladies, but she had her own kind of homey charm, and she simultaneously managed to keep Harry happy and put up with Margaret (who would sing), which is no mean feat.  If nothing else, she set the stage for Mamie, who seemed by contrast both stylish and vigorous.

I don't know about you, but I'm just mad for that davenport, and I have to admit with a certain pride that somewhere in the depth of a storage unit back home, I have a chair just exactly like Harry's.

In a terrible rush for all sorts of good reasons, darlings, but I couldn't resist (only slightly belatedly) celebrating le jour de la Bastille with this image of overwhelming fabulosity. Yes indeed, look who jetted in to help the Sarkozis celebrate their special day - none other than Café icon and Cameroonian style sensation, the glorious Mme. Chantal Biya!

I am madly in love with the almost baroccoco composition of this snap, in which La Chantal assumes the position of a beneficent background goddess, bestowing her approval on the curious union of the tiny if powerful President of France and his bride. As always, though, the primary thought on Chantal's mind appears to be how very much more glamourous she is than anyone around - and who can say her nay?