Speak snidely and carry a green snake
Or, the three lives of Alice Roosevelt Longworth
If you can’t say something good about someone, go sit by Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The Washington socialite, wit, and daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt had words to that effect printed on a throw pillow, which is as good a way as any of laying claim to a quip.
Mrs. L, as she liked to be called, was an aphorism snowball: A big personality who said some clever things to get things rolling and then picked up credit for all sorts of lines, even when she insisted they weren’t hers. Her particular specialty was the political putdown, and her insults helped her play three distinct roles on the Washington stage.
First, she was the Wild Child, or more precisely “a young wild animal that had been put into good clothes.” Teenage Alice moved into the White House with her widowed father in 1901 and proceeded to smoke on the roof, sled down stairs on stolen tea trays, and wear pantalettes in public. She named her pet snake Emily Spinach, after a hated aunt. She became the first woman ever to be issued a speeding ticket. “I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice,” her father said. “I cannot possibly do both.”
As Teddy and the Oyster Bay Roosevelts gave way to their distant relations Franklin, Eleanor, and the Hyde Park Roosevelts, Alice assumed the role of Black Sheep, or as Time styled her, the “knife-tongued wit of the Old Guard.” No politician could ever live up to her father, and she felt no hesitation at pointing this out. William Howard Taft was “great in girth … but great in nothing else.” Calvin Coolidge looked “like he was weaned on a pickle.” Thomas Dewey looked like “the little man on a wedding cake.” Wendell Willkie “sprang from the grass roots of the country clubs of America.” She made a particular point of razzing Franklin (“a good little mother’s boy whose friends were dull”) and her “poor cousin Eleanor.” All the first lady’s do-gooding seemed to inspire Alice’s do-badding. When Rebecca West visited Washington in 1935, she noted that “intellectually, spiritually, the city is dominated by the last good thing said by Alice Roosevelt Longworth.”
And finally, Mrs. L became a Grand Dame, hosting dinner parties in her Dupont Circle mansion, bantering with LBJ and Nixon, giving freewheeling interviews, and bathing in the “delight of pouring out yourself to someone who listens with rapt attention and takes down every precious word.”
The lesson from her long life: Figure out the part you’re expected to play and give it your all. Her Wild Child, Black Sheep, and Grand Dame roles inadvertently line up with her three-part summation of how she lived her 96 years:
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. And scratch where it itches.
Quick quips; lightning
“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”
— Sean O’Casey
“It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.”
— George Bernard Shaw
“Prior to the Reagan era, the new rich aped the old rich. But that isn’t true any longer. Donald Trump is making no effort to behave like Eleanor Roosevelt as far as I can see.”
— Fran Lebowitz
There’s the 31st issue of Get Wit Quick, a weekly vinaigrette of pantalette vignettes. My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting graphically details the many perils of pickle-weaning. Pour yourself out by tapping the ❤️below.