Lese Majeste

To shock its readers, the New Yorker (a little magazine but a considerable financial success, published by the sophisticates of the metropolis for their would-be-sophisticate fellow townsfolk)last week published an article titled "The First Lady" purporting to be an intimate portrait of Mrs. Coolidge, by one Paul A. Burns. Carefully skirting the shoals of libel, his thesis ended very neatly in the port of Lese Majeste:

"Calvin Coolidge is pretty much of a child in the hands of his wife and his exterior frigidity is not reflected in his home life. If it were, she would laugh him out of it. ...

"She does not dress well. Her choice of models seems to some women inexplicable, for her tone combinations clash violently among one another and with her own coloring. . . . Perhaps, if she had an individual income, she could do better; at least she would not have to exclaim to society reporters at White House receptions: 'Don't be looking me over. I've worn this gown at two other receptions.'

"Her forte is her naturalness. She has refused to be dazzled by her position and has gone on being herself. Florence Harding tried to act up to her job and Edith Gait Wilson assumed extra-legal prerogatives; but neither was popular. . . .

"Her enjoyment never abates over stories that her husband is a mystery. He is as transparent to her as any of the big White House windows through which venturesome owls, believing what they see in the newspapers, may fly in quest of nocturnal postgraduate courses in the art of appearing wise through silence. . . .

"Her own mother objected* to her marrying Calvin Coolidge. Mrs. Goodhue has been quoted as having said she 'never liked that man from the day Grace married him, and the fact he's become President of the U. S. makes no difference.'

"Grace Coolidge seems to have gone back a long way for her psychology of marriage. . . . He may not be all that she desired in her romantic moments, he may be boorish around the house, but after all, the progressive social esteem accruing to the wife of a Northampton Mayor, a Massachusetts Governor, a President of the U. S., is not hard to take. . . .

"The First Lady accepts her husband as he stands. She has her rows in private. Few have heard her complain in public of his lack of deference. . . .

"There is another tale of a White House dinner. Mrs. Coolidge was in a lively mood; she had attended a concert--the Philadelphia Orchestra, Paderewski, or Jeritza--and was quite enthusiastic ... until the President, laying down a fork and drawing a napkin across his lips, interjected: "'I can't understand why you keep running around to these musicales when there are five pianos right here in the White House.'

"Guests were embarrassed. Grace Coolidge was not. She leaned over so as to see around a floral centrepiece and, looking the President squarely in the eye, said with a smile, 'Oh, tut, tut!' "

*It is unfair of the New Yorker to imply that there is any lack of cordiality between the President and his mother-in-law. In July, 1924, Mrs. Goodhue joined her daughter and son-in-law to go to the funeral of her grandson Calvin Jr. ; in March, 1925, she visited the White House for the President's inauguration ; in August, 1925, the President and Mrs. Coolidge motoring from Plymouth to Swampscott paused at Northampton to visit Mrs. Goodhue; and only last April the occupants of the White House sent Mrs. Goodhue a radio set for her diversion.