An Oyster for Perle

For Perle Mesta the call of duty sounded last week above the merry tinkle of cocktail glasses and the clatter of knives & forks. President Truman named his favorite partygiver and Washington's No. 1 hostess to be the first U.S. Minister to the tiny Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (pop. 300,000).

Mrs. Mesta, well-heeled oil and machine-tool heiress (TIME, March 14), raised Democratic campaign funds and stuck by Harry Truman last year when the canapes were scarce in Democratic circles. But she really hadn't expected any reward, she said, "not one single thing." "It would be a lot easier to stay in Washington and I'd have a lot more fun," she told a columnist. "But I think this post is an advancement for women and I ought to accept it."

Although social life ordinarily is pretty dull in Luxembourg, there was nothing to stop Perle from throwing some of her big parties there (to entertain, she will have to add considerable of her own money to the $15,000 or $20,000 salary of a Minister). Since Mrs. Mesta is a widow, protocol officers were spared one problem: when it comes to table-setting, there is no place to put a Minister's husband.

The Senate was expected to confirm Mrs. Mesta with little delay (she had been hostess to plenty of them), so she quickly set about preparing to leave for Europe. She closed "Uplands," her fashionable Foxhall Road mansion, ordered the Mesta mansion at Newport shut up, and moved into Washington's Sulgrave Club. There was one annoying hitch: A shipment of costly fabrics containing materials for the ministerial wardrobe was pilfered en route to Washington, and even the FBI, when called in, couldn't find it. But Perle was not fazed. "It's too hot to think about clothes," said the Minister.

Veterans of the Luxembourg post calculated that the job of running U.S. diplomatic affairs there would leave her about 23 hours of. free time each day.

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