New Design For Living At The White House

Press, Volume C, Issue 29513, 15 May 1961, Page 2

New Design For Living At The White House

[TM» U the second in a eeries of sir article* by KATE LANG, well-knotcn author and journalist, on the tastes of the President and John Kenneai/j Jacqueline Kennedy has lit the White House fireplaces and opened the White House windows—literally for the first time in eight years, figuratively for the first time in many more. In the short time that she has been mistress of the mansion she has carried over to official functions her warmth, strong regard for personal comfort, and sharp eye for beauty.

The usual diplomatic reception at the White House has consisted of an interminable receiving line composed of all the subalterns in every mission in Washington, with the ambassadors and their wives lucky to shake hands with the President. Food has usually been limp sandwiches. Floral decorations were arranged with all the magnificence of a gangster’s wake. The guests at the Kennedy's diplomatic reception were met by music, and fires crackling Ln the fireplaces, both unprecedented (the fireplaces had gone unused for so long that smoke escaped into the reception room and guests bad to move elsewhere. This sign of gracious living did not go unnoticed, however, and hardened diplomats loved it.) . The guest list had been pared down to heads of missions so the Kennedys could talk to every guest. Among the hors d’oeuvres were strips of hot filet mignon wrapped around toothpicks, which could be picked up and dipped into sauce. Mrs Kennedy, herself, checked from time to time to make sure they were hot The flowers looked, as one ambassador's wife put it “as if they had been arranged by a human hand.” Arranging Flowers

Arranging flowers is one of Jacqueline Kennedy’s great pleasures. She admits to bning keener on this end of horticulture than on gardening itself. Her arragements are her signature, and her flowers have the controlled beauty of a Flemish painting. She pours flowers into deep strawbaskets. enormous copper containers or little silver mugs. She likes to put them on tables at the eye-level of guests sitting in deep armchairs. Abhorring the precise almost antiseptic quality of the usual floral arrangement, she masses her flowers in such a way that they are pretty at any angle. » Wild flowers like Queen Anne's lace are combined with anemones and garden flowers such as tulips, lilacs and roses. She is especially fond of anemones, marvellously brilliant red, purple and white accents in a room. The point is, thinks Mrs Kennedy, that just as a house should look as if it had been decorated lovingly by the owner and not by a distinterested professional, so should a bowl of flowers look as if it had been arranged with pleasure, not ordered coldly over the telephone. During the election campaign there was a cartoon in the "New Yorker’’ showing a group of clubwomen playing cards. The caption ran more or less like this: “Of course I'm voting for Nixon, but I can’t help wishing I could see what Jackie would do with the White House." It's fairly clear what Jackie will do with—and for—the White House. Three weeks after she arrived there she replaced the musty, funereal potted palms with lovely fig trees. A house. Mrs Kennedy

feels, is a place where persons live. Along w;th the delicate antiques there should be plenty of deep, comfortable chairs for m-n to talk and read happily. On the dinner table, there should be Large ashtrays for men's smoking needs. There should be nothing, she says firmly, that a child can’t touch. Perhaps that's why Caroline is so lively, so unlike the kind of child described by Eric Larrabee. In "The Self-Conscious Society," he writes: “The middle-class child's discovery that the living-room furniture is more important to his mother than his impulse to crawl over it undoubtedly finds a pfece in the background of the etiology for a certain type of neurosis. ...” The furniture in a house. Mrs Kennedy believes, should go with its architecture. In her Georgian bouse in Georgetown, the furniture was Federal: in her Cape Cod house, it is sturdy early American. In Glen Ora, the house in Middleburg, Virginia. which the Kennedys leased, some of the owners valuable antique furniture has been taken out and the Kennedy's own more sturdy furniture substituted. In the soft green drawing room are Mrs Kennedy’s sofa and slipcovered chairs, pale green and light yellow. There is a Louis Quinze desk for the President and French chairs belonging to the owner which have all been recovered by Mrs Kennedy. In Jacqueline Kennedy’s room, the wallpaper and the chintz headboard of her twin beds are of the same pink and white

floral pattern. She has kept a small French desk which belongs to the owner. Caroline’s room in the ■ White House is fresh and! charming. The walls are! pale pink and the woodwork’ white, and again, the pink! and white curtains are of the; same chintz as the material! on Caroline's four-poster bed.; On the floor is a fluffy, wash-; able white rug. John Fitz-! gerald Kennedy, jnr„ on the! other hand, has an all-white i room, except for pale blue; moulding on the doors. His bassinet is the same one that I was used by Caroline and i Mrs Kennedy herself. Small Dinners The Kennedy's favourite form of entertaining—the! spontaneous get - together—> will, of course, be limited; now. But small dinners, for! about eight to 12 persons, will continue to be the bulk of their party-giving, and their favourite kind of party-going, even in the White House. Often, they've been known to sneak out of the White House at 11 p.m. to visit old ; friends and neighbours in Georgetown, and sit talking long into the night. The President and Mrs Kennedy drink daiquiris on i occasions, the President even rather absent-mindedly. Mrs Kennedy will sometimes drink a martini or a gin and tonic. The Kennedys play no bridge., no charades, no chess. At their parties, there is only! good conversation, the lively stimulating exchange of ideas. Will America, perhaps, re-1 discover the gentle art of talk’—“New York Herald Tribune,” Inc.