Never on Saturday
By DENIS BROGAN
IHE restaurant we had booked into is one of the smartest in Washington's smart district, Georgetown—which is a sort of superior Chelsea. Thirty years ago it was full of Negro slums. Now its 'Federal' houses (late Georgian) are very chic indeed and very expensive. It was from a Georgetown house that John Kennedy moved to the White House. So Georgetown has some of the attractions of Soho and Greenwich Village plus the Boltons. Alas, this has become known, and Georgetown is filled with visitors who want to see and sample le hig lif in which the national capital is not notably rich.
So we found the restaurant jammed, our reser- vations worth a dicer's oath and were able to contemplate the American bon pere de famille our with his wife and children on a Saturday night. We were able, too, to observe with resentment three `GGs' (Government girls—i.e., civil servants) spinning out their post-prandial coffee in a way that irritated the many hungry and thirSty would-be. customers. We threw in our hands, which was annoying, for Washington dining hours are as late and maddening as those of Paris, and, after hunting and peeking, we got a bad meal in a French-style restaurant that may have avoided being overcrowded by being so bad that even Washingtonians notice it.
But Washington in many ways is a paradoxi- calcity. I have known it for nearly forty years. In that time it has altered greatly. The Federal Government has built on a scale that would fill an emperor like Nero with envy (and I suspect in much the same taste). The United States is now one of the two great world powers. There are a hundred embassies and scores of inter- national organisations. It has, especially in the burgeoning spring, something of the charm that Henry Adams remembered as being the 'note' of the overgrown village that was Washington 'before the war.' And now spring is bustin' out all over. It came with a rush. The temperature went up to the eighties and the city bloomed. And it was Cherry Blossom Week. This is now a great national ritual. Before the First World War, the Mayor of Tokyo sent seedlings of dwarf cherry trees to Washington as a token of Nippono-American friendship. They flour- ished and even survived the protests of outraged patriots after Pearl Harbor. And a tradi- tion grew up, possibly fostered by the Washing- ton Board of Trade (anglice Chamber of Com- merce) of inviting 'Cherry Blossom princesses' from all the States, choosing a Cherry -Blossom Queen and• thus encouraging tourists to visit the nation's capital. This tradition, about as old as singing 'Abide with me' at Wembley, is now deeply rooted, and Washington was full of pretty girls in their light summer dresses.
It is not only the White House that has tried to keep Washington from being a small, languorous southern county seat. It is not the magnificent art galleries or the new and impres- sive and aesthetically unsatisfaCtory science museum. It is not even The School for Scandal or the presence of Sir Ralph Richardson at the White House party in honour of Sir Winston, It is the opening of a new and super-duper hotel, the Madison. Hotels play a far greater part in American life than in ours. In particular, Washington, a city for tourists, pilgrims, poli- ticians separated from their families, is lavishly provided with hotels. But the Madison is different. It is to be operated 'in the European tradition.' We are told, truthfully, that hotel origin- ally meant a 'town mansion,' but, alas, the noble word has gone the way of the noble faubourg. `Today you will find guest homes, inns, lodges, motor courts, and even rooming houses, that call themselves "hotels." ' None of this for the Madi- son. It is to be the `town mansion' of its guests, as if Oriane de Guermantes were to take boarders.
The first great mark of the Madison is that it does not permit conventions or tourist parties to -`block book.' This not only keeps out some potentially noisy guests, but—a point not stressed by the Madison—cuts down the number of children and teenagers. Everything is done with great dignity. The Montpelier Bar, I am glad to see, is not as dark as it looks at first. (The. American passion for drinking in the dark' shocks me as much as the English habit of making love in public shocks Americans.) But I won't go on Saturday, and merely note without censoring that the only guests making use of the excellent wine list was what appeared to be a coven of the Teamsters' Union.
Thanks to the good offices of a friend, I was taken to the Gaslight Club. Washington has never gone in very much or very successfully for night-clubs of the New York type. It has dinner plus entertainment, but I can only re- member what I would call one genuine night- club, which I shall never forget, because a friend of mine who rashly bought a ticket in a raffle won a horse for which he had no use. He gave it away to the raffle girl. I have been told of the charms of 'The Speakeasy' and of two belly-dancing institutes known as the Port Said and the Suez. But the Gaslight is above all this. It is the pioneer 'key club.' It has its recon- structed speakeasy like the Temple of Mithras in the City. Its atmosphere is rather that of the Gay Nineties. There is a remarkable statue (un- mistakably French) of a plump young woman about to dive while wearing a marble bathing suit. The young ladies are quite adequately clad, though the fact that they are callipygous as well as 'talented' (in the old Hollywood sense) is not concealed. Indeed, it was rather a case of `fannies by gaslight.' No; the Gaslight and the Madison possibly suggest that Washington is not a drowsy southern town. And after all, the White House is a great social centre too. But what is it like on Saturday night?
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