The Wicked Child Club

Cousin Alice and Me

Fiction writers are eavesdroppers. It’s one of the tools of the trade. Because, in imitation of my journalist father,

I began to write stories early in my childhood, I also learned to observe and record not just the physical movements of my large family, but the deeper emotional currents.

My parents were members of what was known as the Georgetown Set, a group of friends who were well-connected in the world of cold war Washington. They gave weekly dinner parties and the guests included members of the inner circles of Washington power brokers.

Children know instinctively when they can claim a little pinch of power. I learned early on that the gossip I picked up while passing hors d’oeuvres in my pajamas at the cocktail hour or by listening through the floorboards of my bedroom to the dinner table conversations down below could serve as my passport to safe havens away from my emotionally distant and troubled mother. It meant that on Thursdays I’d be invited for tea with my elderly cousin in her four-story house on Massachusetts Avenue.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the oldest daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, the only child of his marriage to Alice Lee who died two days after her baby was born. She entered the White House as a rambunctious 17-year-old party girl who publicly smoked, drank and caroused with men. She kept a pet snake named Emily Spinach in the White House and was once stopped for speeding when she took over the wheel from the chauffeur on her way to a wedding.*  (My grandmother Corinne, and Alice and Eleanor Roosevelt were first cousins.)

Her exasperated father said that "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.”

Her granddaughter and I attended the same Catholic day school so, on Thursdays, Cousin Alice picked us up in her ancient black Cadillac with Turner, her implacable driver, behind the wheel. Once we had dropped Joanna off for her riding lessons, I had Mrs. L all to myself. When Jane, Mrs. L’s housekeeper, wheeled the tea tray into the second floor living room, I propped myself up closer to the teapot with that famous pillow that read, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” Mrs. L treated me like any other guest. She poured the tea through a silver strainer and offered me sugar, cream and a plate of cookies while we settled in for a good gossip.

I adored her for many reasons but especially because I was a timid little girl, the farthest thing from a wild child which is what I really wanted to be.

Me in what I called my butterfly dress

So imagine my delight when recently, I learned from a historian, Michael Cullinane** that he had just transcribed an interview with Alice in which she talks about me.

Apparently when I was only six years old, I picked up on her faux English accent which she herself admitted sounded “absurd” in 20th Century America, so she was especially amused when I imitated her. She declared that at first she thought I was a prim little girl, but when I turned around and repeated her exact words with her odd inflection, she roared with laughter and declared me to be a wicked child. She went on to say that “we became the kind of friends that have never been: we laughed until we cried.”

I have no memory of this encounter, but it does help explain why I loved her company and leapt at every chance to spend time with her. And all these years later, I’m pleased that she had bestowed on me her highest compliment.

Because I was not only a mimic but an eavesdropper, she considered me a member in good standing of the wicked child club.

*With thanks to Allerton Kilborne, Historian, for this anecdote

**Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries by Michael Cullinane