The Capital: Pass TheSalt

THE CAPITAL

The social life of Washington is a damask extension of the business day. The season’s dinner parties are invariably dimpled with a dizzying variety of ambassadors, Cabinet members, agency heads, socialites, Pentagonians, and sometimes the President himself. And a major problem to the Washington hostess is the proper seating of her guests by the order of their rank. This is called precedence, or among the truly ingroup, precedence.

Anyone can ring up the State De partment’s helpful Protocol Division to find out who is outranking whom lately. But people who are in the know use as their bible a bright green, suede-backed copy of Carolyn Hagner Shaw’s Social List of Washington, D.C. ($17.50 the copy). Last week the chic in Washington were busily thumbing through the brand-new edition of the “Green Book,” scanning its 7,000 names to see who, if anyone, had been moved above or below the salt.*

Up & Down. Sure enough, Precedential Adviser Shaw has recorded some fascinating shifts, additions and subtractions, and they are now de rigueur. That is because “Gallic” Shaw is the Lady Umpire of the Social Game. She is 59, the daughter of a now-deceased social secretary who first started the Green Book series back in 1930, and she knows her social shallots. Her list, she says, comprises “important people from the social or civic angle and old blue-bloods—people who make the wheels go around in Washington.”

Callie this year advises the uncertain hostess that U.S. Senators can now be moved up three notches, just below the Cabinet. Where to seat the Budget Director? In the old days, presumably because budget balancing was important, he was No. 14 in line; now he has been dropped to No. 24. Where to put the director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the administrator of the Agency for International Development? Peace and international cooperation are definitely fashionable. They move 26 steps forward to Nos. 19 and 20. The U.N.’s Secre tary-General? He is on the list (No. 21) for the first time. The chairman of the

Atomic Energy Commission? In the aftermath of the test ban treaty, he goes back from No. 13 to No. 34.

After You, Alphand. Unfortunately, the precedence business in Washington sometimes unleashes poor sports. France’s Ambassador Herve Alphand, for example, “used to be a very reasonable man,” says a fellow countryman, “but since De Gaulle . . .” It has been said that if Alphand feels slighted at a dinner, he grabs his chapeau and leaves. Once, at a dinner party given by “Scottie” Lanahan (daughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald), Alphand discovered that Adlai Stevenson was scheduled to sit at the hostess’ right. Alphand thought he ought to have that place of honor. After all, the French Ambassador outranks the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

So Mrs. Lanahan hastily juggled the place cards, and voila, poor Adlai finished second again.

The basic problem for Mrs. Shaw is always the question of who belongs on the list and who doesn’t. Will divorce spoil one’s chances? Not unless the matter has been particularly messy. Similarly, anyone who is touched by scandal—Harry Vaughan or Alger Hiss or T. Lamar Caudle—is washed out. Lobbyist Charles Patrick Clark was jettisoned years ago after he publicly took a poke at Columnist Drew Pearson. Last year two prominent women got into a hair-pulling match at a party, and it took four men to drag them apart. As luck would have it, a Green Book reporter saw the whole thing. Pffft!

I Was a Hostess for the FBI? In addition to providing the necessary listings, Callie Shaw also offers helpful hints on social conduct. She sadly deplores “the letting down of the bars of the few formalities we have left,” especially at the New Frontier headquarters. She thinks all official White House receptions should be white-tie, shakes her head over the Kennedys’ black-tie affairs: “I think they’re going to come in pajamas some day.” Nor does she like the idea of small tables at a state dinner, or Jack Kennedy’s habit of strolling among his guests instead of greeting them in a reception line. “It means a great deal to people in the sticks to read about the pomp and ceremony at the White House,” she explains. She is always ready to answer questions from her “patients” and deals out advice with good sense and wry humor. “I always argue violently against curtsying,” she says, “because we don’t know how to do it. A big fat dowager is likely to fall on her fanny.”

This year Callie Shaw will be doing a brisk business. The Green Book has a printing of 5,000 copies. The White House will take a couple of dozen. So will the Defense Department. And for some mysterious reason, the Federal Bureau of Investigation usually buys a few. New hostesses should note that Callie’s name does not appear on her own social list. Big parties? Says she: “I loathe them.”

* The phrase harks back at least to the days when knighthood flowered—and ate exceedingly well. Upon their long dinner tables was placed a big salt cellar called a “saltfoot.” Guests who sat above the saltfoot were those whom the host particularly wanted to honor. Below the salt sat folks of lesser quality.