VOICES

WASHINGTON, D.C., TALKS AND TALKS AND TALKS The first in a series of verbatim portraits of places

BOB COLACELLO

I play tennis like I was secretary of state: hard." ALEXANDER HAIG author

One can really eat quite well in Washington. That's new. J. CARTER BROWN director of the National Gallery of Art

“My whole life here is different than I expected it to be. I didn’t expect to be so busy. I didn’t expect it to be so confining, which has grown worse since we’ve been here, because of the increase in terrorism all over the world. That’s why Camp David is so wonderful. It’s a place to get away, to get outside. I miss the outside, coming from California especially.” NANCY REAGAN

“Whenever a new administration came in, residential people went to the White House and drove right in, went to the front door, and left their calling card, you know, with their little white gloves. And in due time we would be invited, usually to a musicale or a reception.”

MRS. FONTAINE BRADLEYgreat-great-great-granddaughter of the first mayor of Georgetown, Robert Peter

LEE AND GARY HART “Gary Hart—he’s Jerry Brown without the Medflies.” Overheard at the Jockey Club

“It started out as a going-away party for Morgan Mason, and two days before the party Mike came in and said, ‘You wouldn’t mind if we had the president and Mrs. Reagan, would you? They’d love to come.’ But he said not to tell anybody. Well, good luck. At four that afternoon there was not a place to park on the street because of the communications vans and the dogs and the police cars. Every child immediately knew what was going on. They put up a barricade, and then the helicopter came, and then the SWAT team came, and finally the president did come, and it was a riot. ’ ’ CAROLYN DEAVER

publicist, wife of the president’s deputy chief of staff

“Washington is the classic case of plus qa change, plus c’est la me me chose. The play remains the same. The roles are prearranged: the president, the vice president, the this, the that. Only the cast changes. And the decor upstairs at the White House.” INA GINSBURGtrustee of the Washington Opera and the American Film Institute

“Ina [Ginsburg] knows more about Washington than I do.”

KATHARINE GRAHAMowner of the Washington Post

“It’s a city of 15,000 journalists.”

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEYjournalist

“And there are about twenty that you want to have for dinner.”

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

“The chief justice outranks everybody, except the president and the vice president. In fact, it’s advised not to have the chief justice and the vice president at the same meal—or the speaker of the House. You get into a question of who goes first.”

GENERAL VERNON WALTERSambassador-at-large

“Then there is the cast of characters that stays here all the time, the repertory company. Many of them happen to live in Georgetown: Susan Mary Alsop, Joe Alsop, Evangeline Bruce, Polly and Clayton Fritchie, the Krafts, the Brandons, to a lesser degree the Hardmans—she’s too professional and he’s too much of a saint. Lorraine Cooper. There’s a woman named Mrs. George Garrett, as well as this Edith Munson, who lives across the street from me. Oatsie [Charles] helps set the tone. Their stock rises and falls depending on who they have access to in the administrations as they come in and out. Most of this repertory company is basically Democratic, but by virtue of their jobs or by virtue of their sheer attractiveness as human beings, they manage to have access to other than Democrats. So when a Republican administration comes in they don’t suddenly stop having access. Museum directors are in a very nice, fluid position, because art is apolitical. Your home becomes a nice buffer zone.” JENNIFER PHILLIPS

wife of the director of the Phillips Collection

“It’s very cliquey here in Georgetown. They all used to fly to London once a year and go to Colefax and Fowler, so I thought, well, why not bring Colefax and Fowler to them. They like brighter colors here, but they love the English style. All these houses are made for the English style. One of the reasons I chose this city is that there isn’t the kind of competition you have in New York. So it’s a bit of a pushover. Do I think Republicans have better taste than Democrats? You can’t make remarks like that in this town. The only people with bad taste in this town are Communists. I’ll tell you who is a big name here, Polly Fritchie. Who’s leader of the pack? They all like to think they are, but I would say undoubtedly Evangeline [Bruce] is number one. And then there’s Deeda Blair and there’s Oatsie [Charles]. It’s a bit like the Queen of England the way you talk about Deeda Blair.” ANTHONY P. BROWNE

interior decorator

KATHARINE GRAHAM “Kay Graham is just about as powerful as anybody in the United States—if she just puts her mind to it and wants to be.” OATSIE CHARLES

“When I was a young girl growing up in Washington in the thirties, people like my family, Kay Graham’s family, all lived near Dupont Circle. Georgetown was a place entirely black, with the exception of two or three very fine houses owned by old Washington families, who were known as Cavedwellers. For example, the Peters’ house, Tudor Place, on Q Street at Thirty-first, or the one Ben Bradlee just bought—that’s a very important one indeed. But most of Georgetown was little frame or brick houses owned by blacks whose families had lived here since the time when Georgetown was a port city, in the eighteenth century, and Washington never existed. It began to be very popular in the thirties to buy up these little houses for nearly nothing— many people did it for sheer speculation. The blacks were thrilled, because they thought something like $12,000 was terrific. We drove them into Northeast Washington, you see what I mean, where they are still. And as a present Georgetown resident, I feel awfully shabby when I’m out with one of my black friends and she says to me—they generally say nothing, they’re so wonderful about it—‘This is my grandpappy’s home,’ looking at something somebody bought in 1935 for $12,000 and now it would sell for a million.”

It’s a very derivative town. You get a Reagan in place and Secret Service agents start wearing cowboy boots and western gear. -CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

SUSAN MARY ALSOP author and ex-wife of retired columnist Joseph Alsop

“Twelve thousand dollars? It was more like $4,000! My first mother-in-law was in Georgetown real estate.”

DIANA McLELLAN gossip columnist for the Washington Times

“Adams Morgan, Capitol Hill, Foggy Bottom—anywhere there’s one of those Federal row houses made out of brick, with high ceilings and a window where you can put some stained glass in, the two-professional married team will go in there and wipe it out. Some of them are even homesteading in the area that used to be the morphine killer scene, Ninth and M. You see them there with their big dogs and fancy slacks.”

J. R. BLACK photographer

“This may sound pretentious, but Paris is our favorite city in the entire world, and the scale of Washington is very reminiscent of the scale of Paris. It’s designed that way: a lot of gray granite buildings, the river...I mean, just coming over Memorial Bridge—it’s like coming over the Pont-Neuf. It’s a very romantic city.” JAMES ROSEBUSH

Nancy Reagan’s chief of staff

“Think about Stendhal. It’s a Stendhal town. It’s The Red and the Black. Stendhal should be alive today in Washington. He’d talk about the public hypocrisy. There’s a lot of hypocrisy in Washington, and it’s so damned tiring.”

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

“Every administration leaves a certain percentage of people, which is a great blessing and is what has made Washington a fabulous city. It was a city of only a few hundred thousand people at the time of the Second World War. Since then it’s become a major metropolis and, in the last twenty years, a cosmopolitan city. When I came back here twenty years ago from New York, I felt like I was going into exile. At that time there wasn’t enough to do in terms of theater, opera, ballet, museums—the toys of life. Now there is so much to do you could not possibly do it, even if you wanted to. Washington has become a bit like the way New York was in the ' twenties. It’s become a wonderful, fabulous place to be, but it’s still human in scale, it’s still a comfortable city. These are the days of Washington.”

PATRICK J. DALY protocol officer

“I’d get on the bus tomorrow and go. The thing I find frustrating about living in Washington is that I have never felt I was part of a community. It’s a city with tremendous racial imbalance, a city where nobody is from; it’s a transient, gypsy community. You begin to make a friendship, establish a relationship, and they’re gone. I would like very much to go someplace where people stayed around and were accountable for the caliber of life in that community.”

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

“I view it as a city of delegates. Everybody represents a different area of the country, so this is a microcosm of the nation. And to the extent that people err here, they err on the side of gratification in Washington and forget the folks back home. Once you do that, you start catching what they call Potomac Fever. ’ ’

CONGRESSMAN JIM COOPER Democrat from Tennessee

“I remember sitting next to one of the most key, important senators in Congress at a party, and I said to him, ‘Don’t you ever want to stay at home and put your feet up?’ He said, ‘Little lady, I made three deals tonight. I’ve been trying to make contact with these people for weeks.’ You see, in Washington, unlike, say, England or Canada, power is divided. Congress has power, the administration has power, the press has power, the lobbyists have power, the K Street lawyers who make up all the bills for the congressmen have power. And if you’re representing a foreign country, you’re hit all over the head— you don’t know where a decision is being made. Anyone who tells you where a decision’s being made in this town is a liar and a fraud. ’ ’ SONDRA GOTLIEB wife of the Canadian ambassador

“When we first got here my poor son was five years old, and he said, ‘Mom, why do you keep going to the same restaurant?’ I said, ‘What restaurant?’ And he said, ‘The Black Tie. Isn’t it boring?’ ” CAROLYN DEAVER

“It’s all glitzed up and there’s nothing practical about it. Do you realize that this is one of the few capitals in the world which is not also the business center of the country?”

MAYOR MARION BARRY

“You know the present mayor came from the burn-baby-burn era in Washington. Remember? He used to go around in the dashiki.” TERESA HEINZ

Yes, there is a Washington beyond the world of politics, but it ain’t worth it. — DIANA McLELLAN

MARTHA BARTLETT wife of former columnist Charles Bartlett

“Art collectors? There’s Robert Hilton Smith. A big fortune made, like most of the fortunes around here, out of cars and construction.” OATSIE CHARLES

grande dame

“The only thing manufactured in Washington is paper—printed paper. And ideas, but that’s subject to debate.”

PATRICK J. DALY

“The pollution is gaseous, verbal, rather than the kind of pollution you get in a Minneapolis. ’’ WILLIAM E. FARRELL New York Times Washington correspondent

“It’s cleaner than Hobe Sound, that’s how clean it is. ’ ’ MICHAEL BARTLETT landscape architect

PRINCE BANDAR

“Prince Bandar, the new Saudi ambassador, was guest of honor at this party Joanne Herring gave which was hysterical. It had Pakistani tablecloths and Italian lace hearts and fortune cookies and Mexican hat dancing... ’’ OATSIE CHARLES

“It’s a delightful city to live in, because it offers everything my family wants. My wife loves animals, and we have horses, chickens, even geese. I like to play tennis, and I have a tennis court where I live. At the same time, in twenty-five minutes I’m downtown in the world of politics and international affairs.” ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

former national-security adviser

“It’s funny. I have this Ethnic and Race Relations class with one of the two black professors at Georgetown. And I didn’t realize that Washington is 75 percent [black]. That’s amazing.”

KAREN RUSSELL Georgetown University student

“Washington has always been mostly Democratic—a southern city with southern habits, people entertaining at home. I know I feel very southern.”

MRS. FONTAINE BRADLEY

“My new theory about Washington is that it can be a suburb of New York. I know lots of people who have New York romances. They simply take the 5:30 New York Air flight Friday—always New York Air, not the Eastern shuttle, though I rather like Frank Borman—and come back Monday morning.” CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

“When I first came to Washington, in 1966,1 used to go back to New York to have my hair done. I still feel dowdy when I go to New York. Where do I have my hair done now? Village Hair Design, where all the grandes dames who have so much money go because it’s the cheapest place in Georgetown. It’s on Thirtieth and N—as in Nancy.”

KITTY KELLEY biographer of Jackie 0, Liz Taylor, and Frank Sinatra

“We’re not picking up New York’s leavings—we do mostly new plays here, new productions. We did Noises Off here. ’ ’ ROGER L. STEVENS

chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Petforming Arts

“I must say, I haven’t seen that awful thing they used to call a patio skirt since the Kennedy Center opened.”

JENNIFER PHILLIPS

“There is no counterculture. The counterculture is a thirty-two-year-old Justice Department lawyer who comes home, takes off his three-piece suit, lights up a joint, and puts the Police on the record player. ’ ’ JEFF STEIN

editor of The Washington Weekly

“I don’t think it’s possible to be an upwardly mobile mainstream person in Washington and not be interested in politics. Even if you’re an upwardly mobile hairdresser, your business depends on politics. It’s possible to be a garbageman and not be interested in politics—although we’ve had incidences where reporters have gotten the cooperation of garbagemen to go through people’s trash.”

JENNIFER PHILLIPS

“We do a tremendous business with the European imports—Valentino, Saint Laurent, Chanel. Washington is also very comfortable in Calvin Klein, because it’s conservative, it’s classic, it’s a quality product. ’ ’ VAL COOK

vice president of Saks Jandel

“It’s the number-one city in per capita wine consumption.” BRUCE BASSIN of Addy Bassin’s MacArthur Beverages

“It wears on you sometimes. When you’re quoted, it’s always as Mrs. Reagan’s hairdresser. I do a lot of people. I do a lot of senators’ and congressmen’s wives, on both sides of the aisle. I’ve done Queen Beatrix, Indira Gandhi, Princess Alexandra, last week the president of Austria’s wife. I did get in trouble with Indira Gandhi, because she’s always been known for her finger wave and I gave her a very updated blowdry—updated for her, of course. It brought too much attention to her hair, and it taught me a lesson: You can’t make very radical changes.”

ROBIN WEIR Mrs. Reagan’s hairdresser

“At least Reagan is trying to get a baseball team here. This town would love to have a baseball team. Carter was trying to get a softball team.”

CHUCK RENDELMAN co-owner of Commander Salamander, a punk boutique in Georgetown

“I haven’t seen that much difference in the last four presidents. It’s been the same thing over and over again. Just more people out of work, less money circulating.” WILLIAM HASKINS

cabdriver

“When Reagan came into Washington he didn’t know anyone. His people are not Washingtonians, and they aren’t friends of Washingtonians. I think Nancy Reagan really did go to lunch with a few [ladies] and still does, but a lot of people who were at those early lunches later said, ‘We don’t have anything in common with her. She’s very California and she has her own California friends, her own style of living, and our interests are not her interests.’ It’s not saying anything bad about her, it’s just saying that this ain’t her crowd. They are not setting any kind of social tone here, because they import all their friends. So there is still this vacuum, and the press has filled the vacuum. The press sets the social tone.’’ SALLY QUINN

PRESIDENT AND MRS REAGAN

“When we first came to Washington, my husband said that there’s only one letter difference between president and resident, and we intend to be both. But it hasn’t worked out that way.” NANCY REAGAN

reporter turned novelist, wife of Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post

“I’m getting awfully bored with the press’s infatuation with itself, frankly. You’ve got the Washington Post ‘Style’ section, and you use that to write about yourself and your friends. You can tell yourself you’re setting the tone for Washington, and I suppose in some ways you are. You’re famous because you write that you’re famous. This is off the record, of course, because I have to live in this town.”

A GEORGETOWN HOSTESS

“The press really runs the town, let’s face it. I’m not talking only about the Washington Post; I’m talking about the press from all over the world that are stationed here in Washington. They run it socially, financially, and every other way.” ROGER L. STEVENS

“You wake up and your first thought is, Oh my gosh, what’s on the front page of the Washington PostT ’

A WHITE HOUSE AIDE

“ThePosthas gotten a lot bigger, it’s gotten more famous, it’s gotten better. I guess you could apply the same adjectives to the City.” SHELBY COFFEY deputy managing editor, features, of the Washington Post

“If you get a bad review in the Post, it’s amazing how much it affects the box office. The Washington Times is not taken that seriously, though it has a very good arts section. I don’t think the Post is nice to anybody. It’s negative journalism, that attitude.”

ROGER L. STEVENS

“I have a sense that people in the press are holding back a little bit, that people are nervous. There’s a conservative president, a conservative Supreme Court, the First Amendment is constantly under question, newspapers are being sued constantly. So there is this sense of fear and carefulness among a lot of journalists.” SALLY QUINN

“The day the Redskins won the Super Bowl, it pushed politics off the front page of the Washington Post—that was one of the healthiest days in the life of this City.” JAMES ROSEBUSH

“Have you heard the latest? The Baron and Baroness di Portanova want to buy a house here, but only if he gets full diplomatic accreditation as ambassador from San Marino. ’ ’ BUFFY CAFRITZ

socialite

“Joanne Herring had a dinner for the new Saudi ambassador. That was something: Texas attacks Washington. Joanne had everybody rotating. The girls sat down and didn’t get up, but the boys moved three times. She had one table with 165 people. The second time around, General Vessey sat next to me. He wasn’t interested in talking about anything, poor fellow. He probably was thinking about Lebanon.”

TERESA HEINZ wife of Senator John Heinz, Republican from Pennsylvania

“I had a really damn good seat. I was next to Cap Weinberger, and I never saw him have such a good time—he was giggling and scratching like crazy. Then I got Bill Cohen, senator from Maine, who’s a charmer. It was just absolutely wild! Then I got William French Smith. I’ll just never get over that party. ’ ’ OATSIE CHARLES

“That’s certainly not what I consider real Washington. That’s what I consider transient Washington, government Washington. It’s like talking to Mayor Koch about New York but not talking to the Van Rensselaers. See, there is this world of people who are very quiet and very conservative—the Cavedwellers. And then there’s the group that manages to go to parties every night. I don’t know what happens to their children.”

JULIE FINLEY Children’s Hospital board member

“The Cavedwellers, the old families, really have nothing to do with making this city move and shake.”

SANDRA McELWAINE journalist

SALLY QUINN AND BEN BRADLEE

“Do we get invited to the White House? Not in this administration.” SALLY QUINN

“I think there are several embassies that are rather glamorous at the moment. I would put very high the Canadians and the French. The Canadians are really wonderful. Mrs. Gotlieb writes very well written letters in the Washington Post—they’re awfully funny.”

SUSAN MARY ALSOP

“I’ll give you this week: We had lunch for 14 on Monday, we have 165 people for cocktails tonight, we have a dinner for 30 Saturday night, and a dinner for 30 Monday night. ’’ SONDRA GOTLIEB

“The British Embassy never loses its cachet. I mean, people fall over backwards . ’ ’ OATSIE CHARLES

“We used to see a lot of Dobrynin. We don’t see him much anymore. Interesting man. Vibrant conversationalist. I had a tremendous fight with him once. He said, ‘My dear, Solzhenitsyn—it’s our trashy literature.’ But I think people are very cautious in dealing with members of the Soviet Embassy, the satellite countries, and Iraq.’’

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

CLARE BOOTHE LUCE

“The trouble with Washington is there’s a $500 price tag on everything. And that’s hard on the extra women, because buying two tickets and then finding someone who isn’t in a wheelchair to go with you, after a certain age, is difficult.’’

CLARE BOOTHE LUCE

“I think the pursuance of large numbers of people trying to acquire intelligence in Washington is interesting. I remember once a Soviet intelligence officer’s saying to me, ‘Your problem and ours are opposite. Yours is scarcity, ours is overabundance. Everybody tells us everything, and we don’t know who to believe.’ ” GENERAL VERNON WALTERS

“This is a world where sound travels at the speed of light.’’ RICHARD BURT assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs

“So not only do they have to look not too ardently Democrat in case the Republicans get in, but they can’t look too ardently Mondale in case Hart gets in. It keeps people in a high state of anxiety. This city has less irreverence and less of a public sense of humor than almost any place I’ve been. People are afraid to laugh. They’re afraid to laugh at themselves and they’re afraid to laugh at each other. It’s much less true, however, of these Republicans, interestingly enough, who seem to be very involved with self-satire.” JENNIFER PHILLIPS

“I think [an election year] drives everybody a little crazy, and I think it’s interesting that people don’t talk about it candidly. They talk about it incessantly, but what they don’t really say up front is that whatever happens is going to have a profound effect on their careers—and that worries them.”

RICHARD BURT

“Yesterday we voted for a couple of gold medals for certain folks. That’s all we did that day. That’s pitiful.”

CONGRESSMAN JIM COOPER

“I often think, What’s Helen Jackson doing now that Scoop has died? When someone dies in that position, it’s not like in New York or Pittsburgh. These widows are absolutely startled. Where’s home for them, you see? They can’t believe it. They think it’s their great personalities that have done it. They come from Cobunker, Nobunker, or something, and they really, honestly, in a strange way don’t know how to handle it, and get conceited as anything.”

MARTHA BARTLETT

“There was an undersecretary of commerce in the Eisenhower administration. One day he received a call from a social hostess who said, ‘I’m giving a dinner dance on such and such a date. If the rumor that you are going to be made secretary of commerce is true, I wonder if you’d be available to come to dinner. If it’s not true, maybe you’d like to stop in later for dancing.’ ”

ROBERT KEITH GRAY public-relations executive

“It’s not a kind town. I’ve seen women have nervous breakdowns when their husbands are out of position. It’s almost better not to have been a former. Almost better. Because a former remains a former.” INAGINSBURG

“Politicians’ wives? They’re the ones who buy the handcuffs.”

WENDY EZRAILSON co-owner of Commander Salamander

“I think this is a town where women are extremely important, because social life is very important here. A lot of things get said before dinner, over dinner, and after dinner. And because we seat traditionally in Washington, women, particularly the ones who are giving the parties, are likely to be seated between two of the most fascinating people in the room. Washington women, if they care to, can bring together Arabs with Israelis. They can make all sorts of marvelous social combinations which could only exist as social combinations but which have a much greater impact than that. It’s a town of very strong women.” JENNIFER PHILLIPS

“The women will kill you in this town. It isn’t the men. It’s the women. It’s very subtle, but it’s the women in a strange way who manipulate the undercurrents of Washington life.”

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

“One of the most intelligent women I’ve ever met here is called Dolly Hoffman—she’s about eighty-six and so bright it’s amazing. She turned to my wife and said, ‘You’re from Philadelphia, and it’s important for you to know one thing about Washington: Stick to the women and you’ll be all right.’ All these old dames—Mrs. Bruce, Oatsie Charles—they stick together like glue.”

MICHAEL BARTLETT

“There’s a lot of hunting going on. And it’s not the men who do the hunting, it’s the women who hunt men. You get bright women lawyers who go to the Hill, and L.A.’s—legislative assistants. They have no compunction whatsoever about ruining a marriage, a family— they don’t care. ’’ TERESA HEINZ

“I’m addressing a group of young black businesswomen. My topic is ‘What Has Happened to the Business Suit and What Are the Alternatives?’ ”

TERESA HEINZ

This town has more game plans than the boards of all the conglomerates in the world.’ TERESA HEINZ

There’s a wave, like the tide, going in and out. The new administration comes in with their entourage. There’s a great surge in real-estate dealings and wheelings. Then they go. -MRS. FONTAINE BRADLEY

VAL COOK

“As far as I can see, the women are working too hard, the men are exhausted, and love affairs as we knew them in the wonderful era of Camelot, as well as the good healthy robust shenanigans under Lyndon Johnson, have gone. I won’t say the sexuality of life, but there was a lot of flirting going on. The women wanted to be pretty. Now it’s very dry. We’re a bunch of exhausted people.”

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

“This is the biggest closet in the country, no question about it. There’s a huge, huge gay thing here. I don’t bring anybody out in the column, because otherwise there’d be nobody left.”

DIANA McLELLAN

“Homosexuality? Oh, oh, oh my God, no. You can see reputations disappearing. It’s a no-no. We are very puritanical and prissy in this city, because everybody here is on public record. There are things that terrify them, and one of them is homosexuality—and obviously its female equivalent. Love affairs, promiscuity, drugs—anything that can sully a reputation is in the closet.”

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

“It was called ‘On the Couch in the Capital,’ and it was about the uniqueness of psychiatry in Washington, what the special problems are here because of the pressures of political life. C.I.A. operatives obviously have a terrible problem, because they can’t talk to anybody—their lives are totally secret. Politicians are always onstage; they can’t let down once they get off. Children here have a terrific problem, because their parents are superachievers and they’re expected to achieve.”

SANDRA McELWAINE

“I hate politics. I want to go back to New York.” KAREN ANDERSON

daughter of John Anderson

“I doubt if Abraham Lincoln would run a successful campaign today. He was, unfortunately, not a very attractive man physically. He was large in stature as far as height is concerned, but his facial features were not in harmony.”

DR. CLYDE LITTONaesthetic surgeon

“That’s the Kennedy Institute for Bioethics. It used to be the International Police Academy. Here’s where Sophie [Engelhard] lives, and next door is where I take the Harney twins swimming at this guy’s who wrote this book called The Secret Life of Plants. Here’s where the gay psychiatrist lives. It’s a very nice house. And here’s where President Kennedy lived when he was elected president. Remember the next morning he talked to the press standing out there in his bathrobe? Here’s where Chuck, from Salamander, lives. Here’s Jennifer Phillips’s house..

CHRISTOPHER MURRAYart dealer, driving through Georgetown

“I wonder how many of us truly consider this home, even those of us who have been here for twenty years. I always think of home as Indiana.”

CAROLYN PEACHEYpublicist

“I prefer to live in Indiana.”

SENATOR DAN QUAYLERepublican from Indiana

“I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to Philadelphia!” ROSE BARTLETT

wife of Michael Bartlett

“Everybody’s really into vintage clothing. Bowling shirts are in. And everybody’s really into break dancing. Nobody likes Reagan.” AMY HARNEYprep-school student

“I don’t like any of them. The nuclear threat? Oh yeah, everybody is always talking about that. We have a big nuclear thing at school. Every Tuesday and Friday we have assemblies and talk about that.” LAURA HARNEY

Amy's twin sister “It has occurred to us that if there was a war this would certainly be a target. I’m told there are various caves in Virginia where senior members of government would go.” SUSAN MARY ALSOP

“Don’t leave. Dance forever. The night is young.” LYNN WYATT

visiting from Houston as chairman of the Princess Grace Foundation gala

“Right under the superficial glamour of Washington there is a chasm of tragedy, of unfulfilled, unloved people who do

not feel they are recognized for their true selves, who live in a charade under the glare of publicity. God, to strike the surface of this town! It’s a city of theater, masks, and tragedy. It’s fascinating theater, but it’s also transitory, and the transitory nature makes people who come through here very nervous. It makes the hostesses nervous. Nothing is secure. It’s a floating crap game. If you have good instincts, you can get in on the crap game. Everybody’s terrified of being out of the crap game.”

A PROMINENT WASHINGTON WOMAN

“If I’m here another four years, fine. If not, fine too.” NANCY REAGAN

CLARK CLIFFORD

“Clark Clifford? Now, that’s the perfect example of Permanent Washington. He’s been in the confidence of every president since Roosevelt.”

SUSAN MARY ALSOP