American Princess Read online

  Sadly, the gong rang to announce the opening of the banquet long before the receiving line had trickled away. My stomach growled in a most unladylike manner as the tables were laid with so many of my favorite foods: oysters Rockefeller and breaded lamb cutlets, quivering towers of currant jelly and coconut custard pies.

  “I’ve asked the maids to send a coconut pie to your room tonight,” Mother whispered during a momentary lull. “I’m afraid you’ll have to open the ball and may not have a chance to eat.”

  She was right, for the plates were already being cleared when I thanked my final guests for attending and opened the ball on the arm of a Lieutenant Gilmore of the artillery (with a mustache that rivaled the tail of a coonskin hat) who had won my first quadrille. After months of eager anticipation, I found the entire soiree a bit disappointing, although I did love the way everyone orbited around me, like small planets to my glowing sun.

  “The men around you are seven deep,” said a male voice at my elbow. I turned to see smooth-faced cousin Franklin wearing his customary grin and a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez glasses identical to my father’s.

  Destined for the drudgery of sitting for the New York bar exam, I thought to myself, but he idolizes Father, so I suppose he can’t be all bad.

  “Seven might be a bit of an exaggeration,” I said as Feather Duster offered his hand for the next dance.

  “Seven is dead-on, fair cousin,” Franklin said with a wink. “I counted.”

  My cousin’s future as a dully competent lawyer looked brighter with each passing moment. I expected him to be a heeler on the dance floor, but his step was lively and his timing impeccable as he guided me about the linen crash laid over the East Room’s hideous mustard carpet, although a proficient waltz was hardly going to make me the star of the society columns tomorrow.

  “I’d claim the next dance, if the debutante doesn’t mind a turn with her father, that is.”

  I grinned like a Cheshire cat to see Father offering his hand to me. My cousin was quickly claimed by Maggie Cassini, the flamboyant daughter of our Russian ambassador. She was striking in an ivory evening ensemble spangled with black velvet swirls and tiny mirrors that called to mind a Romany caravan so I could almost hear the crash of Gypsy cymbals. I knew Maggie only by sight, but her flowing black curls and barking laugh seemed far too exuberant for the likes of Feather Duster. I was right, for we’d scarcely started moving before Franklin bowed a hasty departure and left Maggie smirking after him.

  “You’ve done admirably well this evening,” Father said. I remembered once—I think it was Christmas, or perhaps the memory was just tinged with such wonder that it may as well have been Christmas morning—when I danced with Father, my tiny patent leather shoes atop his own big feet as he twirled me around the floor. Now I strained to listen while I studiously avoided stepping on his feet. “Your mother and I are passably pleased.”

  Admirably well. Passably pleased.

  My mouth went suddenly dry at this colossal failure, worse than if I’d tripped us both in the middle of the dance floor. “Thank you,” I mumbled, unable to meet his eyes. “And thank you for tonight.”

  “You’re welcome, Sissy,” he said, as if I’d merely complimented him for passing me the bread at dinner. I forced a smile as he handed me off to his graybeard attorney general.

  Playing the proper young lady is an utter bore, I thought as I excused myself and fled to the powder room, and it made me invisible to Father. Face it, Alice, you balled up this time.

  Back in my room later that night, I kicked off my satin Louis heels, too distraught to eat a bite of the coconut pie the maids delivered, before collapsing onto my narrow bed. I snuggled down under the pink patchwork quilt Auntie Bye had made me ages ago, willing myself to forget Father’s lukewarm praise. Instead, I remembered the feel of everyone’s attention as I’d walked down the stairs, a memory that made me warmer than if I’d quaffed a whole bottle of champagne.

  I’m doomed to be a bitter pill for Father to swallow, but I won’t let that stop me from having a little fun. More than a little, actually.

  If I played my cards right, there would be many more magnificent balls, operas, and garden parties to make my head spin in the months to come.

  Unfortunately, my parents had other plans.

  * * *

  • • •

  I found myself trussed into my debut gown again and posed in the corner of the Yellow Oval Room one week later, the hundreds of debut roses and hyacinths used to decorate the Blue, Red, Green, and East Rooms long since donated to Washington hospitals. I wrinkled my nose at the haphazard pile of newspaper headlines and autograph requests that had accumulated on the Louis XIII writing table just out of reach, for I’d read them all at least ten times already.

  ROOSEVELT DEBUT CHARMING, LACKS COTILLION FAVORS.

  FIRST YOUNG LADY OF THE LAND DEBUTS WITH EXTREMELY SIMPLE DECORATIONS.

  “Perhaps one with your hand on the back of the chair?” Frances Johnston adjusted her box camera while she directed my pose. I liked that my photographer was a woman, and even more that I had cause to be photographed. For despite the bland reviews of my debut, the press had dubbed me with a new title.

  Princess Alice.

  Overnight, I’d become America’s favorite daughter, hence my being dressed up again like a life-size doll and arranged in stiff positions all morning, accompanied by the acrid smell of sulfur and the boom of exploding chemicals while I twitched with impatience.

  “This is the last one,” Frances said, just as Rose, my favorite of the White House’s Negro maids, and my mother bustled in. Rose and her brother Ike—a White House usher who possessed an unfortunate parish pickax of a nose—had helped all my siblings and me find the largest tin trays in the pantry to slide down the staircases on our first night in the White House. “More autograph requests,” Rose said, setting them on the desk. “Soon you’re going to need a secretary to answer all these letters.”

  Mother’s lips took on a decidedly pinched look. “At least you’ll have appropriate photographs now to placate this brief fascination with America’s ‘first young lady of the land.’ Neither your father nor I are keen on your newfound popularity.”

  Because heaven forbid either of you be keen on anything I might enjoy.

  The camera’s deafening crack of sound and blinding flash of light saved me from responding. “That was the last one,” Frances said. “There should be some excellent shots once they’re developed.”

  “Do you know, Miss Alice,” Rose said, handing me an ivory-handled letter opener with which to attack the envelopes now that I was free to move again, “I was walking home yesterday and passed Miss Vincent’s dress shop. You’ll never guess what she had in her front window.”

  “A dress?” I quipped as I tore open the first letter.

  “Alice,” Mother said, her very tone a warning. She grimaced at the pile of envelopes as if they were vermin to be swept away while Frances packed up her equipment. “Don’t be pert.”

  Rose started humming as if neither of us had spoken, a testament to the unflappable composure common among the White House staff. “At least three day gowns, all in a color advertised as Alice Blue.” Rose squinted at me and shook her head. “Miss Vincent claims this season’s color is the same shade as your eyes, but they’re not nearly so gray.”

  “I’ve never met Miss Vincent,” I said. “How could she know the color of my eyes?”

  Rose didn’t answer, but I suddenly recalled a snippet from one of the society articles I’d read shortly after my debut.

  Miss Roosevelt’s lively eyes are a lovely shade of gray-blue . . .

  I couldn’t recall greeting any newspapermen face-to-face at the ball, but I’d been introduced to over six hundred people that night. I might have met Abraham Lincoln and not noticed.

  I filed away the realization that my every sneeze might n
ow potentially wind up as news to be discussed over American breakfasts. It was a daunting thought, but perhaps one that I might somehow use to my advantage, although I wasn’t sure how just yet.

  Still, a color of my own was something to celebrate. Only a few months in the White House and already I had something named after me, just as I’d hoped. Maybe tomorrow I’d have a song or a new dance . . .

  “I’m all done here.” Frances hefted her case with one hand and her wooden tripod with the other. “I’ll send word as soon as the cabinet cards are ready.”

  “I’ll approve all the photographs before we decide which ones to purchase,” Mother said before turning and showing Frances out with a swish of crinoline skirts. “Then Alice may sign them.”

  Perhaps Mother should hold my hand while I sign the damnable pictures, too, in case I spell my name wrong, I thought as I glared at her retreating back. Heaven forbid I should do anything on my own.

  “Help me out of this dress?” I asked Rose after Mother and the photographer left. “I’m off to see Auntie Bye for tea.”

  Rose followed me back to my room and helped me unbutton my debut gown, so I could slip into a new striped navy day dress. I’d just finished tugging on my white gloves and adjusting my hat—a delectable creation featuring a bouffant of white egret feathers that had cost me over a month’s allowance—when Rose stopped thumbing through the pile of correspondence.

  “Miss Alice, you may want to read this one before you go,” she said, offering me an envelope as if it were stuffed with precious jewels.

  “Toss it with the others,” I said. “I don’t want to keep my aunt waiting.”

  “But it’s from Buckingham Palace.”

  I stared at her, then snatched the letter. Rose was right—above my painstakingly stenciled name was the official emblem of Buckingham Palace, stamped on vellum so thick it might have been the cover of a book rather than an envelope. Inside were two papers, one a letter from Whitelaw Reid, my father’s special ambassador, and the other . . .

  “It’s an invitation to the coronation of Edward VII!” I’d never been a girl to get the vapors, but a fainting couch wouldn’t have gone amiss had there been one available at that moment. I fanned myself with the paper, cursing the tightness of my corset that kept me from drawing a decent breath. “Did the rest of the family receive invitations too?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Rose tried to peer over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of the invitation. “Will your father allow you to attend?”

  “Of course!” I said with more confidence than I felt, kissing both her dark cheeks before skipping down the stairs. After all, surely it was fitting that America’s princess attend the crowning of a king?

  I didn’t even make it to the front door when Mother stopped me, her face ashen.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, for it was common knowledge that only a catastrophe on par with the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could shake the First Lady’s usual aplomb.

  The yellow paper of a Western Union telegram shuddered slightly in her trembling hands, the same capable hands I’d watched darn my father’s socks and soothe my caterwauling siblings after they scraped their knees.

  “It’s your brother, Ted, at Groton,” she said. “He’s very ill. Your father and I must leave immediately.”

  With those words, the coronation of a king seemed very trivial indeed.

  * * *

  • • •

  Dear Alice,

  Your brother Ted lingers in his sickbed here at Groton. The physicians assure us this is only a mild bout of pneumonia, but he calls your name as he tosses and turns in his sleep between doses of warm lemon whiskey. I believe a visit from you would ease him tremendously.

  Please hurry.

  Much love,

  Mother

  I tucked the letter back into my traveling valise and tapped my foot impatiently, waiting beside my silent father to board the train that would whisk me away to my favorite brother. Despite my best intentions, fifteen years ago Ted had weaseled his way into my heart when the nurse first placed him red-faced and mewling into his crib. I’d pulled my rocking chair alongside him and declared with crossed arms that I’d stay there forever beside my howling little polly parrot. To my dismay, his current school schedule meant I only ever saw him during holiday breaks and a few weeks every summer.

  So now I traveled to Groton with a copy of our shared favorite, The Jungle Book, to read and recite with him. The one boon to Ted’s illness—if there was a boon—was that I’d met my father for a flying moment at the Baltimore and Potomac train station and he’d lingered to see me off even as a huddle of newspapermen waited to interview him about a possible coal strike. It was always hellos and good-byes between us, rarely enough time for a breath in between.

  “Ted will be glad to have you to keep him company,” Father said now as he handed me into the train carriage bound for Massachusetts, his suit still rumpled from his own return journey and his Secret Service agents yawning into their hands. Father loathed having guards, but it was a necessary evil after McKinley’s assassination. “Try not to get into too much trouble while you’re at Groton.”

  I ignored his admonition. “Father, have you had a chance to decide whether I’m to attend Prince Edward’s coronation?”

  “We’ll discuss it when you return to Washington. In the meantime, I’ve agreed to allow you to christen Kaiser Wilhelm’s new yacht, the Meteor, when his brother brings it to America next month.”

  “Really?” I wanted to shriek with excitement, but an Associated Press reporter watched us from under the brim of his hat, so I instead contented myself with a gleeful clap of my hands. After all, I didn’t want to end up in the papers for squealing like a stuck pig, even if meeting a German prince was the most exciting thing to happen since my debut.

  “If we can’t keep your name from the papers, we may as well have you doing something worthwhile. Which reminds me.” Father dug in his pocket and retrieved a small velvet box, which he flipped open to display a gaudy diamond bracelet, its center graced with a sour-faced portrait of the grandly mustached Kaiser Wilhelm. “A gift for you from the kaiser.”

  I slipped the bracelet over my wrist and admired its blinding sparkle in the weak winter sunlight. The thing really was beyond lurid, but it would be my first keepsake from my time as the president’s daughter. “You have no idea what that means to me!”

  I meant the responsibility of the christening, but Father seemed to think I meant the bracelet itself.

  “Very well then.” He patted my cheek awkwardly before waving to the crowd of newspapermen and its resulting cacophony of exploding flashlamps. “Be a help to Mother while you’re gone.”

  I bounded into the carriage before pausing to wave exuberantly out the window to the same group of reporters. After all, it wasn’t just Father who could court the papers.

  If only I could impress my own father as easily.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ted recovered quickly with me at his side and even spent an afternoon helping me shatter empty wine bottles against an unlucky oak tree to practice for the Meteor’s christening. The day of the christening dawned cloudy but calm, the briny air from New York’s harbor and the brisk breeze making my step light as I greeted heavy-jawed Prince Henry of Prussia alongside Mother and Father.

  “In the name of Kaiser Wilhelm, I christen thee Meteor,” I repeated in a crisp voice the words I’d practiced all morning, then gave a self-satisfied yip of laughter as I smashed the champagne bottle against the port bow with a magnificent spray of finely aimed golden froth. I’d fretted all the way to the harbor that the silver hatchet wouldn’t sever the ropes, but the yacht slid gracefully into the water after I sawed through the final tie that held her. The celebration gala afterward included thousands of tiny electric lights and fanciful sugar-spun seas
hells with the American flag imprinted on one side and the German eagle on the other, and I wrote my name on stacks of menus alongside Prince Henry’s, pocketing one for myself to paste into a scrapbook later.

  I’m only eighteen and eating up the world. If only everything in life was this easy . . .

  I was a rabid success according to the papers, several of which commented on the fact that the designer Beneson of Paris had copied the style of my beaver cloak and was selling it to fashionable Parisian ladies under the name “Miss Roosevelt’s Wrap.”

  Beneson was no House of Worth, but still.

  First a color, and now a new fashion. The acclaim was all I’d hoped for, but never in my wildest imaginings had I guessed it would happen so fast. There was no precedent for my sudden popularity, for there was no denying that I was the second most popular Roosevelt in the world.

  I’d survived Father’s first public test for me and was ready for the main event, Prince Edward’s coronation.

  That is, until Mother delivered the edict that I wouldn’t attend.

  “We must write Buckingham Palace with our regrets and congratulations,” Mother said at the breakfast table, her eyes dark-rimmed from lack of sleep.

  “Regrets?” I asked, setting down my third cup of coffee. “What do you mean?”

  Mother sighed as she rubbed her temples. She’d finished nursing Ted back to health, but now Archie was abed with a bout of measles and she’d been up with him all night. The rest of the children were subdued after Quentin had brought Archie’s calico pony to his bedside to cheer him up and Mother had given Quentin a scolding to make his ears bleed. (The bag of oats they’d strewn all about Archie’s room hadn’t improved her temper.)

  Mother gave a tight frown. “I mean that your father has decided that you won’t be attending Prince Edward’s coronation.”

  “Why?” I dropped my half-eaten toast to its plate, prompting Mother to raise an eyebrow in warning.