Mrs. L. of Washington

From First Daughter to Congressman's Wife

When Alice Roosevelt married Congressman Nicholas Longworth in the East Room in February 1906, she was trading one Washington address for another. Nick was a Republican from Cincinnati, but Cincinnati never appealed to her. Washington did, and she made it her home for the rest of her life.

Washington knew her as "Mrs. L." She never ran for office, but she had a sharp eye for politics, and she rarely kept her opinions to herself.

Nick's career rose too. He became Republican majority leader and served as Speaker of the House from 1925 to 1931. Their only child, Paulina, was born in 1925. The marriage was often strained, but the Longworth house was one of the places where Washington's business got done.

Speaker Nicholas Longworth and Alice Longworth at the U.S. Capitol, May 15, 1926. (National Photo Company / Library of Congress)

1912: Father or Husband

The hardest test came in 1912. Her father, angry with President Taft, challenged him for the Republican nomination. When the party chose Taft, T.R. ran as the candidate of the new Progressive, or "Bull Moose," Party.

Nick stood by the Republicans and Taft, a friend from Cincinnati. Alice stood by her father. The TR Center describes the couple as drifting apart politically that year, and biographers describe the strain on the marriage.

The election was hard on everyone in the family. Woodrow Wilson won the presidency, and Nick lost his House seat. He won it back in 1914 and returned to Congress in 1915. Alice went back to Washington with him.

The League of Nations Fight

T.R. died in January 1919. That year Alice found a cause of her own.

President Wilson brought home a peace treaty that included the Covenant of the League of Nations. Supporters saw the League as the best hope of preventing another world war. Opponents feared it would commit the United States to defend other nations without the consent of Congress. In the Senate, a group known as the "irreconcilables," led by William Borah of Idaho and including Hiram Johnson of California, opposed the treaty in any form. Others, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, would accept it only with reservations.

Alice sided with the irreconcilables. By her own account, she and her friend Ruth McCormick would take themselves to the Senate gallery to listen for hours, and on the night of a key vote, Borah and other friends came back to her house for supper. Once, as Wilson's car passed near the White House, she crossed her fingers and muttered, "A murrain on him," an old-fashioned curse.

The treaty failed in the Senate in November 1919 and again in March 1920. The United States never joined the League.

Nicholas and Alice Longworth with Warren G. Harding, about 1920. (Bain News Service / Library of Congress)

The Other Washington Monument

For six decades Mrs. L. held court at her house on Massachusetts Avenue, near Dupont Circle. The TR Center describes her guests as scientists, authors, conservationists, diplomats and politicians "of all persuasions." Her wit made her famous, though not every line credited to her was hers. She made the Coolidge crack about being "weaned on a pickle" famous, but she gave the credit to someone else. "The little man on the wedding cake," aimed at Thomas Dewey, was pinned on her too, and she denied coining it. Some lines were surely hers. Of Warren Harding she wrote in 1933, "Harding was not a bad man. He was just a slob." And the pillow in her sitting room read, "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."

Washington gave her a nickname that stuck: "the other Washington Monument."

Politics on Her Own Terms

Nick died on April 9, 1931, in Aiken, South Carolina, weeks after his last term as Speaker ended. Alice kept going.

In the 1930s she wrote a syndicated newspaper column that criticized the New Deal of her cousin Franklin Roosevelt. Before Pearl Harbor she joined the national board of America First, which opposed U.S. entry into World War II. After the war she backed Senator Robert Taft of Ohio for president; he was the son of the president her father had run against in 1912.

Her friendships crossed party lines. She was close to the Kennedys and the Johnsons, and she was a longtime friend and defender of Richard Nixon. In 1971 she was a guest at his daughter Tricia's White House wedding, and in February 1973 President Nixon called on her at home.

When Paulina died in 1957, Alice raised her granddaughter, Joanna Sturm.

Alice Longworth leaving the White House New Year's Day reception.

Alice Longworth leaves the White House New Year's Day reception, January 1, 1930. (Harris & Ewing / Library of Congress)

An elderly Alice Roosevelt Longworth with her granddaughter

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 87, arrives at the White House with her granddaughter Joanna Sturm for the wedding of Tricia Nixon, June 12, 1971. (Official White House photograph / Library of Congress)

Last Word

Alice Roosevelt Longworth died at home in Washington on February 20, 1980, eight days after her 96th birthday. She had been a formidable presence for every president from her father's day to Jimmy Carter's. Her papers are at the Library of Congress.

President Carter's statement that day caught her better than most obituaries. She had "a sense of humor," he said, "that kept generations of political newcomers to Washington wondering which was worse—to be skewered by her wit or to be ignored by her."

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