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The best she could do was one about Joe and his two brothers, Stewart, the Newsweek columnist, and John, who lives near the Alsop family farm in Avon, Conn., and ran for Governor unsuccessfully a few years ago. Until Joe grumpily quit the act in the early nineteen‐sixties, the Alsop boys used to play a melo dramatic scene set in the snowy wastes of Siberia. John and Stewart were the desperate muzhiks who flung the children to the hungry wolves. Joe was cast as Grishkin, the faithful but ill‐fated old Russian horse. To Cousin Alice, Joe was al ways most endearingly abashed and humorless down there on his hands and knees.
With the Russian horse story, rather well‐known “Joe story” as it turned out, Mrs. Longworth felt she had properly discharged the promise Joe had extracted from her to be kind. The rest of her conversation was as forthright as a sharp stick in the eye, and largely unprintable.Joe Alsop has affected a Sir Cedric Hardwicke accent since he was a little boy.
“I am having about 15 young peo ple over for drinks and discussion tomorrow night,” Joe said. “They're from Yale, the Political Union, and they're in town for seminars. I won der if you and Maggi would like to come over and see how Old Joe gets on with young people?”
We arrived at Joe's house in Georgetown about half an hour late and expected to see a crowd. But Joe was in his living room poised on the edge of his Louis XV chair with an outsized glass of Scotch and water cupped in his hands. Across from him sat one ill‐at‐ease young man. When it was only we—not the ex pected crew of Yale students—who entered the room, Joe's eyes blinked behind his round, owly glasses and his shoulders drooped. He rose heav ily to greet us.
“I am told by this young man,” Joe said lightly, “that the students may have chosen this time to eat their dinner since they have not yet been fed. Therefore, we may not see them tonight.”
The young man from Yale was try ing hard to think of excuses without any luck.
We made small talk for a while. Poor Joe, one of the most renowned and attentive hosts in Washington, swirled his Scotch and cocked his head at every street sound. After a time, it grew evident that Joe had given a party to which nobody, or worse than that, only one lone young man, had chosen to come.
“I'm terribly sorry, Barney,” Joe said bleakly when all hope was lost. “I suppose I could have attracted them with something to eat had I known they would not be fed.”
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