In the Garden of Beasts

sight of the huge loins rolling off the sides and edges of the chair, so perilously near to her, she couldn’t remember a single piece that was played.”
    DODD’S BIGGEST COMPLAINT about the diplomatic parties thrown by other embassies was how much money was wasted in the process, even by those countries laid low by the Depression.
    “To illustrate,” he wrote to Secretary Hull, “last night we went at 8:30 to dine at the 53-room house of the Belgian minister (whose country is supposed to be unable to meet its lawful obligations).” Two servants in uniform met his car. “Four lackeys stood on the stairways, dressed in the style of Louis XIV servants. Three other servants in knee breeches took charge of our wraps. Twenty-nine people sat down in a more expensively furnished dining room than any room in the White House that I have seen. Eight courses were served by four uniformed waiters on silver dishes and platters. There were three wine glasses at every plate and when we rose, I noticed that many glass[es] were half full of wine which was to be wasted. The people at the party were agreeable enough, but there was no conversation of any value at all at my part of the table (this I have noted at all other large parties).… Nor was there any serious, informative oreven witty talk after dinner.” Martha attended as well and described how “all the women were covered with diamonds or other precious stones—I had never seen such a lavish display of wealth.” She noted also that she and her parents left at ten thirty, and in so doing caused a minor scandal. “There was a good deal of genteel raising of eyebrows, but we braved the storm and went home.” It was bad form, she discovered later, to leave a diplomatic function before eleven.
    Dodd was shocked to learn that his independently wealthy predecessors in Berlin had spent up to one hundred thousand dollars a year on entertaining, more than five times Dodd’s total salary. On some occasions they had tipped their servants more than what Dodd paid in rent each month. “But,” he vowed to Hull, “we shall not return these hospitalities in larger than ten or twelve-guest parties, with four servants at most and they modestly clad”—meaning, presumably, that they would be fully clothed but forgo the knee breeches of the Belgians. The Dodds kept three servants, had a chauffeur, and hired an extra servant or two for parties attended by more than ten guests.
    The embassy’s cupboard, according to a formal inventory of government-owned property made for its annual “Post Report,” contained:
    Dinner plates 10½″
4 doz.
Soup plates 9½″
2 doz.
Entree plates 9½″
2 doz.
Dessert plates
2 doz.
Salad plates 5 5/16″
2 doz.
Bread/butter plates 6 3/16″
2 doz.
Teacups 3½″
2 doz.
Saucers 5 11/16″
2 doz.
Bouillon cups 3½″
2 doz.
Saucers 5 11/16″
2 doz.
After-dinner cups 2½″
2 doz.
Saucers 4¾″
2 doz.
Chop dishes
2 doz.
Platters, various sizes
4 doz.
Goblets
3 doz.
Tall sherbert
3 doz.
Low sherbert
3 doz.
Small tumblers
3 doz.
Tall tumblers
3 doz.
Finger bowls
3 doz.
Finger bowl plates
3 doz.
    “We shall not use silver platters nor floods of wines nor will there be card tables all about the place,” Dodd told Hull. “There will always be an effort to have some scholar or scientist or literary person present and some informatory talk; and it is understood that we retire at 10:30 to 11:00. We make no advertisement of these things but it is known that we shall not remain here when we find that we can not make both ends meet on the salary allowed.”
    In a letter to Carl Sandburg he wrote, “I can never adapt myself to the usual habit of eating too much, drinking five varieties of wine and saying nothing, yet talking, for three long hours.” He feared he was a disappointment to his wealthier junior men, who threw lavish parties at their own expense. “They can not understand me,” he wrote, “and I am sorry for them.” He wished Sandburg all speed in completing his book on Lincoln, then lamented, “My half-completed
Old South
will probably be buried with me.”
    He closed the letter ruefully, “Once more: Greetings from Berlin!”
    At least his health was good, though he had his usual bouts of hay fever, indigestion, and bowel upsets. But as if foreshadowing what was to come, his doctor in Chicago, Wilber E. Post—with an office, appropriately enough, in the People’s Gas Building—sent Dodd a memorandum that he had written after his