Alonzo Fields worked in the White House
for 21 years. Smithsonian Institution.
|
|
Royal Visitors:
The Butler's Role at a State Dinner
Prior to the 1939 visit of the queen and king of England, Eleanor Roosevelt received
a State Department memorandum, listing various rules of protocol. Mrs. Roosevelt
became concerned about the order in which the Roosevelts, and the queen and king,
should be served at the state dinner honoring the royal couple.1
"I told Franklin," Mrs. Roosevelt recalled, "that British protocol
required that the head butler, [Alonzo] Fields, stand with a stop watch in his
hand and, thirty seconds after [the president] and the king had been served,
dispatch a butler to serve the queen and myself.
. . . I [mentioned] the White
House rule that the president was always
served first."2
The president declared, "We will not require
Fields to have a stop watch. The king and I
will be served simultaneously and you and the
queen will be served next."3
Fields did not use a stopwatch. The evening
was a success, but the armchairs ordered
for the occasion were apparently too low
for the queen. Fields recalls that, after
she was seated, she requested her favorite
cushion. Fields sent for it, and, as the
queen lifted herself up, the head butler "gently
slipped the pillow on the chair."4
1 Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New
York: Harper, 1949), 186.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.; Alonzo Fields, My 21 Years
in the White House (New York: Coward
McCann, 1960), 74. |
