The Pittsburgh Press (February 8, 1946)
Ferguson: Mrs. Clapper’s tapestry
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
Most of the news about Washington concerns men. People who live elsewhere generally think of the Capital as a city where masculine minds gather to ponder grave affairs of the nation and the world.
It’s a pleasure to get a feminine point of view on the place. And we have it in a new book, “Washington Tapestry,” written by Mrs. Olive Clapper, widow of the famous Scripps-Howard columnist, Raymond Clapper, killed in the Pacific in 1944. Mrs. Clapper herself is a popular, poised and lovely woman, who has her own opinions and states them. She has lived among the politicians for a long time, so she has lost her awe of them.
In her book, compiled from diaries and notes left by her husband, she gives her readers an intimate and chatty account of personal experiences since 1932.
You know your own congressman and senators perhaps. On the whole they are ordinary people. You aren’t afraid to talk with them because you know where they lived and what they did before they became congressmen and senators. But sometimes you are either awed or angered by the overall picture of the Washington legislative group. As distance lends enchantment to the view, so it may lend greatness to people.
When you get a closer glimpse, you see that most of these men and women are just like the rest of us, trying to do the best they can. A few are touched by nobility, some are afflicted with demagoguery, but all are subject to the common frailties of human nature.