The Press: Little Woo

"The country, in my opinion, has long needed a light and cheerful review of events in Washington ... I congratulate you . . ." wrote Franklin Roosevelt to Publisher-Editor Harry Newman in the first issue of Senator, a new magazine of Capital chitchat out last week. Modeled partly after the New Yorker, partly after Judge (which Publisher Newman also runs), Senator, in its first appearance, rambled like the garrulous old Senatorial barfly in plug hat and string tie that Norman Rockwell painted for its cover.

Senator's stalest bit of gossip—A President Pitches a Little Woo—was dated February 28, 1844. It related the old story of President John Tyler's below-decks necking with 20-year-old Julia Gardner when a gun blew up on the new U.S.S. Princeton during a trial run on the Potomac, killing Secretary of State Abel Parker Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Walker Gilmer, Julia Gardner's father and two others. Wooer Tyler married the girl a few months later.