FOREIGN SERVICE: Irrepressible Irene

Of the highly varied and highly delicate problems which frequently confront the U. S. State Department, one is what color to paint parlors and bathrooms in the some 300 U. S. embassies, consulates and legations in foreign countries. Another equally delicate problem lately has been what to do with a sprightly, bluish-haired widow whose 25 years as the wife of a career diplomat who was President Roosevelt's first cousin obviously entitled her to something. Last week, the Department of State neatly solved both problems simultaneously with the announcement that Mrs. Warren Delano Robbins had been made an assistant chief of the Foreign Service Buildings Office. Mrs. Robbins' job will be to specialize in "the furnishing and decoration of diplomatic and consular establishments abroad."

If there is anyone thoroughly qualified to decide what shall go into the interior of foreign U. S. public buildings, Irene de Bruyn Robbins, who was reared by Belgian parents in the Argentine and whose hair turned prematurely white some years ago, should be so qualified. Her marriage at Buenos Aires in 1910 was the beginning of a diplomatic marathon in the course of which Mrs. Robbins, who knows how to sew, cook and speak five languages. opened and closed 33 houses in climates varying from 104° above zero to 44° below. In Berlin, Mrs. Robbins computed that she entertained 1,500 dignitaries in one year. In San Salvador, she once ordered stuffed turkey, got a fowl packed with old newspapers. In 1931 Warren Delano Robbins was installed as White House ceremonial officer, perhaps not the best post for him after the 1932 election, because sprightly Mrs. Robbins definitely preferred her husband's socialite friends from New York's tory Tuxedo to the seriously social-minded people who constituted Mrs. Roosevelt's idea of compatible company. However, in 1933 the President appointed his cousin Minister to Canada and the Robbins moved to Ottawa.

When Warren Delano Robbins died in 1935 he left an estate which, surprisingly encumbered by debts, did not add up to much over $15,000. Relict Robbins was forced to sell her comfortable Georgetown house, top off her career with a job in the Manhattan interior decorating firm of McMillen, Inc. which lasted until her friend, Mrs. Sumner Welles, got her the appropriate but temporary niche of social secretary to the Inter-American Peace Conference at Buenos Aires, where Mrs. Robbins was the President's unofficial hostess. Chore of decorating U. S. buildings abroad used to be done unofficially by the "Ladies of the State Department" who pondered plans sent them by the Foreign Service Buildings Office. In last week's shakeup, Frederick Larkin, a widely traveled onetime Birmingham, Ala. contractor, considered an authority on architecture and construction, was made head of the Foreign Service Buildings office. As the State Department's decorator, Mrs. Robbins will get $6,500 a year, a substantial expense account. Her first job: to decorate embassies currently being planned in Vienna, Berlin and Finland. Said Mrs. Robbins whose tastes (see cut) are striking: