THE CAPITAL: Let 'em Eat Garlic

When Martha Rountree beckons, big people in Washington come arunning. As mistress of ceremonies of the television show Meet the Press, Florida-born, belle-like Martha controls a precious segment of Sunday evening air for which politicians yearn as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. Last week Martha had a party, the gaudiest since Marie Antoinette opened at the Trianon, or at least since the night when a foreign ingredient got into Mrs. Murphy's chowder.

The occasion was the first anniversary of Martha's marriage to Oliver Presbrey, a New York advertising executive. Millionaire Clendenin Ryan, who would like to be governor of New Jersey, footed the bill as a belated wedding present for the Presbreys. At first he planned a cozy little party at his Warrenton, Va. estate. "We asked 40 people and 60 accepted," said Ryan. Ryan and Martha were convinced that the scope of the enterprise should be expanded and brought to Martha's home in Washington.

Ryan, with a six-man staff, set up administrative headquarters in the Mayflower Hotel. An army of gardeners dug up rosebushes, chrysanthemums and shrubbery at the Presbreys' spacious place off Connecticut Avenue, and moved them back five feet to make room for a Parisian street scene, complete with sidewalks and sidewalk cafes. Carpenters built a 30-by-50-ft. dance floor over the lawn, covered it with a sideshow tent, which was decorated as and called the Moulin Rouge. Pressrooms, male and female, were set up with tickers and telephones.

Bouncers by the Fence. Inside the house some changes were also necessary. The living room was stripped of furniture to make room for a fullscale, club-car set, modeled after that on the Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional Limited. The Pennsy, blushing with pleasure, supplied standard lounge-car chairs from the Congressional, along with the road's finest glassware and all the other trappings. At the last minute someone noticed that the club car had no Pennsy rug. Executives of the railroad found they had none in Washington storage. Miss Rountree's friends knew what to do about that: they threatened to get a rug from the B. & O. Harried Pennsymen stripped a rug from a car standing in the Washington yards, and the club-car set was complete.

Martha's basement garage was made over into The Snake Pit, Washingtonese for the dark and cozy Mayflower Hotel cocktail lounge,* where lobbyists and politicians meet when the sun gets low. An eight-piece orchestra was hired, and a seven-foot-high fence was built (at a cost of $1,000) to bring order into the lives of six uniformed District of Columbia cops and four private eyes flown down from New York to keep out the uninvited. (Martha likes the fence and thinks she will keep it as a permanent addition to the property.)