Recall, it was the daughter of one of the two greatest Republican presidents for whom the shade was named. And any excuse is worthwhile to recall Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who had her personal motto embroidered on a sofa pillow: "If you haven't got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me.''

Katharine Graham recalled her mother, Agnes Meyer, as "always ambivalent about Mrs. Longworth," despairing at her "brilliant but sterile mind."

"After one party they both attended early in 1920, my mother described Alice as having been in a very carnal sort of mood," Graham wrote. "She ate three chops, told shady stories and finally sang in a deep bass voice: Nobody cultivates me, I'm wild, I'm wild."

By the standards of Washington early in the 20th century, Alice Roosevelt had been wild indeed. Her father, the president, said famously that he could manage the government or manage Alice -- but couldn't possibly do both at once.

Attracting enormous publicity, she smoked, drove her own car, plunged fully clothed into a swimming pool, placed a bet at a race track, was seen in public wearing a boa constrictor around her neck, set off firecrackers and shot at telegraph poles from a train; she was universally dubbed "Princess Alice" after she christened the yacht of Kaiser Wilhelm's brother.