Henrietta Odeline Wallace

"A lot of people are unfair about Henrietta. I suppose she was a woman of her time. She didn't like that little hussy who later went to work for the abortionist that Sanger woman, and I can't blame her for that. That girl was a disreputable little harlot and God knows what sort of improprieties she and Walker may have committed. Walker ruined Marsden's character you know? And Henrietta so tried to counter that influence. That's really the only reason she would associate with Walker. But Henrietta was not without a warm personal side. She held "at home" on Wednesdays and I attended her "at home" nearly every week. She was very proper about it - I know it was a source of some argument with her and the other GMs that she insisted on having her Wednesday "at home" instead of doing some of the last-minute work. She always wrote all of the invitations herself and send them out in the morning post I would reply by the afternoon post.

She always had some nice little tea cakes and such - not a whole lot but very pleasant - if it was winter she had the gas she had a coal-fired going in the great and her little apartment was very warm and comfortable and the Woods said he and it was always very polite and artistic much like appearance alarm which I think she consciously modeled after. She was not as conservative as a lot of people think. She had a painting by a Monet that she bought in Paris before he was terribly popular I suppose that would be worth a lot of money now. I guess her niece got it with the rest of her estate. She was very well traveled and nearly every year went Bayreuth for the Wagner festival. I believe she had met Blucher there backed in the 80's or 90s traveling abroad and actually introduced him to Horatio King when he came to work in Washington. She had some peculiarities. It drove even King crazy that she would not take a public streetcar, but would call a hansom cab just to go up Wisconsin avenue, which always made her rather late to meetings, since she wouldn't think to call for a hansom before she left. King took to calling one for her, early, but she'd have her girl send it away because she wasn't ready yet.

King and Bucher were in the same war gaining group - they met at King's bachelor digs with some other folks. King had a sand table, and a lot of lead figures, and they would re-enact battles. King was marvelously enthusiastic about the American Civil War, and of course Bucher was more interested in more modern warfare. They had a lot of arguments about the Franco-Prussian war, concerning tactics and what not. I remember their most heated argument was what would have happened if Marshal Patrice Mac-Mahon had been General William T. Sherman.

When Henrietta decided to do the project she of course recruited some people with a knowledge of games, and what could be more natural than one's war gaming group. King spun the idea to Bucher and he apparently was enthusiastic about it, though I think he never really cared all that much for Live Roleplay. And she recruited Marsden who was somewhat her protege, and came to her "At Home" and he suggested his marvelously talented and witty friend Thaddeus Walker. And Walker had a habit of making a very good first impression, and it wasn't until he was firmly on board that Henrietta came to despise him. That's why they moved the meetings to King's, because Henrietta banned Walker from her house, allegedly for suggesting some sort of sexual impropriety with her girl during whist, which Walker didn't play except for money.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world that you would get a GM out of war gaming group because that was a gaming background. There was theater of course and of course Marsden and Walker came out of theater but you don't think about that - it seemed natural that we thought of it as the game and we wanted to see people involved who were gamers.

At any rate I was recalling "at homes" with Henrietta. In the evening or late afternoon after the light had gone down and that gas light had been turned up - Henrietta never had electricity when I knew her - she didn't hold with it and thought it was somewhat dangerous - King was merciless about this though I don't think Bucher had electricity in his house either, and always seemed kind of suspicious of it as well - she would pour a little Madiera or Brandy and we all played whist and she would get very excited, so that she talked in a sort of high pitched and squeaky voice. She could really be very warm and personable, and was very fun, telling "little jokes" sometimes even about people she knew.

She didn't like to converse about what she called sex matters though she talked pretty often about how bad it was that everything was about sex matters these days. A lot of people held the opinion that this was the final Romanized decadence of Western civilization. When Theda Bara came into the movies, Henrietta considered that an abomination. Not that she was an apocalyptic or anything - her attitude towards the fall of our civilization was more along Roman and secularlist lines - She was an Episcopalian and attended St. John's Church on Lafayette Square "with the President, you know."

She was really not very outspoken about religion, and I don't think religion was a big part of her life. She despised William Jennings Bryan. She was very progressive in a Christian way - she gave to a lot of charities and believed in the equality of man. I knows she had some real tussles with Bucher about his plots about natural selection of the white race and such, though King and Bucher outalked her because she didn't know anything about science nor did he want to. For a very talkative woman she often got out talked, and I admit she did have a tendency not to know just precisely what it was that she was saying. But she had a very good heart, and really tried to take care of her players, that is those that she did not already despise.

Wilson,Veoma L. "Henrietta Wallace Dead at 76, Remembered," Metagame Vol XLVII, No. 10, October 1952