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PRINCETON: Remembering President Wilson

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   Right around 7 p.m. Saturday, the men and women at the Nassau Club raised their glasses and toasted the man whose portrait hung on the wall.
   ”To Wilson,” they said in honor of Woodrow Wilson, once president of Princeton University, governor of New Jersey and 28th president of the United States, on a night when they turned back the clock for a period dinner celebrating his inauguration 100 years ago.
   The Wilson Centennial Committee, a group formed to celebrate Mr. Wilson’s accomplishments on the national stage, staged an evening at the club in which everything from the clothes guests wore to the food they ate was meant to evoke early 1900s America. Attendees paid $100 per person, with close to 40 people expected.
   ”It’s just as much of a re-creation as we can do now for fun,” said committee member Claire Jacobus as piano music played in the background. Ms. Jacobus, wearing a black dress with a lace mantilla and long white gloves, said the dinner was meant to be “evocative of the period.”
   Two other committee members, Alison Lahnston and Dee Patberg, researched the menu for Saturday’s dinner. They did not have to travel far. Mudd Library, located on the Princeton University campus, has a book that Mr. Wilson’s class at Princeton did for its 15th alumni reunion, which included a copy of the menu, said Ms. Patberg, a past president of the Historical Society of Princeton.
   Together, the women conferred with Stephen Pieretti, general manager of the Nassau Club, to create a meal that started with snapper soup, then moved on to roasted beet salad, fish, broken up with lemon sorbet to cleanse the palate, before the filet mignon arrived. Wines included a Chardonnay and a Cabernet.
   ”Well, we didn’t do pheasant because that’s really prohibitive, and we wanted everybody to feel they could come,” said Ms. Lahnston, a past president of the Nassau Club, before dinner started.
   Mr. Pieretti, wearing white gloves, said he watched a 1944 movie about Mr. Wilson “to see how things were served. The way fellowship was done was very important to the meal.”
   Meals at the time, he said, were lengthy, anywhere from four to four and a half hours “because it was all about conversation.” While Saturday’s multi-course dinner was not supposed to be that long, the tempo of the meal would be in keeping with the way things were done then. Plates were not going to be removed until the entire table was finished eating each course.
   ”As you know in the modern day, you can clear with 80 percent of the tables done, and that coaxes the meal along. So we’ll wait until the entire table is done, and then we’ll re-pour the wine and then we’ll clear the course,” he said.
   Ms. Lahnston, sporting a Gibson Girl hairdo that would have been in fashion around the early 1900s, wore pearls and brought an embroidered cloak to accentuate her outfit. There were other touches to the evening, as organizers sought to capture every detail.
   During cocktail hour, guests munched on cheese sticks, which Mr. Wilson liked to have in the White House. The sterling silver punch bowl, loaned from the university for the dinner, belonged to a classmate of Mr. Wilson’s at Princeton, William Isham.
   ”We’re thrilled that the university allowed us to have the punch bowl. It made it something unique and it was something that Wilson was involved with,” Ms. Patberg said.
   The dinner, originally scheduled for Nov.10 to celebrate Mr. Wilson’s election, was postponed due to the after-effects of superstorm Sandy. As things turned, the rescheduled dinner fell in the same month he was inaugurated president, March 4, 1913.
   Mr. Wilson, a native of Virginia, attended Princeton University, class of 1879. He later returned to his alma mater to teach and then became its president starting in 1902. As a politician, he was the governor of New Jersey and a two-term president who guided the nation through World War I.
   In these parts, he is also remembered for founding the Nassau Club, where photos and Wilson memorabilia hang on the walls. “Someplace around here,” Ms. Patberg said, “there’s a picture of him. And it says president of the Nassau Club, nothing about university, United States, governor. It’s like he had reached the pinnacle.”
   The club holds themed events, but nothing like the size of Saturday night.
   ”It’s fun,” said Mr. Pieretti, before he went ring a bell to signal dinner would be ready. “You see that a lot of people liked to come out for these type of things. It’s an icebreaker. It’s something to talk about.”