Calvin Coolidge writing his father: January 15, 1926.

Coolidge notes that they “had one of our weekly parties last night. A dinner and some music after it.” The Washington Post reported on January 15, “The President and Mrs. Coolidge entertained at dinner last evening at the White House in honor of the Supreme Court. The table was decorated with white carnations, baby primula and maidenhair fern… A musical program in the East room followed the dinner.” Coolidge says of such events in his Autobiography that “these functions were so much in the hands of Mrs. Coolidge that oftentimes I did not know what guests were to be present until I met them in the Blue Room just before going in to dinner. These social events are almost as much a part of the life of official Washington as a session of the Congress or a term of the Supreme Court.”

Coolidge finishes the letter with a comment on son John, who was starting the second half of his sophomore year at Amherst, writing, “He is a good boy, better I think than I was, but not a good scholar, only adequate.” In a 1999 interview for C-SPAN, Mr. Coolidge said that his brother, Calvin, Jr. was a “brilliant boy” and that “he was a better scholar than I was.”