The Courtesan and the Consort

by Kitty Kelley

Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman opened the front door of her Georgetown mansion. Pearls draped her freckled cleavage and reddish hair framed her milk-white face like a froth of ginger. “Please come in,” she said. “The White Roses are straight ahead.”

Everyone grinned like fools. They had been standing outside 3038 N Street for some time, having paid $1000 to support “Democrats for the ’80s,” better known as Pam PAC. Now they clomped into the house like peasants to the palace.

“Does she really think we’re here to see the Van Gogh?” said one woman, whispering like a second-grader.

In fact, Mrs. Harriman knew full well all were there as voyeurs just wanting a chance to rub up against a copper-bottomed courtesan who finally got one of the richest men in the country to marry her. But what did she care? They were paying her for the privilege.

These paid events hosted by the Harrimans from 1980-1990 usually raised $100,000 an evening, and went a long way toward a Democratic restoration in the wake of the Reagan revolution that had seized control of the Senate for the first time in twenty-eight years….

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Originally published December 30, 2016 at New York Social Diary