The First Ladies Read online

  Parties were elegant but not lavish. Edith was a thrifty woman, and entertainment expenses were still out of the president’s pocket. The guest list, however, was always a who’s who of the finest talents and intellects in the world. Their contemporaries said that Theodore and Edith Roosevelt’s gatherings were more like a cultural salon than the center of political society.

  In her own way, Edith seemed to have a sixth sense for protocol and appropriate etiquette, and she watched her over-exuberant husband like a hawk. Even though she kept to the background, one look, or her cautionary, “Now, Theodore,” and the contrite president would immediately cease whatever he was doing that gave her pause.

  Her admirers said that Edith Roosevelt was the only First Lady who never made a mistake. Perhaps so, but her mark as First Lady, classy or not, leaves no real fingerprint. In part, she was overshadowed by a husband whose fingers were on everything. Then, too, there would be another Mrs. Roosevelt who would leave indelible fingerprints. Edith’s detractors claimed she seemed cocooned within her own hard, private shell that few were ever able to crack. Theodore could crack that shell of course. But he died prematurely at sixty, and she outlived him by nearly thirty years.

  No one else seems to have cracked that shell.

  Postscript: EDITH NEVER HUNTED MOOSE OR BIG GAME OR EXPLORED UNCHARTED RIVERS, BUT SHE THOROUGHLY ENJOYED INSPECTING ALL THE COLLECTIONS OF ROCKS, INSECTS, PLANTS, AND ANIMALS LARGE AND SMALL THAT FOUND THEIR WAY TO SAGAMORE HILL. SHE CLIMBED AND HIKED, SWAM, RODE, AND ROWED AND WAS HAPPY TO PARTICIPATE IN WHATEVER WAS ESSENTIAL TO ROOSEVELTIAN FUN. ONE SON SAID, “WHEN MOTHER WAS A LITTLE GIRL, SHE MUST HAVE BEEN A LITTLE BOY.”

  NELLIE TAFT

  1861–1943

  FIRST LADY: 1909–13

  The Wind Beneath

  There was nothing shy, retiring, domestic, or deferential about Helen Herron, called Nellie from birth. Born to a prominent Cincinnati, Ohio, family at the outset of the Civil War, Nellie would rail internally against the Victorian constrictions of the feminine world. She clandestinely smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey, and gambled at cards by the time she was fifteen— habits she kept all her life.

  At sixteen she spent a week at the White House, a guest of President and Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, who were close family friends. From that moment on, Nellie’s overwhelming goal was to occupy that same residence as Mrs. First Resident herself. The only path open for an ambitious woman at that time was via a promising spouse. William Howard Taft, who she married when she was twenty-five, had that promise. Besides boasting a Cincinnati pedigree surpassing the Herrons, Will had graduated at the top of his class at Yale, and at three hundred pounds, he was a huge mountain of lovable fellow who adored his sometimes witty and frequently sharp-tongued wife. Republican doors swung open for him.

  The biggest threat to Nellie’s presidential ambitions was that Will didn’t share them. His ambitions pointed a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue in the other direction: the Supreme Court. Will was a jurist by temperament and inclination, as he would be for the rest of his life. Nellie believed that same temperament and inclination would serve just as effectively in the executive branch. More important, she believed the executive branch would suit her temperament and inclination much better than the stuffy old court.

  So she joined, participated in, subscribed to, supported, and contributed to everything that would further her goal. As keeper of the family purse, she made sure political obligations were paid first. The tight-knit and well-moneyed Taft brothers were also inclined to agree with Nellie’s viewpoint, and they willingly gave her an important seat at the family council table. With their support and her inherent thrift, finances or lack thereof would never be a serious problem.

  Nellie was a Gemini, however, and the mischievous twins of her stars would play havoc within her own nature. Always a tightly wound perfectionist, she could make a half dozen fine decisions during the day only to toss and turn all night second-guessing herself and worrying everything to death.

  Nellie’s Legacy

  Nellie Taft is a big what-if. In only three months she would break numerous precedents and likely would have broken more if her health had permitted. She had AMBITION of both kinds—the ambition to want something and the ambition to work for it. Will Taft would have never been president if Nellie hadn’t been standing behind him with a cattle prod. No one gets very far without ambition, and Nellie had more of it than any of her predecessors. Maybe even more than her successors too.

  In 1899, right after the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Islands fell generally unwanted into our lap. The islands were steeped in generations of chaotic religious and political factions, and President McKinley wisely appointed Taft, a man of good will and excellent jurisprudence, to serve as governor-general. Nellie, who loved exotic travel almost as much as political power, was delighted to move to the islands with three children in tow. They would be her happiest years, although she didn’t know it at the time. There, ensconced in Manila’s beautiful Malacañan Palace, she was the first lady of the Philippines in a dress rehearsal for her plans for Washington. She entertained lavishly, mixing her nonprejudicial attitudes with elegance and etiquette. She undertook a program to provide milk to indigent Filipino children. She also managed to indulge her tastes for adventure and rode in war canoes, trekked muleback into the Luzon jungles “where no white woman had ever gone before,” and even took a solo side trip to Japan. Meanwhile, Taft was sincerely endearing himself to the Filipino people and actually establishing order.

  After the anguish of declining two offers of a Supreme Court appointment because of his commitments in the Philippines, Will finally received the one he couldn’t refuse: secretary of war under his good friend President Theodore Roosevelt. Nellie was thrilled. It was the opportunity she had been waiting for. It was an important cabinet post and visibly placed on the path to the White House itself.

  With the country at peace, the secretary of war had little to do except serve as TR’s troubleshooter, a job well suited to Taft’s talents. His star was rising. TR had also made a promise not to seek a second term (which he regretted the moment he uttered it) and needed to groom a successor. Theodore wanted Taft to run. So did Nellie. So did the Brothers Taft. The only one waffling was Will Taft himself, but he was outnumbered. So he ran and won.

  Nellie’s dream had come true. Since Taft now had a hefty $75,000 annual salary, he insisted that she indulge herself with a luscious new wardrobe. The glamorous Edwardian styles of the day were particularly becoming to the forty-eight-year-old woman with a good figure. At her insistence, she rode in the car beside the newly elected president—the first First Lady to ride with her husband. (Incoming and outgoing First Ladies previously rode together.) She began to redecorate and rearrange the furniture, which included removing the Roosevelt trophy heads. She contracted with the Cadillac Company to provide two automobiles gratis for presidential use in return for the privilege of saying so (didn’t everyone in Europe?); integrated the staff dining room over many objections; and turned a large section of the Tidal Basin area into a pedestrian park with free band concerts for everyone. The emperor of Japan, remembering Mrs. Taft from her earlier visit, sent hundreds of cherry seedlings to enhance the promenade. True to her nervous nature, Nellie fretted that no one would attend the first concert, but more than ten thousand people showed up.

  The Greek definition of tragedy is based on great height preceding great fall. The gods had granted Nellie’s wish. The goal had been reached. But a few months later, the gods turned. Nellie collapsed from a severe stroke. While she was not physically paralyzed, she suffered from aphasia and some facial disfiguring. In short, Nellie Taft could not communicate or be seen in public. She knew and understood everything that was going on, but her speech was garbled and her face contorted. She could not read or write. She could no longer be a participant. She could not even share her thoughts with her husband. It would take nearly the rest of Will Taft’s term for her to regain these lost
abilities. Still, she worked behind the scenes as much as possible, planning guest lists and menus and table arrangements and whatever she could do without undue stress. Her health was her main focus from that point on.

  One aide painted a heart-wrenching scene: a magnificent state banquet that Nellie had helped to plan but could not attend. Instead, bejeweled and dressed to the teeth in one of her elegant gowns, she sat alone at a table in an adjoining room, eating party food, and listening at a door left slightly ajar so she could hear what went on.

  All the great plans she had envisioned as First Lady, all the programs and good works she hoped to espouse, all the grand entertainment she had seen in her mind’s eye, and perhaps even her lasting place in the pantheon of First Ladies, all were gone in a moment’s collapse.

  Nellie recovered, although her speech would always be somewhat slurred. But what she had lost was her hard drive. Even though she lived past eighty, and even though she always maintained a lively interest in the political scene, and even though her husband became chief justice of the Supreme Court in his postpresidential career, Nellie’s greatest task was to quiet her restless soul. When she wrote her memoirs, she focused on the Philippines. The White House chapters were merely lists of guests and table decorations. If she grieved for her lost dreams, it was private.

  Postscript: THE TAFT FAMILY TODAY, TO THE FIFTH AND SIXTH GENERATION, LOOMS LARGE AND RESPECTED IN OHIO AND EVEN NATIONAL POLITICS. NELLIE IS THEIR MATRIARCH.

  ELLEN WILSON

  1860–1914

  FIRST LADY: 1913–14

  The Steel Magnolia

  When Ellen Axson was twenty, her mother died, leaving her to care for her brothers, ages fourteen and four, and the infant sister whose birth contributed to her mother’s early death. Then there was her father, a Presbyterian minister who battled crippling depression all his life and would succumb not long thereafter.

  Born in Savannah, Georgia, just as the Civil War commenced, Ellen had known little luxury. Ministers are seldom wealthy, and the decimated South could barely provide for its clergy. After a conventional education, Ellen had hoped to teach art, for which she had a decided talent. Her mother’s death ended that dream, however. Her only goal became keeping her family together.

  When she married Woodrow Wilson after an ardent two-year courtship mostly by correspondence, she was twenty-five. He was a twenty-eight-year-old scholar, just starting his academic career. Agreeing from the beginning to provide a home for Ellen’s brothers, the new couple would never know an empty house. Their three daughters came in rapid succession in the first five years. There was also a revolving door of Woodrows, Wilsons, and Axsons as long-term houseguests. With so many mouths to feed, Professor Wilson, whose academic stature would soar from the start, began augmenting his insufficient salary with extra lectures and seminars and also churned out a book nearly every year. The stress, along with his personal need for constant perfection and emotional reassurance, would take its toll: his always-delicate health suffered, which included two mis- or undiagnosed strokes before he was forty.

  It would fall to Ellen to be the earth mother and soother of wounds. She was the adhesive to hold the family, the house, the finances, and Woodrow together. She managed to do it all in her quiet and gentle way, which included becoming an intelligent audience for her brilliant husband. From the beginning of their courtship, Woodrow treated her as an intellectual equal, writing to her as he might write an academic colleague. He never gave a lecture series or submitted a manuscript without her preview and input. Woodrow the professor was a superb teacher. Ellen would always ask pithy and insightful questions. Her comments were always considered.

  Ellen also knew intuitively that she lacked the sophistication for the witty dinner table banter that her husband so loved. Instead, whenever his programs took him to other universities, she encouraged him to participate as a single and charm all the worldly wives and daughters of his academic associates. She supported his separate vacations where he could relieve those tensions that always bubbled like simmering magma within. She firmly believed that she had bartered frivolous cosmopolitan pleasures for something far better. She also knew Woodrow’s love for her ran deep and true and had no doubt that she was married to the most wonderful man in the world. They would write each other loving letters every day they were apart—even decades after their marriage.

  By the time Wilson was a serious presidential contender, he had spent two decades shepherding Princeton to become one of the most academically prestigious colleges in the country. Considered a safe, conservative Democratic candidate, he was easily elected governor of New Jersey. Meanwhile, Ellen had become a capable hostess, business manager, political confidante, and watchful observer of Woodrow’s precarious health. She also had the innate tact and savvy to run surreptitious interference for the turbulent personal-professional relationships that seemed to be a part of her husband’s personality. Also, by the time Wilson was a serious contender, their daughters were grown. Ellen now had some uncrowded hours to unpack brushes and paints and devote more time to herself and her art. Hers was a serious talent, far more developed than Caroline Harrison’s gift for china painting. Even before she had First Lady notoriety, she had earned the respect and regard of several important American impressionists of the early twentieth century. She sold. She submitted. She competed. She won prizes.

  Ellen’s Legacy

  Ellen Wilson, in her own unassuming way, had a GENEROSITY OF SOUL that is hard to equal. Everyone else’s interest came before her own, and she offered it gladly. Other First Ladies would be generous with their time, talents, support, and even money, but Ellen’s bounty would penetrate to her core. Even in dying, she placed her husband’s responsibilities as president before her own health or need for personal comfort. On her deathbed, she gave Woodrow Wilson “permission,” as it were, to love again without guilt. When he remarried, he would always know it was with Ellen’s blessing.

  Two years later, Wilson was elected president. Ellen believed with all her heart that he was the best qualified person to run the country, and whether she wanted it or not (and she said she didn’t), being First Lady was part of the bargain. Her tenure would only last fifteen months, but in that time she made two notable contributions. The first is the Rose Garden that exists to this day. She had noticed the spot the day of Wilson’s inauguration, and her artist’s eye could see its potential. She worked closely with the White House gardeners to plan it, although she would not live to see its full glory.

  Her second contribution is frequently and unjustly pooh-poohed by subsequent historians who measure against the present and demand executive foresight and skills from First Ladies who barely understood that concept. Within walking distance of the 1913 White House was a foul slum of shanties built as temporary housing for former slaves after the Civil War. They were ugly, fetid, unsanitary, and bred disease. Ellen and several congressional wives mounted an intense lobbying campaign to have the eyesore removed. This would mark the first time a First Lady had undertaken a serious non-domestic public role. Others, of course, would follow, but she was the first. With little precedent to guide them since social activism was still in its infancy, little attention if any was given to the consequent problems of the displaced residents. “Mrs. Wilson’s Bill,” as it was called, was doubtlessly naive in a way, but had she lived, it is likely that she would have continued her involvement and advocacy to the next steps.

  But Ellen came to the White House with a secret—one she didn’t even know herself. Her health was failing. She blamed her flagging energy on the fact that she was fifty-four years old and had undertaken an enormous social schedule, including planning a grand White House wedding for her daughter. A year into Wilson’s presidency, she had a fall. While it did not cause serious injury, it was a shock to her system and required medical attention. When she did not respond adequately to the prescribed treatment, Dr. Cary Grayson, their personal physician who had become a close friend to both Wilsons, decide
d to look further. It did not take long for him to discover the alarming symptoms of Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment, then always fatal. She had had it for years.

  Ellen and her doctor decided to withhold that information from the president until such time as it no longer could be concealed. Woodrow had enough stress dealing with accelerating hostilities in Europe. He was only told the inevitable two days before his wife died, just as the guns of August were booming their way into World War I.

  Postscript: SHORTLY BEFORE HER DEATH, ELLEN CONFIDED TO DR. GRAYSON THAT IT WOULD BE HER WISH THAT WOODROW REMARRY IF THE OPPORTUNITY AROSE. SHE KNEW BETTER THAN ANYONE HOW MUCH HE NEEDED A WOMAN’S SUPPORT AND COMFORTING PRESENCE IN HIS LIFE. IT WAS THE GREATEST GIFT SHE WOULD GIVE HIM.

  EDITH WILSON

  1872–1961

  FIRST LADY: 1915–21

  Dragon Lady

  Woodrow Wilson was practically paralyzed with grief when Ellen died, but less than a year later, that grief would be replaced by euphoria.

  Edith Bolling was born into an old (dating to Pocahontas), genteel Virginia family (her father was a judge) not long after the Civil War had left everything in ruins. As the seventh of nine children and a girl to boot, there was little left for Edith’s education except the admonition to marry well and provide for herself. She did. At twenty-four, after a four-year tepid courtship, she married Norman Galt, a prestigious Washington jeweler a dozen years her senior. Their marriage, albeit childless, was pleasant enough. When he died a decade later, Edith was his sole heir. She would never need to worry about money.