First Ladies (16 page)

I am sorry to say Nellie also used her power in petty ways. Some twenty years before, on her honeymoon in Europe, she had asked Henry White, at the time a minor diplomat in the American Embassy in London, for tickets to Parliament. Instead, she and Will had gotten tickets to the Royal Mews—a tourist attraction, to be sure, but not quite on the level of Parliament. She had never forgiven the man. When Nellie became First Lady, firing White became a top priority for the Taft administration. The President hated to do it but finally let Nellie have her way. Ex-President Roosevelt was shocked and outraged. White was a personal friend, currently serving as ambassador to France, and Teddy considered him the finest diplomat in the State Department’s ranks.

The incident marked the beginning of a split between Taft and Roosevelt that would eventually wreck the Republican Party. Nellie added fuel to the soon-to-be conflagration by vetoing the appointment of Alice Roosevelt’s husband, Nicholas Longworth, a distinguished congressman from Ohio, as ambassador to China. Maybe she had heard about Alice’s wicked imitation of her stiff posture and what Alice called her “Cin-cin-nasty” accent. Or perhaps Nellie had found out about that voodoo doll buried on the White House lawn. In any case, shooting down Nick Longworth was a mistake. Backing the nomination would have been a perfect way to get Alice and her savage tongue far away from Washington, D.C.

While Nellie turned alienation into an art, Taft was writing letters to Roosevelt, assuring him he did “nothing in the executive office without considering what you would do under the same circumstances and without having in a sense a mental talk with you over the pros and cons of the situation.” The poor man did not seem to realize that he was trapped between two irresistible forces—and he was not an immovable object.

Simultaneously, Nellie was trying to turn her time in the White House into a replay of her reign as queen of the governor’s palace in Manila. She fired the traditional ushers virtually en masse and replaced them with an all African-American staff wearing blue livery. For a while she even considered putting the rest of the staff into gaudy uniforms, but she backed off when people began murmuring that her changes were far too regal for a democracy.

Nellie also bounced the steward, who had been responsible for meals and general housekeeping, and hired the first of the housekeepers, a tyrant named Elizabeth Jaffray, who reportedly was a forerunner of Henrietta Nesbitt in terror tactics. Nellie wanted everything “spotless,” and Mrs. Jaffray made sure the White House lived up to its name, inside and out. Behind her back the staff murmured that apparently neither the First Lady nor Mrs. Jaffray had heard of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Nellie also embarked on a laudable campaign to get the First Family out of the horse and buggy era. She extracted a twelve-thousand-dollar appropriation from Congress for motorcars, which were already becoming ubiquitous. When she found the prices of the best cars too high, she struck a deal with their manufacturers for a handsome discount, giving them the privilege of advertising their brand as the choice of the White House. I can almost hear what Harry Truman would have to say about such a commercialization of the presidency. Nellie was acting more like a Queen than a First Lady.

Making the car deal even more unpalatable was the fact that the Tafts could easily have afforded to pay a little extra for the models Nellie wanted. Congress, in a fit of uncharacteristic generosity, had just raised the Chief Executive’s salary to $75,000, plus a $25,000 travel allowance. According to economist Michael Ahearn, who is good at historical statistics, in those days of low pay and even lower inflation, $100,000 was equivalent to $1.5 million in 1993 dollars, making William Howard Taft the highest-paid President in real dollar terms in our history.

Instead of loosening her purse strings a little, Nellie resolved to save $25,000 a year ($350,000 in today’s dollars) from this bonanza.
Mrs. Jaffray was ordered to comparison shop for everything from lettuce to lamb chops. The First Lady succeeded in departing with $100,000 (again, $1.5 million of our funny money) in the bank at the end of her husband’s term.

While Nellie fretted over money and housekeeping minutiae, things drifted politically. President Taft moaned that he felt like a “fish out of water” and confessed he was glad that “my wife is the politician” in the family. The unhappy Chief Executive consoled himself with his favorite indoor sport: eating. Soon his weight had ballooned, and the White House plumbers had to install a special bathtub, seven feet long and forty-one inches wide, weighing a ton, to accommodate him.

Recognizing the need for some good publicity, Nellie embarked on a project to beautify Washington. During her Manila days she had been impressed by the throngs that gathered each evening in the city’s beautiful waterside park, the Luneta. With some help from the Army officer in charge of public grounds, Nellie chose a road along the Potomac River, renamed it Potomac Drive, and had a bandstand built nearby. On April 17, 1909, she and the President drove down to the site in one of the new White House cars. A crowd of ten thousand gathered around them to enjoy a concert by the U.S. Army band.

The swampy, mosquito-infested landscape along Potomac Drive left a lot to be desired, and Nellie solved that problem with another inspiration from her years in the Far East—the beautiful pink-blossomed cherry trees of Tokyo. She sent out a rush order to all the nurseries in America to ship their Japanese cherry trees to Washington. When only a hundred showed up, the mayor of Tokyo offered another two thousand trees. The first shipment died, but subsequent deliveries created the beautiful cherry blossoms that are one of Washington, D.C.’s spring joys. They would prove to be Nellie Taft’s chief accomplishment as First Lady.

Meanwhile, former President Roosevelt and his wife had embarked on a trip around the world. As newspaper stories about their warm reception in various capitals multiplied, Nellie’s jealousy of Teddy tended toward paranoia. One report from Naples quoted the ex-President
as saying that if Taft did not carry out his progressive policies, he would return and run him out of the White House. Major Archie Butt, the White House military aide who had also served Roosevelt, told Taft he was sure the story was a fabrication. “Oh I don’t know,” Nellie said. “It sounded just like him.”

By now I think it is all too clear that Nellie was a First Lady under terrific stress. In May 1909, two months after her husband’s inauguration, the Tafts and a party of friends, including several cabinet officers, boarded the presidential yacht,
Sylph
, for some much needed relaxation. The First Lady was pale and drawn from an ordeal that had nothing to do with money or politics. Her son Charles had had his adenoids removed that morning. In those days surgery of any kind was life threatening, and Nellie’s tense nerves and vivid imagination had redoubled her anxiety. As the
Sylph
plowed toward Mount Vernon, the attorney general sat in a deck chair beside Nellie, making polite conversation. Suddenly he noticed the First Lady’s eyes were glazed, her face wooden. She was unconscious.

Nellie was rushed back to the White House, unable to speak, her right side paralyzed by a devastating stroke. The distraught President spent hours each day in her bedroom, helping her regain her speech. He barred all mention of politics from the second floor of the White House, fearing it would trigger another, possibly fatal episode.

On his own as President, Taft soon became the captive of the conservative Republicans in Congress. These retrograde politicos were determined to destroy Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive reforms and the easygoing Taft, a conservative by instinct, became their halfhearted collaborator. As one disgusted progressive senator put it, “Yes, Taft carried out Roosevelt’s policies. [He] carried them out on a shutter.”

As critical letters from progressives reached him abroad, Teddy grew dismayed by Taft’s performance. When the Roosevelts returned from their world tour, Edith Roosevelt received an almost incoherent letter from Nellie Taft. She addressed Edith as “Mrs. Roosevelt,” as if she were a stranger, and referred to Teddy as “President Roosevelt.” Nellie invited them to the White House “soon” but said she was about
to retreat to the Taft summer home in Beverly, Massachusetts, to “recuperate” from the White House season.

This mishmash shows how much Nellie’s stroke had unraveled her, as well as the Tafts’ partnership. They were still concealing her illness from the press, referring to it only in the vague terms used at the time to explain ladies’ indispositions. (Taft confessed how serious it was in a letter to Roosevelt, however.) She had recovered the ability to walk, but her speech was slurred and she had to grope for every other word. The letter suggests that she was also not thinking very clearly.

When the Roosevelts visited the Tafts in Beverly later that summer, Nellie insisted on joining the meeting. At first, she scarcely spoke a word because of her speech impediment. Roosevelt told Taft that during his tour of Europe he had encouraged the major powers to convene an international peace conference. With all the industrial nations armed as never before and threatening one another with annihilation, it was an eminently worthwhile proposal. Teddy suggested Andrew Carnegie as a natural choice to lead the American delegation to this conclave. The Pittsburgh industrialist had donated millions to various peace movements. “I don’t think Mr. Carnegie would do at all!” Nellie blurted out. She was reacting to press criticism of Taft’s tendency to hobnob with millionaires. She did not seem to realize—or care—that she was inflicting yet another wound on the Taft-Roosevelt friendship.

Nellie’s speech gradually improved, but her health remained fragile. As late as January 1911, nineteen months after her stroke, Ellen Slayden noted in her journal, “Poor Mrs. Taft is still too ill to take part in anything.” Almost certainly the stroke affected the First Lady’s political judgment. Her paranoia about Roosevelt made her an easy target for the schemes of Taft’s secretary, Charles Norton, a Chicagoan who saw himself as a Machiavelli destined to reshape the Republican Party. Together, he and Nellie relentlessly poisoned Taft’s mind against Roosevelt, persuading him to fire still more of TR’s appointees, notably Gifford Pinchot, the man who had helped found the conservation movement in America.

Further evidence of deteriorated judgment was Nellie’s decision to invite four thousand people to a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party at the White House. She all but solicited expensive presents from every prince, potentate, politician, and tycoon in the world. The result was a mountain of silver whose total value had to exceed a million dollars. Virtual strangers such as the head of U.S. Steel sent a silver tureen worth eight thousand dollars. John D. Rockefeller came through with an entire cabinet of silver tea caddies. The guests wandered the White House grounds asking each other sotto voce how much they had “put up” to get in. Ellen Slayden, who liked Nellie, was sorry that presents had been permitted. “Many of the Tafts’ friends regret it and feel it was a mistake,” she said.

By this time Roosevelt had given up on Taft and was openly advertising himself as a candidate for the presidency in 1912. Rather than split their Grand Old Party, Taft was inclined to let him have the Republican nomination. He told Nellie that he was ready to retire “with the consciousness that I have done the best I could.” Nellie promptly informed him that he would do no such thing. By this time she was so consumed with hatred of Theodore Roosevelt, she was determined to deny him the presidency, even if the Democrats nominated the Akhond of Swat.

As the incumbent President, Taft controlled enough party machinery to win the Republican nomination. But he had long since lost the confidence of the people. The 1912 campaign was one long humiliation for him. After a particularly abusive assault by Roosevelt, running on the impromptu Progressive Party ticket, Taft broke down. “He’s my best friend,” he sobbed.

Poor Will carried only two states, one of the worst beatings ever inflicted on a sitting President. But he won enough votes to keep Teddy out of the White House. The winner was the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, who polled 1,413,728 votes less than the combined Roosevelt-Taft total.

Although I admire Helen Taft’s determination to make her woman’s voice heard in an era when this was anything but fashionable, objectivity forces me to conclude she was a disaster as a political
partner, by almost any standard. Part of this failure must be attributed to bad luck. She had more than her share of strength and courage, two of the three gifts Grace Coolidge said all First Ladies need. But Nellie fatally lacked the third, health.

In spite of all Nellie put him through in the White House, Will Taft, the good-natured old slug, went right on worshiping her. Maybe that proves love really is the mystery of life Victor Herbert said it was in that song.

—

T
HAT MAGICAL WORD
,
LOVE
,
IS A PERFECT TRANSITION TO THE REIGN
of an accidental political partner—one could even call her an accidental First Lady—Edith Boiling Gait Wilson. She was very much alive when the Trumans came to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1945, and I met her several times. My mother maintained a warm correspondence with her.

Formidable is a word that comes readily to mind when I think of Edith Wilson—large and formidable—and extremely charming when she wanted to be. My mother often invited her to dinners and receptions, where she was invariably a Presence. In 1961 John F. Kennedy invited her to ride in his inaugural parade. By that time she was in her late eighties, and no one recognized the woman who had virtually run the country for almost two years in 1919–21.

Ellen Axson Wilson, Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, died, readers will recall, in August 1914. Her grief-stricken husband buried himself in work, of which there was plenty. In that same month the nations of
Europe had plunged into fratricidal war on a hitherto unimaginable scale, and Americans began arguing violently about which side to support. The President struggled, mostly in vain, to be a mediator between the combatants.