First Ladies (33 page)

Mary’s performances as a hostess and parade watcher became sporadic, however, as the war ground on and the casualties multiplied endlessly. Spilling across half the continent, the conflict absorbed, even consumed, the President. His wife retreated into a shell of private grief, haunted by imaginary fears and nightmarish dreams. She passed most of the day in her sitting room on the second floor, waiting for her exhausted husband to appear, which he rarely did before midnight.

In her loneliness, guilt began mingling with Mary’s sorrow. She, the ambitious one, had been the driving force behind Abraham’s ascent, and God had apparently punished her with Willie’s death. The ambition that drives a man or his wife to the presidency can do terrible things to them when tragedy strikes down one of their children.

Mary’s grief multiplied when she learned that two of her brothers, Samuel and Alexander, her favorite, had died fighting for the Confederacy. Even worse, somehow, was the news that General Ben Helm, husband of her youngest sister, Emilie, had been killed leading an attack on the Union Army at the Battle of Chickamauga. When Emilie attempted to return to Kentucky with her two young children, federal officials arrested her. Lincoln ordered her sent to the White House. Among the mean-spirited, this ignited another spate of rumors about Mary Lincoln’s Southern sympathies.

I am more interested in Emilie’s reaction to Mary’s deterioration. She could not believe this frightened, haunted woman was the happy, lively older sister she had left with protestations of love when they parted in 1861. Mary’s fears, her dreams were “unnatural and abnormal,” Emilie said. Lincoln begged Emilie to stay on in the White House, in spite of the fact that she was an irreconcilable Janey Reb. He felt she was the companion Mary badly needed. But Emilie, after several ferocious exchanges with Northern senators and congressmen—she shared the hot Todd temper and sharp tongue—went home to Kentucky, leaving Mary even more bereft.

Gradually, Mary Lincoln began to hate the White House. It was haunted by Willie’s ghost, and by her present but preoccupied husband. She spent more and more time at a summer residence, the Soldiers’ Home, on Rock Creek Road, about three miles north of the Capitol. Built in the 1850s to house retired federal veterans, it had a charming cottage on its five hundred wooded acres that several Presidents used to escape Washington’s ghastly humidity and foul smells.

By the time victory emerged from the slaughter in early 1865, Mary Lincoln was a deeply depressed, isolated woman. Her mental state became apparent in an episode which did almost as much to ruin her reputation as the mess with Chevalier Wikoff. On March 23,1865,
she accompanied her husband to Virginia to review General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and be on hand for what looked like the imminent end of the war. The day after they arrived, Lincoln left Mary aboard the side-wheeler that had brought them up the James River and rode off with his generals to visit the battlefields around Richmond. Later in the day Mary and Julia Grant climbed into an army ambulance that had been converted into a makeshift carriage. Bouncing over the atrocious roads, Mary became more and more infuriated. When she reached the field where the review was to be held, she found herself relegated to a seat far in the rear, while the President sat on his horse in the front row, beside an extremely pretty woman, the wife of a Union general.

Mary’s Todd temper erupted. This was not the way Abraham should treat his political partner. She had stood beside him as a near equal at the White House, reviewing hundreds of parades. Why, in the hour of victory, was she being treated like a nobody? She waded across the muddy field and assaulted the President with every irate verb and adjective in her vocabulary, while the ranking generals of the Army of the Potomac gaped with disbelief.

The story spread through Washington, certifying Mary Lincoln as something close to a madwoman. I make no apologies for it—beyond the explanations already given. It was atrocious behavior. But Mary soon calmed down and was thoroughly ashamed of herself. She barely spoke to anyone for the rest of the trip, sequestering herself with her youngest son, Tad, and her oldest son, Robert, who had become an officer on General Grant’s staff. Eventually she returned to Washington, mortified and even more alone.

While others tut-tutted, Abraham Lincoln was not particularly upset by Mary’s outburst. He had encountered her temper too often to take it seriously. He knew Mary quickly regretted her explosions and did her best to make amends with soothing words and her ample feminine charm. A little over two weeks later, on Palm Sunday, she stood smiling at a White House window while Lincoln spoke to a joyous crowd, celebrating the news that Robert E. Lee had surrendered his army to General Grant at Appomattox Court House.

With peace at hand, Lincoln started trying to be a husband again. He wrote Mary tender, playful notes and invited her for rides around Washington in one of the White House carriages. The President’s good humor—and his desire to share it with Mary—led him to suggest they go to Ford’s Theater on Good Friday, April 14, to see a comedy,
Our American Cousin
.

That afternoon they went for another carriage ride. Mary wanted to invite some friends, but Abraham said he preferred to be alone with her. “We must both be more cheerful in the future,” he told her. “Between the war and the loss of our darling Willie, we have both been very miserable.” Here is evidence that the man who understood Mary Lincoln best was well aware of what had happened to her. He was taking part of the blame, admitting he too had been depressed and unable to help her.

At the play that evening, Mary impulsively took Abraham’s hand during the third act. With them were a young couple, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris. They were deliriously in love. “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on you so?” Mary asked.

“She won’t think anything about it,” Lincoln said, airily comparing them with the young lovers.

Ten seconds later a madman named John Wilkes Booth burst into the presidential box and shot Abraham Lincoln in the head. From that moment Mary Lincoln ceased to be a balanced woman. Can anyone blame her?

—

I
HAVE MY OWN CANDIDATE FOR WORST
F
IRST
L
ADY
. W
HEN THE
Trumans used to discuss former denizens of the White House, Warren Harding’s name was seldom spoken with respect. Dad did not hesitate to call him our worst President. As I began delving into the lives of First Ladies, I found myself wondering if Florence Kling Harding was just as bad. I soon discovered they were a matched pair.

You could argue that Florence’s first mistake was marrying Warren Harding. But that would be a bit unfair. When Florence Kling met the affable Ohioan, she was a desperate woman with a failed marriage. Her first spouse had been a playboy who abandoned her and her infant son. She was determined, if she married again, to choose a man she could keep in line.

Warren may have struck her as a bit vacuous, but that was a minor problem. Her quarry (she pursued him relentlessly) was unquestionably handsome, and he had high if vague ambitions. Florence was almost thirty-one and Warren was twenty-five, no doubt another reason
why she thought he would be easy to control. She should have listened more closely to Warren’s mother, who told her if she wanted a happy marriage, she should keep the icebox full and both eyes on Warren.

Harding was the owner and publisher of the Marion, Ohio,
Star
, a newspaper that was barely breathing. Florence appointed herself circulation manager and head bookkeeper and in eighteen years of hard work built the
Star
into a profitable small-town paper. As one of the neighbors observed, Florence “runs her house; runs the paper… runs Warren, runs everything but the car.”

Meanwhile Warren wrote editorials full of platitudes about God and country and home and mother and recited them in speeches up and down Ohio. Pretty soon the local Republicans decided his eloquence and his matinee idol profile made him a likely candidate for the state senate. There he met a political operator named Harry Daugherty, who said to himself: “That man looks like a president.”

Florence had mixed feelings about Daugherty. Perhaps she sensed, from the start, that “Wurr’n,” as she called him, was not qualified for high office. Maybe she feared that politics would make it harder for her to keep her eyes on him. Both fears turned out to be well grounded, although Warren did not need politics as an excuse to stray. For over two decades he conducted a passionate affair with Carrie Phillips, the wife of one of their best friends in Marion. Many people who knew about it did not blame Warren too much. Florence never stopped nagging him about money and other matters, and from all accounts her nasal, peremptory voice would have driven even a devoted husband out of earshot. Warren’s attitude is probably summed up in the nickname he pinned on her: “The Duchess.”

In spite of her misgivings, Florence allowed Daugherty, a less than successful lawyer, to become Warren’s alter ego and perennial promoter. Thanks to this eager beaver, Harding was elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio in 1914.

Florence liked being a senator’s wife. She enjoyed the capital’s social scene and was thrilled when the millionaire hostess Evalyn Walsh McLean befriended her. Florence’s fears about her husband’s
incompetence proved groundless. There were many senators as dumb as Warren, without his personal charm or gift for platitudes.

Harry Daugherty was still lurking in the wings of Senator Harding’s career, and as the Wilson administration collapsed into illness and political disarray, it became more and more apparent that the Republicans were going to win in 1920. Moreover, the nomination was wide open because Theodore Roosevelt, the most likely candidate, had died in 1919. At first Florence reacted coolly to the idea of Warren becoming President. This time maybe she was sure he was not up to the job. In any case, she told Daugherty she preferred to remain a senator’s wife.

There were other more serious reasons for saying no. Warren had high blood pressure, a heart condition, and a long record of “breakdowns” which required him to retreat to a sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan, to recuperate. Florence had lost a kidney in 1905 and was frequently forced to retreat to her bed with attacks of nephritis. Neither was in any condition to handle the stresses of the White House.

Harding himself was less than enthusiastic about running for President. He had no great opinion of his talents; in fact, he was a modest man, aware of his limitations. He was also lazy. He spent a lot more time on his extramarital affairs than he devoted to politics. He was now conducting two of them, one with his long-running flame, Carrie Phillips, the other with Nan Britton, a curvaceous twenty-something blonde who bore him an illegitimate child in 1919. No wonder Warren missed two-thirds of the votes in his five years in the Senate.

Florence’s doubts about a presidential race were deepened by a visit to Madame Marcia, one of Washington, D.C.’s more popular astrologers. Florence told Marcia only the time and date of Warren’s birth and asked for a reading on his destiny. Marcia declared the man was a “great statesman” and was destined to become President. But he would die in office. She also said his life was full of clandestine love affairs and he was subject to melancholia.

Harry Daugherty pooh-poohed Madame Marcia and overcame Florence’s doubts by convincing her that the presidency was no more
trouble than a Senate seat. He dangled the First Lady’s social power before the Duchess’s susceptible eyes. During her Washington years, Florence had begun keeping a list of people who had snubbed her. The chance to even scores with these adversaries swept her away. Need I say this is not a very good reason to persuade an ailing husband to run for President?

Nevertheless, Florence and Harry Daugherty soon had “Wurr’n” in the race. At first, he was a horse so dark he was all but invisible. There were several leading Republican contenders, but none had enough votes to win the nomination. The canny Daugherty said he did not expect Warren Harding to win on the first ballot or the second or the third. He was going to be a compromise candidate when the deadlocked convention had nowhere else to go.

Harding’s lack of enthusiasm for the run made him a less than energetic candidate. When he faltered at rounding up delegates in Ohio and Indiana, he decided to withdraw. Florence arrived just as he was placing the call and snatched the telephone out of his hand. “Wurr’n Harding, what are your doing? Give up? Not until the convention is over,” she cried.

The Republican Convention played out exactly as Daugherty had predicted. The leading contenders deadlocked, and Daugherty and his Ohio cohorts pushed Harding until the bleary-eyed party leaders finally accepted him at 2:00
A.M
. in a room full of cigar smoke at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel. The bosses asked Warren if he had any skeletons in his closet. He thought it over for ten minutes and said “No.” He had concealed his love life as senator. Why not as President?

As the final ballot neared, Daugherty joined Florence Harding in a box in the balcony. She had taken off her hat and was clutching two enormous hatpins in her right hand. “Warren will be nominated on the next ballot,” Daugherty said.

Florence whirled, a maniacal light in her eyes, and drove the hatpins deep into Daugherty’s side. The mastermind of Harding’s presidency staggered away, wondering if he were mortally wounded, while the roll call of the states put his man over the top. What inspired this extraordinary act of violence? We will never know, but I tend to suspect that Florence Harding sensed in her deepest self that making
“Wurr’n” President was the worst mistake of both their lives. She yielded to an unconquerable urge to wreak harm on the man who had set the fatal machinery in motion.

Harding won the election by an astonishing seven million votes, and the Republicans did almost as well in the House and Senate. It was not an endorsement of Harding, of course; it was a repudiation of Woodrow and Edith Wilson. But no one stopped to think about that. Harding instantly became a “popular” President. He gave the disillusioned American people what they wanted in the White House at that moment: a nice man with a big smile and no ideas whatsoever. He or one of his speechwriters chose a word to sum it up: normalcy.