First Ladies (35 page)

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T
HE
H
ARDING STORY—AND TO SOME EXTENT
M
ARY
L
INCOLN’S
tragedy—underscores one aspect of the presidency that few people understand: it is dangerous work, loaded with emotional and physical stress that can destroy the body and maim the mind. One First Lady triumphed over formidable obstacles to achieve a rare serenity in the White House—while doing her job with a finesse that won plaudits from Americans in both parties. But for reasons beyond her control, Grace Coolidge could not communicate this serenity to her deeply troubled husband.

There have been other serene First Ladies, notably Edith Roosevelt, but she did not have to overcome as many challenges as Grace Coolidge. First, Grace was married to Calvin Coolidge, a man who would have driven me—and most other women—to despair. Not only was this laconic, moody Vermonter, known even to his friends as “Silent Cal,” Grace’s total opposite in temperament and attitudes but he was a domestic dictator who insisted on running her private life.

Those with good memories will recall the letter I mentioned earlier, from Grace Coolidge to Bess Truman, assuring Mother that she would survive the shock of waking up one morning and discovering she was no longer that invisible personage, the vice president’s wife. This was, of course, another obstacle for both the Coolidges. In their case, along with being catapulted into the White House, they were saddled with a huge political-financial scandal perpetrated by the scoundrels in the Harding administration.

Yet thanks to Calvin Coolidge’s unflinching Yankee honesty and Grace’s smiling serenity, the Coolidges pulled off a political miracle and survived the Republican Party’s disgrace to win a startling victory in the 1924 presidential race. The Democrats helped, of course, by publicizing the deep divisions in their party at their nominating convention, where they took over a hundred ballots to name a cardboard compromise candidate.

After Florence Harding, a First Lady who made people wince every time she opened her mouth, Washington discovered a woman who made people feel good every time they met her. Willowy Grace Coolidge had a magical smile and a warm greeting for everyone. She was gregarious, cheerful, outgoing—the opposite of her diffident, poker-faced husband, who seemed to make it a rule not to smile more than once a month. While Coolidge’s unblemished reputation was helpful in weathering the crisis that confronted his party, he utterly lacked the personal warmth that wins votes. Most people agree that without Grace Coolidge, Calvin would not have risen beyond mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, where he practiced law before going into state politics.

Along with filling the void in conversations at dinner parties and receptions, at which Calvin would sit or stand mute by the hour, Grace told funny stories about his taciturnity, helping to make him into a character. She was the source of the tale about a determined woman who sat next to Coolidge at a dinner, vowing she could make him talk to her. “Mr. Coolidge,” she said, “I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.”

“You lose,” Cal said.

Another of Grace’s stories dealt with two men who were overheard discussing the President and his wife. One of them remarked that Grace had been a teacher in a school for the deaf before her marriage. “She taught the deaf to speak,” he said.

“Why didn’t she teach Cal?” the other man asked.

Grace was not above teasing her husband for his verbal parsimony. One night at dinner on the presidential yacht, he sat between two women friends who were staying at the White House and did not say a word to either of them. The next morning, when they came into the dining room for breakfast, they overheard Calvin asking Grace where their guests were. “They’re probably still in bed, exhausted from your conversation last night,” she answered.

Grace was also an expert mimic and gave a wonderful imitation of her husband’s Vermont accent, which added three extra syllables to the word
cow
. She told people how, in the early years of their marriage, he forbade her to attend any of his speeches, perhaps suspecting what her reaction would be. One day she disobeyed him and had to hide behind a pillar to control her laughter at his Yankee twang. Here, too, Grace helped turn a potential minus into a plus.

She even made a joke out of Coolidge’s frugality, which was one of his major political assets. In private, however, it must have been one of his more trying traits. When a Northampton hotel went out of business, Coolidge purchased a supply of their towels and silverware, emblazoned with the words NORWOOD HOTEL, and insisted on Grace using them.

From the start people puzzled over what had brought the Coolidges together. When they attended his college reunion not long after their marriage, the wife of a classmate wondered aloud “how that sulky redhaired little man ever won that pretty charming woman.” Her husband said Coolidge was bright and ambitious and would make a name for himself someday. “Yes, but through Grace,” his wife replied.

Love is a very mysterious potion. There is no doubt that the Coolidges loved each other. While Grace was frolicsome and even a little rebellious in her youth, she had grown up under the eye of a
strong-willed father, who ran her life much the way Calvin did when he took over. She and Calvin shared a puckish sense of humor, which expressed itself in constant teasing. When he was governor of Massachusetts, he said he was going to send the crust on Grace’s pies to the road commissioner for testing because it seemed superior to concrete. He sometimes dropped one of her biscuits on the floor and stamped his foot to make it sound as if a lead weight had struck the rug.

Grace began charming Washington in her days as the vice president’s wife. Tall, dark haired, with big gray-green eyes and that winning smile, she carried herself regally but was totally unaffected. She loved people and parties, and her enthusiasm warmed everyone around her. Calvin’s determination to accept any and all invitations helped widen Grace’s popularity. (The reason for this uncharacteristic sociability became apparent when he remarked: “Got to eat somewhere.”) One member of Washington society said no other vice president’s wife had ever seemed to enjoy herself so much—“and give so much in return.”

In the White House, Grace went from popularity to acclaim. President Coolidge could not bring himself to give callers more than a curt nod and a quick handshake. Grace remembered everyone’s name and was a genius at small talk—hardly surprising after almost twenty years with Silent Cal. She had a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude toward White House pomp and ceremony. Once a tourist wandered into one of her receptions and confessed her crime. Grace invited her to stay. “I know I’m going to do something wrong,” the poor woman quavered.

“That will only make you more interesting,” Grace assured her.

The list of Grace’s accolades could fill the rest of this book. Chief Justice William Howard Taft (appointed by President Harding) pronounced her
“very
nice,” perhaps a comment on his sharp-tongued Nellie. Comedian Will Rogers, an admitted Democrat, said she was “chuck plumb full of magnetism.” A foreign diplomat who did not understand a word of English said he did not mind conversing with her because “to look at her is gladness enough.”

Every day Grace’s picture seemed to be on the front page of half the nation’s newspapers, embracing Boy Scouts, puppies, handicapped children. She told one of her friends if she kept it up she was going to be named “National Hugger.” Her passionate interest in the ups and downs of the Boston Red Sox became part of her charm. She entertained Marie, the Queen of Rumania; transatlantic hero Charles Lindbergh; the Rockefellers; and movie stars like Douglas Fairbanks and Ethel Barrymore. Always, that golden smile showered cheer on everyone. The White House staff nicknamed her “Sunshine.”

How did she do it? Here was a woman who seemed to be utterly tyrannized by her husband, to the point where Calvin drew up her schedule of appointments for the week without telling her what they were. At breakfast one day, she made a rare protest. “Calvin, look at me,” she said. The President’s face was buried, as usual, in the daily paper. Grace demanded the weekly schedule from the Secret Service, so she could be more prepared for where she was going and whom she was going to meet. “Grace,” Calvin said in his presidential voice, “we don’t give out that kind of information promiscuously.”

There was an element of teasing in that answer—but Grace never saw a schedule. She was reduced to having a variety of dresses and accessories ready for every imaginable occasion. Coolidge also insisted on monitoring other aspects of her life. When she took up horseback riding, he made her stop after the first lesson. If she stayed out after 6:00
P.M
., he had no hesitation about calling her up and telling her to come home. He forbade her to dance in public, which was a pity, because she was an excellent dancer.

If he were my husband, I might have become the first First Lady to assassinate a President. But nothing—or almost nothing—Calvin said or did could alter Grace’s affection and respect for him, and her smiling equanimity with everyone else.

Calvin’s frank admiration for his wife’s beauty may have had something to do with her amazing tolerance. Even after he became President, his favorite hobby was buying clothes for Grace. He often went shopping with her and was not hesitant about expressing his opinion about what looked good on her and what didn’t. He urged her to
spend so much money on clothes, his reputation for frugality would have been permanently exploded if the reporters had told all they knew. You could hardly blame the man. Grace Coolidge’s slender elegance and nineteen twenties fashions were made for each other.

At Calvin’s urging, Grace abandoned her restrained New England styles and bought gorgeous lame gowns with long trains of gold lace and satin and silk dresses decorated with rhinestones, feathers, and fur. As for colors, her secretary, Mary Randolph, said: “Very few things were unbecoming to her; white, pink, yellow, blue, red, orchid, old rose… suited her equally well.” She wore her hair in a “horseshoe marcel” that instantly became the preferred style for half the women in America. As always, Calvin’s dictatorial style intruded. While he loved to see Grace dressed to the nines, he forbade her to wear slacks, culottes, shorts, and other kinds of casual clothes.

Grace handled this regimen in various ways. Like Eleanor Roosevelt eight years later, she decided the First Lady was not her. She was a “personage” that Grace Coolidge was assuming for the duration of her stay in the White House. This enabled her to put up with a lot of otherwise meaningless rules and regulations and constant demands on her time and patience. When she became really distressed, she turned to her knitting. She said she often found her needles a compass, “keeping me on my course.”

It will probably surprise no one to discover that Calvin Coolidge never discussed politics with his wife. Early in their marriage, they had agreed that the ideal union called for two separate spheres, with the wife in charge at home and the man in the office. This division was hardly original with Coolidge, but he never hesitated to invade Grace’s bailiwick. In the White House he often went over her menus and guest lists, peremptorily changing dishes and crossing out people he did not like.

By the time the Coolidges completed their first year in the White House, Grace had become one of the most popular First Ladies in memory. Chief Usher Ike Hoover pronounced her “ninety percent of the administration.” Will Rogers practically abandoned his allegiance to the Democratic Party and called her “Public Female Favorite No. 1.”
Even a frozenpuss like Housekeeper Elizabeth Jaffray pronounced her “warm and friendly.” Coolidge himself was forced to admit to his father: “She is wonderfully popular here. I don’t know what I would do without her.”

I love this portrait of Grace Coolidge in one of those marvelous 1920s gowns her husband selected for her. Posing with her is her famous white collie, Rob Roy.
(White House Historical Society)

Then came a tragedy that tested Grace Coolidge’s serenity to its utmost. The Coolidges had two sons, eighteen-year-old John and sixteen-year-old Calvin Jr. Like many parents, they each had a favorite. Grace doted on John, who had her penchant for fun and sunshine,
and the President adored Calvin Jr., who was not a little like him. When Calvin Jr. received a letter addressed to the “First Boy of the Land,” he fired off a stiff reply, telling the writer the title was a mistake, since he had done nothing to deserve it. The First Boy of the Land should be “some boy who had distinguished himself through his own actions.”

One hot day in July 1924, Calvin Jr. played a game of tennis on the White House courts. He did not bother to wear socks and acquired an ugly blister on his big toe. Like any boy his age, he ignored it until his whole foot was inflamed. The Coolidges called in the best doctors in the country, but they had no sulfa drugs or penicillin to fight such an infection. They and the agonized parents could only stand helplessly beside his bed while Calvin Jr. slowly died of blood poisoning.