The Admiral and the Ambassador (32 page)

As the McKinleys were taking their train tour of the United States, Porter's wife, Sophie, was once again away from Paris. The months of receptions and crowds and entertaining she had endured during the Exposition Universelle 1900 had left her exhausted, and she failed to regain her health during the winter. With her chronic heart issues, she tired easily and seemed vulnerable to whatever cold or flu happened to make the rounds of Paris. Still, as the ambassador's wife, she insisted on maintaining as much of a social schedule as she could, with Elsie filling in at her father's elbow as needed. But the encounters drained her. The Porters also traveled often through Europe—they attended the wedding of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in March 1901—and spent many evenings at dinners and receptions. Porter, for his part, was solicitous of his wife's frailties and spent a significant amount of money for treatments, weeks of recuperative seclusion, and other potential cures.

Porter's papers suggest the lengths they pursued in hopes of improving Sophie's health. In September 1901, the day before McKinley died, Porter paid 960 francs—about $185 US, equal to about $5,000 today—for “medical attendance” by Dr. Otto Veraguth, a Swiss neurologist, whose
expertise was in electrophysiology and whose research explored links between external stimuli and increased electrical activity in the human body. That fed into the Porters' apparent belief that rest and quiet would be best for Sophie's health and her weak heart.

Much of Sophie's care was overseen by Dr. Theophile Mende, a Zurich physician who subscribed to homeopathic remedies, including extended rest to let the body's natural healing processes work. Sophie made repeated weeks-long trips to Switzerland. Away from the stress of Paris and the embassy, and in the fresh mountain air, her health usually bounced back. “His rational treatment, the quiet living, the walks in the Dolder woods [outside Zurich] always greatly helped her,” Elsie wrote. “But a few months of Paris life seemed to undo any benefit she had derived from her stay.”
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In the summer of 1901, Sophie spent several weeks in Mende's care before returning to Paris and then joined her husband and Elsie on an extended tour that included Berlin and Saint Petersburg. It was a steady stream of exhausting balls and receptions to hobnob with the diplomatic corps and the political powers of different nations and empires.

Back in Paris, Sophie fell ill again during the winter of 1902, and by spring she was headed back to Zurich, accompanied by Elsie and some visitors from America: her son Clarence, his wife, and the ambassador's sister, Elizabeth Wheeler. The company seemed to help, and a restored Sophie returned to Paris by mid-May and was on hand to join her husband in hosting a dinner party for “Mrs. Astor,” as she was known in public and in the press—Caroline Astor, the wife of William Backhouse Astor Jr. and grande dame of Manhattan society, who spent part of her summers in her Champs-Élysèes apartment.
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Shortly thereafter, Porter made his first return to the United States since assuming his ambassadorial duties five years earlier. Traveling alone, he arrived in New York on May 17, 1902, aboard the
St. Louis
steamship and spent nearly three months with family and old friends, mostly in New York City, where Porter's peers in the Union Club and other exclusive social groups feted him at a series of dinners. (Mark Twain spoke at one of them.) Porter also joined President Roosevelt for a luncheon aboard a French battleship moored near Annapolis. He took part in the dedication of a statue in Lafayette Square across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to
memorialize Comte de Rochambeau, the head of the French Expeditionary Forces that had fought with the colonial army during the American Revolutionary War.

On a side trip, Porter guided the French delegation on a tour of Grant's Tomb in Manhattan. And Porter joined Roosevelt, secretary of war Root, and other top officials in a program at West Point celebrating the military academy's centennial, where Porter—among West Point's oldest high-profile graduates—was one of the main speakers. Most of the trip was personal, though, and social. When in New York, Porter stayed with his son and daughter-in-law, but he also traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, to attend a Vanderbilt wedding and vacationed for several days in Bar Harbor, Maine, at the start of the “summer season.” It was a warm and welcoming return to the home soil.
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While Porter was in Washington, Root took him aside and asked the ambassador to prepare a brief statement about his long-ago actions during the Civil War battle of Chickamauga, with an eye toward nominating him for the Congressional Medal of Honor. A significant and rare honor now, in that era the Medal of Honor was bestowed for the slimmest acts of valor. For years, military men could nominate themselves, and while still an honor, the awarded medals didn't necessarily recognize bravery under fire. One entire Civil War regiment received awards for simply doing its duty in Washington. And there had been a rush of applications in the 1890s, more than eight hundred requests, for Civil War-related acts that had taken place a generation earlier. Porter was duly awarded his—the final decision was Root's, so there was never any doubt—as part of a group of more than a dozen granted at the same time. In 1917, fearing a dilution of the medal's significance, the military would purge more than nine hundred names from the list of honorees after a blind review of the soldiers' actions. Porter would keep his medal, though—his efforts at Chickamauga were harrowing and decisive—and it remained a point of pride for the duration of his life.
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Porter returned to Paris in late July on the French liner
La Savoie,
accompanied by Root and his wife, who were off for a European vacation. Porter spent a few days in Paris then traveled to Germany with the exhausted and ailing Sophie, who then headed for Switzerland while the ambassador returned to the embassy.

By late August, the family was reunited in Zurich, where Porter had booked rooms at the three-year-old Dolder hotel and spa, an ornate complex on a hill overlooking the city. The grounds included tennis courts and other areas for outdoor exercise adjacent to hiking trails through the Dolder woods. Elsie particularly enjoyed the setting and the attentions of a young tennis player she met, Edwin Mende, the son of her mother's doctor. He began stopping by the family's suite and persuaded Elsie to join him on day trips around the region. “I found myself not wanting to go back to Paris, with all its rush and turmoil and all the endless society functions,” Elsie wrote later in her diary. “I was quite contented to wander through the green fields and autumn-tinted woods with the boy for the rest of my life.” She did return to Paris without him, but the couple would marry three years later.

The winter of 1902–03 was particularly bad for illness in Paris and across Europe. Porter fell ill, as did most of the embassy staff, all knocked off their feet by a virulent strain of the flu. And it was a deadly bug. Gowdy's vice consul, Edward P. McLean, died on January 6 of pneumonia, which began with the flu. A month later, John H. Carroll, the US consul in Cádiz, Spain, died of congestion of the lungs also brought on by the flu. Sophie escaped it, but as the illnesses spread, she again fled Paris for Switzerland and the ministrations of Dr. Mende. The flu was persistent, as well. In March, Porter mentioned in a letter to the new American ambassador to Germany, Charlemagne Tower Jr., that he had been bedridden with the grippe for a week and nine other embassy staffers were ill. It took Porter a month to recover, forcing him to cancel a planned trip to Greece.
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Sophie's visit to Switzerland, usually a palliative to her weak health, didn't help much that winter and spring. She arrived in Switzerland feeling tired and drained, and left the same way. She boarded a train for Paris at the start of April in order to be back at the embassy in time for the spring entertainment season, but en route she was overcome by a sudden and severe flu. She went to bed once she arrived at the residence, and for the next few days, Porter barely left her side as a pall of anxiety descended on the embassy. By April 6, Sophie was looking and sounding better and regaining strength; she seemed to have weathered the worst of it. Porter had abandoned his customary daily walks during Sophie's illness, but around four o'clock that afternoon he decided to step out for air and exercise. He
slipped into his coat while still in Sophie's room, bade her good-bye, and headed downstairs for the door; before he could reach it, the housekeeper called out to him, and he went racing back to his wife, who was suddenly having trouble breathing. Her lungs were filling with liquid; the doctor's treatments made little difference. Her decline was rapid. Within an hour, Sophie, Horace Porter's wife of forty years, was dead.
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Her death devastated Porter. He dictated terse telegrams to relatives in the United States. “Sophie died five this afternoon congestion of lungs,” Porter wired her brother, John McHarg, in Stamford, Connecticut, who was overseeing Porter's financial affairs while he was in France. He asked McHarg to inform Sophie's other brother and his own sister with a direct “Advise John and Lizzie,” then signed the message simply “Porter.”
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And he sent a personal wire to his boss Secretary Hay: “It is my sad duty to inform you that Mrs. Porter died at five this afternoon of congestion of the lungs.”
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Porter spent that night sitting in a chair in his wife's death chamber, crying into his hands as he awaited the arrival of Elsie, who cut short a trip to Germany to return to Paris. He couldn't bring himself to make the funeral arrangements and left it to Vignaud, the embassy secretary. He sat stoically through the memorial service at the American Church in Paris, then took a few weeks off to try to regain his footing. His son, Clarence, and daughter-in-law arrived from New York, and with Elsie they took Porter to Venice, one of his favorite spots. The ambassador couldn't shake his grief, and as they left the Piazza for the last time before returning to Paris, Porter spoke in maudlin terms. “I am saying good bye to all this beauty,” the daughter recorded her father saying. “I shall never see it again.” He was, Elsie suddenly realized, sixty-six years old.

Back in Paris, Clarence Porter took charge of his mother's body, and without fanfare her remains were taken by train to the coast then ferried to Southampton, where the coffin was loaded onto the steamship
New York
and returned to New York. On June 15, she was buried next to the graves of her two sons in the West Long Branch Cemetery in Long Branch, New Jersey, the coastal village where the Porters had for years maintained a summer residence.

Sophie's death took the joy from Porter's life, and his grief turned to depression. He lost interest in the job of ambassador and began talking
about resigning and returning to the United States. “More than ever he longed for America,” the daughter wrote. Ultimately he didn't resign—Elsie wrote that Roosevelt talked him into staying through the end of the president's term, though there are no records to support that. Porter lost his heart for much of the socializing that came with the ambassadorship. The rented mansion itself depressed him. He ordered the reception rooms closed up, and in June he and Elsie left the city for two weeks in Dinard, a favorite getaway spot on the north Brittany coast. Even that couldn't dispel the gloom. Porter “had lost his old buoyancy of spirit, and this time forever.” He rarely tended to business at all that summer but finally resumed a full schedule of work in late September. Even then, he was something of a recluse, no longer hosting dinners and turning down nearly all social invitations, even those from old friends.
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In early October 1903, Porter received a letter from Roosevelt, circumventing Secretary Hay, the usual intermediary for communications from the White House (though Roosevelt wasn't particularly wedded to such protocols). It could be that Roosevelt, aware of Porter's floundering emotions, sought to lift the ambassador's spirits by giving him something other than the mundane duties of the embassy upon which to focus. Or it could be that Roosevelt, knowing that Porter was looking to quit Paris, wanted to ensure that one lingering project would get completed before there was a change.

The president asked Porter for an update on the search for the body of John Paul Jones. Porter had set the quest aside nearly four years earlier, when Roosevelt was still the governor of New York and before the election that had made him vice president and the murder that had made him president. Was it possible, Roosevelt wanted to know, that the body could indeed be found? Could Jones's body be moved to the United States for burial in a manner and place proper for a figure who had played such a high-profile role in the American Revolution and who had been such a key figure in the evolution of the United States Navy? And what would it cost?
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Porter took a few days to respond, and when he did, it was via a detailed but succinct five-page typed overview of the steps he had taken—along with Bailly-Blanchard, Vignaud, the hired researcher Ricaudy, and others—to determine where Jones had been buried. “I had pursued all the investigations cautiously and quietly so as not to excite the cupidity of the
present owners of the cemetery property, but unfortunately the matter got into print,” Porter wrote, choosing not to point a finger at Ricaudy. The cost of proceeding was hard to frame. “I shall have to act with great caution in obtaining any figures at which the property could be bought,” Porter wrote. He estimated it could take up to $200,000 to buy the property, plus an additional budget to raze the buildings, excavate the cemetery, and then fill it all back in. Porter speculated that the vacant lot could then be sold for about $100,000, recovering about half the purchase price. So far, Porter told his president, he had paid all the search costs himself, “not feeling warranted in asking the government to make an appropriation for a purpose so problematical and which would be just as likely to end in failure.” Implied was that the larger and final effort would require a federal outlay. And Porter dismissed the notion that the space should eventually be turned into a commemorative square, since the project would either prove the body wasn't there, making the memorial spot irrelevant, or the body would be found and removed to the United States. Again, not much of a reason for a park in Jones's honor.