PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Shortly after my husband’s election, having spent a couple of restful
weeks at Hot Springs, Virginia, we went to Augusta, Georgia, and took
the old house known as the Terrett Cottage, near the Bon Air Hotel. To
me the weeks we spent there were exceptionally happy ones and I should
like to mention each friend—friends then and friends still—who
contributed to our constant enjoyment, but there were too many of them
and their kindnesses too numerous.
Mr. Taft, of course, immediately became engrossed in the difficulties of
securing a Cabinet which would satisfy everybody and disappoint none,—an
impossibility,—as well as a thousand and one other matters not connected
in any way with the daily games of golf on Augusta’s sandy links which
attracted such wide attention. But even then my own problems became to
me paramount and I began to give them my almost undivided attention and
to neglect the political affairs which had for many years interested me
so intensely. Perhaps with my husband safely elected I considered all
important affairs satisfactorily settled. At any rate I found little
time or inclination at the moment to worry about who should have the
high offices in the new President’s gift, or what policies should be
pursued during his administration.
At my request Captain Archibald Butt came down to Augusta to consult
with me as to changes I wished to make in the White House service, and
together we went over the whole situation. As President Roosevelt’s aide
he knew the whole lexicon of customary White House social formalities.
I had been a member of Washington’s official family for five years and
knew as well as need be the various phases of the position I was about
to assume, so my plans were not so difficult to put into form, however
difficult I may have found them to put into execution.
[Illustration:
THE WHITE HOUSE AS IT LOOKED ON THE EVENING OF THE FOURTH OF MARCH,
1909
]
We made a trip to Panama in February before the Inauguration and did not
reach Washington until the end of the month when we went to stay with
our friends, Mr. and Mrs. William J. Boardman, and their daughter, Miss
Mabel Boardman, at their residence on Dupont Circle. We spent with them
a busy week as the recipients of varied and delightful hospitality,
which was terminated by a splendid reception in our honour on the
evening of the second of March.
Captain Butt, who was to be continued as aide to President Taft, called
on me at once upon my arrival in Washington to assure me that my
instructions had been carried out and that the new régime, fully
organised, would go into effect at the White House on the morning of
March fifth.
Some time before the Inauguration, indeed shortly after Mr. Taft’s
election, President Roosevelt expressed a desire that we should dine
with him and Mrs. Roosevelt on the evening of the third of March and
spend that night in the White House as their guests. This was breaking a
precedent, but it was Mr. Roosevelt’s plan for bidding us a warm welcome
to the post which he was about to vacate, and my husband accepted with
grateful appreciation. My impression is that neither Mrs. Roosevelt nor
I would have suggested such an arrangement for this particular evening,
but, it having been made for us, we naturally acquiesced.
The third of March, a stormy day, was filled with innumerable
minor engagements and small incidents, with instructions and
counter-instructions and, especially, with weather predictions and
counter-predictions, so it was not until shortly before eight
o’clock that Mr. Taft and I, having dressed for dinner, arrived at
the White House. The other guests at the dinner were Senator and
Mrs. Lodge, Senator and Mrs. Root, Admiral and Mrs. Cowles, Mr.
and Mrs. Nicholas Longworth and Miss Mabel Boardman.
Now there is always bound to be a sadness about the end of an
administration, no matter how voluntarily the retiring President may
leave office, no matter how welcome the new President and his family may
be. Mrs. Roosevelt seemed depressed, not, I am sure, over the prospect
of leaving the White House,—Presidents’ wives are always given plenty of
time to prepare themselves for that event,—but for other reasons which
one easily could surmise. Her husband and son were about to start for a
long and, possibly, dangerous trip into the jungles of Africa, and she
was looking forward to a year of anxiety. She was leaving a full and
busy life; she had occupied her high position for nearly eight years,
during which she had made a host of friends, and a great number of them
had called during the afternoon to say farewell and to express their
deep regret at her departure. I knew all of these things, realised their
depressing effect and sympathised with her deeply. The President and Mr.
Taft, seconded by other guests, did their best with stories and
conversation, made as general as possible, to lighten the occasion, but
their effort was not entirely successful.
As my husband had an engagement to attend a “smoker” which was being
given to him at the New Willard Hotel by a large gathering of Yale men,
the party broke up very early and, as soon as the last of the guests had
gone, I went immediately to my rooms. We had been assigned to the suite
in the southeast corner, known in the White House as the Blue Bedroom.
This Blue Bedroom gave me food for interesting reflection. Conspicuous,
under the mantel against the side wall, I found, on a bronze plate, the
following inscription (which I read as I struggled with my hooks): “In
this room Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation of
January 1, 1863, whereby four million slaves were given their freedom
and slavery forever prohibited in these United States.” It is only a
state bedroom now, having been made so by the plans of the McKim
restoration which was accomplished during the Roosevelt administration,
but it was once Lincoln’s Cabinet room, a room in which he lived through
many terrible days during the Civil War. It seemed strange to spend my
first night in the White House surrounded by such ghosts.
I went to bed reasonably early, hoping that I might have a good, long
sleep and get up refreshed and ready for an eventful day. But the press
of circumstances was against me. My mind was never more wide awake. In
spite of my determination to rest, I went carefully over the whole
Inaugural programme. I wondered if this had been done, if that had been
attended to. I worried over many petty details with which I had no
reason to be concerned. I suppose I must have been excited, a condition
quite rare with me, but then, too, the weather had something to do with
it. Never was seen such a night in Washington. It will be remembered
that Mr. Moore, the Chief of the Weather Bureau, had prophesied that the
storm of the third would pass and that the Fourth of March would dawn as
clear and bright as any Inaugural Committee could wish. He made himself
very popular with the anxious officials, who were expending their
energies in the preparation of a fair weather programme, but his
popularity was short lived. He afterward learnedly explained that some
wholly unprecedented thing had happened in the wind currents, causing a
“flareback”—whatever that may be. It was a memorable “flareback” in any
event, not to be forgotten by those who were so seriously inconvenienced
by its results.
After I had fallen asleep in the early morning hours, thinking—with
faith in the prophet—to wake up and find a smiling world, I was roused
by loud, crackling reports which seemed to be in the immediate vicinity
of my windows. I got up and looked out. It was light enough for me to
see that the world was ice-bound and that the storm, instead of abating,
had increased in violence. The crackling I had heard was the noise of
twigs and tree limbs breaking with the weight of the ice which encased
them. It didn’t look hopeful for the Inaugural Ceremonies, and I had a
ludicrous vision of a haughty, gold-laced parade sliding, rather than
marching with measured precision, down Pennsylvania Avenue, striving to
maintain its dignity while it spasmodically lost its footing. But mine
was rueful mirth.
In the morning Mr. Taft found President Roosevelt in the great hall
below, genially alert.
“Well, Will,” he exclaimed, “the storm will soon be over. It isn’t a
regular storm. It’s nature’s echo of Senator Rainer’s denunciations of
me. As soon as I am out where I can do no further harm to the
Constitution it will cease.”
“You’re wrong,” said Will; “it is my storm. I always said it would be a
cold day when I got to be President of the United States.”
It was really very serious. Railroad and telegraphic communications were
paralysed all along the Atlantic Coast. Wires were down in every
direction and traffic of all kinds was at a practical standstill.
Thousands of people, on their way to Washington for the Inauguration,
were tied up at points outside the city and it was impossible for awhile
even to get a telegram in or out. However, Inaugurations do not wait for
fair weather and the programme had to proceed.
About half past ten I saw the President and the President-elect, in a
closed carriage, accompanied by Senators Knox and Bacon of the Inaugural
Committee, and a brilliant mounted escort, start on their slippery way
toward the Capitol. The Inauguration ceremonies would not take place
until twelve o’clock, but there were a number of bills waiting for the
signature of Mr. Roosevelt, and it was necessary for him to go early to
the office of the President at the Capitol to attend to this and other
final business details.
Before they left the White House it had not yet been decided whether or
not the Inauguration would take place out of doors. Mr. Taft regretted
exceedingly the necessity for disappointing thousands of people, but at
the same time he recognised the danger of exposing the crowds to the wet
and penetrating cold, and he considered, especially, the impossibility
of asking Chief Justice Fuller, who was then over seventy years old and
very frail, to brave a blizzard, even for the purpose of administering a
Presidential oath. However, he decided to wait until the weather had
given its ultimate indication before changing the programme. He said
afterward that as he drove to the Capitol there were many brave citizens
in the streets who gave voice to as hearty cheers as could possibly be
expected under the circumstances.
I was being taken care of by Captain Archibald Butt, so I had nothing
except the weather to worry about. With a last hopeless look out of
doors I proceeded to don my Inauguration finery, feeling duly thankful
that it was not too springlike in its character. The newspapers say I
wore a purple satin suit, and a small hat trimmed with gold lace and a
high white aigrette. This is as good a description as any, though it
might have been more flattering, considering the importance I attached
to the subject. I remember the hat perfectly. The aigrette was not quite
as high as it started out to be. It had nearly met an untimely end at a
reception the day before where it collided with a lighted gas-jet.
Fortunately it was put out before it was greatly damaged, but it had to
be trimmed down some, and I imagined that it exuded a faint odour of
burning feathers.
At least two years before the election, when no one could anticipate who
would be the next President, President Roosevelt had announced at a
Cabinet meeting that he did not intend to ride back to the White House
with his successor. It was a precedent which he did not like and which
he desired to break. Mrs. Roosevelt went, with her family and friends,
directly from the White House to the station to wait for her husband to
join her after the Inauguration. It was about half past eleven when
Captain Butt and I started in a limousine for the Capitol where we
arrived to find the “scene set” for the ceremonies in the Senate
Chamber.
Our children were already in the gallery, waiting eagerly. It was an
event in their young lives never to be forgotten, and I believe that
Robert and Helen were in properly receptive moods. My son Charlie,
however, seems not to have been so confident. Charlie is a great lover
of adventure stories and it is a favourite tradition in the family now
that he carried with him to the Senate Chamber a copy of “Treasure
Island” with which to while away the time in case the Inaugural address
should prove too long. Charlie was only eleven years old and I consider
it a great tribute to his father’s eloquence that “Treasure Island” was
not opened that day.
This Inauguration was said to be, by persons who had seen many, one of
the most impressive ceremonies that ever opened the administration of a
President. The oath of office is usually administered and the Inaugural
address delivered from a large platform erected in front of the Capitol
before which ten thousand people can assemble. But the ten thousand
people are sure to have been waiting in a massed crowd for an hour or
more; they are always tired and uncomfortable, so when they finally
discover that few of them can really hear anything, and that they have
seen all there is to be seen, they begin to move about and talk, the
noise and agitation greatly detracting from the impressiveness of the
ceremony. Because my husband’s Inauguration took place in the Senate
Chamber it was no less “in the sight of all the people.” There was room
on the floor of the Chamber for the whole official personnel of the
Government of the United States, resident in Washington. There were the
retiring President and his Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court in
their robes of office, the Senate and the House of Representatives,
besides the foreign Ambassadors and the whole Diplomatic Corps in their
brilliant uniforms, while the galleries were crowded with official
families and a substantial number of unofficial auditors.
[Illustration:
MR. AND MRS. TAFT RETURNING TO THE WHITE HOUSE MR. TAFT’S INAUGURATION
]
It was a great presence; and the taking of the oath and the delivering
of the Inaugural address before assembled national authority and the
world’s representatives, in a solemn silence in which every word could
be heard, left a deep impression.
As soon as Mr. Taft had finished speaking Mr. Roosevelt walked rapidly
up, and giving his hand a mighty grasp, said something which sounded
like “Bully speech, old man!” and hurried out of the Chamber accompanied
by members of his Cabinet who were to see him off at the station. My
husband told me afterward that what he really said was: “God bless you,
old man. It is a great state document.”
Since the ex-President was not going to ride back to the White House
with his successor, I decided that I would. No President’s wife had ever
done it before, but as long as precedents were being disregarded I
thought it might not be too great a risk for me to disregard this one.
Of course, there was objection. Some of the Inaugural Committee
expressed their disapproval, but I had my way and in spite of protests
took my place at my husband’s side.
By the time the Inauguration ceremonies were concluded the skies had
cleared and the sun had come out. Mr. Taft left the Senate Chamber with
the Committee, followed by the assembled dignitaries in the order of
precedence. With Captain Butt I hurried from the gallery and joined him
in the great hall under the Dome, on his way to the platform on the
North Side where the Inauguration would have taken place but for the
weather. In front of the temporary structure many people had gathered,
and as we descended to the front they called for the new President. In
response he stepped to the platform where the Inaugural oath was to have
been administered, and bowed repeatedly.
A platoon of mounted Police and our escort, the Cleveland City Troop,
with their elaborate and beautiful uniforms somewhat bedraggled by the
morning’s sleet and mud, met us at the steps leading down from the
platform. We entered the official coach and four and were slowly driven
down through the Capitol grounds to Pennsylvania Avenue, and thence to
the White House. As I have said, the clouds had rolled by; the day was
cold but bright; the expected and expectant crowds were thronging the
sidewalks and filling the stands, and our greeting from them was all
that my fancy had pictured it.
For me that drive was the proudest and happiest event of Inauguration
Day. Perhaps I had a little secret elation in thinking that I was doing
something which no woman had ever done before. I forgot the anxieties of
the preceding night; the consternation caused by the fearful weather;
and every trouble seemed swept aside. My responsibilities had not yet
begun to worry me, and I was able to enjoy, almost to the full, the
realisation that my husband was actually President of the United States
and that it was this fact which the cheering crowds were acclaiming.
There was nobody at the White House to bid us welcome except the
official staff and some of our own guests. But it didn’t matter. There
is never any ceremony about moving into the White House. You just drive
up and walk in,—and there you are. The aides and ushers who greeted us
at the entrance, treated our occupation of our new residence so much as
a matter of course that I could not help but feel something as
Cinderella must have felt when her mice footmen bowed her into her coach
and four and behaved just as if they had conducted her to a Court Ball
every night of her life. I stood for a moment over the great brass seal,
bearing the national coat-of-arms, which is sunk in the floor in the
middle of the entrance hall. “The Seal of the President of the United
States,” I read around the border, and now—that meant my husband!
But I could not linger long because my duties as a hostess began at
once. I was not unused to the accepted regulations of official life, so,
in spite of a slight feeling that the whole thing was unreal, I was not
embarrassed as I walked into the great dining-room and took my place by
the door to receive guests for the first time as mistress of the White
House.
I had left to the efficient management of Captain Archibald Butt as many
of the details of the day’s programme as was possible. Some time before
I had carefully gone over the plans with him, we had provided for any
reasonable emergency, and I knew my instructions would be carried out.
Captain Butt—later Major Butt—had been military aide to President
Roosevelt; we had known him well, both in the Philippines and in
Washington, and we were glad to have the opportunity of continuing him
in that capacity. Whatever Major Butt did was done faultlessly—always.
During the three years he was with us—day in and day out, upon every
possible occasion, in the closest intimacy—I never ceased to wonder at
his genius for work, his comprehensive grasp of important matters and of
small details, his extraordinary accuracy. His very presence inspired
the utmost confidence. Archie Butt, as everybody called him, became our
close and dearly loved friend. Indeed, we felt that he belonged to us,
and nothing in all our experience ever touched us as deeply as the
tragedy of his death. Returning from a short vacation abroad, he went
down on the _Titanic_, facing death like a soldier, after the lives of
nearly all the women and children had been saved.
We had invited a large number of people to the usual Inaugural luncheon.
The cook and several of the staff of servants were to accompany Mrs.
Roosevelt to Oyster Bay, but they remained until the afternoon of the
Fourth when the staff I had engaged were installed. There are a few old,
official servants who remain in the house from one administration to
another, keeping in operation an uninterrupted household routine, so
there was no reason why the Inaugural luncheon should not be carried
through with the same smoothness and despatch to be expected on ordinary
occasions. But again we reckoned without the weather. The difficulties
of traffic, added to the crush on the avenues, made it impossible for
our guests to arrive on time and they continued to straggle in
throughout the whole afternoon, each one wishing to apologise in person
and make special explanation. This, of course, made anything like
systematic reception out of the question and the result was that the
luncheon really ran into and became a part of the tea for my husband’s
classmates of Yale, which was scheduled for five o’clock. There was some
confusion, but much goodwill and frank enjoyment and the fact that the
President was not there to receive his classmates caused nothing more
than a few repetitions of, by that time, familiar comments on the
elements.
Mr. Taft was reviewing the Inaugural Parade and the last of it did not
pass the reviewing stand until after nightfall. He came in, however, in
time to exchange greetings with old-time, enthusiastic friends, the
members of the Yale class of ‘78, and to hold them longer than they had
intended to remain. When the last of them had wished us Godspeed and
said good-bye, we stood, the five of us,—my husband, my three children
and I,—alone in the big state dining-room, and tried to realise that,
for the first time, the White House was really our Home. The great
walnut-panelled room, with its silvered chandeliers and big moose heads,
seemed very empty with only the Taft family in it, after all the clatter
and chatter that had been sounding there all day. We gazed at each other
for a moment, with slightly lost expressions on our faces, and then
nature asserted herself in the new President.
[Illustration:
© Harris & Ewing.
THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THE FAMILY
SITTING-ROOM AT THE END OF THE LONG UPSTAIRS CORRIDOR
]
“Let’s go up stairs, my dears, and _sit down_!” said he.
Poor man, he had not experienced the blissful sensation of sitting down
since early that morning; so we proceeded out to the elevator, which
Charlie, true to his boy nature, had, of course, already learned to
operate. For once, I am glad to say, it did not stick between floors.
This was a habit to which it became addicted in later days, a habit it
was sure to indulge on occasions when the President proudly used it for
taking a large party of men upstairs after dinner. But this time he was
able, without delay, to reach the best easy-chair in the sitting-room
where he remained until I prodded him once more into activity by
reminding him that he must get into evening clothes else the Inaugural
Ball could not take place.
Not having been taxed so greatly, I was not yet ready to succumb to
fatigue; besides I was now eager to roam around the house, to
familiarise myself with the mysteries of my new home and to plan the
assignment of rooms among various members of the family who were to come
to us that very night.
The second story of the White House, where all the family living rooms
are, corresponds in spaciousness with the floor below, which, with its
broad hall, its great East Room, its large reception rooms and state
dining room, is familiar to the public. Upstairs there is a very wide
hall running the entire length of the building. The rooms occupied by
the President and his wife are in the southwest corner and at that end
of the house the hall is partially partitioned and screened off and
pleasantly furnished with desks, sofas and easy-chairs to make a fairly
large and very private family sitting-room. It was here that I left my
tired husband while I went on my first tour of exploration.
At each of the four corners of the house there is a suite; all arranged
on the same plan, exactly alike, except as to decoration. Each consists
of an exceedingly large bedroom with a spacious bath, and a smaller room
adjoining which may be used as a bedroom or dressing-room. I went first
into the large bedroom which my husband and I expected to occupy. The
windows of this room look out on the White House gardens where the large
fountain plays, and, beyond, on the Washington Monument, the Potomac
River and the distant Virginia hills. This, I think, is the most
glorious vista in Washington, which is a city of splendid vistas, and
seeing it that March night by the long line of lights which stretch
across the Potomac bridge and meet the lights of Arlington, it was,
indeed, inspiring.
The room was the room where Lincoln slept, indeed, where every President
since Jackson has slept. A tablet under the mantel states this fact. It
is the room which must necessarily have more intimate and personal
association with the men who have occupied the White House than any
other. Other parts of the house have been the scenes of great historic
events and of magnificent hospitality, but here, one after another, the
Presidents of the United States have really lived and been at home.
Its furnishings have, undoubtedly, been changed many times and yet I
found it to contain many old and interesting pieces. The most striking
object in the room was an enormous four-poster bed with a great curved
canopy of wood, decorated with carved and gilded eagles and upholding
heavy draperies of blue and white brocade. In this bed, we had been
told, the Prince of Wales slept when he visited this country in 1860,
but on the first night I discovered that, whatever its historic
interest, I did not like it as a bed to sleep in. I soon replaced it
with two smaller mahogany beds and I dispensed altogether with the
draperies. There were canopies of the same gilded eagles over the
windows, and the curtains suspended from them, as well as the upholstery
of the sofa and chairs, were of the same blue and white brocade. Some of
the furniture was colonial, some Victorian. The colonial furniture in
the White House is very good and there is quite a lot of it in all the
bedrooms, but many of the bureaus and wardrobes are of the
scarcely-to-be-called beautiful style of the Victorian era. I secured
for our room, later on, the beds, a dressing-table and some chairs, all
colonial. These were about the only pieces of furniture I bought for the
White House. I also substituted heavy chintz for the brocade draperies
and upholstery, and did away with the canopies entirely, as they seemed
to me to be too heavy for a sleeping room. The small room in the corner
of our suite Mr. Taft used for a dressing-room.
The corresponding suite across the hall I gave to Helen, my daughter. It
had been occupied by both of the Misses Roosevelt and before them, I
believe, by Mrs. McKinley. It had been fitted up in pretty flowered
chintz for Miss Ethel Roosevelt, after Miss Alice had married, and we
left it unchanged.
I strolled down the hall, which contains only a large table and a few
portraits of Presidents for which there is no wall space down stairs,
and looked into the Library which is exactly in the center of the house
on the south side. It is oval like the Blue Drawing Room beneath it and
it is a little dark in the daytime, being shaded by the roof of the
south portico. This was Mrs. Roosevelt’s favourite room and it had been
fitted most charmingly with many of her own belongings, but as they were
now gone and my own had not yet been moved in, it looked rather bare.
The furniture had not been upholstered for many years and it was a
little shabby. Later on I had it all recovered and the walls of the room
retinted, and when I had put in some of the Oriental tapestries and
handsome pieces of furniture which I had brought with me from the Far
East it made a very beautiful and livable room. We used it a great deal,
especially when there were guests, but for the family the sitting-room
at the end of the hall was always the favourite gathering place.
Opposite the Library a short corridor extends to the window under the
roof of the front portico and on each side of this doors open into
smaller bedrooms; smaller, that is, in comparison with the four large
ones. Even these would be considered large in an ordinary house. One of
them I assigned to the housekeeper and the other to my two sons. The
boys’ room was rather dark, with its windows directly under the roof of
the portico; and it was furnished, moreover, in dark red, a colour which
does not add light to gloominess, but the boys got it because they were
the members of the family who would care the least and who would be the
most away.
The great staircase descends from the central hall just beyond these
rooms and facing the staircase is the President’s Study. The eastern end
of the building was all used as offices until the new offices were built
and the house restored in accordance with the original plan. The
Presidents with large families must, indeed, have been in an
uncomfortable situation when they had to confine themselves to the rooms
in the west end, the only rooms then available for living purposes. The
facts are that such families found the house to be less commodious than
a “five-room flat,” as the wife of one President expressed it. I believe
the Roosevelts, until the house was remodelled, were unable to
accommodate one guest.
[Illustration:
© Harris & Ewing.
TWO WHITE HOUSE BEDROOMS SHOWING FINE OLD COLONIAL BEDS
]
There is a story that when Prince Henry of Prussia was in Washington,
President Roosevelt invited him to ride. The Prince accepted and just
before the appointed hour appeared at the White House in his street
clothes, accompanied by a valet bearing his riding clothes. He had very
naturally expected to change at the White House, but it happened that on
that day there was not one room that could even be prepared for a Royal
dressing-room, so the President was compelled to request His Highness to
return to the German Embassy to change. I believe this incident had the
effect of hastening the deliberations of the members of the
Appropriations Committee of the House who were then leisurely figuring
on the amount necessary for the restoration.
Senator McMillan, who was at the head of the District Committee in the
Senate, and who, in his lifetime was the leading spirit in the
improvement of Washington, in the revival of the L’Enfant plan, and in
the creation of a Commission of Fine Arts to pass upon contemplated
structures and changes, conferred with Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and with
Senator Allison of the Appropriations Committee, and by an amendment in
the Senate, in the spring of 1902, to which Speaker Cannon and the House
Appropriations Committee assented, the necessary funds for this
restoration were eventually provided and, most fortunately, the whole
work was committed to Mr. James McKim, of McKim, Meade and White, who,
among all the architectural monuments to his genius which he left, left
no greater evidence of his mastery of his art than this. He added the
gracefully beautiful terraces on either side, equipped with electric
light standards, and in accord, really, with the original plan of the
house, and utilised them in a most ingenious way. He made of the one on
the west a very dignified and convenient approach, through the basement,
for large companies attending state entertainments. Cloak stands for the
accommodation of thousands were fitted into each side of this passageway
and guests now are able to dispose of their wraps and proceed to the
staircase leading up to the main hall on the first floor without the
slightest interruption or discomfort.
The ample and airy space beneath the high portico on the south side was
used for domestic offices and servants’ quarters, thus greatly
increasing the capacity of the house, and the construction of the very
convenient executive office building, reached by a covered, or
cloistered passage from the White House basement, was carried out on
lines so like in style and appearance to the north portico, so low and
classically simple, that it detracts nothing from the general effect and
interferes in no way with the dignified outlines of the home of the
Nation’s Chief Magistrate.
During the reconstruction the President and Mrs. Roosevelt lived either
at Oyster Bay or in a house a few steps from the White House on
Lafayette Square. Mr. McKim frequently consulted Mrs. Roosevelt as to
interior changes and many of her views were adopted, so that the woman’s
side of the new White House was well looked after.
The work took longer and cost more than was expected and this elicited
much criticism of the architect as well as of the architectural result.
His aim had been to make as little outward change in the main lines as
possible and yet to make as great a change as space would permit in
interior accommodation. Considering what he had to accomplish his
success was remarkable. But the Philistines among the Congressmen and
Senators, who don’t like architects anyway, found much to complain of.
In their daily visits to the President they did not, by Mr. McKim’s
plan, reach him through the historic front entrance, supported by the
great, white pillars, but they were relegated to a business office,
simply and conveniently equipped, and it offended the sense of due
proportion of some of them as to who were the real power in the
government, the legislative representatives calling on business or the
social guests of the President.
But now, after all the ignorance, ill-feeling and prejudice displayed in
the most unjust attacks upon Mr. McKim, those whose judgment is worth
anything, and that includes the whole body of the people of the United
States, rejoice in their hearts that the greatest of American architects
was given a free hand to adapt to modern needs, but also to preserve in
its dignity and beauty, this most appropriate official home of the Head
of the Republic.
These observations may not be in place just here, but they occurred to
me on the first evening of my occupancy of the White House, and I
congratulated myself that I was to enjoy the results of that successful
reconstruction of what had been a most uncomfortable mansion.
The President’s Study, as it is now called, is the only room of the old
Executive offices which has not been changed into a sleeping room. It is
now the President’s more personal office where he can receive callers
more privately than in the new office building. A small bronze tablet
under the mantel tells, in simple words, the history of the room. Here
all the Presidents since Johnson held their Cabinet meetings, and here
the Protocol suspending hostilities with Spain was signed in McKinley’s
administration. A picture of that event, painted by Chartran, hangs in
the room and conveys a remarkably vivid impression of the men who had a
part in it. The faces of President McKinley, of Justice Day, who was
then Secretary of State, and of M. Cambon, the French Ambassador, are
especially striking. This room, in which there had been a great many
personal mementos gathered by Mr. Roosevelt in his interesting career,
also looked, after their removal, rather bare on that evening of my
first inspection and, save for the pictures and the tablet, had little
in its character to make real in one’s mind the great events that it had
witnessed. Yet, as I roamed around that evening, the whole house was
haunted for me by memories of the great men and the charming women whose
most thrilling moments, perhaps, had been spent under its roof, and I
was unable to feel that such a commonplace person as I had any real
place there. This feeling passed, however, for though I was always
conscious of the character which a century of history had impressed upon
the White House, it came, nevertheless, to feel as much like home as any
house I have ever occupied. That Study, which seemed at the moment so
much a part of American history and so little even a temporary
possession of the Taft family, was later hung with amusing cartoons
illustrative of events in Mr. Taft’s career, with photographs of his
friends, and with what are called at Yale “_memorabilia_” of his varied
experiences, and it became, in time, for us all, peculiarly _his_ room.
The Blue Bedroom, where we had slept the night before as guests of the
Roosevelts, belongs to one of the four corner suites and I planned to
give it to my sister Eleanor, Mrs. Louis More, and her husband, while
the smaller room in the same suite I assigned to Miss Torrey, our Aunt
Delia—and during our administration apparently the country’s “Aunt
Delia.” She had been staying with us at the Boardmans’ and was probably
enjoying the Inauguration of her nephew more than anyone in Washington.
The last of the suites, which was exactly like the blue suite except
that it was hung in pink brocade, I gave to my husband’s sister and
brother-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Edwards of San Diego.
When I had finished my explorations and arrangements I glanced at the
clock in the Pink Room and discovered that I had no time to lose before
beginning that important toilet which would make me ready for the
Inaugural Ball, the last, but not the least of the Inaugural functions.
I hurried to my room and found the hairdresser waiting for me. I sat
down with a feeling of great comfort and submitted myself with hopeful
patience to her ministrations. But she was so overcome by the greatness
of the occasion that, although she was quite accustomed to the
idiosyncrasies of my hair, she was not able to make it “go right” until
she had put it up and taken it down twice, and even then it was not as
perfectly done as I had fondly hoped it would be. I believe this
hairdressing process made me more nervous than anything else in the
whole course of the day.
While it was going on, my new gown lay glittering on the bed, where the
maid had placed it, and I was very anxious to get into it. It had given
me several days of awful worry. It was made in New York and the
dressmaker had promised that I should have it at least a week before it
was needed so that any necessary changes could easily be made. But day
after day went by and no dress,—the third of March arrived and then I
began, frantically, to telegraph. I finally received the reassuring
advice that the dress was on its way in the hands of a special
messenger, but the special messenger was, with many other people, held
up for hours by the blizzard and did not arrive at the Boardmans’ until
after I had left for the White House, wondering, disconsolately, what on
earth I should wear to the Inaugural Ball if it happened that the
messenger couldn’t get there at all. The suspense had been fearful and
it was a comfortable relief to see the gown all spread out and waiting
for me.
It was made of heavy white satin which I had sent to Tokyo to have
embroidered, and the people who did the work surely knew their art. A
pattern of golden-rod was outlined by a silver thread and cleverly
fitted into the long lines of the gown, and no other trimming had been
used except some lace with which the low-cut bodice was finished. It
fitted me admirably and I hoped that, in spite of all the mishaps in my
preparations, I looked my best as I descended from the White House
automobile at the entrance of the Pension Office.
The Pension Office was not built for balls, Inaugural or otherwise, and
on the evening of March Fourth, 1909, after a day of melting sleet and
snow, the entrance was not especially inviting. Neither was the
dressing-room which had been assigned to me. I suppose that for years it
had rung with the ceaseless click of scores of typewriters and that its
walls had beheld no more elaborate costume than a business blouse and
skirt since the occasion of the last Inaugural Ball which had marked the
beginning of the second Roosevelt administration four years before. But
as I needed to do very little “prinking” it really didn’t matter and I
quickly rejoined the President and proceeded, on his arm, to the
Presidential Box, this being a small round gallery above the main
entrance of the great ballroom which is itself, in everyday life, the
principal workroom of the Pension Office.
A brilliant, an almost kaleidoscopic scene spread before us. The hall is
of tremendous proportions, pillared with red marble and with walls
tinted in the same colour. Every inch of floor space seemed to be
occupied. The bright colours and the gleam of women’s gowns met and
clashed, or harmonised with the brighter colours of diplomatic uniforms.
Officers of the Army and Navy, in full regalia, mingled with the
hundreds of men in the plain black of formal evening dress. It was a
wonderful glittering throng, more magnificent than any I have ever seen.
It was not possible to distinguish individuals except in the space
directly below the box, but there, as I looked down, I saw a great
semi-circle of faces—thousands, it seemed to me—smilingly upturned
toward us. The din of human voices was terrific; even the loudest band
procurable had difficulty in making itself heard. But the scene was so
gay in colour, and the faces that gazed up at us were so friendly and
happy that I felt elated and not at all overwhelmed.
The first person whom my eyes rested upon in the box was Aunt Delia,
already installed in a chair near the back and drinking in the scene
with visible pleasure. Aunt Delia, at that time, was eighty-three years
old, but not for anything would she have missed one feature of this
crowning day of her life. Having no children of her own, she had for
many years given the greater part of her thought and interest to her
nephews and nieces, and she followed every step in my husband’s career
with an absorption, not to say an excitement, as great as my own. All
day long she had travelled from ceremony to ceremony, conducted by
Lieutenant Reed, one of the Naval aides. She would arrive, leaning on
his arm, among the first at each appointed place, ready and eager for
any new event. She didn’t miss even the late supper of birds, salads and
ices which was served to us later that night, before we left the Ball.
And now she sat in the President’s Box, her soft, white hair arranged by
the best hairdresser, gowned in rich, old-fashioned, black velvet,
adorned with all the good old lace which she had been treasuring for
years for an occasion justifying its display.
The Vice-President and Mrs. Sherman arrived shortly after we did and
shared the box with us. They also had with them a large family party and
were both so jolly and so much in the festive spirit that formality
disappeared. Many friends and officials of distinction came, in the
course of the evening, to pay their respects; and members of our own
family came and went at intervals as they were inclined.
I may as well say here that my husband and I both came from such large
families that all Washington, at the time of the Inauguration, seemed
filled with our near and dear relatives. Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft
took a comfortable house for ten days, while Mr. and Mrs. Henry Taft and
Mr. Horace Taft were at the New Willard.
About eleven o’clock the President and I descended to the ballroom
floor, followed by Vice-President and Mrs. Sherman and, as is the
custom, proceeded slowly down the length of the hall and back between
the closely packed rows of people who stood aside to make room for our
promenade. This ceremonious parade was not as trying for me as it may
sound, for not only did I have the reassurance of my husband’s arm, but
the crowd was too large to seem very personal. So I was quite serene,
except for frequent spasms of anxiety lest my gorgeous length of train
be stepped on.
Except for this ceremony, and for a short supper which was served to us
and a few invited guests in a private room, the President and I remained
in the box until shortly after one o’clock when we once more descended
and made our way to a waiting automobile which very quickly whisked us
away to much needed rest.
However, I must still have had energy enough left to worry over domestic
arrangements since the last thing I remember of that eventful day was a
hearty laugh from my husband when I exclaimed in sleepy tones: “I wonder
where we had all better have breakfast in the morning!”