CONCLUSION
Our second summer at Beverly began with a call from Mr. Roosevelt. When
the ex-President returned to the United States, on the 18th of June,
1910, after an absence of a year and a half, Mr. Taft sent two members
of his Cabinet, the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of
Agriculture, and his aide, Captain Butt, to New York to meet him and to
extend to him a personal as well as an official welcome home. According
to Captain Butt’s Official Diary:
“Immediately upon the arrival of the S.S. _Kaiserin Auguste Victoria_ at
Quarantine the Presidential party scaled the sides of the steamer by
means of a rope ladder and proceeded to the staterooms of Mr. Roosevelt
where each member of the party greeted the ex-President. Then Captain
Butt, who was in full dress uniform, saluted Mr. Roosevelt and presented
to him the letter of welcome entrusted to his care by the President. Mr.
Roosevelt read it and expressed his great appreciation of the honour of
the receipt of the letter, as also for the ordering of the U. S. S.
_South Carolina_ and other vessels to accompany him from Quarantine to
New York. Captain Butt also presented to Mr. Roosevelt a letter (from
Mrs. Taft) supplementing the President’s invitation to Mr. and Mrs.
Roosevelt to pay them a visit at the White House now or at any time when
it might be convenient for them to do so.... Mr. Roosevelt took occasion
to send his sincere appreciation and profound thanks to the President by
Captain Butt both for the official and personal welcome extended to
him.”
I removed the Presidential household to Beverly the week Mr. Roosevelt
arrived and did not see him until after Mr. Taft joined me about ten
days later. Again to quote from Captain Butt’s carefully kept record:
“June 30—At 3:30 o’clock ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, accompanied by
Senator Lodge, called to pay his respects to the President. He was met
at the entrance by Captain Butt, who announced his arrival. The
President immediately came out and greeted his visitor most
affectionately, addressing him as Theodore.
“Colonel Roosevelt took both hands of the President, and said,
“‘Mr. President, it is fine to see you looking so well.’
“‘But why “Mr. President”?’ laughed the President.
“‘Because,’ replied Colonel Roosevelt, ‘it used to be “Mr. President”
and “Will,” now it must be “Mr. President” and “Theodore.”’
“The President conducted his distinguished predecessor to the side porch
where they started into a series of delightful reminiscences of the past
Administration.... Colonel Roosevelt remained two hours, during which he
gave the President an interesting account of his trip.”
I was present at this interview and remember it as being remarkably
pleasant and entertaining. Everybody will recall that the question of
Mr. Roosevelt’s attitude toward my husband was even then a debatable
one, but Mr. Taft had resolutely refused to believe that it could ever
be anything but friendly. I did not share his complete faith, but I was
glad on this occasion to find the old spirit of sympathetic comradeship
still paramount and myself evidently proved to be unwarrantably
suspicious.
Mr. Roosevelt had just been in England where he acted as the
representative of the President of the United States at the funeral of
King Edward, and that solemnly magnificent event seemed to have
overshadowed in his mind every other experience he had had during his
long absence. He described the stately ceremonies and the mediævally
picturesque procession in vivid detail and did not fail to emphasise
their grave and reverential aspects, but he dwelt particularly, and to
our great amusement, upon the humorous side of the situation in which he
had found himself.
It will be remembered that among Kings and Emperors and Czars, and even
lesser potentates, the rank of Presidents was a difficult thing to
determine. Should minor royalties take precedence over the
representatives of the French Republic and the United States of America,
to say nothing of Mexico, Brazil, Switzerland, and all the other great
and small democracies?
Mr. Roosevelt had great difficulty in finding his place. Then, too, he
was constantly running into kings and other royalties to whom he,
naturally, owed ceremonious respect. They were so numerous in London at
the time that familiarity with them bred carelessness in one whose
tongue had not been trained to the honorifics of Court life, and he
found himself making extremely funny blunders. He told us many stories
of his adventures with the world’s elect and, with his keen appreciation
of the ridiculous and his gift of description, gave us as merry an
afternoon as we ever spent with him.
I dwell on the memory of this agreeable meeting with Mr. Roosevelt and
the entertainment it afforded me, because by his manner he succeeded in
convincing me that he still held my husband in the highest esteem and
reposed in him the utmost confidence, and that the rumours of his
antagonism were wholly unfounded. I was not destined to enjoy this faith
and assurance for very long.
In mid-July of that year we started off for a short cruise on the
_Mayflower_, the only one we ever made. It is not really possible for
the President to have a vacation, but if he happens to be a good sailor
I know of no better way for him to get short intervals of rest than by
boarding the Presidential yacht and steaming away, out of the reach of
crowds.
We had only a small party with us, my husband’s brother, Mr. Horace
Taft, my sister, Mrs. Louis More, Miss Mabel Boardman and the Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Beekman Winthrop, and Mrs. Winthrop; and
Captain Butt, of course, was with us always.
We headed north for the Maine coast with Eastport as our first stopping
place. The mayor of that interesting city of fisheries came on board as
soon as we dropped anchor, made a felicitous speech of welcome and
proceeded to lay out a programme of sightseeing and festivities which
would have kept us there for a considerable longer time than we could
stay if it had all been carried out, and this experience was repeated
everywhere we went. We had to decline everything except a motor ride
about town for the purpose of getting a glimpse of the weir fisheries
and the sardine canneries, but a President doesn’t visit Eastport very
often, so the people thronging the streets made it seem quite like a
holiday.
Then a committee from the Island of Campo Bello, which lies a short
distance off the coast and which is a British possession, waited upon us
with an invitation to come across and go for a buckboard ride around a
part of the island. It sounded like such a homely and restful form of
amusement that Mr. Taft was sorely tempted to break the unwritten law
which decrees that a President may not set foot outside United States
territory, but he concluded that he had better not. The rest of us,
however, decided to go and we had a jolly, jolting ride which ended at
the summer home of Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt.
Everywhere we went we were most delightfully entertained, finding
beautiful homes and merry summer hosts at every port and town. At
fashionable Bar Harbor we found a colony of friends whose winter homes
are in Washington and Mr. Taft got some excellent golf. There were
luncheons and dinners, of course, every day and everywhere, to say
nothing of teas and large receptions, and Mr. Taft had to make speeches,
too, and meet all the Maine politicians. But there were the long restful
nights on the _Mayflower_, steaming along among the crags and rocks of
the broken, picturesque coast, or lying at anchor in some quiet harbour
with only the soft water sounds to break the stillness, and it would not
have taken much persuasion to have kept me aboard indefinitely.
The _Mayflower_ is used ordinarily for official purposes in connection
with naval reviews and other naval ceremonies, and at such times, with
the President on board, there is a punctilious formality to be
encountered which makes a mere civilian feel like a recruit under the
eyes of a drill-sergeant. But it is very interesting. One gets so used
to seeing everybody in uniform standing stiffly at attention as the
President passes that one almost forgets that it isn’t their natural
attitude.
And then the guns. They shake one’s nerves and hurt one’s ears, but they
are most inspiring. The President’s salute is twenty-one guns. It is
fired every time he sets foot on the deck of the _Mayflower_, or any
other naval vessel, and when he passes, on the _Mayflower_, between the
lines of naval vessels on review he gets it from every ship in the
fleet, not one by one, but altogether, so I think I know what a naval
battle sounds like.
Shortly after we returned from our little cruise on the Maine Coast we
received a visit from the President of Chili, Señor Montt, and Señora
Montt. He was on his way to Europe, having been ordered abroad on
account of ill health. He stopped in New York at the request of his
government, and at Mr. Taft’s invitation came to Beverly to pay his
official respects to the President of the United States. He made the
trip to Boston by special train and was there met by the _Mayflower_ and
by Captain Butt.
President Montt was very ill indeed. On the way down to Beverly he had a
heart attack which alarmed everybody and made it seem very probable that
he would not be able to land. But he recovered sufficiently to become
the most cheerful and confident member of the party and we found him and
Señora Montt to be among the most delightful of all the distinguished
visitors we had the pleasure of entertaining during our term in the
Presidency. After the ceremonious presentation and the exchange of
international compliments were disposed of they took luncheon with us
and we spent several most interesting and memorable hours together. The
members of his numerous _entourage_ for whom there was no room in our
modest summer cottage were entertained at luncheon on board by Captain
Logan of the _Mayflower_ and by Captain Butt. We were told afterward
that they managed to create quite an _entente cordial_, toasting each
other’s Presidents and armies and navies and ministers and attachés and
everybody else they could think of with great enthusiasm and gusto.
Señor Montt died a week later just as he reached England on his
health-seeking trip. In his death Chili lost an eminent citizen.
Mr. Taft remained with us at Beverly, playing golf, attending to routine
business, seeing the never-ending line of visitors and preparing
speeches until September when there began for him one of those whirlwind
seasons, so many of which he had lived through. With a printed itinerary
in his pocket he was off from Boston on the third of September to attend
the Conservation Congress at St. Paul. With two speeches to be
delivered, one at the Congress and one at the State Fair in Minneapolis,
to say nothing of another in Chicago and numerous short speeches from
the rear platform of his train, he was still back in Boston on the
eighth to be present at an aviation meet where together we saw the
performance of the best aviators of that day.
A short interval of rest and he was away again to New Haven to attend a
meeting of the Yale Corporation, then out to Cincinnati to the Ohio
Valley Exposition and back to Washington as quickly as a long programme
of speeches and hospitalities could be disposed of.
The political skies were then beginning to cloud up in earnest; he had a
Democratic Congress to prepare messages for, and I suppose the
approaching winter looked anything but alluring to him.
For the first time in the history of the Executive Mansion it was turned
into a bachelors’ hall during my various absences. My husband always had
one or more men staying with him, he would move his aides and
secretaries into the White House, and so arrange things that my frequent
desertions of him never weighed very heavily on my conscience.
When he arrived in Washington this time he organised a Cabinet House
Party so that Washington and the newspaper correspondents had something
to worry about for quite a while. He gathered all the members of his
Cabinet under his roof and kept them there where he could have three
Cabinet meetings a day besides the ones he called in the Executive
Offices. People made wild guesses at all kinds of crises and at all
manner of important disclosures to be made, but it was only a house
party after all. There were a great many problems to be solved, proposed
legislative measures to be discussed, and with every woman in the
Cabinet off summering somewhere it was an excellent opportunity for the
Executive branch of the Government to do extra work.
The distinguished gentlemen had to “double up” in rooms, too, so I have
often imagined that they got very little rest at any time. The Secretary
of State and the Secretary of the Treasury had the southeast room; the
Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Interior had the
northeast room; the Attorney General and the Secretary of Commerce and
Labour had the northwest room; the Postmaster General had Robert’s room;
the Secretary of Agriculture had the housekeeper’s room, and the
Secretary to the President had my son Charlie’s room. I think probably
as a house party it was unique, but if there had been any more
Departments of Government the President would have had to fit up a
dormitory.
[Illustration:
© Harris & Ewing.
THE LONG EASTERN CORRIDOR THROUGH WHICH GUESTS ARRIVE FOR STATE
FUNCTIONS
]
[Illustration:
© Harris & Ewing.
THE MAIN STAIRWAY LEADING TO THE PRESIDENT’S PRIVATE APARTMENTS
]
At this point in Archie Butt’s record I find the note: “Mrs. Taft left
this morning for New York to fit her son Charlie out in long trousers.”
That brings up unpleasant memories. Like any sensible woman I never
would admit that I had reached the high point in life as long as I had
one son still in knickerbockers, but with one son at Yale, with a young
lady daughter ready to be presented to society, and with Charlie going
into long trousers I felt that the day was approaching when the unhappy
phrase “getting on in years” might be applied to me.
The very rapid lengthening of Charlie’s legs had been a subject of much
discussion at Beverly during the summer and the necessity for bestowing
upon him the dignity of man-style garments had been manifest to
everybody sometime before I would consent to recognise it.
One day the telephone rang and Helen answered it. A voice at the other
end of the line said:
“I’d like to speak to Master Charlie Taft, please.”
“Somebody wants to speak to you, Charlie,” said Helen. Then sister-like
she stood by to see who it was and what he could possibly want with her
unimportant younger brother. She was surprised to hear this half of a
very earnest conversation:
“Who said so?”
“Certainly not!”
“Well, somebody has been giving you misinformation.”
“An absolute denial.”
“Well, if you want to quote me exactly you may say that I said the
rumour is false; wholly without foundation.”
“All right. Good-bye.”
Helen was sufficiently startled to place Charlie under cross-examination
at once. She had visions of grave complications wherein he played the
unfortunate part of a President’s son who had forgotten the rigid
discretion exacted of him by the nature of his position.
Charlie admitted that it was a reporter who had called him up.
“Couldn’t you tell that from the way I talked to him?” said he.
He had heard enough such conversations to have acquired the natural
“tone,” but he insisted that the subject of his conversation with his
reporter was “purely personal” and had nothing whatever to do with his
sister nor yet with any matters of high importance to the Government.
The question had to be referred to the President, his father, before he
would admit that the reporter wanted to write something about his going
into long trousers.
“And if that isn’t a personal matter,” said he, “I should like to know
what is.”
To his intense delight, his “absolute denial” to the contrary
notwithstanding, I fitted him out, kissed my baby good-bye and sent a
young man son off to school in his stead, feeling vaguely thankful that
I should have until Christmas to get used to the thought of him before
having to see him again.
Shortly afterward I returned to the White House and to the routine of a
social season. The Cabinet officers having all gone to their respective
homes we gave the Cabinet Dinner with all its accustomed formalities,
then came musicals, luncheons, small dinners, teas and parties of
various sorts until near the end of the year when I introduced my
daughter to society.
Helen had gone out in Washington and had attended my entertainments
during the winter of 1909 whenever she had been at home from college and
when I was ill had even acted as hostess in my place at a dinner we gave
for Prince and Princess Fushimi of Japan, but she had never “come out,”
so I gave two parties early in the winter of 1910 in honor of her début.
We began with an afternoon At Home, for which, as my daughter says she
“got all the flowers there were in Washington,” and later I gave a ball
on the night of December 30th, when the East Room was filled with
hundreds of young people clamouring for “just one more dance” until two
o’clock in the morning.
The New Year’s Reception was followed in quick succession by the
Diplomatic, Congressional, Judicial and other state functions; the
winter passed like a dream; the Garden Party season was upon us; then
came the greatest event of our four years in the White House, our Silver
Wedding.
Twenty-five years married and all but a single year of it spent in the
public service. It did not seem unfitting to me that this anniversary
should be spent in the White House or that we should seek to make it an
event not to be forgotten by anybody who happened to witness it. I
thanked the happy fate that had given me a summer wedding-day because I
needed all outdoors for the kind of party I wanted to give. That silver
was showered upon us until we were almost buried in silver was
incidental; we couldn’t help it; it was our twenty-fifth anniversary and
we had to celebrate it.
I am not going to try to remember or to take the trouble to find out how
many invitations we issued. I know there were four or five thousand
people present and that a more brilliant throng was never gathered in
this country.
It was a night garden party with such illuminations as are quite beyond
description. Every tree and bush was ablaze with myriads of tiny
coloured lights, the whole stately mansion was outlined in a bright
white glow; there were strings of bobbing, fantastic lanterns wherever a
string would go; the great fountain was playing at its topmost height in
every colour of the rainbow; while on the gleaming point of the Monument
and on the flag stretched in the breeze from the staff on the top of the
White House shone the steady gleam of two searchlights.
My husband and I received the almost endless line of guests under a
large tree about midway between the South Portico and the fountain; the
entire house was thrown open and was filled constantly with people
seeking the refreshment tables laid in the dining rooms and vestibule. I
have a right to be enthusiastic in my memory of that party because
without enthusiasm it could not have been given at all. And why should
not one be frankly grateful for success?
With the passing of another season, in no way different from those that
went before, I come to the end of my story. There is another story to
tell, longer and fuller, but it does not belong to me. It belongs to the
man whose career has made my story worth the telling.
After Mr. Taft was renominated, or rather after the second convention in
Chicago when the Republican party was divided, I began to make plans for
the future in which the White House played no part. I stopped reading
the accounts of the bitter political contest because I found that the
opposition newspapers made so much more impression on me than those that
were friendly to my husband that I was in a state of constant rage which
could do me no possible good.
Mr. Taft had never been subjected to bitter criticism and wholesale
attack until his term in the Presidency and I suppose I had formed a
habit of thinking that there was nothing to criticise him for except,
perhaps, his unfortunate shortcoming of not knowing much and of caring
less about the way the game of politics is played. Such criticism of him
as Mr. Bryan’s supporters were able to create for their use in 1908
amounted to nothing. His record of twenty years’ uncriticised service
stood, and he stood on it. I think we both avoided much perturbation
after we became convinced of the unfairness and injustice of much that
was said by hostile newspapers, by not reading it. Mr. Taft took much
satisfaction from those words of Lincoln’s which Mr. Norton, his
Secretary, had photographed and placed in a frame on his office desk:
“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me
this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very
best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so
until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against
me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels
swearing I was right would make no difference.”
I wanted him to be re-elected, naturally, but I never entertained the
slightest expectation of it and only longed for the end of the turmoil
when he could rest his weary mind and get back into association with the
pleasant things of life. Fortunately we are a family that laughs. Both
Mr. Taft and the children manage to get some fun out of almost
everything, and I and my matter of factness have afforded them lifelong
amusement. They like now to tell a story about me which doesn’t impress
me as being particularly funny.
During the last campaign I was at Beverly alone a good part of the
summer, but when Mr. Taft did join me for short intervals he brought
Republican Headquarters with him, more or less, and a few political
supporters were sure to follow for consultation with him.
There was one good old enthusiastic friend who had always supported him
and who was then making a valiant fight in his behalf. And he had faith
that they would win. He assured me they would win. He told me how they
were going to do it, pointing out where Mr. Taft’s strength lay and
telling me how kindly the people really felt toward him.
“Mrs. Taft, you mark my word,” said he, “the President will be
re-elected in November!”
“Well,” said I, “you may be right, but just the same I intend to pack
everything up when I leave Beverly, and I shall take the linen and
silver home.”
* * * * *
At a dinner given by the Lotos Club in New York, just ten days after Mr.
Wilson’s election in 1912, Mr. Taft said:
“The legend of the lotos eaters was that if they partook of the fruit of
the lotos tree they forgot what had happened in their country and were
left in a state of philosophic calm in which they had no desire to
return to it.
“I do not know what was in the mind of your distinguished invitation
committee when I was asked to attend this banquet. They came to me
before election. At first I hesitated to accept lest when the dinner
came I should be shorn of interest as a guest and be changed from an
active and virile participant in the day’s doings of the Nation to
merely a dissolving view. I knew that generally on an occasion of this
sort the motive of the diners was to have a guest whose society should
bring them more closely into contact with the great present and the
future and not be merely a reminder of what has been. But, after further
consideration, I saw in the name of your club the possibility that you
were not merely cold, selfish seekers after pleasures of your own, and
that perhaps you were organised to furnish consolation to those who
mourn, oblivion to those who would forget, an opportunity for a swan
song to those about to disappear....
“The Presidency is a great office to hold. It is a great honour and it
is surrounded with much that makes it full of pleasure and enjoyment for
the occupant, in spite of its heavy responsibilities and the shining
mark that it presents for misrepresentation and false attack.... Of
course the great and really the only lasting satisfaction that one can
have in the administration of the great office of President is the
thought that one has done something permanently useful to his fellow
countrymen. The mere enjoyment of the tinsel of office is ephemeral, and
unless one can fix one’s memory on real progress made through the
exercise of presidential power there is little real pleasure in the
contemplation of the holding of that or any other office, however great
its power or dignity or high its position in the minds of men.
“I beg you to believe that in spite of the very emphatic verdict by
which I leave the office, I cherish only the deepest gratitude to the
American people for having given me the honour of having held the
office, and I sincerely hope in looking back over what has been done
that there is enough of progress made to warrant me in the belief that
real good has been accomplished, even though I regret that it has not
been greater. My chief regret is my failure to secure from the Senate
the ratification of the general arbitration treaties with France and
Great Britain. I am sure they would have been great steps toward general
world peace. What has actually been done I hope has helped the cause of
peace, but ratification would have been a concrete and substantial step.
I do not despair of ultimate success. We must hope and work on.”
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.