As secretary of war, Taft had enjoyed an easy rapport with members of the press, who frequented his office to secure gossip, information, and anecdotes. “It was a favorite occupation for the correspondents,” Oscar King Davis recalled, “to ‘go Tafting’ ”—to meet with the secretary in the late afternoon for “a half-hour or so of very pleasant conversation which often furnished a good deal of news.” Always “a good scout,” Taft had spoken frankly, and depended on reporter friends to protect his occasional indiscretions. In his first weeks as president, however, Taft discovered that “casual remarks” made headlines, and quickly recognized “the necessity of care” in everything he disclosed. Rather than hold informal daily discussions with members of the press, he would see individual journalists by appointment only. Nonetheless, the new president promised to meet with the entire group of correspondents on a weekly basis. Before he discontinued these press conferences, the White House reporters developed a genuine affection for “the big, good-humored man who had taken the place of the strident, dynamic Roosevelt.”
Taft was beginning to create “his own atmosphere,” Archie Butt remarked in late April. “People are forgetting that he is the residuary legatee, and his smile, good nature, and evenness of temper are winning hearts to him.” The press and the public seemed to have reached a similar verdict about the new occupant of the White House. “Roosevelt made good with the people; and Taft promises to do likewise,” one reporter noted. “Take it all and all,” another concluded, “Washington is mighty happy in these opening days of the Taft administration.”
IF TAFT PROFESSED TO BE “a fish out of water” in his new office, Nellie was finally entirely in her element. The new president frequently touted his wife’s strengths, maintaining that without her guidance, he would never have sought and never gained the presidency. “I am no politician,” he told a gathering in Georgia shortly after his election. “There,” he proudly indicated Nellie, “is the politician of the family. If she had only let me alone, I guess I should now be dozing on the Circuit Court bench.” Her acumen, he insisted proudly, had facilitated every critical step of his career. Indeed, he held that without her “tact and diplomacy,” he would never have succeeded in the Philippines. Now he had faith that Nellie would “share the responsibilities” of his new office and once again prove instrumental in surmounting the “formidable” challenges he would face.
Journalists latched onto Taft’s narrative, emphasizing Nellie’s decisive role in her husband’s political ascendancy. Their comradeship, the Ladies’ Home Journal observed, was “like that of two men who are intimate chums.” A portrait emerged of an ambitious wife who championed her viewpoints “with almost masculine vigor,” while Taft assumed “his most judicial attitude.” Article after article highlighted Nellie’s role in her husband’s choice to leave the Cincinnati Superior Court to become solicitor general, and then to relinquish his federal judgeship and become governor general of the Philippines. “Yes,” Nellie acknowledged, “it is true that I urged Mr. Taft to give up his position on the bench and return to politics. I felt that while he honored and loved his legal position more than all else in his career, he might spend the younger years of his life in a wider field.” Again, reporters observed, Nellie’s “judgment prevailed” when Taft turned down Roosevelt’s third offer for the Supreme Court to test the waters for the presidency. A week after his victory, Nellie was asked if she studied politics. “Indeed, I do,” she replied in her usual forthright manner. “I have studied the situation gravely and I think I understand it well.”
“Few women have gone into the White House so well equipped to meet the exactions” of the first lady’s position, remarked the New York Times. As the governor general’s wife, she had already served in a similar capacity; she acutely understood the importance of getting out among the people, appreciated the ceremonial aspects of her role, and was well versed in the rules of etiquette required for her position. Her knowledge of Spanish, French, and German enabled her to speak freely with the diplomats and natives of numerous countries. “You make me feel truly at home when you converse with me in French,” Ambassador Jusserand told her. Nellie’s extensive travels had provided her with myriad stories and anecdotes to entertain such dignitaries. The new first lady was “never at a loss for conversation,” a reporter for the New York Tribune wrote. “Never within the recollection of Washingtonians of today,” claimed another correspondent, had a first lady shown herself so conversant “on any subject of contemporaneous interest.” Asked how she found time “to keep up so thoroughly” with world events, Nellie rejoined with droll simplicity: “By reading the daily papers.”
His first interview with Nellie Taft left the Ladies’ Home Journal reporter George Griswold Hill “impressed with her dignity.” He remarked upon her unusual acuity and shrewd insight into people and situations. “She surveys the man or woman presented to her with a look so calm and deliberate,” Hill observed, “that strangers sometimes are wont to describe her as cold.” Beneath her “cloak of composure,” however, Hill discerned a charming and sensitive woman. A New York Times reporter was similarly taken with the clever new first lady: “Her smile has the charm of intelligence,” he reported, “that quick flash of recognition, distinct from the frozen, automatic smile peculiar to many women in official life.”
As the president’s wife, Nellie announced early on, she considered herself “a public personage” and would “cheerfully meet any demands the position [made] upon her.” Her statement revealed a far different temperament from that of her predecessor. Even after seven years as first lady, Edith Roosevelt had remained “unwilling to look upon herself otherwise than as a private individual.” Believing that “a woman’s name should appear in print but twice—when she is married and when she is buried,” Edith had refrained from publicly voicing political opinions and routinely declined interview requests. In a rare portrait piece, entitled “Mrs. Roosevelt: The Woman in the Background,” Mabel Daggett portrayed Edith Roosevelt as an intensely private and traditional wife and mother. She “presents none of the restless new woman attributes,” Daggett wrote. “She throbs for no reforms. She champions no causes.” Surrounded by her boisterous family, Edith was described as “a happy woman,” adored by her husband. Edith Roosevelt, Daggett concluded, would intentionally “step out into history as one of the least known” first ladies.
Before she took up residence in the White House, Nellie Taft made it clear she would play a far different role. In December 1908, she agreed to become honorary chair of the Women’s Welfare Department of the National Civic Federation (NCF)—a progressive organization founded to better the working lives of wage earners employed in government and industry positions. No previous first lady had taken “a commanding lead” in promoting controversial programs to improve public welfare. At the annual meeting, Nellie delivered a well-received speech calling for investigations into the working conditions of female employees in federal and state departments, post offices, public hospitals, and police stations. “She plainly showed,” one attendee noted, “that she has brains and used them without in any sense being aggressive or pedantic.” During the NCF banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York the following evening, she was observed “in animated conversation” with the union leader Samuel Gompers. Not all Washingtonians approved of Nellie’s unconventional activism. A traditionalist, Archie Butt predicted that Nellie would “make a fine mistress of the White House,” but only if she would refrain from speaking publicly about “the betterment of the working girl class,” and focus instead upon “the simple duties of First Lady.”
Public policy affecting working women was not the only issue on which Nellie expressed a strong opinion. Asked about granting suffrage to women, she answered with her usual directness: “The woman’s voice is the voice of wisdom and I can see nothing unwomanly in her casting the ballot.” In fact, Nellie fervently rejected traditional restrictions on a woman’s role in society, insisting that intellectual development in
no way diminished her capabilities in the home. Nothing in a college education, she maintained, “makes a girl either unfit for domestic obligations or masculine in her tastes.” Some women were “not called on to preside over a home,” and for those who did marry and have children, education would “make them great in intellect and soul.” Her daughter Helen, she noted with pride, had chosen to take “a full college course” at the National Cathedral School, then secured a prestigious scholarship to Bryn Mawr College. While Nellie appreciated “the distinct advantages for a young girl in the social life of the White House,” she fully supported her daughter’s decision to pursue her education elsewhere. With her progressive views, one reporter noted, Mrs. Taft had “endeared herself to that class of women who are sometimes slightingly referred to as ‘strongminded.’ ”
Despite Captain Butt’s concern, Nellie’s political activities did nothing to interfere with her duties as mistress of the White House. In fact, the new first lady had ambitious plans to make the national capital the hub of American cultural life. The White House, she argued, belonged to the people, and she would conduct social affairs there “on a plane of the highest and broadest democracy.” She hoped that Washington would someday supplant New York as the “real social center” of the country. In the capital, she envisioned “a national society” comprised “of the best people in the land, a society not founded on the dollar, but on culture, art, statesmanship.” No other city, she maintained, “is more beautifully laid out or has more natural charm during the months given over to official and social life.” New Yorkers reacted with scorn, calling the first lady’s idea “as absurd as it is impracticable,” insisting that New York “has been, and always will be the mecca of culture and wealth in our land.”
Undeterred, Nellie embarked on her first major project. With the coming of spring, inspired by the Luneta, the popular municipal park in the heart of Manila where all classes of the citizenry could gather for outdoor concerts, she worked with a landscape architect to transform the south side of Washington’s Tidal Basin into “one of the most famous esplanades of the world.” She enlisted her husband to persuade Congress that $25,000 should be appropriated to beautify the area—to plant trees, improve both the bridle path and the roadway, build an octagonal wooden bandstand, and install hundreds of comfortable benches. During her travels in the Far East, Nellie had fallen under the enchantment of Japanese cherry trees. Discovering that “both the soil and climate” of Washington were suitable for their growth, she purchased 100 trees from nurseries around the country; when her plans became public, the mayor of Tokyo sent an additional 2,000 young cherry trees to Washington.
On April 17, the president and first lady officially dedicated “Potomac Park” with the first in a series of White House–sponsored public concerts to be held every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon from five to seven. Hours before the first notes of the inaugural concert, “vehicles of every description” began to arrive—“horse drawn victorias and landaus, electric and gasoline motor cars, taxicabs and nearly every type of carriage.” Men and women on horseback lined the winding bridle path and thousands of pedestrians settled on the lawn near the river. All told, 10,000 people representing “every walk of life” had gathered in the new park.
Vigorous cheers greeted the president and first lady as they arrived in an open electric landaulet. They smiled and bowed “right and left,” stopping frequently to speak with friends and acquaintances. The entire cabinet was present, along with dozens of ambassadors. “Everybody saw everybody that he or she knew,” Nellie marveled, “and there was the same exchange of friendly greetings that had always made the Luneta such a pleasant meeting place.” Though Nellie had taken pains to ensure that her municipal park would “acquire the special character” she so desired, she could hardly have envisioned the future of Potomac Park and the cherry blossom festival that one day would draw millions of visitors to the nation’s capital.
In May, Nellie also introduced a series of Friday afternoon garden parties. After developing a “very strong liking” for open-air festivities in the Far East, she decided the south grounds of the White House would provide a perfect setting for similar events. The Marine Band was stationed on the lawn, a large refreshment tent was situated under the trees at the rear of the mansion, and iron benches were scattered around the grounds. The invitations, issued each week to more than five hundred people, asked men to attend in white “short coats, flannel trousers and straw hats,” while women wore white dresses and carried “bright colored parasols.” The president and first lady stood on a knoll to receive their guests, who were free to “roam at will in the private grounds of the President and sip tea and punch and eat sandwiches and ices under the historic trees.” These picturesque gatherings, one reporter observed, “are as informal as any entertainment given in the name of the President and his wife can be.” Nevertheless, they quickly became “the most popular form of official hospitality yet seen in Washington.”
Taft expressed his immense pride in Nellie’s accomplishments to Archie Butt. “It was a difficult thing for her to give any individuality to her entertainments following so close on the Roosevelt administration, which was so particularly brilliant,” he acknowledged, but she had clearly managed to do so. Butt was equally impressed that she had managed to distinguish herself. “She possesses a nature which I think is going to unfold and enlarge itself as it adjusts itself to new and broader surroundings,” he told his sister. “She really looks ten years younger since she entered the White House, and I think she has become more gracious and kinder toward all the world.”
It was evident to all that the vivacious and self-possessed first lady would continue to be instrumental in all the new president’s endeavors. “The complete social success of the Taft administration has been fully established,” the Kansas City Star observed on May 16. “In the ten weeks of her husband’s Administration,” the New York Times agreed, “Mrs. Taft has done more for society than any former mistress of the White House has undertaken in as many months.”
ON MAY 17, NELLIE AND William Taft hosted a small party on the presidential yacht, the Sylph. The guests included Attorney General George Wickersham and his wife; her sister Lady Hadfield and husband; the steel baron Sir Robert Hadfield; and Archie Butt. The Sylph set sail on the Potomac, heading toward Mt. Vernon, where a special tour of President Washington’s home had been arranged. Nellie was talking with the attorney general when she suddenly grew faint and collapsed.
Crushed ice was pressed to her forehead and wrists, and the first lady “seemed to revive,” Butt recalled, but she remained only “half conscious” and “did not speak.” Taft raced to her side as the ship turned back and a message was dispatched directing Dr. Matthew Delaney to meet them at the White House. “The trip back seemed interminable,” Butt recalled, because “no one could do anything.” When they reached the White House, Taft and Butt each took one of Nellie’s arms and “practically carried” her inside.
Nellie’s right side was paralyzed, the right side of her face had fallen, and she remained unable to speak. Taft was devastated—he “looked like a great stricken animal,” Archie Butt sorrowfully remarked. Never had he “seen greater suffering or pain shown on a man’s face.” The symptoms, Taft anxiously told his son Robert, indicated “a lesion in the brain.” After examining Nellie, however, Dr. Delaney concluded that “because she could hear all right,” she had suffered in all likelihood “a mere attack of nervous hysteria rather than a bursting of a blood vessel in the brain.” With extended rest, he reassured the president, her symptoms might disappear.
The last of the six congressional dinners was scheduled for that very evening. Recognizing his obligation “in the face of sorrow,” Taft circulated among his guests with a forced smile and friendly demeanor. “But what a dinner!” Butt observed. “Every mouthful seemed to choke him, yet he never wavered.” He was “fighting her battle, for it would humiliate her terribly to feel that people were commiserating wi
th her.” While the men smoked cigars, Taft hastened to his wife’s room and consulted with her doctor. Told that she had fallen peacefully asleep, he rejoined the party. The night was balmy, allowing the guests, as Nellie had planned, to move to the East Terrace. There, electric lights, covered with red paper and colorful flowers, created an atmosphere of enchantment. “The beauty of the scene cut the President like a knife,” Butt sadly noted, who likewise recognized the hand of the stricken first lady in every carefully orchestrated detail.
After sixteen hours of sleep, Nellie finally awakened. “Her old will and determination asserted itself,” Archie remarked, as she immediately tried to get out of bed and walk. By late afternoon, Taft reported to Robert, she had regained partial “control of her right arm and her right leg,” though she remained mute. The doctor expressed his continued confidence that the paralysis of her vocal chords was temporary. The White House released a statement insisting there was “no cause for alarm.” The first lady was simply enduring a “nervous attack”—the label then given to a range of amorphous afflictions brought on by exhaustion. Newspaper reports attributed the collapse to Nellie’s “ceaseless and strenuous efforts to aid her husband.” Her exertions, the St. Louis Post Dispatch suggested, were “more than one person could stand up under and she went to pieces.”
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 83
