Frank I. Cobb seconded that opinion in a long panegyric in the New York World. “No other American has made so much world history as Woodrow Wilson,” he observed. In drawing a sharp contrast to President Harding, Cobb reminded his readers that Wilson dealt almost exclusively with ideas. He cared little for party politics, and patronage bored him, as did the actual administration of government. He pronounced Wilson the most profound student of government among all the Presidents—with the exception of Madison, “the Father of the Constitution.” Wilson’s foreign policies had obscured the rest of his administration, he said, but his domestic policies alone guaranteed him an elevated position in American history. Cobb called Wilson’s control over Congress for six years “the most impressive triumph of mind over matter known to American politics.” Wilson’s words led the nation not simply into a war but into a crusade, one in which “international relations have undergone their first far-reaching moral revolution.”
A little after three that afternoon, Wilson appeared at one of his third-floor windows and discovered five hundred people outside cheering. For the rest of the afternoon, a steady stream of automobiles and primitive tour buses—“rubberneck” cars, they were called, horseless wagons that could carry twenty passengers—rode into S Street. Friends and former colleagues dropped by to pay their respects, including former Attorney General Palmer and former Secretary Daniels, various Democratic Senators and Representatives, and Joe Tumulty, whose future was uncertain now that Wilson had no further need for a chief of staff.
Guests entered a generous foyer, with a floor of black marble with white inset squares. To the immediate left was what became Wilson’s front office, an ample room with a fireplace. John Randolph Bolling—an inhibited, slightly hunchbacked, younger brother of Edith’s—moved there to serve as Wilson’s secretary and chief usher. As the actual secretarial work would require a steadily decreasing number of hours, he devoted much of his time to assembling scrapbooks, producing a detailed timeline of his brother-in-law’s life. He referred to his office as his “dugout,” which his sister visited each day in order to tend to some of the mail. The room also became a temporary workspace for Ray Baker, who had earlier expressed his desire to write a book about the Paris Peace Conference and in time had received carte blanche to Wilson’s papers. During this transitional period, Baker became Wilson’s in-house biographer, and Edith especially appreciated having somebody they both trusted on hand to spend constructive time with her husband.
Beyond the dugout was a gentlemen’s cloakroom, a trunk room for storage, and, after some remodeling of servants’ quarters, a billiard room. The other side of the entrance hall had a ladies’ coatroom, as well as the kitchen—with its zinc sink and early General Electric refrigerator—and the servants’ dining room. A mezzanine hall, which served in part as an annex for Wilson’s books, was up three marble steps from the entrance, and a wide stairway carried visitors to the second-floor drawing room. It was almost six hundred square feet, furnished with a combination of French and English pieces that Edith and Woodrow brought from their prior marriages. Because the Wilsons would seldom entertain on a grand scale, this parlor became something of a museum, housing many of the artifacts from his Presidency: a mosaic of St. Peter, a gift from Pope Benedict XV; silver-framed photographs of King George and Queen Mary; and the hand-painted plates from the King and Queen of Belgium. A black Steinway D concert grand piano sat before a huge Gobelins tapestry depicting The Marriage of Psyche, a gift Ambassador Jusserand had presented to Edith in 1918 on behalf of the people of France.
In the opposite corner of the second floor was a large dining room, furnished with a graceful, narrow-legged Sheraton dining set. A portrait of Edith hung over the mantelpiece. The room connected to a solarium, its glass doors opening onto a terrace that faced south, overlooking a long, brick-walled garden with several large evergreens. The sunroom and its porch connected on its eastern side to the room where the Wilsons found themselves spending most of their time—a serene wood-paneled library. Before they had moved in, Edith had requested the installation of two bookcases to accommodate much of Wilson’s eight-thousand-volume library. Furnished with his Cabinet chair from the White House and the great table from Prospect (which Hibben had shipped at the university’s expense), the room became the Wilsons’ inner sanctum.
The first day in his new house, Wilson could not resist glancing out the window. The crowd steadily swelled into the thousands. Each glimpse of him prompted applause, which he acknowledged with a wave. When a procession of League advocates marched down S Street and stopped in front of the house, he granted an audience to a few of its leaders. Wilson received them in the drawing room, where they presented him with a huge white wicker basket filled with roses and tulips and lilacs. He shook hands, saying, “It makes me very happy to see you on this occasion. I am proud of you all.” When the delegation left, a man in the crowd outside called for three cheers for Wilson, which were loud enough to bring him to an open window. He smiled, bowed, and waved a white handkerchief. The crowd quieted, as it appeared that Wilson might speak. But instead, he raised his right hand to his throat, suggesting soreness, though Edith knew he simply feared that his voice would break. He smiled and bowed a few times and then fell from sight. He spent the rest of the day in his bedroom, and stayed there for the next several weeks.
In late March, Ray Baker went upstairs to talk with his subject. He found the sixty-four-year-old propped up in bed, “looking inconceivably old, gray, worn, tired”—his hair thin, his skin parchment yellow, his face an aquiline caricature of its former looks. Only the eyes still burned, suggesting the activity of his mind. Dr. Grayson had revealed that Wilson was suffering a recurrence of trouble with his prostate, but as Baker noted in his diary, the former President was suffering from more than physical ills.
He has been lost. . . . He seems lonelier, more cut-off than ever before. His mind still works with power, but with nothing to work upon! Only memories & regrets. He feels himself bitterly misunderstood & unjustly attacked; and being broken in health, cannot rally under it.
Homer Cummings, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, paid a bedside visit one month later, and found Wilson “more depressed than I had ever known him to be.” In discussing foreign affairs, Wilson proved as uncompromising as ever. He had a new antagonist to curse, Harding’s Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson spoke of the “deplorable consequences” of America’s failure to ratify the Treaty and of America’s “helpless attitude” at a time when Europe was attempting to rebuild itself. He feared the military leaders occupying the Ruhr District were sowing the seeds of future discontent. He claimed that the United States had abandoned “a fruitful leadership for a barren isolation.” Most chilling, Wilson told Cummings that the course of events was “leading inevitably to another world war.”
Cummings assured Wilson of his own faith in the League and that he relied on all the “philosophy” he could summon to endure the humiliation he felt as an American in seeing its defeat. “If I had nothing but philosophy to comfort me,” Wilson said, “I should go mad.” When Cummings asked him to expound, the old man could not find the words. His voice quavered and he broke down. Cummings caught only his suggestion that they were all but small instruments in a greater divine plan.
No President had left the White House feeling so utterly depleted as Woodrow Wilson. By mid-May, he was still lying in bed most days—“too much,” thought Grayson, who urged him “to get at some work that will engage, even to exhaustion, his self-consuming mind.” But Wilson lacked the spirit. He whiled away hours reading with his one good eye, mostly potboilers. He tried to remain indifferent to the news, but he could not always suppress his acrimony. Upon becoming the new Ambassador to Great Britain, Colonel George Harvey—Wilson’s first important benefactor—delivered a speech that ridiculed the former President and the League. When Grayson referred to Harvey as a skunk, Wilson ret
orted without batting an eye, “No, no, Grayson, you are wrong: a skunk has a white streak.”
Knowing her husband always responded to the call of duty, Edith fashioned an activity to get him out of bed in the morning. Stacks of mail arrived every day, and she told him that many warranted a reply. Randolph Bolling sorted them; and after Woodrow and Edith breakfasted together in the solarium—if she could get him that far—they would descend to the dugout. Wilson dictated a great number of short replies, leaving his brother-in-law to respond to those letters that did not require a personal touch. Wilson would then take his daily walk—back and forth across the vestibule. When he tired, he returned to his bedroom, where Isaac Scott had prepared his shaving stand. The one-armed exercise remained the most arduous of the day, but one he insisted upon performing himself. For the most part, Wilson remained in his dressing gown and slippers. Only the occasional guest could get him to the dining room for a formal meal. After lunch he rested for a solid hour. Bolling ushered those few with appointments to the library, where they would find Wilson in an armchair by the fire. Even when he remained in his bedroom, Wilson rigorously performed basic calisthenics to strengthen his muscles and received regular massages. So while his hair had turned white and he often replaced his trademark pince-nez with framed spectacles, Wilson’s physique stayed relatively trim.
Nothing refreshed Wilson more than his motor trips around the city. He had especially liked one car in the Presidential fleet, the big black Vestibule Suburban car the government leased from Pierce-Arrow in Buffalo, New York. The six-cylinder, forty-eight-horsepower vehicle with its steering wheel on the right represented the height of luxury—eight feet high with running boards, silver-plated door handles and bud vases, German silver carriage lights, and whitewall tires—then selling for $9,250. Upon entering civilian life, he purchased the big black “used car” for $3,000, personalizing it by having the Presidential seal on either side painted over and putting his initials in their place. He jazzed up the car with a few thin orange stripes on its body and orange accents on the spokes of the wheels. In further homage to Princeton, he replaced the Presidential hood ornament of an eagle with that of a tiger. Wherever the Wilsons drove each afternoon, the reception along the way lifted his spirits, as he invariably received cheers from the people he passed.
They always returned home by seven, so that Woodrow could change back into his dressing gown and eat dinner at a small table in the library. By the light of the fire and a dim lamp, Edith read to him until he was ready for sleep, usually around nine o’clock. While he prepared for bed, Edith and her brother would dine. Then she would visit her husband in his bedroom and read to him again until he drifted off. At that moment, he would reach for the Bible on his nightstand and read a few verses before falling asleep. The routine seldom varied, except when a local theater owner sent reels of the newest films to S Street so that Wilson could watch them in his library, employing the Douglas Fairbanks projector and a portable screen. A pianist would sometimes visit, playing the score on an upright instrument tucked in a corner of the room.
Starting in late April 1921, his favorite diversion came on Saturday nights, when the Wilsons and a few guests ritually went to Keith’s Theatre on Fifteenth Street. The manager reserved seats in the last row of the theater, which not only allowed for easy access from its side door but also for Wilson to slip in without creating much of a scene. In no time his appearances had become so predictable, the public considered his presence a featured act. As Wilson entered in evening clothes, the entire audience would offer a standing ovation and the performers would present him with flowers. By the time the show ended, as many as a thousand people would swarm to the G Street entrance, where Wilson’s Pierce-Arrow waited. Some of the entertainers would rush outside without taking time to remove their greasepaint. By summer, Wilson could enter the big car on his own, cheerfully doffing his hat. Sandwiches and ginger ale awaited at home, where he and Edith would stay up and review that night’s songs and routines. The house was well stocked with a collection of records to which Wilson could listen on the Victrola: the latest recordings from Harry Lauder, John Philip Sousa, Nellie Melba, and Alma Gluck; Enrico Caruso’s rendition of “Over There”; and the blackface comedy routines of Moran and Mack. By fall, Wilson often propped himself up in bed with a writing board, making notes in shorthand. He even took to sitting at a desk in order to type personal letters on his Underwood with one hand.
For all the optimistic signs of his activity, Wilson’s physical health had not improved much. His regimen masked the fact that his left arm and leg were still paralyzed, and his digestive tract remained as problematic as ever. Those surrounding him believed his only real salvation lay in some “systematic mental occupation,” at least an hour each day. Stockton Axson, for one, hoped something might spring from the conversation Wilson had started with Bainbridge Colby about a law partnership.
Colby had not only pursued the idea but also took it upon himself to open a few doors so that Wilson would be readily admitted to the New York State Bar and that of the District of Columbia. Just before noon on June 25, the former President arrived at the District’s Supreme Court, where all the justices gathered to witness Wilson taking the oath.
The following week, Colby drafted the announcement of the new partnership Wilson & Colby, “Attorneys and Counsellors at Law,” with offices at 1315 F Street (in the American National Bank Building) in Washington and at 32 Nassau Street in Manhattan. Colby would man the New York office and come to Washington once a week to consult with his partner in the capital, who intended to spend an hour in the office every day. Colby proposed mailing two thousand engraved notices, but after compiling his list of contacts, Wilson suggested five thousand. On August 16, Wilson rode to F Street, where he entered the building through the rear and walked to the elevator without assistance. He met Colby in their suite, where the bookshelves remained empty and the walls bare, but the large desks and richly upholstered chairs suggested a law firm that intended to remain in business for years to come.
But, for the second time in his life, Wilson displayed his inherent lack of interest in practicing law. As with the launch of his first practice, Wilson faced a dearth of clients—though this time for different reasons. The firm faced an ethics problem—as Wilson refused to accept any case in which he felt his former official position might influence the decision in his clients’ favor. He presumed his partner would follow suit. In February 1922, for example, Costa Rica approached the new firm about a border dispute with Panama. In light of America’s most recent dealings with the former during Wilson’s last days in office, he deemed the clients inappropriate. A few months later, American banks hoped the firm might smooth over a deal pending with Ecuador. Wilson feared it would contribute to new monopolies in the South American nation and felt uncomfortable associating his name with the transaction. Again, he asked Colby to “comprehend my feelings and indulge my scruple.”
The most intriguing potential clients who hoped to engage Wilson & Colby were officers of the Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation, who sought representation in two investigations about to take place before the United States Senate. One case dealt with the fluctuating price of gasoline; the other concerned Sinclair’s recent acquisition of property in Wyoming known as Teapot Dome. Through some sleight of hand endorsed by Harding, the land had come under the jurisdiction of Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who had, in turn, leased the vast oil field to Sinclair. Colby wrote Wilson that this promised to be “a very substantial and important employment”—a high-profile hearing with compensation in six figures. Colby also looked forward to working with ex-Senator George Sutherland of Utah as co-counsel. “Do you see any objection to accepting this employment?” he asked his partner.
Wilson did. A private oil company seeking representation from a former President whose conservation policies opposed such leases seemed highly suspect. Wilson only knew what he had read in the newspapers, w
hich gave the impression “that some ugly business is going on in respect to the Teapot Dome,” but he knew that “the oil companies are constantly attempting to invade that Reserve with or without right.” Worse, Wilson considered Senator Sutherland “one of the most thick headed and impenetrable of the Senate partisans.” Again, Colby deferred to Wilson’s judgment. After yet another instance in which Colby had to refuse a $500,000 retainer for a case he felt sure would not compromise Wilson’s integrity, he spoke to Edith. “Of course I want to go on as long as we can hold out,” he said, “but day after day I sit in my office and see a procession walk through—thousands and thousands of dollars—and not one to put in our pockets. It is a sublime position on the part of your husband, and I am honoured to share it as long as we can afford it.”
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