Presidential incapacity became a national story once again—in the summer of 1923, when Warren Harding embarked upon a cross-country tour to the Pacific Coast. For months it had been whispered that the robust fifty-five-year-old President-elect who had bounded up the Capitol steps to his inauguration only twenty-nine months earlier had grown exceedingly tired in office as the result of heart disease. Harding showed symptoms of food poisoning in Vancouver, Canada, rushed through a speech in Seattle, and had to cancel another in Portland. On August 2, he suffered a fatal heart attack in his hotel suite in San Francisco.
The news shocked Wilson. Despite the great differences in their politics and personalities—and the fact that Wilson thought him a “fool,” except for the fact that there was “nothing in his conduct that the country can laugh at with the slightest degree of enjoyment”—the two Presidents had maintained a cordial relationship. Wilson sent prompt and “profound sympathy” to Harding’s widow.
By the light of a kerosene lamp at their house in rural Plymouth Notch, Vermont, Vice President Calvin Coolidge took the oath of office from his father, a notary public. The following day, Coolidge invited Wilson to participate in Harding’s funeral services on Wednesday, the eighth. Wilson appreciated the honor of joining the procession, in which he hoped to include his wife and Dr. Grayson, but his lame leg, he said, made it impracticable for him to attend the exercises at the Capitol, where Harding’s body was to lie in state. On the day of the services, Wilson waited in his open car outside the White House for more than an hour until the flag-covered casket was carried from the East Room to the artillery caisson. While Marines in full-dress uniforms wilted under the hot August sun, Wilson remained collected—until one dazed Colonel rushed up, wondering if he might ask a question. “Certainly,” said Wilson. “Could you tell me whether Senator Lodge has arrived or not?” Wilson uttered that he could not. Then he turned to Grayson and asked “what asylum that Colonel had escaped from.” For the next few minutes, the New York Times reporter noticed that Wilson was visibly moved, his eyes fixed upon the coffin of his successor, nine years his junior. As Wilson’s car rode down Pennsylvania Avenue, following Coolidge and the new Chief Justice, William Howard Taft—recently appointed upon the death of Edward Douglass White—hundreds of people along the sidewalks paid homage to Wilson by removing their hats. Upon reaching the Capitol, Woodrow and Edith veered back to S Street.
The ovation Wilson received at Keith’s Theatre that Saturday night surpassed any he had received before. The headliner, a French soprano named Mademoiselle Diane, closed the show with a special mention of the distinguished guests. When they reached their car in the stage door alley, a double quartet surrounded his car, singing “Just a Song at Twilight.” By the time the song ended, five hundred people had gathered, including that evening’s entire cast. Wilson was so captivated by the reception, he asked the chanteuse to sing the “Marseillaise,” and she obliged. The crowd cheered, Wilson raised his hat, and the car drove off. A man in the crowd shouted, “There’s the man you can’t forget.”
Wilson’s popularity continued to climb, especially as the Harding Administration underwent immediate and unfortunate postmortems. His controversial Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, had resigned earlier that year as the Senate began to investigate his oil leases, specifically Teapot Dome. Fall was found guilty of conspiracy and bribery and sentenced to a year in prison, becoming the first United States Cabinet member to serve time as a result of malfeasance in office. Other scandals followed, including those involving a number of mistresses Harding had entertained during his White House residency. One of them, Nan Britton, claimed he was the father of her illegitimate daughter. Because Florence Harding had not allowed an autopsy of her husband, further suspicions clung to his reputation, as people questioned whether the President had died of a heart attack, a stroke, suicide, or even poison at his wife’s hand. The taciturn Calvin Coolidge proved to have a steadying influence on the nation. Despite his conservative policies, Wilson looked upon him favorably as a courteous and decent man.
Many marveled at Wilson’s endurance during that especially torpid summer, though few said the same of Edith. A long profile in The New York Times commented on his rehabilitation and even suggested his possible reentry into politics. The journalist attributed much of his restoration to the constant devotion of his wife, who had not left him for more than a day and a half since he had been stricken in Pueblo. After years of priding herself on her own good health, Edith recognized that she was simply worn out. Friends in the shore town of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts—Charles Sumner Hamlin, the first chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and his wife—invited Edith to visit. Woodrow encouraged her to accept, especially after Dr. Grayson said if she did not, she would “break down completely.” The doctor volunteered to stay at S Street in her absence.
Woodrow missed Edith terribly, but her week away made him realize, as he typed in one of his daily notes to her, “how completely my life is intertwined with yours.” She returned in September considerably revived but could not say the same for Woodrow. For the first time, she noticed how much he had aged, not in just the last week but in the last few years. His progressive arteriosclerosis, lack of exercise, and age itself contributed to his physical malaise and mental depression. Then his good eye began to fail, the result of small retinal hemorrhages. He maintained his regimen, but he could no longer recognize people on the street, and reading became a chore. His world darkened.
Wilson’s outings to Keith’s and his enjoyment of moving pictures tapered off. His reading was reduced to leafing through illustrated magazines—Country Life, National Geographic, Photoplay, Screenland, Theatre Magazine, and Vanity Fair—sometimes using a magnifying glass and flashlight to study details. Edith continued to read to him, mostly old favorites—Bagehot and Sir Walter Scott. And he played thousands of hands of canfield.
For the most part, he received only those visitors whose presence guaranteed a few minutes of easy conversation. Clemenceau visited the United States for the first time in more than fifty years, and he and Wilson enjoyed what the former called an “affectionate” reunion. “We didn’t discuss the future,” the old Tiger later reported, “—only the occasional good moments of the old days.” He said, “[We] fully forgave each other for our bitter quarrels at Versailles. That was all in the past; and both of us had lost.” In October 1923, the Wilsons entertained Mr. and Mrs. David Lloyd George, and both men laid aside their past differences, as the conversation degenerated into reciting limericks. Colonel House called one afternoon and left his cards for both Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. Surely he knew he would not find Wilson at home during the hour of his ritual drive; and just as surely Wilson could have reached House while he was in Washington—if Edith ever even mentioned the calling cards to Woodrow. Later, a number of mutual friends tried to reconnect the two old friends, but Edith never saw fit to relay their entreaties.
Visitors winnowed down to family members—Stockton Axson, Edith’s mother and siblings, and, of course, Wilson’s daughters. Her singing career as thin as her voice, Margaret spent years finding herself. While she was questioning her faith and searching for answers, she periodically turned up at S Street. The McAdoos visited from Los Angeles, where they were raising their two young daughters and where Mac had become general counsel to a new producing partnership of Hollywood’s most important stars—Chaplin, Pickford, and Fairbanks. With his 20 percent ownership in the company, United Artists provided him an opportunity to earn some significant money and make influential contacts. McAdoo continued to plot a course to the White House, which Wilson never embraced, but Nell’s sprightly appearance never failed to cheer him. And that year Jessie announced that the government of Siam had invited her husband, Frank Sayre, to take a leave from teaching law at Harvard to advise the progressive Asian nation as it opened doors to Western political thought. Wilson’s heart sank at the thought of his serene daughter going so far away fo
r so long, but he urged his son-in-law to accept what seemed to be a most interesting offer. During their farewell visit to Washington in early September, Wilson took one of his afternoon drives with his grandson Francis Junior, then eight years old. As they were driving up Massachusetts Avenue, a bystander recognized the car and shouted out, “I’m for the League!” The somewhat startled boy yelled back, “I’m for the League!” And with that, he recalled a lifetime later, “Grandfather didn’t say a word. He just dissolved into tears for reasons I didn’t understand, pulled me into his arm, and kissed me on the forehead.”
Among Wilson’s guests that autumn was Bernard Baruch’s eldest daughter, Belle. She and a friend staunchly supported the League of Nations through a group they helped finance called the Nonpartisan League. They hoped to boost both their leagues by getting Wilson to speak over the radio on “The Significance of Armistice Day.” Although new to broadcasting, he agreed to an Armistice Eve address. Edith noticed her husband’s trepidation. Where he formerly could speak off the cuff for hours, his crippled body, his failing eyesight, and his fear of speaking into a microphone constrained him terribly. For two weeks he fretted, as he labored over eight paragraph-long sentences. Without ever mentioning the League by name, he wrote of his country’s great wrong in not bearing a responsible part in the administration of the peace after sending her soldiers to fight the war. Edith repeatedly suggested that he abandon the speech, but he insisted doing so would make him feel “like the most arrant coward.”
Radio technicians arrived in the morning of November 10, 1923, and worked for hours running wires through the house to the library. Wilson spent the day in bed, suffering from a nervous headache. Just before 8:30 p.m., however, he descended in his dressing gown. He had asked to deliver the address standing because he had always spoken on his feet. Because his throbbing headache worsened his poor vision, Edith sat behind him, holding a carbon copy of the text should he need her prompting. Stations in Washington, New York, and Providence carried the speech, which reached across most of the nation. Some towns installed speakers in their civic auditoriums to simulate the collective experience of a live address. Tentative at first but finding his stride, Wilson delivered his remarks without incident—other than his discouragement over his performance. His self-criticism was harsh but understandable, for this new medium—radio—required more than a little artificiality, the demand of orating to an invisible audience. Public reaction the next day was full of praise.
Crowds, complete with banners and brass bands, began forming on S Street early that Armistice Day. Flowers, telegrams, and letters poured in. Because a short formal ceremony was planned, with Carter Glass introducing the guest of honor, Wilson decked himself out in a morning coat, gray trousers, and a silk hat. When he appeared at the front door of his house at 2:30 that afternoon, twenty thousand supporters filled the five blocks between Massachusetts and Connecticut Avenues. Journalist Raymond Clapper recalled the crowd was predominantly female, no doubt many of them mothers mourning a lost son. Many had been on their knees, praying in the street. Wilson spoke only two minutes, and the crowd interrupted him three times with overwhelming applause, moving him to tears. He asked them to transfer their homage to the men who had made the Armistice possible, especially General Pershing. Wilson said he was proud to have commanded “the most ideal army that was ever thrown together.” Before leaving his admirers, he added one last thought: “I am not one of those that have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before and I have seen the destruction, as will come upon these again—utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.”
Wilson met the holidays with good cheer—enjoying family and intimate friends and a stirring Christmas Eve at Keith’s, where the entire cast (including the zany comedy team of Olsen and Johnson) as well as the audience stood and sang “Auld Lang Syne.” But his spirits soon plunged. Margaret, his most contemplative daughter, often sat with him in silence, at which time she felt his soul stirring. During one such “conversation” in December, he startled her by saying, “I think it was best after all that the United States did not join the League of Nations.” Margaret asked why. “Because our entrance into the League at the time I returned from Europe might have been only a personal victory,” he said. “Now, when the American people join the League it will be because they are convinced it is the right thing to do, and then will be the only right time for them to do it.” With a faint smile, he added, “Perhaps God knew better than I did after all.”
On December 28, 1923, Woodrow Wilson turned sixty-seven. The highlight of the celebration came at three o’clock, when the Wilsons went to the side entrance of the house for their daily excursion. In lieu of the Pierce-Arrow, a brand new Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost touring car waited in the driveway. It was a black six-passenger limousine with a narrow stripe and Wilson’s initials monogrammed in Princeton orange. Other modifications included a high top and wider doors so that he could enter the car without stooping. Four friends—Cleveland Dodge and Tom Jones from his Princeton days, Bernard Baruch and Jesse H. Jones, businessmen he had engaged in government work—had privately shared the $12,782.75 cost.
Dodge and Jesse Jones also created a trust for Wilson that would provide an income of $10,000 a year for the rest of his life. With characteristic grace, Dodge wrote the former President that while they were prompted by their love and admiration for him, “the trust is in fact intended as a slight material reward for your great service to the world, and while being fully cognizant that in taking this privilege of friendship we are honoring ourselves, we are nevertheless unwilling that you deny it to us, because it is indeed a very great privilege and pleasure.” On a less personal note, Dodge and Jones drafted a memorandum explaining that they were simply providing what they thought Congress should for all retiring presidents, especially those who had lived unselfish lives and had no opportunity to lay aside sufficient savings for their retirement. Both men considered the transaction completely above board because neither had ever sought or received a single political favor from Wilson. This annuity, Wilson said, “lifted Mrs. Wilson and me out of the mists of pecuniary anxiety and placed us on firm ground of ease and confidence.” He wrote Dodge, “Surely no other man was ever blessed with so true, so unselfish, so thoughtful, so helpful a friend as you are and always have been to me!”
The icing on the cake that day came from Franklin Roosevelt, who announced that the Woodrow Wilson Foundation was officially accepting nominations for its first annual prize of $25,000, to be awarded “to the individual who has rendered within the year the most unselfish public service of enduring value.” Then, at its annual year-end meeting, the American Historical Association unanimously elected Wilson its president. He accepted the honor but wrote in reply, “I cannot be sure that I shall be fit for the duties that fall to the occupant of that office.”
That was not false modesty. Recently asked about his health, the former President quoted one of his predecessors: “John Quincy Adams is all right, but the house he lives in is dilapidated, and it looks as if he would soon have to move out.” Whenever conversation turned to the League, Wilson’s eyes still shone, and he would insist, “The world is run by its ideals.” When former student and public servant Raymond Fosdick ended a visit in January 1924, the last image he took with him from S Street was of Wilson’s “tear-stained face, a set, indomitable jaw, and a faint voice whispering, ‘God bless you.’ With his white hair and gray, lined face, he seemed like a reincarnated Isaiah, crying to his country: ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!’”
On the sixteenth, the Democratic National Committee concluded its meeting by adopting a resolution endorsing the Administration of Woodrow Wilson, assuring him that they were preparing for that year’s Presidential campaign inspired by his administration’s achievements and his high ideals.
When he learned that two hundred committee members wanted to make a pilgrimage to what they called the “shrine of peace” on S Street, he agreed to receive them in his library.
On Saturday, January 26, Dr. Grayson prepared for a sorely needed week’s vacation, a shooting holiday at Bernard Baruch’s Hobcaw Barony plantation in South Carolina. Before departing, he called on the Wilsons, especially Edith, just out of bed after a week with the grippe. She expressed anxiety at his leaving. Letters her husband had dictated were piling up on his table unsigned, which indicated to her that his energy was waning. Grayson said he did not share her fears. When he left, she went to Woodrow’s room and found him despondent. She asked if he “felt badly,” and he said, “I always feel badly now, little girl, and somehow I hate to have Grayson leave.” Edith said she could still catch him, but he said, “No, that would be a selfish thing on my part. He is not well himself and needs the change.” And then, very deliberately, he said the unspeakable: “It won’t be very much longer, and I had hoped he would not desert me; but that I should not say, even to you.”
Over the next few days, the stacks of unsigned letters rose. Edith went out to dinner on Tuesday, and her brother Randolph Bolling checked on Wilson at ten o’clock that night. The nurse asked him if Dr. Grayson was in town, because she thought the patient had become “a very sick man.” When Bolling said Grayson was in South Carolina, she replied, “Oh, I wish he were here.” After midnight, Edith awakened Randolph, telling him to summon the doctor home. Grayson did not receive the message until the following noon. He boarded the next train to Washington. Based on the symptoms Edith described and Wilson’s medical history, he suggested it was an indigestive attack.
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