White House gossip

by Edna M. Colman

Every step in the career of the genial President, from his birth to his service on the bench as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, is well known, but the career of his talented wife, to whom so much of his own success is due, is familiar but to a limited circle, since her life has been submerged in his, and her objective the promotion of his welfare.

Mrs. Taft, the daughter of John W. Herron of Cincinnati, one-time law partner of Rutherford B. Hayes, had every social and educational advantage from earliest childhood. As a girl visiting “Aunt Lucy Hayes,” she is credited with having declared her intention of becoming mistress of the White House some day. “I shall never forget the joy of those visits,” Mrs. Taft has said. “There was a supper served at eleven or twelve o’clock every evening in the main corridor and laughing companies of young people used to gather ’round that table.”

Nellie Herron was still a schoolgirl at that time, but no one welcomed her home from these delightful visits more heartily than the jolly big boy she had known from babyhood, the son of her father’s lifetime friend, Judge Alphonso Taft, and when he went away to Yale, his brightest memory was woven around the frolics, dances, and good times with this talented young girl.

By the time she had finished high school and completed the course at the Cincinnati University, “Bub” Taft, as he was nicknamed by his comrades, had graduated from Yale and was studying law and doing court reporting at the same time, this last for Murat Halstead’s Cincinnati paper, which paid him but six dollars a week when he started. Although his time was so well filled, he still had ample to help “Nellie Herron” organize a literary society, which they called the “Salon,” and which met each Saturday evening at the Herron home on Pike Street. Made up of a small group of young men and women, mostly just out of college, it held together for several years, its members writing essays which they read to each other, and discussing matters of current interest. At this time, Miss Herron was teaching in a private school. This little club had the encouragement of the parents of both of these young people, who were members of the Cincinnati Literary Club, of which Judge Taft became the president. Young William later attained membership in this exclusive club of older folk, and the fact gave him added prestige with the junior group. Miss Herron had in the meantime developed her music and become one of the founders of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Young Taft soon made his intentions regarding Miss Nellie very plain by outstaying all other members of the “Salon,” and it was not long before their betrothal was announced. Their engagement was a long one, as he had resolved first to build a home for his bride, an ambition that he saw gratified in the spring of 1886 when “The Quarry,” on East Walnut Hills, became a reality. A June wedding followed, when he was twenty-eight and she just twenty-five.

This marriage service and all of the details were brought to public attention in June of 1911, when the President and Mrs. Taft followed the precedent set by their old friends, President and Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, by also having a silver wedding anniversary celebration, in a charming reception and dinner at the White House.

Following their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Taft went to Europe on their honeymoon and started the travelling habit that kept them journeying about the world until his election to the Presidency settled his residence for four years.

The most eventful and important of Mr. Taft’s many missions was the one that took him to the Philippines when President McKinley found himself, through the fortunes of war, with eight million strange people on his hands and called upon Mr. Taft to take charge and teach these people the principles of home government and the ideals of American citizenship.

He took his family with him, and while he devoted his attention to organizing system out of the chaos that he found, Mrs. Taft’s sympathy was aroused at the appalling infant mortality in the Islands and she concluded to make that her own problem. She eventually persuaded the native women to accept medical attention and proper food for their babies. With Mr. Taft’s help, official organization of the work followed and the charitable association called the “Drop of Milk” was established, which distributed sterilized milk and thereby accomplished great improvement in the condition of the Filipino children. Mrs. Taft had her reward for this interest while on a visit to Manila some years after the expiration of her husband’s governorship. While he stood in the great hall greeting all of the governors of the provinces who had come to meet “Santa Taft,” scores of the native women were clamouring to see Mrs. Taft and to show her their children, whose lives her work had saved.

Both Governor and Mrs. Taft spared no pains to win the confidence and the devotion of their people, and she taxed her resources and ingenuity to plan festivals and entertainments for the natives. The Venetian Carnival given at the Governor’s Palace in Manila, and the Annual Carnival of Flowers, so beautifully worked out, were the results of their joint interest, and they added to the esteem in which they were held when they both learned the famous Filipino dance, the rigadoon, not unlike the minuet, and introduced it at their entertainments.