White House gossip

by Edna M. Colman

In February, the President and Mrs. Wilson, laden with rare and costly gifts and tributes of all descriptions, turned their faces homeward. They were given a tremendous reception in Boston. After taking up the threads of his work at home for a few weeks, the President became convinced that he must return to Europe. Leaving again in March, he gave his whole mind and body to getting the Allied Peace Treaty signed, which was done June 28, 1919. Then he turned to face his most difficult task—to have the Treaty ratified at home with the League of Nations covenant incorporated.

He returned to Washington in July, to be confronted by a bitter struggle with Congress. Determined to win the states by convincing the people at large, he started on his tour of the country on September 3d. Those who travelled with him recall his thoughtfulness of his party and the solace and pleasure he derived from his wife’s presence and her watchful charge of him. She could always coax a smile, and though he was weighted with cares and anxieties, his inherent wit and humour would respond to her effort to amuse him.

She lived in a dread that she had to keep concealed. She knew he was breaking, and when at Wichita the collapse came that cancelled the trip and removed him from the active political stage, it was no more than the culmination of the fear that had haunted her for months.

Throughout the President’s long illness and up to the moment when Warren G. Harding took office, Mrs. Wilson’s life at the White House was full. She was called upon to perform many services for her country far beyond the mere wifely duties of caring for a loved sick one. The iron of criticism burned into her soul when his helplessness, incurred in the line of duty as surely as the wound of any soldier on the field, was turned against him. With an outward stoicism, she busied herself with the job of keeping her husband alive and of getting him well enough to handle the reins of the government himself, before they were tugged out of his limp hand by governmental action.

Vice President Marshall was approached by men of both parties and pressed to assume the executive duties when it became known in a limited circle that the President had suffered two cerebral strokes and that his death was considered imminent. The Vice President steadily refused to act other than as a substitute in such formal matters as the reception and entertainment of distinguished visitors as in the case of the King and Queen of Belgium. Until the President resigned or some properly constituted tribunal declared the government without a head, he would not assent to any such plan.

Mrs. Wilson adapted herself to her husband’s moods. With the instinct of a loving woman she knew the struggle of this man, dominant, autocratic, and self-sufficient, baffled in his efforts to put his policies into execution. She staged every diversion that would tend toward relaxation.

When the trembling, scraggly signature to the state documents brought forth a fresh attack of criticism and a more determined effort to bring about the transfer of authority which Mrs. Wilson felt would be contrary to her husband’s wishes and the best interests of his following, she managed to secure a type of writing board which supported the weak hand in its work of inscribing the necessary “Woodrow Wilson” in the proper place.

The President’s pleasure in motion pictures resulted in Mrs. Wilson’s having a regular daily show for his benefit in the East Room during 1920 and 1921, until the morning of the 3d of March. Producers everywhere sent films. In all, more than 400 pictures were shown, many of them first productions. When he was able to go about in his wheeled chair, he liked to be taken over the house. The daily trip diverted him. On pleasant days he visited the sun parlour on the roof.

Following his collapse, for five months he lay a shattered wreck, and it was February, 1920, before he was able to make his first motor trip.

President Wilson decided to make his permanent home in Washington, and purchased a commodious dwelling on S Street, where he had as neighbours the family of Herbert Hoover.