White House gossip

by Edna M. Colman

Upon another occasion, when five hundred school children gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to sing and leave flowers as their part of the Dedication services, a heavy storm prevented the arrival of speakers, and the children marched over to the White House to sing for the President. Mrs. Harding saw them and gave orders that they all be brought in, dripping and soaked as they were. After they had finished their songs and been thanked as a group, Mrs. Harding greeted each of them most warmly, and as they passed her they put their flowers at her feet. By the time the last wet little one had gone, she was waist deep in a bank of dripping flowers, and drenched to the skin. Her only comment in reply to the remarks about her lovely dress was terse: “What’s a gown amount to compared to a child’s disappointment?”

This is the reason why the soldiers and the children, as well as the general public, prayed for her recovery—some kneeling on the White House steps—and kept a steady stream of inquiry and flowers pouring into the mansion during her critical illness of September, 1922. In the acute stages, her husband kept vigil in a chair outside her door when the physicians would not allow him to remain longer at her bedside. To all letters of sympathy and inquiry about her condition, President Harding placed his signature upon the replies, and there were bushels upon bushels of them.

The first group of any size received by Mrs. Harding after her six months of illness and sickroom seclusion was that of about thirty women writers of the Capital City, most of whom represented large papers and magazines, while the rest were well-known free-lance writers. Next to the pleasure of again seeing Mrs. Harding, for whom each one had a feeling of warm friendship, all appreciated the little personal touch of being received in her own sitting room, the large oval apartment above the Blue Room—the room that was replete with historic associations of the first levees in the mansion under Mrs. John Adams, and that later was made the coziest spot in the building by Mrs. Fillmore and her library. Great, comfortable, chintz-covered chairs, davenports, mahogany bookcases, shaded lamps, and a fire crackling cheerily in the fireplace above which hung Laszlo’s sketch of Mrs. Harding herself, all made the place most homelike and attractive. This atmosphere was emphasized by the winter sunshine streaming through the three south windows that look toward the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the lovely Potomac. Major Baldinger and Lieutenant Taylor, both of whom she proudly introduced as “two of my boys from the Marion Star,” were there as military and naval aides.

Frail, dainty, and courageous, the White House mistress had come back from the Valley of the Shadow, and while now and then she had to think for a word, she was just as merry and full of energy as when she had last talked over the events of her first year in the White House. She told of her desperate struggle against death, solemnly stating that it was only the prayers of the people that had saved her life.

Mrs. Harding also spoke of the pleasure it had been to have her husband with her, and to a special friend she remarked:

“In one way this illness has been a blessing. We have had more time with each other than at any period since the beginning of the campaign. Before I had to go to bed there was not a minute of the day that either of us was free. There was never a meal when we were alone. I can tell you it was a treat to be able to take advantage of my condition and sit upstairs here in the evening and talk to my husband.”

Though a good mixer like her husband, whose friends were her friends, Mrs. Harding was not much of a “joiner.” She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, by her descent from Captain Edmund Richards, of Connecticut; but had been identified with that organization for many years in Ohio and became honorary member of the Mary Washington Chapter of the District of Columbia. Wives of the Presidents are so hedged about with restrictions that they make as few new moves as necessary to avoid the criticism that is always ready to descend upon them.

Mrs. Harding once remarked that she had joined every Animal Rescue League in the land, for that seemed a perfectly safe thing to join. At the time of Mr. Harding’s election, she became an active member of the League of American Pen Women, holding that membership until her death.

When President Harding set out for Alaska, it was to realize a dream he had nurtured from the time he came to the Presidency. Yet there are many who believe that he had a premonition that he would not survive the trip, for he set his house in order, made his will, rearranged his investments, sold certain properties, and left his personal affairs in ship-shape condition. The trip, though interesting and enjoyable, proved a severe strain, although his sixty speeches in thirty-nine days was not an unusual number for Presidents on such long journeys across the continent. But his vitality had been weakened by a sick spell in the early summer. The deaths of the three men, all friends of his and members of his party, whose car plunged over the cliff in Colorado depressed him greatly. Mrs. Harding’s threatened collapse in Alaska, and the accident to the boat that brought them back to Seattle, all added to the weariness. At San Francisco, almost at once came his severe illness, and when the nation watched with anxiety the sickroom bulletins, the relief at the news of his improvement and the assurance of recovery was heartfelt.

No one believed that death was near, certainly not Mrs. Harding or the physicians. Always devoted, she sat at his bedside, happy that he was interested in being entertained. She was reading Sam Blythe’s summary of him and his administration, “A Calm Review of a Calm Man.” Apparently comfortable and free from pain, and enjoying the sound of her loved voice, appreciating, no one knows how deeply, the words of commendation of his efforts from a writer of authority, he murmured when she hesitated: