Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

We had only a small party with us, my husband’s brother, Mr. Horace Taft, my sister, Mrs. Louis More, Miss Mabel Boardman and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Beekman Winthrop, and Mrs. Winthrop; and Captain Butt, of course, was with us always.

We headed north for the Maine coast with Eastport as our first stopping place. The mayor of that interesting city of fisheries came on board as soon as we dropped anchor, made a felicitous speech of welcome and proceeded to lay out a programme of sightseeing and festivities which would have kept us there for a considerable longer time than we could stay if it had all been carried out, and this experience was repeated everywhere we went. We had to decline everything except a motor ride about town for the purpose of getting a glimpse of the weir fisheries and the sardine canneries, but a President doesn’t visit Eastport very often, so the people thronging the streets made it seem quite like a holiday.

Then a committee from the Island of Campo Bello, which lies a short distance off the coast and which is a British possession, waited upon us with an invitation to come across and go for a buckboard ride around a part of the island. It sounded like such a homely and restful form of amusement that Mr. Taft was sorely tempted to break the unwritten law which decrees that a President may not set foot outside United States territory, but he concluded that he had better not. The rest of us, however, decided to go and we had a jolly, jolting ride which ended at the summer home of Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt.

Everywhere we went we were most delightfully entertained, finding beautiful homes and merry summer hosts at every port and town. At fashionable Bar Harbor we found a colony of friends whose winter homes are in Washington and Mr. Taft got some excellent golf. There were luncheons and dinners, of course, every day and everywhere, to say nothing of teas and large receptions, and Mr. Taft had to make speeches, too, and meet all the Maine politicians. But there were the long restful nights on the Mayflower, steaming along among the crags and rocks of the broken, picturesque coast, or lying at anchor in some quiet harbour with only the soft water sounds to break the stillness, and it would not have taken much persuasion to have kept me aboard indefinitely.

The Mayflower is used ordinarily for official purposes in connection with naval reviews and other naval ceremonies, and at such times, with the President on board, there is a punctilious formality to be encountered which makes a mere civilian feel like a recruit under the eyes of a drill-sergeant. But it is very interesting. One gets so used to seeing everybody in uniform standing stiffly at attention as the President passes that one almost forgets that it isn’t their natural attitude.

And then the guns. They shake one’s nerves and hurt one’s ears, but they are most inspiring. The President’s salute is twenty-one guns. It is fired every time he sets foot on the deck of the Mayflower, or any other naval vessel, and when he passes, on the Mayflower, between the lines of naval vessels on review he gets it from every ship in the fleet, not one by one, but altogether, so I think I know what a naval battle sounds like.

Shortly after we returned from our little cruise on the Maine Coast we received a visit from the President of Chili, Señor Montt, and Señora Montt. He was on his way to Europe, having been ordered abroad on account of ill health. He stopped in New York at the request of his government, and at Mr. Taft’s invitation came to Beverly to pay his official respects to the President of the United States. He made the trip to Boston by special train and was there met by the Mayflower and by Captain Butt.

President Montt was very ill indeed. On the way down to Beverly he had a heart attack which alarmed everybody and made it seem very probable that he would not be able to land. But he recovered sufficiently to become the most cheerful and confident member of the party and we found him and Señora Montt to be among the most delightful of all the distinguished visitors we had the pleasure of entertaining during our term in the Presidency. After the ceremonious presentation and the exchange of international compliments were disposed of they took luncheon with us and we spent several most interesting and memorable hours together. The members of his numerous entourage for whom there was no room in our modest summer cottage were entertained at luncheon on board by Captain Logan of the Mayflower and by Captain Butt. We were told afterward that they managed to create quite an entente cordial, toasting each other’s Presidents and armies and navies and ministers and attachés and everybody else they could think of with great enthusiasm and gusto. Señor Montt died a week later just as he reached England on his health-seeking trip. In his death Chili lost an eminent citizen.

Mr. Taft remained with us at Beverly, playing golf, attending to routine business, seeing the never-ending line of visitors and preparing speeches until September when there began for him one of those whirlwind seasons, so many of which he had lived through. With a printed itinerary in his pocket he was off from Boston on the third of September to attend the Conservation Congress at St. Paul. With two speeches to be delivered, one at the Congress and one at the State Fair in Minneapolis, to say nothing of another in Chicago and numerous short speeches from the rear platform of his train, he was still back in Boston on the eighth to be present at an aviation meet where together we saw the performance of the best aviators of that day.

A short interval of rest and he was away again to New Haven to attend a meeting of the Yale Corporation, then out to Cincinnati to the Ohio Valley Exposition and back to Washington as quickly as a long programme of speeches and hospitalities could be disposed of.