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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“A Great Stricken Animal”

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First Lady Nellie Taft, posed in formal attire at the White House, ca. 1909.

HENRY ADAMS, SCION OF TWO presidents and an acute student of American political life for nearly seven decades, called William Howard Taft “the best equipped man for the Presidency who had been suggested by either party during his lifetime.” A prominent New Yorker argued that Taft was “the greatest all around man” ever to reach the White House. As Congressman James E. Watson noted, “he had served with great success in every subordinate post he had occupied.”

From his early days as solicitor general to his governor generalship of the Philippines to his tenure as secretary of war, Taft had proved himself reliable, hardworking, and loyal. On those rare occasions when he disagreed with a superior, he kept his dissent private. Nor had he objected when credit for his achievements was extended to others. “The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle,” a celebrated conductor once noted, yet for nearly two decades, Taft had performed with unfailing mastery.

Whether the skills of this exemplary subordinate were the requisite skills to lead a nation remained the only unanswered question. Ray Baker suggested that sometimes the second fiddler may be a more accomplished musician than the first, “but he could not fill the first fiddler’s place. He has not the audience-sense; he does not know how to handle men; he has not the ability to beat disharmonies into harmonies.” As leadership scholars observe: “Not everyone was meant to be No. 1.”

Within hours of his election triumph, Taft was already anguished that his nature was ill-suited to his new role. He “spoke like a man,” one insider noted, “whose job had got him down even before he tackled it.” In one of his first statements, Taft predicted that his friends and acquaintances would soon “shake their heads and say ‘poor Bill.’ ” Not long afterward, he responded to confident remarks on the prospects of his administration with “a trembling fear” that in four years’ time, he would “be like the man who went into office with a majority and went out with unanimity.”

Yet with each substantial step in his successful career, Taft had overcome similar waves of grave doubt and anxiety. As solicitor general, despite fearing in his first days that the demand for a one-sided argument would prove incompatible with his temperament, he had quickly developed into an effective advocate, winning a large majority of the government’s cases. When initially approached to govern the Philippines, he had protested that he was not the right man for the job. He left that position with an international reputation as a successful administrator. “Sitting on the lid” as acting president during Roosevelt’s two-month vacation, he had deftly defused a number of potentially explosive situations. And painfully aware of his deficiencies as a campaigner, he had nevertheless bested all rivals to win both the Republican nomination and the general election. Through all these challenges Taft had relied on the guidance of a superior; now, for the first time, he was truly on his own.

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FACED WITH THE COMPLICATED TASK of shaping a cabinet, Taft sought escape. He traveled first to Hot Springs, Virginia, and then to Augusta, Georgia, where he stayed for six weeks in a comfortable cottage adjacent to the luxury Bon Air Hotel, widely celebrated for its “splendid 18 hole golf course and the handsomest clubhouse in the South.” While Nellie thought the location too remote to accurately gauge the tenor of Washington, Taft insisted on “getting away for a complete rest.” He defiantly proposed to spend his time sleeping and playing golf. Clearly, there was much preparatory work for the presidency, but Taft’s dilatory nature took hold and he refused to consider a single appointment until he was “good and ready.” In the interim, he would do his part “to make golf one of the popular outdoor exercises” in the country.

Each evening, groups of leading citizens vied to entertain the Tafts. A committee in Atlanta decorated the city with flags and bunting in preparation for the president-elect’s appearance at an elaborate “possum and taters” banquet. Newspapers described a specially constructed cage that housed each arriving batch of twenty possums until a hundred were gathered to feed six hundred guests. Featuring vaudeville acts, songs, and the release of doves, the gala evening was ranked the most brilliant event ever held in Atlanta, marking “a social epoch” in the history of the new South. A cartoon of Taft as Billy Possum prompted a toymaker to patent a new stuffed animal. But expectations that Billy Possum would rival the Teddy bear in popularity were swiftly dashed when the stuffed creature, resembling “a gigantic rat,” caused children to cry.

Taft’s sojourn at the Bon Air Hotel provided a happy respite, enabling him to enjoy “the honor without the responsibilities of the office.” For the first time in months, the entire family was together: Robert and Helen arrived from Yale and Bryn Mawr, and the families of Charles and Harry Taft stayed for several weeks, along with Taft’s good friend John Hays Hammond. Splendid weather afforded long hours on the golf links, daylong fishing excursions, and automobile rambles around the countryside. “He is so genial, so companionable, so gentlemanly,” a woman remarked, “that one is apt to forget that he is the President-elect.”

By postponing cabinet decisions, however, Taft inadvertently fueled speculation and rumor. Conventional wisdom suggested that after repeated pledges to support Roosevelt’s policies, the new president would retain most of his predecessor’s cabinet. Taft had even conveyed a message to Roosevelt for his cabinet colleagues: “Tell the boys I have been working with that I want to continue all of them. They are all fine fellows, and they have been mighty good to me. I want all them to stay just as they are.”

In the months that followed, Taft began to recognize the necessity of establishing an independent identity, particularly after the barrage of criticism that accompanied his “humiliating pilgrimage” to Oyster Bay to consult Roosevelt on his acceptance speech. Throughout the campaign, Taft had stressed the very different challenges that would confront his own prospective administration. Roosevelt, Taft repeatedly explained, had launched a successful crusade against the abuses of industry and “aroused the people to demand reform.” Now, Taft said, the time had come to perfect the necessary regulatory machinery and to craft amendments that would ensure proper enforcement. To accomplish these ends, a different sensibility and “different personnel” might be required.

Notwithstanding, the first man invited into Taft’s cabinet was Roosevelt’s trusted secretary of state, Elihu Root. In the cabinet’s premier post, Root would provide the anchor in Roosevelt’s absence. Looking back on his achievement in the Philippines, the president-elect attributed much of his success to the detailed instructions, goals, and framework Root had furnished. “I merely followed the way opened up by Root,” he insisted. Indeed, after his election, Taft went so far as to tell an audience that the administration was topsy-turvy: Root “ought to be Pres.-elect,” he insisted, “and I ought to be a prospective member of his Cabinet. Because I know how to serve under him.” Such sentiments cannot be simply construed as extravagant humility or an odd, self-disparaging humor. Rather, like his chronic procrastination, they connote tentativeness, a want of confidence arising from underlying insecurity. Root was sorely tempted to accept Taft’s offer. “I would rather stay here than do anything else,” he told a friend, but “between rheumatism and the climate and the incessant and wearisome pressure of social duties I am satisfied that it would mean a complete breakdown of Mrs. Root’s health.”

With Root out of the running, Taft turned next to another intimate of his predecessor, Henry Cabot Lodge. Though “touched and gratified,” Lodge nonetheless felt that he could be of greater service to the country by remaining in the Senate. After conferring with Roosevelt, Taft finally offered the post to former attorney general Philander Knox, then a Pennsylvania senator. “Knox called on me last night,” Roosevelt informed Taft several days later. “I had a long talk over his accepting the position of Secretary of State and I am confident that he will do so.” Five days later, Knox sent a telegram confirming his acceptance. Taft told Roosevelt he was planning to invite Knox to Augusta, hoping to secure guidance on his remaining choices. There, Knox would be joined by Taft’s campaign chair, Frank Hitchcock, slated to become postmaster general. “Ha ha!” Roosevelt jested. “You are making up your Cabinet. I in a lighthearted way have spent the morning testing the rifles for my African trip. Life has compensations!”

Taft’s initial assurance that he would retain the entire cabinet proved particularly troublesome when he subsequently decided to replace Luke Wright as secretary of war. When Taft had resigned his own cabinet post the previous July after securing the Republican nomination, Roosevelt had wanted Wright, Taft’s successor as governor general in the Philippines, to replace him. Worried that Wright would decline a term of only nine months, Roosevelt had asked Taft if he could offer the “inducement” of a longer tenure should he win the election. Taft had confirmed that he “would be more than pleased to continue Wright,” and Roosevelt could relay that message. Once Taft had the choice in his hands, however, he hesitated, concerned that Wright was not “decisive” enough and tended “to let questions settle themselves without mental action by him.” Instead, he selected another southern Democrat, Jacob Dickinson. While rethinking a key appointment was surely Taft’s prerogative, he exacerbated the awkward situation and irritated Roosevelt by failing to inform Wright until mid-February 1909, just weeks before the inauguration.

In the end, no appointment would have more far-reaching consequences for Taft’s administration than his decision to replace Interior Secretary James Garfield with Richard Ballinger. Roosevelt had pushed to retain Garfield from the outset. “I didn’t have to be hit with a club ten times a day to understand the workings of his mind,” Taft later remarked. No two young men in the Roosevelt administration had been closer to the president than Garfield and Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot had driven Roosevelt’s conservation fight; Garfield had served for seven years, first as civil service commissioner, then as head of the Bureau of Corporations, and finally as secretary of the interior, where he worked closely with Pinchot. A “peculiar intimacy” bonded the trio, Roosevelt reflected, “because all three of us have worked for the same causes, have dreamed the same dreams, have felt a substantial identity of purpose.”

Garfield had every reason to believe that Taft would ask him to stay. As one of Taft’s staunchest supporters during the fight for nomination and election, Garfield had delivered scores of speeches in Ohio and chaired the convention in Columbus that provided an early boost to Taft’s candidacy. Furthermore, Garfield was connected with Taft personally as well as politically: he and his wife, Helen, socialized with Will and Nellie, dining at each other’s houses and vacationing together. Their son, John, attended Horace Taft’s school in Connecticut. The press assumed that Garfield would not only stay on in Taft’s cabinet, but would likely become an important member of the new president’s inner circle.

Yet almost immediately after his election, Taft began searching for someone to replace Garfield. Although Taft considered Garfield an accomplished bureau chief, he did not think him “big enough” for a cabinet position. He was convinced that Pinchot dominated Garfield, and did not relish the thought of Pinchot running the Interior Department in addition to the Forestry Bureau. While he recognized Pinchot’s vital role in securing Roosevelt’s conservation legacy, Taft believed that some of his executive policies and land withdrawals had not merely strained but broken existing law. Geographic representation also weighed heavily in Taft’s rationale. Garfield hailed from Ohio, the state of the president-elect himself, while the West Coast clamored for someone to represent their interests.

Taft’s choice, Richard Ballinger, had been a reform mayor in Seattle before joining the Roosevelt administration as head of the Land Office, where he was regarded as an ardent conservationist and an excellent administrator. By the time Ballinger returned to his Seattle law practice in 1908, Garfield was deeply impressed with his work. “He has done admirably,” he noted, “& leaves with a reputation for ability, industry & fairness.” When first approached to join Taft’s cabinet, Ballinger regretfully declined, citing “limited personal means” and the promise to his wife that they would remain in Seattle. After further conversations, however, he was finally persuaded.

Had Taft taken Garfield into his confidence early on, perhaps explaining the necessity of geographical balance, he might have avoided future conflict, but instead he said nothing. Beyond his initial choice of Knox and Hitchcock, Taft remained silent regarding further appointments until he could assemble a complete cabinet. In late December, rumors circulated that Garfield was “out of the running,” leaving the interior secretary in an embarrassing position. “I am utterly at sea,” Garfield recorded in his journal on January 11, observing with frustration, “if he wishes me to stay he should ask me soon—if not he surely owes it to me, because of our relations during many years & close association recently, to frankly tell me so.” When no announcement was forthcoming by late January, the press speculated that Garfield might be chosen after all and attributed the delay to the difficult process of constructing a balanced, cooperative cabinet, a particular challenge for “a genial, agreeable man, averse to making enemies or disappointing ambition.” Yet the longer Taft withheld selections, the more anxious Garfield grew. “Rumors & more rumors but he says nothing,” he reported, calling Taft’s procrastination “an astounding condition of affairs & wholly without reasonable explanation.”

Garfield was not the only former Roosevelt cabinet officer bewildered and exasperated by Taft’s inaction. Gossip filled the vacuum; word spread that Taft had “completely changed his mind,” deciding “to keep no one” associated with his predecessor so that his administration could stand on its own merits. While Roosevelt publicly defended Taft’s right to choose his own men in his own way, he advised the president-elect to inform those he did not intend to reappoint immediately. “They will be making their plans, and less than two months remains, and I do not think they ought to be left in doubt,” Roosevelt told Taft. “Of course I am perfectly willing to tell them if you will write me to do so.”

“I think I ought to do it myself,” Taft replied, yet he continued to wait more than two weeks before sending a half-dozen letters simultaneously. Each began with the same stilted phrase: “The President has thought that you were entitled to the notice of my cabinet plans insofar as to advise you that in the list of my cabinet I have not been able to include your name.” The recipients, all formerly Taft’s intimate colleagues, were understandably hurt by this impersonal and awkward manner of address. In the end, despite the fact that two additional members of Roosevelt’s cabinet—George Meyer and James Wilson—joined Secretary of State Philander Knox in the new administration, the overriding impression was of “a clean sweep” of Roosevelt’s team.

“T.R.’s Trusty Aides All to Walk Plank,” announced the Cleveland Press. “Taft Seems Bent Upon Dumping His Old Associates in his Cabinet.” Taft asserted that he had simply examined each position and carefully considered the best men to comprise the new administration. “I have my own record to make,” he maintained, “and my own place to secure in the confidence of the country.” Proponents of Roosevelt’s agenda, however, began to question the president-elect’s strategy: “If Taft is going to fire all his old associates in the Roosevelt administration, how is he going to make good his pledge to carry on the Roosevelt policies? Why, if he intends to finish the Roosevelt program, does he get rid of all the men trained in the Roosevelt school?” In addition, Roosevelt supporters voiced concern over the preponderance of corporate lawyers in the new cabinet.

Roosevelt himself could not help but feel “a little cast down” by Taft’s dealings and decisions as he assembled his cabinet. Still, he continued to profess belief in his old friend. “They little realize that Taft is big enough to carve out his own administration on individual lines,” he told Archie Butt. “I predict a brilliant administration for him. I felt he was the one man for the Presidency, and any failure in it would be as keenly felt by me as by himself or his family.” While Taft’s “system may be different,” the president predicted, “the results will be the same.”

After announcing his cabinet choices, Taft wrote a long letter to Roosevelt. “People have attempted to represent that you and I were in some way at odds during this last three months,” he explained, “whereas you know and I know that there has not been the slightest difference between us.” Indeed, the two men had spent many hours together during the transition. Through conversations and correspondence, Taft had kept Roosevelt informed on each cabinet decision and had shared an early draft of his inaugural address. “How could I but be delighted with your Inaugural?” Roosevelt responded. “It is simply fine in every way . . . and it marks just exactly what your administration will be.”

Taft’s final letter to Roosevelt before he assumed the presidency expressed “renewed appreciation” for his old friend’s “breadth of soul and mind and magnanimity.” Roosevelt replied with an equal warmth and affection. “Your letter,” he wrote, “[was] so very nice—nice isn’t anything like a strong enough word, but at the moment to use words as strong as I feel would look sloppy.”

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ROOSEVELT MADE NO SECRET OF his reluctance to leave office. “If I had conscientiously felt at liberty to run again, and try once more to hold this great office,” he acknowledged, “I should greatly have liked to do so and to continue to keep my hands on the levers of this mighty machine.” In his last annual message to Congress, he had firmly declared that he felt “none of the weariness of public life” which seven tumultuous years might well have produced. Although conservative leaders in the House and Senate had successfully blocked most of his proposals for two straight years, Roosevelt remained undaunted. In a sweeping “valedictory message” of more than 21,000 words, the outgoing president expounded “his whole social philosophy” and urged Congress to “carry into effect the new spirit of democracy,” reinforcing federal power to address “present day” social and economic problems.

“He is as voluminous as ever,” the New York Tribune remarked. If only “a fraction” of the laws that Roosevelt advocated were passed, another reporter observed, “they would commit the country to a course of new experiments and make over the face of the social creation.” He wanted authority over telegraph and telephone companies, along with railroads, placed in the hands of the Interstate Commerce Commission. He called for greater regulation of interstate corporations, prohibition of child labor, enforcement of an eight-hour workday, strengthening of workmen’s compensation, the establishment of a postal savings system, and an inheritance tax. “The danger to American democracy lies not in the least in the concentration of administrative power in responsible and accountable hands,” he argued. “It lies in having the power insufficiently concentrated, so that no one can be held responsible to the people for its use.” What might have been interpreted as “an infringement upon liberty” before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of massive corporations “may be [the] necessary safeguard of liberty today.” Within this new industrial context, he criticized the courts for ruling unconstitutional various state laws designed to remedy social problems, “arrogat[ing] to themselves functions which properly belong to legislative bodies.”

Finally, Roosevelt rounded on Congress. For two decades, the executive departments had deployed members of the Secret Service to ferret out land frauds, violations in anti-trust laws, and, on rare occasions, illegal actions perpetrated by senators or congressmen themselves. The previous year, however, Congress had passed an amendment preventing the Secret Service from pursuing such investigations. Incensed, Roosevelt charged that no one but members of the criminal class could benefit from such an amendment; clearly, “Congressmen did not themselves wish to be investigated.”

Roosevelt’s comments provoked a “storm of censure” from Republicans and Democrats alike. Senator Aldrich introduced a resolution challenging the president to produce evidence of congressional misbehavior, while Senators Bailey and Tillman huffily defended the “self-respect and integrity” of fellow legislators. Adamantly refusing to retract his charge, Roosevelt fired off a 6,000-word response that targeted specific members of the Congress, including Minnesota representative James Tawney and Senators Tillman and Bailey. “Pandemonium broke loose,” the Timesreported. In return, Congress took a rare measure not utilized since Jackson’s presidency, reprimanding Roosevelt with an overwhelming 212–35 vote to reject his message “on the ground that it lacked due respect.”

Despite such overwhelming resistance, Roosevelt held fast to his position. “Congress of course feels that I will never again have to be reckoned with and that it is safe to be ugly with me,” he confided to Kermit, admitting, “I am not having an easy time.” Even as he acknowledged that “it is a President’s duty to get on with Congress if he possibly can, and that it is a reflection upon him if he and Congress come to a complete break,” he nevertheless insisted that he must continue to “fight hard” on the issue of corruption—a touchstone of his presidency—or “be put in a contemptible position.” Although this bitter struggle ended his days in Washington on a disagreeable note, he took pride that he had exercised his presidential powers “right up to the end.”

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DURING THE FINAL WEEKS OF the Roosevelt administration, a mood of sadness enveloped the White House. “I have never seen so much feeling in evidence in all my life,” Archie Butt observed as this vital stage in the lives of both the president and his colleagues drew to a close. As the chief military aide, the forty-three-year-old Captain Butt had developed an intimate relationship with both the president and first lady. His warmth, flair for conversation, and love of books had made him a welcome companion at Sagamore Hill and scores of White House lunches and dinners. A graduate of the University of the South in Tennessee, Archie had worked as a journalist for nearly a decade before volunteering for service during the Spanish-American War. Remaining in the military, he had served in the Quartermaster Department in the Philippines, Cuba, and Washington before Roosevelt brought him to the White House. Butt had begun his duties “believing thoroughly in the real greatness” of the president, and the weeks and months spent with the family had not altered his original judgment. He had traveled with the Roosevelts on overnight trips, joined them for horseback rides, tennis games, and scrambles through Rock Creek Park—always assuming “his duties with a boyish delight and a relish for all the gay doings of the White House.”

Archie Butt had grown especially close to Edith Roosevelt. “She is perfectly poised and nothing seems to annoy her,” the forty-three-year-old bachelor told his mother, lauding Edith’s “ever-softening influence” on her volatile husband. Even while drawing a protective curtain around her family, Edith had unfailingly carried out social obligations with natural elegance. Formerly, Butt remarked, the “smart element” of society had been “wont to sneer” at the garish nature of public entertainments at the White House. Under Edith Roosevelt, however, functions were smaller, less frequent, and more formal; guests were required to present cards, and soon, smart society clamored for invitations. Edith’s Friday evening musicales attracted the nation’s finest performers, including Ignace Jan Paderewski, the concert pianist, and the young cellist Pablo Casals. “If social affairs have thus become less democratic, they have also become more dignified,” remarked one reporter. “Were we living in the days of chivalry,” Butt confessed with grandiose nostalgia, “I could easily believe myself in the role of knight for a mistress so gentle, so sweet, and so altogether lovely.”

“The ball rolls faster as it nears the bottom,” Captain Butt observed as the Roosevelt administration drew to a close in early February. The White House calendar was “filled every minute” with brilliant but melancholy events—the last Army and Navy reception, the last meeting with the diplomatic corps. Several of the ministers and ambassadors “actually wept as they said goodbye,” Butt recounted. The wife of the Japanese ambassador “could not say a word, but burst out crying, and the Ambassador was not much better.” Later that same afternoon, Edith Roosevelt finally “had a good cry” of her own, but when the president attempted to comfort her, he “broke down himself.”

For his final public journey, Roosevelt chose to deliver a speech at Knob Creek Farm in Kentucky, birthplace of his hero Abraham Lincoln. He had ordered his train route withheld from the newspapers, fearing he would be met with diminished enthusiasm as his presidency neared its end.“For the first hour there were no yells,” Archie Butt recorded, and Roosevelt looked forlorn as he gazed out at calm streets and empty platforms. Before long, however, the train schedule leaked. Suddenly, throngs materialized at every spot along the way: families and children stood at tiny intersections; in larger towns, thousands assembled to wave and cheer, wishing their president a final farewell. “He jumped from his seat as readily for a half-dozen people at a road crossing as he would for a crowd at a station,” Archie Butt marveled. At one point, Roosevelt rushed to the platform to greet a single woman in a field, prompting recollection of an earlier trip when “he found himself waving frantically at a herd of cows.” With deadpan mirth, Roosevelt remembered that he had “met with an indifferent, if not a cold, reception.”

On March 1, Roosevelt hosted perhaps the most colorful official luncheon on record. “The papers have made a good deal of fun of my tennis cabinet,” he playfully observed, “but they have never known how extensive or what a part it has played in my administrations. It will be gathered together to-day for the first time.” Thirty-one members of this fabulously eclectic “tennis cabinet”—Roosevelt’s hunting companions, sparring partners, tennis mates, and fellow rock climbers—would attend. In order that “various elements” of this informal cabinet might “get acquainted,” the president told Archie Butt to seat them “irrespective of rank.” Jules Jusserand, the French ambassador, and cabinet members James Garfield, Truman Newberry, and George Meyer should enjoy the company of “the wolf hunters and the ‘two-gun’ men.” Needless to say, this convergence of disparate worlds made quite an impression: “Is there any other man,” Mme Jusserand exclaimed, who “could have had on one side of him the Ambassador of a great country and on the other a ‘desperado’ from Oklahoma?” Throughout the lunch, Roosevelt spoke of his relationship with each of the men in turn. According to Archie Butt, “there was not a dry eye around all that table.”

The Roosevelts chose to spend March 3, 1909, their last night in the White House, with the Tafts. Arriving in the late afternoon, Will and Nellie were escorted to a bedroom suite on the second floor, later designated the Lincoln Bedroom. “It was a curious occasion,” Alice Roosevelt Longworth recalled. “There were the Tafts, about to take over, obviously being tactful, soft pedaling their natural elation.” For everyone else, “like an obscuring fog, was the inevitable melancholy of saying good-by, of closing the door on great times; the interest, the personal associations, the power—all over, gone.” Even Archie Butt, who would remain at his post with the new president, “was frankly emotional,” and Elihu Root was in such “low spirits” that tears brimmed from his eyes.

“The dinner would have been hopeless,” Archie Butt remarked, “had it not been for the President,” who lightened the mood with one entertaining story after another. Regardless of Roosevelt’s efforts, everyone seemed relieved when the meal ended. In customary fashion, couples separated, the men going to the president’s upstairs study while the women congregated in the library. Sometime after 10 p.m., Taft rose to keep his promised appearance at a Yale smoker in his honor at the Willard Hotel. His departure brought the evening to an end, leaving only Theodore, Edith, Nellie, and Captain Butt. “Mrs. Roosevelt finally arose,” Butt wrote, “and said she would go to her room and advised Mrs. Taft to do the same. She took her hand kindly and expressed the earnest hope that her first night in the White House would be one of sweet sleep.”

Taft remained at the smoker until midnight, his late return to the White House provoking a widely read spoof in the New York Sun the next day. A fictional dispatch portrayed a weary Taft trudging upstairs, whereupon a servant announced that the president awaited him. And there before him stood Roosevelt, broadsword in hand. “Thought you’d like a short bout before turning in,” Roosevelt offered. “Here, get this mask and these pads on. Here are the gauntlets.” Taft barely had time to don his equipment before Roosevelt struck three decisive blows. “Now we’ll have a little wrestling,” he suggested, and “as if by magic, the mattress was spread.” Almost instantly, Taft was on his back. Exulting in triumph, Roosevelt asked the servants to set up the rings and parallel bars. For thirty minutes, they took turns until Roosevelt mercifully declared himself the clear victor. Finally, at 3 a.m., the Sun fancied, “the two athletes went to bed!”

In fact, by the time Taft returned to the White House, the Roosevelts had long since retired. Only Nellie, too excited to sleep, had waited up. For weeks, she had been preoccupied with the inaugural festivities and everything had been meticulously arranged—everything except the weather. A soggy wet snow had been falling all day. The storm was supposed to end by morning but the wind gusting over the water “shunted it back angrier than before” and the nation’s capital found itself “bound hand and foot” by the worst blizzard since 1888. Gale winds howled, tree limbs cracked under the weight of the heavy snow, and streets were covered with a slick slush. “It was really very serious,” Nellie recalled. “Railroad and telegraphic communications were paralyzed all along the Atlantic Coast.”

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ON MARCH 4, INAUGURAL DAY, the president and president-elect met for an early breakfast. “The storm will soon be over,” Roosevelt sardonically predicted. “As soon as I’m out where I can do no further harm to the Constitution it will cease.” Taft suggested a different, if equally portentous interpretation. “You’re wrong,” he told his old friend. “It is my storm. I always said it would be a cold day when I got to be President.”

The Street Department was already hard at work clearing snow from Pennsylvania Avenue, but there was no time to remove the “yellowish, slimy, shoe-penetrating mush” from the sidewalks. In front of every structure with windows on the street—“candy stores, pawnbrokers’ shops, undertaking parlors, Chinese restaurants, machine shops”—carpenters had been busy all week long building seats which the owners planned to sell at a premium. By midmorning, melancholy enveloped the proprietors of the small shops along the parade route. With wet snow still blanketing the city, prices began to plummet. Seats expected to garner five dollars sold for one; sandwiches priced at a dime could be had for three cents. Despite the severe conditions, people “stood three deep on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue,” prepared to cheer and wave as the carriage bearing the president and president-elect moved slowly toward the Capitol. Unfortunately, hardly a glimpse of the two could be seen through the windows, for a driving snow had forced the coachmen to close the top of the carriage.

At the Capitol, more than 10,000 hearty souls waited to take their seats in the open stands to witness the inaugural ceremony. Inside, the Inaugural Committee debated whether to move the ceremony to the Senate chamber for the first time since President Jackson’s second inaugural. Reluctant to disappoint the eager crowd, Taft fought to keep the ceremony on the Capitol Plaza. “If so many spectators could endure the cold merely to see the sight,” he argued, “he certainly could endure it.” The president-elect relented only when advised that the elderly chief justice and several members of Congress and the diplomatic corps might be imperiled by the exposure. The disheartening news was blared to the expectant crowd through megaphones: “All exercises will be conducted in the Senate chamber, and no one will be admitted there unless he has a ticket.” No longer an open, public ceremony, the inaugural was attended by members of Congress, high government officials, Supreme Court justices, and ambassadors.

Cheers erupted when Roosevelt and Taft entered, walking “arm in arm” down the aisle. “Hale and hearty as Mr. Roosevelt looked,” the Sun reported, “he was dwarfed by Mr. Taft’s generous proportions.” Appropriately, William Howard Taft took the oath of office on the same Bible used for decades to swear in Supreme Court justices. Then, speaking in “a slow, distinct voice, which carried to the furthest reaches of the chamber,” he delivered his inaugural address. “For the first time in a century,” correspondents observed, the assembled guests could actually hear the president’s words.

While he felt the “heavy weight of responsibility” to preserve and enforce regulatory reforms initiated by “his distinguished predecessor,” Taft simultaneously reassured those businesses companies “pursuing proper and progressive business methods.” He pledged to secure amendments to both the anti-trust and interstate commerce laws that would make a distinction between “legitimate” combinations “and those formed with the intent of creating monopolies and artificially controlling prices.” Pressing Roosevelt’s agenda, he urged Congress to pass new conservation laws, consider a graduated inheritance tax, establish a postal savings bank system, and provide added protections to members of the working class. “The scope of a modern government,” he maintained, “has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old ‘laissez faire’ school of political writers, and this widening has met popular approval.” Finally, stepping into uncharted territory for his party, Taft called for a downward revision of the tariff and announced that he was summoning Congress into special session on March 15 for this purpose.

When Taft finished, Roosevelt jumped up and climbed the steps to the raised platform. “The new president turned to meet him,” reporters observed, “with a smile that irradiated his face; the departing president grinned all over.” Then, “with hands on each other’s shoulders,” they talked for several minutes. “God bless you, old man,” Roosevelt exclaimed, calling his address “a great state document.” Witnesses of the emotional scene “applauded like mad.”

Rather than ride together back to the White House, as custom dictated, the two men parted. Months earlier, Roosevelt had decided to go straight from the inaugural ceremony to Union Station. There, he bid adieu to thousands of well-wishers with a short, heartfelt speech. A band played “Auld Lang Syne” and, amid “deafening” cheers, Roosevelt and Edith departed for Oyster Bay.

Since Roosevelt had abandoned tradition, Nellie followed suit, deciding to do what “no President’s wife had ever done”—accompany her husband from the Capitol to the White House. “Some of the Inaugural Committee expressed their disapproval,” she recalled, “but I had my way and in spite of protests took my place at my husband’s side.” Although a bitter wind still scoured the streets, the snow had stopped and the new president insisted the carriage top remain open. Drawn by four horses, the carriage elicited “a continuous cheer” from the thousands of visitors unable to witness either the oath of office or Taft’s address. “Three cheers for the first lady,” a voice shouted along their route. Seeing his wife’s radiant smile, Taft took up the cheer himself and soon the entire crowd was hailing the first lady. “That drive was the proudest and happiest event of Inauguration Day,” Nellie recalled. “My responsibilities had not yet begun to worry me, and I was able to enjoy, almost to the full, the realization that my husband was actually President of the United States.”

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NEWSPAPERS PREDICTED THE GENIAL NEW president would usher in an “era of good feelings.” Taft “has no enemies of his own making; he is not taking over any of the enemies of his predecessor,” observed Walter Wellman. The change of administration signaled “peace and reassurance” rather than the atmosphere of “vituperation and denunciation” that had marked the final months of Roosevelt’s tenure. While progressives trusted Taft to continue his mentor’s work, conservatives took comfort that “judicial poise had succeeded erratic temperament,” that decisions would now be made with deliberation, not drama. “Never did any man,” the Sun editorialized, arrive at the White House “with such universal good will.”

Already questioning his own competence for the nation’s highest office, Taft found such grand expectations unnerving. Asked a week after his inauguration how he liked being president, he confessed that he remained disoriented. “I hardly know yet. When I hear someone say Mr. President, I look around expecting to see Roosevelt, and when I read in the headlines of the morning papers that the President and Senator Aldrich and Speaker Cannon have had a conference, my first thought is, ‘I wonder what they talked about.’ So you can see that I have not gone very far yet.”

Roosevelt’s departure for Africa on March 23 signaled opportunity as well as anxiety for Taft. For years, Archie Butt observed, Taft had “been living on the steam of Theodore Roosevelt,” propelled by the outsized personality and ambition of his friend and chief. “He will have to find his own fuel now,” Butt conjectured, “and, like a child, will have to learn to walk alone. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that he will learn to walk alone and will walk possibly all the better but it is going to be a readjustment just the same.”

Initially, Captain Butt had hesitated to accept Taft’s offer to remain in the White House, fearing he would not be able to serve the new president with the same devotion he continued to feel toward his predecessor. “The influence of Mr. Roosevelt over those around him is masterful and his friends become fanatical, e.g. to wit—I,” he told his sister Clara. He had great admiration and liking for Taft, however, and considered Nellie “an intellectual woman and a woman of wonderful executive ability.” He had been in the Philippines when Taft was governor general and had seen how the Filipino people had responded to the warmth and openness of the big man’s personality. While Butt acknowledged at the start that he missed Roosevelt’s “marvelous wit,” he found his new chief a most enjoyable companion. “He is essentially a gregarious animal,” Butt reflected. “He likes to have someone in the car with him when he is reading or studying, and if he is at work, he works better if he has someone in the room with him.”

Despite Taft’s initial reservations, his first two months in office augured well for the new administration. Early on, he decided that his White House would be open to all: he would not, like Roosevelt, compile a “list of undesirables”; there would be no “abrupt and stormy attacks” on fellow politicians. Reflecting on the animosity between the president and Congress that had consumed the country since the previous December, Taft resolved to end such recrimination. “I hope that I shall never be called upon ever to say anything in disparagement of Senators and members of the House. I have no desire to belittle them.”

As governor general of the Philippines, Taft had welcomed every political group at Malacañan Palace, making it “a rule never to pay any attention to personal squabbles and differences.” He hoped to institute the same policy as president. Aware that access to the White House was an enormous political asset, Taft announced a series of a half-dozen formal dinner parties designed to unify “all the warring factions” in the House and Senate. “I am rather proud of these lists,” he told Archie Butt. “I do not believe there were given six dinners at the White House where more thought has been expended than on these six.” He was careful to include Senator Joseph Bailey, despite the fact that just a month earlier the Texas Democrat had pronounced Taft wholly unsuited for the presidency. And Bailey appeared to appreciate the gesture. “I have come to pay my tribute and respects to a most agreeable personality,” Bailey declared at the event. Taft also lifted Roosevelt’s ban on Senator Tillman of South Carolina and invited dozens of rank-and-file congressmen who had not previously attended a White House dinner. Where Roosevelt had dispensed White House invitations “to pay for favors already performed and loyalty which had been proven,” Taft hoped his magnanimity would induce future cooperation.

The volatile guest list for the first of these affairs, which included Old Guard Republicans and their progressive antagonists, northern Democrats and southern Populists, created “the liveliest interest” in the capital. Fortunately, one reporter noted, ladies had been invited to keep these “belligerent Congressmen apart.” Even with their mollifying influence, some suggested, the situation might “require all of President Taft’s diplomacy to keep things going smoothly.” In the end, good food, good wine, and the music of the Marine Band made the first dinner a notable success, setting an agreeable precedent for the five events planned for the future. “It is undoubtedly Mr. Taft’s purpose to conciliate,” observed a northwestern paper. “He doesn’t like discord. He thinks it will be possible to get all the good men of the country together on a common platform—the Roosevelt men and the anti-Roosevelt men.”

During the weeks that followed, reporters kept a tally of “the undesirables” once again “finding their way” to the White House. Democratic senator Augustus Bacon of Georgia was “pleased as a boy” with his first invitation in seven years. Senators Hale, Aldrich, Payne, “and a lot of other ungodly standpatters” were again welcomed in the president’s home, as were the most fervent Roosevelt men. Rather than wielding the “big stick through the press” to prod legislative action, Taft hoped that “personal appeal,” reasoned arguments, and a spirit of hospitality would prevail.

Reporters too delighted in the “startling contrast” evident in Taft’s method of handling the hundreds of audience-seekers from that of his predecessor. Senators, congressmen, and all manner of officials appeared during the morning hours between ten and twelve. To expedite matters, Roosevelt had kept his door open, entertaining a dozen or more callers simultaneously with his snappy banter, sending them “on their way out almost before they realized they were in.” One visitor described his experience as being “caught in a strong draught.” Taft possessed none of Roosevelt’s “terminal facilities.” He invited callers individually into his office, closed the door, and reportedly made everyone feel “so much at home” that they were inclined to linger all morning. At the pace he conducted business, Archie Butt worried, Taft would “be about three years behind” on the final day of his term.

Taft extended the window for callers an additional hour and a half, interrupting the flow of visitors only to take his lunch. Unlike Roosevelt, who famously invited people from all walks of life to his table, Taft generally ate alone. Forever struggling to lose weight, he limited his midday meal to an apple or a glass of water. One visitor, having reportedly waited three hours to see him, was finally invited into the president’s office with an unceremonious greeting: “I am glad you have come in,” Taft told him, “but you will have to wait until I have had my luncheon.” When the weary caller asked how long it would be, Taft’s only reply was to pick up a pitcher of water and pour himself a glass. When he finished drinking, he returned to his desk: “Now I am through, what do you want to tell me?”

Meetings with governmental officials and lawmakers often stretched until five o’clock, after which Taft, like Roosevelt, took time to exercise. “There the resemblance ended,” one White House correspondent remarked. Roosevelt took strenuous hikes or played in vigorous tennis matches; Taft much preferred a leisurely round of golf. As a horseman, Roosevelt “jumped hurdles, forded creeks, and sought out unused bridle paths,” another reporter noted, while the new president trotted “along the river front or around the ellipse.” Before long, even these placid forays were replaced by late afternoon spins in one of the three new White House automobiles. Roosevelt had displayed no interest in what critics called “devil wagons,” but “Taft fell in love with them on the first whirl.” In short order, he converted the stable, which had held Roosevelt’s “jumpers, pacers, and calipers,” into an oversized garage for his Model M steam touring convertible (capable of seating seven passengers); a Pierce Arrow Limousine; and a Baker Queen Victoria electric, which Nellie learned to drive.

Diverted by their superficial differences in style, the journalists initially failed to recognize a far more consequential contrast between the two men—their differing attitudes toward the press. More than any previous president, Theodore Roosevelt had treated journalists as intimates; covering the White House had been “a reporter’s paradise” for seven years. “No president ever lived on better terms with the newspapermen than did Roosevelt,” reporter Gus Karger proclaimed. He inquired after their families, shared confidential anecdotes, and discussed their latest projects. Throughout his day, whether he was being shaved, signing documents, or traveling from place to place, he gave them unheard of access to his comings and goings. Most important, as one historian wrote, “he made the White House hum with activity, and in the process, gave the correspondents who covered him the best ongoing story in generations.” Now, that colorful story had come to an end. “There will be some one at the White House whom you will like more than me,” Roosevelt had predicted during his final meeting with the press corps, “but not one who will interest you more.”

As secretary of war, Taft had enjoyed an easy rapport with members of the press, who frequented his office to secure gossip, information, and anecdotes. “It was a favorite occupation for the correspondents,” Oscar King Davis recalled, “to ‘go Tafting’ ”—to meet with the secretary in the late afternoon for “a half-hour or so of very pleasant conversation which often furnished a good deal of news.” Always “a good scout,” Taft had spoken frankly, and depended on reporter friends to protect his occasional indiscretions. In his first weeks as president, however, Taft discovered that “casual remarks” made headlines, and quickly recognized “the necessity of care” in everything he disclosed. Rather than hold informal daily discussions with members of the press, he would see individual journalists by appointment only. Nonetheless, the new president promised to meet with the entire group of correspondents on a weekly basis. Before he discontinued these press conferences, the White House reporters developed a genuine affection for “the big, good-humored man who had taken the place of the strident, dynamic Roosevelt.”

Taft was beginning to create “his own atmosphere,” Archie Butt remarked in late April. “People are forgetting that he is the residuary legatee, and his smile, good nature, and evenness of temper are winning hearts to him.” The press and the public seemed to have reached a similar verdict about the new occupant of the White House. “Roosevelt made good with the people; and Taft promises to do likewise,” one reporter noted. “Take it all and all,” another concluded, “Washington is mighty happy in these opening days of the Taft administration.”

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IF TAFT PROFESSED TO BE “a fish out of water” in his new office, Nellie was finally entirely in her element. The new president frequently touted his wife’s strengths, maintaining that without her guidance, he would never have sought and never gained the presidency. “I am no politician,” he told a gathering in Georgia shortly after his election. “There,” he proudly indicated Nellie, “is the politician of the family. If she had only let me alone, I guess I should now be dozing on the Circuit Court bench.” Her acumen, he insisted proudly, had facilitated every critical step of his career. Indeed, he held that without her “tact and diplomacy,” he would never have succeeded in the Philippines. Now he had faith that Nellie would “share the responsibilities” of his new office and once again prove instrumental in surmounting the “formidable” challenges he would face.

Journalists latched onto Taft’s narrative, emphasizing Nellie’s decisive role in her husband’s political ascendancy. Their comradeship, the Ladies’ Home Journal observed, was “like that of two men who are intimate chums.” A portrait emerged of an ambitious wife who championed her viewpoints “with almost masculine vigor,” while Taft assumed “his most judicial attitude.” Article after article highlighted Nellie’s role in her husband’s choice to leave the Cincinnati Superior Court to become solicitor general, and then to relinquish his federal judgeship and become governor general of the Philippines. “Yes,” Nellie acknowledged, “it is true that I urged Mr. Taft to give up his position on the bench and return to politics. I felt that while he honored and loved his legal position more than all else in his career, he might spend the younger years of his life in a wider field.” Again, reporters observed, Nellie’s “judgment prevailed” when Taft turned down Roosevelt’s third offer for the Supreme Court to test the waters for the presidency. A week after his victory, Nellie was asked if she studied politics. “Indeed, I do,” she replied in her usual forthright manner. “I have studied the situation gravely and I think I understand it well.”

“Few women have gone into the White House so well equipped to meet the exactions” of the first lady’s position, remarked the New York Times. As the governor general’s wife, she had already served in a similar capacity; she acutely understood the importance of getting out among the people, appreciated the ceremonial aspects of her role, and was well versed in the rules of etiquette required for her position. Her knowledge of Spanish, French, and German enabled her to speak freely with the diplomats and natives of numerous countries. “You make me feel truly at home when you converse with me in French,” Ambassador Jusserand told her. Nellie’s extensive travels had provided her with myriad stories and anecdotes to entertain such dignitaries. The new first lady was “never at a loss for conversation,” a reporter for the New York Tribune wrote. “Never within the recollection of Washingtonians of today,” claimed another correspondent, had a first lady shown herself so conversant “on any subject of contemporaneous interest.” Asked how she found time “to keep up so thoroughly” with world events, Nellie rejoined with droll simplicity: “By reading the daily papers.”

His first interview with Nellie Taft left the Ladies’ Home Journal reporter George Griswold Hill “impressed with her dignity.” He remarked upon her unusual acuity and shrewd insight into people and situations. “She surveys the man or woman presented to her with a look so calm and deliberate,” Hill observed, “that strangers sometimes are wont to describe her as cold.” Beneath her “cloak of composure,” however, Hill discerned a charming and sensitive woman. A New York Times reporter was similarly taken with the clever new first lady: “Her smile has the charm of intelligence,” he reported, “that quick flash of recognition, distinct from the frozen, automatic smile peculiar to many women in official life.”

As the president’s wife, Nellie announced early on, she considered herself “a public personage” and would “cheerfully meet any demands the position [made] upon her.” Her statement revealed a far different temperament from that of her predecessor. Even after seven years as first lady, Edith Roosevelt had remained “unwilling to look upon herself otherwise than as a private individual.” Believing that “a woman’s name should appear in print but twice—when she is married and when she is buried,” Edith had refrained from publicly voicing political opinions and routinely declined interview requests. In a rare portrait piece, entitled “Mrs. Roosevelt: The Woman in the Background,” Mabel Daggett portrayed Edith Roosevelt as an intensely private and traditional wife and mother. She “presents none of the restless new woman attributes,” Daggett wrote. “She throbs for no reforms. She champions no causes.” Surrounded by her boisterous family, Edith was described as “a happy woman,” adored by her husband. Edith Roosevelt, Daggett concluded, would intentionally “step out into history as one of the least known” first ladies.

Before she took up residence in the White House, Nellie Taft made it clear she would play a far different role. In December 1908, she agreed to become honorary chair of the Women’s Welfare Department of the National Civic Federation (NCF)—a progressive organization founded to better the working lives of wage earners employed in government and industry positions. No previous first lady had taken “a commanding lead” in promoting controversial programs to improve public welfare. At the annual meeting, Nellie delivered a well-received speech calling for investigations into the working conditions of female employees in federal and state departments, post offices, public hospitals, and police stations. “She plainly showed,” one attendee noted, “that she has brains and used them without in any sense being aggressive or pedantic.” During the NCF banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York the following evening, she was observed “in animated conversation” with the union leader Samuel Gompers. Not all Washingtonians approved of Nellie’s unconventional activism. A traditionalist, Archie Butt predicted that Nellie would“make a fine mistress of the White House,” but only if she would refrain from speaking publicly about “the betterment of the working girl class,” and focus instead upon “the simple duties of First Lady.”

Public policy affecting working women was not the only issue on which Nellie expressed a strong opinion. Asked about granting suffrage to women, she answered with her usual directness: “The woman’s voice is the voice of wisdom and I can see nothing unwomanly in her casting the ballot.” In fact, Nellie fervently rejected traditional restrictions on a woman’s role in society, insisting that intellectual development in no way diminished her capabilities in the home. Nothing in a college education, she maintained, “makes a girl either unfit for domestic obligations or masculine in her tastes.” Some women were “not called on to preside over a home,” and for those who did marry and have children, education would “make them great in intellect and soul.” Her daughter Helen, she noted with pride, had chosen to take “a full college course” at the National Cathedral School, then secured a prestigious scholarship to Bryn Mawr College. While Nellie appreciated “the distinct advantages for a young girl in the social life of the White House,” she fully supported her daughter’s decision to pursue her education elsewhere. With her progressiveviews, one reporter noted, Mrs. Taft had “endeared herself to that class of women who are sometimes slightingly referred to as ‘strongminded.’ ”

Despite Captain Butt’s concern, Nellie’s political activities did nothing to interfere with her duties as mistress of the White House. In fact, the new first lady had ambitious plans to make the national capital the hub of American cultural life. The White House, she argued, belonged to the people, and she would conduct social affairs there “on a plane of the highest and broadest democracy.” She hoped that Washington would someday supplant New York as the “real social center” of the country. In the capital, she envisioned “a national society” comprised “of the best people in the land, a society not founded on the dollar, but on culture, art, statesmanship.” No other city, she maintained, “is more beautifully laid out or has more natural charm during the months given over to official and social life.” New Yorkers reacted with scorn, calling the first lady’s idea “as absurd as it is impracticable,” insisting that New York “has been, and always will be the mecca of culture and wealth in our land.”

Undeterred, Nellie embarked on her first major project. With the coming of spring, inspired by the Luneta, the popular municipal park in the heart of Manila where all classes of the citizenry could gather for outdoor concerts, she worked with a landscape architect to transform the south side of Washington’s Tidal Basin into “one of the most famous esplanades of the world.” She enlisted her husband to persuade Congress that $25,000 should be appropriated to beautify the area—to plant trees, improve both the bridle path and the roadway, build an octagonal wooden bandstand, and install hundreds of comfortable benches. During her travels in the Far East, Nellie had fallen under the enchantment of Japanese cherry trees. Discovering that “both the soil and climate” of Washington were suitable for their growth, she purchased 100 trees from nurseries around the country; when her plans became public, the mayor of Tokyo sent an additional 2,000 young cherry trees to Washington.

On April 17, the president and first lady officially dedicated “Potomac Park” with the first in a series of White House–sponsored public concerts to be held every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon from five to seven. Hours before the first notes of the inaugural concert, “vehicles of every description” began to arrive—“horse drawn victorias and landaus, electric and gasoline motor cars, taxicabs and nearly every type of carriage.” Men and women on horseback lined the winding bridle path and thousands of pedestrians settled on the lawn near the river. All told, 10,000 people representing “every walk of life” had gathered in the new park.

Vigorous cheers greeted the president and first lady as they arrived in an open electric landaulet. They smiled and bowed “right and left,” stopping frequently to speak with friends and acquaintances. The entire cabinet was present, along with dozens of ambassadors. “Everybody saw everybody that he or she knew,” Nellie marveled, “and there was the same exchange of friendly greetings that had always made the Luneta such a pleasant meeting place.” Though Nellie had taken pains to ensure that her municipal park would “acquire the special character” she so desired, she could hardly have envisioned the future of Potomac Park and the cherry blossom festival that one day would draw millions of visitors to the nation’s capital.

In May, Nellie also introduced a series of Friday afternoon garden parties. After developing a “very strong liking” for open-air festivities in the Far East, she decided the south grounds of the White House would provide a perfect setting for similar events. The Marine Band was stationed on the lawn, a large refreshment tent was situated under the trees at the rear of the mansion, and iron benches were scattered around the grounds. The invitations, issued each week to more than five hundred people, asked men to attend in white “short coats, flannel trousers and straw hats,” while women wore white dresses and carried “bright colored parasols.” The president and first lady stood on a knoll to receive their guests, who were free to “roam at will in the private grounds of the President and sip tea and punch and eat sandwiches and ices under the historic trees.” These picturesque gatherings, one reporter observed, “are as informal as any entertainment given in the name of the President and his wife can be.” Nevertheless, they quickly became “the most popular form of official hospitality yet seen in Washington.”

Taft expressed his immense pride in Nellie’s accomplishments to Archie Butt. “It was a difficult thing for her to give any individuality to her entertainments following so close on the Roosevelt administration, which was so particularly brilliant,” he acknowledged, but she had clearly managed to do so. Butt was equally impressed that she had managed to distinguish herself. “She possesses a nature which I think is going to unfold and enlarge itself as it adjusts itself to new and broader surroundings,” he told his sister. “She really looks ten years younger since she entered the White House, and I think she has become more gracious and kinder toward all the world.”

It was evident to all that the vivacious and self-possessed first lady would continue to be instrumental in all the new president’s endeavors. “The complete social success of the Taft administration has been fully established,” the Kansas City Star observed on May 16. “In the ten weeks of her husband’s Administration,” the New York Times agreed, “Mrs. Taft has done more for society than any former mistress of the White House has undertaken in as many months.”

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ON MAY 17, NELLIE AND William Taft hosted a small party on the presidential yacht, the Sylph. The guests included Attorney General George Wickersham and his wife; her sister Lady Hadfield and husband; the steel baron Sir Robert Hadfield; and Archie Butt. The Sylph set sail on the Potomac, heading toward Mt. Vernon, where a special tour of President Washington’s home had been arranged. Nellie was talking with the attorney general when she suddenly grew faint and collapsed.

Crushed ice was pressed to her forehead and wrists, and the first lady “seemed to revive,” Butt recalled, but she remained only “half conscious” and “did not speak.” Taft raced to her side as the ship turned back and a message was dispatched directing Dr. Matthew Delaney to meet them at the White House. “The trip back seemed interminable,” Butt recalled, because “no one could do anything.” When they reached the White House, Taft and Butt each took one of Nellie’s arms and “practically carried” her inside.

Nellie’s right side was paralyzed, the right side of her face had fallen, and she remained unable to speak. Taft was devastated—he “looked like a great stricken animal,” Archie Butt sorrowfully remarked. Never had he “seen greater suffering or pain shown on a man’s face.” The symptoms, Taft anxiously told his son Robert, indicated “a lesion in the brain.” After examining Nellie, however, Dr. Delaney concluded that “because she could hear all right,” she had suffered in all likelihood “a mere attack of nervous hysteria rather than a bursting of a blood vessel in the brain.” With extended rest, he reassured the president, her symptoms might disappear.

The last of the six congressional dinners was scheduled for that very evening. Recognizing his obligation “in the face of sorrow,” Taft circulated among his guests with a forced smile and friendly demeanor. “But what a dinner!” Butt observed. “Every mouthful seemed to choke him, yet he never wavered.” He was “fighting her battle, for it would humiliate her terribly to feel that people were commiserating with her.” While the men smoked cigars, Taft hastened to his wife’s room and consulted with her doctor. Told that she had fallen peacefully asleep, he rejoined the party. The night was balmy, allowing the guests, as Nellie had planned, to move to the East Terrace. There, electric lights, covered with red paper and colorful flowers, created an atmosphere of enchantment. “The beauty of the scene cut the President like a knife,” Butt sadly noted, who likewise recognized the hand of the stricken first lady in every carefully orchestrated detail.

After sixteen hours of sleep, Nellie finally awakened. “Her old will and determination asserted itself,” Archie remarked, as she immediately tried to get out of bed and walk. By late afternoon, Taft reported to Robert, she had regained partial “control of her right arm and her right leg,” though she remained mute. The doctor expressed his continued confidence that the paralysis of her vocal chords was temporary. The White House released a statement insisting there was “no cause for alarm.” The first lady was simply enduring a “nervous attack”—the label then given to a range of amorphous afflictions brought on by exhaustion. Newspaper reports attributed the collapse to Nellie’s “ceaseless and strenuous efforts to aid her husband.” Her exertions, the St. Louis Post Dispatch suggested, were “more than one person could stand up under and she went to pieces.”

Of the true severity of Nellie’s illness and disability, the public remained uninformed. In his initial diagnosis, Dr. Delaney had failed to discern the serious stroke she had suffered. A blood vessel had burst in the area of her brain that controlled language and speech, producing what Taft later described as aphasia—the loss or partial loss of the ability to speak. While she remained alert and clearly comprehended verbal communication, she was unable to express her thoughts and ideas in words. Two weeks after her stroke, Nellie could venture hesitantly out of her bedroom and walk around the second floor. “She only comes into the corridor,” observed Butt, “when she can do so without running any danger of seeing anyone.” At the end of May, she remained unable to project her own thoughts into language, though she could “repeat almost anything” said to her. Nevertheless, the doctor remained optimistic, predicting it “merely a question of time and rest and practice until she regains her speech entirely.”

Taft mobilized the entire family to help with Nellie’s rehabilitation. Helen came home from Bryn Mawr to be with her mother, and Nellie’s sisters—Eleanor More, Lucy Laughlin, and Jennie Anderson—took turns living in the White House. The stroke had not destroyed Nellie’s ability to read or listen, so Helen spent hours reading aloud to her mother, then encouraging her to repeat the same passages. Very gradually, Nellie began to speak on her own, though her words were often jumbled and indistinct. At times, she tended “to say the opposite of what she meant” or speak with undue emphasis. “She gets pretty depressed about talking,” Helen reported to her brother Robert in mid-June. “She tries very hard but it seems to be such an effort that I hate to make her.” Eventually, the first lady learned to deliver stock phrases such as “Glad to see you,” but complex expressions remained difficult and enunciation was a struggle. Consonants at the beginning of words presented a particular impediment. The housekeeper, Elizabeth Jaffray, recalled “scores of times” when Taft sat with Nellie, “his hands over hers, saying over and over again: ‘Now, please, darling, try and say “the”—that’s it, “the.” That’s pretty good, but now try it again.’ ”

“No one knows how [the president] suffers over his wife’s illness,” Butt lamented. “As the weeks go by and there does not seem to be any permanent improvement, his hope sinks pretty low.” Despite an outward show of optimism, Taft slowly began to acknowledge “the tragedy” which had befallen his marriage, his family, and his presidency. In Nellie’s presence, he remained resolutely cheerful, determined to buoy her spirits and make her laugh. But beneath this bright veneer, Butt detected “a world of misery in his mind.” Whenever he was left alone, Taft would sit by the window, “simply looking into the distance.”

Before her illness, Nellie had discovered an ideal summer home for the family in Beverly, Massachusetts. On July 3, the president and first lady, accompanied by Nellie’s sister Eleanor, Dr. Delaney, and Captain Butt, boarded the Colonial Express to “take up their residence” in the seaside community. The grand house stood amid “parklike lawns, shrubs, trees and flower-beds” that lent “an English beauty to its surroundings.” One porch faced the sea; the other looked to Beverly Cove. The three children could walk to the Montserrat Club to play tennis, swim, and enjoy all manner of social activities, and two excellent golf courses were close by—the Myopia Club and the Essex Club. But what should have been a relaxing retreat for the first family became a period of enforced inactivity for Nellie. Although the doctor now conceded that it would “take quite a time” for her to recover, he believed she would be immeasurably strengthened by “two months of entire rest.” Newspapers reported that the first lady would be kept “in seclusion,” that no visitors would be entertained, and that the Secret Service would “keep intruders away.”

The president himself was able to stay in Beverly for only twenty-two hours, just long enough to get Nellie settled. He was needed in Washington, where the special session of Congress called to revise the tariff was culminating in a nasty battle. “The great tug will begin,” he remarked as he returned to the White House, “and one of the crises of my life will be on.” The tariff struggle would indeed become a defining event in Taft’s young presidency, but the true crisis had already transpired. His eloquent and independent wife, the partner who had attended to every detail in the opening days of his administration, was permanently incapacitated. The fierce and loving voice that had counseled and prodded Taft to every achievement and consoled him through every insecurity and difficulty was silent.

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