by Smith, Gene;
The White House staff was waiting when the car pulled up at the door. Ike Hoover, the usher, thought the President looked a little peaked and spiritless, otherwise he seemed all right. But to the woman’s eye of Elizabeth Jaffray, the housekeeper, there was something definitely wrong. It was something about the way he wore his clothes that made Mrs. Jaffray think him different from the careful and methodical man who had left for the trip. The staff was told the President had suffered a collapse and would be “somewhat restricting his schedule.” No details were offered.
Lunch was served with John Randolph Bolling, the First Lady’s brother, sitting at table along with Margaret. Afterward the President said to Grayson that he would want to go to a church service, it being a Sunday. Grayson said perhaps he had better not but encouraged him to go for a drive and get some fresh air—it would help him sleep. With the First Lady, Margaret and Bolling, he toured Rock Creek Park and Chevy Chase, returning to the White House at twilight.
Although he could use his left arm and leg, still the ghastly headaches tortured him. He could not work or even read, and wandered the White House second floor, the family living quarters, drifting from the study at one end of the hall to the First Lady’s room at the other. At night he could not sleep.
The next day, Monday, he went motoring with the First Lady and Margaret from three in the afternoon until four-thirty. At five the First Lady had in for tea a dozen of the reporters who had covered the trip, explaining that the President regretted he could not join them. She made the reporters laugh when she told them that at one point on the trip, while driving in a motorcade to visit an Army post outside a town, she had thought she heard a cheer and, turning to bow and smile, found only a mooing cow looking at her.*
So passed a few days. He signed some bills, a few unimportant Congressional resolutions, dictated a handful of letters. Most of the time he stayed in his room and study and did not go to the business offices of the White House. He saw no officials, including Tumulty, but he dined downstairs with members of the family and even played some billiards. He appeared reasonably bright and cheerful even though he was still weak and in pain and had trouble sleeping. On the evening of October 1 there was a movie in the East Room and afterward he seemed so well that he said he would read aloud to the First Lady from the Bible, as he had done every night during the war. He stood under the chandelier in her room with his Bible, a small khaki-covered type given to soldiers, held in one hand. His voice was strong. When he finished he put his Bible down on a table and talked with the First Lady for a few minutes. As they chatted he wound his watch. A little after he went to his own room the First Lady noticed he had left the watch on the table and took it in to him. “That worries me, to have left that watch there,” he said. “It is not like me.” “Nonsense,” she replied. “What difference does it make? It is what I do all the time—forget things.”
That night, as she had since their return, the First Lady did not sleep well, arising often to look into his room to see how he was. At dawn she found him sleeping normally. It was after eight before she looked in again. She found him sitting on the side of his bed trying to reach for a water bottle. As she gave it to him she noticed his left hand hung loosely. “I have no feeling in that hand,” he said. “Will you rub it? But first help me to the bathroom.” She got him on his feet with difficulty. Every move seemed to cause him great pain. Once he was in the bathroom, she asked if she could leave him long enough to call Grayson at home. He said yes and she went to a telephone and rang the Usher’s Room downstairs. Ike Hoover answered and she said, “Please get Dr. Grayson. The President is very sick.” Hoover at once telephoned Grayson and dispatched a White House car to the doctor’s home. Meanwhile, upstairs, the First Lady heard a slight noise in the bathroom. She rushed in and found the President lying unconscious on the floor. Her first thought was to keep him warm. She snatched a blanket from his bed and while she was putting it over him he moved his head and asked for a drink of water. She gave it to him and put a pillow under his head.
After calling Grayson and sending the car, Hoover went upstairs into the hall. All the doors were closed, and although servants were working in the area, none knew that anything was amiss. After a few minutes Grayson arrived and tried the knob on the President’s door. It was locked. Grayson knocked and the First Lady admitted him. Together they lifted the President and put him on his bed. Ten minutes after entering the room Grayson came out. Hoover was still standing in the hall. “My God,” Grayson gasped, “the President is paralyzed.” He named a doctor and nurse and told Hoover to send for them at once. It was a little after nine in the morning.
Word soon spread in the White House that the President was ill, but beyond that nothing could be learned. Within a few hours three other doctors had joined Grayson, and two nurses were in attendance. No servants were allowed in the room, but Hoover was asked in to help rearrange the furniture. As he helped move things about, Hoover looked at the President lying in the enormous bed that Abraham Lincoln had used and thought to himself that the President looked as though he were dead. There was not a sign of life. Hoover also thought he saw a cut above the President’s temple and another on his nose and assumed these had been a result of a fall.
All day the President’s room was filled with doctors and nurses. The First Lady did not leave his side for a minute. Below, the servants could find out nothing. But word reached the reporters in the White House press room, and for them Grayson issued a bulletin: “The President had a fairly good night, but his condition is not at all good this morning.” Later he issued a second: “The President is a very sick man. His condition is less favorable today and he has remained in bed throughout the day. After consultation with Dr. F. X. Dercum of Philadelphia, Drs. Sterling Ruffin and E. R. Stitt of Washington, in which all agreed as to his condition, it was determined that absolute rest is essential for some time.”
There was no hint of what the condition might be. The New York World, a paper very friendly to the President, had earlier said “one thousand rumors” enveloped Washington; now, if possible, the number doubled. Suddenly people noticed that bars were in place on one window of the White House, and at once it was said they were there because the President, insane, was trying to escape and run out into the street. Other rumors had him a prisoner, unconscious, sulking. One particularly strong one was that he had contracted syphilis during a dalliance in Paris and that the effects of the disease were now making themselves felt. That Dr. Dercum was a professor of nervous and mental diseases at a Philadelphia medical college was widely held to confirm the bars-on-window theory.*
All day and all night Washington seethed. The next day, Friday, October 3, the bulletin was simply, “The President’s condition is about the same, with a slight improvement.” The Cabinet members were all bewildered. Tumulty, in tears, told Secretary Daniels, “We must all pray.” Nothing more. Secretary of Agriculture David F. Houston saw Secretary of War Newton D. Baker at the Shoreham Hotel and Baker said, “I am scared literally to death.” Houston thought to himself that Baker looked it. Later in the day the Cabinet men were all telephoned through the White House switchboard and told that by request of the Secretary of State there would be a special Cabinet meeting on Monday. That day, also, a rumor arose in New York that the President was dead. At once stock prices began dropping sharply. Calls were put in to the White House and the rumor was denied. It was decided the story was put into motion by the sight of flags half-staffed because of the death of the Manhattan Borough President.
The bulletins continued bland. In the White House diary for Saturday, Ike Hoover wrote: “Consultation of doctors at 10 A.M. Condition said to be improving. Dr. Grayson remained all night.” The First Lady was handed a note: “My little girls tomorrow morning are offering their communion for him. God will not desert us in this critical hour of need. Please let the President know that we all think of him every minute of the day and that my poor, humble prayers are lifted up each day for his early reco
very. Sincerely your friend, Tumulty.”
On Sunday, Secretary of the Navy Daniels called at the White House and spoke to Tumulty and Grayson. Grayson told Daniels the truth: the President was completely paralyzed on his left side. He also told him that the President was bravely asking for a stenographer to take some letters but that he was dissuaded from getting one on the basis that Sunday was a day of rest. Grayson was frank to say the excuse was a ruse and that it would be impossible for the President to do any work. Daniels was so shaken by the information that he found himself almost unable to think. He could not bring himself to tell even his wife that the President was paralyzed. It hurt too much.
Secretary of Agriculture Houston also talked with Tumulty, the latter speaking in strictest confidence, and learned the truth. He and Tumulty agreed it would be “one of the tragedies of the ages” if the President remained incapacitated. In the Shoreham Hotel at lunch, later, Houston saw the Vice President, Thomas R. Marshall. Marshall was terribly distressed and said to Houston that he was completely in the dark. He begged Houston to give him any information he had, but Houston was unable to repeat what Tumulty had told him in confidence. Marshall appeared terrified by the turn of events and was bitter at the doctors who were keeping the situation a mystery from him. He said it would be at best a tragedy for him to assume the duties of President and an equal tragedy for the American people, that he knew many men who knew more about the affairs of the government than he, but it would be especially trying for him if he had to assume the duties without warning. There was nothing Houston could say to him.
On Monday at eleven, in compliance with Secretary of State Lansing’s request, the Cabinet met in the Cabinet Room. The other Cabinet members probably did not know it, but the Secretary of State had already done some spade work for the gathering. On Friday he had called upon Tumulty, bringing with him a book which contained the text of the Constitution. Lansing pointedly read aloud to Tumulty the passages saying that in case of the removal of the President from office, or his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the office, the same should devolve upon the Vice President.
When Lansing finished reading, Tumulty coldly said, “Mr. Lansing, the Constitution is not a dead letter with the White House. I have read the Constitution and do not find myself in need of any tutoring at your hands of the provision which you have just read.” He then asked Lansing who could certify to the President’s disability. Lansing intimated it was a job for either Grayson or Tumulty himself. Tumulty burst out that the Secretary could rest assured that while the President was “lying on the small of his back” Tumulty would not be a party to “ousting” him. “He has been too kind, too loyal and too wonderful to me to receive such treatment at my hands.”
At this point Grayson walked into the room. “And I am sure,” Tumulty went on, “that Dr. Grayson will never certify to his disability. Will you, Grayson?” Grayson said he most certainly would not. Tumulty then hotly said that if anybody outside the White House circle tried to certify the President as disabled within the Constitution’s meaning, he and Grayson would stand together and repudiate the attempt. He added that if the President were in a position to know of Lansing’s remarks it was certain that very decisive measures would be taken.
At the Cabinet meeting, Lansing, presiding, said it was necessary to decide whether or not the government was going to be carried on. He added there was nothing to guide the Cabinet as to who would decide the question of the President’s ability to discharge his duties. Somebody said that if the question had to be considered at all it should be done only after the Cabinet received authoritative word as to the President’s condition. They decided to send for Grayson, and a messenger was sent to ask the doctor to come to the Cabinet Room. While they waited, they discussed the situation. “The business of the Government must go on,” Lansing said. He read out the same constitutional provisions he had propounded to Tumulty. Someone pointed out that President Garfield had been shot in July of 1881 and had not died until September and that Garfield’s secretary ran the government during that time. But someone else mentioned that Congress was not in session during the period, as now it was, and that, had it been, serious questions otherwise ignored would have had to be faced.
Grayson came in. Lansing said, “Dr. Grayson, we wish to know the nature and extent of the President’s illness, and whether he is able to perform the duties of his office, so that we may determine what shall be done to carry on the business of the Government.” Grayson said the President was suffering from a nervous breakdown, indigestion and a depleted system, that it was “touch and go,” the “scales might tip either way and they might tip the wrong way” if the President were harassed by business matters. The President should be bothered as little as possible; any excitement would kill him. Grayson also said that when moments before he left the sickroom the President asked what the Cabinet wanted and by whose authority it was meeting.
There was no immediate answer to this implied question, for several Cabinet members said at the same time that they were meeting to get information and take up business matters arising since their last meeting prior to the President’s trip. Secretary of War Baker made a point of saying that the Cabinet was very anxious that Grayson express the sympathy of all the men to the President. More efforts to get something out of Grayson—“tell us more exactly what was the trouble”—elicited nothing beyond “His condition is encouraging but we are not yet out of the woods.” The meeting ended.
For days the bulletins were all the same: “The President had a very good night, and if there is any change in his condition it is favorable … The President had a restful and comfortable day …” There was absolutely nothing concrete given out, and for the first time in his career Tumulty had no off-the-record information for the White House reporters. Soon it was said all over America that a madman raving in wild delirium sat at the head of the government, or an imbecile whose mind was completely gone. One paper said the Cabinet was on the verge of asking the Vice President to take over the government; Tumulty denied it was so. Even the sympathetic New York World editorialized about the fact that only “vague generalities” were given out: “From the beginning of his illness to the present moment not a word has come from the sick-chamber that can be regarded as frankly enlightening. Mystery begets mystification.”
The President’s brother, Joseph Wilson, a Baltimore businessman, wrote Tumulty: “It has seemed to me that it would not be amiss at least for the attending physicians to make a more detailed statement than any that has so far appeared concerning the real cause and the extent of the President’s illness, in order to satisfy the public mind and to refute the numerous rumors which are afloat.” The suggestion was not complied with. But heavy traffic was diverted from streets near the White House, and the musicians of a hotel band a block away were asked not to play loud numbers.
On October 12 papers all over the country carried the text of a letter sent by Senator George Moses of New Hampshire to a friend and released by the friend to a New Hampshire paper. Moses wrote: “Of course he may get well—that is, he may live—but if he does he will not be any material force or factor in anything.… There is no possibility that Mr. Wilson would be able to perform the functions of his office either in the immediate or remote future.” Grayson refused to make any comment on the letter, saying that if he answered every rumor he would have no time to attend to the President’s health. The World reluctantly had to point out that this did not answer the rumors. When Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer went to speak at a Philadelphia Columbus Day celebration, he was surrounded by reporters before he went onto the Academy of Music stage. “What is the President’s condition?” he was bluntly asked. “You read the papers, don’t you?” he answered. “Don’t you know any more than that?” “I do not.” “Does any Cabinet member know any more about it than what he reads in the papers?” “No.”*
Palmer was wrong in saying no Cabinet man knew anything beyond wha
t a newspaper reader would know, but one man in Washington definitely had no more information than the newspaper reader. He was the Vice President of the United States, Thomas Riley Marshall of Indiana. Marshall had come to the governorship of his state after practicing law for a third of a century in Columbia City, Indiana, population three thousand, and was a rustic type, physically unimpressive, who often said very amusing things that made people laugh. (William McAdoo saw Marshall’s best scene as a country grocery store where he could sit by the stove and tell stories with his cronies.) The Vice President was the greatest possible contrast to the President in every way besides geographically and so had been nominated in 1912 and again in 1916 to balance the ticket. His destiny was the traditional one of American Vice Presidents: like the sailor lost at sea, he was never heard of again. At least it was so in Washington that he was a completely discounted factor. But in the hinterlands he was known as a lecturer who would appear anywhere a fee awaited him. He had no substantial private resources beyond his $12,000 annual salary and found the lecture trail an attractive financial proposition.
The first Vice President ever to go lecturing, he explained he had either to give his talks, “steal, or resign.” He always kept in his mind the advice given him by William Jennings Bryan, the acknowledged king of the lecture trail: “Always get your money before you step onto the platform. Don’t be standing around later waiting for it. Don’t step onto the platform unless you already have the money in your pocket.” On his endless travels to keep his lecture dates he amused himself by spinning tall tales to his fellow passengers in the day coaches, few of whom recognized him. One such fellow passenger, complaining that business in the auto accessories line was slow, learned from Marshall that he was a dope peddler, a narcotics salesman. The man asked if this line wasn’t against the law and Marshall told him that yes, it was, but he had a special arrangement with the authorities in Washington.