by Smith, Gene;
Finally, before leaving on tour, Marshall reluctantly consented to go over the ground. The first thing, Thistlethwaite said, was that Marshall ought to keep handy a prepared statement on the President’s death which would embody the idea that he would carry on the President’s policies. Marshall said he would never say any such thing because he would as President have new policies.* “All right,” said Thistlethwaite, “change later, but first announce a continuation of the previous policies.” Marshall said he wouldn’t do it. Thistlethwaite went on to another subject: would Marshall take office if the Congress declared the President incapable of holding office? “No,” said Marshall. Such a move would be illegal unless the President assented to it or until it had a two-thirds vote, “and a two-thirds vote is impossible.” Would Marshall assume office if the Supreme Court declared the President incapacitated? Well, there was no need to discuss the matter because the Court would never do it. Thistlethwaite finally asked just what Marshall would need to take over. Marshall’s answer was, A Congressional resolution approved in writing by Cary Grayson and the First Lady. “I could throw this country into civil war,” Marshall summed up, “but I won’t.” Thistlethwaite wanted something more concrete from his chief, but Marshall refused even to listen to any more talk. “I am not going to seize the place,” he said, “and then have Wilson, recovered, come around and say, ‘Get off, you usurper!’” Marshall then went off on his tour. (His expenses in giving a posh dinner for the Belgians had never been refunded to him out of the President’s government funds for such purposes, and good lecture dates were available.)
On November 23, Marshall spoke under the auspices of the Moose of Atlanta in the civic auditorium. He was engaged in paying tribute to the memories of Washington and Lincoln when an Atlanta policeman came running up the aisle. The policeman talked with a prominent Atlantan sitting on the platform and told him that word had just been received over the telephone that the President was dead. The Atlantan stepped up to Marshall, asked him to halt his speech, and whispered what the policeman had said. Marshall staggered a few steps and held up his hands. After a moment he steadied himself and said to the audience, “I cannot continue my speech. I must leave at once to take up my duties as Chief Executive of this great nation.” He asked the people to pray for him and then, as the organist played “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” he went to his hotel surrounded by a hastily materialized police escort. At the hotel, calls to the Associated Press and the White House brought about the realization that the telephoned report was a practical joke. “A most cruel hoax,” said Marshall. It was the most awful hour of his life, he later told people. The Governor of Georgia put up a one-hundred-dollar reward for apprehension of the person who made the telephone call, but the jokester was never found. Marshall went on his way, minus the police escort and the fanfare attending it. He was never, save for a brief moment just prior to the inaugural ceremonies of the President’s successor, to see the President again.
On December 2, Congress would again convene. Always before, the President had appeared in person to read a message to the legislators, but now it would be impossible for him to do so. It would also be impossible for him to write the message.* Instead, Joe Tumulty asked each of the Cabinet men to submit a report and some recommendations, gathered the papers together, and tossed them on the desk of Charles Swem. “You know how the Chief writes,” Tumulty said to the stenographer, “you can put them together.” Swem did so and the finished product was sent up to the First Lady, who penciled in some corrections which she said the President wished made.
The message, concerning itself with the need for a simplified tax program, a budget system, the problems of unemployment among ex-servicemen, Federal aid for the road-building program and forest conservation, protection for the chemical and dyestuff industries, and a readjusted tariff, made no mention of the League of Nations. The most pressing problem was left out, perhaps to answer critics who said the President had since 1917 concerned himself too much with foreign policy and too little with domestic problems, perhaps because the First Lady forbade any mention of a subject which, put upon the table for discussion, would excite the President and destroy the quiet atmosphere she was so desperately maintaining. In any event, the Congress received the message with scorn and indifference, many Senators allowing themselves to be quoted as saying the President did not write, knew nothing of, had no connection with, the whole business.
One such Senator was Albert B. Fall of New Mexico. A long drooping mustache adorned Senator Fall’s face, his frame was clothed in Western-type rancher’s apparel complete with ten-gallon hat, and in time, after serving as Secretary of the Interior, he was going to become the only United States Cabinet officer ever to go to jail, the penalty being one of the results of the sorry Teapot Dome oil scandals. “I wonder when he wrote it,” Fall sarcastically said of the message, and intensified his already active efforts to get the President proved either insane, mindless, unconscious, paralyzed, or a prisoner.
The device Fall presently hit upon to achieve this end found its origins in the country’s perennial troubles with Mexico, which at the time was a whipping boy for, among other things, the radicals, the high cost of living, the wave of strikes, racial tension and—most important of all to a Senator who even then was so involved with oil investments that his colleagues addressed him as “Petroleum” Fall—the difficulties of American oil concessionaires south of the border. There was a good deal of agitation for a war against Mexico which would, as Secretary Lansing said, “settle our difficulties here,” and the agitation speeded up when a United States consular agent, William Jenkins, was kidnaped at Puebla, Mexico.
As soon as word of the kidnaping was received, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee met to consider what to do about Mexico. Secretary Lansing came before the group and said that he had sent down a very strong protest. (In actual fact his protest was practically a threat to go to war.) Had the Secretary consulted with the President about the protest? the committee inquired. No. Had he consulted with the President on anything in recent months? No. At this the Republicans on the committee passed a resolution appointing a representative of the committee to call upon the President in order to get his views on Mexico. It is certain that Senator Fall, who introduced the resolution calling for a visit to the President and offered himself as a visitor, never expected that the President would receive the delegation. If the President wasn’t even consulting with his Secretary of State, Fall reasoned, he would hardly receive one of Senator Lodge’s outstanding supporters. That refusal could be the lever by which the President would be pried out of the White House.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Lodge, after solemnly naming Fall and a reluctant Senator Hitchcock (to represent the Democrats) as a two-man delegation, called Joe Tumulty and asked for the men to be received. Lodge, the lending of whose name to the enterprise would make it even less palatable to the White House, was astonished when Tumulty, after consulting with the First Lady, said the two visitors might come that very day—December 4.
The meeting was set for two-thirty in the afternoon. Before lunch Robert Woolley, head of the Democratic Party publicity organization, went to the White House in response to an urgent call from Tumulty. Tumulty said Fall would have to be received—otherwise impeachment proceedings might be begun—and asked Woolley’s help in staging a “dress rehearsal” that would prepare the President for the visit. The two decided to place a copy of a Senate report on the Mexican situation on a table to the right of the President’s bed so that it could be dramatically picked up by the President’s one good hand. Apart from the right arm, the President would be covered with blankets up to his chin so that the paralyzed left hand would not show. As for the President’s ability to concentrate on what Fall would say, and parry his thrusts, they would have to trust to luck and the presence of Grayson, the First Lady and Hitchcock as allies.
Promptly on time, the two Senators appeared in the afternoon. By then the impending visit ha
d been headlined in the newspapers, which correctly labeled it as having nothing at all to do with Mexico. The “actual purpose,” said the New York World, was to force a “disclosure of the President’s condition.” Reporters anticipating a post-visit interview with Fall swarmed to the White House. There were more than one hundred of them to see the arriving Fall preen himself in the spotlight while Hitchcock, frightened of what might be about to happen, kept in the background. The two men were shown up to the President’s bedroom. Grayson stood outside the door. Fall asked if there would be a time limit and Grayson said, “No, not within reason, Senator.”
They went in and the President shocked Fall by marshaling all his strength for a firm handshake and a wave to the nearby chair selected for the Senator in the dress rehearsal. “Well, Senator, how are your Mexican investments getting along?” breezily asked the President. Fall, certain the warped Presidential signatures sent from the White House were the work of a forger, and certain the President was not in his right mind, blanched at this use of hand and tongue. “If agreeable, I wish Mrs. Wilson to remain,” said the President, and Fall said that would be all right. At once the First Lady began to write down every word Fall said. (She had previously provided herself with a pencil and pad, which, occupying her as they did, allowed her to avoid shaking hands with the Senator.)
“You seem very much engaged, madam,” Fall said to her. “I thought it wise to record this interview so there may be no misunderstandings or misstatements made,” she grimly answered. Doubtless shaken by the cold look, Fall turned back to the President and asked if he had seen the Foreign Relations report on Mexico. “I have a copy right here,” said the President, and reached over to where it was, pointedly waving it in the air. “You see,” he went on, “despite the stories going the rounds, I can still use my right hand.” He mentioned the medical opinions-hawked by “Doc” Moses. “I hope the Senator will now be reassured,” he said to Fall, “but he may be disappointed.”
Fall desperately started talking about Mexico and the kidnaping of the consular agent. As he spoke, Grayson was called from the room, returning in a few minutes to announce in practically bad-melodrama fashion that word had just been received that the consular agent had been released by the Mexicans. This was the crowning blow to Fall, rendering his mission totally farcical. He got up, defeated. By then the First Lady was out of paper and she picked up a large brown franked envelope of Fall’s and continued her note-taking upon it. She was thus able to take down the words of parting between the two men as Fall, apparently trying to salvage some shred of dignity from the meeting, bent over the President and took his right hand. “Mr. President, I am praying for you,” Fall said. “Which way, Senator?” asked the President with a chuckle. Fall fled.
Jubilant, Grayson saw Fall down to the door. As they went down, Grayson solicitously asked after Fall’s health. The Senator numbly said that he had been working hard and getting little sleep lately. “You have just left a man suffering a breakdown due to overwork and concentration,” Grayson said. He added tenderly, “You had better be careful.” Then he mercilessly threw Fall to the reporters outside. There were no questions about Mexico; instead it was how is the President, can he talk, is he paralyzed, what is his mental condition? Fall had to give the answers that spelled the end of the campaign to oust the President from his post and insured his continued residence in the White House for the remaining fifteen months of his term. The President had gathered all of his strength and, running in good luck, he had pulled the trick off. The people around him, knowing how it might have turned out, were ecstatic with joy. They knew how lucky he had been.
* Foreign diplomats sent to the United States, formally without status until they presented their credentials to the President in person, were told they could take up their posts and that the government would consider them “Appointed” Ambassadors with all the status of actual Ambassadors.
* Marshall privately told several persons that he thought the Lodge reservations should be accepted.
* It should be said that, unlike many of his successors, this President had never employed speech writers. Every word he had uttered was written by one man—himself.
9
In the mornings he awoke at eight and his valet lifted him into his chair so that, sitting up, he might eat breakfast and have the First Lady read the headlines from the papers. Sometimes, not often, he asked for an entire story to be read out. Then while he rested she went below to tend to the domestic affairs of the White House. When she came back up they sat together for an hour or so and she told him the official business with which she thought he should deal. He was very quiet, rarely speaking, but sometimes he would say a few broken words about what he wanted done. Even as he got the thoughts out he would forget himself in the middle of a sentence and falter into a silence that lasted until, motionless, eyes gazing out into space, he was brought up by her repeating of the last words he had uttered. Then he would come to himself and begin again, but after a few moments the weak voice would drift away so that they sat silently in the quiet which surrounded and inundated a building whose gates were closed, some literally padlocked, to the public and almost all the world. Together they worked on the pardon pleas and departmental reports and sometimes he tried to dictate for a while; but it was no good. In the middle of a sentence he would slide off again into his unmoving silence from which only her gentle prodding removed him. Margaret would often come in to talk with him and he would try to smile for her and want to know about the children of Jessie and Nellie. He would say Margaret should send them his love.
Below, the great state rooms constructed to hold hundreds of people were completely empty. The curtains were drawn and in some the rugs were taken up so that it would be easier for his wheel chair to move over the floor. When the servants went walking through the Red Room, the State Dining Room, the East Room, their footsteps echoed. The Executive Wing was likewise dreary, vacant, quiet, and the reporters in the press room played cards. Ike Hoover’s official White House diary, which in other days had listed ten visitors in two hours, drifted away into a series of single-line notations that “Dr. Grayson spent the night.” In late November the diary simply petered out.
Before lunch he would be slowly wheeled down the hall to the elevator and then out onto the South Portico looking out over the grounds, empty save for the sheep chomping at the grass. Sometimes one of the two women or Grayson or Ike Hoover pushed the wheel chair along the veranda until they reached the window of Joe Tumulty’s office. Someone would tap on the glass so that Tumulty might come to it and say a few words carefully chosen to put in the best light the possibility that the Senate would in the new session pass the League as the President wanted it. Then they would go into the elevator in slow procession and the President and First Lady would take lunch in his study. Afterward he slept while she walked in the grounds. At four in the afternoon he would be propped up in bed and if he seemed strong enough to her she worked for an hour or so with him. After dinner he went to sleep. It would be seven-thirty or eight by then. Sometimes before he dozed off she read aloud to him from mystery novels—which she detested but he seemed to enjoy—but suddenly, in the midst of a passage with no emotional significance, he would begin to cry. His hair was whitened and his face thin and haggard and seared, and he would sit shaking while she took his head into her arms and whispered “Darling, darling” until the sobbing ended.
December drew out and Christmas came and the girls were with him. On Christmas evening after he went to bed the girls and the First Lady and some of her relatives watched a movie run off in the East Room by Robert E. Long, the manager of a Washington theater, on a projector that was a gift of Douglas Fairbanks. The next day the First Lady told the President about it, and he said he would like to see it also, and so Ike Hoover called Long and asked if he would come again. Long again set up the projector and the screen, which was an enormous Lincoln bed sheet. Into the room then came the President in his wheel chair, his head bent
forward and down, and Long was shocked to see him so. Before, at Long’s theater, he had often seen the President and had thought him the personification of disciplined energy and power. Long and his assistant looked at each other in horror. They could hardly believe this bent figure unable to sit up straight was the same man. The flickering of the light on the bed sheet illuminated dimly the empty East Room with the giant crystal chandeliers and the classic cornicing and the gigantic mirrors and, across the uncovered hardwood floor, hanging on a wall, a gift of the French Government to the First Lady: a Gobelin tapestry depicting the marriage of Psyche. Alone in the midst of all this sat a few huddled figures watching In Old Kentucky. But when the climactic horse-race scene began, the excitement was too much and the First Lady told Long to stop. They wheeled the trembling President out and put him to bed and asked Long to come back the next day to finish.
Long did so, and every day thereafter he came again, each day carrying a new film. At ten-thirty he would arrive and set up the machine and a few minutes later the elevator would bring the President down to be wheeled through the empty rooms, one after the other. “My tour of inspection,” he said to the servants who saw him, and he would try to smile, his face twisting as he did so. The maids felt something breaking inside them as they watched his attempt to be cheery, and after tremulously returning his smile they would bob their heads and hurry by. At eleven the films would begin, many of them not destined for general release until months in the future.