When the Cheering Stopped

by Smith, Gene;

  Requests for expressions of opinion constantly came in. Would he please make known his views on whether the United States should join the World Court? Does Mr. Wilson think there has been a growth of sentiment in favor of American entry into the League? What does Mr. Wilson think of the use of the pictorial chart as a teaching aid? How can the world best work to keep the peace? What can be done to aid the American Indians? What are the responsibilities of the country to Armenia? “Dear Mr. Wilson, If you were Santa Claus and could put into the world’s stocking what it most needs this Christmas, what would you give it?” Will Mr. Wilson express a view on the necessity for better railroad safety measures to be made use of by the Association for Grade Crossings? Will he offer a statement upon the anniversary of the birth of Patrick Henry that can be used by the Richmond Historical Pageant? What does Mr. Wilson think of the government bond purchase campaign as it applies to the salaried man? How can crime be prevented? Prohibition enforced? What is the best method of educating the orphaned boy? Should there be motion picture censorship? What is the Secret of Success? Is Mr. Wilson in favor of a Federal anti-lynching law? A bonus for the ex-soldiers? To all these requests, all without exception, the answer was that Mr. Wilson had nothing to say. “… He does not think it opportune nor proper that he should express his views on your question … does not care to contribute an opinion on this matter … Mr. Wilson prefers to reserve anything he may have to say on this subject until a later time … does not feel he is sufficiently well acquainted with the subject to which you refer to warrant him in expressing an opinion concerning it … prefers not to enter into a discussion of the matter to which you refer … the program of complete rest which he is now taking will not permit him to prepare a statement such as you request.… Mr. Wilson asks me to reply to your letter and say that he is not making any statements for publication on any subject at this time.”

  To private requests from old acquaintances for his evaluation of political figures, however, he had answers in plenty: Senator Reed was “thoroughly false, entirely impossible, one of the most despicable men in public life, a blackguard”; Lord Birkenhead was an “egregious ass” characterized by “quite absurd vanity and empty-headedness”; President Poincaré of France was a “tricky skunk.” But such remarks were never for publication. For the public at large there was to be nothing of him; he would give not a bit of himself. His withdrawal extended also to those, or most of those, who asked for his autograph. Bolling had a printed form: “During Mr. Wilson’s illness he was excused by thousands from sending them his autograph and from autographing books, photographs, etc. In view of this he does not feel he can in conscience begin the practice again, and therefore hopes that you will excuse him from complying with your request.” America had turned him out—he was the living embodiment of Finley Peter Dunne’s remark that the Americans should build their triumphal arches of bricks that could easily be pulled loose and flung at the hero—and it was not for him to court the favor of any American.

  But sometimes something in a letter would reach through the aloofness. Ex-soldiers who wrote of wounds or disabilities often got answers from him signed “Very truly yours, Your War Comrade.” (Had he not sent them overseas and brought them pain and blood on the misty April evening he went down Pennsylvania Avenue and asked America to save democracy?) People who sent him gifts for no reason but that they wanted to also got answers. The gifts, of negligible financial value, usually took the form of something the donor had grown or made by his own efforts. A Virginia farmer sent eggs produced by his prize hen; a Chesapeake Bay barber sent a dozen clams plucked from the mud during an afternoon’s outing; a turkey farmer sent a giant specimen of his flock. Tomatoes came, and figs and pecans, some flowers grown by a suburban woman who wanted him to have them, a brace of ducks shot out of season by a man who wrote he would not mind having to pay the game warden’s fine if Mr. Wilson enjoyed the results. A Potomac River trawler regularly sent over part of the day’s catch. And all these people touched him very deeply and he wrote and told them so: “Please accept for yourself and your sisters assurances of sincere gratitude not only for the apples but for the generous words which accompany them. It is just such words that keep a man in good heart.” It was not easy for him to frame such letters, for he had not been in the past a man who wanted or accepted the gifts of others. Now the newspapers called him the Lame Lion of S Street and it was not in his power to get the things he wanted and do the things he wanted to do, and he must find it in him to be crippled and old and beaten and to thank those few who cared that he had lived and lived still.

  Children also got answers to their letters. For they were the innocent ones. “Dear Mr. Wilson: No doubt you will be surprised to receive a letter from a small girl whom you don’t even know, but I feel as though I know you. I am the girl who you saw on Wednesday last, a little before you reached Union Station, Alexandria, who was all dolled up in kaki riding breeches, white sweater and a bright red scarf and tam, and pulling a sled. Last summer do you remember seeing a little girl playing tennis on a court in Rosemond who everytime you went past would throw her racquet in the air and wave at you? I am the girl. I am a great admirer of you and your lovely wife and take the opportunity to write to you. I appreciate so much your waving at me. Yours Very Truly, Virginia Dare, 14 years.” She was no relation “to the original Virginia Dare,” but was a sophomore at Alexandria High School and had a brother at the University of Virginia. He was a member of the Ravens there. The ex-President wrote back, “My dear Little Friend, It was a pleasure to receive your letter and to know more about the little girl whose greetings have given us pleasure as we passed along the road in our afternoon drives. I am interested in all you tell me about yourself and hope that every happy fortune will be yours as you grow older. Mrs. Wilson joins me in cordial good wishes. With warmest greetings, Faithfully yours.”

  He refused to join hundreds of organizations that wanted to make use of his name, but to the Washington Order of the Merry Men he wrote that he would accept membership. The letter asking him to join explained that the Merry Men stood for “the protection of public property, particularly the woods around Mount Pleasant, and roam the woods collecting plants and rocks and taking notes of animals, insects and birds.” The dues consisted of five cents a month from regular members. The Honorary Member—Woodrow Wilson—would not be required to pay the dues. The constitution of the Merry Men explained that if any member misbehaved at an Official Meeting he was given a demerit. “Upon receiving five demerits he will be put through the paddle.” A picture of the Order’s flag was sent him and his attention was drawn to the Chinese letters on it: “A Chinaman offered to interpret our name into his language, and on the spur of the moment we accepted,” explained the Merry Men’s constitution, “and it was embroidered on our flag by my mother, so now we cannot change.” He wrote the boys he was proud to be their Honorary Member. “I wish that I could wander about the woods with you.”

  The summer of 1921 passed. In the White House open liquor bottles stood on upstairs tables; the President explained to callers that he considered the lower rooms the property of the people of the United States and perhaps Prohibition should not be violated there, but upstairs was his home, where his personal preferences could be followed. Spittoons were under the poker table used three times a week, and men with cigars in their mouths called the First Lady “Ma,” “Boss” or, imitating the President, “Duchess.” The President played golf several times each week. He made love to his mistress in a White House closet. The people had elected him President, but, said Charles Willis Thompson, “they did not vote for anybody; they voted against somebody; and the somebody they voted against was not a candidate; it was Woodrow Wilson.” That Woodrow Wilson, said Mark Sullivan, was to a nation tired of heroics the “symbol of the exaltation that had turned sour, personification of the rapture that had now become gall.” And in fact it was with a certain justification, a certain very considerable justification, that America in 1921
could ask what in hell the war had been all about, anyway. But now it was over and Warren Harding was President and he believed in live and let live and keeping everybody happy and giving your pals a job. The pals looted every department of the government he let them into—and he let them in everywhere. Sometimes they went too far, and then a visitor coming into the Red Room might see, as one man did, the President of the United States standing with his hands around the throat of the Director of the Veterans Bureau, choking him while he shouted, “You yellow rat! You double-crossing bastard!” But not too many people saw such things. Those who did usually had their fingers in the pie anyhow. The rest of America saw and appreciated the informality of a President who called everybody by his first name and a First Lady who came running downstairs to shake hands with the tourists being shown through. “Aren’t things different now?” delightedly asked the wife of Senator Pomerene when she came to a lavish White House garden party and saw the red uniforms of the bandsmen and the bright-colored hats and parasols of the women. Now when Woodrow Wilson and his wife drove on West Executive Avenue in the afternoon they could see, as they did just one week after leaving office, photographers dispersing after taking pictures of Henry Cabot Lodge when the Senator paid a call on the President.

  Mostly, however, the rides were not city ones, but rather country trips. He took with him an old cape bought years ago in Scotland and even on warm days wore it around his shoulders beneath the long thin face. A cap was always on his head. He lived but did not live in the America of 1921; he was like some apparition from the past, from Yesterday, coming along the road in his big old open car with two small W’s painted where once the Seal of the President had been. Motionless and silent, he roused himself only at the sight of a soldier or an American flag. For the soldier there would be a slow salute with the good hand. For the flag he would lift his hat and take it off and hold it over his heart. Always. Atop the government buildings and in the parks a fluttering banner would catch his eye, and his arm would come up and for a moment as his car glided by he would be bareheaded, the face seemingly even more stark now that it could be seen that only a thin fringe of longish hair came back from his forehead to run down to his collar in back.

  But it was possible to live in the Washington of that day and never know that he lived there also, so rarely was he seen. He belonged to no organizations of note; his wife was patroness of no dinners or women’s affairs and was not seen in the shops. For the first month in S Street they had retained the services of a guard, but then they let him go. There was no need for the guard, for Washington and the world did not, save for the letters, bother with the ex-President any more than with the widow of General Philip Sheridan, a neighbor. The world did not seem to care that he was there, an ex-President and aged figure with an expression of infinite sadness upon that ravaged face, a look of questioning also, a wondering request of God and Fate to know what had happened, where did it all go, was this what life was—ruin and a terrible loneliness?

  On November 10, 1921, there came a letter written in pencil upon the stationery of Louis Miller, Cut-Rate Dealer in Hardware, Paints, Oils, Kitchen Supplies and Sporting Goods, Floyd Avenue, Richmond, Va.

  “To my Hero,” it began. “Dear Mr. Wilson, Tomorrow we celebrate Armistice Day and my Daddy says its to honor the Brave Boys who made peace possible. I think the biggest honor is you. I take my hat way off to you. I pray God will let you live and be happy and healthy. From David H. Miller seven years old.”

  He wrote back, “My dear Little Friend, Your delightful letter gave me a good deal of pleasure. I send you, besides my warm thanks, my most cordial good wishes, and am glad to call myself your friend.”

  On that Armistice Day the body of the Unknown Soldier would be going to its grave in Arlington and on that day the former Commander in Chief would be in the funeral parade. In the days preceding the burial, when the plans were made, the former Commander in Chief’s presence had not been expected, so no arrangements for his participation were made. A letter to President Harding, however, brought forth an invitation. The other mourners would be marching on foot behind the coffin, but it would be impossible for this mourner, and so, early on Armistice Day morning, in black, wearing a tall black hat, he came out to where a rented horse carriage waited before his house. His man Scott lifted his left leg to the carriage’s step, and the coachman held the horses, a bay and a black, and with difficulty he was gotten up onto the seat. His wife sat by him, she also in black. A poppy was in his lapel and one at her breast. He held a cane in his good hand. The Secretary of War had asked that by eight twenty-five he be at the east entrance of the Capitol, where an Army officer would take him into his place for the funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. There he would drop out of the procession in compliance with the Secretary’s request—only military contingents would march all the way to Arlington.

  With Scott beside him on the victoria’s box, the coachman drove by way of Massachusetts Avenue and First Street, N.E., in order to avoid the congestion of the many troops that would march. But when they got to the Capitol there was no sign of the officer who would direct them to their place. The crowds and confusion affected the horses and they grew restless, but finally a police sergeant took over and led the carriage to a place in the line. And so the funeral of the Unknown began, and down Pennsylvania Avenue, behind six jet-black horses with black trappings, came the cortege. The hoofs of the artillery horses drawing the great caissons were muffled, and upon muffled drums a slow, rhythmic beat dully sounded. The flags were draped in mourning and lowered, and dirges played. Faded flowers brought from overseas sat atop the draped flag on the casket. A wall of humanity, silent save for an occasional sob, watched as the Unknown went slowly by.

  President Harding marched side by side with General Pershing, who wore no decorations but the Victory Medal which every American soldier could wear. The Cabinet walked behind the coffin, and the Senators, and the Representatives, and the Supreme Court Justices, and the soldiers in long regimental formations, and the sailors, the lumbering guns of the artillery, the banners, the generals, the admirals. And the foreigners who would present to him in that coffin their Victoria Crosses and their Croix de Guerres—Marshal Foch, Admiral Lord Beatty, the others. All passed by the people standing on the curb in a great silence, and so did a marching group of Congressional Medal of Honor winners, and then, gripping a cane and leaning on it so that he might sit up the straighter, came Woodrow Wilson.

  And the silence of the funeral was broken, for the people were whispering to each other, “It’s Wilson; look, President Wilson.” A flutter of applause came out to him, and a few low calls of greeting. And more cheers. He had seventeen blocks to go in the procession, and by the time those blocks were traveled the people all around were cheering him. His carriage stopped before the White House, where he would be leaving the procession, and President Harding and his wife took up a position in a box opposite the west gate, and the President looked over toward the halted carriage and bowed to its occupant. Inside the grounds a couple of Negro servants saw who was there, and they came running out to look up at him and say their names and ask if he didn’t remember them from before. All around the carriage people were pushing to get closer, and more White House servants came crying their greetings. It was a funeral, and the funeral of the Unknown Soldier at that, but the cheering got louder until it was an ovation. With no smile, seemingly with the greatest reluctance, Woodrow Wilson took off his high black silk hat and held it out to the cheers. His stern face was unrelaxed, and nothing showed, but from that moment on nothing would be for him as it had been before, before he heard those cheers and saw those people crying, “Oh, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Wilson.”

  The coachman turned the bay and the black and they went to S Street. When they got there they found the pavement covered with people. For a small group of women had gathered at Connecticut and Florida avenues with the aim of marching to his home to stand before him and let him know t
hat they cared. As they marched other people came up to ask, What is it? Where are you going? And when they found out they too joined the double column. In the end the people numbered thousands.

  They stood in front of his house, and as the guns were firing in salute to the Unknown in Arlington across the river they shouted, “Three cheers for the greatest soldier of them all!” and gave those cheers. And “Three cheers for Woodrow Wilson!” and gave those cheers. Bursts of hand-clapping spontaneously broke out after he went inside, and spontaneously also people shouted for him. After a time there was a great roar, for the door opened and, leaning upon his cane, he came out and stood underneath the flag waving from his house because this day was Armistice Day and the soldier who served under him was being laid to rest. Three disabled young men, fellow soldiers in the past to that Unknown, sat in a car before his house, and when he saw them he went down the steps, Scott on one side, his cane holding him up on the other, and shook their hands. Hamilton Holt, long identified as a League supporter, came forward to speak for the people.