When the Cheering Stopped

by Smith, Gene;

  “Mr. Wilson,” Holt said, his voice carrying to the outermost reaches of the crowd and to the trees brown with November’s leaves, “we congratulate you, a wounded soldier of the World War. You have our respect and our affection. Your work will not die.” The people burst into applause, but then those in front turned and beat at that applause with their hands, crying “Hush! Hush! He’s going to speak!” Silence fell. He took off his hat and moved forward one step.

  It had been two years and two months since Pueblo. I believe that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face. There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before. He said, “I wish …” His voice was broken and quavering. His hand was shaking; the high silk hat he held was trembling. “I wish I had the voice to reply …” Tears ran down his cheeks to the black coat. “… to reply and to thank you for the wonderful tribute …” The faces before him were strained as the people leaned toward him as if to lend him strength to go on. “… for the wonderful tribute you have paid me. I do thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless you.” He tried to turn away, but the people pushed forward and threw flowers before him. He groped for his wife’s hand and found it, and it was wet, for she was crying, crying, Edith Bolling Wilson crying as though she were a little girl back in Virginia long before the nights when he lay in the Lincoln bed and she at her desk worked on the papers and looked across at the lights of the State, War and Navy Building. He waved his hat and at the last kissed his hand to them and then he was gone, the thin shoulders shivering as his wife and his servant took him inside. The people sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”

  For hours after that the people stayed in the street although police came and asked them to please move on and clear the area. The aged Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi sat on the ground on the terrace across the street and tried to hear what the people were saying as they slowly went away, always casting long glances back. But the Senator’s hearing was bad and so he relied upon his wife to tell him what they were saying. She gave him the comments she picked up and he thought to himself that it was remarkable, remarkable, that so many people would gather with nothing to be accomplished of any actual use but that tribute be shown to a broken old man in a tall silk hat.

  The writer Ida Tarbell saw something else: that the crippled body was as the crippled hopes of the people who went to war with the wish and belief that by so doing they would make the world better, and good, and clean, and right; she saw them as asking if he too had lost his hopes and ideals, his faith and vision, the ability to believe. “They seek him,” she wrote. “He means something to them; they don’t quite know what. He is a living link with their noblest phase.” They wanted to see him, she wrote, to get, if only in a fleeting glimpse, something that would bid them to live again as they did in the great but quickly dead moment of their Great Crusade, the war. She called her article “The Man They Cannot Forget.”

  * Writing the letters of refusal was Bolling’s job, but occasionally the ex-President dictated one in his own words and name. To a publisher asking if he would write an autobiography he replied: “There ain’t going to be none.” Asked for a statement on the virtues of grinning—this by the promoters of National Smile Week—he dictated: “I have no message to send on such a silly subject.”

  13

  Joe Tumulty was warm, alive, enthusiastic, a wonderful story-teller. His negro stories were very good, his German accent was first-rate, and his Irish brogue was perfection itself. Edith Bolling Wilson thought him a cheap political hack from Jersey City. She had never liked him, she told people. In April of 1922, Tumulty asked the ex-President if it would not be a good idea to send a greeting message to the Jefferson Day banquet of the National Democratic Club in New York. “It would hearten and inspire everybody,” Tumulty wrote his former chief. The ex-President wrote back to Tumulty at Tumulty’s Washington law office, “I do not feel that the occasion is a specially appropriate one for breaking my silence.”

  Tumulty telephoned S Street and spoke to the lady of the house. “Mrs. Wilson,” he said, “can’t you get the Governor to send a letter to this dinner in New York?” She said, “Why, Mr. Tumulty, he answered your letter yesterday. Haven’t you gotten it?” Tumulty said that he had indeed gotten the letter but still hoped the Governor would change his mind. He asked if he might not call that afternoon. She said he could if he wanted to, and from three to three-thirty Tumulty sat with his former chief in the library.

  On April 8, 1922, the dinner was held. A woman speaker read off messages of greetings from persons not able to attend. Among the messages was one typed on yellow paper that looked, to the audience, like a telegraph form: “Say to the Democrats of New York that I am ready to support any man who stands for the salvation of America, and the salvation of America is justice to all classes. Woodrow Wilson.” The audience cheered. Immediately afterward, the chief speaker of the evening made an address. The chief speaker was James Cox, the defeated Presidential candidate of 1920 and a potential candidate for 1924. The next day the New York Times said, “Cox Boom Launched on Wilson Keynote of Justice for All.”

  The Times headline brought consternation to S Street. At once a letter went out asking the newspaper upon what authority it represented the alleged message as anything but “an absolute fabrication.” Another letter went to Tumulty asking his aid in determining how such a message was given to the banquet. The explanation was that Tumulty had typed the message on the yellow paper but had not meant it to be interpreted as the ex-President’s endorsement of Cox. The reporters present had misunderstood the import of the words, Tumulty announced to the public. The whole thing came from a “casual conversation with me at Mr. Wilson’s home on Friday last when he remarked he would support any candidate who stood for justice for all,” he told the Times. “He simply gave a casual message to me in a casual manner. It had nothing to do with any individual.” The Times published Tumulty’s explanation and with it reported that members of the National Democratic Club felt the whole thing was a “slight misunderstanding” that would easily be cleared up.

  But this was no slight misunderstanding to S Street. Mrs. Wilson was in a fury and her husband was upset and unnerved. Tumulty wrote and apologized profusely and asked if he could not come and explain, but no hearing was granted him. Tumulty was terribly disturbed and frightened of what might be coming and wrote again to say that he hoped his explanation to the Times would clear the air, but that if it did not, and further action was to be taken from S Street, it did not matter to him: “I will never engage in a controversy with you. No slight bruise nor public rebuke from you can in any way lessen my devotion and affection.”

  “Sob stuff,” said Edith Bolling Wilson to this, and the next day the Times printed a letter to the editor:

  My dear Sir:

  I notice in the issue of the Times this morning an article headed “Doubt Cast on Wilson Message to the Cox Dinner.”

  I write to say there need be no doubt about the matter. I did not send any message whatever to that dinner nor authorize anyone to convey a message.

  I hope that you will be kind enough to publish this letter.

  Very truly yours,

  Woodrow Wilson

  The ground was completely out from under Tumulty’s feet. He had said he bore an informal message to the dinner; Woodrow Wilson had said there was no message. Reporters came to Tumulty. He said, “If Mr. Wilson says the message was unauthorized, then I can only say I deeply regret the misunderstanding which has arisen between us. I certainly would not have given the message if I had not believed it to be authorized.”

  Tumulty did something else. He wrote a letter to Edith Bolling Wilson:

  The colloquy between poor Julie and Louise in t
he play of “Liliom” gives a perfect picture of my feelings in this vital matter. It is as follows:

  Louise: Is it possible for some one to hit you hard like that—real loud and hard—and not hurt you at all?

  Julie: It is possible, dear, that some one whom you love may beat you and beat you and beat you—and not hurt you at all.

  That is the way I feel toward the Governor. I want you to feel, you who have been so wonderful and generous to me in all things, that I shall always be around the corner when you or yours need me.

  I expect no reply to this letter. I shall understand.

  Cordially and sincerely yours,

  Joseph P. Tumulty

  Joe Tumulty was right to expect no reply, for none ever came. And when he said he understood, he told the truth. His understanding was shown by the fact that he wrote to Edith Bolling Wilson and not her husband.

  Joe Tumulty never saw Woodrow Wilson again.

  The law offices of Wilson & Colby opened a few months after the two partners left government service. Elaborate suites were maintained in New York and Washington, and stupendous offers of business poured in. Colby was ecstatic at the giant retainers proposed for the services of a former President and a former Secretary of State, but every potential client was turned away by order of the senior partner. For Woodrow Wilson was not going to capitalize upon the position which once he had held. The Government of Ecuador asked if Wilson & Colby would assist in securing a United States loan for $12,000,000, and Colby hopefully wrote his partner that this “would be a very fine piece of business,” but the answer was no. An ex-President—or, rather, this ex-President—could not be a party to getting money from the government of which he had once been the head. The Western Ukrainian Republic sought Wilson & Colby’s help in obtaining recognition from the League of Nations, and the answer was that the senior partner could not make use of his influence with the League to make money for himself. Harry F. Sinclair and E. L. Doheny wanted the firm to act as consultants in the Teapot Dome matter, and Colby wanted to take the case, but Colby was vetoed—a former President’s name and authority could not be used to put pressure upon government employees investigating the oil scandal. The retainer suggested by Doheny and Sinclair was $100,000. Another group of men in a different matter offered half a million for representation, but again were turned down by the senior partner. Colby wrote, “To a man who has spent his life in the rough and tumble of the legal profession, as I have done, it makes one a little dizzy at times to turn away business which one’s professional brethren are bending every energy and resource to get, but it’s a fine game and worth the candle as long as we can hold out.” To Mrs. Wilson, Colby said, “Day after day I sit in my office and see a procession walk through—thousands and thousands of dollars—and not one to put in our pockets.” But, “It is a sublime position on the part of your husband.”

  It could not go on, of course. It seemed that in the ex-President’s mind there was the picture of a Robin Hood type of operation in which Wilson & Colby helped unfortunate people in trouble and with no other redress. But things did not work that way. The people who came did so because they wanted the twenty-eighth President of the United States to fight corporations for them or do battle with the government, and always for many thousands of dollars. After a year had passed, the senior partner’s fees totaled just five thousand dollars (most of which was spent to buy his wife a Rausch & Lamb electric auto) and the junior partner, who insisted upon paying all expenses, was minus many thousands. There was, beyond the idealism and rigid concept of duty to the past, something else working against success of the firm. It was that although S Street’s occupant kept saying there was no such thing as brain fatigue and the more work you did the more you could do, this was not so. For he could not concentrate on the cases. He went only once to the office.

  Finally, in the fall of 1922, Colby asked if perhaps his partner wanted to reconsider his participation in the firm. It was not an easy thing for Colby to do, for he had believed this work would bring a meaning to the life of his former chief in the government. And it was not easy for that former chief to admit to Colby that perhaps it was best that they have done with the brave attempt. Let it be over, he wrote. Only, say the dissolution did not come through the dissatisfaction of either partner.

  Colby had tried hard to make it work; he had wanted to do right. He wired: YOU ARE THE DEAREST MAN IN THE WORLD. I WANT TO COME DOWN AND JUST TAKE YOU BY THE HAND. I LIKE TO FEEL THAT THERE IS NO HURRY ABOUT THE NEXT MOVE. I FEEL ALL BROKEN UP.

  Ten days later Colby got out a statement to the newspapers saying Mr. Wilson’s continued progress toward good health, so gratifying to his friends, caused him to turn his energies to other important questions, matters the importance of which could not be overestimated. Therefore he was withdrawing from the firm. His disciplined powers as a lawyer, his effectiveness as one, had been a veritable revelation.

  The next day Colby got a wistful letter: “I wish that it were all true.”

  And so 1922 passed. He was sixty-six that year, an old man trying to walk and asking Grayson when his health would come back. Cardinals sang in the garden by a red shrub near the wall and sometimes he sat there in the sun. The movie-theater audiences cheered when the newsreel would upon occasion show a brief shot of him going on his ride, and each day the Washington sightseeing buses paused in S Street and the tour guides pointed out Number 2340. The house itself was always quiet, the servants speaking in low tones so as not to disturb the old man dreaming through the long days or slowly lifting and dropping the cards as he played his game of Canfield. “I suppose and believe that I am getting better,” he wrote his son-in-law McAdoo, “but not in a way that would startle you with its rapidity or at all excite you with a sense of haste. Patience has never been my long suit but it now contains evidently all the winning cards, and I must do the best I can to stimulate it.” McAdoo knew, of course—they all knew; everyone knew—that there would never be a recovery, never any more good health, but the son-in-law wrote back that it was fine to hear from you, Governor, fine. It was like old times, Governor. Douglas Fairbanks was a friend of McAdoo and Nellie, and they had the actor arrange to make a short film of the two little granddaughters, complete with titles and all.

  In Edith’s mind there lived every minute of her day the knowledge that her husband could not be more than now he was. But her smile never faltered. He had no real work to do and the girls were gone, Nellie to California, Jessie to Massachusetts with Frank Sayre, Margaret to a series of New York jobs, and he had only Edith, nothing but the lilting sweet buoyant part of her nature she saved for him and him alone. He was dying by degrees, he was an old dying man given to dull spells of noiseless sobbing, but she loved him as few women have ever loved a man, and alone she carried him forward, cheering him with her jokes and her whistling. “She is simply great,” wrote Carter Glass, “not divine as we often say in exaggeration, but with human qualities that are nearest akin to the divine.” She had been brutal with Tumulty, but she would have been so to anyone who in any way disturbed her man if only for an instant. She did not regret for one moment that Tumulty was hurt, and lonely for Woodrow Wilson. Tumulty had given her man embarrassment with his message to the dinner, Tumulty had upset the quiet of S Street for a few days, and that was enough for S Street’s mistress. Tumulty could go to the devil, and James Cox along with him, and so could anyone else who brought an increased trembling to her man’s shaking hands. Every day she told John Randolph Bolling, her brother turned secretary, just which letters should be read out loud and which should not. Let one letter contain a word that might bring upset to the man it was addressed to, and that man would never know the letter had been written. Let Tumulty beg to be allowed a visit, let him beg John Randolph and Wilmer, another brother, let him ask Carter Glass to intercede, and Grayson also, but no visit would be allowed. She had had enough of Joe Tumulty. Franklin D. Roosevelt might write asking for an autograph, but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s hospitality
to Lord Grey was not forgotten, nor was the resentment of the then-President of the United States, nor the possibility that mention of Roosevelt’s name might bring emotion now, and so Bolling wrote that Mr. Wilson must beg to be excused from complying with Mr. Roosevelt’s request.

  So she fought to bring him peace. But in the crushed body and in the tortured mind there yet lived the man Woodrow Wilson. His wife thought of him as a wonderful, beautiful, wounded eagle chained to a rock, and so he seemed to many others. But he was an eagle that longed to fly. For years he had been at the heart of great events, and now simply to sit alone, protected and sheltered, was not enough. He began to work on a paper he called The Statement or The Document. It would embody his ideas on how the country should be run and what the ultimate meaning of America was. Those who surrounded him in the great days were asked to contribute their thoughts and recommendations—Bernard Baruch, ex-Secretary Houston, ex-Secretary Baker, Colby, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, all were asked to give guidance in their various fields of expertise. Central to The Document, of course, was that America must enter the League; the other economic and agricultural plans surrounded this. It was never established just how The Document would one day be used, but perhaps it would be given to all Democratic candidates for office, they to subscribe to its provisions or face the denunciation of the former titular leader of the party. Or perhaps it would be given to newspapers as a guideline for the entire country. There was something else The Document could be used for, also: it could be made the explosive charge that would propel a well man, cured, free, able to walk, himself as once he had been, into one more try for the Presidency. But no one mentioned that. He did not ever say it himself, and of his people there was not a one who could find it to say aloud that he was before their eyes slipping into that grave whose digging began the day in Paris when he fell ill; that his skin was the color of yellowed parchment and drawn down over his temple and cheekbones so that the long sharp nose came into new prominence; that he could never again be anything but this that he was: Yesterday.