by Smith, Gene;
Woodrow Wilson’s eyes were on the ground as the applause slowly quieted. Edith stood behind him in a moleskin cape with sable collar. He moved forward one step and put on his hat so that he might lift his cane and with his good hand hook it into the top pocket of his overcoat. Then he took off his hat again and for perhaps thirty seconds he stood silent, swaying slightly. He raised his bowed head and peered at the ex-soldiers in front and at the people in the street. He moved the right hand holding the high silk hat in a vague gesture and then he began to speak.
“Senator Glass, ladies and gentlemen: I am indeed deeply touched and honored by this extraordinary exhibition of your friendship and confidence; and yet I can say without affectation that I wish you would transfer your homage from me to the men who made the Armistice possible. It was possible because our boys had beaten the enemy to a standstill. You know—if you will allow me to be didactic for a moment—‘Armistice’ merely means ‘standstill of arms.’ Our late enemies, the Germans, call an Armistice ‘Waffenstillstand,’ an armed standstill; and it was the boys who made them stand still.” There was laughter and applause. “If they had not, they would not have listened to proposals of armistice. I am proud to remember that I had the honor of being the commander in chief—” Someone yelled, “The best on earth!” “—the commander in chief of the most ideal army that was ever thrown together—” And his voice broke and his eyes filled for a moment and he said, “Pardon my emotion,” and went on: “Of the most ideal army that was ever thrown together, though the real fighting commander in chief was my honored friend Pershing, to whom I gladly hand the laurels of victory. Thank you with all my heart for your kindness.”
He turned away and put on his hat. He said, “That’s all I can do.” Huston Thompson of the Federal Trade Commission, a former student at Princeton, stepped forward to help him back to the house, and as the crowd cheered, the band broke into the hymn How Firm a Foundation. But as Thompson took his arm he moved his lips. Above the cheers and the music Thompson could not understand the whispered words; Thompson put his ear to the speaker’s lips and faintly heard, “Stop the band. I have something more to say.” Thompson waved his arms at the band to quiet them and they stopped playing and again S Street became completely silent.
Before, Woodrow Wilson had spoken in a monotone, and what he said was mild, graceful enough, of no real significance. It was a sick old man’s few remarks in front of his house; it meant nothing. But now he was going to speak again for one moment, one paragraph, and he was going to find it in him to speak so that his voice, suddenly strong, would carry to the outermost reaches of the crowd ranging down S Street’s hill; to the little boys perched up in the maple trees; to the people on the sloping mud banks across the street. For this moment, this one last instant, that voice was the voice of the Professor Wilson who long ago called to the students at the football games that they should cheer louder for the team; the voice was that of the President in the West crying aloud that there would be a terrible war if the nation did not enter the League. These were the last words he was ever going to say in public. The long crusade was over. This was summation—valedictory. And no tears.
He said:
“Just one word more; I cannot refrain from saying it. I am not one of those that have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns. Thank you.”
On Christmas Eve they went to Keith’s. Helen Bones, who introduced them—(eight years … Edith Galt in muddy shoes and the President in tatty golfing suit and Grayson saying he thought the ladies could at least invite the men for tea)—Helen was down from New York for the holiday and so was Margaret. Two strong doormen waited at the alley entrance to the theater and half carried him in to Seat U-21. The headliners that night were the madcaps Olsen and Johnson, the latter playing a maniac version of Santa Claus, and the final set was of a living room with a fireplace. Above the fireplace was a portrait of Woodrow Wilson. The cast came out on the stage for the finale, and the actress Nan Halpern stepped forward and said to the audience in the dark, “Merry Christmas to you and you and you.” She turned her back and went to the picture and looked up at it and said, “And to you, an abundance of Yuletide blessings and a bountiful year.” The people in the theater were entirely silent then, both those on the stage and those sitting before them, for she was raising herself to the picture and she was holding it in her arms and pressing her lips to it in a long sweet embrace. Down the aisle came showgirls. They carried roses. They went to Row U and handed them over. Onstage the cast began to sing Auld Lang Syne and at the first slow familiar notes the audience got up—every last one of them, Olsen noted—and stood and turned toward Seat U-21 and sang along with the orchestra. This was no ordinary singing, Olsen thought. He had never heard such singing. At the end there was a long silence that seemed to Olsen to last and last until one of the girls on the stage stepped forward to the footlights. The brightness illuminated her tears glittering down through the mascara and stage make-up. She said, “Merry Christmas, Mr. President.”
Four days later, December 28, they celebrated his birthday. Richard Linthicum, a Democratic Party publicist, sent a limerick:
On S Street resides a great sage
Whose name brightens history’s page.
Is he old? Fiddlesticks!
One year past sixty-six—
A very young age for a sage.
Outside when he went for his afternoon drive at three o’clock there waited a magnificent birthday gift from a group of his old friends and associates. It was a Rolls-Royce, specially constructed to make his entrances and exits easier. It was black with a thin orange stripe—Princeton’s colors. On the doors was “W.W.”
New Year’s came and Helen and Margaret left. Now he was alone with Edith, to whom he had always been My Dear One, My Beloved, My Darling, My Own; to whom he would always be these. Her smiles to cheer him did not stop, but now in this last winter, these last weeks and days, he could hardly see her or the letters he dictated. His pen dragged badly when he tried to sign his name; one letter to the Misses Ford of Bournemouth was filed away with a notation by Bolling: “Not sent on account of bad signature.” For days, in fact, he lay too weary and spent to try even to lift his pen. But on January 16 he asked Cordell Hull, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, to bring the members of the committee, in session in Washington, to call. They came in a fleet of taxicabs driving up S Street through a heavy cold rain. They hurried in through the outer doors thrown open for the first time—for this was his first reception—and formed a line to go up the staircase. There were 125 of them. Edith stood at the top of the steps in front of the library, where he sat before a blazing fire. In a green afternoon frock, she shook hands with each visitor, but constantly, every few seconds, she turned her head to look at her husband. The guests went single file into the library to where Hull stood by to say their names quietly. There was no cheering, no music; there were no speeches. There were hardly any words. For each person there was a slow lifting of the right hand no more than six inches in the air, but above the rustling of the moving people and the swish of their damp clothing nothing he might have said in his weak voice could have been heard. His lips moved and there was an almost imperceptible nod of the head; that was all. He grew ever more fatigued as the line kept coming, and his head sagged forward, so that he could no longer look up into the anxious faces of the people gently reaching their hands out to his. After an hour it was over. He had shaken the hand of every man and woman.
Four days later, on January 20, terribly weak, he met for a few minutes with Raymond Fosdick, who, although an American, had served as a League of Nations official in Geneva. Fosdick asked him how he felt, and he said he would reply by quoting something another President said when asked about his health: “John Quincy Adams is all right, but
the house he lives in is dilapidated, and it looks as if he would soon have to move out.” But mostly they talked of the League. Constantly he talked about 1914 and the utter wastage of the war. “It must never happen again!” he said. “There is a way of escape if only men will use it.” The escape was the League, the authority of law substituted for the authority of force, he said. His voice rose when he spoke of criticisms of the League as a too-idealistic conception. “The world is run by its ideals,” he said. He grew excited and tears rolled down his face when he said to Fosdick that it was unthinkable that America would permanently stand in the way of human progress; it was unthinkable that America would remain aloof, for America would not thwart the hope of the race. His voice broke and he whispered huskily that America was going to bring her spiritual energy to the liberation of mankind. Mankind would step forward, a mighty step; America could not play the laggard. Fosdick was young, and when Fosdick rose to go he pledged in the name of the younger generation that they would carry through to a finish the uncompleted work. At this the tears flowed unimpeded. Fosdick wrote it all down: “My last impression of him was of a tear-stained face, a set, indomitable jaw, and a faint voice whispering, ‘God bless you.’ With his white hair and gray, lined face, he seemed like a reincarnated Isaiah, crying to his country: ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!’”
January in Washington is cold and damp. Cary Grayson wanted to get away for a little while and Bernard Baruch obliged him by offering an invitation for a week’s shooting at his South Carolina estate.* On January 26, Saturday, Grayson came to S Street for a few moments before heading for the train south. The doctor was seen to the door by the mistress of the house, who said as they walked down the stairs that she was very worried about her husband, for he seemed so weak. She asked Grayson if he shared this fear, and Grayson said, “No. If I did, I would not leave him, and if you want me to give up the trip, I will. But I think you are mistaken.”
She left Grayson and went up to her husband’s room, where he sat with his head bowed. She asked how he felt; he said, “I always feel badly now, little girl. Somehow I hate to have Grayson leave.”
She said, “He is still downstairs. Let me run and tell him and he will stay.” She made as if to go, but he caught her hand. “No. That would be a selfish thing on my part. He is not well himself and needs the change.” But then he said, “It won’t be very much longer, and I had hoped he would not desert me. But that I should not say, even to you.”
And so Grayson left. On Sunday the invalid went over his mail, but he seemed terribly, terribly tired. On Monday he was even weaker. On Tuesday night the nurse on duty, Lulu Hulett, said to Bolling that she thought her patient was a very sick man. She asked Bolling if Grayson was in Washington. Bolling told her the doctor was in South Carolina. She said, “Oh, I wish he were here.” That night, a little after midnight, Edith decided that Grayson, gone four days, must be recalled. She went to her brother’s room and woke him to say that she wanted Grayson to be telegraphed. Bolling got up and sent a prearranged code telegram, charging it to the telephone of another brother, Wilmer Bolling, so that no word of the crisis might leak out. The wire did not arrive at Baruch’s South Carolina place until morning, and as Grayson was already out shooting, he did not see it until noon. When he did, he telephoned and said he would take the next train north. He would be in Washington on Thursday morning and would come to the house at once.
Grayson arrived at ten on Thursday and examined the patient, who had sent word to Bolling that unless there was something of great importance in the mail he would let all correspondence go for a day. Later on Thursday, in the afternoon, Edith asked Grayson if the girls should be notified. Grayson said perhaps not; doing so would alarm them unnecessarily. But the woman’s eye—the wife’s—had seen something the doctor had missed. All that night the two of them sat with the patient, and when Bolling arose at eight his sister told him it was time to tell the girls. Grayson came down and said she was right. Margaret was in New York; they telephoned her and she said she would be down on the next train. Nellie was at her home in California; Jessie was in Bangkok, where her husband was acting as adviser to the Government of Siam. The telegrams went out: CONSIDER CONDITION EXTREMELY SERIOUS. Nellie wired Edith: OUR DEAR LOVE TO YOU BOTH DARLING. WE ARE LEAVING TOMORROW FOR WASHINGTON. SURE EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL RIGHT. She and McAdoo took reservations on the Santa Fe Railroad’s California Limited leaving Los Angeles at 11:30 A.M. Saturday. Nothing was heard from Jessie, but the Siamese Embassy in Washington offered all aid in expediting messages to and from Bangkok.
Later that day, Friday, word leaked out and brought a platoon of reporters to S Street. Grayson went to speak with them. There was no attempt to minimize the gravity of the situation; Grayson said frankly that the situation was very bad. That evening every paper in America told its readers: WOODROW WILSON VERY WEAK. END IS THOUGHT TO BE VERY NEAR. FAMILY OF EX-PRESIDENT SUMMONED TO BEDSIDE. As the papers appeared on the streets the reporters were phoning in a statement by Grayson that it could be only a matter of time. A rumor spread through Washington that the dying man was delirious and that in his mind he was back in 1919 where he still sat in the White House leading the fight for ratification of the League.*
Other doctors came, H. A. Fowler and Sterling Ruffin, both of whom attended him in the White House. (Ruffin had had another professional duty to perform that day. With two other doctors he went as a Senate-appointed committee to determine if Albert Fall, who once went to a sickroom to see if the President of the United States was insane, was too ill to testify before the Senators investigating Teapot Dome. Fall said he was far too sick. Ruffin and the other doctors did not agree.) When Fowler and Ruffin arrived, Grayson went into the sickroom to say that the two doctors were coming in to make an examination. When they came in behind Grayson, there was a tiny smile from the patient, and a faint whisper: “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
Last jest, thought Grayson.
Grayson stayed when the other doctors left. Late that night, after the fog came in and covered S Street and the reporters shivering in front of the dimly lit house and in a flimsy little construction shack in an empty lot nearby, Grayson said to his patient what was the truth: that he was dying. Woodrow Wilson listened and breathed, “I am a broken piece of machinery. When the machinery is broken …” His voice petered out. There was a moment’s silence in the sickroom where hung the original of the most famous Red Cross poster—“The Greatest Mother in the World”—and where he lay in the replica of the White House’s Lincoln bed underneath a picture of the American flag and across from the fireplace where stood the casing of the first shell fired at the enemy. Then he said, “I am ready.”
Outside, unasked, the morning milk wagons detoured around the block so that there would be no noise. It was barely light and cold February dawn had hardly come when one of the servants came out and busied himself sweeping the steps. The reporters came rushing up to ask for Grayson. The servant said the doctor had spent the entire night with his patient and could not come out now. The reporters became insistent and the servant went inside and closed the door. But shortly he had to open it again and again, for a flood of telegraph boys came bicycling up S Street. They bore messages for Edith: THREE HUNDRED GIRLS OF GALLOWAY WOMENS COLLEGE ARKANSAS SEND THEIR PRAYERS AND DEEPEST SYMPATHY TO YOU IN THIS TIME OF CRISIS AND THEIR LOVE TO THAT TRUEST AMERICAN YOUR HUSBAND … The Newport News, Virginia, Young Men’s Hebrew Association … The Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Greek Association … TONIGHTS PAPERS SAY THAT YOUR ILLUSTRIOUS HUSBANDS CONDITION IS SUCH THAT HIS PASSING AWAY IS MOMENTARILY EXPECTED STOP IF THIS IS SO THE GREATEST AMERICAN SINCE LINCOLN IS PASSING STOP LET ME SORROW WITH YOU STOP A FORMER AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE CAPTAIN J A LYNCH CRESSON PENNSYLVANIA … The American Women’s Club of Vancouver, British Columbia.… Forrest Cavalry of the United Confederate Veterans … OUR TENDEREST SYMPATHY GOES OUT TO YOU FROM OVERFLOWING HEARTS. WE LOVED HIM SO DEARLY.
MR AND MRS LAWRENCE C WOODS DAYTONA BEACH FLORIDA.
With the breaking day, Saturday, February 2, the people came. They gathered before the house, waiting. The trees stood bare above the lines the police put up to hold them back, and autos inched their way up S Street’s hill. Callers stepped from cars to leave their cards in a silver tray Scott held in his hand when he came to the door. Mr. and Mrs. William Howard Taft left their cards, and Mr. and Mrs. Alben W. Barkley, and Daisy Harriman, and Cordell Hull; the French Ambassador, the Italian Ambassador, Herbert Hoover, Oscar W. Underwood, the widowed Florence Kling Harding. Anna Hamlin, with whom Edith had walked along the shores of Buzzards Bay as Moses, the spaniel, played about them, wrote on her card just: “Dear love—”