First Ladies

by Margaret Truman

  That was unquestionably Julia Grant’s attitude. In fact, she was far more interested in living in the White House than her husband, who saw himself as a soldier with little concern and less aptitude for politics. The leitmotiv of the Grants’ tenure was struck on inauguration day in 1869. After he took the oath of office and gave his speech, the new President walked across the platform to his wife and whispered: “Well my dear, I hope you’re satisfied.”

  In her memoirs, Julia downplayed her role as power broker but did portray Grant as a reluctant candidate. Their good friend General William Tecumseh Sherman may have had something to do with this stance. After the Republicans nominated Grant, Sherman warned Julia that now she would find out she was married to “a very bad man.”

  Julia was indignant. “Why, General,” she exclaimed. “General Grant does all things well. He is brave, he is kind, he is just, he is true.”

  “Oh my dear lady,” Sherman replied. “It is not what he has done but what they will say he has done…. You will be astonished to find out what a bad man you have for a husband.”

  Recalling this story after she left the White House, Julia said: “I was astonished too, but I grew not to mind it.”

  Having seen how attacks on their husbands caused other First Ladies so much pain and anguish, you may be surprised, as I was, by Julia Grant’s flippant dismissal of the critical slings and arrows that are an inevitable part of the presidency. To understand her attitude requires further recourse to her unique position as the wife of Ulysses S. Grant. These days Grant has faded from popular memory. His tomb on Riverside Drive in New York, once one of the major tourist attractions of the city, has been allowed to molder into a defaced, abandoned wreck, to the justified indignation of his descendants and the disgrace of the National Park Service, which is supposed to maintain it.

  In 1868 Ulysses S. Grant was as close to a sacred figure as any American had come since the death of George Washington. Unassuming, reticent, he was another small d democrat in Republican clothing whose appeal cut across all parties and classes. No one completely understood how this stumpy, silent man had saved the Union as it teetered on the brink of defeat in the Civil War. But he had saved it—and the slogan he offered to the exhausted nation seemed heaven-sent: “Let us have peace.”

  Another reason for Julia’s immunity to criticism of her husband was the simple fact that she adored him—and he adored her—with an extravagance seldom seen again in the White House until the Reagans arrived. The mansion has its share of touching love stories, but the Grants’ saga is the stuff of storybook romance. From the day she met him, Julia was convinced her laconic lieutenant was destined for “great things.” Her wealthy Missouri father did not think so—nor did Grant’s superiors in the U.S. Army, who handed him a series of deadend assignments that drove him to drink and finally to resignation from the service. But Julia’s faith in him apparently never wavered, and she followed “Ulys” from one discouraging job to another with a resolution that was doubly amazing for a woman raised in a mansion. It was named, incidentally, White Haven, perhaps another reason why Julia felt at home in the White House.

  The Grants had four children, and they added youthful good cheer to the aura of triumph the General and Julia brought to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Two older sons spent most of their time away at college, but thirteen-year-old Nellie was pretty and high-spirited like her mother. Ten-year-old Jesse was a hell-raiser who was constantly playing pranks and sneaking stories to reporters.

  Julia doted on Jesse, who, she claimed, “had an answer for everything.” In her autobiography (the first by a First Lady) she told how smoothly the scamp could outwit his father. One day Jesse showed up late for breakfast, and Grant gave him the standard parental lecture. (As a chronic late sleeper, I heard the Truman variation more than once.) “Jess, how is this? Nine o’clock and you just down to breakfast? When I was your age I had to get up, feed four or five horses, cut wood for the family, take breakfast and be off to school by eight o’clock.”

  Jesse smiled sweetly at his father and said: “But you did not have such a papa as I have.”

  When the whole family was in residence, the Grants frequently assembled in Julia’s bedroom at the end of the day for a half hour of teasing and storytelling. In her autobiography, Julia wrote a charming description of the scene. She lay on her bed, one of the boys often stretched across the foot, and the President sat next to him smoking a cigar. Nellie sat in a cushioned chair, “radiant in the beauty of youth and a full dinner dress,” while jokes and gossip flew back and forth. “These half hours were the [White House] times we really enjoyed most,” Julia said.

  Julia also thoroughly enjoyed taking charge of the White House. She was the first First Lady in decades to do something about its dilapidated condition. With a little help from her victorious General, she browbeat Congress into voting funds for a thorough overhaul. One of her innovations caused Congress to rumble and growl about the First Lady wasting money on a newfangled idea: closets. The more things change, the more Congress remains the same.

  The First Lady also took charge of the mansion’s servants with a firmness worthy of her military background. Discipline had disintegrated under the distracted Lincolns and Johnsons. Ushers, sweepers, and messengers hung around the north door, chatting with the doormen, smoking pipes, and heating their lunches as if they were on bivouac. Julia banned the hangers-on forthwith and ordered the doormen to start wearing black dress suits and white gloves. They were to stand at attention while on duty, and smoking was strictly forbidden.

  The staff groused at first, but they soon learned that the First Lady practiced another army tradition: she cared about the welfare of the lower ranks. Warmhearted and kind, Julia seldom gave unreasonable orders. She fretted about their low pay and was always ready to help if anyone needed a loan because of a family illness or some other misfortune. Often she advised the staff to invest their spare cash in real estate, which was selling at bargain rates in the expanding capital. One of the black staffers, Henry Harris, declined to take this advice. Julia nagged and pestered him and finally ordered him to buy some land. When he died, his wife and children inherited a substantial estate.

  Succeeding White House families were grateful for another change Julia Grant made in the mansion’s rules and regulations. In 1869 the grounds were still open to the public, as a sort of park. When the First Lady went for a stroll with one of her children, she was often followed by “a crowd of idle, curious loungers.” She persuaded Ulysses to close the gates and post guards at them. Passersby could still peer at the First Family sitting on the South Portico, but that was a major improvement over having John Q. Public literally breathing down their necks.

  Along with launching major redecorations of the East Room, the Blue Room, and other state rooms downstairs, Julia Grant purchased new china, 587 pieces in an earth color called Grecian. In the center was a cluster of various American flowers, with no two plates exactly the same. Julia also strove to banish bureaucratic stuffiness and make the old house warm and cheery. She put bright silk tydie bows on the backs of the parlor chairs and colorful pillows on the sofas. Lively prints decorated the walls.

  To this stylish White House, Julia invited foreign diplomats, members of Congress, and permanent and temporary Washingtonians for glittering receptions and elegant twenty-nine-course dinners. She had spent enough time in Washington as a general’s wife to perceive that if the First Lady chose to be, she was the social leader of the city. Julia chose to be. She prevailed on the President to come to her receptions, which quadrupled their attendance; everyone wanted to get a close look at the nation’s hero. Soon there was scarcely a man or woman in Washington who was not panting for invitations to the White House.

  Julia laid down strict rules for her guests, and she enforced them with military rigor. Ladies outside the Grant official family were expected to wear hats. In her autobiography, Julia wrote that sometimes a caller imposed upon her “good nature” by declinin
g to wear one. But this “little maneuver was never repeated by the same person.” Some guests encountered plainclothesmen Grant hired to make sure no one showed up with a gun or knife. Memories of Lincoln’s assassination still haunted the White House. These forerunners of the Secret Service were not above probing the contents of a lady’s purse or frisking surprised gentlemen.

  Julia Grant was the first First Lady to write her memoirs. She tried to get her reluctant husband elected to a third term and almost succeeded.(American Heritage Library)

  Thanks in part to Ulysses Grant’s stupendous fame, during his eight years in the White House the press discovered the Executive Mansion made good copy. Julia gave interviews, and her husband’s fondness for risking his presidential neck behind the two fastest horses in the district became national news. Pretty Nellie’s high jinks at midnight dancing parties were eagerly devoured by millions of readers. Descriptions of the incredibly elaborate dresses of the period all but exhausted the reporters’ supplies of adjectives.

  Julia’s affability and self-confidence made her one of the most popular First Ladies in White House history. She sometimes teased her famous husband in public and liked to show him up now and then. Once, when young Jesse vaulted over the porch railing of their summer cottage at Long Branch, New Jersey, Grant observed that it was a good way to get out of the house if the place caught fire. But he wondered how Julia would escape a conflagration. She stood up, put her hand on the railing, and vaulted over it in a perfect imitation of Jesse. “That way,” she said.

  There was a political purpose at work in the Grants’ relaxed, comfortable style. In Washington, D.C., nothing, however seemingly innocent, is completely devoid of politics. Both Grants saw their wholesome family, their lavish entertaining, as a projection of his slogan, “Let us have peace.” They were trying to steady the nerves and soothe the anxieties of a nation shaken by a civil war that had left in its wake a million dead and wounded and almost as many widows and orphans.

  For a while Julia and Ulysses succeeded admirably. The General was elected by a landslide for a second term in 1872. Then the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in the 1874 midterm elections and began investigating the Grant administration. They uncovered scandal after scandal. Millions in graft had gone to federal officials administering government contracts; the stench reached into Grant’s cabinet and White House staff. The President himself was not implicated. But the public discovered he was much too naive and trusting in his choice of subordinates.

  Before the political roof fell in, Julia managed an extravaganza which hypnotized the nation: her daughter Nellie’s wedding to a wealthy Englishman, Algernon Sartoris. They had met when eighteen-year-old Nellie toured Europe in the summer of 1873. Julia tried to talk her out of the union, but Nellie was as strong willed as her mother. After months of feverish speculation in the newspapers, the wedding was set for May 21, 1874. Julia and Nellie, followed by swarms of reporters, traveled to New York by special train to select her wedding dress. It was a traditional white satin gown covered by a great wavy overskirt of Brussels point lace that spilled into a six-foot train.

  At 11:00 A.M. on the great day, the bride descended the grand staircase preceded by eight bridesmaids in white satin, with overskirts of white illusion. Through the Blue Room and the Green Room the procession marched to the spacious East Room, where the groom met Nellie and escorted her to a platform beneath the central chandelier. The ceremony was performed there so it could be seen by all 250 guests.

  The White House was turned into a garden for the occasion. Masses of blossoms and ferns were banked against the walls. A wedding bell of white roses hung from the ceiling. Nellie’s veil was held in place by a wreath of white orchids and orange blossoms. Her gift from the groom was a loose bouquet of rare flowers that had been rushed from New York on a night train. Algernon, in a gesture of gender equality a hundred years ahead of his time, upset the Grants by insisting on carrying a bouquet of his own.

  After a reception and a viewing of the wedding presents in the upstairs Oval Room, the doors of the State Dining Room were thrown open to reveal a fantasy world full of ropes of flowers, with more banks of blossoms piled on silver trays at the end of the banquet table. The food was not as overwhelming as a twenty-nine-course state dinner, but it was enough to threaten any modern diner with indigestion. The guests started with softshell crab and worked their way through lamb, beef, wild duck, and chicken. The multi-tier wedding cake was served with chocolate pudding and baskets of chilled fruits. All this, plus descriptions of the gowns of the guests, many of them wives of the nation’s burgeoning crop of millionaires, pushed the rest of the news off the front pages of the newspapers.

  Afterward, the newlyweds drove to Union Station in a White House carriage while tens of thousands lined the streets and applauded. It would be nice to report that they lived happily ever after, but Sartoris turned out to be a cad and a bounder. However, he had the decency to die in 1893, leaving Nellie a very rich widow.

  Julia Grant enjoyed the White House so much, she hated the thought of leaving it in 1877. She brushed aside the numerous scandals as mere blemishes and urged the General to run for a third term. Grant demurred. He felt personally humiliated by the lapses of his appointees and yearned to escape politics.

  This led to a first-class contretemps between the President and his First Lady. The Pennsylvania state legislature—Republican controlled, of course—had passed a resolution urging Grant to run for a third term. Numerous Republican newspapers were voicing similar sentiments. One Sunday in the spring of 1876, Grant summoned the cabinet to the White House and read them a letter he had written to the Pennsylvania pols, declaring he would not be a candidate.

  Julia Grant noticed the cabinet members coming and going and wanted to know what they were doing in the White House on Sunday. Grant said he would tell her as soon as he “lighted his cigar.” He went off, supposedly in search of a match, and was gone several minutes. When he returned, he told her about the letter.

  “Why did you not read it to me?” Julia cried.

  “I know you too well. It would never have gone if I had read it.”

  “Bring it and read it to me now!” demanded Julia.

  Grant shook his head. “It is already posted. That’s why I waited to light my cigar, so it would be beyond recall.”

  “Oh Ulys! Was that kind to me? Was that just to me?”

  “I do not want to be here another four years. I don’t think I could stand it,” Grant said. “Don’t bother [me] about it, I beg of you.”

  Julia felt “deeply injured” for a while but she soon recovered her good cheer, and the presidential couple, deserted by the last of their children when Jesse went to college, often spent the evening in one of the upstairs parlors holding hands and chatting like a pair of youthful lovebirds. But Julia still had trouble tearing herself away from the White House. She hung on as hostess right through inauguration day, presiding at an elaborate luncheon for incoming President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife, Lucy, which had them wondering if she was ever going to depart. Julia barely kept her composure until she was in the privacy of the railroad car, where she hurled herself on her General’s broad chest and wept bitter tears.

  To console her, Grant suggested a trip around the world. Julia instantly accepted, foreseeing it would be a perfect way to wangle Ulysses into a third term: As we shall see in a later chapter, strong-willed Julia almost succeeded, with disastrous consequences for the Republican Party.

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  JULIA’S GRIEF ON LEAVING THE WHITE HOUSE WAS UNDERSTANDABLE if we recall the nomadic existence of the army wife. Number 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the closest thing to a permanent home the Grants had ever known. Mamie Doud Eisenhower’s experience in the U.S. Army replicates this roving life—and then some. She moved thirty-four times—seven times in a single year—before reaching the White House.

  Like Julia Grant, Mamie grew up in very comfortable circumstances, one of t
hree sisters whom well-to-do parents showered with money and attention. In a prophetic touch almost as good as Julia growing up in a house called White Haven, the Douds had a red carpet running down the front steps of their Denver home, apparently because there was always a party in progress.

  Cupid’s dart found its mark in Mamie’s heart when lithe, strong-jawed Lieutenant Dwight David (Ike) Eisenhower met nineteen-year-old Mamie while the Douds were spending the winter in San Antonio, Texas, in 1915. He’s about the handsomest male I’ve ever seen, she thought. Ike, known as the woman hater of nearby Fort Sam Houston, succumbed almost as instantaneously.

  Behind his Texas-size smile, Ike was a much sterner character than Ulysses S. Grant When his bride began to sob because he was leaving her to go on maneuvers less than a month after their wedding, Ike sat her down and said, as she recalled it a half century later, “Mamie, there is one thing you must understand. My country comes first and always will. You come second.”

  Mamie retaliated by going home to Denver whenever she found the Army too much to handle. For a while it looked as if the Eisenhower marriage might founder. It suffered a body blow when their firstborn son, Doud Dwight Eisenhower, nicknamed Icky, died of scarlet fever in 1921. Only with the arrival of a second child, John Sheldon Doud, did good feelings return. But in the 1930s Mamie let Ike spend a year in the Philippines without her because she did not like hot climates. Unlike the vigorous, robust Julia Grant, Mamie suffered from a number of illnesses—insomnia, dizzy spells (from an inner ear disorder, Ménière’s disease), a heart which beat with violent irregularity if she became fatigued or upset. These woes entitled her to spend a lot of time in bed—or justified yet another retreat to Denver.