Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  Such improvement led Wilson to want to give the State of the Union speech in person again when Congress reconvened in December. Grayson had to talk him out of it. He reminded the president that the ovation at the Capitol might overcome him and that his voice might give out. Grayson told Baker that Wilson “easily loses control of himself” and that “when he talks he is likely to break down and weep.” Although he did not go to Capitol Hill, Wilson did meet with congressional leaders at the White House on the day the session of Congress opened. The staff ushered into the Blue Room senators Lodge and Underwood, who was now the Democratic leader, and representatives Joseph W. Fordney of Michigan, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and Champ Clark, the former Speaker. Wilson walked in, holding his cane in his right hand; he did not shake hands with the men. He whispered to Underwood, “I used the excuse of this ‘third leg,’ as I did not want to shake hands with Lodge.” After the meeting, he told Grayson, “Can you imagine what kind of a hide Lodge has got, coming up here in these circumstances and wanting to appear familiar and talk with me. His hide has a different anatomical arrangement than any I have heard of.”35

  Wilson dictated and edited his last State of the Union message, which sparkled with his eloquence and opened with “an immortal sentence of Abraham Lincoln’s, ‘Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.’” He depicted democracy being put to the test in the world, and he wanted the United States to uphold democracy at home and champion weak nations abroad. Specifically, he called for a unified government budget, simplified taxes, loans to Armenia, and independence for the Philippines. “I have not so much laid before you a series of recommendations, gentlemen,” he concluded, “as sought to utter a confession of faith, of the faith in which I was bred and which it is my solemn purpose to stand by until my last fighting day. I believe this to be the faith of America, the faith of the future.”36

  Lame-duck sessions of Congress usually enact little legislation, and this Republican-controlled body was in no mood to please a partisan adversary in the dying days of his administration. In those circumstances, Wilson would have had little to do even if he had been in good health. He did veto some bills passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, including a measure to raise tariff rates back to pre-1913 levels. In a veto message written by Secretary of the Treasury Houston, the president warned that higher tariffs would hurt American farmers and that the United States had now become the world’s leading creditor nation, which meant that European nations must sell goods here in order to be able to pay their debts.37 This Congress still contained enough Democrats to sustain the veto, but the tariff bill offered a foretaste of a government in which the Republicans controlled both the executive and the legislative branches. This veto message accurately predicted the damage that higher tariffs would do to the American and international economy in the coming decade.

  Some of the time, Wilson occupied himself with thoughts about his future. Back in July, after the Democratic convention, he had talked about entering a new career, and he also occasionally thought about academic life and writing. Edith later recalled that shortly before they left the White House, she found him at his typewriter. He looked up at her and smiled as he said, “I have written the dedication to the book on Government for which I have been preparing all my life and which now I will have leisure to do.” The dedication began, “To E. B. W. I dedicate this book because it is a book in which I have tried to interpret life, the life of a nation, and she has shown me the full meaning to life.” Edith added in her memoir, “The tragedy is that this was the only page of that book ever written.”38

  Money worried her and her husband because Congress did not then provide an ex-president with a pension. In fact, they were in good shape financially. Wilson had saved money from his $75,000-a-year presidential salary, and a newspaper report later stated that he had $250,000 in the bank—a handsome sum in those days.39 A welcome addition to their assets came in December, when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Wilson the Nobel Prize for Peace for his role in founding the League of Nations. He was the second American president so honored—the first was Theodore Roosevelt, for his role in mediating the Russo-Japanese War. In addition to the honor, the Nobel Prize brought him a cash award of $40,000.

  Larger and still more welcome additions to the Wilsons’ finances would soon come from their wealthy friends. A group led by Cleveland Dodge and Bernard Baruch would raise money for them to purchase one of the White House limousines and a house in Washington. Over the next three years, these financial angels would establish a trust that would pay an annuity of $10,000 a year; Wilson would receive the first quarterly payment less than a month before his death. In the meantime, Wilson made a surprising move, apparently dictated by concerns about money. In February, he asked Secretary of State Colby what he planned to do after leaving office. Colby replied that he was going to practice law again; although the prospect did not excite him, he had to make a living. “Well, I, too, must make a living,” Wilson said. “As I was once a lawyer, why not open an office together here in Washington?” Although Edith soon told Colby that this was just a momentary impulse and not something to take seriously, the arrangements went forward, and Wilson casually remarked one day, “Oh, that reminds me, Tumulty—you can tell [reporters] I have decided to open a law office in partnership with Colby.”40

  Wilson made this move after he and Edith had decided where they would live after they left the White House. She later recalled that in Paris they had begun to consider various places. She drew up a list that included Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Boston, and New York, and they scored those cities for “Climate,” “Friends,” “Opportunities,” “Freedom,” and “Amusements.” Washington came out lowest, but they chose it anyway because he wanted to use the Library of Congress in writing his book, and, she said, “it was home to me.” Wilson wanted to build a house on a site overlooking the Potomac beyond Georgetown, and he had clipped articles and illustrations from architectural magazines. When the project proved impracticable, they considered several houses in the district and nearby Virginia, including Woodlawn, a plantation that had belonged to George Washington’s stepchildren. Edith did most of the house hunting, assisted by her brother Wilmer Bolling, who was in the real estate business. Eventually, she settled on a large, recently built house at 2340 S Street N.W., half a block off Massachusetts Avenue. Their benefactors put up $100,000 toward the purchase price of $150,000, and Wilson signed the deed on December 14. This would be home to both of the Wilsons for the rest of their lives.41

  During the new year, Edith busied herself with renovations to the house, adding an elevator and bookshelves for her husband’s library. In February, for the first time since his stroke, Wilson went to the theater, where the audience cheered him before and after the performance and between acts. His moods still seesawed. He was reliving past glories by watching newsreels of the European tour over and over. One last unpleasant duty remained before Harding’s inauguration on March 4. At six-thirty in the preceding evening, the president-elect and his wife paid the customary call on the outgoing president and First Lady. The visit, which lasted only twenty minutes, was cool and correct. Earlier, Edith had invited Florence Harding to the White House to discuss domestic arrangements. Given Wilson’s health, questions arose about whether he would attend the inauguration. At a cabinet meeting in January, Daniels recorded Newton Baker saying, “I hope you will not go if it is a cold & sleety day.” Wilson answered, “O that will not matter. I will wear a gas mask anyhow.”42

  Inauguration day, March 4, 1921, was clear and cold. Wilson rode from the White House to the Capitol beside Harding in an open car, with two old-line Republicans, Senator Knox and Representative Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois, the former speaker, sitting in front of them. People who lined up along Pennsylvania Avenue got their first glimpse of the president since his return from the speaking tour. One reporter described “the pathetic picture�
�� of him limping out of the White House to the car; beside the ruddy-faced, smiling Harding, the reporter wrote, Wilson looked like a living ghost.43 Harding was solicitous, helping him in and out of the car, but at the Capitol the younger man reinforced the contrast by bounding up the steps while Wilson had to use a wheeled chair to enter the building. Once inside, Wilson walked with his cane to the elevator that took him to the ornate President’s Room off the Senate chamber.

  One last painful encounter awaited Wilson in that room. Senator Lodge entered and informed the president that the houses of Congress had concluded their business and asked if he had any further communication to make to them. “Tell them I have no further communication to make,” Wilson replied. “I thank you for the courtesy. Good morning, Sir.” A reporter who was in the room noted, “There was something in the voice of the President and the way he uttered those words. … The President’s response was not uttered curtly or discourteously, but there was no mistaking the rigidity of the response.” Wilson then told Harding and the incoming vice president, Calvin Coolidge, that he could not attend the inaugural ceremony because the stairs were too steep for him. He joked to Knox, “Well, the Senate threw me down before, and I don’t want to fall down myself now.” Shortly before noon, the Wilsons, accompanied by Tumulty, Grayson, and a valet, left the Capitol and drove to S Street. A crowd cheered his arrival, and a group of League supporters marched up the street at three o’clock. Wilson came out several times and waved, but he declined calls to speak.44

  On that quiet, subdued note, the eight years of Wilson’s presidency ended. No one tried to look for silver linings in the clouds that had overhung his last year in the White House. He did receive many messages wishing him well, and public tributes usually hailed him as a prophet who had pointed the way toward a better world. No one tried, either, to disguise the struggle and conflict that had marked his time in office from the beginning or to pretend that he had not failed in his final quest. The most affecting valedictory came from the journalist who, besides Baker, knew Wilson best—Frank Cobb, the person to whom the president had bared his soul as he agonized over his decision to enter the war. Cobb closed his editorial in the New York World by affirming,

  Woodrow Wilson on this morning of the fourth of March can say, in the words of Paul the Apostle to Timothy:

  “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.

  “I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course, I have kept faith.”

  Those words pleased Wilson as he departed from the public arena and faced the prospect of the rest of his life.45

  25

  TWILIGHT

  Woodrow Wilson lived the rest of his life in twilight. He lived a month short of three years in the house on S Street, which Edith made into a refuge for and shrine to him. A replica of the big Lincoln bed took up much of his second-floor bedroom, at the back of the house. At his insistence, the bedroom harbored one object that Edith disliked and replaced after he died: over the mantel, where his eye alighted when he lay in bed, hung a painting he had bought of a young woman who reminded him of Ellen. On bright days, sunlight flooded through the bedroom’s south-facing windows, which looked out on a terraced backyard and garden and offered a verdant, flower-filled view in the spring and summer. On the first floor, between the library and the dining room, there was a solarium reminiscent of the White House portico where Wilson had spent many hours; in the dining room, French doors opened onto a large terrace. The weakness of Wilson’s left leg prevented him from walking on the grass in the yard.1

  The ex-president’s family worked to make the move to his new home as easy as possible for him. When the Wilsons arrived from the Capitol on inauguration day, familiar faces surrounded him at lunch. After the meal, as Edith recalled, Grayson said, “Mr. President—“to which her husband replied with a smile, “Just Woodrow Wilson.” He disliked being called Mr. President now, and he would henceforth discourage people from addressing him in that way. Catching himself, the doctor responded, “Mr. Wilson, I think you should excuse yourself and get some rest.” President Harding generously permitted Grayson, who was still an active-duty naval officer, to continue to serve as the ex-president’s physician. A succession of private nurses would care for him during the next three years. In place of Arthur Brooks, the thoughtful and efficient valet at the White House, Edith secured the services of a highly recommended couple, Isaac and Mary Scott, who soon became essential to Wilson’s comfort.2

  After a few days, Edith established a household routine. She brought in her bachelor younger brother, John Randolph Bolling, to be Wilson’s secretary. In frail health since childhood and hunchbacked, Randolph knew shorthand and typing and had helped out during the last months in the White House. He handled the voluminous correspondence at a desk in the hall outside Wilson’s bedroom and responded to most letters on Wilson’s behalf. Tending to the mail was Wilson’s first activity in the morning, followed by walking in the hall and being shaved by Isaac Scott. Unless guests came, he would stay in his bathrobe and slippers, having lunch in the bedroom and taking a nap in the early afternoon. Then, he would dress for the daily ride in the Pierce-Arrow and afterward receive a few visitors by the fireside in the library. He usually ate dinner on a small table in the bedroom while Edith read to him; later, she would have dinner with Randolph and come back to read to her husband again until nine or ten. Family visitors included his daughters Margaret, Jessie, and Nell and Stockton Axson, together with Edith’s relatives. The Wilsons and their visitors often watched movies in the library. Starting in April, they also went out each Saturday night to Keith’s Theater on Fifteenth Street, where the audience and sometimes even the actors applauded Wilson.3

  Despite this care, he did not make the transition well. He grew tired more easily, and he suffered a recurrence of the prostate problems. When Ray Stannard Baker visited two and a half weeks after they moved into the house, Wilson struck him as “lon[e]lier, more cut-off, than ever before. His mind still works with power, but with nothing to work upon!” When Baker told him that audiences at movie theaters were cheering him in the newsreels more than Harding, Wilson grumbled that once when he was in a theater, people had cheered Roosevelt louder. He managed a flash of humor. About hostile accounts of the peace conference in a recently published book and magazine article by Lansing he quipped, “I think I can stand it if Lansing can!”4

  The coming of spring in 1921 brought little cheer or solace to Wilson. In May, Tommy—as Wilson was still known to some—had to beg off a nearby reunion of the Witherspoon Gang from Princeton, telling one of them that newspapers exaggerated his improvement: “I have not yet the physical strength to venture so far afield.” When Baker visited again in May, Edith told him her husband had resisted suggestions that he do some work and was reading mostly mystery stories, and in the car he always wanted to ride along the same route. In June, Stockton Axson secretly reported to Hibben, who hoped to reconcile with Wilson, that he saw no improvement in the arm and leg and that Wilson could not seem to get interested in writing.5

  Practicing law with Bainbridge Colby did not occupy his mind the way he had thought it might. After going abroad briefly in the spring of 1921, Colby began to set up the practice, renting and furnishing offices in New York and Washington. According to Edith’s recollection, Grayson advised his patient not to take up work for a while, and remodeling problems delayed the opening of the Washington office until August. Wilson went there on the opening day, but that would be his only visit. A ceremonial appearance before a judge to be admitted to the District of Columbia bar would be his only other venture outside the house for the law practice. Colby sought to remedy his partner’s absence by installing three telephone lines from the office to the house, but there was little traffic on those lines at first. An ex-president and former secretary of state should have dazzled as rainmakers, but high-paying clients did not immediately flock to their practice.6

  When business finally picked
up, another obstacle loomed. Wilson nearly always found something ethically objectionable about prospective clients. Approached in February 1922 about a boundary dispute between Costa Rica and Panama, he told Colby, “I am sure you will agree with me that we should accept no business which might involve us in dealings with the Government of Costa Rica.” Four months later, in a matter involving Ecuador and American banks, he said, “Frankly, my dear Colby, I am not willing to have my name associated with this transaction.” He did agree to represent the bid of the breakaway Western Ukrainian National Republic for recognition by the League of Nations. Colby went to Europe in the fall of 1922 to look into the matter, but he found that they could do little on behalf of the Ukrainians.7

  In one instance, Wilson’s ethical qualms saved the partners from a painful embarrassment. In August 1922, representatives of the oil company owned by Harry Sinclair asked the firm to represent them in an upcoming Senate investigation into the leasing of the Teapot Dome oil reserves in Wyoming. They were offering a retainer that would, Colby noted, “swamp the inadequate financial returns that are involved in the Ukrainian business.” He did not give a figure, but Edith recalled that it was $100,000—a huge amount at the time. Wilson smelled a rat. “Colby must be a child not to see through such a scheme,” he told Edith. Because exploding political scandals soon made Teapot Dome a byword for corruption under the Harding administration, her memory may have exaggerated Wilson’s reaction—but not by much. He composed a letter to Colby stating that he did not know what the oil companies were up to, but reading the newspapers gave him “the impression that some ugly business is going on in respect to Teapot Dome.” Instead of sending the letter, however, he telegraphed to say that they should talk in person, and when Colby came to Washington and heard Wilson’s objections, he agreed to withdraw.8