White House gossip : $b from Andrew Johnson to Calvin CoolidgeColman, Edna M. (Edna Mary)
History
White House gossip : $b from Andrew Johnson to Calvin Coolidge
Colman, Edna M. (Edna Mary)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Washington (D.C.) -- Social life and customs; White House (Washington, D.C.)
Throughout the President’s long illness and up to the moment when
Warren G. Harding took office, Mrs. Wilson’s life at the White House
was full. She was called upon to perform many services for her country
far beyond the mere wifely duties of caring for a loved sick one. The
iron of criticism burned into her soul when his helplessness, incurred
in the line of duty as surely as the wound of any soldier on the field,
was turned against him. With an outward stoicism, she busied herself
with the job of keeping her husband alive and of getting him well
enough to handle the reins of the government himself, before they were
tugged out of his limp hand by governmental action.
Vice President Marshall was approached by men of both parties and
pressed to assume the executive duties when it became known in a
limited circle that the President had suffered two cerebral strokes and
that his death was considered imminent. The Vice President steadily
refused to act other than as a substitute in such formal matters as the
reception and entertainment of distinguished visitors as in the case
of the King and Queen of Belgium. Until the President resigned or some
properly constituted tribunal declared the government without a head,
he would not assent to any such plan.
Mrs. Wilson adapted herself to her husband’s moods. With the instinct
of a loving woman she knew the struggle of this man, dominant,
autocratic, and self-sufficient, baffled in his efforts to put his
policies into execution. She staged every diversion that would tend
toward relaxation.
When the trembling, scraggly signature to the state documents brought
forth a fresh attack of criticism and a more determined effort to
bring about the transfer of authority which Mrs. Wilson felt would
be contrary to her husband’s wishes and the best interests of his
following, she managed to secure a type of writing board which
supported the weak hand in its work of inscribing the necessary
“Woodrow Wilson” in the proper place.
The President’s pleasure in motion pictures resulted in Mrs. Wilson’s
having a regular daily show for his benefit in the East Room during
1920 and 1921, until the morning of the 3d of March. Producers
everywhere sent films. In all, more than 400 pictures were shown, many
of them first productions. When he was able to go about in his wheeled
chair, he liked to be taken over the house. The daily trip diverted
him. On pleasant days he visited the sun parlour on the roof.
Following his collapse, for five months he lay a shattered wreck, and
it was February, 1920, before he was able to make his first motor trip.
President Wilson decided to make his permanent home in Washington, and
purchased a commodious dwelling on S Street, where he had as neighbours
the family of Herbert Hoover.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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