Kati Marton (5 page)

Edith’s continued hostility toward Colonel House began to shake Wilson’s own confidence in him. Still, he tried to bring her around, while yielding a bit. “About him you are no doubt partly right. You have too keen an insight and too discerning a judgment to be wholly wrong,
even in a snap judgment of a man you do not know ….
His very devotion to me, his ardent desire that I should play the part in the field of international politics that he has desired and foreseen for me, makes him take sometimes the short and personal view when he ought to be taking the big and impersonal one …. You are going to love House someday …. You must remember, dear little critic,” he wrote, pleading for her to soften toward House, “that Sweetness and power do not often happen together.”

As he agonized about whether to declare war against Germany, Woodrow’s dependence on Edith deepened. “These are very solemn
thoughts, my precious one, my little partner, and they seem to draw me nearer to you than ever,” he wrote her on August 22. “As things thicken about me I more and more realize what you mean to me and more and more feel my dependence upon you to keep the darkness off ….” When Edith protested mildly that she did not have the background to be his adviser, he told her that even if he weren’t in love with her, he’d seek her “clear sighted counsel” above that of anyone else in the world, including House.

The president installed a direct phone line between her home and his office to circumvent the White House switchboard. He taught her how to use the secret code in which he communicated with his emissaries abroad. Edith soon learned to use the simple cipher that consisted of numbers based on a master key. From then on, like two children sharing a secret, the president would write secret messages in longhand and Edith would encode them in her own handwriting. Wilson would then type the code numbers out on his typewriter. She also decoded incoming messages for him. Edith was privy not only to the secret presidential code but to the personal code between Wilson and House. As she later noted proudly, “In this way I followed day by day every phase of the mosaic which he was shaping into a pattern of statecraft, and we continued this partnership of thought and comradeship unbroken to the last day of his life. It was a rare privilege, and except for formal interviews with officials, I always ‘sat in’ when one or two people we knew came to discuss policies. In that way I was never a stranger to any subject, and often able in small ways to be of help.”

Each day Edith awaited the arrival of his “big envelope” of state documents. “I am afraid this has been another wretchedly busy day for you,” she wrote on August 13, 1915, “for I know from the manifold things I found in my big envelope today—how thoroughly you are going into things. You are a dear person to take the time to write little sentences on each of the papers you send me …. I felt so queer this afternoon reading all these reports from the different theaters of war, sitting here in my quiet room …. I, an unknown person, one who had lived a sheltered, inconspicuous existence now having all the threads in the tangled fabric of the world’s history laid in my hands—for a few minutes—while the
stronger hand that guides the shuttle stops long enough in its work to press my fingers in token of the great love and trust with which you crown and bless my life.” She may have felt “queer” about all this statecraft dropping in her lap, but she eagerly awaited more. “Is it true that you have asked the Secretaries of War and Navy to give you suggestions for preparedness for war?” she asked him.

By now she was as enthralled by the political partnership as the emotional. “Much as I enjoy your delicious love letters,” she told him, “I enjoy even more the ones in which you tell me … of what you are working on … then I feel I am sharing your work and being taken into partnership as it were.” In one of her more revealing passages she wrote, “I love the way you put your dear hand on mine while with the other you turn the pages of history.”

The Washington press corps of the time respected the president’s privacy. It now seems remarkable, but no photographs of the president leaving Edith’s home near Dupont Circle were ever taken. But the capital’s rumor mill was active, passing on stories of the commander in chief in love. The salons savored each new morsel, but Wilson’s political allies were troubled. In September 1915, House, along with a handful of Wilson’s Cabinet members including Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo—Wilson’s son-in-law—and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, agonized over the potential political cost of Wilson’s infatuation. Daniels, Wilson’s oldest friend in the Cabinet, was chosen to warn Wilson against a too early remarriage. Less than a year after his wife’s death and one year before the presidential elections of 1916, his friends feared the affair could be politically damaging. When Daniels said that he could not perform as “Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Cupid,” McAdoo was dispatched with a clumsy blackmail conspiracy based on an event that had taken place years earlier, and had caused the only real crisis in Wilson’s first marriage.

In 1907, during a Bermuda holiday recommended by his doctor, Woodrow, unaccompanied by Ellen, began what was delicately called “an intimate friendship” with another vacationer, Mary Peck Hulbert. What actually transpired between them is a matter of some dispute, but
clearly something happened—enough to lead Wilson into a continued correspondence with Mrs. Hulbert, and even to send her $7,500, a huge sum in those days. McAdoo tried to use the old affair to derail his father-in-law’s wedding plans. He told Wilson that Hulbert planned to sell the president’s incriminating letters, which was not true.

Wilson reacted swiftly. Rushing to Edith’s house, he told her of “a folly long ago loathed and repented of” and said he stood before her “stained and unworthy.” As he had hoped, Edith did not break off the engagement. “I will stand by you—not for duty, not for pity … but for love.” The president was overheard singing “Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll!” as he left Edith’s house.

Both lovers showed their mettle: Wilson for resisting blackmail, Edith for standing by her suitor, now revealed as imperfect. Edith soon learned of the role House and McAdoo played in the plot to thwart her wedding plans. Now she had real cause to attack her husband’s advisers. Fortified by adversity, Edith and Woodrow emerged stronger and more committed to each other than before.

The Cabinet’s fear of a public outcry at his sudden remarriage was unjustified. Nothing, however, stopped the Washington chatterers from chattering. A popular joke of the day was: “What did Mrs. Galt do when the president asked her to marry him?” The answer: “She fell out of bed.” That bit of sophomoric humor would have long-term consequences for Anglo-American relations and the wit to whom it was ascribed, British diplomat Charles Crauford-Stuart.

The lovers quietly wed on December 18, 1915, in the front parlor of Edith’s small town house, and immediately set off for Hot Springs, Virginia. “Nothing,” the president informed the press, “need[ed] to be described” of his two-week honeymoon. The press duly respected his wish to be left alone, but history did not. On January 4, 1916, the British steamship
Persia
was torpedoed by a German submarine. Two Americans were among those killed, forcing Mr. and Mrs. Wilson to cut short their idyll and return to Washington.

FEW FIRST LADIES HAVE SO RELISHED
the pomp and the attention, or dressing up for the part, as Edith did. “My first public appearance as the wife
of the President,” she wrote later, “was at a reception to the diplomatic corps …. I wore a white gown brocaded in silver with long white tulle drapery, then known as ‘angel sleeves.’ It was thrilling the first time to greet all the Cabinet in the Oval Room upstairs and then with the President precede them down the long stairway with the naval and military aides forming an escort, the Marine Band playing ‘Hail to the Chief,’ and the waiting mass of guests bowing a welcome as we passed into the Blue Room.”

Edith did not like to be called first lady, however, for that implied a public responsibility. Mrs. Woodrow Wilson was her title of choice. In her mind, she served her husband, not the country. She was intrigued by politics and diplomacy, but only as an activity she and Woodrow could share. As the country mobilized for war, Edith could legitimately finesse many of the traditional functions of the White House’s chatelaine. She could devote herself full-time to her true passion: the role of first wife, as opposed to the more public role of first lady.

As they began their marriage, Wilson attempted to mediate among the countries at war. He dispatched Colonel House on a peace mission to London, Paris and Berlin. Simultaneously, Wilson began laying the foundation for a new postwar order, based on principles that would forever be associated with his name: open diplomacy, the preservation of the right to neutrality and the right to self-determination. Later, these would form the spine of his famous Fourteen Points. At the same time, Wilson floated a proposal for an association of nations to replace aggression with mediation. Wilson promised that the United States would abandon its longstanding policy of isolation in exchange for a peace without vengeance. The ruling powers nodded politely but disregarded Wilson’s ideas.

With his “little partner” almost always by his side, Wilson’s most productive year as chief executive was perhaps 1916. “I helped Woodrow in the study until nearly twelve,” Edith wrote in her diary on November 25, 1916. “He was writing what he says may prove the greatest piece of work of his life and oh, if it is only so, for it will mean so much.” When the president summoned his ambassador to Berlin to help him draft his message to the belligerents, the envoy noted, “Mrs. Wilson was present …and at times asked pertinent questions showing her deep knowledge of foreign affairs ….”

An invigorated Wilson now reached beyond the usual Democratic Party base to pass progressive legislation that would transform the nation’s social fabric. Workmen’s compensation, child labor laws and the eight-hour day were part of his daring leadership. “Mr. Wilson has done what high statesmanship in a democracy must do,” the
New Republic
wrote. “In a very real and accurate sense the President has made himself the spokesman of a whole people.”

Nineteen hundred sixteen was also a presidential election year. Wilson’s slogan was increasingly fragile: “He kept us out of war.” On Election Day Wilson eked out a narrow victory against Republican Charles Evans Hughes, winning 277 of 531 electoral votes. A few months later, Edith became the first first lady to ride with the president to and from his swearing-in.

THE WOMAN WHO CONSIDERED HERSELF
the president’s full partner vehemently opposed granting women the right to vote. Edith was offended by the growing momentum of the women’s suffrage movement. The suffragettes’ way was not her way. Her diary makes references to “those disgusting creatures” and their “unladylike” conduct. Much to Edith’s annoyance, suffragettes positioned themselves at the White House gate. “Woodrow decided to pardon those devils in the workhouse,” she wrote of the women who had displayed a banner “so outrageous that the police arrested them.”

While still maintaining a wary alliance with Colonel House, Edith continued to pressure the president to dump Tumulty and Josephus Daniels. Wilson held his ground. Edith was willing to bide her time. But since she sat in on all but Cabinet meetings, his once close advisers had lost their direct channel to him. “The little circle close to the President,” House wrote, “seems to have dwindled down to the two of us, Mrs. Wilson and myself.”

On a fine Saturday in the spring of 1917, Woodrow and Edith strolled the quiet streets of the capital and unintentionally made a little history. On the way back to the White House, they stopped first at the home of the secretary of war and then at the home of the secretary of the
navy. “I think this is the first time in American history,” a member of the White House staff noted, “that a President’s wife has accompanied the President in a purely business call on a Cabinet officer.”

At 8
P.M.
on April 2, 1917, flanked by cavalry troops, Edith and Woodrow drove up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol ablaze with its first night lights, the Stars and Stripes snapping atop the cupola. Wilson had summoned a historic joint session of Congress. “When we reached the Capitol,” Edith recalled, “the crowd outside was almost as dense as Inauguration Day, but perfectly orderly. Troops were stationed on guard round the entire building which stood out white and majestic …. When my husband came in and all rose to their feet my very heart seemed to stop its beating.”