When the Cheering Stopped (27 page)

A moment later the First Lady came in to say that Warren G. Harding, whose term was to be filled with graft, thievery, misappropriation of government funds, Veterans Bureau scandal, Teapot Dome, waited below. It was ten-thirty in the morning. The President and First Lady went down in the elevator to the Blue Room, where the Hardings and the members of the Congressional Inauguration Committee were.

The cars were outside—for his first inauguration he had ridden in a horse-drawn vehicle with William Howard Taft at his side—and there were also fifty policemen to make sure no pictures were taken until he was seated and ready. The men and the two women, the First Lady and Florence Harding, headed for the door. Harding gave the President his arm and he leaned upon it heavily, his
blackthorn stick in his good hand sounding on the White House floor he was walking over for the last time and would never see again. Just before they came to the door the President released Harding's arm and indicated that in front of the people outside it would be improper for him to be thus served by anyone save government employees—his valet, the Secret Service men. Grayson stepped up and gave him a strong drink of whisky.

They went out, he trying to stand as straight as possible. The policemen looked to the photographers as he was all but picked up and bodily lifted into the car. He took off his high hat and held it in his gloved hand until the President-elect had walked around the car and gotten in and seated himself; then the hat went back on his head. Harding sat by him; Senator Philander C. Knox and Representative “Uncle Joe” Cannon of the Congressional Committee sat on the open limousine's jump seats. Behind them in the next car, Mrs. Harding was waving to the reporters. “My boys!” she said to the First Lady, whose once-dark hair had in the months of sickness and ruin developed gray streaks, and whose skin had an unhealthy pallor and whose very flesh seemed to sag on her chin and neck.

They got under way and went out of the White House grounds and into Pennsylvania Avenue to the bands and the troopers with white gloves holding aloft red-and-white guidons; to the cavalry horses, the soldiers in puttees; to soup-bowl helmets, pounding drums, sounding bugles, the sailors, the Legionnaires. Down the Avenue on the other side of the Capitol the American flag, at half staff for the death of Representative Champ Clark two days before, went up to the top of the staff and a transmitter played music above the sounds of the bands tuning up. In front of the Capitol a heavy Negro with a broom came along and swept the spot where Harding would be as he delivered his inaugural address, and youthful pages from the Congress hung wreaths along the front of the stand. Disabled soldiers in wheel chairs sat in the front lines. A flutter of excitement went through the massed thousands at the word that they were coming.

In the car the men in their top hats sat in silence as the first cheers of the people lining the street came
rolling to them. Harding took off his hat and waved and smiled his handsome smile, but the President's hat remained on and he looked straight ahead. They were moving very slowly, no faster than the troops marched, and the Secret Service man Starling could hear the comments of the people on the curb: “Doesn't the new President look fine and healthy? Poor President Wilson—this will kill him!”

Between waves and smiles Harding began a discussion of White House pets, mentioning his Airedale, Laddie Boy. He went on to remark that he had always wanted to own an elephant and the President said, “I hope it won't turn out to be a white elephant!” Harding smiled his big and generous politician's smile and, grateful for finding a subject of conversation, launched into discussing an experience of his sister, a former missionary in the Orient, who knew of a dying elephant that moaned piteously for his native keeper. When the keeper came the elephant wound his trunk around the man and pressed and hugged him and so peacefully passed away, happy that his friend was with him. When Harding finished the story he looked over at the President and saw to his horror that the President was crying, great tears rolling down his face. They were approaching the Capitol and in a moment the car would be halted and people would be gathering around, and Harding wondered if he ought to wipe away the President's tears. He was actually still in doubt when the President got hold of himself and took out a handkerchief and did the job himself.

They stopped in front of the Capitol. It had been arranged for the President to enter the building through a little-used freight entrance in the Senate wing; Harding got out and vigorously walked up the steps, waving his hat. The car drove the short space to the door the President would use and there it stopped. While cavalry mounts screened him off, the President was lifted out of the car. Without assistance, head bent down, cane tapping, he went in and took an elevator up to the President's Room. Senators, Cabinet members and friends stood waiting for him there. They gathered around him and took off his coat. Slipping his right arm out of the sleeve, he was
for a moment deprived of the support of the cane which he had hooked into an upper pocket of the coat, and former Mayor John Fitzgerald of Boston
*
held him and steadied him. The President limply sat down at a desk and for a moment fidgeted with his hands and looked aimlessly about before setting out to sign the last bills of the Congress which would in a few minutes be adjourning. The first measure he signed authorized more money for hospitalization facilities for wounded soldiers.

Every now and then he interrupted his work to greet people who came in to shake his hand. “Excuse me, General, for not rising,” he said to Pershing. He signed bills relating to appropriations for fortifications, water power, agricultural needs. Senator Knox stepped in and asked if he would come into the Senate Chamber to see the swearing-in of Vice-President-elect Coolidge. Referring to the three stone steps leading to the Chamber, the President said that perhaps he had better not do it: “The Senate has thrown me down, but I don't want to fall down.”

Colby, Burleson, Baker, Daniels, the others—all stood by and there was quiet chatter in the room, each man wishing him luck, he saying “Thank you” and calling each man by name. He said, “Well, I think I had better scoot now,” but at that moment a complete hush fell upon the room. Someone touched him on the arm to indicate that the committee from both Houses of Congress had arrived to ask permission to adjourn. “This committee begs to inform you that the two Houses have completed their work and are prepared to receive any further communications from you,” said a sharp, dry voice, that of the head of the committee.

The voice was that of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

For a moment Joe Tumulty thought the President was going to say something violent, something terrible, but the President's face appeared to be about to fall into a bitter lopsided smile and then it froze and he said, “I have no further communication. I would be glad if you would inform both Houses and thank them for their
courtesy.” He turned his head and looked off into thin air. “Good morning, sir.” Senator Lodge silently bowed and went out.

The people in the room started moving out to the stand where Harding would soon be making his inaugural address. Harding himself came in and bent over the seated President in a kindly way—for he was, above all things, a kindly man—and said that he would in no way regard it as a discourtesy if the President did not come out, that the President must do nothing to tax his strength. “I guess I had better not try it,” the President said. “I'm afraid I shall have to beg off.” Harding said he thoroughly understood. “All the luck in the world,” the President said, and Harding went out.

The Capitol clocks were being put back so that, officially, it was not yet twelve noon, but in the President's Room a big clock in the corner started to toll out the hour. Joe Tumulty counted under his breath, One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. The clock fell silent. The man at the desk reached for his throat and took off a scarf pin with the Seal of the President of the United States on it. It was made from the same gold nugget which the State of California had given him and his bride upon the occasion of their marriage in 1915. From the nugget also came their wedding rings. Outside, faintly, there was heard the sound of the U.S. Marine Band playing “Hail to the Chief” for Harding. There were very few people in the President's Room now, only a handful. He got up on his feet and struggled into his coat and went to the elevator, the stick tapping on the flagstone, the few people in the hall who saw him murmuring at the slow, slow pace.

He emerged from the building to where the car was, head bent down but eyes up, trying to smile into the sunshine, and more feeble, weaker, than he had been when he got out of the car, he stood before it while Starling got in first and pulled him up into it. Very few people saw him; everyone was watching Warren Harding begin his inaugural speech. The car went about three lengths before it was noticed at all, and then a feeble cheer rose in its wake. Chauffeur Francis Robinson drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, which on this day was as
empty and deserted as it would be on a Sunday morning. There was no escort for him who had known escorts for eight years of his life. They drove in absolute silence, he and his wife, Grayson, Tumulty, Starling, the valet Arthur Brooks. Grayson wondered if he was thinking of the crowds and the noise and glamour of his ride with Harding to the Capitol, or of the roaring mobs in Paris, London and Rome, of the banners
HAIL THE CRUSADER FOR HUMANITY, WELCOME TO THE GOD OF PEACE
. They went into Jackson Place and for a moment the wife turned her head and looked back at the White House. Her husband looked away, off at Lafayette Park and the statue there.

They went up New Hampshire Avenue, into Massachusetts Avenue, and to S Street. To their surprise there were people gathered before the house, and they burst into applause for him. He was taken out of the car, put into the waiting wheel chair, wheeled into his home. Edmund Starling and the valet and the chauffeur saw him to the elevator and he thanked them for their services. Starling turned to go to the car and saw the wife and she shook his hand. Margaret came up to Starling, weeping, and put her young arms around him, and her lips sought his cheek. Starling got into the car and sat in front with the chauffeur and they went back to the Capitol and parked at the head of the procession, waiting upon the man speaking from the stand on the Capitol steps.

In S Street, Joe Tumulty told several White House reporters that they might come in and greet the man whose activities they had covered. They came in and took his hand as he stood, absolutely mute, at the head of the stairs of his home. He did not say one word. They went out, and the people in the street raised a cheer for the house's occupant. He came to a window of the second-floor drawing room and waved his good hand. They wanted him to speak to them, but he pointed to his throat as if to say that he was too choked up to get the words out. He stepped back behind a curtain, but the cheers—perhaps two thousand voices cried for him—drew him back, and once again he mutely pointed to his throat.

Secretary Daniels came in his car and had to get out a block from the house. The car could not possibly get through the people. Daniels walked up to the door and it opened for him and some others—Carter Glass, Cordell Hull, James F. Byrnes—and they went in to talk with him for a few minutes. As they spoke, wishing him well and admiring the flowers which people had sent, some women outside began to sing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Once more he went to the window. Then lunch was served. When it was over, Cary Grayson began to say that he thought it would be best if his patient went to bed now, but the doctor got out only two words before he was interrupted: “Mr. President—” “Just Woodrow Wilson.”

*
The First Lady took the word as a personal insult to herself, saying that she had done her best to keep things normal.

*
The purchase price was in the vicinity of $150,000, an extremely large sum by 1920 standards. The President was aided in the purchase by ten friends who contributed $10,000 each to assure him a proper residence. One of the ten, Bernard Baruch, seeking to insure privacy for him, also bought the lot next door and allowed Nature to have her way with it, which resulted in an attractive woods-like setting.

*
Whose daughter Rose Kennedy had four years earlier given birth to a boy named for her father.

PART THREE

S Street

That we shall prevail

12

First there were the Presbyterian manses in the South and Tommy and then school and Thomas W. Wilson, T. W. Wilson and, finally, Woodrow Wilson, and then there was Attorney-at-Law and Dr. and Professor Wilson, and Governor, and at the end Mr. President. With it all went the small houses and the little girls growing up, and Prospect, the home of the president of Princeton University, and the White House.

Now came S Street.

There had been 1912 and his election, and 1916 and his election—he thinking the day after that he had been defeated, Margaret coming to the door of his bathroom and calling in that the New York
Times
said the result was in doubt, he yelling back, “Tell it to the Marines!”—and then came the war and the Armistice. He went to Europe, and in Europe they hailed him as a god and he took off his hat to the crowds, waved to the crowds, ended by throwing kisses to the crowds. When he came back New York's streets were filled with people waiting for him and Margaret threw her arms around him and cried, “Oh, darling, wasn't it wonderful? All those thousands of people crying, waving their hats in the air, yelling—all for you! There never was such a triumph, such a homecoming!” And he looked at her and said—and she would never forget the look on his face—he said, “Wait until they turn.”

And they did turn—the Senate, the People. The Senate wanted a part in determining what the peace would be about, and the League, but he upon his sickbed would not, could not, compromise. The People wanted cars, money, liquor from the bootlegger, higher skirt lines, forgetfulness from glory and the marching men and the war
to end war. The League went down because he could not meet the Senate's terms; Democratic candidate Cox went down because the People were tired, sick and tired, of their President.