XVI
President of the United States
Shortly after my husband’s election, having spent a couple of restful weeks at Hot Springs, Virginia, we went to Augusta, Georgia, and took the old house known as the Terrett Cottage, near the Bon Air Hotel. To me the weeks we spent there were exceptionally happy ones and I should like to mention each friend—friends then and friends still—who contributed to our constant enjoyment, but there were too many of them and their kindnesses too numerous.
Mr. Taft, of course, immediately became engrossed in the difficulties of securing a Cabinet which would satisfy everybody and disappoint none—an impossibility—as well as a thousand and one other matters not connected in any way with the daily games of golf on Augusta’s sandy links which attracted such wide attention. But even then my own problems became to me paramount and I began to give them my almost undivided attention and to neglect the political affairs which had for many years interested me so intensely. Perhaps with my husband safely elected I considered all important affairs satisfactorily settled. At any rate I found little time or inclination at the moment to worry about who should have the high offices in the new President’s gift, or what policies should be pursued during his administration.
At my request Captain Archibald Butt came down to Augusta to consult with me as to changes I wished to make in the White House service, and together we went over the whole situation. As President Roosevelt’s aide he knew the whole lexicon of customary White House social formalities.
I had been a member of Washington’s official family for five years and knew as well as need be the various phases of the position I was about to assume, so my plans were not so difficult to put into form, however difficult I may have found them to put into execution.
We made a trip to Panama in February before the Inauguration and did not reach Washington until the end of the month when we went to stay with our friends, Mr. and Mrs. William J. Boardman, and their daughter, Miss Mabel Boardman, at their residence on Dupont Circle. We spent with them a busy week as the recipients of varied and delightful hospitality, which was terminated by a splendid reception in our honour on the evening of the second of March.
Captain Butt, who was to be continued as aide to President Taft, called on me at once upon my arrival in Washington to assure me that my instructions had been carried out and that the new regime, fully organised, would go into effect at the White House on the morning of March fifth.
Some time before the Inauguration, indeed shortly after Mr. Taft’s election, President Roosevelt expressed a desire that we should dine with him and Mrs. Roosevelt on the evening of the third of March and spend that night in the White House as their guests. This was breaking a precedent, but it was Mr. Roosevelt’s plan for bidding us a warm welcome to the post which he was about to vacate, and my husband accepted with grateful appreciation. My impression is that neither Mrs. Roosevelt nor I would have suggested such an arrangement for this particular evening, but, it having been made for us, we naturally acquiesced.
The third of March, a stormy day, was filled with innumerable minor engagements and small incidents, with instructions and counter-instructions and, especially, with weather predictions and counter-predictions, so it was not until shortly before eight o’clock that Mr. Taft and I, having dressed for dinner, arrived at the White House. The other guests at the dinner were Senator and Mrs. Lodge, Senator and Mrs. Root, Admiral and Mrs. Cowles, Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Longworth and Miss Mabel Boardman.
Now there is always bound to be a sadness about the end of an administration, no matter how voluntarily the retiring President may leave office, no matter how welcome the new President and his family may be. Mrs. Roosevelt seemed depressed, not, I am sure, over the prospect of leaving the White House—Presidents’ wives are always given plenty of time to prepare themselves for that event—but for other reasons which one easily could surmise. Her husband and son were about to start for a long and, possibly, dangerous trip into the jungles of Africa, and she was looking forward to a year of anxiety. She was leaving a full and busy life; she had occupied her high position for nearly eight years, during which she had made a host of friends, and a great number of them had called during the afternoon to say farewell and to express their deep regret at her departure. I knew all of
