For me that drive was the proudest and happiest event of Inauguration Day. Perhaps I had a little secret elation in thinking that I was doing something which no woman had ever done before. I forgot the anxieties of the preceding night; the consternation caused by the fearful weather; and every trouble seemed swept aside. My responsibilities had not yet begun to worry me, and I was able to enjoy, almost to the full, the realisation that my husband was actually President of the United States and that it was this fact which the cheering crowds were acclaiming.
There was nobody at the White House to bid us welcome except the official staff and some of our own guests. But it didn’t matter. There is never any ceremony about moving into the White House. You just drive up and walk in—and there you are. The aides and ushers who greeted us at the entrance, treated our occupation of our new residence so much as a matter of course that I could not help but feel something as Cinderella must have felt when her mice footmen bowed her into her coach and four and behaved just as if they had conducted her to a Court Ball every night of her life. I stood for a moment over the great brass seal, bearing the national coat-of-arms, which is sunk in the floor in the middle of the entrance hall. “The Seal of the President of the United States,” I read around the border, and now—that meant my husband!
But I could not linger long because my duties as a hostess began at once. I was not unused to the accepted regulations of official life, so, in spite of a slight feeling that the whole thing was unreal, I was not embarrassed as I walked into the great dining-room and took my place by the door to receive guests for the first time as mistress of the White House.
I had left to the efficient management of Captain Archibald Butt as many of the details of the day’s programme as was possible. Some time before I had carefully gone over the plans with him, we had provided for any reasonable emergency, and I knew my instructions would be carried out. Captain Butt—later Major Butt—had been military aide to President Roosevelt; we had known him well, both in the Philippines and in Washington, and we were glad to have the opportunity of continuing him in that capacity. Whatever Major Butt did was done faultlessly—always. During the three years he was with us—day in and day out, upon every possible occasion, in the closest intimacy—I never ceased to wonder at his genius for work, his comprehensive grasp of important matters and of small details, his extraordinary accuracy. His very presence inspired the utmost confidence. Archie Butt, as everybody called him, became our close and dearly loved friend. Indeed, we felt that he belonged to us, and nothing in all our experience ever touched us as deeply as the tragedy of his death. Returning from a short vacation abroad, he went down on the Titanic, facing death like a soldier, after the lives of nearly all the women and children had been saved.
We had invited a large number of people to the usual Inaugural luncheon. The cook and several of the staff of servants were to accompany Mrs. Roosevelt to Oyster Bay, but they remained until the afternoon of the Fourth when the staff I had engaged were installed. There are a few old, official servants who remain in the house from one administration to another, keeping in operation an uninterrupted household routine, so there was no reason why the Inaugural luncheon should not be carried through with the same smoothness and despatch to be expected on ordinary occasions. But again we reckoned without the weather. The difficulties of traffic, added to the crush on the avenues, made it impossible for our guests to arrive on time and they continued to straggle in throughout the whole afternoon, each one wishing to apologise in person and make special explanation. This, of course, made anything like systematic reception out of the question and the result was that the luncheon really ran into and became a part of the tea for my husband’s classmates of Yale, which was scheduled for five o’clock. There was some confusion, but much goodwill and frank enjoyment and the fact that the President was not there to receive his classmates caused nothing more than a few repetitions of, by that time, familiar comments on the elements.
Mr. Taft was reviewing the Inaugural Parade and the last of it did not pass the reviewing stand until after nightfall. He came in, however, in time to exchange greetings with old-time, enthusiastic friends, the members of the Yale class of ’78, and to hold them longer than they had intended to remain. When the last of them had wished us Godspeed and said goodbye, we stood, the five of us—my husband, my three children and I—alone in the big state dining-room, and tried to realise that, for the first time, the White House was really our Home. The great walnut-panelled room, with its silvered chandeliers and big moose heads, seemed very empty with only the Taft family in it, after all the clatter and chatter that had been sounding there all day. We gazed at each other for a moment, with slightly lost expressions on our faces, and then nature asserted herself in the new President.
