The Mayflower is used ordinarily for official purposes in connection with naval reviews and other naval ceremonies, and at such times, with the President on board, there is a punctilious formality to be encountered which makes a mere civilian feel like a recruit under the eyes of a drill-sergeant. But it is very interesting. One gets so used to seeing everybody in uniform standing stiffly at attention as the President passes that one almost forgets that it isn’t their natural attitude.
And then the guns. They shake one’s nerves and hurt one’s ears, but they are most inspiring. The President’s salute is twenty-one guns. It is fired every time he sets foot on the deck of the Mayflower, or any other naval vessel, and when he passes, on the Mayflower, between the lines of naval vessels on review he gets it from every ship in the fleet, not one by one, but altogether, so I think I know what a naval battle sounds like.
Shortly after we returned from our little cruise on the Maine Coast we received a visit from the President of Chile, Señor Montt, and Señora Montt. He was on his way to Europe, having been ordered abroad on account of ill health. He stopped in New York at the request of his government, and at Mr. Taft’s invitation came to Beverly to pay his official respects to the President of the United States. He made the trip to Boston by special train and was there met by the Mayflower and by Captain Butt.
President Montt was very ill indeed. On the way down to Beverly he had a heart attack which alarmed everybody and made it seem very probable that he would not be able to land. But he recovered sufficiently to become the most cheerful and confident member of the party and we found him and Señora Montt to be among the most delightful of all the distinguished visitors we had the pleasure of entertaining during our term in the Presidency. After the ceremonious presentation and the exchange of international compliments were disposed of they took luncheon with us and we spent several most interesting and memorable hours together. The members of his numerous entourage for whom there was no room in our modest summer cottage were entertained at luncheon on board by Captain Logan of the Mayflower and by Captain Butt. We were told afterward that they managed to create quite an entente cordial, toasting each other’s Presidents and armies and navies and ministers and attachés and everybody else they could think of with great enthusiasm and gusto. Señor Montt died a week later just as he reached England on his health-seeking trip. In his death Chile lost an eminent citizen.
Mr. Taft remained with us at Beverly, playing golf, attending to routine business, seeing the never-ending line of visitors and preparing speeches until September when there began for him one of those whirlwind seasons, so many of which he had lived through. With a printed itinerary in his pocket he was off from Boston on the third of September to attend the Conservation Congress at St. Paul. With two speeches to be delivered, one at the Congress and one at the State Fair in Minneapolis, to say nothing of another in Chicago and numerous short speeches from the rear platform of his train, he was still back in Boston on the eighth to be present at an aviation meet where together we saw the performance of the best aviators of that day.
A short interval of rest and he was away again to New Haven to attend a meeting of the Yale Corporation, then out to Cincinnati to the Ohio Valley Exposition and back to Washington as quickly as a long programme of speeches and hospitalities could be disposed of.
The political skies were then beginning to cloud up in earnest; he had a Democratic Congress to prepare messages for, and I suppose the approaching winter looked anything but alluring to him.
For the first time in the history of the Executive Mansion it was turned into a bachelors’ hall during my various absences. My husband always had one or more men staying with him, he would move his aides and secretaries into the White House, and so arrange things that my frequent desertions of him never weighed very heavily on my conscience.
When he arrived in Washington this time he organised a Cabinet House Party so that Washington and the newspaper correspondents had something to worry about for quite a while. He gathered all the members of his Cabinet under his roof and kept them there where he could have three Cabinet meetings a day besides the ones he called in the Executive Offices. People made wild guesses at all kinds of crises and at all manner of important disclosures to be made, but it was only a house party after all. There were a great many problems to be solved, proposed legislative measures to be discussed, and with every woman in the Cabinet off summering somewhere it was an excellent opportunity for the Executive branch of the Government to do extra work.
The distinguished gentlemen had to “double up” in rooms, too, so I have often imagined that they got very little rest at any time. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury had the southeast room; the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Interior had the northeast room; the Attorney General and the Secretary of Commerce and Labour had the northwest room; the Postmaster General had Robert’s room; the Secretary of Agriculture had the housekeeper’s room, and the Secretary to the President had my son Charlie’s room. I think probably as a house party it was unique, but if there had been any more Departments of Government the President would have had to fit up a dormitory.
