My first necessity in my generally considered enviable position was to find a house in Washington large enough to contain my family, to permit such participation in social life as would be expected of us, and the rent for which would not wholly exhaust the stipend then allowed to a Cabinet officer.
Eight thousand dollars a year, sufficient income though it may be when it is expected to accommodate itself to an ordinary eight-thousand-dollars-a-year standard of living, shrinks alarmingly when its recipient is expected to maintain on it the dignity of a Cabinet position. If we had not had some private resources I don’t quite see how we could have managed. Fortunately for my husband, and more so for his successors in office, this figure was raised to twelve thousand before he left the War Department, and still there are complaints which I am amply able to appreciate.
We finally settled, on the first of October after my arrival at Washington, in a pleasant, old-fashioned house on K Street near 16th. It was not the most elegantly equipped house available, but we preferred a little extra space to the more elaborate modern conveniences, so we took it.
We were spared one item of expense by having the use of the War Department carriage and its big Irish coachman, Quade. Quade was quite a character. He had been at one time in the artillery service and had occupied the position in which we found him through several administrations. He was never able to lose the habits and manners of an artillery man, and Mr. Roosevelt used to say he never drove behind him without feeling as if he were on the caisson of a gun wagon going into action. He kept his horses in fine condition, though a trifle too fat perhaps, and he took great pride in the speed he could get out of them. He would swing around corners and dash past street cars and other vehicles in a way that was anything but soothing to sensitive nerves, but there was no use protesting. Quade’s character was fully formed.
He used to feed Mr. Taft’s private riding horse at the public expense, and Mr. Taft didn’t approve of this. He thought he ought to include the pay for its keep in his personal accounts, and he told Quade so, asking him at the same time to have a bill made out so that he might settle it. Quade regarded him in utter disgust for a moment, then said:
“Well, Misther Sicretary, what with the good an’ plinty o’ fodder we got in the stables, I guess ye can go on a-feedin’ your horse here without the Government’s a-worryin’ anny.”
I remember going one day to a reception at the house of Justice Harlan on the occasion of his twenty-fifth anniversary on the bench. President Roosevelt was already there and as we drove up we found the bicycle policemen surrounding the entrance waiting for him. Quade, with great friendliness but with an absolute lack of decorum, leaned over on the box and shouted to them as we passed:
“Ah, Begorra! Ye’ll be a-waitin’ around fer my boss one o’ these days!”
Faithful Quade lived to see his prophecy fulfilled, but not long afterward he lost his life at his post of duty in a shocking accident. He was driving the Department carriage for Secretary of War Dickinson’s family; the pole broke, the horses became frightened and bolted. There were young children and a nurse in the carriage, so Quade bravely held on to the reins and finally succeeded in turning the horses into a fence. He saved the occupants of the carriage from injury, but he himself was thrown forward violently, falling in such a way as to break his neck.
Another War department employee whom we valued highly was Arthur Brooks, a coloured department messenger, and a major of militia. Arthur was the most useful individual I ever knew anything about, combining absolute loyalty with an efficiency and accuracy that were most comforting to his employers. He went into the War Department during President Arthur’s administration and gradually won for himself a position of especial trust. Mr. Root, as Secretary of War, found Arthur most valuable and reposed the utmost confidence in him.
For me he did all kinds of things which without him would probably have been done very badly. He “managed” all my larger entertainments, being present, after I had done all I could by way of preparation, to see that everybody was properly received, that the service ran smoothly and that nothing went amiss. When Mr. Taft became President he had Arthur transferred to the position of custodian of the White House and I shall have occasion to speak of him in that capacity later on.
Taking things all in all, I think we managed to get on very well indeed, though I did sometimes sigh for the luxurious simplicity and the entire freedom from petty household details that I had left behind me in Manila. I did not find that my very large and very black cook was so capable as to make me forget the excellencies and the almost soundless orderliness of Ah Sing; nor did my coloured butler and one housemaid quite manage to take the places of Ah King and Chang, my two upstairs “Chinaboys” at Malacañan. As for the six or eight barefoot muchachos who “skated” my Philippine hardwood floors to a state of mirror gloss and kept everything speckless without ever seeming to do any work at all, they could have no substitute in a Washington establishment.
The life of a “Cabinet lady” newly arrived in the Capital is one of rather monotonous stress. In the first place she is expected to call on nearly everybody who calls on her, and, of course, nearly everybody does that. This custom in my time was especially insisted upon with regard to the wives of all the Congressmen and of
