Every afternoon throughout the winter when I was not “at home” myself I started out on certain rounds of calls, and I think I made as many calls as anyone I knew. Irksome to me as this duty sometimes was, in the formal discharge of it I made some of the pleasantest friends I ever had. I have always found Army women particularly delightful, and it is easy to understand why they are so. In the course of their wanderings and their many changes of habitation, and in consequence of the happy-go-lucky attitude toward life that they are bound to assume, they acquire a cordiality of manner and an all-round generous tone which make them very attractive.
One morning each week Mrs. Roosevelt held a meeting of the Cabinet ladies at the White House, but this was not a social affair. We met to discuss various matters supposed to be of interest to us all, and would gather in the library from eleven to twelve for this purpose.
After calling, the most important social duty devolving upon a Cabinet officer’s wife is dining out. We always dined out when we were not giving a dinner party at our own house, so that from the time Mr. Taft became Secretary of War we almost ceased to know what it was to have “a quiet evening at home.” Of course such a life gave us an opportunity for meeting many interesting men and women who contributed much to the sum total of what the world seemed to have in store for us.
It has been the custom through a good many administrations for the President, sometime during the season between December first and Lent, to dine with each member of the Cabinet, and all other members of the Cabinet, with only a few outside guests, were usually invited to these parties. It can easily be imagined that they did not offer much variation, especially in view of the fact that hard and fast rules of precedence settled for the hostess just where each of her guests should sit. Mr. Roosevelt did not care for this custom, so during his last Administration it became usual to ask to such dinners only people outside the “official family,” as it is called. The dinner to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt which we gave each year was our most ambitious social function and it was my desire always to invite as many persons as possible who would themselves prove entertaining and who would not be likely to meet the President in the ordinary course of events. I often asked friends from different parts of the country to visit us for the occasion.
Every Wednesday afternoon all the ladies of the Cabinet were “at home” and nearly all Washington called on each of them. Then, too, the casual visitors to the Capital were free to attend these informal receptions and I used to be surprised at the number of curious strangers who found their way into my drawing room.
However, this is only a glimpse in general of the life of a Cabinet lady during the regular social season. Fortunately for me my husband was, from the very beginning, a travelling Secretary. I remember most of the cartoons of those days pictured him either as “sitting on the lid,” wreathed in cherubic smiles, while President Roosevelt rushed off on some flying trip, or as himself making a frantic dash for the rear platform of a moving train. The rush of Mr. Roosevelt was always expressed by the backward sweep of the ribbon attached to his eyeglasses, while Mr. Taft was usually pictured with a perspiring look, his hat lifted off his head by the wind and a busy looking suitcase, labelled in large letters: “Taft,” swinging wildly along behind him. And these cartoons were rather accurately descriptive of real conditions.
I had hardly got my house on K Street in order before something happened in Panama which made it imperative for the Secretary of War to go down to the Isthmus and give the situation his personal attention. There was a state of popular discontent among the Panamanians complicated by question of zone boundaries, jurisdiction, postal regulations, tariff inequalities and a few other matters, and by that time we had too much at stake in the Canal Zone to risk long distance or dilatory regulation.
The building of the Panama Canal was not included in the business of the War Department until after Mr. Taft became Secretary, nor was there at that time any definite idea of having it done by the Army Engineer Corps, but it has long been recognised that in the War Portfolio accommodation can be found for any and every kind of governmental problem, and Mr. Taft had not been Secretary long before Mr. Roosevelt transferred the administration of Canal Zone affairs to his already well-laden shoulders.
I was very glad to have an opportunity to see the beginning of what I knew was to be the greatest enterprise ever undertaken by the United States, so I fully approved of my husband’s suggestion that I accompany him to Panama. Señor Obaldia, the Panamanian Minister to Washington, went also, and among others in the very interesting party were Rear Admiral J. G. Walker, President of the Canal Commission, Judge Charles G. Magoon, law officer of the Commission, and Mr. Nelson W. Cromwell, counsel for the Republic of Panama.
On this trip Mr. Taft went to Panama as a representative of the President of the United States for the purpose of presenting to the President of Panama a message of friendship, and to make, if possible, an amicable adjustment of the differences
