First Ladies (26 page)

Harriet Lane, as she appeared during the presidency of her bachelor uncle, James Buchanan. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Mary Todd Lincoln wore an elaborate gown to her husband's inauguration, and she continued to spend extravagantly on clothes. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

For family pictures, Julia Grant, shown here with her husband and son Jesse, liked to face away from the camera to conceal her slightly crossed eyes. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Lucretia Garfield lived only a few weeks in the White House before she became ill and her husband was assassinated. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In this advertisement, carried in
Harper's Weekly
, May 15, 1878, the President and First Lady appear to endorse a household appliance. Courtesy of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center.

Caroline Harrison, the second wife of a president to die in the White House, was noted for starting the White House china collection and for helping to make a medical school coeducational. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

At age twenty-one, Frances Folsom became the first woman to have married a president in a White House ceremony. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Grover Cleveland's admitted association with a Buffalo woman resulted in many cartoons such as this one. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Ida McKinley, weak and ill during most of her White House stay, managed to symbolize the kind of femininity that many Americans found attractive. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

AS THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
began, the sickly, self-centered Ida McKinley still sat in the White House. Before many more administrations had ended, however, evidence would show that the job of First Lady was changing. Gradually, presidents' wives began to hire separate staffs of their own, take more public roles in policy and personnel decisions, and lead important reform movements. Although still unpaid, the job was quasi-institutionalized. Edith Wilson (1915–1921), Woodrow's second wife, received most of the publicity associated with this shift and heard herself criticized for exercising “petticoat government,” but she should be seen as part of a trend rather than an anomaly. Each First Lady between 1901 and 1921, even the most insecure, left her mark. Together, they guaranteed that their successors would never find an easy retreat from a public role.

It is no accident that a new and stronger role for the president's wife coincides with the United States' growing importance in the world and the executive branch's ascendancy over the legislature. Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), William Howard Taft (1909–1913), and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) all possessed much greater knowledge and experience in the field of foreign affairs than had most of their immediate predecessors, and Theodore and Woodrow held definite ideas about a president's preeminent role. Theodore Roosevelt's attempt to engineer a peace settlement between Russia and Japan in 1905 and Woodrow Wilson's vigorous activity at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 are only examples of how the two men put their ideas into action, causing the rest of the world to focus more attention on the United States and, in particular, its presidents. Press coverage of chief executives increased dramatically, and some of the new attention focused on the president's family. When Theodore
Roosevelt described the presidency as a “bully pulpit,” he might have also noted the increased opportunities for a First Lady.

For almost a dozen years (September 1901 to March 1913), either Edith Carow Roosevelt or Helen Herron Taft presided over the White House. With their husbands at the top of the Republican party, their paths crossed many times, and that they did not particularly like each other is a matter of record. Edith's stepdaughter, Alice, revealed at least part of the reason when she wrote of Helen Taft: “Her ideas were rather grander than ours.”
¹
Helen, who in 1914 became the first ex-president's wife to publish her own memoirs, implied that Edith did not excel at household management and had left the executive mansion depleted of linens and china.
²

Although the two women bore an uncanny resemblance to each other in the bare facts of their lives, they differed markedly in their views of their places in the world. Born in 1861, they married within six months of each other and each died in her eighties. Yet beneath these irrelevant similarities lay sharp differences. Edith Roosevelt always appeared supremely confident, in command of herself and often, it seemed, of those around her—while Helen Taft's ambition pushed her to try for more. No achievement sufficed, and even a very large prize, like residence in the White House, never quite equaled her expectations.

Portraits of the two women underline the contrast. Edith Roosevelt sits regally, chin up and arm gracefully arched as though she never meant to move, apparently unconcerned about the stray wisp or two that falls on her face. Helen Taft is perfectly coiffed, leaning forward as though ready to pounce into action.
³

Edith Carow Roosevelt traced her American roots all the way back to the 1630s, through a line of illustrious men and women that included the prominent Puritan Jonathan Edwards. She grew up in New York City in the same Union Square neighborhood where the Roosevelts lived, and Corinne, Theodore's sister, became Edith's best friend. Theodore's relationship with Edith is less clear. Although he was three years older than she, they moved in the same circles, and before he enrolled in Harvard the two may have reached an agreement to marry.
⁴
Edith later explained that Theodore had proposed but that she had refused, presumably influenced by her family's opinion that she was too young to accept. In any case, Theodore's path in Cambridge intersected with that of an exceptionally beautiful young woman, Alice Lee, and as soon as he graduated, he married her. Four years later she died of Bright's disease on the same day that
Theodore's mother died of typhoid fever. He was inconsolable and left his New York State Assembly seat for a period of reflection and strenuous exercise on a North Dakota ranch. Rejuvenated, he returned to run (unsuccessfully) for mayor of New York City in 1886. A few weeks later, in an unheralded ceremony, he married Edith Carow in London.