History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (5 page)

Lincoln once remarked, “My best friend is the man who’ll git me a book I ain’t read.”

3
. PETS

In the 1800s, most Americans had little spare time or extra food, so pets were relatively scarce. Chester Arthur and Millard Fillmore had none. Andrew Johnson fed house mice out of pity. Most of the first pets were working animals. Washington had his hunting hounds, including Sweet Lips, Drunkard, and Tipsy. Eccentric John Quincy Adams had silkworms. Confrontational Andrew Jackson raised fighting cocks. William Henry Harrison and William Howard Taft owned cows.

Horses, on the other hand, were the White House motorcade. John Tyler, U. S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln were particularly kind to their steeds. Tragedy befell Lincoln’s in 1862 when a fire broke out in their pens. Guards had to restrain him as he rushed to save the dying creatures. Among the fatally burned was a pony that had belonged to his late son William. Upon hearing of its fate, Lincoln wept.
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With the arrival of the internal combustion engine, a new breed took over. “If you want a friend in Washington,” said Harry Truman, “get yourself a dog.” Truman’s friends were Feller the mutt and Mike the Irish Setter. Ike liked Heidi the Weimaraner. Lyndon Johnson had his beagles. The Obamas acquired a Portuguese Water Dog soon after entering the White House. FDR and Hoover shared a love of canines, owning more than a dozen between them. Vice President Richard Nixon saved his career in 1952 with his sentimental Checkers speech on nationwide television. Dismissing accusations of financial impropriety, Nixon listed his assets, including a cocker spaniel recently given to the family. “I just want to say this right now,” insisted the misty-eyed veep, “that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.” Dick wasn’t clear if he meant the dog or his job.
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Of German descent himself, Herbert Hoover was partial to German Shepherds.

William Howard Taft’s pet cow Pauline strikes a pose on the White House lawn. In the background stands the Old Executive Office Building.

Then there are the virtual zoos. The Kennedys had a glut of animals great and small, from parakeets and hamsters to cats, rabbits, and a pack of dogs. The equestrian Jackie needed her prize mount Sardar. Caroline and John John owned ponies named Leprechaun, Macaroni, and Tex.

Before them was the strangely dynamic Coolidge family. Calvin preferred the company of animals, while his wife, Grace, simply enjoyed company, including a bobcat, a goose, an antelope, a stray cat, a donkey, and dogs aplenty. Among their favorite was Rebecca the Raccoon, who liked to ride on the shoulders of her masters while they strolled around the Executive Mansion.

No family accumulated more than the flying circus of the Theodore Roosevelts. Cats, rats, ponies, pigs, guinea pigs, a badger, a one-legged rooster, a slew of terriers and hounds, and a macaw. Avid travelers, the Roosevelts and their six kids seemingly adopted every animal that Teddy didn’t shoot.

Situated within sight of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis is the Presidential Pet Museum. Among the holdings is a cowbell once worn by Pauline, a bovine member of the Taft family who grazed on the White House lawn.

4
. CARDS

Nearly every president in the nineteenth century played—except James Polk, whose wife, Sarah, forbade the pastime in the White House. The games were much like the general population of the Northeast, mostly of English origin and accompanied by French and German variations. The popular game early on was whist, a four-player contest involving tricks and trumps. After the Civil War, euchre became the national diversion and was a favorite of James Garfield, with pinochle and cribbage not far behind.

Over time, whist evolved into the female-dominated bridge, while males turned toward competitive poker, an ancient game introduced into the United States sometime in the 1820s. Adept at reading people, Grover Cleveland thrived on it. FDR and Truman played for small pots. The most skilled players were Eisenhower and Nixon, who both made ample sums in their younger days but elected for friendlier games while in office.
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Saturday night was bridge night at the Eisenhower White House. As a soldier, Ike excelled at poker, but as president he chose less combative card games to keep the peace among friends.
Eisenhower Presidential Library

Warren Harding liked to play poker in the White House at least twice a week, though he wasn’t particularly good at it. On one occasion he lost a set of china from the Benjamin Harrison administration. But he found the experience a wonderful diversion from the cares of office as well as a great way to stay connected with cabinet members and major campaign contributors. Frequent faces at the table included Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Gen. John “Blackjack” Pershing, and William Wrigley Jr. Harding’s commerce secretary, Herbert Hoover, sat in on a game once and was so offended by the seedy behavior of the president and his guests that he never came back.
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Along with playing cards, Martin Van Buren liked to place wagers. One of his favorite pursuits was to bet on the outcome of elections.

5
. WALKING

When the country moved more slowly, so did their presidents. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were the first executives born in the age of the automobile. Before them, most presidents grew up in rural areas or “walking towns,” where hiking was the major mode of transportation.

Many developed a considerable amount of endurance. While in his sixties, John Adams could go five miles before tiring, insisting, “It sets my blood in motion much more than riding.” His presidential son liked to start his day with a stroll to Capitol Hill and back. James Madison preferred setting out during midday, while night owl Chester Arthur preferred the quietness of Washington at 3:00 a.m. Calvin Coolidge enjoyed a brisk jaunt in the morning, followed by a slower stroll in the afternoon, where he would window shop to forget about his troubles.
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The fastest among them was Harry Truman, who moved abruptly for miles on end. After the attempt on his life in 1950, Truman had to tolerate a slower pace and a much higher degree of protection from the Secret Service. Though he despised feeling insulated from the public and being forced to take shorter trips, he did enjoy conversing with “his boys” about almost everything except politics.

The last dedicated stroller was Jimmy Carter, who cemented his image as a frugal man by walking the last mile to his inauguration. He and Rosalynn also attempted to take leisurely saunters around Camp David, though the gaggle of Secret Service agents behind them invariably dampened the ambiance.

Most presidencies transpired before the automobile. Twenty-fifth president William McKinley was the first chief executive to ride in a car while in office.

6
. HUNTING AND FISHING

Washington hunted foxes, as did his look-alike, James Monroe. John Tyler was by many accounts an excellent shot. Grover Cleveland gunned for game with a rifle he named “Death and Destruction.”

Making up for lost time as a sickly little boy, Theodore Roosevelt immersed himself in outdoor and combat sports—boxing, hiking, jujitsu, polo, rowing, wrestling. He also hunted extremely large game. Immediately after leaving office, TR and his son Kermit went on an extended African safari, where they proceeded to bag more than five hundred animals, including antelope, elephants, giraffes, hippos, hyenas, leopards, lions, rhinos, warthogs, waterbucks, wildebeests, and zebras. Conservationist Roosevelt made up for poor eyesight by shooting often. The legend of the Teddy Bear is not entirely true. On a particularly unproductive hunting trip to Mississippi, President Roosevelt was presented with a small black bear that had been injured and restrained. Though he did refuse to shoot the exhausted animal, he had someone else kill it with a knife.
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Winston Churchill observes while FDR fishes at Shangri-La, the presidential retreat that later was known as Camp David.

Most other sportsmen chose the more placid pursuit of fishing. New Yorker Martin Van Buren was one of the first presidential fishermen. Franklin Pierce loved the recreation, and it was rarely far from his mind (he mentioned fishermen or fishing rights in all four of his State of the Union addresses). Chester A. Arthur preferred angling in Canada. Cleveland found the Adirondacks more to his liking, while Eisenhower was an avid fly fisherman. Unlike Ike, Herbert Hoover never took a sick day or a vacation during his entire presidency, opting instead to labor sixteen-hour days in an effort to fix the Great Depression. Only after defeat in the 1932 elections did he allow himself weekends in the Shenandoah, where he cast his line into the rushing streams.

Two presidents who thoroughly despised hunting were Lincoln and Grant. The former could not bring himself to kill, and the latter hated the sight of blood.

7
. SWIMMING

Today commonly viewed as a sport of the upper classes, swimming was initially equated with poverty. Dipping in rivers and streams not only provided a simple form of entertainment for early Americans; it also was often their primary means of bathing. Tubs and clean water were conveniences of the wealthier strata, and millions of citizens went without indoor plumbing until well into the twentieth century (the White House did not have indoor bathroom facilities until the Hayes administration in the late 1870s).
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The stigma of commonness did not bother John Quincy Adams, and he looked forward to swimming in the Potomac on a daily basis. In his fifties, President Adams could swim the river’s breadth, so long as the weather and the water’s pace were agreeable. Not until Theodore Roosevelt would the Potomac see another executive swimmer, and he liked it cold. In contrast, his polio-stricken cousin preferred the eighty-eight-degree waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, which he first visited three years after contracting polio in 1921. FDR also installed the first swimming pool in the White House, which he kept lukewarm. The balmy waters were therapeutic for Roosevelt, and he found them liberating because they allowed him to do something that had been impossible since he was thirty-nine—stand under his own power.