In the autumn of 1914, Miss Helen Woodrow Bones, a cousin of President Wilson and a member of the White House household, not being well, Dr. Cary T. Grayson, the President's physician, prescribed more outdoor exercise and walking. He introduced Miss Bones to Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt, and in the days following they were seen often walking through the parks and out in the country around Washington. In the course of time Miss Bones naturally invited her friend to the White House, where she met the President. That is the whole story; and what happened, of course, is history.
A simple story. A pretty but far from extraordinary romance! But before December 18, 1915, when Edith Bolling Galt and Woodrow Wilson were married, the Democratic Party leaders all but died of fright. This is the remarkable story. It has never been published before.
If President Wilson should remarry before the election of 1916, would it affect his chances for re-election?
That was no academic question with the Democratic leaders in the early fall of 1915. The sweeping Democratic victory of 1912 had been reduced to a slim majority in the House and Senate in 1914. The Progressives had almost disappeared from Congress. The voters of what promised, in 1912, to be a mighty party had nearly all returned to the Republican fold.
It was plain that the election of 1916 was going to be the closest since Cleveland was elected in 1884 by carrying New York State by something like a plurality of a thousand. Any old-time; in politics could have told you that the 1916 election depended upon Roosevelt. If when he got back into the game, he could rejuvenate his Progressive Party, he might compel his own nomination, or that of someone acceptable to him; or if Roosevelt could swing the Progressive voters to the support of the Republican candidate, the odds would be heavily against Wilson for a second term unless —
And that unless was "Wilson luck."
This was the state of affairs on Flag Day, 1915. At that celebration, which was a big day in Washington, President Wilson was the speaker. A great throng assembled at the Treasury Department to hear the address and give honor to Old Glory. The members of Wilson's family, members of the Cabinet, and their wives were there. But there was one hearer in the Presidential party, unobserved by the crowd, who was the object of particular interest for the women of the Wilson Cabinet.
Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt arrived with Margaret Wilson and her friend, Miss Helen Woodrow Bones, cousin of the President, and sat with the White House party. It was the first time she had attended any public function with the Wilsons. She wore, and wore becomingly, the most beautiful orchids ever seen on any lady in Washington, presaging the time when the orchid would be the favorite flower worn by the First Lady of the land.
The wives of the Cabinet members had heard that Mrs. Galt and Miss Bones were in the habit of taking frequent walks. They knew she had been the guest, for tea, of Miss Bones at the White House. And they surmised that the President was interested and that his heart was involved. But it was all surmise.
Flag Day, 1915, confirmed what they had suspected. As they were leaving after the exercises one Cabinet member said to his wife:
"It is going to be a be."
"What do you mean by 'it is going to be a be'?" the wife asked.
"The President is in love with Mrs. Galt, and, what is equally as important, she reciprocates."
"How do you know so much?" she asked with wifely incredulity. "Has anybody told you anything?"
"Not a syllable," he answered. "I do not need to be told. I have eyes. As the President was sitting on the platform during the preliminaries I observed his eyes wandering over the seats set apart for the official party. Presently they rested on Mrs. Galt. At the same moment she caught his glance, and there was a mutual telegraphic exchange between them.
"Well, couldn't the President look at Mrs. Galt (I'll say she is good to look at), and couldn't she look at the President (he has distinction of appearance, if not beauty) without it going to be a be?"
She was skeptical, and she didn't want to believe the President would think of a second marriage. His first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, had died August 6, 1914. It seemed the President was too engrossed in big public questions to have time to think of another courtship and marriage. Moreover, the first Mrs. Wilson had been dead only a little less than a year, and in her mind the Cabinet member's wife could not reconcile the President's position and known devotion to Ellen Axson Wilson with the suggestion that his heart might be touched even by so charming a lady as Mrs. Galt.
"How do you know he is so particularly interested in her?" she demanded.
"I saw the mutual glance," he replied. "I'll gamble they will be married. I know the symptoms."
The husband for one time was right, but it required further and better evidence to convince his wife.
That was a sweltering summer in Washington in 1915. How hot it was! President Wilson, with his daughters, Miss Bones, and Rear Admiral Cary T. Grayson, the President's physician, had gone to a summer home at Cornish, New Hampshire. It is a beautiful place. The descriptions of the place and the pictures published by the papers convinced everybody that the summer White House was ideal for the rest and mountain air President Wilson needed. Of course, there went with him the retinue of White House clerks and stenographers and the inevitable Secret Service men. How he did long, that summer, for quiet and seclusion! Even the Secret Service men were an intrusion upon the privacy he desired.
Shortly before Mr. Wilson left for Cornish, William Jennings Bryan had resigned as Secretary of State.
"Wilson is resolved to be his own Secretary of State," said a member of his Cabinet.
That was not it. He had great regard for Mr. Bryan. But in the serious questions which were so vital, at home and abroad, President Wilson felt the compulsion to decide the national policy himself.
It was not, however, all work at Cornish. There were play and long drives by green hills and quiet farms.
During those afternoon drives through the beautiful country his companion was the charming visitor, Mrs. Norman Galt, born Edith Bolling at Wytheville, Virginia. It was not an occasional hospitable courtesy to a guest of his cousin and his daughters such as his chivalry would suggest. It was an everyday occurrence when the weather was good; and when the weather wasn't good it was the same. Indeed, the secretaries and Secret Service men and the ever-vigilant newspaper correspondents down at Windsor came to the conclusion that the couple didn't pay the least attention to the weather. And from outside appearances they did not.
The newspaper correspondents knew the symptoms. It was the biggest story of the year. They wanted to write it for their papers, printing pictures of President Wilson and Mrs. Galt, and describing the beauties of the countryside through which their afternoon drives carried them, with the conclusion that "it is going to be a be."
But they didn't write the story. Or, if they did, the editors didn't print it. The President was away on a vacation. He always insisted that a President had some private rights which the public ought to respect. It was well known in every newspaper office in America that he resented any intrusion upon his home or social life. No President ever so rigidly adhered to the deep gulf he tried to fix between the President as a public man and as a private citizen. Mr. Wilson struggled to make the people accept his point of view.
It would have made President Wilson happy if there had been no mention of the private social activities of his family, as, for instance, when they went to church, or had a quiet afternoon tea for a few friends, or went to the theater. As to public receptions and the like, they were, of course, to be treated like all other public matters. But respecting the information as to what he did as a man, and who were the female guests in his home, and what they did, whether in Washington or at Cornish, he waged a long and losing battle.
The public regards not only a President's public duties but also everything connected with him as public property. It denies him any privacy. He belongs to the public. So do his wife and daughters and female relatives and guests.
So Mrs. Galt could not ride with the President without the matter having national interest. Every newspaper in the country wanted to print the story. It was first-page stuff; but none printed it. Such suppressions of a great feature, born of proper journalistic ethics, is not known in any other country in the world.
Of course, when the party returned to Washington there was publication of the names of the party, including Mrs. Norman Galt, "who had been the guest of the family at the summer Capital." That was all. But by the time they were back in Washington tongues were wagging and the belief was general that the White House was to have a new mistress. But nobody knew.
Here's where the Democratic politicians came into action. The election in 1916 was admittedly in doubt. It was a foregone conclusion that Wilson would be renominated by acclamation. His close competitor at Baltimore, Speaker Champ Clark, when asked if he would contest the nomination, answered in substance:
"If the nomination is worth having it will go to Woodrow Wilson. If it isn't worth anything nobody else will want it."
Therefore, when the news trickled down from Cornish and everybody believed the President and Mrs. Galt would be married, the Democratic politicians became alarmed.
It was almost a panic. They were almost all — I mean those particularly in official positions in and around Washington — of the opinion that if the President remarried before November, 1916, he would destroy all chances of re-election. Looking back from this distance, it is not easy to understand why they were so convinced; but it became an obsession with them. Many informal conferences were held. What could be done? Could anything be done? Most of them were hopeless as they took counsel of their fears.
"Presisdent Wilson ought to be warned before it is too late," said one.
"It is already too late," said another.
"I do not mean he should be warned not to fall in love. That apparently has already happened. He ought to be told that he should not remarry until after the election of 1916. There is more involved than Mr. Wilson. The whole Democratic Party is involved. He ought not to jeopardize the success of the party by consulting only his own personal happiness."
The wives of the politicians and other women had decided views. The first Mrs. Wilson had been dead only a little less than a year. They didn't like the idea of his remarrying so soon. That weighed with them more than the political consideration. The majority of the wives of Senators and Congressmen and other Democrats saw political defeat if the President should marry in 1915.
"Let him wait until after the Presidential election if he must marry again," That was the opinion on Capitol Hill.
While that was the opinion as to the aspect in politics, few believed President Wilson would permit political considerations to outweigh an affair of the heart, if his heart were really involved.
"They made my life a burden those days, did some of the politicians," said Doctor Grayson, "when they thought that the President was going to marry Mrs. Galt. I remember one member of the Cabinet coming to me and saying:
"Doctor Grayson, you have the Presidency for the next four years in your hands. We wish you to intercede with the President not to marry until after the election."
"My reply to one and all was, 'I am a sailor and not a politician. If you think anybody ought to intercede with him, do it yourself. I don't know what is going to happen to you politicians. I am not going to the President about this matter, and you are not, either!"'
One afternoon in the early fall of 1915 a Cabinet member called at the Navy Department by appointment to discuss with my husband what he had described over the telephone as "a very important matter." He waited until after four-thirty, when all the clerks had gone home, so the conversation or conference (everything in Washington is a conference) would be both secret and undisturbed.
"What do you think," the colleague of Mr. Daniels began, "of the gossip that the President is deeply interested in Mrs. Galt?"
My husband repeated what he had told me on Flag Day; that there was no need for surmise, adding that, in his judgment, before Christmas "we will have another boss."
"Are you certain of it?" he asked.
"Just as certain as that you are sitting in that chair," said Mr. Daniels. "No, nobody has told me anything. In this matter I am not in the President's confidence. He has not asked my advice or consent, or so much as intimated that he contemplates taking such a step. But the sails are set, and I predict before New Year's Day Mrs. Edith Galt will change her name to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson."
"It is exactly because I feared such might be in contemplation that I have come to see you," the friend said.
"Why to see me?" my husband asked.
This Cabinet official then told of how scores, yes, hundreds, of prominent Democrats all over the country had been coming to see him or writing him letters. He said they all believed that victory the next year was impossible if the President remarried before the election. Senators, members of the House of Representatives, national committeemen, chairmen of State committees, influential editors whose support was essential to secure victory were quoted.
"It is the unanimous opinion," he said, "that if the President remarries before November, 1916, we might as well give up the fight right then and there."
Mr. Daniels ventured that it was not as bad as that, agreeing that in a close election the effect might be injurious if the sentiment was as strong as pictured.
"Something should be done," declared my husband's colleague, "to secure postponement." He was in the depths.
"What do you suggest?" Mr. Daniels asked.
"That is exactly what I have come to see you about," the visitor said. "A few days ago, during your absence from the city, we had a little conference about the matter."
He told who was in the conference. Pretty big men in the Democratic Party they were, and influential, too.
"We unanimously agreed," he went on, "that someone should go to see the President, lay the whole matter before him, tell him it was the unanimous view that remarriage before the election would result in his defeat. We also agreed it should be borne in on him that not only was the success of his party at stake but that a Republican victory would result in the repeal of his splendid measures and shut the door in the face of other measures on which his heart was set.
Publication Date: August 22, 1925