# Recollections of Full Years/Chapter 16

Shortly after my husband's election, having spent a couple of restful weeks at Hot Springs, Virginia, we went to Augusta, Georgia, and took the old house known as the Terrett Cottage, near the Bon Air Hotel. To me the weeks we spent there were exceptionally happy ones and I should like to mention each friend—friends then and friends still—who contributed to our constant enjoyment, but there were too many of them and their kindnesses too numerous.
Mr. Taft, of course, immediately became engrossed in the difficulties of securing a Cabinet which would satisfy everybody and disappoint none,—an impossibility,—as well as a thousand and one other matters not connected in any way with the daily games of golf on Augusta's sandy links which attracted such wide attention. But even then my own problems became to me paramount and I began to give them my almost undivided attention and to neglect the political affairs which had for many years interested me so intensely. Perhaps with my husband safely elected I considered all important affairs satisfactorily settled. At any rate I found little time or inclination at the moment to worry about who should have the high offices in the new President's gift, or what policies should be pursued during his administration.
At my request Captain Archibald Butt came down to Augusta to consult with me as to changes I wished to make in the White House service, and together we went over the whole situation. As President Roosevelt's aide he knew the whole lexicon of customary White House social formalities.
THE WHITE HOUSE AS IT LOOKED ON THE EVENING OF THE FOURTH OF MARCH, 1909
We made a trip to Panama in February before the Inauguration and did not reach Washington until the end of the month when we went to stay with our friends, Mr. and Mrs. William J. Boardman, and their daughter, Miss Mabel Boardman, at their residence on Dupont Circle. We spent with them a busy week as the recipients of varied and delightful hospitality, which was terminated by a splendid reception in our honour on the evening of the second of March.
Captain Butt, who was to be continued as aide to President Taft, called on me at once upon my arrival in Washington to assure me that my instructions had been carried out and that the new régime, fully organised, would go into effect at the White House on the morning of March fifth.
Some time before the Inauguration, indeed shortly after Mr. Taft's election, President Roosevelt expressed a desire that we should dine with him and Mrs. Roosevelt on the evening of the third of March and spend that night in the White House as their guests. This was breaking a precedent, but it was Mr. Roosevelt's plan for bidding us a warm welcome to the post which he was about to vacate, and my husband accepted with grateful appreciation. My impression is that neither Mrs. Roosevelt nor I would have suggested such an arrangement for this particular evening, but, it having been made for us, we naturally acquiesced.
The third of March, a stormy day, was filled with innumerable minor engagements and small incidents, with instructions and counter-instructions and, especially, with weather predictions and counter-predictions, so it was not until shortly before eight o'clock that Mr. Taft and I, having dressed for dinner, arrived at the White House. The other guests at the dinner were Senator and Mrs. Lodge, ​Senator and Mrs. Root, Admiral and Mrs. Cowles, Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Longworth and Miss Mabel Boardman.
Now there is always bound to be a sadness about the end of an administration, no matter how voluntarily the retiring President may leave office, no matter how welcome the new President and his family may be. Mrs. Roosevelt seemed depressed, not, I am sure, over the prospect of leaving the White House,—Presidents' wives are always given plenty of time to prepare themselves for that event,—but for other reasons which one easily could surmise. Her husband and son were about to start for a long and, possibly, dangerous trip into the jungles of Africa, and she was looking forward to a year of anxiety. She was leaving a full and busy life; she had occupied her high position for nearly eight years, during which she had made a host of friends, and a great number of them had called during the afternoon to say farewell and to express their deep regret at her departure. I knew all of these things, realised their depressing effect and sympathised with her deeply. The President and Mr. Taft, seconded by other guests, did their best with stories and conyersation, made as general as possible, to lighten the occasion, but their efforts was not entirely successful.
As my husband had an engagement to attend a "smoker" which was being given to him at the New Willard Hotel by a large gathering of Yale men, the party broke up very early and, as soon as the last of the guests had gone, I went immediately to my rooms. We had been assigned to the suite in the southeast corner, known in the White House as the Blue Bedroom.
This Blue Bedroom gave me food for interesting reflection. Conspicuous, under the mantel against the side wall, I found, on a bronze plate, the following inscription (which I read as I struggled with my hooks): "In this room Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, whereby four million slaves were given their ​freedom and slavery forever prohibited in these United States." It is only a state bedroom now, having been made so by the plans of the McKim restoration which was accomplished during the Roosevelt administration, but it was once Lincoln's Cabinet room, a room in which he lived through many terrible days during the Civil War. It seemed strange to spend my first night in the White House surrounded by such ghosts.
I went to bed reasonably early, hoping that I might have a good, long sleep and get up refreshed and ready for an eventful day. But the press of circumstances was against me. My mind was never more wide awake. In spite of my determination to rest, I went carefully over the whole Inaugural programme. I wondered if this had been done, if that had been attended to. I worried over many petty details with which I had no reason to be concerned. I suppose I must have been excited, a condition quite rare with me, but then, too, the weather had something to do with it. Never was seen such a night in Washington. It will be remembered that Mr. Moore, the Chief of the Weather Bureau, had prophesied that the storm of the third would pass and that the Fourth of March would dawn as clear and bright as any Inaugural Committee could wish. He made himself very popular with the anxious officials, who were expending their energies in the preparation of a fair weather programme, but his popularity was short lived. He afterward learnedly explained that some wholly unprecedented thing had happened in the wind currents, causing a "flareback"—whatever that may be. It was a memorable "flareback" in any event, not to be forgotten by those who were so seriously inconvenienced by its results.
After I had fallen asleep in the early morning hours, thinking—with faith in the prophet—to wake up and find a smiling world, I was roused by loud, crackling reports which seemed to be in the immediate vicinity of my windows. I ​got up and looked out. It was light enough for me to see that the world was ice-bound and that the storm, instead of abating, had increased in violence. The crackling I had heard was the noise of twigs and tree limbs breaking with the weight of the ice which encased them. It didn’t look hopeful for the Inaugural Ceremonies, and I had a ludicrous vision of a haughty, gold-laced parade sliding, rather than marching with measured precision, down Pennsylvania Avenue, striving to maintain its dignity while it spasmodically lost its footing. But mine was rueful mirth.
In the morning Mr. Taft found President Roosevelt in the great hall below, genially alert.
"Well, Will," be exclaimed, "the storm will soon be over. It isn’t a regular storm. It’s nature’s echo of Senator Rainer’s denunciations of me. As soon as I am out where I can do no further harm to the Constitution it will cease."
"You're wrong," said Will; "it is my storm. I always said it would be a cold day when I got to be President of the United States."
It was really very serious. Railroad and telegraphic communications were paralysed all along the Atlantic Coast. Wires were down in every direction and traffic of all kinds was at a practical standstill. Thousands of people, on their way to Washington for the Inauguration, were tied up at points outside the city and it was impossible for awhile even to get a telegram in or out. However, Inaugurations do not wait for fair weather and the programme had to proceed.
About half past ten I saw the President and the President-elect, in a closed carriage, accompanied by Senators Knox and Bacon of the Inaugural Committee, and a brilliant mounted escort, start on their slippery way toward the Capitol. The Inauguration ceremonies would not take place until twelve o'clock, but there were a number of bills waiting for the signature of Mr. Roosevelt, and it was necessary ​for him to go early to the office of the President at the Capitol to attend to this and other final business details.
Before they left the White House it had not yet been decided whether or not the Inauguration would take place out of doors. Mr. Taft regretted exceedingly the necessity for disappointing thousands of people, but at the same time he recognised the danger of exposing the crowds to the wet and penetrating cold, and he considered, especially, the impossibility of asking Chief Justice Fuller, who was then over seventy years old and very frail, to brave a blizzard, even for the purpose of administering a Presidential oath. However, he decided to wait until the weather had given its ultimate indication before changing the programme. He said afterward that as he drove to the Capitol there were many brave citizens in the streets who gave voice to as hearty cheers as could possibly be expected under the circumstances.
I was being taken care of by Captain Archibald Butt, so I had nothing except the weather to worry about. With a last hopeless look out of doors I proceeded to don my Inauguration finery, feeling duly thankful that it was not too springlike in its character. The newspapers say I wore a purple satin suit, and a small hat trimmed with gold lace and a high white aigrette. This is as good a description as any, though it might have been more flattering, considering the importance I attached to the subject. I remember the hat perfectly. The aigrette was not quite as high as it started out to be. It had nearly met an untimely end at a reception the day before where it collided with a lighted gas-jet. Fortunately it was put out before it was greatly damaged, but it had to be trimmed down some, and I imagined that it exuded a faint odour of burning feathers.
At least two years before the election, when no one could anticipate who would be the next President, President Roosevelt had announced at a Cabinet meeting that he did not intend to ride back to the White House with his successor. It ​was a precedent which he did not like and which he desired to break. Mrs. Roosevelt went, with her family and friends, directly from the White House to the station to wait for her husband to join her after the Inauguration. It was about half past eleven when Captain Butt and I started in a limousine for the Capitol where we arrived to find the "scene set" for the ceremonies in the Senate Chamber.
Our children were already in the gallery, waiting eagerly. It was an event in their young lives never to be forgotten, and I believe that Robert and Helen were in properly receptive moods. My son Charlie, however, seems not to have been so confident. Charlie is a great lover of adventure stories and it is a favourite tradition in the family now that he carried with him to the Senate Chamber a copy of "Treasure Island" with which to while away the tune in case the Inaugural address should prove too long. Charlie was only eleven years old and I consider it a great tribute to his father's eloquence that "Treasure Island" was not opened that day.
It was a great presence; and the taking of the oath and the delivering of the Inaugural address before assembled national authority and the world's representatives, in a solemn silence in which every word could be heard, left a deep impression.
As soon as Mr. Taft had finished speaking Mr. Roosevelt walked rapidly up, and giving his hand a mighty grasp, said something which sounded like "Bully speech, old man!" and hurried out of the Chamber accompanied by members of his Cabinet who were to see him off at the station. My husband told me afterward that what he really said was: "God bless you, old man. It is a great state document."
Since the ex-President was not going to ride back to the White House with his successor, I decided that I would. No President's wife had ever done it before, but as long as precedents were being disregarded I thought it might not be too great a risk for me to disregard this one. Of course, there was objection. Some of the Inaugural Committee expressed their disapproval, but I had my way and in spite of protests took my place at my husband's side.
By the time the Inauguration ceremonies were concluded the skies had cleared and the sun had come out. Mr. Taft left the Senate Chamber with the Committee, followed by the assembled dignitaries in the order of precedence. With Captain Butt I hurried from the gallery and joined ​him in the great hall under the Dome, on his way to the platform on the North Side where the Inauguration would have taken place but for the weather. In front of the temporary structure many people had gathered, and as we descended to the front they called for the new President. In response he stepped to the platform where the Inaugural oath was to have been administered, and bowed repeatedly.
A platoon of mounted Police and our escort, the Cleveland City Troop, with their elaborate and beautiful uniforms somewhat bedraggled by the morning's sleet and mud, met us at the steps leading down from the platform. We entered the official coach and four and were slowly driven down through the Capitol grounds to Pennsylvania Avenue, and thence to the White House. As I have said, the clouds had rolled by; the day was cold but bright; the expected and expectant crowds were thronging the sidewalks and filling the stands, and our greeting from them was all that my fancy had pictured it.
For me that drive was the proudest and happiest event of Inauguration Day. Perhaps I had a little secret elation in thinking that I was doing something which no woman had ever done before. I forgot the anxieties of the preceding night; the consternation caused by the fearful weather; and every trouble seemed swept aside. My responsibilities had not yet begun to worry me, and I was able to enjoy, almost to the full, the realisation that my husband was actually President of the United States and that it was this fact which the cheering crowds were acclaiming.
There was nobody at the White House to bid us welcome except the official staff and some of our own guests. But it didn't matter. There is never any ceremony about moving into the White House. You just drive up and walk in,—and there you are, The aides and ushers who greeted us at the entrance, treated our occupation of our new residence so much as a matter of course that I could not ​help but feel something as Cinderella must have felt when her mice footmen bowed her into her coach and four and behaved just as if they had conducted her to a Court Ball every night of her life. I stood for a moment over the great brass seal, bearing the national coat-of-arms, which is sunk in the floor in the middle of the entrance hall. "The Seal of the President of the United States," I read around the border, and now — that meant my husband!
But I could not linger long because my duties as a hostess began at once. I was not unused to the accepted regulations of official life, so, in spite of a slight feeling that the whole thing was unreal, I was not embarrassed as I walked into the great dining-room and took my place by the door to receive guests for the first time as mistress of the White House.
I had left to the efficient management of Captain Archibald Butt as many of the details of the day's programme as was possible. Some time before I had carefully gone over the plans with him, we had provided for any reasonable emergency, and I knew my instructions would be carried out. Captain Butt—later Major Butt—had been military aide to President Roosevelt; we had known him well, both in the Philippines and in Washington, and we were glad to have the opportunity of continuing him in that capacity. Whatever Major Butt did was done faultlessly-always. During the three years he was with us—day in and day out, upon every possible occasion, in the closest intimacy—I never ceased to wonder at his genius for work, his comprehensive grasp of important matters and of small details, his extraordinary accuracy. His very presence inspired the utmost confidence. Archie Butt, as everybody called him, became our close and dearly loved friend. Indeed, we felt that he belonged to us, and nothing in all our experience ever touched us as deeply as the tragedy of his death. Returning from a short vacation abroad, he went down on the ​Titanic, facing death like a soldier, after the lives of nearly all the women and children had been saved.
We had invited a large number of people to the usual Inaugural luncheon. The cook and several of the staff of servants were to accompany Mrs. Roosevelt to Oyster Bay, but they remained until the afternoon of the Fourth when the staff I had engaged were installed. There are a few old, official servants who remain in the house from one administration to another, keeping in operation an uninterrupted household routine, so there was no reason why the Inaugural luncheon should not be carried through with the same smoothness and despatch to be expected on ordinary occasions. But again we reckoned without the weather. The difficulties of traffic, added to the crush on the avenues, made it impossible for our guests to arrive on time and they continued to straggle in throughout the whole afternoon, each one wishing to apologise in person and make special explanation. This, of course, made anything like systematic reception out of the question and the result was that the luncheon really ran into and became a part of the tea for my husband's classmates of Yale, which was scheduled for five o'clock. There was some confusion, but much goodwill and frank enjoyment and the fact that the President was not there to receive his classmates caused nothing more than a few repetitions of, by that time, familiar comments on the elements.
THE PRIVATE DINING-ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THE FAMILY SITTING-ROOM AT THE END OF THE LONG UPSTAIRS CORRIDOR
"Let's go up stairs, my dears, and sit down!" said he. Poor man, he had not experienced the blissful sensation of sitting down since early that morning; so we proceeded out to the elevator, which Charlie, true to his boy nature, had, of course, already learned to operate. For once, I am glad to say, it did not stick between floors. This was a habit to which it became addicted in later days, a habit it was sure to indulge on occasions when the President proudly used it for taking a large party of men upstairs after dinner. But this time he was able, without delay, to reach the best easy-chair in the sitting-room where he remained until I prodded him once more into activity by reminding him that he must get into evening clothes else the Inaugural Ball could not take place.
Not having been taxed so greatly, I was not yet ready to succumb to fatigue; besides I was now eager to roam around the house, to familiarise myself with the mysteries of my new home and to plan the assignment of rooms among various members of the family who were to come to us that very night.
The second story of the White House, where all the family living rooms are, corresponds in spaciousness with the floor below, which, with its broad hall, its great East Room, its large reception rooms and state dining room, is familiar to the public. Upstairs there is a very wide hall running the entire length of the building. The rooms occupied by the President and his wife are in the south-west corner and at that end of the house the hall is partially partitioned and ​screened off and pleasantly furnished with desks, sofas and easy-chairs to make a fairly large and very private family sitting-room. It was here that I left my tired husband while I went on my first tour of exploration.
At each of the four corners of the house there is a suite; all arranged on the same plan, exactly alike, except as to decoration. Each consists of an exceedingly large bedroom with a spacious bath, and a smaller room adjoining which may be used as a bedroom or dressing-room. I went first into the large bedroom which my husband and I expected to occupy. The windows of this room look out on the White House gardens where the large fountain plays, and, beyond, on the Washington Monument, the Potomac River and the distant Virginia hills. This, I think, is the most glorious vista in Washington, which is a city of splendid vistas, and seeing it that March night by the long line of lights which stretch across the Potomac bridge and meet the lights of Arlington, it was, indeed, inspiring.
The room was the room where Lincoln slept, indeed, where every President since Jackson has slept. A tablet under the mantel states this fact. It is the room which must necessarily have more intimate and personal association with the men who have occupied the White House than any other. Other parts of the house have been the scenes of great historic events and of magnificent hospitality, but here, one after another, the Presidents of the United States have really lived and been at home.
Its furnishings have, undoubtedly, been changed many times and yet I found it to contain many old and interesting pieces. The most striking object in the room was an enormous four-poster bed with a great curved canopy of wood, decorated with carved and gilded eagles and upholding heavy draperies of blue and white brocade. In this bed, we had been told, the Prince of Wales slept when he visited this country in 1860, but on the first night I dis​covered that, whatever its historic interest, I did not like it as a bed to sleep in. I soon replaced it with two smaller mahogany beds and I dispensed altogether with the draperies. There were canopies of the same gilded eagles over the windows, and the curtains suspended from them, as well as the upholstery of the sofa and chairs, were of the same blue and white brocade. Some of the furniture was colonial, some Victorian. The colonial furniture in the White House is very good and there is quite a lot of it in all the bedrooms, but many of the bureaus and wardrobes are of the scarcely-to-be-called beautiful style of the Victorian era. I secured for our room, later on, the beds, a dressing-table and some chairs, all colonial. These were about the only pieces of furniture I bought for the White House. I also substituted heavy chintz for the brocade draperies and upholstery, and did away with the canopy entirely, as they seemed to me to be too heavy for a sleeping room. The small room in the corner of our suite Mr. Taft used for a dressing-room.
The corresponding suite across the hall I gave to Helen, my daughter. It had been occupied by both of the Misses Roosevelt and before them, I believe, by Mrs. McKinley. It had been fitted up in pretty flowered chintz for Miss Ethel Roosevelt, after Miss Alice had married, and we left it unchanged.
I strolled down the hall, which contains only a large table and a few portraits of Presidents for which there is no wall space down stairs, and looked into the Library which is exactly in the center of the house on the south side. It is oval like the Blue Drawing Room beneath it and it is a little dark in the daytime, being shaded by the roof of the south portico. This was Mrs. Roosevelt's favourite room and it had been fitted most charmingly with many of her own belongings, but as they were now gone and my own had not yet been moved in, it looked rather bare. The ​furniture had not been upholstered for many years and it was a little shabby. Later on I had it all recovered and the walls of the room retinted, and when I had put in some of the Oriental tapestries and handsome pieces of furniture which I had brought with me from the Far East it made a very beautiful and livable room. We used it a great deal, especially when there were guests, but for the family the sitting-room at the end of the hall was always the favourite gathering place.
Opposite the Library a short corridor extends to the window under the roof of the front portico and on each side of this doors open into smaller bedrooms; smaller, that is, in comparison with the four large ones. Even these would be considered large in an ordinary house. One of them I assigned to the housekeeper and the other to my two sons. The boys' room was rather dark, with its windows directly under the roof of the portico; and it was furnished, moreover, in dark red, a colour which does not add light to gloominess, but the boys got it because they were the members of the family who would care the least and who would be the most away.
The great staircase descends from the central hall just beyond these rooms and facing the staircase is the President's Study. The eastern end of the building was all used as offices until the new offices were built and the house restored in accordance with the original plan. The Presidents with large families must, indeed, have been in an uncomfortable situation when they had to confine themselves to the rooms in the west end, the only rooms then available for living purposes. The facts are that such families found the house to be less commodious than a "five-room flat," as the wife of one President expressed it. I believe the Roosevelts, until the house was remodelled, were unable to accommodate one guest.
©Harris X Ewing
TWO WHITE HOUSE BEDROOMS SHOWING FINE OLD COLONIAL BEDS
Senator McMillan, who was at the head of the District Committee in the Senate, and who, in his lifetime was the leading spirit in the improvement of Washington, in the revival of the L'Enfant plan, and in the creation of a Commission of Fine Arts to pass upon contemplated structures and changes, conferred with Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and with Senator Allison of the Appropriations Committee, and by an amendment in the Senate, in the spring of 1902, to which Speaker Cannon and the House Appropriations Committee assented, the necessary funds for this restoration were eventually provided and, most fortunately, the whole work was committed to Mr. James McKim, of McKim, Meade and White, who, among all the architectural monuments to his genius which he left, left no greater evidence of his mastery of his art than this. He added the gracefully beautiful terraces on either side, equipped with electric light standards, and in accord, really, with the original plan of the house, and utilised them in a most ingenious way. He made of the one on the west a very dignified and convenient approach, through the basement, for large companies attending state entertainments. Cloak stands for the accommodation of thousands were fitted into each side of this ​passageway and guests now are able to dispose of their wraps and proceed to the staircase leading up to the main hall on the first floor without the slightest interruption or discomfort.
The ample and airy space beneath the high portico on the south side was used for domestic offices and servants' quarters, thus greatly increasing the capacity of the house, and the construction of the very convenient executive office building, reached by a covered, or cloistered passage from the White House basement, was carried out on lines so like in style and appearance to the north portico, so low and classically simple, that it detracts nothing from the general effect and interferes in no way with the dignified outlines of the home of the Nation's Chief Magistrate.
During the reconstruction the President and Mrs. Roosevelt lived either at Oyster Bay or in a house a few steps from the White House on Lafayette Square. Mr. McKim frequently consulted Mrs. Roosevelt as to interior changes and many of her views were adopted, so that the woman's side of the new White House was well looked after.
The work took longer and cost more than was expected and this clicited much criticism of the architect as well as of the architectural result. His aim had been to make as little outward change in the main lines as possible and yet to make as great a change as space would permit in interior accommodation. Considering what he had to accomplish his success was remarkable. But the Philistines among the Congressmen and Senators, who don't like architects anyway, found much to complain of. In their daily visits to the President they did not, by Mr. McKim's plan, reach him through the historic front entrance, supported by the great, white pillars, but they were relegated to a business office, simply and conveniently equipped, and it offended the sense of due proportion of some of them as to who were the real power in the government, the legislative representatives ​calling on business or the social guests of the President.
But now, after all the ignorance, ill-feeling and prejudice displayed in the most unjust attacks upon Mr. McKim, those whose judgment is worth anything, and that includes the whole body of the people of the United States, rejoice in their hearts that the greatest of American architects was given a free hand to adapt to modern needs, but also to preserve in its dignity and beauty, this most appropriate official home of the Head of the Republic.
These observations may not be in place just here, but they occurred to me on the first evening of my occupancy of the White House, and I congratulated myself that I was to enjoy the results of that successful reconstruction of what had been a most uncomfortable mansion.
The President's Study, as it is now called, is the only room of the old Executive offices which has not been changed into a sleeping room. It is now the President's more personal office where he can receive callers more privately than in the new office building. A small bronze tablet under the mantel tells, in simple words, the history of the room. Here all the Presidents since Johnson held their Cabinet meetings, and here the Protocol suspending hostilities with Spain was signed in McKinley's administration. A picture of that event, painted by Chartran, hangs in the room and conveys a remarkably vivid impression of the men who had a part in it. The faces of President McKinley, of Justice Day, who was then Secretary of State, and of M. Cambon, the French Ambassador, are especially striking. This room, in which there had been a great many personal mementos gathered by Mr. Roosevelt in his interesting career, also looked, after their removal, rather bare on that evening of my first inspection and, save for the pictures and the tablet, had little in its character to make real in one's mind the great events that it had witnessed. Yet, as I roamed around that evening, the whole house was haunted for me by memories ​of the great men and the charming women whose most thrilling moments, perhaps, had been spent under its roof, and I was unable to feel that such a commonplace person as I had any real place there. This feeling passed, however, for though I was always conscious of the character which a century of history had impressed upon the White House, it came, nevertheless, to feel as much like home as any house I have ever occupied. That Study, which seemed at the moment so much a part of American history and so little even a temporary possession of the Taft family, was later hung with amusing cartoons illustrative of events in Mr. Taft's career, with photographs of his friends, and with what are called at Yale "memorabilia" of his varied experiences, and it became, in time, for us all, peculiarly his room.
The Blue Bedroom, where we had slept the night before as guests of the Roosevelts, belongs to one of the four corner suites and I planned to give it to my sister Eleanor, Mrs. Louis More, and her husband, while the smaller room in the same suite I assigned to Miss Torrey, our Aunt Delia-and during our administration apparently the country's "Aunt Delia." She had been staying with us at the Boardmans' and was probably enjoying the Inauguration of her nephew more than anyone in Washington. The last of the suites, which was exactly like the blue suite except that it was hung in pink brocade, I gave to my husband's sister and brother-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Edwards of San Diego.
When I had finished my explorations and arrangements I glanced at the clock in the Pink Room and discovered that I had no time to lose before beginning that important toilet which would make me ready for the Inaugural Ball, the last, but not the least of the Inaugural functions.
I hurried to my room and found the hairdresser waiting for me. I sat down with a feeling of great comfort and submitted myself with hopeful patience to her ministrations. But she was so overcome by the greatness of the oc​casion that, although she was quite accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of my hair, she was not able to make it "go right" until she had put it up and taken it down twice, and even then it was not as perfectly done as I had fondly hoped it would be. I believe this hairdressing process made me more nervous than anything else in the whole course of the day.
While it was going on, my new gown lay glittering on the bed, where the maid had placed it, and I was very anxious to get into it. It had given me several days of awful worry. It was made in New York at least a week before it was needed so that any necessary changes could easily be made. But day after day went by and no dress, — the third of March arrived and then I began, frantically, to telegraph. I finally received the reassuring advice that the dress was on its way in the hands of a special messenger, but the special messenger was, with many other people, held up for hours by the blizzard and did not arrive at the Boardmans' until after I had left for the White House, wondering, disconsolately, what on earth I should wear to the Inaugural Ball if it happened that the messenger couldn't get there at all. The suspense had been fearful and it was a comforatble relief to see the gown all spread out and waiting for me.
It was made of heavy white satin which I had sent to Tokyo to have embroidered, and the people who did the work surely know their art. A pattern of golden-rod was outlined by a silver thread and cleverly fitted into the long lines of the gown, and no other trimming had been used except some lace with which the low cut bodice was finished. It fitted me admirably and I hoped that, in spite of all the mishaps in my preparations, I looked my best as I descended from the White House automobile at the entrance of the Pension Offise.
The Pension Office was not built for balls, Inaugural or ​otherwise, and on the evening of March Fourth, 1909, after a day of melting sleet and snow, the entrance was not especially inviting. Neither was the dressing-room which had been assigned to me. I suppose that for years it had rung with the ceaseless click of scores of typewriters and that its walls and beheld no more eleborate costume than a business blouse and skirt since the occasion of the last Inaugural Ball which had marked the beginning of the second Roosevelt administration four years before. But as I needed to do very little "prinking" it really didn't matter and I quickly rejoined the President and proceeded, on his arm, to the Presidential Box, this being a small round gallery above the main entrance of the great ballroom which is itself, in everyday life, the principal workroom of the Pension Office.
A brilliant, an aalmost kaleidoscopic scene spread before us. The hall is of tremendous proportions, pillared with red marble and with walls tinted in the same colour. Every inch of floor space seemed to be occupied. The bright colours and the gleam of women's gowns met and clashed, or harmonised with the brighter colours of diplomatic uniforms. Officers of the Army and Navy, in full regalia, mingled with the hundreds of men in the plain black of formal evening dress. It was a wonderful glittering throng, more magnificent than any I have ever seen. It was not possible to distinguish individuals except in the space directly below the box, but here, as I looked down, I saw a great semi–circle of faces — thousands, it seemed to me — smilingly upturned toward us. The din of human voices was terrific; even the loudest band procurable had difficulty in making itself heard. But the scene was so gay in colour, and the faces that gazed up at us were so friendly and happy that I felt elated and not at all overwhelmed.
The first person whom my eyes rested upon in the box was Aunt Delia, already installed in a chair near the back and drinking in the scene with visible pleasure. Aunt ​Delia, at that time, was eighty-three years old, but not for anything would she have missed one feature of this crowning day of her life. Having no children of her own, she had for many years given the greater part of her thought and interest to her nephews and nieces, and she followed every step in my husband's career with an absorption, not to say an excitement, as great as my own. All day long she had travelled from ceremony to ceremony, conducted by Lieutenant Reed, one of the Naval aides. She would arrive, leaning on his arm, among the first at each appointed place, ready and eagar for any new event. She didn't miss even the late supper of birds, salads, and ices which was served to us later that night, before we left the Ball. And now she sat in the President's Box, her soft, white hair arranged by the best hairdresser, gowned in rich, old–fashioned, black velvet, adorned with all the good old lace which she had been treasuring for years for an occasion justifying its display.
The Vice–President and Mrs. Sherman arrived shortly after we did and shared the box with us. They also had with them a large family party and were both so jully and so much in the festive spirit that formality disappeared. Many friends and officials of distinction came, in the course of the evening, to pay their respects; and members of our own family came and went at intervals as they were inclined.
I may as wll say here that my husband and I both came from such large families that all Washington, at the time of the Inauguration, seemed filled with our near and dear relatives. Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft took a comfortable house for ten days, while Mr. and Mrs. Henry Taft and Mr. Horace Taft were at the New Willard.
About eleven o'clock the President and I decended to the ballroom floor, followed by Vice–President and Mrs. Sherman and, as is the custom, proceeded slowly down the length of the hall and back between the closely packed rows of peo– ​ple who stood aside to make room for our promenade. This ceremonious parade was not as trying for me as it may sound, for not only did I have the reassurance of my husband's arm, but the crowd was too large to seem very personal. So I was quite serene, except for frequent spasms of anxiety lest my gorgeous length of train be stepped on.
Except for this ceremony, and for a short supper which was served to us and a few invited guests in a private room, the President and I remained in the box until shortly after one o'clock when we once more descended and made our way to a waiting automobile which very quickly whisked us away to much needed rest.
However, I must still have had energy enough left to worry over domestic arrangements since the last thing I remember of that eventful day was a hearty laugh from my husband when I exclaimed in sleepy tones: "I wonder where we had all better have breakfast in the morning!"