Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson's First Ladies

3. The White House Bride

Ellen Wilson’s death threw Woodrow into a bleak, unfamiliar world. He wrote to Mary Hulbert, “I never dreamed such loneliness and desolation of heart possible.” Because Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States, his loss was not merely a personal tragedy; the United States, and a world at war, needed his leadership. But Wilson confessed to Colonel House that he could “not think straight” and “had no heart in the things he was doing.”1 He was not actually alone at this time. Stockton Axson was at the White House a great deal that autumn. Joe Tumulty and Dr. Cary Grayson were on hand at all times. Wilson became closer to House during this period, “the high point” in their relationship, according to Wilson biographer John Milton Cooper Jr. But none of these men could take Ellen’s place: Woodrow wanted and needed a woman. The denizens of Washington had taken note of Woodrow’s temperament . Ellen Maury Slayden, having observed that the president “rather leans to the ladies,”bet a friend five pounds of chocolate that Wilson would marry again before his term expired.2 Given Woodrow’s warm correspondence with Mary Hulbert over the previous six years, he might have been expected to reach out to her. Mary might well have hoped that her newly single “devoted friend” would turn to her once he had finished mourning his wife. Woodrow assured Mary that her letters helped him; he asked her to c h a p t e r t h r e e THE WHITE HOUSE BRIDE 97 } { 98 Edith Bolling Wilson } { “write as often as you can.” But though his letters were warm, they were not romantic. Indeed, on the very day that he wrote his second letter to Mary, he wrote a letter nearly identical in tone to another close woman friend, Nancy Saunders Toy.3 Mary unquestionably was disappointed. But she must have known, at some level, that her relationship with Woodrow had already peaked. She was older now and often in poor health. Her son kept failing at one enterprise after another, probably because he drank too much. She must have realized that marriage to Woodrow Wilson would put an end to his political career. His enemies would seize on it as evidence that a romance had existed between them while he was still married to Ellen. Still, Woodrow Wilson was a man who freely admitted to an inColonel Edward M. House, Woodrow Wilson with unidentified baby, New Hampshire, 1914. Wilson wears a mourning band for Ellen. Woodrow Wilson House, a National Trust Historic Site, Washington, D.C. tense need for female affection. Ellen expected that he would find someone after her death. She even told her friends Lucy and Mary Smith, “I hope Woodrow would marry again. He cannot live alone.”4 Some of his advisers hoped this would not be soon, believing that a new relationship would dishonor Ellen’s memory and create an adverse reaction among the public. But those closest to Woodrow, including his daughters, knew how he was suffering and were eager for him to find new love.5 Woodrow did find a new woman to share his life, faster than anyone anticipated. And the woman he chose—or the woman who chose him—was not another demure intellectual with artistic sensibilities . Instead—just seventeen months after Ellen Wilson’s death— Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt, an outgoing, buxom forty-three-year-old widow, the owner of a thriving jewelry store sometimes referred to as “the Tiffany’s of Washington.” The marriage had profound historical significance because of the actions Edith took after Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke in October 1919. She was determined to help her husband remain in of- fice. She personally made high-level governmental decisions, guessing at what Wilson would have wanted. Sometimes she refused to make necessary decisions and prevented others from making them. She did not hesitate to push out longtime Wilson advisers and appointees . Unquestionably she lied—to Wilson’s associates, to political leaders, to the press and public. In so doing, she became one of the most controversial first ladies of all time. Since her death in 1961, Edith Wilson has been criticized by prominent biographers and commentators. She has been portrayed as a “sinister” woman who “had her way with history,” even characterized as “America’s worst first lady.” Perhaps the low point for...