When the Cheering Stopped (15 page)

Grayson came in. Lansing said, “Dr. Grayson, we wish to know the nature and extent of the President's illness, and whether he is able to perform the duties of his office, so that we may determine what shall be done to carry on the business of the Government.” Grayson said the President was suffering from a nervous breakdown, indigestion and a depleted system, that it was “touch and go,” the “scales might tip either way and they might tip the wrong way” if the President were harassed by business matters. The President should be bothered as little as possible; any excitement would kill him. Grayson also said that when moments before he left the sickroom the President asked what the Cabinet wanted and by whose authority it was meeting.

There was no immediate answer to this implied question, for several Cabinet members said at the same time that they were meeting to get information and take up business matters arising since their last meeting prior to the President's trip. Secretary of War Baker made a point of saying that the Cabinet was very anxious that Grayson express the sympathy of all the men to the President. More efforts to get something out of Grayson—“tell us more exactly what was the trouble”—elicited nothing beyond “His condition is encouraging but we are not yet out of the woods.” The meeting ended.

For days the bulletins were all the same: “The President had a very good night, and if there is any change in his condition it is favorable … The President had a restful and comfortable day …” There was absolutely nothing concrete given out, and for the first time in his career Tumulty had no off-the-record information for the White House reporters. Soon it was said all over America that a madman raving in wild delirium sat at the head of the government, or an imbecile whose mind was completely gone. One paper said the Cabinet was on the verge of asking the Vice President to take over the government; Tumulty denied it was so. Even the sympathetic New York
World
editorialized about the fact that only “vague generalities” were given out: “From the beginning of his illness to the present moment not a word has come from the sick-chamber that can be regarded as frankly enlightening. Mystery begets mystification.”

The President's brother, Joseph Wilson, a Baltimore businessman, wrote Tumulty: “It has seemed to me that it would not be amiss at least for the attending physicians to make a more detailed statement than any that has so far appeared concerning the real cause and the extent of the President's illness, in order to satisfy the public mind and to refute the numerous rumors which are afloat.” The suggestion was not complied with. But heavy traffic was diverted from streets near the White House, and the musicians of a hotel band a block away were asked not to play loud numbers.

On October 12 papers all over the country carried the text of a letter sent by Senator George Moses of New
Hampshire to a friend and released by the friend to a New Hampshire paper. Moses wrote: “Of course he may get well—that is, he may live—but if he does he will not be any material force or factor in anything.… There is no possibility that Mr. Wilson would be able to perform the functions of his office either in the immediate or remote future.” Grayson refused to make any comment on the letter, saying that if he answered every rumor he would have no time to attend to the President's health. The
World
reluctantly had to point out that this did not answer the rumors. When Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer went to speak at a Philadelphia Columbus Day celebration, he was surrounded by reporters before he went onto the Academy of Music stage. “What is the President's condition?” he was bluntly asked. “You read the papers, don't you?” he answered. “Don't you know any more than that?” “I do not.” “Does any Cabinet member know any more about it than what he reads in the papers?” “No.”
*

Palmer was wrong in saying no Cabinet man knew anything beyond what a newspaper reader would know, but one man in Washington definitely had no more information than the newspaper reader. He was the Vice President of the United States, Thomas Riley Marshall of Indiana. Marshall had come to the governorship of his state after practicing law for a third of a century in Columbia City, Indiana, population three thousand, and was a rustic type, physically unimpressive, who often said very amusing things that made people laugh. (William McAdoo saw Marshall's best scene as a country grocery store where he could sit by the stove and tell stories with his cronies.) The Vice President was the greatest possible contrast to the President in every way besides geographically and so had been nominated in 1912 and again in 1916 to balance the ticket. His destiny was the traditional one of American Vice Presidents: like the sailor lost at sea, he was never heard of again. At least it was so in Washington that he
was a completely discounted factor. But in the hinterlands he was known as a lecturer who would appear anywhere a fee awaited him. He had no substantial private resources beyond his $12,000 annual salary and found the lecture trail an attractive financial proposition.

The first Vice President ever to go lecturing, he explained he had either to give his talks, “steal, or resign.” He always kept in his mind the advice given him by William Jennings Bryan, the acknowledged king of the lecture trail: “Always get your money before you step onto the platform. Don't be standing around later waiting for it. Don't step onto the platform unless you already have the money in your pocket.” On his endless travels to keep his lecture dates he amused himself by spinning tall tales to his fellow passengers in the day coaches, few of whom recognized him. One such fellow passenger, complaining that business in the auto accessories line was slow, learned from Marshall that he was a dope peddler, a narcotics salesman. The man asked if this line wasn't against the law and Marshall told him that yes, it was, but he had a special arrangement with the authorities in Washington.

Upon the occasions when he was in the capital Marshall spent most of his time working at getting jobs for his cronies, telephoning people from his office, which, however, did not please him. He wanted one where he could put his feet up on the desk, and instead had to do with one that was too easily accessible and did not differ much “from a monkey cage, except that the visitors do not offer me any peanuts.” A cigar was never absent from his face or hand, and of course he will always be remembered for the remark he made during a Senate debate: “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”

After the first two or three terrifying days of the President's illness, the bland bulletins seemed to put Marshall's mind at ease, for his humorous inclinations did not desert him. On October 6, as Senator Borah bitterly argued about the League of Nations with the Democratic Minority Leader, Senator Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska, Marshall from his seat as presiding officer interrupted to put before the Senate a letter he had received. He had it read out by the Secretary of the Senate. It was from a brand-new father who wanted the Senate to help him choose a name
for his baby boy. He sought, the man wrote Marshall, to name the boy after a Senator, any Senator. “The man who will give the baby the biggest prize can have the name … Mr. Marshall, see what you can do for me.” (Sometimes the Vice President's levity shocked people.)

A few days earlier, when a delegation went by train to New York to welcome the King and Queen of the Belgians to America, the usual Washington attitude toward Marshall was demonstrated when the Secretary of State was given a private compartment on the train and Marshall and his wife were given two seats in a coach. (After the King and Queen and their son, the Duke of Brabant, later King Leopold III, learned of the President's illness, they announced they were abandoning their ceremonial tour of the country and would travel in a quiet way, incognito.)

Marshall had, it was true, sat in on a few Cabinet meetings at the President's suggestion in late 1918 when the President was in Europe for the Peace Conference. But soon he gave up his attendance, saying if he couldn't have the President's $75,000 a year he was not going to do any of the President's work. He added that he preferred his own job, anyway—“No responsibilities.” But in October of 1919, Marshall was in the position, whether he liked it or not, of being liable to have to take over the President's duties at any moment. The Cabinet had not formally discussed the possible devolution of the President's duties upon the Vice President, but the thought was in everybody's mind. And yet for days nothing was said by anybody to the Vice President about the possibility.

Finally Tumulty decided Marshall should be told something of the situation he was in. Thinking that it would be unwise for anyone formally connected with the President to speak with Marshall—any direct statement might be used as proof of Presidential disability—it was decided to send a completely unofficial person to tell Marshall clearly that at any moment he might find himself President of the United States. The man chosen was J. Fred Essary, a reporter for the Baltimore
Sun
. Essary went to Marshall's office and sat by the Vice President's desk. As the reporter began to speak, Marshall lowered his head
and put his hands on the desk. His teeth gripped his cigar. Essary said what he had to say, giving no details beyond what he himself had been told: the President could die at any moment. When Essary finished, he waited for Marshall to speak. But the Vice President, head bowed, was silent. Essary uncertainly stood up and waited. Marshall did not say a word. Essary went to the door, opened it, looked back. Marshall's head was still down. The cigar had gone out. He was looking at his hands. Essary went out and closed the door behind him.

*
Telling the story may have been a way of impressing the reporters with the fact that saluting a cow—or, more to the point, empty sidewalks—is not necessarily a sign of insanity. This is, however, only the author's speculation.

*
Although the rumor has lasted into the present day, there is irrefutable medical proof that the President never suffered from a venereal disease. The window bars were almost twenty years old and had been put in place to protect the glass from Theodore Roosevelt's ball-playing children.

*
At about this time a worried official of the United Press asked the manager of the Washington bureau, “Suppose Wilson was running around nekkid on the second floor of the White House, and nobody could ketch him—how would you find out about it?” The bureau manager had to reply that for all he knew the President was in fact doing just what the UP official described.

7

The word “thrombosis” refers to a clotting of blood in a blood vessel. Such a condition can block the blood's normal movement in a part of the body. It is caused by a multiplicity of reasons and can be brought on by overwork and hypertension. It is not the same thing as a “stroke,” in which the blood vessel ruptures, but the symptoms are very similar.

Some of the symptoms of a thrombosis in the human brain are violent stomach upsets—which are at first often diagnosed as resulting from indigestion or influenza—and hitherto unexperienced insomnia, twitching of the face, difficulty in using a pen, headaches, great weakness, and paralysis of one side of the body (which may come and then temporarily go).

These are the physical distresses, obvious to anyone who comes in contact with the patient. There are also more subtle mental changes. The victim often becomes unreasonable, apprehensive, irritable. He may become violently emotional—the most common characteristic is frequent crying spells—and lose a great deal of his judgment. One thrombosis in the brain may well be shaken off, but eventually there will be another, although the second may not come for months or even years. The process by which repeated clottings end the patient's life may,
in some cases, take up to twenty or even thirty years. In effect, little bites, one with each thrombosis, are being taken of the brain. The brain is slowly dying. When there is one bite too many, the brain dies.

The great Louis Pasteur suffered a thrombosis and lived to do some of his finest work with two thirds of a brain. However, most doctors advise the family of a man who has suffered a serious thrombosis to retire him from business immediately and to guard him against temptations which formerly would not have interested him. Important businessmen, shorn of their judgment by the condition, have lost their fortunes in months. Clergymen have taken up with prostitutes.

In April of 1919, in Paris, the President of the United States suffered, according to all evidence available after the fact, a thrombosis in his brain. His illness was diagnosed as influenza by his doctor—a logical diagnosis at a time when influenza outbreaks were sweeping the world. When the President got up from his sickbed, certain strange things in him were seen—his sudden decision, later rescinded, that he go home; his worry about the furniture in the house he occupied; his suspicion of the French servants; his rapid banishment of Colonel House from his confidence; his insistence that official cars not be used for formerly permitted pleasure trips—but not too much attention was paid to these changes.

There were two reasons working to prohibit much inquiry. One was that he was under enormous strain during the peace negotiations and could logically have been expected to develop eccentricities; the second was that he was the President, a strong President and a strong personality, and there was not a person who could say him no. In any event, none of his actions were in themselves terribly objectionable—House, for instance, was disliked and distrusted by many people, including Cary Grayson and the First Lady, and perhaps the servants
were
spies and the cars overused.

So the Peace Conference ended and the President came home to fight for the League of Nations. But when on his tour he collapsed, one half of his face fallen and his arm and leg temporarily paralyzed, Dr. Grayson knew at once that serious brain damage had been sustained. Once
back in Washington, there was reason to hope that with rest he might well throw off the effects of the thrombosis and get back to something approaching normal health. Then came the morning when he fell in his bathroom. After that he lay between life and death for several days. Only a tiny group of people, half a dozen, had access to his sickroom. The doctors called in as consultants could, of course, not dictate what the President should do in non-medical matters. Cary Grayson, in addition to being a doctor, was a naval officer on active duty, sworn to obey the orders of his Commander in Chief and therefore voiceless in policy matters. The President himself was desperately ill and unable to decide anything. There was only one person who could speak in his name and make use of, and make felt, his powers as President. Only one person could decide that he would continue in his job as though nothing had happened.