When the Cheering Stopped (34 page)

Four days later, on January 20, terribly weak, he met for a few minutes with Raymond Fosdick, who, although an American, had served as a League of Nations official in Geneva. Fosdick asked him how he felt, and he said he would reply by quoting something another President said when asked about his health: “John Quincy Adams is all right, but the house he lives in is dilapidated, and it looks as if he would soon have to move out.” But mostly they talked of the League. Constantly he talked about 1914 and the utter wastage of the war. “It must never happen again!” he said. “There is a way of escape if only men will use it.” The escape was the League, the authority of law substituted for the authority of force, he said. His voice rose when he spoke of criticisms of the League as a too-idealistic conception. “The world is
run
by its ideals,” he said. He grew excited and tears rolled down his face when he said to Fosdick that it was unthinkable that America would permanently stand in the way of human progress; it was unthinkable that America would remain aloof, for America would not thwart the hope of the race. His voice broke and he whispered huskily that America was going to bring her spiritual energy to the liberation of mankind. Mankind would step forward, a mighty step; America could not play the laggard. Fosdick was young, and when Fosdick rose to go he pledged in the name of
the younger generation that they would carry through to a finish the uncompleted work. At this the tears flowed unimpeded. Fosdick wrote it all down: “My last impression of him was of a tear-stained face, a set, indomitable jaw, and a faint voice whispering, ‘God bless you.' With his white hair and gray, lined face, he seemed like a reincarnated Isaiah, crying to his country: ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!'”

January in Washington is cold and damp. Cary Grayson wanted to get away for a little while and Bernard Baruch obliged him by offering an invitation for a week's shooting at his South Carolina estate.
*
On January 26, Saturday, Grayson came to S Street for a few moments before heading for the train south. The doctor was seen to the door by the mistress of the house, who said as they walked down the stairs that she was very worried about her husband, for he seemed so weak. She asked Grayson if he shared this fear, and Grayson said, “No. If I did, I would not leave him, and if you want me to give up the trip, I will. But I think you are mistaken.”

She left Grayson and went up to her husband's room, where he sat with his head bowed. She asked how he felt; he said, “I always feel badly now, little girl. Somehow I hate to have Grayson leave.”

She said, “He is still downstairs. Let me run and tell him and he will stay.” She made as if to go, but he caught her hand. “No. That would be a selfish thing on my part. He is not well himself and needs the change.” But then he said, “It won't be very much longer, and I had hoped he would not desert me. But that I should not say, even to you.”

And so Grayson left. On Sunday the invalid went over his mail, but he seemed terribly, terribly tired. On Monday he was even weaker. On Tuesday night the nurse on duty, Lulu Hulett, said to Bolling that she thought her patient was a very sick man. She asked Bolling if Grayson was in Washington. Bolling told her the doctor was in
South Carolina. She said, “Oh, I wish he were here.” That night, a little after midnight, Edith decided that Grayson, gone four days, must be recalled. She went to her brother's room and woke him to say that she wanted Grayson to be telegraphed. Bolling got up and sent a prearranged code telegram, charging it to the telephone of another brother, Wilmer Bolling, so that no word of the crisis might leak out. The wire did not arrive at Baruch's South Carolina place until morning, and as Grayson was already out shooting, he did not see it until noon. When he did, he telephoned and said he would take the next train north. He would be in Washington on Thursday morning and would come to the house at once.

Grayson arrived at ten on Thursday and examined the patient, who had sent word to Bolling that unless there was something of great importance in the mail he would let all correspondence go for a day. Later on Thursday, in the afternoon, Edith asked Grayson if the girls should be notified. Grayson said perhaps not; doing so would alarm them unnecessarily. But the woman's eye—the wife's—had seen something the doctor had missed. All that night the two of them sat with the patient, and when Bolling arose at eight his sister told him it was time to tell the girls. Grayson came down and said she was right. Margaret was in New York; they telephoned her and she said she would be down on the next train. Nellie was at her home in California; Jessie was in Bangkok, where her husband was acting as adviser to the Government of Siam. The telegrams went out:
CONSIDER CONDITION EXTREMELY SERIOUS.
Nellie wired Edith:
OUR DEAR LOVE TO YOU BOTH DARLING. WE ARE LEAVING TOMORROW FOR WASHINGTON. SURE EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL RIGHT
. She and McAdoo took reservations on the Santa Fe Railroad's California Limited leaving Los Angeles at 11:30
A.M.
Saturday. Nothing was heard from Jessie, but the Siamese Embassy in Washington offered all aid in expediting messages to and from Bangkok.

Later that day, Friday, word leaked out and brought a platoon of reporters to S Street. Grayson went to speak with them. There was no attempt to minimize the gravity of the situation; Grayson said frankly that the situation was very bad. That evening every paper in America told its
readers:
WOODROW WILSON VERY WEAK. END IS THOUGHT TO BE VERY NEAR. FAMILY OF EX-PRESIDENT SUMMONED TO BEDSIDE.
As the papers appeared on the streets the reporters were phoning in a statement by Grayson that it could be only a matter of time. A rumor spread through Washington that the dying man was delirious and that in his mind he was back in 1919 where he still sat in the White House leading the fight for ratification of the League.
*

Other doctors came, H. A. Fowler and Sterling Ruffin, both of whom attended him in the White House. (Ruffin had had another professional duty to perform that day. With two other doctors he went as a Senate-appointed committee to determine if Albert Fall, who once went to a sickroom to see if the President of the United States was insane, was too ill to testify before the Senators investigating Teapot Dome. Fall said he was far too sick. Ruffin and the other doctors did not agree.) When Fowler and Ruffin arrived, Grayson went into the sickroom to say that the two doctors were coming in to make an examination. When they came in behind Grayson, there was a tiny smile from the patient, and a faint whisper: “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

Last jest, thought Grayson.

Grayson stayed when the other doctors left. Late that night, after the fog came in and covered S Street and the reporters shivering in front of the dimly lit house and in a flimsy little construction shack in an empty lot nearby, Grayson said to his patient what was the truth: that he was dying. Woodrow Wilson listened and breathed, “I am a broken piece of machinery. When the machinery is broken …” His voice petered out. There was a moment's silence in the sickroom where hung the original of the most famous Red Cross poster—“The Greatest Mother in the World”—and where he lay in the replica of the White House's Lincoln bed underneath a picture of the American flag and across from the fireplace where stood the casing of the first shell fired at the enemy. Then he said, “I am ready.”

Outside, unasked, the morning milk wagons detoured
around the block so that there would be no noise. It was barely light and cold February dawn had hardly come when one of the servants came out and busied himself sweeping the steps. The reporters came rushing up to ask for Grayson. The servant said the doctor had spent the entire night with his patient and could not come out now. The reporters became insistent and the servant went inside and closed the door. But shortly he had to open it again and again, for a flood of telegraph boys came bicycling up S Street. They bore messages for Edith:
THREE HUNDRED GIRLS OF GALLOWAY WOMENS COLLEGE ARKANSAS SEND THEIR PRAYERS AND DEEPEST SYMPATHY TO YOU IN THIS TIME OF CRISIS AND THEIR LOVE TO THAT TRUEST AMERICAN YOUR HUSBAND
… The Newport News, Virginia, Young Men's Hebrew Association … The Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Greek Association …
TONIGHTS PAPERS SAY THAT YOUR ILLUSTRIOUS HUSBANDS CONDITION IS SUCH THAT HIS PASSING AWAY IS MOMENTARILY EXPECTED STOP IF THIS IS SO THE GREATEST AMERICAN SINCE LINCOLN IS PASSING STOP LET ME SORROW WITH YOU STOP A FORMER AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE CAPTAIN J A LYNCH CRESSON PENNSYLVANIA
… The American Women's Club of Vancouver, British Columbia.… Forrest Cavalry of the United Confederate Veterans …
OUR TENDEREST SYMPATHY GOES OUT TO YOU FROM OVERFLOWING HEARTS. WE LOVED HIM SO DEARLY. MR AND MRS LAWRENCE C WOODS DAYTONA BEACH FLORIDA
.

With the breaking day, Saturday, February 2, the people came. They gathered before the house, waiting. The trees stood bare above the lines the police put up to hold them back, and autos inched their way up S Street's hill. Callers stepped from cars to leave their cards in a silver tray Scott held in his hand when he came to the door. Mr. and Mrs. William Howard Taft left their cards, and Mr. and Mrs. Alben W. Barkley, and Daisy Harriman, and Cordell Hull; the French Ambassador, the Italian Ambassador, Herbert Hoover, Oscar W. Underwood, the widowed Florence Kling Harding. Anna Hamlin, with whom Edith had walked along the shores of Buzzards Bay as Moses, the spaniel, played about them, wrote on her card just: “Dear love—”

Grayson came out, and the reporters lounging in the
driveway against the electric coupe that was the only tangible result of the firm of Wilson & Colby came running. He said, “Mr. Wilson realizes his fight is over. He is making a game effort. It almost breaks one down. He is very brave. He is just slowly ebbing away. He is not talking to anyone but he is still conscious.” Down the hill toward Massachusetts Avenue, other reporters waited by the telephone in an apartment building for the signal from their colleagues that it was all over. The telegraph company ran lines to the muddy slopes of the empty lot across from Number 2340, and operators waited in the construction shack. The people kept coming to stand before the house and look up to the third floor where, out of sight, for his room faced the rear, he was making his fight. With the people came, steadily, the bikes of the uniformed telegraph boys. The Polish Fellowship League of Chicago …
DEEPLY DISTRESSED AM HOPING FOR THE BEST YOU ARE BOTH CONSTANTLY IN MY THOUGHTS FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT JACKSONVILLE FLORIDA
… American Legion posts … The Virginia Writers Club …
DEAR NOBLE LADY COURAGE AND GODS HELP TO YOU BAINBRIDGE COLBY
… The Acting Governor of the Territory of Hawaii … Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army …
OUR HEARTS ARE WITH YOU IN LOVE AND DEVOTION AND ANXIETY MR AND MRS JOSEPHUS DANIELS
.

Senator Carter Glass, who made the speech on the last Armistice Day, three months before, came with Bernard Baruch. The doors opened for them and they took seats in the library, as did Joseph Wilson, the kind, well-meaning, mild, untalented brother. Grayson came down and Glass asked if the doctor could say to the dying man that Carter Glass wanted him to know how much he loved him. Grayson went up and said, “Senator Glass sends you his love.” Woodrow Wilson tried to smile and his eyes gleamed. The fingers of his right hand moved slightly. Grayson went downstairs and with lowered eyes said to Glass, “He smiled when I told him.”

At four-thirty in the afternoon Grayson went out with a bulletin for the death-watch reporters: “Mr. Wilson's general condition is the same as it was this morning. He grows steadily weaker.” The reporters telephoned it in to their city rooms, ready and waiting for a flash to print
the extras with black mourning at the edges of the pages. The whole country was hanging on the papers, and in all major cities rumors periodically sprang up that it was all over. Flags went down to half staff and then the rumors were found to be false and the flags went up again.

Always the people outside were noiseless, voiceless; always the same, although the individual men and women came and went, standing for an hour, two hours, and then going away. Joe Tumulty came. It had been twenty-two months. Joe Tumulty slipped in the door and asked for Grayson and said, “It seems to me that ten years' faithful service have earned me the right to go in and look once into his eyes, or maybe just pat his forehead before he goes.” It had been very bad for Tumulty, those twenty-two months. Grayson said, “Yes, Joe, you're right, and he will be glad to see you. But he's asleep now.” And Grayson promised that Joe could see him before the end. But by the bed, night and day, old-looking, no longer chic, no longer beautiful as she had been in the days when she used to walk with Helen Bones in Rock Creek Park, sat Edith Bolling Wilson. Joe Tumulty did not get to the sickroom.

Saturday wore on: crowds; four soldiers saying, “We served under him in France and we want to be with him until the end”; Edith and Margaret sitting by the bed with the two nurses; Grayson going out to tell the reporters that no nourishment was being taken although Mrs. Wilson had carried in a tray with chicken broth and meat juices, Grayson adding that he was himself present more as a friend than a doctor, for no doctor could do anything now; President Coolidge issuing a statement that he was much disturbed; the papers crying in black headlines
ALL HOPE GONE;
the letters coming in: “My dear Mrs. Wilson”—this on the stationery of the Woodrow Wilson Club of Minneapolis—“I so much want Mr. Wilson to know how deeply we love him. I know that you have received so many messages of this kind that it is probably not possible to mention them to him, but it would make me happy to feel that he knows of our Club and that it is founded upon a deep and abiding faith in him and the principles which he has advocated.… May God bless him and keep him always. Mrs. Genevieve Barton Curtis.”