First Ladies (30 page)

Julia Grant was the first First Lady to write her memoirs. She tried to get her reluctant husband elected to a third term and almost succeeded
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(American Heritage Library)

Thanks in part to Ulysses Grant’s stupendous fame, during his eight years in the White House the press discovered the Executive Mansion made good copy. Julia gave interviews, and her husband’s fondness for risking his presidential neck behind the two fastest horses in the district became national news. Pretty Nellie’s high jinks at midnight dancing parties were eagerly devoured by millions of readers. Descriptions of the incredibly elaborate dresses of the period all but exhausted the reporters’ supplies of adjectives.

Julia’s affability and self-confidence made her one of the most popular First Ladies in White House history. She sometimes teased her famous husband in public and liked to show him up now and then. Once, when young Jesse vaulted over the porch railing of their summer cottage at Long Branch, New Jersey, Grant observed that it was a good way to get out of the house if the place caught fire. But he wondered how Julia would escape a conflagration. She stood up, put her hand on the railing, and vaulted over it in a perfect imitation of Jesse. “That way,” she said.

There was a political purpose at work in the Grants’ relaxed, comfortable style. In Washington, D.C., nothing, however seemingly innocent, is completely devoid of politics. Both Grants saw their wholesome family, their lavish entertaining, as a projection of his slogan, “Let us have peace.” They were trying to steady the nerves and soothe the anxieties of a nation shaken by a civil war that had left in its wake a million dead and wounded and almost as many widows and orphans.

For a while Julia and Ulysses succeeded admirably. The General was elected by a landslide for a second term in 1872. Then the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in the 1874 midterm elections and began investigating the Grant administration.
They uncovered scandal after scandal. Millions in graft had gone to federal officials administering government contracts; the stench reached into Grant’s cabinet and White House staff. The President himself was not implicated. But the public discovered he was much too naive and trusting in his choice of subordinates.

Before the political roof fell in, Julia managed an extravaganza which hypnotized the nation: her daughter Nellie’s wedding to a wealthy Englishman, Algernon Sartoris. They had met when eighteen-year-old Nellie toured Europe in the summer of 1873. Julia tried to talk her out of the union, but Nellie was as strong willed as her mother. After months of feverish speculation in the newspapers, the wedding was set for May 21, 1874. Julia and Nellie, followed by swarms of reporters, traveled to New York by special train to select her wedding dress. It was a traditional white satin gown covered by a great wavy overskirt of Brussels point lace that spilled into a six-foot train.

At 11:00
A.M
. on the great day, the bride descended the grand staircase preceded by eight bridesmaids in white satin, with overskirts of white illusion. Through the Blue Room and the Green Room the procession marched to the spacious East Room, where the groom met Nellie and escorted her to a platform beneath the central chandelier. The ceremony was performed there so it could be seen by all 250 guests.

The White House was turned into a garden for the occasion. Masses of blossoms and ferns were banked against the walls. A wedding bell of white roses hung from the ceiling. Nellie’s veil was held in place by a wreath of white orchids and orange blossoms. Her gift from the groom was a loose bouquet of rare flowers that had been rushed from New York on a night train. Algernon, in a gesture of gender equality a hundred years ahead of his time, upset the Grants by insisting on carrying a bouquet of his own.

After a reception and a viewing of the wedding presents in the upstairs Oval Room, the doors of the State Dining Room were thrown open to reveal a fantasy world full of ropes of flowers, with more banks of blossoms piled on silver trays at the end of the banquet table. The food was not as overwhelming as a twenty-nine-course state dinner,
but it was enough to threaten any modern diner with indigestion. The guests started with softshell crab and worked their way through lamb, beef, wild duck, and chicken. The multi-tier wedding cake was served with chocolate pudding and baskets of chilled fruits. All this, plus descriptions of the gowns of the guests, many of them wives of the nation’s burgeoning crop of millionaires, pushed the rest of the news off the front pages of the newspapers.

Afterward, the newlyweds drove to Union Station in a White House carriage while tens of thousands lined the streets and applauded. It would be nice to report that they lived happily ever after, but Sartoris turned out to be a cad and a bounder. However, he had the decency to die in 1893, leaving Nellie a very rich widow.

Julia Grant enjoyed the White House so much, she hated the thought of leaving it in 1877. She brushed aside the numerous scandals as mere blemishes and urged the General to run for a third term. Grant demurred. He felt personally humiliated by the lapses of his appointees and yearned to escape politics.

This led to a first-class contretemps between the President and his First Lady. The Pennsylvania state legislature—Republican controlled, of course—had passed a resolution urging Grant to run for a third term. Numerous Republican newspapers were voicing similar sentiments. One Sunday in the spring of 1876, Grant summoned the cabinet to the White House and read them a letter he had written to the Pennsylvania pols, declaring he would not be a candidate.

Julia Grant noticed the cabinet members coming and going and wanted to know what they were doing in the White House on Sunday. Grant said he would tell her as soon as he “lighted his cigar.” He went off, supposedly in search of a match, and was gone several minutes. When he returned, he told her about the letter.

“Why did you not read it to me?” Julia cried.

“I know you too well. It would never have gone if I had read it.”

“Bring it and read it to me now!” demanded Julia.

Grant shook his head. “It is already posted. That’s why I waited to light my cigar, so it would be beyond recall.”

“Oh Ulys! Was that kind to me? Was that just to me?”

“I do not want to be here another four years. I don’t think I could stand it,” Grant said. “Don’t bother [me] about it, I beg of you.”

Julia felt “deeply injured” for a while but she soon recovered her good cheer, and the presidential couple, deserted by the last of their children when Jesse went to college, often spent the evening in one of the upstairs parlors holding hands and chatting like a pair of youthful lovebirds. But Julia still had trouble tearing herself away from the White House. She hung on as hostess right through inauguration day, presiding at an elaborate luncheon for incoming President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife, Lucy, which had them wondering if she was ever going to depart. Julia barely kept her composure until she was in the privacy of the railroad car, where she hurled herself on her General’s broad chest and wept bitter tears.

To console her, Grant suggested a trip around the world. Julia instantly accepted, foreseeing it would be a perfect way to wangle Ulysses into a third term: As we shall see in a later chapter, strong-willed Julia almost succeeded, with disastrous consequences for the Republican Party.

—

J
ULIA’S GRIEF ON LEAVING THE
W
HITE
H
OUSE WAS UNDERSTANDABLE
if we recall the nomadic existence of the army wife. Number 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the closest thing to a permanent home the Grants had ever known. Mamie Doud Eisenhower’s experience in the U.S. Army replicates this roving life—and then some. She moved thirty-four times—seven times in a single year—before reaching the White House.

Like Julia Grant, Mamie grew up in very comfortable circumstances, one of three sisters whom well-to-do parents showered with money and attention. In a prophetic touch almost as good as Julia growing up in a house called White Haven, the Douds had a red carpet running down the front steps of their Denver home, apparently because there was always a party in progress.

Cupid’s dart found its mark in Mamie’s heart when lithe, strong-jawed Lieutenant Dwight David (Ike) Eisenhower met nineteen-
year-old Mamie while the Douds were spending the winter in San Antonio, Texas, in 1915. He’s about the handsomest male I’ve ever seen, she thought. Ike, known as the woman hater of nearby Fort Sam Houston, succumbed almost as instantaneously.

Behind his Texas-size smile, Ike was a much sterner character than Ulysses S. Grant When his bride began to sob because he was leaving her to go on maneuvers less than a month after their wedding, Ike sat her down and said, as she recalled it a half century later, “Mamie, there is one thing you must understand. My country comes first and always will. You come second.”

Mamie retaliated by going home to Denver whenever she found the Army too much to handle. For a while it looked as if the Eisenhower marriage might founder. It suffered a body blow when their firstborn son, Doud Dwight Eisenhower, nicknamed Icky, died of scarlet fever in 1921. Only with the arrival of a second child, John Sheldon Doud, did good feelings return. But in the 1930s Mamie let Ike spend a year in the Philippines without her because she did not like hot climates. Unlike the vigorous, robust Julia Grant, Mamie suffered from a number of illnesses—insomnia, dizzy spells (from an inner ear disorder, Ménière’s disease), a heart which beat with violent irregularity if she became fatigued or upset. These woes entitled her to spend a lot of time in bed—or justified yet another retreat to Denver.

In World War II, Dwight Eisenhower soared to fame while Mamie sat home, lonely and unhappy and letting Ike know it now and then. While many of his letters to her are full of endearing sentiments, others are on the short side. A great many people believe General Eisenhower had an affair with his attractive Anglo-Irish secretary-driver, Kay Summersby, although the lady herself, in her two books on the subject, was evasive to the point of obfuscation. Mamie was worried enough about the rumor to ask Ike bluntly if there was any truth to it. He emphatically denied it.

At any rate, by the time Ike and Mamie reached the White House, they were definitely not lovebirds like the Grants. Possibly thinking of Kay Summersby, Mamie confided to Julie Nixon, after Julie married
her grandson, David Eisenhower, that there were a lot of times when Ike broke her heart. But the Eisenhower union was still much more than a marriage of convenience. No matter what may have happened in Europe, Mamie had a strong sense of being the significant woman in Ike’s life.

But it was a marriage without even a semblance of equality. While Julia Grant was not in the least shy about giving her general political and even military advice (which he seldom took), Mamie never dreamt of doing such a thing. When reporters asked her in 1952 how she would describe her life, she replied she was “thankful for the privilege of tagging along by Ike’s side.”

On the way to the White House, Mamie had to cope with several challenges Julia Grant never had to worry about. In the Grants’ day, candidates stayed home and let others campaign for them. The Eisenhowers had to fight both Republicans (Senator Robert Taft of Ohio challenged Ike for the nomination) and Democrats for the presidency, a struggle which involved flying all over the country. Mamie hated crowds—and planes. But her devotion to Ike overcame her nerves, and she soon became a key player in the Eisenhower road show. She seldom said a word, but her signature bangs, her youthful figure and her cheerful smile were worth fifty electoral votes, in the opinion of one Ike staffer.

Eventually, Mamie began to enjoy herself. “Seeing thousands and thousands of people adoring Ike, believing in his leadership, kept me cloud high all the time,” she told one reporter. She was also buoyed by a solemn promise Ike made to her, that once they got out of the White House, he would never ask her to fly anywhere again.

To Harry Truman’s chagrin, Ike won in a landslide. By the time the election ended, so many nasty charges about McCarthyism, Communism, and the supposed mess in Washington had been traded back and forth, the incoming and outgoing Presidents were barely speaking to each other. But my mother liked Mamie. She had gotten to know her when Ike served as Army chief of staff under Dad. For a year Mamie had come to the White House once a week to study Spanish in a class that Mother organized to promote inter-American friendship. The
two First Ladies had no trouble remaining friends. Mother invited Mamie to tea and gave her a tour of the mansion. After Mamie left, Mother cast a wry eye on one of the White House staff and said they could look forward to “plenty of pink” in the new First Lady’s decorating plans.

Bess did not need a crystal ball for that prediction. Pink was Mamie’s favorite color. She wore pink dresses, pink suits, pink shoes, pink bows. She even had pink cloth covers on her lipstick tubes. Sure enough, Mamie splashed pink all over the White House. Pink cushions, pink furniture for her bedroom. Since pink is usually considered a little girl’s color, some psychohistorians have suggested that Mamie saw herself as Ike’s little girl. I say bosh. The real Mamie Eisenhower was a lot more complicated.