Description:
An extraordinary work of history and original reporting that reveals the ways in which presidential marriages have affected the tone, character, and policies of twelve administrations, from Woodrow and Edith Wilson to George W. and Laura Bush.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples—each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples—each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
With this thoughtful rumination, journalist Marton augments the proliferating literature on the position and person of the First Lady. Marton examines 11 of the 20th-century presidential couples (the Wilsons, the Franklin Roosevelts, the Trumans, the Kennedys, and the seven couples that followed), relying chiefly on interviews, oral histories, and secondary sources. Ultimately, the reader comes away with the sense that the First Lady has confronted the same problem faced by every other 20th-century American woman, albeit writ large: however she balances the demands of her family and her "job," she isn't seen as getting it quite right. The First Lady, however, gets ragged on not just by her in-laws or her neighbors but also by the national press. Much of the material Marton includes has appeared elsewhere, but her commentary is insightful. The portrayals of Woodrow Wilson as a passionate lover, Bess Truman as selfish, small-minded, and mean, and Pat Nixon as isolated and depressed, are vivid. Recommended for public libraries.
- Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Two of our last four First Ladies were regularly savaged in the press for their supposedly inordinate influence on national policies through their husbands. As this enjoyable and informative survey indicates, strong spousal influence over our recent presidents has been the rule rather than the exception. Marton is an author of three nonfiction works and a novel, and she is a former correspondent for ABC News and National Public Radio. Relying on private White House documents and interviews with sources employed in the White House, she illustrates how presidents from Wilson to the current Bush have usually accepted, even depended on, advice and counsel from their spouses. At times, the influence has been overwhelming; during the later stages of the Wilson administration, Edith Wilson made virtually all major policy decisions as her husband recovered from a stroke. Typically, however, the influence has been subtle and based on mutual respect and affection. As Marton asserts, we should be neither surprised nor unnecessarily disturbed by this entirely human tendency. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"In Hidden Power Kati Marton explores a neglected dimension of the modern presidency. The result is not only acute and perceptive; it is also one of the most readable and diverting books of the year."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
"Hidden Power is an astute analysis of high-level bedroom politics: intimate, well-reported, and well-told. One assumes presidential wives have been influential and powerful. Marton proves it with the kind of delving and digging that makes her one of our fine historians. Solid and dazzling, a great read."--Lesley Stahl
"Kati Marton takes us on a fascinating and illuminating tour of the hidden power centers of the American Presidency–the women behind, beside and occasionally in front of the men in the Oval Office. I was entertained, informed and enlightened." –Tom Brokaw
"Kati Marton has done a splendid job of showing us the importance of modern First Ladies as political figures and as towering examples of the changing role of women in America. Hidden Power is an absorbing and original look at a dozen formidable women and the men with whom they changed American history." –Michael Beschloss
"There have been many books on First Families. This is without question one of the very best. Kati Marton is a wonderful writer with a gift for storytelling and a keen insight into the relationships between presidents and their wives. This is a book anyone interested in the American presidency will love to read." –Doris Kearns Goodwin
From the Inside Flap
An extraordinary work of history and original reporting that reveals the ways in which presidential marriages have affected the tone, character, and policies of twelve administrations, from Woodrow and Edith Wilson to George W. and Laura Bush.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples―each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples―each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
From the Back Cover
"In Hidden Power Kati Marton explores a neglected dimension of the modern presidency. The result is not only acute and perceptive; it is also one of the most readable and diverting books of the year."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
"Hidden Power is an astute analysis of high-level bedroom politics: intimate, well-reported, and well-told. One assumes presidential wives have been influential and powerful. Marton proves it with the kind of delving and digging that makes her one of our fine historians. Solid and dazzling, a great read."--Lesley Stahl
"Kati Marton takes us on a fascinating and illuminating tour of the hidden power centers of the American Presidency–the women behind, beside and occasionally in front of the men in the Oval Office. I was entertained, informed and enlightened." –Tom Brokaw
"Kati Marton has done a splendid job of showing us the importance of modern First Ladies as political figures and as towering examples of the changing role of women in America. Hidden Power is an absorbing and original look at a dozen formidable women and the men with whom they changed American history." –Michael Beschloss
"There have been many books on First Families. This is without question one of the very best. Kati Marton is a wonderful writer with a gift for storytelling and a keen insight into the relationships between presidents and their wives. This is a book anyone interested in the American presidency will love to read." –Doris Kearns Goodwin
About the Author
Author and journalist Kati Marton was born in Hungary and has spent two decades writing and reporting from the United States, Europe, and the Far East. Ms. Marton is a director and former chairperson of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists and a member of the Freedom Forum’s Media Studies Center Advisory Committee. She also serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, the New America Foundation, the J. Anthony Lukas Memorial Foundation, the Central European University, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Ms. Marton is the author of HIDDEN POWER, a book about presidential marriages, published by Pantheon Books (Fall 2001).
Since 1980, Ms. Marton has published four other books and contributed as a reporter to numerous news organizations, including ABC News, Public Broadcasting Services, National Public Radio, Atlantic Monthly, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic. Her first book, Wallenberg, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was published by Random House in 1982. From 1983 until 1984, she was a columnist for the Sunday Times of London. Her second book, a novel entitled An American Woman, was published in 1987. Her investigative history, The Polk Conspiracy--Murder and Coverup in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk, published in 1990, has been acquired by Mel Gibson for a feature film. Her fourth book is A Death in Jerusalem--the Assassination by Extremists of the First Middle East Peacemaker, published by Pantheon books in the fall of 1994. From 1995 until 1997, Ms. Marton hosted America and the World, a weekly half-hour broadcast on international affairs from National Public Radio, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations.
From December 1977 until December 1979, Ms. Marton was Bonn Bureau Chief and Foreign Correspondent for ABC News. While based in West Germany, Ms. Marton reported from many countries, including Poland, Hungary, Italy, Holland, Northern Ireland, and East Germany.
Ms. Marton was a news writer/reporter at WCAU-TV, the CBS-owned and -operated affiliate in Philadelphia, from January 1973 until November 1977. At WCAU, Ms. Marton covered City Hall, the courts, and labor-related stories, and anchored newscasts, documentaries, and talk shows. From March 1971 until October 1972, Ms. Marton was a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington. In addition to diplomatic and political assignments, Ms. Marton was involved in the development of NPR’s program, All Things Considered.
Ms. Marton has received several prestigious honors for her reporting, including a Gannett Fellowship in 1988 and a George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary on China in 1973. She was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center Visiting Scholar at Columbia University from 1992 until 1993. She also received a Philadelphia Press Association Award for Best Television Feature Story and a Channel 12 (PBS) Award for reporting. Most recently, she received the Marc H. Tanenbaum Foundation for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding Media Bridge-Builder Award and the Kyriazis Foundation award for the promotion of press freedom, both in 1997.
Ms. Marton attended Wells College in Aurora, NY, the Sorbonne, and the Institute des Etudes de Science Politiques in Paris. Ms. Marton was awarded a BA in Romance Languages and an MA in International Relations from George Washington University in 1971.
Kati Marton is married to Richard Holbrooke, the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, and lives in New York City with her children, Elizabeth and Christopher.
Since 1980, Ms. Marton has published four other books and contributed as a reporter to numerous news organizations, including ABC News, Public Broadcasting Services, National Public Radio, Atlantic Monthly, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic. Her first book, Wallenberg, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was published by Random House in 1982. From 1983 until 1984, she was a columnist for the Sunday Times of London. Her second book, a novel entitled An American Woman, was published in 1987. Her investigative history, The Polk Conspiracy--Murder and Coverup in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk, published in 1990, has been acquired by Mel Gibson for a feature film. Her fourth book is A Death in Jerusalem--the Assassination by Extremists of the First Middle East Peacemaker, published by Pantheon books in the fall of 1994. From 1995 until 1997, Ms. Marton hosted America and the World, a weekly half-hour broadcast on international affairs from National Public Radio, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations.
From December 1977 until December 1979, Ms. Marton was Bonn Bureau Chief and Foreign Correspondent for ABC News. While based in West Germany, Ms. Marton reported from many countries, including Poland, Hungary, Italy, Holland, Northern Ireland, and East Germany.
Ms. Marton was a news writer/reporter at WCAU-TV, the CBS-owned and -operated affiliate in Philadelphia, from January 1973 until November 1977. At WCAU, Ms. Marton covered City Hall, the courts, and labor-related stories, and anchored newscasts, documentaries, and talk shows. From March 1971 until October 1972, Ms. Marton was a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington. In addition to diplomatic and political assignments, Ms. Marton was involved in the development of NPR’s program, All Things Considered.
Ms. Marton has received several prestigious honors for her reporting, including a Gannett Fellowship in 1988 and a George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary on China in 1973. She was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center Visiting Scholar at Columbia University from 1992 until 1993. She also received a Philadelphia Press Association Award for Best Television Feature Story and a Channel 12 (PBS) Award for reporting. Most recently, she received the Marc H. Tanenbaum Foundation for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding Media Bridge-Builder Award and the Kyriazis Foundation award for the promotion of press freedom, both in 1997.
Ms. Marton attended Wells College in Aurora, NY, the Sorbonne, and the Institute des Etudes de Science Politiques in Paris. Ms. Marton was awarded a BA in Romance Languages and an MA in International Relations from George Washington University in 1971.
Kati Marton is married to Richard Holbrooke, the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, and lives in New York City with her children, Elizabeth and Christopher.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
from Chapter 1
Edith and Woodrow Wilson
Fools for Love
I am absolutely dependent on intimate love for the right and free and most effective use of my powers and I know by experience . . . what it costs my work to do without it.
-Woodrow Wilson to Edith Galt, August 16, 1915
The dear face opposite me was drawn and lined; and as I sat there watching the dawn break slowly I felt that life would never be the same; that something had broken inside me; and from that hour on I would have to wear a mask-not only to the public but to the one I loved best in the world; for he must never know how ill he was, and I must carry on.
-Edith Wilson, My Memoir
On January 1, 1900, two thousand washingtonians braved the bitter cold and falling snow and patiently waited for the White House doors to open for the traditional New Year's reception. They came by trolley and in elegant carriages to mark the dawn of a new century and with it, as the presence of dozens of diplomats in the queue signaled, America's emergence as one of the world's most powerful nations.
The day also marked the hundredth anniversary of the death of George Washington, but America was now an altogether different country than the fledgling republic bequeathed by Virginia's "First Gentleman." In the past twenty years, seven million Americans had abandoned roots and rural traditions and joined the great urban migration. "America fever" was sweeping the muddy villages and mining towns of Central and Eastern Europe. An entire Italian family could buy steerage tickets from Naples for as little as $15. Half a million immigrants were expected to arrive in New York that year. The combination of the rich land, a fearless, mobile population and breathtaking new technology-from the combine to alternating-current electricity-was allowing America to challenge the rest of the world.
Inside the White House resided a Victorian man and his withdrawn, sickly wife. William and Ida McKinley, good-natured, well liked and unchallenging, had little interest in the new age. While the country had stretched and grown, the White House had not. It had been built as the home of the president of a small republic. The presidential offices were a rabbit warren of jumbled rooms, alongside the First Family's private quarters. A handful of men in formal morning attire, black cutaway coats, gray-and-black-striped trousers and silk ties jockeyed for space in the overcrowded, ill-lit offices. Down the hall in the presidential bedroom, Ida spent much of her time crocheting. She neither had, nor wished for, her own staff or an office of her own. But the American people felt close to their president, who was still accessible to citizens. When he was in residence in the White House, hundreds of them arrived every weekday, expecting to meet him.
It would take another year and an assassin's bullet to bring to power the first twentieth-century president, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was not content for the United States to be the world's economic giant; his sights were set on global military and diplomatic might. Colorful and ebullient, he and his coolly confident second wife, Edith, were the first modern presidential couple. They and their six children filled the mansion with the boisterousness associated with the family. Roosevelt decreed that henceforth the Executive Mansion would be called the White House, a name he considered less stuffy and more in line with the democratic image he intended to convey. Edith, meanwhile, began to institutionalize the office of first lady. She persuaded Congress to finance the mansion's modernization, adding the West Wing and-for the first time-allocating space for the first lady's offices. She hired the first full-time White House social secretary. Edith ran the White House with the ease and detachment of a born chatelaine, though she treated the public and political aspects of the role with aristocratic disinterest. Nevertheless, in both style and substance, Edith and Theodore Roosevelt virtually initiated the ascendancy of an imperial presidency. Though Edith did not personally make use of the first lady's own pulpit, she helped lay the foundation for her successors. Another Roosevelt would take it into territory Edith never could have imagined.
Helen Herron Taft, the wife of President William Howard Taft, who succeeded Roosevelt, achieved a number of breakthroughs as first lady between 1909 and 1913. She was the first woman to be allowed a seat within the bar of the Supreme Court, the first to publish her memoirs and the first to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. But her historic role is overshadowed by the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, with whom this narrative of marriage and power truly begins.
Edith Wilson became first lady during a period when the inherent inequality between men and women-society's patriarchal nature-was beginning to be questioned. Since the 1890s American women made up one-third of college students and more than one-third of professional workers. Edith, however, seemed content with the crumbs of education reserved for a Victorian woman. She wanted no part of the generation of college-educated women who were forming local suffrage associations and going door-to-door to enlist support. She would have found repellent Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, which sparked a national scandal. So great was the uproar caused by this story of a country girl who uses sex to climb out of poverty that the publisher was forced to withdraw the book after selling only 456 copies. Another book, What a Young Husband Ought to Know, fared better. The book advised men that "the sexual impulse in the male . . . marches like a mighty conqueror, arousing and marshaling the mightiest human forces [leading to] the attainment of the world's greatest and grandest achievement in art, in letters, in inventions, in philosophy, in philanthropy, and in every effort that is to secure the universal blessing of mankind." The book went on to assure readers that with patience and self-control, husbands could teach their wives to accept sex as a necessary hardship on the road to motherhood.
Edith willingly accepted the role her nineteenth-century southern upbringing assigned to her. She embraced the Victorian feminine ideal of the virtuous, compliant and passive child/woman. She proudly proclaimed both her disapproval of women she called "devils in the workhouse" and her adherence to women's subservience to men. She called Woodrow Wilson "My Lord and Master" and he called her "Little Girl"-not for her the nascent female solidarity movement. Yet no presidential wife ever wielded more real power than she did, the first lady who said she wished only to be a good wife.
The Wilsons' story is perhaps the most poignant in the chronicles of presidential marriages, and among the most controversial. In rapid succession it encompassed death, bereavement, unexpected bliss and sudden physical decline. It is also the story of an astonishing White House cover-up in which the first lady was the main perpetrator. At a time when American women still could not vote, rarely held jobs beyond that of a domestic or a grade-school teacher, a woman ran the White House and the executive branch. Woodrow and Edith embody the White House's greatest love story, one that had the most tragic outcome for the nation and the world.
No cement barriers or electric fences imprisoned the White House's residents in the early years of the century. At first glance, it was just a very large house in the heart of a medium-sized city. Until the 1860s, Washington had remained a winter outpost where politicians converged to debate a handful of subjects not controlled by the states. Humidity drove residents away for the summer. New York was the country's financial capital, Boston its cultural mecca. But the Civil War had changed Washington, as it became the hub of wartime operations. "Slowly," historian Henry Adams wrote, "a certain society had built itself up about the Government. Houses had been opened and there was much dining; much calling; much leaving of cards."
In the waning years of this era, Woodrow Wilson, a man past his middle age, and Edith Bolling Galt, a woman well into hers, fell in love and carried on an ardent affair in the White House.
The fifty-nine-year-old president was widowed in 1914, during the second year of his first term. Ellen Axson Wilson's sudden death coincided almost exactly with the outbreak of World War I, and the convergence of the two events shattered Wilson's well-ordered world. His famously stern demeanor masked a passionate and emotionally needy man. It is hard to imagine an isolation greater than the one that fell over him, suddenly alone in that house. Wilson had always preferred the company of women to that of politicians. His daughter Nell recalled, "Father enjoyed the society of women, especially if they were what he called 'charming and conversable.' " His first wife and daughters had been the core of his existence. "My heart has somehow been stricken dumb . . . ," Wilson wrote at the time of Ellen's death. "She was beyond comparison the deepest, truest, noblest lover I ever knew." The following year he would marry again.
In March 1915, Edith Galt recalled later, "I turned a corner and met my fate." Invited to tea at the White House by a cousin of the president, she stepped off an elevator and ran into Wilson. Edith would later revealingly recall the encounter primarily in sartorial terms. How fortunate, she wrote, that she had "worn a smart black tailored suit which Worth had made for me in Paris and a tricot hat which I thought completed a very good looking ensemble."
Wilson was immediately smitten. Invitations to dinner and hand-delivered letters from the White House to her town house soon crossed Washington almost daily. So did shipments of Edith's favorite flower, orchids. "The orchids carried ...
Edith and Woodrow Wilson
Fools for Love
I am absolutely dependent on intimate love for the right and free and most effective use of my powers and I know by experience . . . what it costs my work to do without it.
-Woodrow Wilson to Edith Galt, August 16, 1915
The dear face opposite me was drawn and lined; and as I sat there watching the dawn break slowly I felt that life would never be the same; that something had broken inside me; and from that hour on I would have to wear a mask-not only to the public but to the one I loved best in the world; for he must never know how ill he was, and I must carry on.
-Edith Wilson, My Memoir
On January 1, 1900, two thousand washingtonians braved the bitter cold and falling snow and patiently waited for the White House doors to open for the traditional New Year's reception. They came by trolley and in elegant carriages to mark the dawn of a new century and with it, as the presence of dozens of diplomats in the queue signaled, America's emergence as one of the world's most powerful nations.
The day also marked the hundredth anniversary of the death of George Washington, but America was now an altogether different country than the fledgling republic bequeathed by Virginia's "First Gentleman." In the past twenty years, seven million Americans had abandoned roots and rural traditions and joined the great urban migration. "America fever" was sweeping the muddy villages and mining towns of Central and Eastern Europe. An entire Italian family could buy steerage tickets from Naples for as little as $15. Half a million immigrants were expected to arrive in New York that year. The combination of the rich land, a fearless, mobile population and breathtaking new technology-from the combine to alternating-current electricity-was allowing America to challenge the rest of the world.
Inside the White House resided a Victorian man and his withdrawn, sickly wife. William and Ida McKinley, good-natured, well liked and unchallenging, had little interest in the new age. While the country had stretched and grown, the White House had not. It had been built as the home of the president of a small republic. The presidential offices were a rabbit warren of jumbled rooms, alongside the First Family's private quarters. A handful of men in formal morning attire, black cutaway coats, gray-and-black-striped trousers and silk ties jockeyed for space in the overcrowded, ill-lit offices. Down the hall in the presidential bedroom, Ida spent much of her time crocheting. She neither had, nor wished for, her own staff or an office of her own. But the American people felt close to their president, who was still accessible to citizens. When he was in residence in the White House, hundreds of them arrived every weekday, expecting to meet him.
It would take another year and an assassin's bullet to bring to power the first twentieth-century president, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was not content for the United States to be the world's economic giant; his sights were set on global military and diplomatic might. Colorful and ebullient, he and his coolly confident second wife, Edith, were the first modern presidential couple. They and their six children filled the mansion with the boisterousness associated with the family. Roosevelt decreed that henceforth the Executive Mansion would be called the White House, a name he considered less stuffy and more in line with the democratic image he intended to convey. Edith, meanwhile, began to institutionalize the office of first lady. She persuaded Congress to finance the mansion's modernization, adding the West Wing and-for the first time-allocating space for the first lady's offices. She hired the first full-time White House social secretary. Edith ran the White House with the ease and detachment of a born chatelaine, though she treated the public and political aspects of the role with aristocratic disinterest. Nevertheless, in both style and substance, Edith and Theodore Roosevelt virtually initiated the ascendancy of an imperial presidency. Though Edith did not personally make use of the first lady's own pulpit, she helped lay the foundation for her successors. Another Roosevelt would take it into territory Edith never could have imagined.
Helen Herron Taft, the wife of President William Howard Taft, who succeeded Roosevelt, achieved a number of breakthroughs as first lady between 1909 and 1913. She was the first woman to be allowed a seat within the bar of the Supreme Court, the first to publish her memoirs and the first to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. But her historic role is overshadowed by the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, with whom this narrative of marriage and power truly begins.
Edith Wilson became first lady during a period when the inherent inequality between men and women-society's patriarchal nature-was beginning to be questioned. Since the 1890s American women made up one-third of college students and more than one-third of professional workers. Edith, however, seemed content with the crumbs of education reserved for a Victorian woman. She wanted no part of the generation of college-educated women who were forming local suffrage associations and going door-to-door to enlist support. She would have found repellent Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, which sparked a national scandal. So great was the uproar caused by this story of a country girl who uses sex to climb out of poverty that the publisher was forced to withdraw the book after selling only 456 copies. Another book, What a Young Husband Ought to Know, fared better. The book advised men that "the sexual impulse in the male . . . marches like a mighty conqueror, arousing and marshaling the mightiest human forces [leading to] the attainment of the world's greatest and grandest achievement in art, in letters, in inventions, in philosophy, in philanthropy, and in every effort that is to secure the universal blessing of mankind." The book went on to assure readers that with patience and self-control, husbands could teach their wives to accept sex as a necessary hardship on the road to motherhood.
Edith willingly accepted the role her nineteenth-century southern upbringing assigned to her. She embraced the Victorian feminine ideal of the virtuous, compliant and passive child/woman. She proudly proclaimed both her disapproval of women she called "devils in the workhouse" and her adherence to women's subservience to men. She called Woodrow Wilson "My Lord and Master" and he called her "Little Girl"-not for her the nascent female solidarity movement. Yet no presidential wife ever wielded more real power than she did, the first lady who said she wished only to be a good wife.
The Wilsons' story is perhaps the most poignant in the chronicles of presidential marriages, and among the most controversial. In rapid succession it encompassed death, bereavement, unexpected bliss and sudden physical decline. It is also the story of an astonishing White House cover-up in which the first lady was the main perpetrator. At a time when American women still could not vote, rarely held jobs beyond that of a domestic or a grade-school teacher, a woman ran the White House and the executive branch. Woodrow and Edith embody the White House's greatest love story, one that had the most tragic outcome for the nation and the world.
No cement barriers or electric fences imprisoned the White House's residents in the early years of the century. At first glance, it was just a very large house in the heart of a medium-sized city. Until the 1860s, Washington had remained a winter outpost where politicians converged to debate a handful of subjects not controlled by the states. Humidity drove residents away for the summer. New York was the country's financial capital, Boston its cultural mecca. But the Civil War had changed Washington, as it became the hub of wartime operations. "Slowly," historian Henry Adams wrote, "a certain society had built itself up about the Government. Houses had been opened and there was much dining; much calling; much leaving of cards."
In the waning years of this era, Woodrow Wilson, a man past his middle age, and Edith Bolling Galt, a woman well into hers, fell in love and carried on an ardent affair in the White House.
The fifty-nine-year-old president was widowed in 1914, during the second year of his first term. Ellen Axson Wilson's sudden death coincided almost exactly with the outbreak of World War I, and the convergence of the two events shattered Wilson's well-ordered world. His famously stern demeanor masked a passionate and emotionally needy man. It is hard to imagine an isolation greater than the one that fell over him, suddenly alone in that house. Wilson had always preferred the company of women to that of politicians. His daughter Nell recalled, "Father enjoyed the society of women, especially if they were what he called 'charming and conversable.' " His first wife and daughters had been the core of his existence. "My heart has somehow been stricken dumb . . . ," Wilson wrote at the time of Ellen's death. "She was beyond comparison the deepest, truest, noblest lover I ever knew." The following year he would marry again.
In March 1915, Edith Galt recalled later, "I turned a corner and met my fate." Invited to tea at the White House by a cousin of the president, she stepped off an elevator and ran into Wilson. Edith would later revealingly recall the encounter primarily in sartorial terms. How fortunate, she wrote, that she had "worn a smart black tailored suit which Worth had made for me in Paris and a tricot hat which I thought completed a very good looking ensemble."
Wilson was immediately smitten. Invitations to dinner and hand-delivered letters from the White House to her town house soon crossed Washington almost daily. So did shipments of Edith's favorite flower, orchids. "The orchids carried ...
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Visit the Pantheon Store
Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History
Product ID: U0375401067
|
Imported From: United States
At BOLO, we work hard to ensure the products you receive are new, genuine, and sourced from reputable suppliers.
Every product in the BOLO catalogue is sourced through our Verified Global Supply Network of verified sellers, authorized distributors or directly from the manufacturer.
Each product undergoes thorough inspection and verification at our consolidation and fulfilment centers to ensure it meets our strict authenticity and quality standards before being shipped and delivered to you.
If you ever have concerns regarding the authenticity of a product purchased from us, please contact Bolo Support. We will review your inquiry promptly and, if necessary, provide documentation verifying authenticity or offer a suitable resolution.
Your trust is our top priority, and we are committed to maintaining transparency and integrity in every transaction.
While we strive to display accurate information, variations in packaging, labeling, instructions, or formulation may occasionally occur due to regional differences or supplier updates. For detailed or manufacturer-specific information, please contact the brand directly or reach out to BOLO Support for assistance.
Unless otherwise stated, all prices displayed on the product page include applicable taxes and import duties.
BOLO operates in accordance with the laws and regulations of Qatar. Any items found to be restricted or prohibited for sale within the Qatar will be cancelled prior to shipment. We take proactive measures to ensure that only products permitted for sale in Qatar are listed on our website.
All items are shipped by air, and any products classified as “Dangerous Goods (DG)” under IATA regulations will be removed from the order and cancelled.
All orders are processed manually, and we make every effort to process them promptly once confirmed. Products cancelled due to the above reasons will be permanently removed from listings across the website.
Description:
An extraordinary work of history and original reporting that reveals the ways in which presidential marriages have affected the tone, character, and policies of twelve administrations, from Woodrow and Edith Wilson to George W. and Laura Bush.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples—each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples—each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
With this thoughtful rumination, journalist Marton augments the proliferating literature on the position and person of the First Lady. Marton examines 11 of the 20th-century presidential couples (the Wilsons, the Franklin Roosevelts, the Trumans, the Kennedys, and the seven couples that followed), relying chiefly on interviews, oral histories, and secondary sources. Ultimately, the reader comes away with the sense that the First Lady has confronted the same problem faced by every other 20th-century American woman, albeit writ large: however she balances the demands of her family and her "job," she isn't seen as getting it quite right. The First Lady, however, gets ragged on not just by her in-laws or her neighbors but also by the national press. Much of the material Marton includes has appeared elsewhere, but her commentary is insightful. The portrayals of Woodrow Wilson as a passionate lover, Bess Truman as selfish, small-minded, and mean, and Pat Nixon as isolated and depressed, are vivid. Recommended for public libraries.
- Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Two of our last four First Ladies were regularly savaged in the press for their supposedly inordinate influence on national policies through their husbands. As this enjoyable and informative survey indicates, strong spousal influence over our recent presidents has been the rule rather than the exception. Marton is an author of three nonfiction works and a novel, and she is a former correspondent for ABC News and National Public Radio. Relying on private White House documents and interviews with sources employed in the White House, she illustrates how presidents from Wilson to the current Bush have usually accepted, even depended on, advice and counsel from their spouses. At times, the influence has been overwhelming; during the later stages of the Wilson administration, Edith Wilson made virtually all major policy decisions as her husband recovered from a stroke. Typically, however, the influence has been subtle and based on mutual respect and affection. As Marton asserts, we should be neither surprised nor unnecessarily disturbed by this entirely human tendency. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"In Hidden Power Kati Marton explores a neglected dimension of the modern presidency. The result is not only acute and perceptive; it is also one of the most readable and diverting books of the year."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
"Hidden Power is an astute analysis of high-level bedroom politics: intimate, well-reported, and well-told. One assumes presidential wives have been influential and powerful. Marton proves it with the kind of delving and digging that makes her one of our fine historians. Solid and dazzling, a great read."--Lesley Stahl
"Kati Marton takes us on a fascinating and illuminating tour of the hidden power centers of the American Presidency–the women behind, beside and occasionally in front of the men in the Oval Office. I was entertained, informed and enlightened." –Tom Brokaw
"Kati Marton has done a splendid job of showing us the importance of modern First Ladies as political figures and as towering examples of the changing role of women in America. Hidden Power is an absorbing and original look at a dozen formidable women and the men with whom they changed American history." –Michael Beschloss
"There have been many books on First Families. This is without question one of the very best. Kati Marton is a wonderful writer with a gift for storytelling and a keen insight into the relationships between presidents and their wives. This is a book anyone interested in the American presidency will love to read." –Doris Kearns Goodwin
From the Inside Flap
An extraordinary work of history and original reporting that reveals the ways in which presidential marriages have affected the tone, character, and policies of twelve administrations, from Woodrow and Edith Wilson to George W. and Laura Bush.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples―each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
Each of the marriages that Kati Marton examines in this hugely appealing book offers up its own unexpected lessons about power and marriage, about the influence of presidential wives, and about the evolution of women’s roles in the twentieth century. Based on private White House documents and on interviews with the participants and with eyewitnesses to presidential events, Hidden Power explores how both the personal dynamics and public faces of White House marriages have shaped our history.
We see Edith Wilson literally running the government when her deeply beloved husband becomes ill; how the combination of Franklin Roosevelt’s reassuring spirit and his wife’s humility guided the country through Depression and war; how Bess Truman’s loyalty, bluntness, and unpretentiousness were some of her
husband’s greatest resources; the superb and necessary diplomacy of Jacqueline Kennedy.
We observe Lady Bird Johnson retaining her own compass in the face of massive criticism of her husband; how Patricia Nixon’s estrangement from her husband fed his paranoia; how the Fords reassured us after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate; Rosalynn Carter’s struggle to carve out new territory as first lady; the generally constructive role Nancy Reagan played, despite her frivolous reputation; the razor-sharp political instincts behind Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly image; how Hillary Clinton saved her husband’s presidency; and how Laura Bush provides emotional ballast for her husband.
Here are the stories of the ultimate power couples―each one very different, but all of them informative, lively, and absolutely fascinating.
From the Back Cover
"In Hidden Power Kati Marton explores a neglected dimension of the modern presidency. The result is not only acute and perceptive; it is also one of the most readable and diverting books of the year."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
"Hidden Power is an astute analysis of high-level bedroom politics: intimate, well-reported, and well-told. One assumes presidential wives have been influential and powerful. Marton proves it with the kind of delving and digging that makes her one of our fine historians. Solid and dazzling, a great read."--Lesley Stahl
"Kati Marton takes us on a fascinating and illuminating tour of the hidden power centers of the American Presidency–the women behind, beside and occasionally in front of the men in the Oval Office. I was entertained, informed and enlightened." –Tom Brokaw
"Kati Marton has done a splendid job of showing us the importance of modern First Ladies as political figures and as towering examples of the changing role of women in America. Hidden Power is an absorbing and original look at a dozen formidable women and the men with whom they changed American history." –Michael Beschloss
"There have been many books on First Families. This is without question one of the very best. Kati Marton is a wonderful writer with a gift for storytelling and a keen insight into the relationships between presidents and their wives. This is a book anyone interested in the American presidency will love to read." –Doris Kearns Goodwin
About the Author
Author and journalist Kati Marton was born in Hungary and has spent two decades writing and reporting from the United States, Europe, and the Far East. Ms. Marton is a director and former chairperson of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists and a member of the Freedom Forum’s Media Studies Center Advisory Committee. She also serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, the New America Foundation, the J. Anthony Lukas Memorial Foundation, the Central European University, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Ms. Marton is the author of HIDDEN POWER, a book about presidential marriages, published by Pantheon Books (Fall 2001).
Since 1980, Ms. Marton has published four other books and contributed as a reporter to numerous news organizations, including ABC News, Public Broadcasting Services, National Public Radio, Atlantic Monthly, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic. Her first book, Wallenberg, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was published by Random House in 1982. From 1983 until 1984, she was a columnist for the Sunday Times of London. Her second book, a novel entitled An American Woman, was published in 1987. Her investigative history, The Polk Conspiracy--Murder and Coverup in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk, published in 1990, has been acquired by Mel Gibson for a feature film. Her fourth book is A Death in Jerusalem--the Assassination by Extremists of the First Middle East Peacemaker, published by Pantheon books in the fall of 1994. From 1995 until 1997, Ms. Marton hosted America and the World, a weekly half-hour broadcast on international affairs from National Public Radio, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations.
From December 1977 until December 1979, Ms. Marton was Bonn Bureau Chief and Foreign Correspondent for ABC News. While based in West Germany, Ms. Marton reported from many countries, including Poland, Hungary, Italy, Holland, Northern Ireland, and East Germany.
Ms. Marton was a news writer/reporter at WCAU-TV, the CBS-owned and -operated affiliate in Philadelphia, from January 1973 until November 1977. At WCAU, Ms. Marton covered City Hall, the courts, and labor-related stories, and anchored newscasts, documentaries, and talk shows. From March 1971 until October 1972, Ms. Marton was a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington. In addition to diplomatic and political assignments, Ms. Marton was involved in the development of NPR’s program, All Things Considered.
Ms. Marton has received several prestigious honors for her reporting, including a Gannett Fellowship in 1988 and a George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary on China in 1973. She was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center Visiting Scholar at Columbia University from 1992 until 1993. She also received a Philadelphia Press Association Award for Best Television Feature Story and a Channel 12 (PBS) Award for reporting. Most recently, she received the Marc H. Tanenbaum Foundation for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding Media Bridge-Builder Award and the Kyriazis Foundation award for the promotion of press freedom, both in 1997.
Ms. Marton attended Wells College in Aurora, NY, the Sorbonne, and the Institute des Etudes de Science Politiques in Paris. Ms. Marton was awarded a BA in Romance Languages and an MA in International Relations from George Washington University in 1971.
Kati Marton is married to Richard Holbrooke, the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, and lives in New York City with her children, Elizabeth and Christopher.
Since 1980, Ms. Marton has published four other books and contributed as a reporter to numerous news organizations, including ABC News, Public Broadcasting Services, National Public Radio, Atlantic Monthly, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic. Her first book, Wallenberg, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was published by Random House in 1982. From 1983 until 1984, she was a columnist for the Sunday Times of London. Her second book, a novel entitled An American Woman, was published in 1987. Her investigative history, The Polk Conspiracy--Murder and Coverup in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk, published in 1990, has been acquired by Mel Gibson for a feature film. Her fourth book is A Death in Jerusalem--the Assassination by Extremists of the First Middle East Peacemaker, published by Pantheon books in the fall of 1994. From 1995 until 1997, Ms. Marton hosted America and the World, a weekly half-hour broadcast on international affairs from National Public Radio, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations.
From December 1977 until December 1979, Ms. Marton was Bonn Bureau Chief and Foreign Correspondent for ABC News. While based in West Germany, Ms. Marton reported from many countries, including Poland, Hungary, Italy, Holland, Northern Ireland, and East Germany.
Ms. Marton was a news writer/reporter at WCAU-TV, the CBS-owned and -operated affiliate in Philadelphia, from January 1973 until November 1977. At WCAU, Ms. Marton covered City Hall, the courts, and labor-related stories, and anchored newscasts, documentaries, and talk shows. From March 1971 until October 1972, Ms. Marton was a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington. In addition to diplomatic and political assignments, Ms. Marton was involved in the development of NPR’s program, All Things Considered.
Ms. Marton has received several prestigious honors for her reporting, including a Gannett Fellowship in 1988 and a George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary on China in 1973. She was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center Visiting Scholar at Columbia University from 1992 until 1993. She also received a Philadelphia Press Association Award for Best Television Feature Story and a Channel 12 (PBS) Award for reporting. Most recently, she received the Marc H. Tanenbaum Foundation for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding Media Bridge-Builder Award and the Kyriazis Foundation award for the promotion of press freedom, both in 1997.
Ms. Marton attended Wells College in Aurora, NY, the Sorbonne, and the Institute des Etudes de Science Politiques in Paris. Ms. Marton was awarded a BA in Romance Languages and an MA in International Relations from George Washington University in 1971.
Kati Marton is married to Richard Holbrooke, the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, and lives in New York City with her children, Elizabeth and Christopher.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
from Chapter 1
Edith and Woodrow Wilson
Fools for Love
I am absolutely dependent on intimate love for the right and free and most effective use of my powers and I know by experience . . . what it costs my work to do without it.
-Woodrow Wilson to Edith Galt, August 16, 1915
The dear face opposite me was drawn and lined; and as I sat there watching the dawn break slowly I felt that life would never be the same; that something had broken inside me; and from that hour on I would have to wear a mask-not only to the public but to the one I loved best in the world; for he must never know how ill he was, and I must carry on.
-Edith Wilson, My Memoir
On January 1, 1900, two thousand washingtonians braved the bitter cold and falling snow and patiently waited for the White House doors to open for the traditional New Year's reception. They came by trolley and in elegant carriages to mark the dawn of a new century and with it, as the presence of dozens of diplomats in the queue signaled, America's emergence as one of the world's most powerful nations.
The day also marked the hundredth anniversary of the death of George Washington, but America was now an altogether different country than the fledgling republic bequeathed by Virginia's "First Gentleman." In the past twenty years, seven million Americans had abandoned roots and rural traditions and joined the great urban migration. "America fever" was sweeping the muddy villages and mining towns of Central and Eastern Europe. An entire Italian family could buy steerage tickets from Naples for as little as $15. Half a million immigrants were expected to arrive in New York that year. The combination of the rich land, a fearless, mobile population and breathtaking new technology-from the combine to alternating-current electricity-was allowing America to challenge the rest of the world.
Inside the White House resided a Victorian man and his withdrawn, sickly wife. William and Ida McKinley, good-natured, well liked and unchallenging, had little interest in the new age. While the country had stretched and grown, the White House had not. It had been built as the home of the president of a small republic. The presidential offices were a rabbit warren of jumbled rooms, alongside the First Family's private quarters. A handful of men in formal morning attire, black cutaway coats, gray-and-black-striped trousers and silk ties jockeyed for space in the overcrowded, ill-lit offices. Down the hall in the presidential bedroom, Ida spent much of her time crocheting. She neither had, nor wished for, her own staff or an office of her own. But the American people felt close to their president, who was still accessible to citizens. When he was in residence in the White House, hundreds of them arrived every weekday, expecting to meet him.
It would take another year and an assassin's bullet to bring to power the first twentieth-century president, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was not content for the United States to be the world's economic giant; his sights were set on global military and diplomatic might. Colorful and ebullient, he and his coolly confident second wife, Edith, were the first modern presidential couple. They and their six children filled the mansion with the boisterousness associated with the family. Roosevelt decreed that henceforth the Executive Mansion would be called the White House, a name he considered less stuffy and more in line with the democratic image he intended to convey. Edith, meanwhile, began to institutionalize the office of first lady. She persuaded Congress to finance the mansion's modernization, adding the West Wing and-for the first time-allocating space for the first lady's offices. She hired the first full-time White House social secretary. Edith ran the White House with the ease and detachment of a born chatelaine, though she treated the public and political aspects of the role with aristocratic disinterest. Nevertheless, in both style and substance, Edith and Theodore Roosevelt virtually initiated the ascendancy of an imperial presidency. Though Edith did not personally make use of the first lady's own pulpit, she helped lay the foundation for her successors. Another Roosevelt would take it into territory Edith never could have imagined.
Helen Herron Taft, the wife of President William Howard Taft, who succeeded Roosevelt, achieved a number of breakthroughs as first lady between 1909 and 1913. She was the first woman to be allowed a seat within the bar of the Supreme Court, the first to publish her memoirs and the first to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. But her historic role is overshadowed by the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, with whom this narrative of marriage and power truly begins.
Edith Wilson became first lady during a period when the inherent inequality between men and women-society's patriarchal nature-was beginning to be questioned. Since the 1890s American women made up one-third of college students and more than one-third of professional workers. Edith, however, seemed content with the crumbs of education reserved for a Victorian woman. She wanted no part of the generation of college-educated women who were forming local suffrage associations and going door-to-door to enlist support. She would have found repellent Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, which sparked a national scandal. So great was the uproar caused by this story of a country girl who uses sex to climb out of poverty that the publisher was forced to withdraw the book after selling only 456 copies. Another book, What a Young Husband Ought to Know, fared better. The book advised men that "the sexual impulse in the male . . . marches like a mighty conqueror, arousing and marshaling the mightiest human forces [leading to] the attainment of the world's greatest and grandest achievement in art, in letters, in inventions, in philosophy, in philanthropy, and in every effort that is to secure the universal blessing of mankind." The book went on to assure readers that with patience and self-control, husbands could teach their wives to accept sex as a necessary hardship on the road to motherhood.
Edith willingly accepted the role her nineteenth-century southern upbringing assigned to her. She embraced the Victorian feminine ideal of the virtuous, compliant and passive child/woman. She proudly proclaimed both her disapproval of women she called "devils in the workhouse" and her adherence to women's subservience to men. She called Woodrow Wilson "My Lord and Master" and he called her "Little Girl"-not for her the nascent female solidarity movement. Yet no presidential wife ever wielded more real power than she did, the first lady who said she wished only to be a good wife.
The Wilsons' story is perhaps the most poignant in the chronicles of presidential marriages, and among the most controversial. In rapid succession it encompassed death, bereavement, unexpected bliss and sudden physical decline. It is also the story of an astonishing White House cover-up in which the first lady was the main perpetrator. At a time when American women still could not vote, rarely held jobs beyond that of a domestic or a grade-school teacher, a woman ran the White House and the executive branch. Woodrow and Edith embody the White House's greatest love story, one that had the most tragic outcome for the nation and the world.
No cement barriers or electric fences imprisoned the White House's residents in the early years of the century. At first glance, it was just a very large house in the heart of a medium-sized city. Until the 1860s, Washington had remained a winter outpost where politicians converged to debate a handful of subjects not controlled by the states. Humidity drove residents away for the summer. New York was the country's financial capital, Boston its cultural mecca. But the Civil War had changed Washington, as it became the hub of wartime operations. "Slowly," historian Henry Adams wrote, "a certain society had built itself up about the Government. Houses had been opened and there was much dining; much calling; much leaving of cards."
In the waning years of this era, Woodrow Wilson, a man past his middle age, and Edith Bolling Galt, a woman well into hers, fell in love and carried on an ardent affair in the White House.
The fifty-nine-year-old president was widowed in 1914, during the second year of his first term. Ellen Axson Wilson's sudden death coincided almost exactly with the outbreak of World War I, and the convergence of the two events shattered Wilson's well-ordered world. His famously stern demeanor masked a passionate and emotionally needy man. It is hard to imagine an isolation greater than the one that fell over him, suddenly alone in that house. Wilson had always preferred the company of women to that of politicians. His daughter Nell recalled, "Father enjoyed the society of women, especially if they were what he called 'charming and conversable.' " His first wife and daughters had been the core of his existence. "My heart has somehow been stricken dumb . . . ," Wilson wrote at the time of Ellen's death. "She was beyond comparison the deepest, truest, noblest lover I ever knew." The following year he would marry again.
In March 1915, Edith Galt recalled later, "I turned a corner and met my fate." Invited to tea at the White House by a cousin of the president, she stepped off an elevator and ran into Wilson. Edith would later revealingly recall the encounter primarily in sartorial terms. How fortunate, she wrote, that she had "worn a smart black tailored suit which Worth had made for me in Paris and a tricot hat which I thought completed a very good looking ensemble."
Wilson was immediately smitten. Invitations to dinner and hand-delivered letters from the White House to her town house soon crossed Washington almost daily. So did shipments of Edith's favorite flower, orchids. "The orchids carried ...
Edith and Woodrow Wilson
Fools for Love
I am absolutely dependent on intimate love for the right and free and most effective use of my powers and I know by experience . . . what it costs my work to do without it.
-Woodrow Wilson to Edith Galt, August 16, 1915
The dear face opposite me was drawn and lined; and as I sat there watching the dawn break slowly I felt that life would never be the same; that something had broken inside me; and from that hour on I would have to wear a mask-not only to the public but to the one I loved best in the world; for he must never know how ill he was, and I must carry on.
-Edith Wilson, My Memoir
On January 1, 1900, two thousand washingtonians braved the bitter cold and falling snow and patiently waited for the White House doors to open for the traditional New Year's reception. They came by trolley and in elegant carriages to mark the dawn of a new century and with it, as the presence of dozens of diplomats in the queue signaled, America's emergence as one of the world's most powerful nations.
The day also marked the hundredth anniversary of the death of George Washington, but America was now an altogether different country than the fledgling republic bequeathed by Virginia's "First Gentleman." In the past twenty years, seven million Americans had abandoned roots and rural traditions and joined the great urban migration. "America fever" was sweeping the muddy villages and mining towns of Central and Eastern Europe. An entire Italian family could buy steerage tickets from Naples for as little as $15. Half a million immigrants were expected to arrive in New York that year. The combination of the rich land, a fearless, mobile population and breathtaking new technology-from the combine to alternating-current electricity-was allowing America to challenge the rest of the world.
Inside the White House resided a Victorian man and his withdrawn, sickly wife. William and Ida McKinley, good-natured, well liked and unchallenging, had little interest in the new age. While the country had stretched and grown, the White House had not. It had been built as the home of the president of a small republic. The presidential offices were a rabbit warren of jumbled rooms, alongside the First Family's private quarters. A handful of men in formal morning attire, black cutaway coats, gray-and-black-striped trousers and silk ties jockeyed for space in the overcrowded, ill-lit offices. Down the hall in the presidential bedroom, Ida spent much of her time crocheting. She neither had, nor wished for, her own staff or an office of her own. But the American people felt close to their president, who was still accessible to citizens. When he was in residence in the White House, hundreds of them arrived every weekday, expecting to meet him.
It would take another year and an assassin's bullet to bring to power the first twentieth-century president, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was not content for the United States to be the world's economic giant; his sights were set on global military and diplomatic might. Colorful and ebullient, he and his coolly confident second wife, Edith, were the first modern presidential couple. They and their six children filled the mansion with the boisterousness associated with the family. Roosevelt decreed that henceforth the Executive Mansion would be called the White House, a name he considered less stuffy and more in line with the democratic image he intended to convey. Edith, meanwhile, began to institutionalize the office of first lady. She persuaded Congress to finance the mansion's modernization, adding the West Wing and-for the first time-allocating space for the first lady's offices. She hired the first full-time White House social secretary. Edith ran the White House with the ease and detachment of a born chatelaine, though she treated the public and political aspects of the role with aristocratic disinterest. Nevertheless, in both style and substance, Edith and Theodore Roosevelt virtually initiated the ascendancy of an imperial presidency. Though Edith did not personally make use of the first lady's own pulpit, she helped lay the foundation for her successors. Another Roosevelt would take it into territory Edith never could have imagined.
Helen Herron Taft, the wife of President William Howard Taft, who succeeded Roosevelt, achieved a number of breakthroughs as first lady between 1909 and 1913. She was the first woman to be allowed a seat within the bar of the Supreme Court, the first to publish her memoirs and the first to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. But her historic role is overshadowed by the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, with whom this narrative of marriage and power truly begins.
Edith Wilson became first lady during a period when the inherent inequality between men and women-society's patriarchal nature-was beginning to be questioned. Since the 1890s American women made up one-third of college students and more than one-third of professional workers. Edith, however, seemed content with the crumbs of education reserved for a Victorian woman. She wanted no part of the generation of college-educated women who were forming local suffrage associations and going door-to-door to enlist support. She would have found repellent Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, which sparked a national scandal. So great was the uproar caused by this story of a country girl who uses sex to climb out of poverty that the publisher was forced to withdraw the book after selling only 456 copies. Another book, What a Young Husband Ought to Know, fared better. The book advised men that "the sexual impulse in the male . . . marches like a mighty conqueror, arousing and marshaling the mightiest human forces [leading to] the attainment of the world's greatest and grandest achievement in art, in letters, in inventions, in philosophy, in philanthropy, and in every effort that is to secure the universal blessing of mankind." The book went on to assure readers that with patience and self-control, husbands could teach their wives to accept sex as a necessary hardship on the road to motherhood.
Edith willingly accepted the role her nineteenth-century southern upbringing assigned to her. She embraced the Victorian feminine ideal of the virtuous, compliant and passive child/woman. She proudly proclaimed both her disapproval of women she called "devils in the workhouse" and her adherence to women's subservience to men. She called Woodrow Wilson "My Lord and Master" and he called her "Little Girl"-not for her the nascent female solidarity movement. Yet no presidential wife ever wielded more real power than she did, the first lady who said she wished only to be a good wife.
The Wilsons' story is perhaps the most poignant in the chronicles of presidential marriages, and among the most controversial. In rapid succession it encompassed death, bereavement, unexpected bliss and sudden physical decline. It is also the story of an astonishing White House cover-up in which the first lady was the main perpetrator. At a time when American women still could not vote, rarely held jobs beyond that of a domestic or a grade-school teacher, a woman ran the White House and the executive branch. Woodrow and Edith embody the White House's greatest love story, one that had the most tragic outcome for the nation and the world.
No cement barriers or electric fences imprisoned the White House's residents in the early years of the century. At first glance, it was just a very large house in the heart of a medium-sized city. Until the 1860s, Washington had remained a winter outpost where politicians converged to debate a handful of subjects not controlled by the states. Humidity drove residents away for the summer. New York was the country's financial capital, Boston its cultural mecca. But the Civil War had changed Washington, as it became the hub of wartime operations. "Slowly," historian Henry Adams wrote, "a certain society had built itself up about the Government. Houses had been opened and there was much dining; much calling; much leaving of cards."
In the waning years of this era, Woodrow Wilson, a man past his middle age, and Edith Bolling Galt, a woman well into hers, fell in love and carried on an ardent affair in the White House.
The fifty-nine-year-old president was widowed in 1914, during the second year of his first term. Ellen Axson Wilson's sudden death coincided almost exactly with the outbreak of World War I, and the convergence of the two events shattered Wilson's well-ordered world. His famously stern demeanor masked a passionate and emotionally needy man. It is hard to imagine an isolation greater than the one that fell over him, suddenly alone in that house. Wilson had always preferred the company of women to that of politicians. His daughter Nell recalled, "Father enjoyed the society of women, especially if they were what he called 'charming and conversable.' " His first wife and daughters had been the core of his existence. "My heart has somehow been stricken dumb . . . ," Wilson wrote at the time of Ellen's death. "She was beyond comparison the deepest, truest, noblest lover I ever knew." The following year he would marry again.
In March 1915, Edith Galt recalled later, "I turned a corner and met my fate." Invited to tea at the White House by a cousin of the president, she stepped off an elevator and ran into Wilson. Edith would later revealingly recall the encounter primarily in sartorial terms. How fortunate, she wrote, that she had "worn a smart black tailored suit which Worth had made for me in Paris and a tricot hat which I thought completed a very good looking ensemble."
Wilson was immediately smitten. Invitations to dinner and hand-delivered letters from the White House to her town house soon crossed Washington almost daily. So did shipments of Edith's favorite flower, orchids. "The orchids carried ...
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