When the Cheering Stopped Read Online Free PDF Page A

the President’s hands. Also that he had scandalously neglected to provide care for her grave in Georgia and weeds were growing all over it, along with cornstalks, but that he was so occupied with his new love that he did not care. Rumor had it that so taken with Edith Galt was he that official business was utterly ignored and stacks of neglected matters were piled high on his desk. Even if these stories could be handled or combated, there was still a political factor in theromance that could not be brushed away: the sympathy the country felt for a recently bereaved President would vanish immediately he married the gay and smiling Mrs. Galt.
    While McAdoo and House worried about these issues, they had even more frightening facts to deal with. The President during his Princeton days took—alone, without Ellen—a trip to Bermuda and there met a stylish, cheerful, good-looking woman vacationer with whom he spent much time; she visited him at Princeton and the White House and received from him more than two hundred letters; as President he sent her $7,500 of his own money; all this was in general known to the President’s political enemies, and—most terrifying of all—it was said this woman was going to play the role of jilted paramour and reveal the whole story if the President married Mrs. Galt.
    The woman, born Mary Allen, had married a Mr. Peck. After his death she married a Mr. Hulbert, and when the marriage ended in divorce she resumed her former married name. Mrs. Peck was now living in California, and rumors were floating east that the letters were up for sale to anyone who wanted to buy them and make their contents known the moment the President remarried.
    McAdoo and House saw political ruin ahead. They, and others, decided the President should not marry. Or if he must do so, then he must at least wait a year, until after the 1916 election.
    The question was, how was the President to be told this? Various candidates were sought out to perform the task, but no one accepted the job. So McAdoo and House worked up a scheme that McAdoo carried out. Lunching with his father-in-law, McAdoo said that an anonymous letter from California had been received. The letter (which existed only in the minds of McAdoo and House) said Mrs. Peck was talking about the $7,500 and showing the President’s letters to all interested comers. The President, as expected, was horrified. He said the letters were of a totally innocent nature, the $7,500 was a loan he gave Mrs. Peck against some mortgages she held, and as far as the relationship being illicit in any way, his late wife had known everything he ever did with Mrs. Peck, and Ellen herself had enjoyed reading the letters replyingto his. He was astonished that his friend Mrs. Peck would act in this way, but her doing so meant there was only one thing he could do about his relationship with Mrs. Galt.
    He went to his desk to write a note telling Mrs. Galt that he would not expose her to slander and publicity that would hurt her in a way he could not prevent but also could not ask her to accept. For a long time he sat seeking the right words. Grayson came into the room and saw the President was pale, his lips tightly pressed together. The hand holding the pen shook. He did not write anything for a long time and then he put down the pen. “I cannot bring myself to write this,” he said. “You go, Grayson, and tell her everything and say my only alternative is to release her from any promise.”
    Grayson went to Mrs. Galt. She sat silently when he finished speaking. “What shall I tell him?” Grayson asked. “Tell him I will write,” she said.
    She sat for many hours, and night came on, and dawn. She wrote:
    Dearest …
    I will stand by you—not for duty, not for pity, not for honour—but for love—trusting, protecting, comprehending love …
    I am so tired I could put my head down on the desk and go to sleep—but