When the Cheering Stopped (37 page)

Once in S Street he had said that he missed the bonging of the White House's many clocks. He had liked that. So Edith had had made for him a magnificent grandfather's clock that would loudly ring every fifteen minutes. It stood at the second-floor stair landing. Now in S Street the last reverberations of the clock ringing the hour sounded throughout the house. The Reverend James Taylor of Central Presbyterian Church said, “‘The Lord is my shepherd …'” Before the minister, dimly lit by the soft wall lights, a small spray of flowers sat atop the black steel of the casket. Orchids, black orchids, from Edith. On the wall hung a copy of Bouguereau's Madonna, done by Ellen. Behind the seated people, from the stairs, came the sound of Edith sobbing.

The Reverend Sylvester Beach of Princeton University prayed, then, that there would be divine aid to help the world to a realization of the vision of a world at peace that had been seen by this dead man before them. He asked that there would be consolation for the family.

Outside, snow mixed with the rain falling upon the thousands around the house, on the policemen, on the eight servicemen—soldiers, sailors and marines—who could carry the casket to the black hearse, on the men and women standing on the muddy slopes across from the house.

Bishop James Freeman of the Washington Cathedral, holding in his hand the khaki-bound Bible of the dead man, said, “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and present you faultless before the presence of His glory and with exceeding joy; to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and evermore. Amen.” The clock chimed the quarter hour: three-fifteen.

The three clergymen went down the aisle between the people seated at right and left and down the stairs through the opened doors and out into the snow and rain. They took off their hats and stood in a line. Utter silence attended them. The eight servicemen, all young, the soldiers in khaki, the sailors in blue jackets, the marines in field
green, went up the stairs and took the casket and came down, passing on both upward and downward journeys the sobbing widow. As the boys came through the door with their burden, almost every man in the street except the saluting servicemen joined with the clergymen in standing bareheaded. The spray of orchids moved up and down with the movement of the black steel coffin. There was no sound but the clicking of press and movie cameras.

The hearse driver started his motor and when the casket was inside moved down the hill a short distance. Another car pulled up directly in front of Number 2340. The widow came out on the arm of John Randolph Bolling. She wore a plain black cloth coat with lynx cuffs and collar. Her mourning veil was square and bordered by a three-inch band of crape. It completely covered her features. Behind her came McAdoo with Nellie on one arm and Margaret on the other, both sisters also wearing heavy black veils. Then came the guests: the President and First Lady, the honorary pallbearers ex-Secretary Daniels, ex-Secretary Baker, ex-Secretary Houston, ex-Secretaries Redfield, Meredith, Gregory, Payne, Senator Glass, Bernard Baruch, Jesse Jones, General Tasker Bliss, Cleveland Dodge, Dr. Davis and Dr. Hiram Woods—these last three representing the Class of '79—some other old friends. The Cabinet came out, and the Senators, and the household servants, and even two men from Keith's Theatre, doormen who had been kind and understanding. The names of the passengers for the waiting limousines were read out. After the servants and the doormen were assigned their places in the cars, the names of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Tumulty were spoken.

The procession got under way, a slow rolling line of cumbersome high-roofed black automobiles heading down S Street's hill. By the first car, the hearse, marched servicemen. Other servicemen, the soldiers and marines standing in a two-mile line to the Cathedral, one by one came to a salute as the hearse reached them. For as far as could be seen hands came up and stayed at foreheads for a moment and then dropped. No sidearms of any kind were worn, and there were no muffled kettle-drums, no gun caissons, no horse with empty saddle and stirrups reversed, no band to play a dirge. At the junction of S
Street and Massachusetts Avenue some young American Legionnaires stood with standards and flags, the only color in the gray afternoon.

They turned up the Avenue and headed northwest, the crawling line of cars going no faster than the slow march of the boys by the hearse, the unbroken line of people under the black dripping umbrellas motionless save for those women—and men, also—who reached under their coats and brought out handkerchiefs. Fort Myer's guns thudded.

In New York, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise spoke to the crowd jamming Madison Square Garden. His words were carried out to the overflow in the street by transmitters. He touched for a bitter moment on those who opposed the League: “May history compassionately embalm in oblivion the names and deeds of those who, to punish your and my leader—the hope-bringer of mankind—struck him down and broke the heart of the world!” He tried to go on, but a terrible roar, a great swelling snarl, reached up to him. “God forgive them!” he shouted, but he could not be heard. Outside in the street the overflow crowd joined in and the frightening sound rolled in to meet that of the people inside. Rabbi Wise shouted again, “God forgive them!” In a soft hat wet with New York's rain a small, slim man looked on: Colonel House, uninvited to the funeral.

Up Massachusetts Avenue wound the silent procession approaching Mount Saint Alban and the towering arches of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. The sound of the tolling bells came through the wet air to meet the cars, and when the hearse turned into the spacious grounds the bells played
Nearer, My God, to Thee.

The tires of the cars whispered through the slush on the winding road leading past the gardens to the church itself. It was maintained by the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, but all Christian denominations made use of it, for it had no congregation of its own. It was meant to be, and was, a church of prayer for all groups. Under dripping cedars the fifty thousand who waited pressed forward, their umbrellas making a solid black mass.

The hearse stopped, the other cars halting behind it.
The eight boys reached in for the casket and drew it out and took it up and in step marched with it to the door of the Bethlehem Chapel. Over that entrance, in raised stone lettering was:
The Way to Peace.

The boys carried their burden down the narrow corridor leading to the chapel sepulchre, passing thousands and thousands of banked flowers, the greatest floral display Washington had ever seen, flowers from the Republic of Armenia, Gouvernement Beige, Embasada Mexico, flowers “with the homage of the President and Government of the French Republic,” the People of Poland, the Girl Scouts of America, the King of Siam, and an old woman who lived along Conduit Road to whom a President and a First Lady had once given a set of knitting needles in appreciation for a scarf she had knit and sent to the White House. In front of the entrance to the chapel was a big American flag made of flowers, the tribute of a group of Confederate veterans. Pinned to it was a little silk Stars and Bars.

The eight servicemen went in and put the casket down in the center aisle in front of a beautifully carved altar of the Nativity. Tall waxen candles gleamed and dim light came through the high Gothic windows, each showing in tinted glass a part of the story of the Nativity. The invited guests for whom there had been no room in the house sat in their seats on either side of the aisle; those who had been in S Street filed in and sat down also. The organist, Warren F. Johnson, who had been a White House Executive Office employee, played Chopin's Funeral March. Outside, transmitters brought the sound to the people; radio stations brought it to listeners gathered by their sets in every part of the country and to the now silent throng inside and outside Madison Square Garden. Above the waiting tomb in the very heart of the crypt shone a tri-cornered lamp symbolic of the Trinity.

The choir came down the corridor and entered and stood in the aisle with the casket, some at the head, some at the foot. Bishop Freeman said, “‘I am the Resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.'” The Reverend Taylor said, “‘The days of our age are three score
years and ten, and though men be so strong that they come to four score years, yet is their strength then but labor and sorrow; so soon passeth it away and we are gone.'” Outside the church and outside the District of Columbia and many miles away, the prayer was heard; in the Cathedral grounds people sank to their knees in the slush and men took off their hats and prayed even as the dampness of the fading gray day came drifting down in soft snow to wet their heads and drop upon their shoulders.

Bishop Freeman said, “‘So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death! Where is thy sting? O Grave! Where is thy victory?'”

The organ notes sounded faintly a favorite, favorite hymn. The choir sang:

“Day is dying in the west,

Heaven is touching earth with rest.

Wait and worship while the night

Sets her evening lamps alight.”

The singing ended, and in the chapel and through the transmitters outside and the radios came the Apostles' Creed recited by clergymen and mourners. They recited the Lord's Prayer and Bishop Freeman prayed for the family. Then with raised hand he pronounced the benediction. Those members of the choir between the altar and the head of the casket moved past the casket and joined the other members at the foot and went down the aisle and out into the corridor. Their chanting grew softer and softer in the distance, so that finally only a gentle hint wound back to the hearing of the people sitting in the chapel with the black coffin and the orchids: “‘That we may live and sing to thee, Alleluia,'” and a far-off final “Amen.” It was dusk outside.

The organ played the Recessional softly. President Coolidge arose and walked out and the other mourners followed him. Only the family and Cary Grayson were left with the eight servicemen at attention in the rear of the room and the workmen who would move away the
marble slab in the aisle that covered the entrance to the underground cavern where the casket would rest. Those workmen stepped forward and moved the great heavy slab and put it to one side. The boys came and took the casket and put it on the beams that would lower it down many feet into the vault's darkness.

Edith stood at the foot of the casket by the open hole in the floor which the slab had covered and looked up toward the altar. The girls were with her, and McAdoo, and Cary Grayson. Bishop Freeman said, “‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower. He fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death.'” He recited Tennyson's
Crossing the Bar:

“Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark.”

Slowly the casket began to sink down into the vault, the orchids riding down with it and with the simple plate on it saying Woodrow Wilson Born December 28 1856 Died February 3 1924. Bishop Freeman's hand moved slowly through the dim candlelight. “‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.'”

Outside, standing by the chapel door, Sergeant Frank Withey of the Third United States Cavalry lifted the bugle with which he had sounded Taps for the Unknown Soldier at Arlington and raised it to his lips to send into the darkness of this day once again the notes he played then.

Day is done.

Gone the sun.

Goeth day, cometh night,

And a star,

Leadeth all,

Speedeth all,

To their rest.

Edith turned and headed blindly toward the door. McAdoo took her arm and led her out, and the two girls trailed after them. The clergymen went out. The eight boys went out.

Only the workmen stood waiting for the casket to finish its slow trip to the vault so that they might move the great slab back into position, only they and one other: Cary Grayson.
“Please take good care of Woodrow,”
Ellen had said. The casket went down and vanished from view.

Not long afterward, Edith Wilson in her home at S Street came across a little change purse that her husband had always carried in his pocket. She opened it and saw that in a special closed section of the purse there was an object carefully wrapped in tissue paper. She undid the paper and shook it out. Something fell into her hand. At once she knew what it was she held. It was the dime the little boy handed up as the train pulled out of Billings, Montana.

*
Chief Justice William Howard Taft's office also announced that illness would prevent his attendance. However, the decision was made upon the recommendation of Cary Grayson following an examination at Taft's home.

*
Who, it is interesting to know, had years earlier advised McAdoo to have nothing to do with E. L. Doheny.

Acknowledgments, Bibliography, and Notes

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, Samuel Hopkins.
Incredible Era.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939.

Allen, Frederick Lewis.
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties.
New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1931.

Alsop, Em. Bowles (ed.).
The Greatness of Woodrow Wilson.
New York and Toronto: Rinehart & Company, 1956.

Annin, Robert Edwards.
Woodrow Wilson, A Character Study.
New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1924.

Anonymous (Clinton Wallace Gilbert).
The Mirrors of Washington.
New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921.

Anonymous (Nellie M. Scanlon).
Boudoir Mirrors of Washington.
Chicago, Philadelphia and Toronto: John C. Winston Company, 1923.