Carl Sferrazza Anthony - Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era
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Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era: summary, description and annotation
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On the morning of William Howard Tafts inauguration, Nellie Taft publicly expressed that theirs would be a joint presidency by shattering precedent and demanding that she ride alongside her husband down Pennsylvania Avenue, a tradition previously held for the outgoing president. In an era before Eleanor Roosevelt, this progressive First Lady was an advocate for higher education and partial suffrage for women, and initiated legislation to improve working conditions for federal employees. She smoked, drank, and gambled without regard to societal judgment, and she freely broke racial and class boundaries.Drawing from previously unpublished diaries, a lifetime of love letters between Will and Nellie, and detailed family correspondence and recollections, critically acclaimed presidential family historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony develops a riveting portrait of Nellie Taft as one of the strongest links in the series of women -- from Abigail Adams to Hillary Rodham Clinton -- often critically declared copresidents.
Carl Sferrazza Anthony: author's other books
Who wrote Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Carl Sferrazza Anthony
Michelle Knudsen
Helen Herron Taft
Robert Wainwright
Tony Renzoni
John Bankston
Kevin J. Burns
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For Olivia Sferrazza, Kendall Sullivan,
Grace Campbell-McGuire, and Eva Cullen,
those little girls who can now all grow up
to be President on their own
Grace Campbell-McGuire, and Eva Cullen,
those little girls who can now all grow up
to be President on their own
Yo no naka wa
Mikka minu ma ni
Sakura kana
Life is short, like the three-day
Glory of the cherry blossom
JAPANESE PROVERB,
ATTRIBUTED TO MASSO YOSHIKAWA, 1926
Contents
There are several individuals I would especially like to acknowledge who helped me to see this book to completion. First and foremost is Michael Bromley, a historian of American transportation, generally, and the Tafts, specifically. Michael most generously shared everything he had already researched, which was extensive. This extraordinary act of generosity included not only Taft papers but various other publications.
Nan Card of the Rutherford Hayes Presidential Center provided the full breadth of that institutions archives regarding Nellie Tafts parents and siblings, the Herrons, and their relationship with President Hayes and his family, and Gil Gonzales of that institution expedited the photographs of their collection.
Lori McConnell, cultural resource specialist of the National Park Service, National Capital Parks, Central Division, made an extensive survey of that institutions archives regarding Nellie Taft, the development of West Potomac Park, and the Japanese cherry blossom trees. Ms. McConnell went above and beyond the call of duty in this regard, providing me with a full and definitive mini-archive.
Master Gunnery Sergeant D. Michael Ressler, chief librarian of the U.S. Marine Band, also went above and beyond with his great assistance in tracking down the details of Mrs. Tafts band concerts at West Potomac Park.
As usual, my good friend, the gentle and beautiful Mary Wolfskill of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, was of great help.
Francesca Di Meglio of the Ladies Home Journal took her own time to research and copy articles for me from that publication related to or written by the Tafts.
I cannot begin to express how much I appreciated the help and enthusiasm at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, of Jeffory Morris, curator of collections, and Chuck Turley, executive director. Special thanks to artist John Dowd who permitted me to use his private Provincetown history collection on the Taft visit.
Among the Taft family I would first like to thank the current first lady of Ohio and the great-granddaughter-in-law of Will and Nellie, Hope Taft. Mrs. Taft led me to the engaging Seth Taft who seems to embody much of the character of his late father, Charlie Taft, with whom, incidentally, I had some brief conversations and correspondence in the late 1970s when I was beginning to take a professional interest in the political aspects of presidential marriages and families.
Ray Henderson of the William Howard Taft National Historic Site provided many photographs I had never seen before, and I appreciate his help.
I also thank Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor and Linda H. Neary, administrative assistant, for providing the Justices speech on Mrs. Taft.
I would also like to thank my agent, Lisa Bankoff of ICM, and her aides-de-camp, Patrick Price and Tina Dubois. At William Morrow, Claire Wachtel recognized the value of telling the Taft story through Nellies perspective, and whenever I phoned, her assistant, Jennifer Pooley, was always cheerful and helpful. Ditto to Kevin Callahan, who saw the project to its end. Finally, the often unthanked production and management team handled the multiple drafts and rewrites with utter professionalism: Kim Lewis, executive managing editor; Andrea Molitor, production editor; Aryana Hendrawan, production manager; andwith nerves of steelcopy editor Rose Ann Ferrick.
Nobody who didnt know Cincinnati life could describe it. It was a town with a great sense of its own importance. Not a common, vulgar, Midwestern town at all. They were all terribly nice and civilized. They traveled to Europe and promenaded along with the Anglais and they got presented at court and bought inferior pictures. They were very much that way. They considered Boston and Philadelphia to be all right, but New York was just a place one sailed to Europe from.
ALICE ROOSEVELT LONGWORTH
I n the black of the night on November 3, 1908, its columns, portico, and wings made ghostly by the dancing shadows of the torchlight parade, the Taft mansion resembled the most famous building in America. It had what Mrs. William Howard Taft called the same classic lines as the White House and was even said to be designed by the same architect, James Hoban. But the Taft mansionas imposing as the Newport cottages and Palm Beach palaces where wealthy Easterners summered and winteredwas not quite grand enough to be confused with the White House. Not quite grand enough sometimes seemed to be the rally cry which drove the ambitions of Nellie Taft.
She was neither the prettiest nor the eldest of the eight children in the Herron family. Her father had not been quite rich enough to provide her with the complete education she wanted. She began to follow the path she had determined to in her teensthat of the independent single woman who supported herself with a profession. Her confidence, howeverundermined by her mothers warning that she not become an impoverished old maidoften abandoned her. But she did not give up on herself entirely, for she harbored an even more impossible teenage fantasy of her future life. To achieve this she would ostensibly follow a traditional path and marrybut only a man who accepted her as an intellectual equal and career partner. Her sisters and many of her friends married into families of great industrial wealth, while Nellie wed Will Taft from a clan renowned for its altruistic public service. Before she had even begun to date him, Nellie had determined that she would marry a man who would someday be elected President of the United States.
What Nellie thought and felt, however, might change several times in the course of a day. She often wanted many things that were impossible to have at the same time: privacy and recognition, beautiful possessions without the obligation of any permanent home, derivative power yet the right to veto her husbands decisions. She loved to smash precedent, but she also highly valued tradition. She thrived on her independence, yet took refuge in her family. Intellectually progressive in her notion of civil racial equality, she could out-snob the worst of snobs. She was known for both her ability to laugh at danger and for her utterly humorless attitude. She was adventurous and curious while also cautious and conservative, lavish yet frugal; she was fully certain of her own capabilities but often overwhelmed by insecurity and frequently found herself seeing the value of both sides of an argument. She was, thus, often inwardly conflicted about the right thing to do.
Despite the fact that she often thought what was fashionable was ridiculous, she also wanted her social peers to know that she could conform. While never relying on her zodiac guide as seriously as they did, for example, the self-conscious Nellie knew just what it meant to be a Gemini. Even on this night when she finally achieved the great goal of her life, it would be hard for Nellie Taft to entirely submerge her sense of being not quite good enough. It seemed drawn out by a certain type of persona Roosevelt.
Tonight the most famous house in Cincinnati was animated with sound and light and that smug sense of finally being first. Men in bowlers and their wives in cartwheel hats hoisted the fringed Taft banners and held high their torchlights. They chanted Taft! Taft! Taft! while the otherwise droning songs of the Citizens Taft Club were peppered with a dash of ragtime, that jumpy new sound created by the African American denizens of Storyville in New Orleans. Boisterously clustered around the portico, they were anticipating the great man himself, now the President-elect. They had already affectionately dubbed him Big Bill, referring to his fat and jolly image. Friends and family loved him as Will.
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