FIFTEEN

Washington, D.C., and Bolton, New York, March to September 1921

WITH MUCH FANFARE, PRESIDENT HARDING TOOK OFFICE ON March 4, 1921, bringing with him an all-star cabinet. The appointment of Hughes as secretary of state enabled Harding to secure other prominent figures for his administration: Andrew Mellon became secretary of the treasury, Herbert Hoover became secretary of commerce, and Henry C. Wallace became secretary of agriculture. Harding also appointed former President Taft as chiefjustice. The Republicans set out to make good on their campaign promise: “Less government in business and more business in government.” Florence Harding said that had she not been a pol itical wife, she would have devoted herself to animal rights. Upon arrival in Washington, she promptly ordered the removal of all the animal heads—moose, deer, elk, bear, and bighorn sheep—that Theodore Roosevelt had hung as trophies in the State Dining Room.

In August 1919 the national debt had reached its highest point at $26 billion. In broad terms, the federal government’s revenues from taxation in 1920 were nearly $6 billion—six times what they had been in 1917. While Harding worked closely with Mellon to achieve tax relief and introduce a federal budget system, he gave Hughes free rein to address international peace.

From the moment he first sat at the broad desk in the large office in the State, War, and Navy Building in Washington, Hughes had a perfect genius for directing the State Department. His typical routine was to arrive promptly at nine o’clock and leave at seven o’clock or later, often taking state papers with him for closer study after dinner. Twice each day, at eleven o’clock in the morning and at three-thirty in the afternoon, Hughes held a press conference.

Antoinette was also quickly drawn into active duty. She often hosted receptions and elaborate afternoon teas at their home on Eight eenth Street. Certain days of the week were designated for the wives of cabinet officers and other officials to be “at home,” which signified an open- invitation reception. On Antoinette’s first “at home” day, more than one thousand people visited with their calling cards. Traffic came to a standstill for blocks. They ran out of food. And still people continued to arrive.

Barely a month after Charles and Antoinette moved to Washington, leaving Catherine in the care of her older brother, they had received a letter—a letter!—from Catherine informing her parents of her engagement to Chauncey Waddell. Antoinette was so stunned that she drove immediately to the State, War, and Navy Building and, mouth agape and letter in hand, marched into Charles’s office in the middle of the day. Charles rose from his desk, alarmed. Antoinette handed him the letter without a word. She watched in amazement as his eyes scanned the familiar handwriting and then crinkled with mirth as his mustache spread over his smiling lips.

“That’s our CaCa,” he chuckled, referring to her by the nickname bestowed upon her by baby Elizabeth. “Independent to the end.”

“But why has he not come to you to ask your permission?” Antoinette sputtered.

“The world has changed,” Charles said, crossing to place a tender kiss on Antoinette’s cheek. “We must trust her judgment.” He placed the letter in the hands of his wife of more than thirty years. “After all, it’s wonderful news! We’re going to have a wedding!” Antoinette worried that the news might send Elizabeth into a depression at the thought that she, like Helen, would never live to marry.

The heat in Washington in the summer of 1921 was so oppressive that Antoinette arranged for Elizabeth and Blanche to spend August with longtime family friends in Bolton, New York, near Lake George, just twenty-two miles north of Glens Falls. This might well be Elizabeth’s final summer, and Antoinette wanted to shield her from the prying attentions that her failing health would attract in Washington or Morristown. Elizabeth and Blanche would stay on through mid-September 1921.

At Stillwater Cottage, Elizabeth was attended to by maids and cooks who were wonderfully accommodating. She was reunited with family friends, the Hoopeses and the Hydes, with a longstanding tradition of summering in the area. As Elizabeth put it, “The clan has gathered.” The natural environment seemed to restore her strength, and her letters were soon full of enthusiastic reports of her lively existence. Tellingly, they were almost completely devoid of the details of her daily diet.

The mornings were cold—the temperature only reached the midfifties in her bedroom—and Elizabeth often ate her breakfast in bed, beginning with hot cocoa. She was an avid reader of adventure stories, particularly stories of cowboys, scouts, and frontier life. She loved being outdoors and leapt at every chance to grab a fishing pole and climb into a row boat with Blanche, who would row them out to an island and serve a picnic lunch. Blanche would scramble Elizabeth’s single egg in a Girl Scouts campfire cooking set while the other picnickers feasted on fresh-caught fish or chops and roasted corn on the cob. Every afternoon Blanche, or “Mrs. B.” as Elizabeth had taken to calling her, enforced a nap of at least one hour.

There are 4 hydroairplanes [sic] here now, one of which is enormous, carrying 13 passengers beside the two pilots and having two liberty motors in it . . . it is all sort of camouflaged and painted like a fish. About everybody on the lake has been up sometime or other in one of them and they’ll take you up to the narrows from Lake George for $10.00, a ride for 15 or so minutes. . . . Every time I see it up I heave a sigh, for I would so love to go, but I suppose it’s foolish, nevertheless, among countless other things I’ll do on August 19th, 1928 [her twenty-first birthday], I’ll do that, and read Wuthering Heights as I go along!

Elizabeth’s letters included breathless descriptions of her fishing successes (black bass and perch) and bird-watching (bald eagles, great blue heron, wild duck) and the thrilling arrival on the lake of a fast new mo- torboat called the Snark. She joined the clan at country fairs and vocal concerts and tennis tournaments. On Sundays she attended the Baptist Church in Bolton Landing.

. . . last night really was the night of all nights and I shall never forget it. Evangeline Booth, Commander of the Salvation Army and her secretary came to dinner . . . It seems she comes up here almost every summer for her vacation and camps, but no one is supposed to know about it and she remains almost in seclusion . . . Oh, she is the most wonderful and remarkable person I’ve ever met and talked with . . . It was quite a dinner party too, my first real one, there being fourteen of us altogether and we didn’t leave the table until quarter of nine!

Upstate New York was like a second home to Elizabeth, and she and Blanche were having a great summer. But Elizabeth worried about her mother back in Washington, who was still recovering from the loss of Helen just over a year before:

I want you to be very frank with me Mother, and promise absolutely to let me know if you get lonely and want me to really come home for some reason or other, for all the heat of Washington and the tropics put together wouldn’t keep me back if I thought that. You’ll promise, won’t you?

On her fourteenth birthday the group celebrated with a lovely picnic lunch. Elizabeth ate her small portion of egg custard and cocoa while the others had coffee, sandwiches, salad, and watermelon. After lunch, Mrs. Hyde presented Elizabeth with a huge hatbox covered with pink paper to resemble a birthday cake, complete with fourteen blazing candles. Elizabeth wrote that according to the number of blows it took her to extinguish the candles, she would not be married for eleven years. Inside the hatbox were presents—books and RCA Victor recordings and a pincushion from her childhood friend Polly Hoopes.

Elizabeth began to collect bird nests and eggs, and even suggested that, when the time came, she might have the family canary, Perfect, sent to a taxidermist to add to the collection.

I don’t know what’s the matter with me when it comes to birds, but the more I study and watch the dear little things the more I become deeply fascinated, and it has a hold upon me that I simply can’t explain. I’d rather hunt or read or talk birds than do almost anything else . . .

That summer she submitted a story about fishing to a popular children’s journal—and it was published.

If my St. Nicholas has come (as it most doubtless has)please open it and look in the back for the “League,” where you will find a familiar story about a fish called “A Proud Moment” by Elizabeth Evans Hughes, and also don’t fail to notice that said story won a silver badge the next to highest distinction you can receive! Did you ever? When I saw my name and story actually in there I nearly fell over, but when I saw that I had won a silver badge on it, I was an absolute wreck, as you can well imagine . . . it inspired me with such “fresh veal and zigor . . .” Tell Father it’s the first step toward his “life,” that I’m bound I’m going to write one day!

At night, as Elizabeth drifted off to sleep to the sound of crickets and peepers and the occasional hoot of an owl, she recited the names of the things she loved. She breathed each word as if it were a prayer: trees, songbirds, dogs, the first frost, thunderstorms, the smell of pine needles, the feel of pine needles underfoot on the forest floor, the wink of mica in sunlight, reading, writing, words in general, travel by train, travel by ship, the shape of leaves, the feeling of spray on her face as she raced across Lake George in a motorboat, picnics, ladybugs, pussy willows, the sound of rain, the smell of the earth in springtime, the crackle of campfires . . .

It was part devotional, part literary exercise, and part survival strategy. Conspicuously absent from the catalog was all manner of food. She and Teddy Ryder had adopted opposite approaches to achieve the same goal. Each was collecting reasons to stay the course, betting against the odds with the only capital they had—their willingness to endure the pain of living.

Without exception Elizabeth fell asleep before she finished her list.