42 Years in the White House
by
[Houghton Mifflin, $3.50]
THIS collection of spicy material from the notebooks of the late Chief Usher of the White House belongs to the literature of social gossip, like Perley’s Reminiscences, Archie Butt’s letters, and other similar volumes in which good American democrats, lacking royalty to feast on, may learn that their Presidents are not very different from themselves. From his own accurate observation Ike Hoover tells us how T. R.’s children brought their pony upstairs in the elevator, how Mrs. Taft ‘ bossed’ her husband, with what ardor Mr. Wilson wooed his second wife, who played poker with President Harding, and why Mr. Coolidge used a tin whistle to call his dogs. Here the curious may learn how White House guests are treated, including Queen Marie, the Prince of Wales, Bryan Untiedt, and Colonel Lindbergh, and what is done with ‘gate crashers’ and souvenir hunters. We get illuminating little pictures: Mr. Taft stretching himself out in a comfortable chair after the inauguration and crying, ‘I’m President now and tired of being kicked around’; Mr. Wilson saying, ‘ I never do the same thing in the same way; Mr. Coolidge having his hair rubbed with vaseline as he ate his breakfast; and Mr. Hoover, ‘always with a frown on his face and a look of worry.’ Of the ten Presidents whom Ike Hoover knew, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the ablest as well as the most interesting, Hoover was the hardest to work for, and Coolidge the most egotistical. For Coolidge, Hoover had a definite dislike, which he took no trouble to conceal.
Ike Hoover thinks that Mr. Coolidge in the spring of 1928 was ‘eager for a second elective term,’ and even goes so far as to add, ‘No one in the White House doubted that the President was a candidate to succeed himself.’ Mr. Coolidge is dead and Cannot rise to defend himself, but I feel sure that Ike Hoover is wrong. Some day it will be demonstrated that the effect of ill health on Mr. Coolidge at that period was greater than has yet been realized, and that his irritability had a physical rather than a political cause.
This book will be of much value to future biographers of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover because of the intimate details which it discloses. Moreover it should have a large sale, for it is delightfully anecdotal in tone and with it one may pass a very pleasant evening.
CLAUDE M. FUESS