Death of a Speaker

"Perhaps this is the last time I will address you from this rostrum. [Laughter and applause.] I don't mean to insinuate that I regard it as a probability, but I must admit it is a possibility. The decision lies with none of us here. It is a decision that lies with an all-wise Providence. . . . With whatever Providence may decree, I am abundantly satisfied." [Applause.]

Speaker Nicholas Longworth was addressing his House of Representatives a few minutes before its March 4 adjournment. He was rounding out his third term in the highest legislative office in the land. Smiling, benign, always the "good fellow" he was looking forward to December when the 72nd Congress would meet with neither party in clear-cut control. Well aware was he that Death, in the interval, might decide the Speakership.

With Congress gone and his friends scattered, "Nick" Longworth idled about deserted Washington. He picked up a cold. It grew worse. Feeling "utterly wretched" he decided to go down to sunny, sandy Aiken, S. C. to visit his good Washington friends Mr. & Mrs. James F. Curtis (no kin to the Vice President). Fortnight ago he arrived at their low, shrub-bowered home behind its stone wall. His cold got no better. It went into his chest. Early last week doctors were called in, and put the Speaker into bed as a pneumonia patient. The pneumonia was dread Type No. 4.

Next day Alice Roosevelt Longworth, his wife, was summoned by telegraph from Washington. A specialist arrived from Augusta. Five nurses went on duty. The Speaker was put into an oxygen tent. The Press rushed representatives to Aiken as his condition changed from "serious" to "dangerous," from "critical" to "hopeless."

At midmorning they stood outside the Curtis house intently watching a second-story window shade. The doctor had promised to raise it as a signal of the end. Everything was very still. A Negro boy was exercising polo ponies nearby. The air was sweet with spring. . . . Up, slowly up went the shade.

Once he had said he wanted to die with Beethoven's seventh symphony ringing in his ears. But pneumonia victims are in coma long before the end. Perhaps the last sound he heard was the mockingbirds singing in the April sunshine.

From New York to join their half-sister in her black hour hurried Archibald and Kermit Roosevelt. President Hoover sent Col. Campbell Blackshear Hodges, his chief military aide, to Aiken by air. Copper Tycoon Charles Clark offered his private car Errant to Mrs. Longworth. Mourning alone near his master was Charles Eicheoff, for 31 years the Speaker's valet, to whom belonged credit for the famed perfection of the Longworth attire.

A special train took the Speaker home to Cincinnati. Into ivy-clad "Rookwood," the old-fashioned family residence on a green knoll, was carried the grey casket. Waiting there was Mrs. Longworth's stepmother, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Also there was a little girl with flaxen curls. Paulina could hardly understand when Mother took her in her arms, told her gently that Father was dead. ... To the house came the President of the U. S. who bowed his head and moved his lips silently. Also came the Vice President,* members of the Cabinet, a dozen Senators, nearly 100 members of the House. At Christ Church, too small for everybody, Bishop Coadjutor Henry Wise Hobson conducted the brief Episcopal service. At Spring Grove cemetery near the Longworth shaft of granite the Speaker was laid away in the ground while an airplane etched against a very blue sky dropped roses.

Rarely, if ever, has a U. S. statesman, in Death, evoked such widespread and sincere expressions of personal regret as Nicholas Longworth. Behind the trite formality of eulogies-for-the-Press was a ring of honest mourning. The nation had lost its Speaker but there would be others; a multitude of people, high and low, had lost a charming friend who could not be replaced. The range of his friendships was reflected in the long list of honorary pallbearers, including William ("Wild Bill") Donovan and Cornelius Vanderbilt Sr., Joseph Leiter and Efrem Zimbalist, Will Rogers and Clarence Mackay, Albert Lasker and Percy Rivington Pyne.

No man grieved more deeply at the Speaker's death than his fiercest political foe in life, short, ruddy Congressman John Nance ("Jack") Garner of Texas, onetime cowboy, leader of the House Democrats. Tears filled his blue eyes when he heard the news. "My closest, my best-loved friend!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Longworth was an aristocrat. I am a plebeian. Perhaps the very fact of our different rearing intensified our interest in each other." As rival leaders of the House Garner and Longworth had joked over the Speaker's official automobile, called it "our car" (TIME, Nov. 17). After House hours they amicably reviewed the day's events, planned for the morrow. So close in fact was their association that some Democrats grumbled that their leader was being "taken into camp" by the Republican Speaker.

Mourned President Hoover: "His happy character, his sterling honesty, his courage in public questions endeared him and held the respect not alone of his myriad of friends but of the country at large. His passing is a loss to the nation."

Last of an old Tory line that removed from New Jersey to Ohio in 1804 and amassed a fortune in Cincinnati real estate and vineyards, Nicholas Longworth was born in 1869. He went to Harvard (1891), conducted the college orchestra. With money, social position and native wit, he went into politics under the guidance of Mark Hanna. After an apprenticeship in the State Legislature, he was elected to Congress in 1902. In the White House then was a slim saucy miss called "Princess Alice" Roosevelt. Congressman Longworth met her, danced with her, took her motoring in one of the capital's first cars. Under the chaperonage of Secretary of War William Howard Taft they, with others, made a junket together to the Orient. When their home-coming steamer docked at San Francisco, a newshawk spotted a very dapper young man busily engaged with bags and grips on deck while a pert and pretty girl sat on a trunk whistling at him the then popular tune, "I'd Leave My Happy Home For You." Alice Roosevelt and Nicholas Longworth were married in 1906 in one of the grand est White House weddings ever held.

Manfully the Ohio Congressman lived down such epithets as "T. R.'s son-in-law" and "Mr. Alice Roosevelt Longworth." No one could doubt his individuality and independence after 1912, when he refused to follow his father-in-law into the Bull Moose Party and was roundly trounced for re-election to the House. He went back to Congress two years later, was chosen the 40th Speaker in 1925. That year too his only child, Paulina, was born in Chicago. Said Longworth on first viewing his tiny daughter: "She looks more like a Roosevelt than a Longworth, but she's young yet."

In the Speaker's chair Longworth ruled with a strong fair hand. He was no less tyrannical than Reed or Cannon but he did it in such a pleasant smiling way that there was little resentment. Behind him he always had a healthy House majority which afforded him his opportunity to build up the "lower'' chamber's recent reputation for smooth, efficient legislating. No White House tool, he deserted the rostrum to fight and defeat President Coolidge on the 1929 Navy building program, President Hoover on the Soldier Bonus Loan. (This latter activity was chiefly motivated by the menacing hostility of Cincinnati Veterans, which almost cost Longworth his seat last year.)

Outside Congress, "Nick" Longworth was the gay, garrulous bon vivant whom Washington officialdom knew and loved best. About him in his Massachusetts Avenue home his friends constantly gathered informally. A thorough musician (he had a standing order for new compositions from the Library of Congress), he would play on the violin, the organ or the piano. Then he would sing old college ballads, sentimental ditties or long songs for men only. His favorite stories were Elizabethan. He maintained active membership in the Royal & Joyous Fellowship of Elbow-benders. He doted on doggerel. Example:

You may live without conscience,

You may live without heart,

You may live without culture,

You may live without art,

You may live without kinsmen--without uncles and aunts,

But civilized man cannot live without pants.

The Seat. Of prime political importance last week was a House successor to Longworth from the Cincinnati district. If a Democrat is elected--and one came within 3,000 votes of it last November-- the next House would be tied at 217, with one Farmer-Laborite. Immediately the Press began to nominate Mrs. Longworth for the place. The daughter of a President, she is smart, politically-minded. Her election would maintain the House's "widow tradition."* But her brother Archie scouted the notion that she would ever accept political office. Besides, most Cincinnati Republicans consider her something of an outsider; they prefer State Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, the late President's son.

Speakership. In line of seniority for the speakership--if Republicans organize the House--is Connecticut's tall, lean John Quillin Tilson, now the majority floor leader. But he lacks the Longworth popularity among the rank & file of House Republicans. Behind his smile lies a dogmatic manner, a tart tongue. As floor leader he has often failed to command a following. But because of Mr. Tilson's intense loyalty to White House policies, President Hoover would like to see his elevation. Already last week he had rivals for the Speakership--Rules Chairman Bert Snell, ultra-conservative and hardboiled, supported by New York and Pennsylvania; Kansas' Homer Hoch backed by mild Mid-West Insurgents; Indiana's little old Wood; Michigan's nice, stodgy Mapes.

If the Democrats control the House, "Jack" Garner will become Speaker. But the honor will have lost some of its savor. His friend is dead.

* President Hoover and Vice President Curtis travelled from Washington to Cincinnati and back on two special trains. Custom forbids their riding together lest a fatal disaster overtake the nation's two chief executives simultaneously.

*Of the eight women in the last Congress, five were widows of members.

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