Nellie Taft

February 28, 2005
Anthony (First Ladies
; Florence Harding;
etc.) takes on one of the least compelling First Ladies and does his best to make her colorful. Helen "Nellie" Herron Taft (1861–1943) went through life underwhelmed by power, having visited the White House for the first time at age 17. Despite Anthony's occasional attempts to make Nellie out to be a revolutionary ragtime heroine of women's rights and a precursor of such policy-driven first ladies as Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton, Nellie seems, on the facts, to have been a typical wife of her time and a devoted mother to her three children. Yet, as Anthony shows, the one area where she was decidedly strong was in her always shrewd and sometimes shrill advocacy for her husband and his interests (think Nancy Reagan). Nellie's other attributes—such as her skill at fashioning elaborate White House balls—may be less remarkable to readers. The best part of his narrative concerns the year 1909–1910, when Nellie struggled successfully to come back from a debilitating stroke, continuing to run the household with the help of a daughter retrieved from college. Anthony is also adept at portraying the complex, calculated bitterness with which Nellie greeted TR's 1912 attempt to usurp his onetime golden boy, Taft, when TR mounted a third-party challenge that toppled him. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW
. Agent, Lisa Bankoff.