Review: 'Edith and Woodrow' and then some

A bit more light on two fascinating people

"Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House Years"
By Phyllis Lee Levin
Nonfiction
Scribner, 606 pages

(CNN) -- For 17 months, from October 1919 to March 1921, the United States had no functioning president. Eighty years later, the true of story what happened in the White House during those months is largely unknown. Journalist Phyllis Lee Levin is trying to change all that.

"Edith and Woodrow" is her painstaking account of the Woodrow Wilson presidency (1913-'21), meticulously researched and recounted in extensive detail. Her central premise is that the president's second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, was in functional control of the government following her husband's October 1919 stroke.

It takes Levin a while to get to that point.

She paints a detailed background of the lives the Wilsons led before they married and of their marriage before illness incapacitated the president. More than three-fifths of the 500-page book is devoted to setting the stage for the health crisis. The portraits that emerge flesh out the historical caricatures of Woodrow and Edith Wilson.

He comes across as a proper, sometimes autocratic Victorian, befitting the son of a minister. But Levin also illuminates Wilson's romantic streak. In letters to both his wives (Ellen Wilson died in the second year of his presidency), Woodrow Wilson reveals himself as an enthusiastic suitor and ardent husband.

It's this little-examined aspect of his personality that helps explain his sudden infatuation with Edith Galt. She's depicted as a shrewd antebellum Southern belle who married well on her first trip to the altar and married even better the second time around. Yet Levin finds in her correspondence a deep devotion to Wilson that belies her reputation as a conniving social climber.

Wide-ranging viewpoint

"Edith and Woodrow" would be an interesting examination of the dynamics of this relationship if Levin had focused her attention on it. Unfortunately, she chooses to range more broadly over the events of the Wilson presidency. They were important events, to be sure. World War I and the battle over the League of Nations were turning points in the history of the 20th century.

Levin devotes a great deal of attention to the political infighting over the League, in particular. While those events are intimately tied to the relationship between the Wilsons, especially after his debilitating stroke, Levin's detailed and repetitious recounting of them bogs down her narrative.

In many ways, "Edith and Woodrow" is a rebuttal of Edith Wilson's memoirs. Levin takes issue with the former first lady's assertion that she had no impact on national policy during her husband's convalescence. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary. The first lady cut off all contact between her husband and his government. Even Vice President Thomas Marshall was refused admittance to the White House and had to rely on newspaper accounts for information about Wilson's health.

Edith Wilson, of course, carefully controlled those accounts.

The evidence Levin cites makes a persuasive case that Edith Wilson hid the gravity of her husband's illness at the time, and for the rest of her life. There's less documentation to support the assertion that Edith Wilson took over the government.

In fact, Levin doesn't offer any evidence that Mrs. Wilson made a decision that ran counter to the express wishes of the President. What she does offer is evidence that Wilson was incapable of making any executive decisions for many months, while his wife maintained a public facade that he had full use of his mental faculties.

"Edith and Woodrow" is a worthy contribution to scholarship about the Wilson presidency. Levin's exhaustive research allows her to examine the issues of the time in the context of the personalities involved. In process, she sheds a bit more light on two fascinating people who resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.