ABSTRACT
On August 6, 1914, Ellen Axson Wilson died. She had been a perfect wife to Thomas Woodrow Wilson: an admirable mother representative, a "center of quiet" for his life. Wilson desperately needed a woman to care for him as his mother and Ellen Axson had cared for him. Wilson's acute depression continued through the Christmas holidays of 1914, and it was accentuated when in January 1915 he felt obliged to send House abroad. After the departure of House, the solitary President, without a wife, without a friend, stalking through the White House by himself, grew so desperately lonely that his physician Cary Grayson, fearing a collapse, insisted on music and guests. Among the friends of Dr. Grayson's fiancee was a widow of forty-three named Mrs. Gait. In the month of April 1915, eight months after the death of Ellen Axson Wilson, she was invited to hear music at the White House.
