Mrs. HB Clark to Cary T. Grayson
Title
Mrs. HB Clark to Cary T. Grayson
Creator
Clark, Mrs. HB
Identifier
WWP16199
Date
1920 February 22
Source
Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia
Language
English
Text
Admiral Grayson
Washington, DC
Dear Admiral Grayson
I am a war widow – all my plantations and homes gone for war taxes. And I am too heart sick at heart over the scandals that are racing back and forth from foreign countries to Washington via Mexico as I got it while on the second line of defense in Honolulu! Will you kindly tell me how sanity experts can give out reports that your patient’s – the president’s mind! is clear when there are reports of hallucinations of autocracy clouding the President’s mind? No president has ever allowed such a state of affairs to exist in Washington before – there fore, as I have studied medicine and psychology of the insane all over the Continent to enable me to write more fully on the subject – I cannot but marvel at these terrible scandals in Washington! First prohibition vote was allowed to be passed without the vote of all the people as over 2 000,000 men were away at the “front” at the time this act went through I am informed this alone has angered the people so they are talking rashly of a revolution!! What would Washington, whose name we are reverently praising to day say of the way the Constitution has been juggled with by politicians and secret diplomacy? Please tell me why the mental experts have not used the numerous up-to date mental tests – time tests etc. to find out about the Presidents’ mental fitness to deal with these intricate and delicate diplomatic questions which foreigners are laughing about and foreign gossip says are waiting to take advantage of through our Presidents illness! Outbursts of passion do not point to a recovery of complete mental balance. And my observations of such cases have been that one area of the brain, always around the area of the clot fissure, remains so scarred as to bring about an unbalanced condition of the mental facualties – any mental excitement or stress bringing on almost a mania for certain things.
No doubt you will soon hear from some of our California patriotic Orders and clubs on this subject as they are voting to write Washington in regard to this question, I am told. It would no doubt also give foreign diplomats, who are crowding the Capital in all sorts of disguise, a jar if they saw a public announcement that experts had again made a diagnosis of the President’s condition etc. = and our beloved America would be safer from the foreign menace Washington rightly dreaded!
Very sincerely
Mrs. HB Clark
Washington, DC
Dear Admiral Grayson
I am a war widow – all my plantations and homes gone for war taxes. And I am too heart sick at heart over the scandals that are racing back and forth from foreign countries to Washington via Mexico as I got it while on the second line of defense in Honolulu! Will you kindly tell me how sanity experts can give out reports that your patient’s – the president’s mind! is clear when there are reports of hallucinations of autocracy clouding the President’s mind? No president has ever allowed such a state of affairs to exist in Washington before – there fore, as I have studied medicine and psychology of the insane all over the Continent to enable me to write more fully on the subject – I cannot but marvel at these terrible scandals in Washington! First prohibition vote was allowed to be passed without the vote of all the people as over 2 000,000 men were away at the “front” at the time this act went through I am informed this alone has angered the people so they are talking rashly of a revolution!! What would Washington, whose name we are reverently praising to day say of the way the Constitution has been juggled with by politicians and secret diplomacy? Please tell me why the mental experts have not used the numerous up-to date mental tests – time tests etc. to find out about the Presidents’ mental fitness to deal with these intricate and delicate diplomatic questions which foreigners are laughing about and foreign gossip says are waiting to take advantage of through our Presidents illness! Outbursts of passion do not point to a recovery of complete mental balance. And my observations of such cases have been that one area of the brain, always around the area of the clot fissure, remains so scarred as to bring about an unbalanced condition of the mental facualties – any mental excitement or stress bringing on almost a mania for certain things.
No doubt you will soon hear from some of our California patriotic Orders and clubs on this subject as they are voting to write Washington in regard to this question, I am told. It would no doubt also give foreign diplomats, who are crowding the Capital in all sorts of disguise, a jar if they saw a public announcement that experts had again made a diagnosis of the President’s condition etc. = and our beloved America would be safer from the foreign menace Washington rightly dreaded!
Very sincerely
Mrs. HB Clark
Original Format
Letter
To
Grayson, Cary T. (Cary Travers), 1878-1938
Files
Collection
Citation
Clark, Mrs. HB, “Mrs. HB Clark to Cary T. Grayson,” 1920 February 22, WWP16199, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.