Alice Roosevelt Longworth - Post-Roosevelt Presidency

Post-Roosevelt Presidency

When it came time for the Roosevelt family to move out of the White House, Longworth buried a Voodoo doll of the new First Lady, Nellie Taft, in the front yard. At many White House social activities such as dinners, Longworth frequently mocked the First Lady, rendering Mrs Taft rather uncomfortable in her presence, though Longworth was some twenty years her junior. Mrs Taft offended Longworth by offering her an invitation to the White House; upon receiving the invitation, Longworth asked, "Me--who walked the halls of the White House for so many years?" Later, the Taft White House banned her from her former residence—the first but not the last administration to do so. During Woodrow Wilson's administration (from which she was banned in 1916 for a bawdy joke at Wilson's expense), Longworth worked endlessly against the entry of the United States into the League of Nations. Her Washington society dinners and reception lobbying are credited with helping to derail America's membership in the League.

Longworth did not like Warren G. Harding any more than she had Taft or Wilson. Mrs. Longworth felt that Harding was crass, barely educated, and ill-suited for the job. She preferred his vice president, Calvin Coolidge. Her feelings toward First Lady Florence Harding grew more strained during the Hardings' years in Washington. Longworth felt that she had lost her best friend, Evalyn Walsh McLean, to Florence, and the relationship between Longworth—the Speaker's wife—and the President's wife grew bitter.

Following the death of her husband in 1931, Alice Longworth and her daughter continued to live near Dupont Circle on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington's Embassy Row. When asked if she would run for her late husband's seat, she declined. She did not like public speaking, seldom spoke at public receptions, and abhorred physical contact with the public and the "press of the flesh" that came so easily to her father; in short, campaigning did not suit her. Her final visits to Cincinnati were in order to fulfill obligations, not for pleasure. One such trip was made for the burial of her husband, another for the social debut of her daughter. When asked if she would be buried in Cincinnati, she said that to do so "would be a fate worse than death itself."

During the Great Depression, when she, like so many other Americans, found her fortunes reversed, Longworth appeared in tobacco advertisements to raise money. She also published an autobiography, Crowded Hours. The book sold well and received rave reviews. TIME Magazine praised its "insouciant vitality." Her library was filled with autographed works from Tennyson, Yeats, and Ezra Pound.