Calvin Coolidge’s Mordant Wit
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By the Editors
Too often, Coolidge endures as a caricature.
You’re no doubt familiar with the image of Silent Cal, the humorless New Englander who looked like he had been “weaned on a pickle.”
But we moderns misread Coolidge, in part because of the humorlessness of our own age. In reality, Coolidge was a master of mordant wit.
Oddly, the most famous tale of Coolidge wit may be apocryphal. The story goes that at a Washington dinner, the person sitting next to Coolidge said, “I’ve made a large bet that I would be able to make you say more than two words.”
Coolidge said nothing for a time. Finally he replied, “You lose.”
But plenty of other stories testify to Coolidge’s sense of humor:
Grace Coolidge remembered that soon after she married Calvin, he came home from work with a bag full of fifty-two pairs of socks that needed repair. When Grace asked whether he had married her to get his socks darned, Coolidge replied, “No, but I find it mighty handy.”
Will Rogers, the most celebrated humorist of his era, said, “Mr. Coolidge had more subtle humor than almost any public man I ever met.” Rogers recalled that Coolidge “told me one time that it was fatal to show humor in public office, it reacted against you.” But the president flashed his wit in private. Rogers wrote: “I was to lecture in Washington on one of my periodical tours (before reforming). I dropped in and wanted him to come to my little show that night, I explained to him that there was nothing to it, only me talking for two or three hours, but that I had a very fine quartet that sang. Quick as a flash, without a trace of a smile, he says, ‘Yes, I like singing.’ ”
Raised on the farm, Coolidge was as skilled as any in a subgenre of humor now nearly gone: agricultural humor. The New England Historical Society recounts: “As president, he once presided over a tree-planting ceremony. He turned back the soil with a golden trowel, the Army and Navy bands stood waiting on cue, the crowd quietly anticipated Coolidge’s words. The president stood silent until Supreme Court Chief Justice William Taft said, ‘Please say something.’ Coolidge finally replied, ‘That’s a good angleworm.’ ”
When Senator Joseph Frelinghuysen of New Jersey visited the White House, he informed Coolidge that he had ordered some special Havana cigars just for the president. The senator explained that the shipment from Cuba had been delayed owing to an issue with the lithographed bands bearing the initials “C.C.” Coolidge responded, “Well, Joe, you know I don’t smoke the bands.”
Coolidge’s friend Otis Skinner, a prominent stage actor, praised the president’s “Yankee wit and quiet humor.” Skinner remembered how, during the 1932 presidential campaign, Mrs. Skinner told Coolidge she wished she could vote for him that November. Coolidge’s election “would be the end of this horrible depression.” To which Coolidge replied, “It would be the beginning of mine.”