Frederick Yates paints Woodrow Wilson
here at Cote How.

Extracts from “An American President’s love affair with the English Lake District” by Andrew Wilson first published June 1996

Frederick Yates, who was born in 1854, had a national reputation for portraits and landscapes and had come to the Lake District in 1901. He had fallen in love with the Lake District just as Woodrow Wilson and his wife Ellen had done, and decided to stay.

He rented a cottage at Cote How, Rydal, from squire le Fleming of Rydal Hall, where he, his American-born wife, Emily, and daughter Mary (then aged 14) were living when Woodrow Wilson first met them.

The friendship between the two men became so strong that it was eventually to lead to Yates being Wilson’s special guest at the White House on his inauguration as US President on 4 March 1913: and their friendship continued right through to Yates’s death in February 1919.

Wilson worked hard at Princeton pushing through reforms, but his battles took a heavy toll on him. In May 1906 he suffered a major stroke in which he temporarily lost the use of his right hand and left eye. He and Ellen decided to return to the Lake District that summer in the belief that a period in his “beloved Lake District” would aid his recovery and restoration. This time they brought their three daughters, Margaret, Jessie and Eleanor (“Nellie”)

Wilson visited Cote Howe to sit for Fred Yates, who had been commissioned by Princeton University to do a full length portrait of him in his academic robes. These sittings took place in Yates studio which is now our Rydal Suite. The original north facing skylight, which Fred installed, is still in place!

While her father was with Yates, Margaret went with Mary Yates and Honor Browne over Wansfell Pike and down the other side to Troutbeck. Afterwards Wilson took the same route, climbing straight to the top of Wansfell Pike and down the other side to Troutbeck village, which he told his wife had been “quite a feat(For me)”. He said it showed her “how well I am”. He also said we must buy Me Browne’s (sic) house”, referring to Townend, the yeoman farmer’s or statesman’s house in Troutbeck which had been owned by the Browne family since it was built in 1626. (Since 1944 it has been owned by the National Trust.) This was the first of a number of references he made to the possibility of buying a property in the Lake District.

On Saturday the 25 th he reported to Ellen that he was still sitting for his picture, three hours at a time, and Mrs Yates was usually with them. “It is beginning to come into shape in a very interesting way.” Mrs Yates’ niece, Mrs Joan Fox explained that Mrs Yates read aloud to Fred’s “sitters” from time to time to keep them amused and relaxed, “especially any that Fred found difficult to talk to – which did not apply to Woodrow Wilson!”

After arriving back in Princeton, Wilson wrote to Yates on 25 September: “I feel like a dog not having written to you before… I got home perfectly well… They are delighted with the drawing…. I carried it in my own hand from Grasmere to Princeton and guarded it at every turn.”

On 3 October Mrs Wilson replied to Fred Yates’ letter of 2 September and thanked him for his “wonderful picture” of her husband. She told him “It was the very man! We have been agreeing that you have the whole of him this time, while before you got a very dear and fine and lovely side of him. This shows his humour and his strength so well, without any lessening of the idealistic qualities brought out in the others. The eyes are the most beautiful things I ever saw. And the execution is simply and absolutely superb!”

She said Woodrow was going to use photographs of it for reproductions in papers and magazines, who were always asking for a picture whenever he spoke.
Mrs Wilson also thanked Yates for all he did “to make Woodrow happy this summer”. She told him “You dear Yates simply made the summer for him. If you could compare the tone of his letters before he reached Grasmere to those after, you would understand”.