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Cold Baths & Indian Clubs. Cabot was an indelibly Proper Bostonian—but of a special sort. For most of his adult life, he kept to a stern schedule: up at 7 a.m., a cold bath, breakfast at 7:15 (all Beacon Hill breakfasts included oatmeal; Cabot took his with bananas). He never really accepted the advent of the automobile, always walked the four or five miles downtown to his office and back, striding determinedly across the traffic-clogged streets, looking neither to right nor left. Six days a week, year after year, decade after decade, his employees could set their watches by his arrival at and departure from his office.
As an ascetic, Cabot was a terror. He neither drank nor smoked. But at 72 he could beat opponents half his age at tennis. He played a savage game of chess until he was 85, when he gave it up because he found it was too exciting. At 86, after recovering from a brief bout with pneumonia, the first thing he did was call for his Indian clubs. When he was 90, he got on a Boston subway, rode to Cambridge, picked up an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard, tucked it under his arm, got back on the subway and went home again.
Peanuts & Bawdyhouses. He was, by every instinct, a Beacon Hill Republican. He spent years writing unsolicited letters of advice to U.S. Presidents—no matter who they were. Woodrow Wilson, he said, "could not run a peanut stand." As for F.D.R.—well, friends dared not mention the name in Cabot's presence.
It was a fundamental principle of Cabot life that one never shirked one's duty. He was largely responsible for closing down most of Boston's bawdyhouses, spent his own money to get evidence that led to the disbarment of a few corrupt lawyers and the ouster of a district attorney. He was a leading member of the blue-nosed Watch and Ward Society. As self-appointed judge and jury of the city's morals, the society pounced on the tiniest infractions of "good taste." Playwright Ben Hecht, who used the words "bitch" and "bastard" in one of his plays, was forced to change them to "dame" and "buzzard." Lindsay-Crouse's famed Life With Father rang repeatedly with the exclamation. "Oh, God!" In Boston it had to be changed to "Oh, Gad!"
Cabot's philanthropic gifts ran to millions—they included amounts for scientific research on bad-weather flying and the uses of solar energy. But Cabot was not a man to toss money about thoughtlessly. "Godfrey," said a friend, "would give his shirt if he thought you needed it and you hadn't asked for it. But ask him for something and, well, he sort of got his back up."
Godfrey Cabot had a daughter and four sons (including U.S. Ambassador to Poland John Moors Cabot), 14 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. His pride of family was such that he could laugh at it. He delighted in the old quatrain:
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
Indeed, he collected variations of the doggerel, some of them slightly ribald. Among the most proper:
Here's to good old Boston,
The home of the road and the pike,
Where Goldfine speaks only to Adams,
And Adams speaks only to Ike.