At sea: The Empress of Australia, “this big passenger liner,” served “temporarily” as the royal yacht for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth “on their way to become the first British ruling couple ever to visit Canada and the United States.”
The king and queen arrived in Quebec on 17 May and spent eighteen days journeying across Canada.
On 4 June, as they prepared to travel to the United States, the Hamburg–American liner SS St. Louis, with 936 Jewish refugees aboard, was anchored “in the tropic heat” of Havana’s harbor. Although the refugees had purchased their visas from Cuban consuls in Germany, President Federico Laredo Brú, who had previously welcomed five thousand refugees, now required additional payment and new papers for asylum seekers. He ordered the ship to return to Hamburg. Captain Gustav Schröder announced that there had already been two suicide attempts, and he feared a “collective suicide pact.” Forced to leave Cuban waters, Captain Schröder slowly sailed up and down the U.S. coast, while urgent efforts for sanctuary were pursued.
That same week ER absorbed press reports of an American fascist movement revealed by the testimony of retired major general George Van Horn Moseley before Martin Dies’s House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities. Dies insisted that Communist interest groups, Communist “transmission belts,” and Communist fronts were everywhere, especially within New Deal agencies. Dies demanded “sterilization for refugees admitted to the United States” and called for “vigilante groups” to battle a “Jewish-led Communist revolution being plotted” by FDR and his friends. Despite calls for the Dies Committee to investigate Moseley and his ties to world fascism, Dies rejected them and announced instead his intention to focus on the arts and theater efforts of the WPA, youth and labor organizers in general, and ER’s friends and allies.
The only really good news of the week was the opening of the Czecho-Slovak Pavilion in Exile at the World’s Fair, which ER was moved to attend. The stirring speech by former president Edvard Beneš was broadcast nationwide and carried by short-wave radio to Europe. The flag of the conquered dissolved republic flew at half-mast, a promise of restored self-rule.
After leaving the World’s Fair, ER returned to her Greenwich Village apartment alone, to find the telephone ringing. Her youngest son, John, was calling with the news that his wife, Anne, was in distress, and they feared a miscarriage. Immediately ER dashed uptown to catch the night train to Boston. Anne Clark Roosevelt did lose her baby. But ER was certain the couple would recover and be strengthened by their ordeal. “Like all other disappointments and sorrows, it will probably make them more conscious that, in the real things in life, everyone stands on the same level and God sends us disciplines in order that we may better understand the sufferings of other people.” Their situation recalled her own lost baby who died at seven months. According to Mollie Somerville, a White House assistant, ER never stopped “mourning the loss of her second child. . . . She once told me, ‘The child you have carried under your heart, you will always carry in your heart.’”
ER returned to Washington with only two days to finish preparations for the arrival of the king and queen. She sought to put the entire nation at ease. So many people asked her how to greet their majesties, she recounted the story of a Yosemite park ranger who guided “King Albert and the Queen of the Belgians” through the park shortly after World War I. He had been “carefully coached . . . as to the proper way of addressing royalty.” But when they met, he forgot the rules, and as he told ER, “I just said ‘Howdy King’ and held out my hand.” Since they “were a charming royal couple,” ER was certain that would be good enough for them. She wanted the country to relax and enjoy the royal visit, she told the press.
The next morning, 7 June, she held her regular press conference. In the afternoon she was scheduled to speak to the Workers’ Alliance, the WPA union vilified as Communist by congressional opponents of the New Deal.
Almost every hour was scheduled. There was to be a diplomatic reception as soon as the king and queen stepped off the train in Washington; then luncheon; then a small tea for about twenty prominent New Dealers, in addition to children and several of ER’s ten grandchildren; then the formal state dinner and a musicale. ER assured the press that all guests at the musicale would be presented to the king and queen. After visiting Washington, the royals were to go to New York City, the World’s Fair, and on to Hyde Park. “If you want a press conference at Hyde Park,” ER told reporters, “I’ll arrange to have one.”
ER arrived at the national congress of the Workers’ Alliance at twelve-thirty. Her twenty-minute “extemporaneous” talk was front-page news. “Delegates from all parts of the country stamped and cheered their approval” as the first lady spoke. They might differ on some things, ER said, “but I am certainly in sympathy with the meeting of any group of people who come together to consider their own problems” and work to achieve betterment. She did not fear radicalism among young people as much as she feared the “rut of hopelessness.”
After her address, the Workers’ Alliance gave her honorary membership, and she “left the platform with her arms full of flowers presented to “the greatest lady in the world.” In that climate of rancor and division, politics and hope, she readied to greet the royals.
Once their train crossed the border at Niagara Falls into the United States, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were greeted everywhere by huge cheering crowds. Accompanied by Canada’s prime minister Mackenzie King and an entourage of numerous attendants, the king and queen arrived at Washington’s Union Station on Thursday, 8 June. FDR said, “At last I greet you.” After the long formal welcome, the two couples were surrounded by over 600,000 people who had turned out to cheer their slow drive to the White House. “It was a gay and happy crowd in spite of the sun and [94 degree] heat,” ER wrote. “Their Majesties themselves made such a gracious impression . . . you could feel the enthusiasm growing.”
ER was pleased because the public’s reaction, despite all her efforts, had hitherto remained uncertain. Anna reported from Seattle, “According to press stories the King and Queen have been worried stiff as to whether the U.S. would give them a cheering welcome or one mingled with boos. I can well imagine that all of those who had anything to do with the preparations will be terribly near collapse.” Vastly relieved, ER acknowledged the success of her publicity campaign.
Pageantry surrounded their arrival and the procession to the White House, which FDR enjoyed immensely. In support of the International Wool Growers of Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United States, who had “combined” to promote their industry, ER and the queen were to wear matching fabrics. “I took it off as soon as I could,” she later wrote. “The Queen could not bear to wear hers . . . for she was already suffering from the unusual heat.” The queen sat upon a cushion “which I afterwards discovered had springs to make it easier for her to keep up the continual bowing.”
ER’s sons James (Jimmy), Elliott, and Franklin and their wives were part of the weekend. John and Anne remained in Boston; Anna and her family were in Seattle. “Luncheon was a very quiet meal with just the guests in the house and our own family, and for once my boys were subdued to such a degree that the President noticed it and remarked to the Queen that it was rare when something did not bring about a vociferous argument in our family.”
That afternoon there was a drive around the city to see the Lincoln Memorial, the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, and Rock Creek Park. ER and Queen Elizabeth used the time to speak intimately and undisturbed. ER was relieved to learn that they agreed about major issues: the “Queen endeared herself to me by saying suddenly, ‘I saw in the paper that you were being attacked for having gone to a meeting of the WPA workers. It surprises me that there should be any criticism, for it is so much better to allow people with grievances to air them; and it is particularly valuable if they can do so to someone in whom they feel a sense of sympathy and who may be able to r
each the head of the government with their grievances.’”
Their long walks and many talks engendered in ER a deep respect for her new friend:
It was interesting to me to find how understanding and sympathetic was the Queen’s attitude toward the social problems faced today by every one. It is quite evident that no nation is without these problems and that their solution is of world-wide interest. These sovereigns are young [fifteen years younger than the Roosevelts], and though the weight of responsibility matures people early, still one does not always find in sovereigns such ability or even desire to comprehend the problems which confront so many people in every country today, and which must be solved before we can feel that the average man and woman can have security and liberty.
Thursday evening was the state dinner at the White House. There were “a few harrowing moments,” ER acknowledged years later. The receiving line was slowed down because at one point the queen felt faint from the heat and exertion of the day. Then the program was rearranged at the last minute to let Kate Smith sing first so she would not be late for her radio broadcast. Marian Anderson hesitated to sing Negro spirituals, “but we discovered it in time to persuade her [our guests] from England would want to hear the music that above all else we could call our own.” An anonymous tipster wrote the FBI that the musicologist Alan Lomax, who was to sing country and cowboy songs, was “a communist or bolshevik and likely to do something dangerous.” So Lomax was “frisked” by both the Secret Service and Scotland Yard and “apparently was so frightened he could hardly sing.”
Before she went to bed that night, ER wrote Hick a short note: “Well, one day is over and fairly well over. The Queen reminds me of Queen Victoria! He is very nice and doesn’t stutter badly when speaking aloud and not at all in quiet conversation. The entertainment went very well tonight, I think, and Marian Anderson was divine.” But the heat was “oppressive,” and ER was “weary.”
The next morning ER told her press conference, “The Queen seems to be particularly interested in social conditions. For one so young she is extremely compassionate and understanding of the conditions that push people to desperation,” and the queen was personally kind. When seven-year-old Diana Hopkins, Harry Hopkins’s young daughter who was then living at the White House, expressed a desire to meet the “fairy queen” with “crown and scepter,” a special meeting was arranged before dinner at the British embassy—with, ER said, “true understanding [for] the child.”
Their majesties had agreed to meet the women of ER’s press conference. The journalists made a double line in the corridor, and ER presented them. According to Bess Furman, Queen Elizabeth, regal in white, said only, “‘There are a lot of them, aren’t there?’” The king merely smiled “as he ran the feminine gauntlet.”
The oppressive heat continued as the Roosevelts and the royals boarded the presidential yacht Potomac for a luncheon cruise to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, where the king laid a wreath on the first president’s tomb. In the afternoon, they toured a Civilian Conservation Corps camp and visited Arlington National Cemetery, where they placed wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and at the Canadian Cross. As they stood contemplating past and future wars, taps was played. “I was not the only one who stood with a lump in my throat,” ER wrote. “Arlington was the unforgettable moment of the whole day.”
The royals’ Washington visit climaxed with a gala dinner at the British embassy, after which they boarded their train for New York City, and the Roosevelts took another train to Hyde Park. The two couples would rendezvous late on Saturday at the Roosevelt home. ER dashed off a brief report to Hick: “Dearest, This day . . . has gone well, even FDR is content and I am glad for him.” There was good, substantial, and wide-ranging conversation at dinner, and the king told ER that “he felt he had learned a great deal.” The queen was interested in every issue, and ER “was fascinated by the Queen, who never had a crease in her dress or a hair out of place.” She was unhurried and emotionally unruffled no matter the circumstance. “I do not see how it is possible to remain so perfectly in character all the time. My admiration for her grew every minute she spent with us.”
Jane Ickes described Washington events in more detail to Anna: “You know, Anna, this city stinks (I promised Harold that I would never more use that vulgar term, but it is the only one which adequately expresses my indignation). . . . Such hate, greed, envy, knifing, pettiness.” For Jane, ER and FDR were really the story: “Anna, how lucky America is to have as hosts your mother and father. . . . They are so much more regal than royalty. . . . Really Anna, [Harold and I] just stared and felt ourselves swelling with pride and thankfulness.”
The first couple arrived at Hyde Park shortly after nine in the morning and had the day to prepare for a most extraordinary twenty-four hours. This was for FDR the highlight of the visit: “My husband always loved taking people he liked home with him. I think he felt he knew them better once they had been to Hyde Park.” ER was mostly pleased by the arrangements. She brought the White House staff along and butlers she trusted. Because they were African-American, however, SDR’s English butler left. There is no record of what SDR thought about his impertinence, or the fact that he would not be there to advise the White House staff about the specific vagaries of the house. When SDR’s butler “heard that the White House butlers were coming up to help him,” ER later recalled, “he was so shocked that the King and Queen were to be waited on by colored people that he decided to take his holiday . . . in order not to see [their majesties] treated in that manner!”
Meanwhile the king and queen arrived in New York to be greeted by three million cheering people. Governor Herbert Lehman and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia led a motorcade of fifty cars from Manhattan to the fairgrounds in Queens. A grand fireworks reception was held at the British pavilion. The Magna Carta, the great charter of personal and political liberty obtained from King John in 1215, was on display, alongside George Washington’s family tree. Washington was not only descended from several signers of the Magna Carta; he was also directly related to the queen. Indeed, according to genealogists, Queen Elizabeth was also a distant cousin of Robert E. Lee. Much was made about shared Anglo-American culture, heritage, and democratic traditions.
After the World’s Fair, the royal couple traveled back to Manhattan to be received by Nicholas Murray Butler at Columbia University, which had been chartered as “King’s College” by George II in 1754. The royals were by then running behind schedule, but en route upstate they called the Roosevelts to report their whereabouts. According to ER, “We sat in the library . . . waiting for them. Franklin had a tray of cocktails ready in front of him, and his mother sat on the other side of the fireplace looking disapprovingly at the cocktails and telling her son that the King would prefer tea. My husband, who could be as obstinate as his mother, kept his tray in readiness.” When the royals finally arrived, FDR said, “My mother does not approve of cocktails and thinks you should have a cup of tea.” The king replied, “Neither does my mother,” and took a cocktail.
After everyone was relaxed, changed, and settled, the dinner guests arrived. Almost thirty people—local friends, neighbors, family, and Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King, who continued to accompany the royals—attended the formal dinner. But there was “a jinx” on the evening, ER wrote in her column. “Just exactly what happened to our well-trained White House butlers that night, I shall never know.” Tommy reported the mishaps to Esther Lape: “I must tell you first that the City of Limoges gave the President a very complete set of really beautiful china—with his crest, etc. He sent it to his mother because she did not have enough sets for such big dinners. . . . The butlers, during dinner, were piling up the service for the next course when the table they used collapsed. Mrs. R. said the racket was terrifying. All the dishes were smashed into bits.” ER noted, “Mama tried in the best-bred tradition to ignore it, but her step daughter-in-law [Helen Astor Roosevelt], from whom sh
e had borrowed some plates for the occasion, was heard to say, ‘I hope none of my dishes were among those broken.’” ER noted that the broken dishes were all “part of a set my husband had been given; none of the old family china suffered.”
Since SDR’s butler had decamped without warning anyone about the unexpected steps between the kitchen and service areas, mishaps continued. After dinner, a butler slipped as he entered the library with a tray of glasses, brandy, soda, water, bowls of ice, and so on. He “fell down the two steps leading from the hall and slid right into the library,” ER recalled, smashing everything on the tray and “leaving a large lake of water and ice cubes at the bottom of the steps. I am sure Mama wished that her English butler had stayed.” ER wrote about it in her column, “because I thought it was really funny, but my mother-in-law was very indignant with me for telling the world about it and not keeping it a deep, dark family secret.” But at each upset “their Majesties remained completely calm and undisturbed,” which she interpreted as a sign of tranquillity and hope in a fractious world.
After dinner, which ended late, everyone retired—except the king and FDR, who spoke together for hours. The next day Mackenzie King told FDR that after their talk the king knocked on his door to chat. He asked, “Why don’t my ministers talk to me as the president did tonight? I felt exactly as though a father were giving me his most careful and wise advice.” FDR encouraged the young king, who had never wanted to be king, to be bold, to take charge, to speak out, and to reassure his people.
On Sunday, 12 June, before the household left for church, a butler at breakfast “fell with a whole tray of eggs, dishes, etc.” But the church service was moving and memorable, and all Hyde Park lined the roads to greet the royals. FDR, who had personally prepared the guest list and seating arrangements, subsequently wrote New York’s Episcopal bishop Henry St. George Tucker, “I think the service was perfect in every way,” and the king and queen were interested to learn that it was “substantially the same” as services in the Church of England. “I think last Sunday will always be remembered by them as the only quiet family day of their entire trip.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3 Page 10