President Roosevelt would have none of this. For his guests to be working, in any of the subtle or not-so-subtle ways mentioned above, would have been frowned upon. His cocktail time was for relaxation and amusement, and he did his best to gather together people who shared his penchant for fun. It was a ritual, one I will always remember.
6
Eleanor Roosevelt’s Book on Etiquette
Even when very young I had absorbed my grandmother’s sense of things that were “right” and things that were “wrong,” and especially things that we were “against.” Being a snob was number one on this last list. Even strong likes and dislikes were questionable. Labeling someone a snob meant that they thought too highly of themselves, manifested airs, or had stilted manners that seemed contrived. Hence Eleanor Roosevelt’s choosing to write a book on etiquette was certainly a surprise. But a little background first.
When living in the White House I was told many times—indeed, strongly admonished—“We are not snobs.” Implicit was the accepted attitude: “They (snobs) are people we do not approve of!” The implication was that we were above that sort of attitude toward other people. Children, as we know, pick up the truth, particularly when their parents are being hypocritical. What was this baloney all about?
I accepted my grandmother’s view on snobbery. She strongly disapproved of people who thought themselves better or “above” other people, usually because of their social position, their class in society, or, more likely, their wealth. This was usually expressed, as I say above, through what they considered to be superior manners, haughty airs or a condescending manner, or disdain of the behavior of people who might be considered less “well-bred.” They would look down on persons who had not been to “the right schools” or who had a different accent. All that, I was informed, was snobbery. I took it in instinctively, siding, as a result, with the underdog, meaning anyone I observed being sneered at for no good reason.
Even at a young age I could sense the truth behind all this. My grandmother thought it better to pursue a real education rather than learning the correct way to hold your teacup in a so-called finishing school. One can’t disagree! When her sons married young women from “the society set,” my grandmother tried hard to be accepting, and was always kind to her daughters-in-law. But I remember many a raised eyebrow from her when a snobbish expression came burbling out from one of these wives at family gatherings.
Eleanor Roosevelt actually took against some people she thought were snobs. My mother, always looking for approval from her own mother, followed suit. And my sister was quick to pick this up—with me as her major target. The most deeply felt condemnation (or taunt from my sibling) as I was growing up was the accusation of being a snob. I was an easy target.
As I have mentioned earlier, I was compelled to leave the White House and move to Seattle in 1937, accompanying my mother, sister, and new stepfather, John Boettiger. He wanted to live close by the country club, explaining that he could more easily play golf and entertain business friends there. But it was also where people would expect the president’s daughter to live, he noted. My mother put her foot down. “We don’t want to associate with that snobbish group!” And that was that. We were not snobs.
Furthermore, I was not to go to a private school but to a Seattle public school because, as she wrote to my grandmother, it will bring Buzzie into contact with “less privileged children” and he will make more “regular” friends. In the letter she expresses the hope that “rubbing shoulders with many different types of boys will help him acquire more independence and confidence.” (For me it was a disaster, but that’s another story.)1
“Equality” was the byword in Eleanor Roosevelt’s mind—and hence in all of ours. Indeed, if there is a cornerstone to Eleanor Roosevelt’s worldwide reputation, it is her stance against inequality and discrimination. I knew from listening to my grandmother that it wasn’t just an intellectual position on her part. She saw people being hurt; that is what aroused her. She saw inequality, and especially discrimination, as being injurious.
But even as a child I could look around and see that equality was more of an idealistic value rather than what I observed in the real world. I could see, for example, that my grandfather and my uncles were far less concerned about snobbery. It certainly wasn’t a word I heard used by any of my teachers nor any of the kids at the public schools in Seattle I attended. However, in this atmosphere it was made abundantly clear to me that I was different.
Moving forward many years to Christmas time in 1962, just two months after my grandmother had died, my mother and I were having a rather somber holiday in Los Angeles. Without Grandmère’s taking charge at Christmas time, as she always had, the exchange of presents seemed sadly unexciting to us. In the past, she had been the one to arrange the piles of presents for each of her children and grandchildren in the White House and in the Big House at Hyde Park, and then at Val-Kill. When my grandfather was alive, my grandmother was the one who organized Christmas stockings for everyone to open when sitting around FDR’s bed in the White House on Christmas morning—a tradition I will always remember.
Nevertheless, two months after she had died, her presence and presents were still very much in evidence. As usual my grandmother had been buying gifts all year and carefully putting them away in the “present closet,” noting on each the name of the recipient. Some of the gifts even had her scrawl on the card, for example: “Buzz—Merry Christmas and Love, Grandmère.” One that was not even wrapped as a gift was a package from Macmillan, the publishers. My grandmother had probably given them a list of people to whom her new book was to be sent. Here was mine, and I wondered what it was.
There it was, big and heavy. I opened the package . . . and was startled, to say the least. My beloved Grandmère, Eleanor Roosevelt no less, had written a book on etiquette! It wasn’t just odd. It did not fit in at all with my—and America’s—image of this person who stood up for what was right, often pointing out in a penetrating way where so-called correct manners were used to perpetuate unkindness or class distinctions. She appreciated good manners but saw etiquette as often being used by one person for putting down another—or just for showing off.
After noting that it was inscribed to “Buzz and Jeanette”—my wife at that time—I put it aside. In fact, I found myself appalled, I admit. Not wanting to read it, I kept it in a bookcase reserved for volumes I knew I would never crack—although I have carried these around all these years as part of my permanent baggage.
Rearranging my books recently—my shelves are overflowing with books on the Roosevelts—I again came across Eleanor Roosevelt’s Book of Common Sense Etiquette. For the first time, I looked at its table of contents and began to dip into it. Then I couldn’t put it down. Memories of my grandmother teaching me manners and values flooded back to me, including her admonitions about snobbery. All was intertwined. My formal manners, how to behave, particularly table manners, came from my great-grandmother, Granny, and these have stood me in good stead. But the manners taught me by Grandmère came from being with her, watching her, the formalities she observed and her innate kindness, melding them together. Her style is vivid in my mind, so natural and unaffected, yet very much reflecting the politeness and consideration of her background. I find it difficult to put into words. And sadly, I must say, no actress portraying my grandmother has ever mastered it.
Style was what set Eleanor Roosevelt apart from other people. I was frequently with my grandmother until I was thirty-three—my age when she died—and as far as I could observe, her own style was exactly the sort people wanted her to have. Nobody seemed put off by her very obvious upper-class background, a style that was already becoming outdated. Indeed the public seemed to relish a graciousness that was already old-fashioned.
What was also unique was the unaffected way my grandmother expressed her manners. There was kindness and warmth, along with the ease that her background—her training from childhood—had provided. Those invited to tea
at the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt presided, would be a mixture of friends, some of them well-known people, along with others whom even she did not know well.2 Some were obviously shy of being included in Mrs. Roosevelt’s tea party, plainly ill at ease. Yet she quickly made them feel welcome and part of the party. In our younger years, if my sister and I were present, we often found ourselves, as her grandchildren, being used as objects of attention upon which all could focus. We were known as the “ice breakers.”
My grandmother felt that manners should be used to give style to life. Some people referred to it as “grace.” More importantly, it meant adhering to “good form,” especially when it might ease tensions in stressful situations. She is quoted on the book jacket summing it up quite nicely: “Etiquette, from my point of view, is not just a matter of knowing how a lunch or a dinner should be served, or whatever the ‘proper’ behavior is in this or that situation. There are many correct ways of behaving in almost any situation, and many proper ways of doing those things for which there are precise rules in formal etiquette books. But the basis of all good human behavior is kindness. If you really act towards people within your home and out of it with kindness, you will never go far wrong.” Thus spoke Eleanor Roosevelt.
But why did my grandmother get involved with such a book? I suspect that one motivation was her desire to strike out against snobbery. She knew of the popularity of books offering rules for what was seen as correct etiquette, authors such as Amy Vanderbilt or Emily Post.3 She saw these authorities being used by people to reinforce the surface behavior that delineated class differences. Showing up the public’s appetite for class distinctions, both books were best sellers for many years, making both their authors famous.
The archives at Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park provide the essential clue about how Eleanor Roosevelt became attracted to this project dealing with etiquette in a new and different way. As I suspected, it had been proposed to her. And it was the editor himself who did the writing. However, the nominal author did put her oar in. Robert Ballou, to whom the book is dedicated, sent his draft to Eleanor and she replied: “It seems to me that you have done a simply wonderful job and I feel very hesitant to change anything, but I must add something to the book or it will be all yours, so I am trying hard to mark the places where I can perhaps make some personal contribution.”
I can see why my grandmother had been tempted by the idea. Not only was the book an alternative to the snobbery she saw implicit in the popular books on social behavior by Post and Vanderbilt, it also covered ground that Eleanor was keen to see presented, such as a section on how to behave when visiting a foreign country. Overseas tourism, after all, was already booming among Americans.
There is also a chapter on “Showing your Colors,” which expresses my grandmother’s views about thoughtless expressions of patriotism, especially relevant in the era of the Cold War. “No amount of flag-waving, pledging allegiance, or fervent singing of the national anthem is evidence we are patriotic in the real sense of the word.”
Covering her social views, there is another chapter I especially liked entitled “Keeping up with the Joneses.” There is even a section in the book pertaining to behavior with handicapped persons. This reminded me of when Helen Keller visited the White House and I was home from my military school, sporting my fancy uniform. My grandmother brought Miss Keller and her companion to meet me. She wanted Miss Keller to feel the trappings of my outfit, especially the brass buttons. I was about to draw back when I remembered that this special guest was both deaf and blind and that the lady with her was the person who had laboriously taught Helen Keller the limited communication she now had. My internal discipline prevailed, and I smiled politely as Miss Keller’s hand roamed up and down my chest.
As her publishers noted in the title, “common sense” is the book’s keynote. And my grandmother concludes: “If you ever find yourself in a situation in which following a formal rule would be manifestly unkind, forget it and be kind instead.” That statement alone sets hers apart from the usual books on etiquette.
7
Security in and out of the White House
When I was born in 1930 my grandfather was governor of the state of New York. My earliest memories are of our family home at Hyde Park. Men in uniform, state troopers, were as routine a sight for me as were the gardeners and servants who worked in the Big House. I liked the troopers’ shiny black puttees and Sam Brown belts that supported their side arms. What I didn’t realize is that these men were there to protect my sister and me, my Granny, Sara Delano Roosevelt, and, of course, the governor, whenever he visited.
When we moved to the White House three years later, there were even more uniforms to differentiate—army, navy, marine corps—everyday dress, full dress, and so on. I was delighted and soon knew all the distinctions. But these people were not our protectors. Others were. First there were the White House police patrolling the White House grounds and stationed at the entrances. They looked like ordinary policemen to me with their not very exciting uniforms. They were familiar with the regular visitors who came and went out by the front entrance to the Executive Mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue. My younger uncles would come “home” for a few days during school vacations. It was on one of those times that Uncle Johnnie came rolling in at three o’clock in the morning and the guard didn’t recognize him. My uncle had to wait while the man checked with the usher on night duty. Johnnie was most put out and took the matter up with my grandmother the following morning—after he’d slept it off.
More drably attired still was the White House Secret Service detail. (I never received a satisfactory answer to my query about why they were “secret”!) They were dressed in civilian clothes and looked much like other people on my grandfather’s staff. Yet, whenever my sister and I ventured forth from the White House, one or two of these people accompanied us. Several of them became like friends to my sister and me.
Until my grandfather died in April of 1945, when I was within a week of being fifteen years old, I had rarely ventured out without some kind of surveillance. The fact was that I was better acquainted with my keepers than I was with any person of my own age. The Secret Service men were my chums, my buddies. I was dependent upon them for their companionship—as well as their protection.
There were good reasons for all this security. The first was the threat of kidnapping. Just as we moved into the White House in 1933, there occurred the tragic case of the Lindbergh baby, whose kidnappers ended up killing him. Later, when I moved to Seattle in 1937, two kidnappings had just taken place nearby. In one instance I remember ransom was paid for the boy’s release. The threat to my sister and me was real but we were not made aware of how real it was until much later, when we were teenagers.
The second kind of threat could come from hate groups or from disturbed individuals stimulated to violence. Again, I was only dimly aware of the level of threat such views engendered. When I was thrust into a public school in Seattle I was taunted by a few of my classmates with typical anti-Roosevelt slogans, prejudices passed on by their parents. But this never seemed serious, only bad manners.
What I didn’t realize is the degree to which my grandfather was, literally, despised by a very small but vociferous number of Americans. Leading the group were major figures from the business and financial worlds. They started what was known as the America First movement. Also, there were demagogues such as Gerald L. K. Smith or Father Coughlin, whose radio program had an audience of millions. They were not muckrakers but “haterakers.”
I was told that some people could hardly speak, so worked up were they when hearing the name of Roosevelt. This made me take notice, trying to imagine persons seized by such uncontrollable emotion. Fanatical hatred was a phenomenon I’d never heard of before or even considered. It seems that my grandfather—inexplicably, of course, to me—provoked this reaction among some people. It was a puzzle.
The Secret Service had their hands full running down these “crazies,”
especially when they hid behind seemingly respectable organizations. Until I worked in the Roosevelt Library archives doing research for my book, I hadn’t been aware how serious it was. I learned that toward the end of his second year in office, and running into the first two years of his second term, 1934 and 1935, a quite serious national effort was launched against my grandfather. It was a phenomenon so disturbing as to be considered newsworthy. Major publications such as Time and Newsweek, as well as the big city papers, gave it major coverage. It was known as “the whispering campaign.” Although it never achieved the influence that the Tea Party has today, it was thought to be a political threat to FDR during his reelection in 1936.
The Hate Roosevelt file in the archives of the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park is a mixture of the hilarious and the sinister. To delve into it is to realize just how active were the various cabals of Americans that lusted after FDR’s blood. Coups were hatched—what the Associated Press termed “Cocktail putschs”—but some were real enough to be exposed before a congressional committee by Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, whom a group of conspirators had tried to enlist in a plot to engage the U.S. Marines in overthrowing the government.
When you read some of the accusations thrown at FDR, you wonder why they were ever taken seriously. A few of the more stupidly outlandish stories went as follows:
“Have you heard his mind’s completely gone? He’s hysterical most of the time and has fits of laughing and crying that he can’t control!”
As one reporter looking into this whispering campaign noted, “Most of the stories are far too obscene to be believed.”
At the cocktail hour, as I’ve said, Franklin Roosevelt mixed martinis, relaxed, told stories, and listened to his friends report the day’s gossip. One of his favorite openers was to repeat a new Hate Roosevelt story. “Do you know they’ve had to put bars over the White House’s windows to keep me from throwing myself out?” Roars of laughter all around.
Upstairs at the Roosevelts' Page 9