Upstairs at the Roosevelts'

by Roosevelt, Curtis;

  But the story picks up again at the beginning of World War II, when Eleanor Roosevelt’s secretary received a request from a man at the head of the Japanese mission sent from Tokyo to discuss peace with the United States. The gentleman was requesting to take tea with the first lady. Eleanor’s secretary was naturally startled, but my grandmother recognized the name immediately. It was Cousin Polly’s sweetheart from World War I. So she had tea—tête à tête—and unknown to the press, with the prince. She told me he couldn’t have been more gracious and asked, please, to be remembered to Miss Delano.

  Cousin Polly had a lovely house about twenty minutes’ drive north of our home at Hyde Park. It was close enough for FDR to drive himself there in his little blue convertible, and he usually went at teatime. He didn’t drink and then drive since shifting, steering, and braking all needed to be done by hand in his specially designed car.

  When Winston Churchill was visiting Hyde Park during World War II, FDR drove the two of them to visit Miss Delano in the late afternoon. They sat outside on her lovely flagstone terrace. FDR accepted tea. The prime minister wanted a whiskey. Out came both the tea tray and the drinks tray. Cousin Polly, puffed up a little perhaps by this visitation from two heads of government, decided to make Mr. Churchill one of the dark rum cocktails for which she was famous. It was a simple concoction—a large slug of Myers’s dark Jamaican rum with just enough lemon juice and sugar added to hide the strong taste of the alcohol. (They were marvelous, and I can report that just one of them made me quite tiddly.)

  She handed the prime minister his drink and turned to pour FDR his tea. Churchill, in the midst of telling a story, took it in his hand without noticing that it wasn’t his whiskey, and took a first sip. He immediately spat it out on the flagstones. “This isn’t whiskey!” he roared. FDR, watching the whole scene, couldn’t help but laugh.

  One of my earliest memories of the people in my “extended family,” all living in the White House and present at mealtimes, is that of Louis Howe. I had no idea how important he had been in my grandfather’s ascendance to the presidency. But I certainly was aware of his formidableness. Obviously, he was an important person. From the moment I entered the room, and would dutifully peck him on the cheek—he was entitled to that—I kept my distance. Occasionally, when very young, I was plopped in his lap. As I’ve written, to this day I can recall the scent of his cigarettes. They were pungent and his clothes reeked of them. The smell of the dangling cigarette being presently smoked was fine, I liked it; it was its predecessors that made me wrinkle my nose. (Secondary smoke inhalation was not a consideration in those days; everyone smoked, except for Granny and my grandmother.)

  When you were as close to Mr. Howe as I so often was, sitting on his lap, I understood why Granny, always with her voice lowered, let drop that she regarded him as none too clean. “Dirty” was the word she used. From being within inches of his pockmarked face with its sallow skin, I could have confirmed to her that he did have a body odor. But I would have had to add that it blended well with the Sweet Caporal cigarettes, a not unpleasant staleness that went with the fallen cigarette ashes regularly decorating his waistcoat and shirtfront.

  Granny had several reservations about Louis Howe, especially when it came to having him “at table”: for one, he was a journalist. A trade, not a profession, she said. His gruff manner, gravelly voice, and the rumpled look of his clothes didn’t endear him to her either. What’s more, that he smoked and drank with her son was something Granny could not approve of. But he was her son’s éminence grise, and so that was that.

  FDR’s solid and long-standing rapport with Howe was plain for Granny—for all of us—to see and feel. So she went along with her son’s choice of confidant, as well as with the other odd characters FDR brought to the table, persons that would not ordinarily have graced her home with their presence (Senator Huey Long, for example).

  Eleanor Roosevelt, too, had developed a strong rapport with Louis Howe, but not before first going through a long period when she shared some of Granny’s reservations. Now I watched her ask him questions—what he thought about this or that—whenever she joined the company. Even as first lady she was clearly somewhat in awe of Louis Howe’s knowledge of and instinct for the political world.

  My own response to Mr. Howe was to take in all the others’ reactions. Thinking and feeling for myself was of secondary importance to absorbing cues, usually from my maternal authorities. Therefore, Louis Howe was always “Mr. Howe” to Sis and me—and also to Granny.

  The presence of Aunt Marion Dickerman and Aunt Nancy Cook at Hyde Park are part of my earliest memories, and also some of my later ones. They were such close friends of my grandmother’s that they shared a house, the Stone Cottage, about a mile and a half east of the Big House on the Hudson River, and just down the hill from my grandfather’s retreat, Top Cottage. (All are now national historic sites.)

  Aunt Marion got my grandmother quite interested in her school, the Todhunter School for Girls, in mid-Manhattan. And Eleanor was for a brief time its associate principal. My grandmother’s pleasure in this involvement was one of the reasons she had initially resisted going to Washington to become first lady as the wife of the president.

  By the time I was old enough to really notice, the relationship had soured enough for my grandmother to have built her own house adjacent to the Stone Cottage. Both are now referred to as Val-Kill. Still, the relationship between Eleanor, Aunt Marion, and Aunt Nancy remained sufficiently intact for my grandmother to ask Nancy to supervise completion of my summer school assignment in 1937.

  Neither woman had been asked to join the government when FDR took office for the first time. Later, in the mid-1930s, when my grandmother was firmly established as the iconic Mrs. Roosevelt, these two old friends seemed to want to take some of the credit for her public transformation. Eleanor was quite shocked and even incensed. She finally bought out her former companions, at which juncture she owned the whole property of Val-Kill.

  Throughout all this period of injured feelings my grandfather continued to see that Sara invited them to supper whenever he was at Hyde Park. He liked their company; they could talk politics. Nancy had been a staff member at the New York Democratic Party headquarters and Marion had been on the campaign trail with my grandmother.

  The last time I saw Aunt Nancy (it was probably in the late 1950s) was when she had invited my grandmother to be the speaker at a women’s gathering close to her home. The two of them were very kind and complimentary to each other.

  Years later, when researching material for my book, I spent an afternoon with Aunt Marion in her Connecticut home (Nancy had died). She couldn’t have been nicer, although most of her remarks were about my grandfather. But there was nothing nasty said about my grandmother. In her autobiography she gives the strong impression that it was FDR with whom she was really close. So much for memory!

  The woman known by all as Missy was one of my second grandmothers. Marguerite LeHand had been FDR’s secretary during his campaign in 1920 for the vice presidency and stayed with him after the campaign when he joined an insurance firm in order to earn a living and support his family. She was with him a great deal during the eight-year period when my grandfather devoted himself to his recovery efforts from the crippling polio. Then she resumed working for him full time after he was elected governor of New York. When he entered the White House, she occupied the housekeeper’s small suite there on the third floor. Missy was the only name I ever heard used when referring to her. According to my mother, she was simply part of the family, an addition to its core group since the early 1920s.

  Missy was obviously a lasting favorite of my grandfather. She had a rapport with him second to none. Some historians consider her to have been as influential with FDR as Harry Hopkins was. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter recalled: “ She was one of the very few people who was not a ‘yes-man’ . . . she told the president not what she knew he wanted to hear, but what were, in fact, her true
views and convictions.”1 Harry Hopkins recalls often having lunch with FDR and Missy at his desk.

  There has been much gossip that she and FDR were having an affair. How stupid! She not only had her own rooms in the White House but also at Hyde Park, the family’s home. FDR was rarely alone with anyone but briefly, except in the Oval Office. With the constant presence of servants and Secret Service men, Missy’s movements were as well monitored as the president’s.

  Somehow Missy understood how to enter into a friendship with my grandmother, and Eleanor would be the first to acknowledge her as being part of the family. Even with the obvious closeness Missy had with FDR—so clearly visible at the cocktail hour, for example—my grandmother understood that they were not having an affair.

  However, twenty years of long hours, being on call twenty-four hours a day, would take its toll on her. In the spring of 1941 she had first a minor stroke and then a massive one that left one side paralyzed. Within a few months she died. FDR grieved. She had always, it seemed, been there beside him—and not only as an adviser but as his close friend. With my grandfather’s power of attorney she wrote his checks and handled many of his personal affairs. To call her irreplaceable would be an understatement.

  “Tommy,” Malvina Thompson, was my grandmother’s secretary. For me, perhaps even more than Missy, she seemed a second grandmother. She was already working for Eleanor when I came to live in the White House at the age of three. Her office was a tiny space at the back of the stairwell. But it was close to my grandmother’s grand sitting room where she had her desk in a corner and books piled all around.

  During our first Christmas at the White House, I hadn’t known—I was too young, of course—that Tommy was going through a divorce, and that it wasn’t easy. That Christmas Eve she attended church with my grandmother; afterward they went back to Tommy’s apartment to celebrate briefly and open presents. Then my grandmother returned to the White House to follow her usual routine of preparing the contents of our Christmas stockings soon to be placed in front of the fireplace in our grandfather’s bedroom. Eleanor greatly appreciated Tommy and their affection was mutual. But Tommy never called my grandmother anything but Mrs. Roosevelt. Their relationship was of a different sort than the one Missy LeHand enjoyed with FDR; both, though, were important ones.

  Sometimes Tommy had other duties, ones quite unusual for a secretary. When I was in first grade at Buckley in New York City, we presented our end-of-term play, just before Christmas. My mother was in Seattle and my grandmother was traveling, so it was Tommy who attended in loco parentis, seeing me as the drummer boy. In no way did I feel neglected; she was one of my extra grandmothers and it seemed quite natural to me for her to be the one to attend my performance.

  Later, when Sis and I returned to the White House as teenagers, we would always join our mother in going straight to Tommy upon arrival. We wanted to find out what was happening, who would be visiting, and any hot gossip that might be circulating. With all the people piling in to ask Tommy questions, it was amazing that she got any of my grandmother’s work done. Tommy always traveled with my grandmother, wrote her checks, kept her in cash, and was used to taking dictation on her lap while riding in a swaying train or a noisy airplane.

  When my grandmother built her own cottage at Val-Kill, she included an apartment for Tommy—living room, kitchen, guest room (Tommy had a close friend, Henry Osthagen, who often visited on weekends), as well as Tommy’s bedroom. My grandmother often used Tommy’s guest room for her own guests—but only after first asking Tommy whether Henry was coming that weekend. During the day family members would drop by to catch up on the gossip with Tommy. And it was in Tommy’s sitting room that the family gathered for cocktails every evening, using her kitchen as the bar where all the liquor was kept. Tommy didn’t seem to mind all of these intrusions. Actually, I feel she enjoyed being at the hub of the family.

  When I accompanied my grandmother to Europe in the autumn of 1948 for the meeting of the United Nations’ General Assembly, Tommy and I became companions. I was recovering from an illness and was on “limited duty.” If I wasn’t organizing the guests for lunch or supper for my grandmother, Tommy and I would eat together. And we always had a drink together before her boss came home to the Hôtel de Crillon. (Tommy kept a bottle of Scotch in her desk drawer.)

  In Paris, however, Tommy was beginning to show her age and did not accompany my grandmother to the same extent to which she had been accustomed previously. By this time Eleanor had a second secretary, Maureen Corr, who began to substitute for Tommy on my grandmother’s journeys. And there’d be times when Tommy had had a bit too much to drink to be able to take dictation at 9:00 p.m. (Yes, just like Missy, Tommy was on call twenty-four hours a day.) But Tommy was family, and there was no thought of moving her out. Val-Kill was her home. When she died I did sense my grandmother was rather relieved. But life would not be the same without Tommy, not for Eleanor nor for the family.

  A vignette: One time at Val-Kill, when my grandmother and I were sitting alone, I had the temerity to ask her what Tommy was paid. When my grandmother told me, I replied that that was much less than my secretary was paid. My grandmother replied defensively that Tommy had no expenses. So I asked what she would live on if Eleanor died. My grandmother nodded and I knew she had taken my point. Soon after, I learned that Tommy was to receive the proceeds from my grandmother’s latest book. Then shortly afterward, Tommy died, so it was her niece who benefited.

  My mother, sister, and I all mourned Tommy’s demise. Val-Kill was different without her. My grandmother, who always used the desk in her bedroom—a very cramped arrangement—moved over to Tommy’s desk in the corner of her sitting room. But we continued to use the room, too, for the family cocktail hour, and always referred to it as “Tommy’s room.” Still, without her it wasn’t quite the same.

  My uncles would also occasionally be in residence when they were home from school or college. They were the darlings of my great-grandmother. (My sister and I were also.) My father told me this story many years later: Granny had given James, my oldest uncle, a ticket to Europe and a substantial sum of money to spend during his vacation there. Jimmy thought he would need more money so he asked my father, Curtis Dall, then a stockbroker, about doubling the amount through a quick deal on Wall Street. Dad said it could be done, but that he also risked losing everything. Jimmy was willing, and he lost all his cash. The next morning at the breakfast table my grandmother said to my father “I understand, Curt, that you have lost all of Jimmy’s money. Don’t you think you should pay him back?” According to my father, he replied simply, “Yes, Mama.” Dad said he had to borrow the money to do so. But good form was maintained, and Jimmy went off to Europe.

  John Steinbeck came to see the president during the height of the Battle of Britain when England had its back to the wall. The well-known author’s suggestion for winning the war against the Nazis was less than helpful. But it had pricked FDR’s humor, his enjoyment of something outlandish. Steinbeck had suggested flooding Germany with counterfeit bills, thereby breaking the back of their economy, and bringing the nation down to defeat.

  Rather than saying no directly, not something FDR liked to do, he instead sent Steinbeck over to see the secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., whose department had under its wing the Secret Service. Part of the job of the Secret Service, in addition to protecting the president, was to deal with the bogus duplication of the bills printed by the U.S Treasury. Also, and this is really the point of the story, FDR knew his old friend had a puritanical streak unleavened by a sense of humor. And my grandfather could anticipate the secretary’s response.

  The Morgenthaus were family friends whom my sister and I referred to as “Uncle Henry” and “Aunt Elinor.” They often joined us at supper and did so after the Steinbeck visit. While FDR already knew of the secretary’s reaction he decided to twit him about it. “I understand, Henry, that you’re not keen on John Steinbeck’s suggestion for winning the
war.” Up rose Uncle Henry from his soup to protest. “Franklin! My department does not engage in counterfeiting!”

  Actually, I don’t remember his exact words, but I do remember his splutter and righteous indignation while most of the company fell about laughing, including FDR.

  Over the years I have heard all manner of criticisms of my grandfather and grandmother. But one, repeated quite often, was especially disturbing to me. This is because I felt the implied anti-Semitism behind the remark: “FDR had a lot of Jewish advisers and Eleanor Roosevelt had a lot of Jewish friends.” In both instances, the strong implication was “too many.”

  I had known Judge Samuel Rosenman for as long as I can remember. A frequent guest at our meals, he was FDR’s main speechwriter for seventeen years, beginning when my grandfather was governor of New York State. A book about his experiences, Presidential Style: Some Giants and a Pygmy in the White House, was finished by his wife, Dorothy, and published after his 1973 death. But an earlier memoir by him, published in 1952, bore the simpler title Working with Roosevelt. And that he certainly did.

  The Moranthaus—Henry, his wife, Elinor, and their children—were significant family friends. If we were at Hyde Park they would be at supper or at least attending the cocktail hour, their place in Fishkill being only a short drive from us. It may seem odd now, but as a child I was surprised to discover that Uncle Henry was in the government—in the Department of Agriculture—and then I was quite bowled over to learn later that my grandfather had appointed him as secretary of the treasury. I was impressed.