In 1934 my mother took Sis and me to Reno, Nevada, where six months’ residency was required to obtain a divorce. My grandmother continued to entertain John regularly at the White House and wrote of trying to take care of him in my mother’s absence. When my mother’s divorce was completed we returned to the White House. But now it was John’s divorce proceedings that held up the marriage. When the marriage finally took place a year later it proceeded in secretive fashion, which of course increased the press coverage. My new stepfather and my mother moved to New York City, leaving Sis and me at the White House. Soon afterward we moved to New York, too, and then across the country to Washington State where my stepfather had a new job. My grandmother was a frequent visitor to us in Seattle, even one year giving up Christmas with the rest of the family in the White House to be with us in our new abode.
The special relationship between my mother and my stepfather that Eleanor Roosevelt had fostered remained in full view, and could be rather overpowering. As I record in my earlier book: “We did join Mummy and Uncle J for their cocktail hour when they came home. It was like a sacred ritual. Mummy and Uncle J, sitting opposite each other on the couch, began by raising their Martini glasses to each other and mouthing silently (but visibly) ‘I love you.’ Sis and I would turn away and look at each other with resigned expressions of disgust.” This vision of an extraordinary marriage—“Anna and John”—was to be maintained for some time to come.
As I read the correspondence of that era, particularly letters between my mother and her mother, I see my mother constantly seeking her own mother’s approval. Even inaccuracies written about me were presented to gain this approbation. The same is true of my stepfather’s letters to his mother-in-law. Eleanor Roosevelt was not just their fairy godmother but also their guide and mentor. They regularly turned to her for approval and affirmation.
At Christmastime in 1939 we returned to the White House. This visit showed me how fully engaged my grandmother was in supporting “the Boettigers.” (I had been strongly pressed, and had reluctantly agreed, to start using the name Boettiger instead of my father’s.) Although the White House would be full of family and guests for the holiday, my grandmother wanted, she said, to keep the Boettigers together as a family group. She was adamant that we were to occupy the entire west end of the living quarters for the president and his family.
Here I must explain: On the White House second floor there are four grand suites, one in each corner, each having a large gracious sitting room and bedroom with a small dressing room and an adjacent bathroom. My mother and John were in one of the large rooms and little Johnny, my new half-brother, in the dressing room close to them. My sister was placed in the comparable suite on the other side of the wide hallway, with me staying in the adjacent dressing room. Sis was occupying the room the Queen of England had once slept in. My mother and stepfather stayed in the one assigned to the king. Later Prime Minister Winston Churchill would have my sister’s room. In other words, “the Boettigers” occupied the prime space.
That the Boettigers occupied the entire west end of the family’s living quarters did not please my uncles and aunts at all. They saw their own children shoved into the third floor. But Grandmère was very firm and ignored the flak. Her explanation about “keeping the Boettiger family together” was one that brooked no dispute.
Behind all of this was her vision of a marriage where love would endure no matter what the obstacles were. Unfortunately, there were many. John Boettiger proved to be quite neurotic, not sure of himself, especially about his role as the president’s son-in-law. My mother went through many hoops and loops just trying to maintain her husband in the mold set out by her mother. Psychologically supporting him turned out to be a full-time occupation for her.
This whole romantic dream fell apart after the war and was triggered by my mother and John’s abortive effort to start a newspaper in Phoenix, Arizona. First my stepfather had an affair and then asked for a divorce. My mother was humiliated. Phoenix was a small town in those days, 1946–48, and she was the object of much nasty gossip. She also learned that John had been regularly undermining the financial viability of their joint enterprise. So, of course, he had to resign as publisher and then move out of our home. The ideal marriage was over.
My mother was indeed devastated. My grandmother, disillusioned. Still, she continued to support this favorite person whose letters to her always began “Dear LL.” She attributed the demise of her dream for the two of them to a kind of mental breakdown, which John Boettiger’s subsequent suicide seems to have confirmed.
In my view much of the sad conclusion of my mother’s second marriage was in fact due to the romantic idealism of my grandmother and to the positioning of “the Boettigers” at a completely unrealistic level, one quite out of reach of normal human beings—hence doomed to failure. In something of the same way that my grandmother engaged in those close, loving friendships I have earlier recorded, she created a falsified model for a perfect matrimonial union. Of course they are responsible for having accepted it—hook, line, and sinker. My mother would have done nearly anything to gain her own mother’s approval—or to avoid her disapproval. John Boettiger dearly had wanted acceptance into the inner circle surrounding the president, and to a degree that none of us really grasped. His identity was totally wrapped up with his recognition as FDR’s son-in-law. But fostering and actively backing this wholly unrealistic vision of a marriage made in heaven was Eleanor Roosevelt.
I spent my younger years in the White House, but from age seven until age seventeen, when John left our home in Phoenix, I lived in the Boettiger household. As I look back upon those years I see my mother constantly needing to bolster John’s ego. This was necessary because her husband seemingly was unable to sustain his interest (and his confidence) in any project. I later learned from my mother that John was already speaking about leaving his job as publisher of the Seattle Post Intelligencer when we had been but three to four years in Seattle. When he went into the army in 1943, John Boettiger left my mother with a four-year-old son and two teenagers, my Sis and me, both off at boarding schools. If we hadn’t had our grandparents’ home at the White House to move back to, I don’t know how she would have coped. My grandmother’s help was essential. Even after his later having that affair in Phoenix and then divorcing my mother, she would still invite John, at his request, to her home at Val-Kill to discuss his problems.
I record this not only to provide another illustration of my grandmother’s idealistic faith in the possibility of a “perfect love” but to show how destructive such a belief can be when it is directed toward others. Eleanor Roosevelt was usually against excess of any kind, especially when she observed anyone exhibiting compulsive behavior. But her own passion to experience an unsullied relationship, or to foster such, was a shortcoming.
12
“Hick,” My Grandmother’s Close Friend
As I have written, Eleanor Roosevelt’s infatuation with Lorena Hickok is well known, though whether Eleanor knew of her friend’s long history of lesbian relationships is unknown. At least, this is what I believe.
The continuing relationship between the two women ended only with Eleanor’s death. The passion had evaporated after the first few months, at least on Eleanor’s part, but the friendship endured. Eleanor continued to see Hick regularly, although as the years went by, less and less. As time passed, it was about my grandmother’s sense of loyalty. But Hick was persistent, and Eleanor always responded.
I’ve already spoken of the ways in which Hick helped her friend Eleanor achieve her expanded role as first lady. Hick was as close to a formal adviser as Eleanor ever had. In fact Hick became such an integral part of the first lady’s life that she resigned from her job as a reporter for the Associated Press. She felt that she could no longer be an objective reporter, and rightly so.
She had also become Eleanor Roosevelt’s closest friend. The letters they exchanged are the best indication of their intimate relation, but
, as already noted, Hick had one view of their intimacy and Eleanor quite another. As with all her passions, my grandmother always wanted to do something for any object of her affection.
It became apparent that Hick was not well. Realizing this, my grandmother stepped in, first helping Hick to find occasional work and then most visibly inviting her to live in the White House. Hick occupied the small northeast corner room next to the large Lincoln bedroom just across from Eleanor’s own suite. She joined us all for breakfast in the West Hall. She became part of our extended family and another of my second grandmothers.
Unlike Missy, my grandfather’s secretary—who lived in a small suite on the third floor—formerly occupied by the White House housekeeper—or Tommy, my grandmother’s secretary—Hick was kept more at arm’s length. As my mother rather disapprovingly noted, Hick was the only one of my grandmother’s new friends to call her Eleanor. Seen as a “hanger-on,” she indeed she attached herself to Eleanor for the rest of my grandmother’s life.
During the White House years, Eleanor continued to include Hick as much as she could, just never as much as I feel Hick would have liked. Hick’s letters, now devoid of the more passionate expressions of her earlier correspondence, were always pressing my grandmother to spend more time with her. She continued to have occasional long stays in the White House and also to be financially dependent upon Eleanor. My grandmother, though, was able to wean her away gradually, helping her find a small house for herself on Long Island as well as a job with the New York State Women’s Division of the Democratic Party. (Hick did have substantial experience in politics as a professional writer.) Eleanor had also arranged for Hick to work for Harry Hopkins, where she was assigned to take a long motor trip in order to report back public reaction to the Works Progress Administration projects under the direction of Hopkins. The accounts she sent in were very well received and still considered basic background for those researching the Great Depression.
Upon leaving the White House after her husband’s death, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to see Lorena Hickok, despite the fact that her affections had long since been directed toward Joe Lash, and would soon change again to David Gurewitsch. But my grandmother is renowned for her unfailing loyalty to friends. She kept regularly in touch with Hick just as she regularly saw Esther Lape, one of the two people with whom Eleanor had begun her series of infatuations when she moved back to New York City from Washington in 1920.
Hick’s continual pressure on Eleanor to see more of her was eventually annoying to my grandmother. She nevertheless responded. After Eleanor had made her place at Val-Kill her permanent home, Hick moved to nearby Rhinebeck into a small house (which I think Eleanor bought for her) about a half-hour’s drive from Val-Kill. Periodically my grandmother would remember to invite her for supper and always included her for Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations.
13
To Europe with My Grandmother
I had known for many years that my grandmother was a political pro. I observed this savvy in the White House and later with visitors in her New York City apartment on Washington Square. But it was at the United Nations in Paris in 1948 that I realized just how seasoned a professional she was. I listened while she discussed tactics with her advisers, and also with other UN delegates with whom she worked closely.
Because of her reputation in America as first lady and as “Mrs. Roosevelt”—a reputation that had crossed the Atlantic, being equally well known in Europe—she had an influence in UN circles no other American delegate had. As could be expected, this brought out annoyance among a few of the other U.S. delegates. But when it came to a tough assignment, particularly the need to confront the Soviet Union, it was to Eleanor Roosevelt they turned.
I was very proud of her having been chosen to answer Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in the General Assembly’s debate on the contentious issue of the rights of refugees. None of the more senior American delegates wanted to take him on. Eleanor’s straightforward speech—no mincing of words—was not the usual “diplomatic” approach. The delegates were delighted, full of praise for her. Even fellow delegate John Foster Dulles, a most prominent Republican, who came up to her later to acknowledge her effectiveness.1 At a cocktail party afterward, Gromyko himself congratulated her.
My grandmother performing as the gracious hostess in Paris was hardly new to me. Her manner, warmth, and innate kindness had always been her hallmark.
But in Paris it was different. There she was truly focused, and I might even say, unusually calculating. Simultaneously hostess and political pro, she honed in on exactly what she wanted to accomplish.
Her goal was to get the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) passed at this session of the General Assembly.
At nearly every lunch and supper were three or four delegates talking intently, all under the influential presence of their hostess and chairwoman. I understood my own role—to keep the meal moving. For example, nodding to me to order more wine or start the cheese course, Eleanor would then return to the problems of the Indian delegate, Mrs. Hansa Mehta—accepting of the use of “man” or “mankind” in the UDHR draft text. Mrs. Mehta wasn’t under instructions from her government to make this a contentious point; it was her personal crusade. She refused to recognize the use of “mankind” as covering both men and women.
My grandmother didn’t disagree with such concerns, but instead felt the whole effort to pass the declaration might founder if Mrs. Mehta pressed too hard. Governments who were lukewarm about human rights in general, such as the Soviet Union, as well as so-called Catholic countries, would use the arguments raised by the Indian delegate to delay the whole process of work in the Third Committee. Hence, Eleanor would point out, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights would never reach the General Assembly for a vote. It would be delayed yet again, sent back to the drafting committee—and probably lost. Mrs. Mehta finally backed down.
Just as at the dining-room table in the White House, these meals, mostly at the Hôtel de Crillon, continued my education. But in Paris there was an additional advantage. In the morning, over breakfast, I often had a preview of the pending conversations at lunch or supper. Grandmère reviewed with me who the guests—her targets—were to be that day and what she wanted to accomplish. Because so much of the uneasiness over particular human rights articles in the draft declaration were related to religious and cultural norms, my breakfast briefings were an education about people in other parts of the world, what they cared about, their beliefs, or just habits long practiced.
For example, the American notion of the separation of church and state in our government was not, Eleanor said, accepted in most other countries, especially if there was a substantial majority of one religious group, as in what were seen as Muslim countries. That there were legitimate arguments on these questions really opened my eyes and made me aware of my own, typically American, self-righteousness. We, too, I now understood, were set in our ways, insulated by the thousands of miles of ocean on either side of our country.
My grandmother was candid, sometimes despairing, about how other of the American delegates—their ingrained attitudes blocking them—remained immune to appreciating cultural differences and understanding their political significance. There were members of the U.S. delegation who refused to acknowledge, or even consider, the validity of other views and how their own attitudes posed a serious obstacle in our working relations with the other UN delegations. Eleanor had repeatedly to point out that working in the United Nations’ arena was a matter of continual negotiation, quite unlike the accustomed political landscape at home.
It wasn’t that she had changed her values, she informed me, but that she had been forced to grasp how deeply other people felt about their interpretation of the same values. “I can’t assume,” she said, “that my interpretation, my sense of right and wrong, will be accepted by other people. I want to see things change in the practice of human rights as much as anyone else,” she conclude
d, “but we will have to go slowly. And try to avoid being arrogant—a poor tactic if nothing else,” she added with a knowing smile.
Now a seasoned delegate with much experience in the negotiating game, my grandmother would also point out how a people’s attachment to their traditional cultural patterns was frequently exploited by politicians or government officials rigidly set against change. There was certainly nothing new about this, she reminded me—prejudice and fear-mongering among citizens has always been effectively used to block change. Setting down basic rights in a written document—a declaration that would, she hoped, guide governments—was hard work, uphill all the way. Additionally, we were now deep into the Cold War, a political reality that cast a shadow on nearly every item on the UN’s agenda. And in the human rights area it was particularly touchy.
The role of the Roman Catholic Church was particularly vexing to my grandmother. The Vatican worked through the delegations of countries with large Catholic populations, nations where the separation of church and state was often still a theory in need of greater application. The Holy See’s positions were, she noted, conservative, even reactionary, particularly on basic human rights related to women.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked,” I would hear her muse. But considering the influence the church could bring to bear, if only with the Latin American countries, it proved a serious drag on obtaining the votes, and had been even during the drafting stage for a universal declaration. Due to continuous negotiations there was a danger of hobbling it with what my grandmother considered parochial views, mirroring the Vatican’s authoritarian role. In passing, she noted that General Franco was still in power in Spain—and with the full cooperation of the church. Even in New York, she had found Cardinal Spellman’s views very conservative on social affairs generally. A year later my grandmother would have a direct confrontation with him over the church’s “growth in temporal power.”2
Upstairs at the Roosevelts' Page 15