by J. B. West
At formal receptions, the gardeners set up a wall of ferns at the south end of the Blue Room. A special seat, like a bicycle seat, was placed between the ferns. It protruded just enough for the President to sit on and still look as if he were standing. His legs, shrunken and useless, could not balance him. With his heavy, steel braces, he could only remain in an upright position with the assistance of someone or something.
My entire first week I spent observing the comings and goings in the White House—Ambassadors, the Secretaries of War and Treasury, the omnipresent Mr. Hopkins. We were in the midst of growing international tension, first about the German armies which had swept through Europe and now threatened England, then also because of Japan’s drive deeper into China. The President’s visitors, I discovered, had to do with the Lend-Lease program of aid to the Allies, which he signed into law on March 11, and which was eventually to cost fifty billion dollars.
The mansion was always full of people. But sitting just inside the front door, I soon found that the White House had two kinds of visitors: there were the President’s people, and then there were Mrs. Roosevelt’s people.
2
FOR THE ROOSEVELTS, THE White House was like a Grand Hotel. Eleanor Roosevelt’s life was filled with visitors from early morning until late at night. Her house was full of guests, some of whom stayed for months, and some of whom she’d just picked up on the street. Sometimes she invited so many people, she forgot who they were.
Mrs. Roosevelt never took a meal alone, that I remember. Dressed in her wrapper, a flowing morning robe, she’d step out of her tiny, austere bedroom, to the chintzy, floral West Sitting Hall, where she presided over a table of assorted houseguests, business appointments, or just friends. The bacon and eggs, carried up two floors and served by two butlers, were usually quite cold by the time breakfast began.
She always had guests for lunch. Every day she was at the White House, the butlers served a formal seated luncheon for at least twelve, in the Private Dining Room on the first floor. She arranged the seating herself, stopping in at the Usher’s office to pick up the place cards, sometimes scribbling the names herself, sometimes handing the cards to Mr. Crim to letter. There were always at least two more people to fit in at the last minute.
Her dinner guests, again in the Private Dining Room, wore black tie, although they were usually “working” guests, people involved in the projects in which she was interested—subsistence homestead, National Youth Administration, Work Corps for single women, WPA art, and anything else to do with public welfare or social justice. Unless the dinner were a State occasion, the President rarely appeared.
On Sunday nights, Mrs. Roosevelt’s table was like a European salon. The President did attend, if he felt well, and listened to authors, artists, actresses, playwrights, sculptors, dancers, world travelers, old family friends—mixed in with Ambassadors, Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet officers, and Presidential Advisors.
Eleanor Roosevelt, using a large silver chafing dish she’d brought from Hyde Park, scrambled eggs at the table. But the main course was conversation.
We called the menu “scrambled eggs with brains.”
Mrs. Roosevelt often entertained her personal guests in her two-room suite on the second floor. Her sitting room, a drab parlor with sofa and desk, adjoined a small dressing room, where she slept in a narrow, single bed. As in her husband’s suite, the walls were covered with framed photographs of official life. There were so many pictures that we had to draw a detailed plan of their arrangement each time we cleaned or painted the walls.
The Roosevelts were great collectors. President Roosevelt’s books took every inch of space on the White House shelves, and they overflowed into stacks and stacks on the third floor. His intricate ship models and Naval mementoes were not appreciated by the staff, however. Each tiny sail and gangplank had to be carefully dusted, and he was in the room so much the servants hardly had time to finish their chores. His study was not air-conditioned, and in the summer, with the windows always open, his collections collected more dust.
Eleanor Roosevelt collected people. We could accommodate 21 overnight visitors at a time, but Mrs. Roosevelt often invited more. And it was always musical chairs with the guest rooms at the President’s House. “We’ve got them hanging from the hooks,” Mr. Crim told me one day as two new arrivals appeared, suitcases in hand, and we had to move one of the President’s sons to his third bedroom of the week, to make room.
By 1941, the Roosevelt children, Anna, James, Franklin, Elliott, and John, were grown, with families of their own. When they visited the mansion, they were accorded no special privileges because they were Roosevelts. Mrs. Roosevelt saw them briefly by appointment or at breakfast, treating them just like any other houseguest.
Movie stars, political friends, just plain people she had met on her travels—Mrs. Roosevelt invited them all to spend the night at the White House. The First Lady was so busy with her own work, however, she sometimes didn’t know who was sleeping down the hall. Once they came, she left the visitors to their own devices. They used the White House like a hotel, meandering in and out at will, sometimes stopping by the Usher’s office for help in scheduling their day in Washington.
Some never went home. There were two “permanent guests” at the White House. One of them, Lorena Hickok, a former reporter who currently worked at the Democratic National Committee, lived in the little room on the northwest corner of the second floor, across the hall from Mrs. Roosevelt’s bedroom. “Hick,” as she was called, had become an intimate friend of Eleanor Roosevelt’s while covering the first Presidential campaign, and moved into the White House after she left journalism to join the Roosevelt administration. A heavy-set, mannish woman, she kept to herself, never taking meals with the family or staff, never appearing at any social functions. Sometimes there were so many people in the house that Miss Hickok would have to relinquish her room to another guest and sleep on the couch in Mrs. Roosevelt’s sitting room.
The other “staying guest” was Joseph Lash,* a young man in his early thirties, who when he was in Washington slept in the small blue bedroom on the second floor, across from the President’s study. Lash was executive secretary of the American Student Union. Because of her work with the American Youth Congress, Mrs. Roosevelt took a special interest in the young man.
Joe Lash occupied a unique position in Mrs. Roosevelt’s life during my years in the Roosevelt White House. He was her closest confidante, her most personal friend. The two would sit in his room talking until late at night; she’d step across the hall to say good morning before her breakfast, and to say good night after everyone had gone to bed. They often walked together around the sixteen acres of White House lawn, or down Washington streets. When he was called to the Capitol to testify before a House Committee, Mrs. Roosevelt sat in the hearing-room audience like an anxious mother, her knitting needles clicking. Eleanor Roosevelt was closer to Joe Lash than she was to her own children, we thought. But then, her children didn’t live in the White House.
Once, we almost caused an international incident because we moved Joe out of his room.
Mrs. Roosevelt had gone to New York. While the First Lady was out of town, Crown Princess Martha of Norway and her gentleman-in-waiting moved in for a personal visit with the President. We placed the Princess in the Queen’s Room, at the east end of the floor, and her aide nearby in the small blue room, moving Joe Lash to a little room on the third floor.
But Mrs. Roosevelt came home during the night—actually it was early in the morning, she’d slept on the train—and nobody told her of the arrangements. Her first stop was the small blue room, Joe’s room. As she usually did, she gave a little rap on the door and walked right in. And was greeted by a totally shocked—and totally undressed—gentleman-in-waiting for Princess Martha.
The First Lady was mortified.
At eight o’clock that morning, Mrs. Roosevelt phoned the Usher’s office. In her iciest tones, she said, “Never, never move
or change a guest from one room to another without first contacting me. The telephone operators can reach me wherever I might be.”
In my early days in the White House, the President’s closest confidante appeared to be his secretary. One morning shortly after I came to work there, I was alone in the Usher’s office when the telephone rang.
“Is this the Usher?” a young woman’s voice asked. “No …” I answered, and the lady hung up. Minutes later, the garage called. “Miss LeHand has ordered a car,” the dispatcher reported. The garage, as well as the front door, was under Mr. Crim’s supervision, and normally the Usher placed orders for all cars. When the Chief Usher returned, I mentioned the puzzling order.
“Who is Miss LeHand?” I asked.
Mr. Crim’s eyebrows elevated. “She is the President’s personal secretary, who lives in a two-room apartment on the third floor,” he explained, noting her order in his “Garage” book. “In fact, she probably sees more of the President than Mrs. Roosevelt does. She acts as his hostess when Mrs. Roosevelt isn’t here.”
Thereafter, Miss LeHand ordered cars at will.
But in early June, Marguerite LeHand, acting as hostess at a small party in the Diplomatic Reception Room for the President’s close personal staff, suffered a stroke, and after a stay in the hospital, went to Warm Springs to recover.* Her duties were taken over by her assistant, Grace Tully, who did not live in the mansion.
In contrast to Mrs. Roosevelt’s close relationship with friends, and her husband’s with his staff, we never saw Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt in the same room alone together. They had the most separate relationship I have ever seen between man and wife. And the most equal.
When she met with him, it was usually in the evenings. She always brought him a sheaf of papers, a bundle of ideas. His secretary Grace Tully was usually there, or hers, Malvina Thompson. Mrs. Roosevelt reported to her husband not only to plead for her own projects and for liberal programs that she favored, but also to discuss other matters. The President had lots of people serving as his “eyes and ears” around the country. But his wife was perhaps his most trusted observer.
Because of his infirmity, the President couldn’t travel at the pace his wife did. He sent her out to assess the feelings of the people on just about everything, including his own policy statements. After eight years in office, he knew full well the awe that strikes most men when they walk into the President’s office, that they are tempted to tell the Chief Executive only what he wants to hear. Because of that tendency to be less than frank, he felt he couldn’t trust his regular channels to filter correct information to him.
Mrs. Roosevelt, therefore, performed a high-level intelligence operation for him. A skilled interviewer, she could easily instill confidence in anyone from an illiterate farm worker to a high government official, and draw out the person’s true opinions or reactions. Her reports to the President were filled with facts and quite often went to the very heart of a subject.
The longer she lived in the White House, the more people found out about this “intelligence service,” and an ever-increasing number tried to get to her, hoping she would filter their messages to Mr. Roosevelt. Which may have partially accounted for some of our overburdened guest lists.
The White House conferences between husband and wife did not occur all that often. The President spent far more time with his personal advisor Harry L. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins had been one of the original Brain Trust; he was the first administrator of the National Relief Administration, then head of the Civil Works Administration and Works Progress Administration, and from 1938 until September, 1940, Secretary of Commerce. Now he was living in the White House, with his daughter, Diana. He walked up the hall from his bedroom to spend hours on end with the President. Mr. Hopkins, a widower, took the “Lincoln’s office” guest room down the hall from the family quarters, and Diana lived on the third floor next to the sun porch.
A little girl of eight, Diana was the first child to live in the White House since “Sistie” and “Buzzie” Dall, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger’s two children, had lived there for a few years in the Thirties. But now the Roosevelt White House was not geared to life with children, and Diana was quite lonely. She had few visitors her own age, very few occasions to see the Roosevelts, and little time with her father. So the White House domestic staff “adopted” Diana.
Her father ate dinner with President Roosevelt, on trays in the President’s private study, and worked with him there, often joined by Grace Tully, until late at night. The President also entertained his private visitors in that study. He was proud of his abilities as a bartender. A butler would place a tray of fixings atop the ornately carved desk, and, announcing that his specialty was a dry martini, Franklin Roosevelt mixed the drinks himself.
Two of the most important men in President Roosevelt’s life, however, were his valets, Arthur Prettyman and George Fields. The two men worked a twenty-four-hour shift, taking turns sleeping on the third floor, so the President could call for assistance after retiring, for he could not get out of bed without their help. Every morning, the valet would call down to the kitchen to order Mr. Roosevelt’s breakfast, and a White House butler soon brought up a tray.
The President’s bedroom, on the south side of the second floor, was sparsely furnished, with a modified hospital bed—not much wider than a standard single bed. At about ten every morning, his aides, General Edwin “Pa” Watson and Press Secretary Steve Early, went up to his bedroom for their morning conference. The three would pore over the day’s newspapers (except the Chicago Tribune, which was barred from the house), and the list of daily appointments.
Then Mr. Roosevelt’s valet would dress the President and wheel him into his adjoining oval study. The room, painted a flat battleship gray, was like a naval museum. The study shelves were lined with hundreds of books, photographs, and a vast collection of ships’ models. Mr. Roosevelt’s massive oak desk, made from the timbers of HMS Resolute, was covered with personal mementoes. A cabinet radio, two breakfronts full of books, and a big green rug filled the room.
If the President was feeling well, he’d emerge from the second floor at about noon and his bodyguard or valet would wheel him to the elevator and down to his official office in the west wing. Mr. Roosevelt frequently suffered from sinus trouble, and he came down with a good case of flu every winter. When he did not feel well, he held all his appointments in that oval study upstairs.
Franklin Roosevelt loved to have a fire crackling in the marble fireplace of that room. But the valets were instructed to extinguish the fire if he were left in the room alone, even for a few minutes. He was afraid that the room might catch fire, and he knew that he could not get out by himself.
The valets, Mr. Hopkins, “Pa” Watson and Steve Early, Grace Tully—those were the Oval Room “regulars.” The President shuffled other appointments in and out about every fifteen minutes, with an usher appearing at the door to announce the next guest. But there was one frequent visitor whom we never hurried.
Quite often, but only when Mrs. Roosevelt was out of town, the President invited his friend Mrs. Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd to the White House. An attractive, vivacious woman in her forties, she’d arrive at the front door, the north entrance. We’d watch her hurry up the steps, to be escorted by an usher to the second floor. The butler would serve tea, close the door, and leave the President and Mrs. Rutherfurd alone. After about an hour’s time, the President rang for the doorman to escort her back to her car.
In good weather, the President enjoyed taking a drive in the Virginia countryside with his little dog, Fala, and the Secret Service guard. One day Mr. Roosevelt directed the driver to go along a certain wooded, dirt road. Suddenly, he ordered the driver to stop. “There seems to be a lady walking along the road. Let us ask her if she needs a ride,” the President directed.
The fourth time this incident occurred, the Secret Service men following the President began to be aware that the same lady, on the same country road, always
needed a ride. They’d take the long route to her destination, giving the President and his passenger a scenic spin in the big car. One of the agents mentioned those drives to the Usher’s office, wondering if any of us might know the mysterious lady. So one day Wilson Searles talked the agent into letting him accompany them on an excursion. When he saw Searles in the Secret Service car, Mr. Roosevelt laughed.
“I see it’s your turn to find out what’s going on!” the President said. The lady was Mrs. Rutherfurd.
President Roosevelt’s recreation—drives in the country, fishing from the yacht Potomac, weekends at Shangri-La—was limited by his desire for privacy and by the restrictions of his physical condition. At the White House, his sole form of exercise was swimming in the austere, fifty-foot pool under the west terrace. That swimming pool had been built for the President in 1933, from funds raised by a nationwide newspaper campaign. At first, Mr. Crim told me, Mr. Roosevelt had exercised there several times a day; now, at the age of fifty-nine, he seldom swam. He spent most of his time in his oval office in the west wing of the White House, or upstairs in his oval study.
If Franklin Roosevelt’s days were spent more or less in confinement, Mrs. Roosevelt more than made up for it in activity.
After her “company” breakfasts in the West Hall upstairs, which all first families use as a sitting room, Mrs. Roosevelt joined her competent secretary, Malvina (“Tommy”) Thompson, in the First Lady’s tiny office by the elevator, overlooking the north lawn. There, she’d begin dictating her syndicated newspaper column, “My Day,” which gave the country a running account of the Roosevelts’ activities. She could never sit still for long, however, and she’d often jump up from her desk, “Tommy” at her elbow, and fly down the halls, dictating all the way. She’d even dictate—or write notes to herself—riding in limousines, on trains and planes.