Upstairs at the White House

by J. B. West

  “Hold on to your hat,” she said. “President Johnson has just invited all of Congress and their wives over to the White House this afternoon. They announced it from the rostrum in Congress. What can we do?”

  I looked out my door at the black crepe still draped from the chandeliers. We’d planned to remove it tomorrow.

  “How many and what time?” I asked.

  She did a quick mental calculation—“Nearly a thousand.”

  “We’ll do the best we can,” I offered, and immediately cranked up the kitchen. René pulled in everybody in the house to help make little finger sandwiches, and I think we bought every cookie in Washington. The butlers went to work making tubs of fruit punch and spiked punch, and grabbed outside help from the other government agencies, some of whom grumbled because they’d already accepted bartending jobs elsewhere for the night.

  In the meantime, the carpenters and electricians began snatching down the mourning crepe, the florists sticking holly and poinsettias in its place. The Christmas tree had been stashed away out of sight. Now it was quickly set in place in the Blue Room, and the lights and trimmings were whipped out of storage and onto the tree. Amazingly, we really had some decent decorations by the time the people arrived. It was the biggest, most sudden party I’d seen—more than a thousand people showed up—Congressmen, Senators, some with their entire families, the President’s top staff and Cabinet.

  To me, it was a symbolic celebration, and I think one that reassured the hastily assembled legislators. With the transformation from grief and black mourning to bright, sparkling Christmas decorations, the White House once again proclaimed, “Long Live the King!”

  President Johnson, by his speeches to the nation, his determination to carry forward Kennedy administration programs, was also reassuring the country that a confident hand was at the tiller. By his strong emphasis on civil rights, the President from Texas reassured his predecessor’s constituency that he was free of any regional Southern bias.

  In looking at his background in the Senate—at his legendary record as Majority Leader and his intimate knowledge of Congress—and at his education in the Executive Branch during his three years as Vice President, I personally felt that Mr. Johnson had the strongest professional qualifications of any incoming President I had met. To me, the shower incident, the lights-out directives, all were merely indications that the new President was a no-nonsense man who was accustomed to power. And that snowy December day when we took down the crepe, I felt relieved that the new President was such an experienced politician.

  From the moment of that legislative reception, we were in the Johnson White House.

  As First Lady, Mrs. Johnson expanded her role into that of a public partner of the President. She was rather like Mrs. Roosevelt in that respect. The exigencies of time—her frequent trips, his nonstop working habits—kept them from spending a great deal of time together. But there was a bond between the two of them, a bond of mutual respect and understanding.

  And yet the President was dominant and at times, I felt, almost abusive to her, shouting at his wife as he shouted at everybody else. Mrs. Johnson’s daughters also seemed to dominate her, at least in the beginning.

  When she told me, “I’ll take what’s left over,” I soon could see that had been her life’s pattern.

  I’m sure that Mrs. Johnson was not lacking in the normal human qualities of annoyance, irritation or anger. Perhaps the self-control, the clear glass curtain that kept hurt or annoyance out of sight came from a lifetime of public life with a highly volatile politician, who had little inhibition privately in expressing the full, wide range of his very human emotions. Yet Lady Bird’s feathers seemed unruffled always—even her husband’s impatiently yelling “Bird” in a resounding voice that echoed through the mansion, or the adolescent Luci’s exasperated “Mother!”—didn’t faze her.

  She had an escape valve, some secret little room inside her mind that she could adjourn to when things got tense. When the air got heavy with personalities and pejoratives, a faraway, almost beatific look would spread across Lady Bird Johnson’s expressive face. She’d simply tuned it all out.

  She hummed a little tune—sometimes a show tune, sometimes a hymn—deep in her own reserve of calm thoughts. Many are the times I’d see Mrs. Johnson, when she obviously had something to worry about, wandering down the halls of the White House, whistling to herself.

  At an afternoon meeting upstairs, in the midst of a spirited discussion about which Head Start center in which part of the country the First Lady should visit, Mrs. Johnson suddenly realized that her husband hadn’t come home to lunch yet. “Please excuse me,” she said, softly, and she walked over to his office in the west wing, to try and persuade him to stop work for a few moments and come back with her. But she returned alone.

  She walked down the wide center hall upstairs, and paused before the row of paintings of American Indians. She loved those earliest Americans and the Western lore that had been a part of her earliest childhood. Again she smiled and walked the length of the hall singing quietly. Then, looking across at the dining room where Zephyr was still waiting with the President’s meal, she rejoined the meeting.

  She had learned, evidently a long time ago, how to compartmentalize her thoughts, how to concentrate solely on one thing at a time. She could be sitting at an informal meeting in the Yellow Oval Room, having tea with fine arts advisors. Her husband would call, to discuss an entirely different matter, and she would “leave” us—to make notes on his call. Or one of her daughters might come in to have some problem solved, and she would “leave” us to plan an event for her. However, Mrs. Johnson stayed at the same table, sipped the same cup of tea. She never allowed interruptions to distract her, but instead directed her full attention to each interruption. Only then would she “return” to the business at hand.

  Though she always seemed a bit remote, the First Lady was kind to everyone, with soft compliments for a job well done, and no criticism if it weren’t. The person who didn’t fit into her scheme of things or didn’t measure up to the job might eventually be replaced, but without having to undergo rebukes or feel humiliation from Mrs. Johnson or others on the staff.

  On reflection, Lady Bird Johnson, in the course of a long, deeply knit partnership with her husband, may have been making up for what she considered his excesses. For the President handed out lavish praise or hair-curling scorn to his closest staff members or to her with little regard for whoever happened to be in the immediate audience. Perhaps his wife had long since learned to survive in the tough world, first, of Texas, then of national and international politics, and in the always turbulent world of Lyndon Johnson—by appearing to be impenetrable.

  Gradually, as Liz and Bess programmed the details of her life for her, Mrs. Johnson took hold and grew in stature as her own person. If they created her role for her, she more than filled it.

  The “other things” Mrs. Johnson wanted to do with her time when she asked me to run the White House were not immediately known. But she studied hard as she felt her way into her role of First Lady, working closely with curator Jim Ketchum to acquaint herself with the history of the White House, learning every object, piece of furniture, work of art acquired during Mrs. Kennedy’s restoration project.

  One of her first tasks was to pick up on the final phases of that project. Mrs. Johnson was anxious that the restoration of the White House not be left in limbo, that the Fine Arts Committee not be dissolved and that the mansion be maintained in perpetuity as a museum.

  At the beginning of the restoration, Mrs. Kennedy’s first curator was on loan from the Smithsonian; now, four years and two curators later, his salary was paid by the White House Historical Association, which was still doing a land-office business in guidebooks.

  “I think the job of curator should be an official position, so that the house will not be at the whim of any First Lady,” she said, and talked her husband into making Executive Order #11145, providing for a curator
of the White House and establishing a Committee for the Preservation of the White House.*

  Before the group’s first meeting, on May 7, 1964, Mrs. Johnson worked long and hard to prepare for it—to acquaint herself with the work everybody had done, to memorize the French names for things, to present us with goals and procedures for our work ahead. Our main job would be to report to the President, and to advise the director of the National Park Service on preserving and interpreting the museum character of the White House. We were to make recommendations as to the “articles of furniture, fixtures, and decorative objects used or displayed in those areas, and as to the decor and arrangements best suited to enhance the historic and artistic values of the White House….”

  It was quite a charge, and a long, long step from the day Mrs. Kennedy had told me to find her a “little curator.” Preserving the mansion had become a serious obligation for Mrs. Johnson—and for all of us.

  After the meeting, the First Lady held a tea for the various library committees, painting committees, the arts commission, and the network of curators Mrs. Kennedy had pulled in for advice. Mrs. Johnson put on an impressive performance that day, conveying intelligence, taste, and sincerity to an audience I’d seen castigate even the “foremost authorities” on matters of style, taste, and authenticity.

  “She’s great!” my old acquaintances murmured in approval as they were leaving. “Knows what she’s doing … heading in the right direction….”

  I knew she’d been most concerned about how the meeting would turn out. She’d boned up for weeks in advance, working with Jim Ketchum and me, going into the background of every contribution, every contributor. As soon as they all left, I phoned Mrs. Johnson.

  “Everything went well,” I told her. “The committee thought you were just great.”

  “I am so relieved,” she sighed. “That’s the first hurdle.”

  Over the next five years, she entered enthusiastically into all the committee’s choices for the White House. Prior to every committee meeting, Jim and I had at least two or three meetings with her, to work out the agenda. She wanted to be thoroughly briefed on each particular piece, each item. If she made an acceptance speech for the presentation of a painting or anything of that nature, she held discussion after discussion with anyone who knew anything at all about it. She first called in experts to give her advice, then she went into everything very thoroughly herself.

  One of her greatest sources was Mrs. John F. Kennedy. The former First Lady never attended any of the Preservation Committee’s meetings because she felt, rightfully, that the White House was no longer hers to influence; that her presence among her old friends on the committee might be too dominant. But on major decisions, such as accepting a valuable work of art, Mrs. Johnson conferred privately by telephone with Mrs. Kennedy. Lines of communication between the two were always open, always gracious.

  The way Mrs. Johnson tackled the completion of the restoration of the White House showed me a great deal about her conscientiousness and willingness to devote herself to her job, even if it meant that she had to spend a great deal of time learning about new things.

  As her knowledge grew, she lent a great deal of her own personality and taste to the selection of gifts to be received, or to the committee’s finds, which we could purchase with funds from the sale of White House guidebooks. And she wasted no time in establishing her own White House style.

  One of her first visitors was Boudin, who came to report progress on the East Room curtains, which were taking so long to complete because they were being woven in golden-yellow silk in France, by an 88-year-old man. As I ushered the irrepressible Frenchman up to the Queen’s sitting room, where Mrs. Johnson was waiting, he kept repeating how “shattered” he was by the news of the assassination.

  “Tragedy, a tragedy,” he said. “Poor Madame—poor Madame Kennedy!”

  Then he whispered to me, “But I will love Madame Johnson.”

  “I am sure,” I said.

  “Because she has lived in my house.”

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  “My house,” he repeated. “I decorated Les Ormes for Madame Perle Mesta.” At once, I recalled the very formal French flavor of The Elms—how familiar it had seemed. It was the Boudin touch!

  But the meeting did not go well. Boudin’s exuberance in describing the draperies, his effusive compliments to Mrs. Johnson spilled over in French, and I, who knew little French but knew Boudin, was the only translator.

  It was clear that he expected to finish his dreams of the President’s Palace. He spoke of his plans for the State Dining Room, and for replacing some fabrics in the Green Room. Mrs. Johnson, however, was clearly uncomfortable. She understood little of what he was saying, and I’m afraid I was no help. I soon realized that even if they had understood one another, they didn’t speak the same language.

  After he left, Mrs. Johnson walked with me back through the second floor gallery, which was lined with the paintings of American Indians.

  “When the curtains are finished, I don’t think we’ll go any further with Boudin,” she told me. Then she smiled, like the knowing politician that she is. “I’d never be able to get away with using a French decorator for the White House!”

  The solarium, the West Sitting Hall with new upholstery, rug, and curtains, and one later color change for the girls’ rooms—those were the only major changes Lady Bird Johnson made in the newly decorated mansion.

  But she made an indelible imprint on the White House in her role as First Lady. She was extremely well-organized, she had each day mapped out in advance, she took her job very seriously.

  * The First Lady was honorary chairman of the committee, which included as permanent members the director of the National Park Service, the director of the National Gallery of Art, the chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the Curator of the White House and the Chief Usher. Nash Castro of the Park Service served as executive secretary to the committee, which included, of course, Mrs. Kennedy (although she never attended any meetings), as well as six other “public” members appointed by the President, Mr. du Pont, William Benton, Bruce Catton, Mrs. George R. Brown, Mrs. Marshall Field and James W. Fosburgh, and later, Mrs. Charles W. Engelhard, Jr.

  2

  THE WHITE HOUSE HAS always had elaborate schedules to take care of dinners, visitors, and every conceivable event. But schedules to Lyndon Johnson were often made to be broken.

  He improvised, for example, on the evening meal. Dinner was rarely a two-person or even four-person affair, regardless of what might have been planned. If guests weren’t scheduled for the second-floor dining room, Mr. Johnson would round up some. There were usually eight to fourteen people around Zephyr’s table, sometimes twenty.

  (I’ve often thought how the Trumans and the Eisenhowers would have loved that second-floor dining room. It probably is the most truly appreciated of all of Jacqueline Kennedy’s innovations.)

  The President was all over the place, everywhere, from six in the morning until midnight or even two or three a.m. always making his presence felt. Liz Carpenter says that, to her, President Johnson was “The Long Arm.”

  I remember him as “The Booming Voice.”

  He spent most of his life on the telephone, although in the mansion he didn’t need one, because we could hear him quite clearly from one end of the house to the other.

  As the voices of the First Ladies I had known bespoke their varied backgrounds, the origins of their husbands shaped their own style and manners. All were tough, shrewd politicians, and their individuality and backgrounds showed through—no bland organization man at the top of American politics.

  I saw Missouri all through Harry Truman—plain as the plains, straightforward and open, and stubborn as a mule; Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy had the quick repartee, the urbane, graceful, wealthy eastern manner; Dwight Eisenhower was so military you could imagine brass buttons and polished boots even when he wasn’t w
earing them, but every now and then, with a “By golly” or two, Kansas flashed through his smile. It was evident that Lyndon Johnson had grown up in the wide open spaces.

  Everything about him was oversized—his gestures, his voice, his friendliness, his temper, his work habits, himself, at nearly six foot four. When he swept his arm around the room, you could tell he hadn’t spent much time cramped in subways, afraid to touch the next fellow.

  When he walked down the hall, you could tell he had spent time on a horse, and his long legs covered a lot of territory with each step. He hugged, kissed, patted on the back, arm-around-the-shouldered all he was close to, showering compliments on the same people he thundered at.

  Every time he came back from a trip, his luggage was loaded with gifts—sets of china, dresses, or paintings—all presents he’d bought for the people in his office or those who worked closest around him on the second floor of the White House. He made the greatest demands on his staff of any President I worked for, and at the same time he drew the greatest loyalty and devotion from them. As one of his assistants told me, after working until 3:00 a.m. only to be awakened by the President three hours later, “I wouldn’t kill myself this way for another man alive!”

  President Johnson was up at 6:00, into the newspapers and on the phone before breakfast every morning.

  At 7:30 or 8:00, the Johnsons had breakfast together in the big four-poster bed which was still outfitted with President Kennedy’s special horsehair mattress.

  After their breakfast together, Mrs. Johnson went to her bedroom to dress and the President conferred with his top assistants—“the boys”—Jack Valenti, Marvin Watson or Jake Jacobson. They were old Texas friends, to whom he turned for absolute privacy and personal loyalty. In my White House years, I sensed that Presidents seldom develop new friends and confidantes. There is not enough time for that. They turn to people they have known and can count on.

  The perpetual-motion President, never losing a minute of valuable time, got briefed while he dressed. Picking up the Secret Service at the elevator, he was down to the ground floor and across to the oval office well before 9:00. We didn’t see him again until he came home for lunch, usually about 3:00.