Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  The Roosevelts recognized that the nation’s crisis was primarily one of the spirit. Fear was the worst thing that happened to the country as a result of the Depression, Eleanor had written in December, “fear of an uncertain future, fear of not being able to meet our problems. Fear of not being equipped to cope with life as we live it today.” What people needed was to have something “outside of one’s self and greater than one’s self to depend on. . . . We need some of the old religious spirit which said ‘I myself am weak but Thou art strong oh Lord!’”2

  Franklin Roosevelt soberly expressed the same feeling on the way to Washington. Religion and a belief in God, he said to Farley, as he looked out at the stricken countryside, “will be the means of bringing us out of the depths of despair into which so many apparently have fallen.”

  Before going to the White House to pick up the outgoing president and his wife, the whole Roosevelt household and the new cabinet attended services at St. John’s Episcopal Church. The old rector of Groton, although he had voted for Hoover, was there at Roosevelt’s invitation to lead the congregation in prayer: “May Thy son Franklin, chosen to be our President, and all of his advisers, be enlightened and strengthened for Thy service and may he direct and rule according to Thy will.” Eleanor’s head bowed low. The stirring hymn of faith and resolve rang out: “Eternal Father, strong to save.”

  Two limousines, with Roosevelt in the first and Eleanor in the second, moved toward the White House. There they were joined by the Hoovers. The crowds along Pennsylvania Avenue cheered. Roosevelt waved and doffed his silk hat, but Hoover, his face set stonily forward, was unresponsive to either the crowds or Roosevelt’s effort to make conversation. What would Mrs. Hoover miss most? Eleanor asked her companion as they rode in the car behind. Not being taken care of, was the reply, not having train reservations made for her, not having her wishes anticipated and attended to. Eleanor made a silent vow never to permit herself to become so dependent.3

  The immense crowds in the Capitol plaza cheered, but the country waited. On the inaugural stand the cold wind blew, and Eleanor, in a velvet gown and coat of “Eleanor blue,” which it had taken her less than thirty minutes to select, was not dressed warmly enough. But she was impervious to the cold, intent on the response of the listening throng to her husband’s words. Roosevelt’s buoyant voice carried a message of action. In later years when the country had recovered its faith in itself, the electric line “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” addressed to the crisis in spirit and morale, would be the one by which the speech was recalled. But on that gray day the millions of Americans who listened on their radios were most stirred by the call to battle stations: “This Nation asks for action, and action now. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” If necessary to meet the emergency, he was prepared to ask Congress for power “as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

  Here the president received his greatest burst of applause. Eleanor found it “a little terrifying. You felt that they would do anything—if only someone would tell them what to do,” she commented afterward at the White House. She had a feeling “of going it blindly. We are in a tremendous stream and none of us knows where we are going to land.” But what was important was “our attitude toward whatever may happen. It must be willingness to accept and share with others whatever may come and to meet the future courageously, with a cheerful spirit.”4

  She and the president set an example. His “exuberant vitality . . . high spirits . . . tirelessness . . . gave a lift to the spirits of millions of average men, stimulated them to higher use of their own power, gave them a new zest for life,” wrote Mark Sullivan of the opening days of the Roosevelt presidency.5 And Bess Furman of the Associated Press, reporting on Mrs. Roosevelt’s debut as mistress of the White House, ended an exultant story, “Washington had never seen the like—a social transformation had taken place with the New Deal.”6 Eleanor was spontaneous, sensible, and direct, and the result was a shattering of precedents. She would run the little wood-paneled elevator herself, she firmly told Chief Usher Ike Hoover. When, because of constant interruptions, Hick was unable to finish an interview with Eleanor in the sitting room, they retreated to the bathroom. In her eagerness to get settled, she pushed furniture around herself. The thousand guests who had been invited for tea turned into three thousand, and for the first time tea was served in the East Room as well as the State Dining Room; Mrs. Henrietta Nesbitt, the Hyde Park neighbor whom Eleanor had brought to Washington as housekeeper, sent out repeatedly for more sandwiches, more little cakes. The tea guests had scarcely departed when dinner guests began arriving—seventy-five Roosevelt relatives, including Alice Longworth, all of whom Eleanor greeted at the door instead of waiting until they were assembled to make a ceremonious descent.

  The most radical break with precedent was her decision to hold press conferences, the first ever given by a First Lady, in the White House, on the record. The contrast with Mrs. Hoover could not have been more marked. That silvery-haired, kindly woman had shielded herself from public notice. The handful of women who were assigned to keep track of her, who were known as the “Green Room girls,” were permitted to observe her only at a distance at official receptions, teas, tree plantings, charity bazaars, and public appearances with the president. The few occasions on which she appeared in the press in her own right were in connection with the Girl Scouts. Behind the screen of protocol, within the confines of the White House, there was a motherly human being whose warmth, had the nation been permitted to share it, would have done something to relieve the impression of severity the Hoovers created. But only in the final days of the campaign did the Hoover managers realize that it had been a mistake to keep Mrs. Hoover at arms’ length from friendly reporters. On the Roosevelt campaign train, Mrs. Roosevelt was talking daily to Lorena Hickok of the Associated Press, and out of the blue Bess Furman, the redheaded AP correspondent traveling with the Hoover campaign special, was told she could interview Mrs. Hoover, the only interview she was granted in four years of covering the First Lady. The ground rules, Mrs. Hoover informed her, were that she should not be directly quoted; Miss Furman would have to write about the biographical details Mrs. Hoover would now furnish her as if she had obtained them from a library.7

  Mrs. Hoover had conformed to a pattern of behavior established for First Ladies from the time of Martha Washington. It was not a model Eleanor Roosevelt could follow without stultifying herself, and it was not a model she thought appropriate in a democratic society where the channels of communication between the people in the White House and the people in the country should, she felt, be open, lively, and sympathetic. So when Hick suggested that she hold press conferences, Eleanor agreed, and Bess Furman, whom she consulted, approved enthusiastically—as did Franklin and Louis. On Monday, March 6, two days before her husband’s first press conference, an astonished and somewhat disapproving Ike Hoover, or so Eleanor thought, accompanied her into the Red Room, where thirty-five women reporters had assembled. The conference had been restricted to women, she explained, in order to encourage the employment of newspaperwomen and to make it more comfortable to deal with subjects of interest primarily to women. To further emphasize that she was in no way encroaching upon Franklin’s domain, she had stipulated that no political questions could be asked. She brought with her a large box of candied fruits which she passed around—to hide her nervousness, she later claimed. The first news conference did not produce much news, but the women were elated, although some of them, especially May Craig of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, having fought hard to break down masculine professional barriers, were uncomfortable that men were excluded. However, the attitude of the men was “Why in the world would we want to come to Mrs. Roosevelt’s conferences?” Byron Price, the manager of the AP, predicted that the institution would last less than six months.8 However, a few weeks later, when a bill to legalize 3.2 beer went up to Congress, Roosevelt was aske
d at his news conference whether beer would be served at the White House if the bill were passed; that would have to be answered by his wife, he replied off the record. Eleanor was on her way to New York, so Ruby Black of the United Press raced out to catch her at the airport. Would she, a teetotaler, permit beer to be served at the White House? “You’ll have to ask my husband,” was Eleanor’s guarded reply. Told that the president had referred the press to her, she burst into laughter. She would have a statement for them at her next news conference, she promised. By Monday, when the women reporters trooped in for their meeting with Eleanor, masculine scorn had turned to anguish, and some of the men begged the women to fill them in later.

  Beer would be served at the White House to those who desire it, Eleanor’s mimeographed announcement read. She herself did not drink anything with an alcoholic content, but she would not dream of imposing her convictions on others. She hoped, however, that the availability of beer might lead to greater temperance, and to a reduction in the bootlegger’s trade.9

  The scoffing ceased. Eleanor proved to be such a good news source that Emma Bugbee, who had been sent by the New York Herald Tribune to report on the First Lady’s inauguration activities, was kept in Washington by her Republican employers for four months. “Well, if it’s going to be like that,” Emma’s office said, after their reporter had lunched with Mrs. Roosevelt and had been taken through the living quarters of the president’s family, something Mrs. Hoover had not done until the final months of her husband’s regime, “you had better stay down.”10 Another Monday the press conference became a classroom in diets—patriotic, wholesome, and frugal; the women learned the recipe for Martha Washington’s crab soup and for dishes that Andrew Jackson ate in the days “when the onion and herb were as important as the can opener.”11 Sheila Hibben, the culinary historian whom Eleanor had invited to the news conference, even ventured a theory of history about White House menus: “The more democratic our Presidents have been, the more attention they paid to their meals.” The lecture on the wholesome, inexpensive dishes that other First Ladies had served their husbands led up to an announcement that with the help of Flora Rose of Cornell, Eleanor had served “a 7-cent luncheon” at the White House—hot stuffed eggs with tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, prune pudding, bread, and coffee. In London a woman read this menu and exclaimed to a friend that “if Mrs. Roosevelt can get her kitchen staff to eat three-penny, ha-penny meals, she can do more than I can with mine!”

  “Oh, I don’t know what she gives the servants,” the friend replied. “She gives them to the President—and he eats them like a lamb.”

  Malnutrition, Eleanor concluded, was not only a result of a lack of food, but often of a lack of knowledge of menus that cost little and had high nutritional value. She thought the White House should set an example in the use of simple and nourishing foods. “Perhaps because of the depression we may teach people how really to feed their children.”

  Bess Furman contrasted the news-conference styles of president and First Lady: “At the President’s press conference, all the world’s a stage; at Mrs. Roosevelt’s, all the world’s a school.”12

  Eleanor’s ban on political subjects did not mean a ban on issues of consequence and controversy. She hit out at sweatshops. She urged women to patronize the merchants who provided decent working conditions. She called for the elimination of child labor and urged more money for teachers’ salaries. When in April the foreign dignitaries came flocking to the White House to confer with the president on the forthcoming World Economic Conference, she startled her press conference with the passion of her anti-isolationist plea. “We ought to be able to realize what people are up against in Europe. We ought to be the ready-to-understand ones, and we haven’t been. . . . We’ve got to find a basis for a more stabilized world. . . . We are in an ideal position to lead, if we will lead, because we have suffered less. Only a few years are left to work in. Everywhere over there is the dread of this war that may come.” She spoke, wrote Emma Bugbee, with “an intensity her hearers had never seen in her before.”13

  With many of her press-conference regulars, what began as a professional relationship soon ripened into friendship. Before the inauguration, Ruby Black (Mrs. Herbert Little) had shown Eleanor a photograph of her fourteen-month-old daughter. Eleanor had said she would love to see the child, and Ruby had thought it was an expression of courtesy rather than of intent. A week after she was in the White House, however, Eleanor telephoned her—could she come the next day to visit Ruby? She did, driving her little blue roadster to Ruby’s house and making friends with the child. Newswomen found themselves being given lifts in the White House car, receiving Easter lilies from the White House greenhouses, lunching at the White House table, being invited to Hyde Park. Eleanor’s gestures of thoughtfulness were not matters of calculation, of “being nice to the press”; one natural act of friendliness led to another. But friendship did not encroach upon journalistic responsibility. The women asked the questions to which they or their editors felt the public was entitled to know the answers. When a reporter cautioned the First Lady that an answer might get her into trouble, her colleagues made their displeasure known; the First Lady could take care of herself, they felt. And she did.

  “Sometimes I say things,” she said to her press conference,

  which I thoroughly understand are likely to cause unfavorable comment in some quarters, and perhaps you newspaper women think I should keep them off the record. What you don’t understand is that perhaps I am making these statements on purpose to arouse controversy and thereby get the topics talked about and so get people to thinking about them.14

  Most of the correspondents were friendly—too friendly, some of the men grumbled. The women alerted her as to what was on the public’s mind and the questions she should be prepared to answer, and sometimes she consulted a few of them about the answers she proposed to give. Even the most “hard-boiled” were willing to help. This was, after all, a male-dominated capital and the women should stand together. Sometimes Eleanor blundered. Mrs. Mary Harriman Rumsey was running into public-relations difficulties as head of the Consumers Division of the National Recovery Administration, and Eleanor talked to Bess Furman and Martha Strayer, of the Washington News, about taking on second jobs, for which they would be paid, to help out Mrs. Rumsey. No, they told her regretfully; they were for the NRA and the whole New Deal, but accepting money from the government in any way could mean the loss of their jobs.15 Publicity and newspaper work were closely allied, but the line between them was sharply drawn, particularly in Washington. They were right and she was wrong, and she did not press the offer. Lorena Hickok, who suddenly realized that her close relationship with Mrs. Roosevelt was affecting her detachment as a journalist, resigned her job with the AP to work for Harry Hopkins in the new relief administration, but her intimacy with Mrs. Roosevelt was unique. Friendship was another matter. Most of the women reporters felt they could be friends with the mistress of the White House without losing their objectivity, and marveled that she wanted to be their friend. In a city where human relations were usually governed by a careful consideration of interests and motivations were usually suspect, Eleanor’s warmth and good will were refreshing. “I always thought when people were given great power it did something to them,” Martha Strayer wrote to Eleanor. “They lost the human touch if they ever had it. To have been able to see you at close hand, demonstrating the exact contrary, means truly a great deal to me.”16 A few weeks after the inauguration, the Gridiron Club, a male journalistic stronghold, gave its annual dinner, which was attended by the president and his cabinet but from which women were barred. Eleanor organized a Gridiron Widows buffet supper for newswomen, cabinet wives, and women in government. “God’s gift to newspaper women,” the feminine press fraternity murmured.

  What enchanted the press captivated the public. As First Lady, Eleanor’s approach to people great and small remained as it had always been: direct and unaffected, full of curiosity and a des
ire to learn—and to teach.

  On her return from a trip down the Potomac on the Sequoia with Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald and his daughter Ishbel as guests, she and Ishbel went on board a fishing schooner from Gloucester, Massachusetts, filled with fishing captains who had come to the Capital to ask for help for this “oldest industry.” She invited the skippers to visit the White House, and twenty-seven came, escorted by their congressman. Eleanor herself took them around, and after the tour of the public rooms invited them to go through the family quarters on the second floor. Down the wide hall the weather-beaten men trailed, peering into historic rooms as Eleanor opened the doors and told some of the history that had taken place in them. The men chortled when she hastily closed a door behind which she had spotted Anna sleeping, and concluded, as one skipper put it, “There ain’t too many ladies in her position who would have done what she did.”17

  A few weeks later she entertained Sara and the members of the Monday Evening Sewing Class at luncheon. Helen Wilmerding, a friend from the days of the Roser classes, was in the group. “All the old tribe we grew up with in New York have turned towards you like sunflowers,” she wrote Eleanor later. “At first they were naturally more anxious than other people as to how you would stand up against the difficulties of your position. You are one of them and they cared more. Now they are sunflowers I need say no more.” Eleanor appreciated Helen’s note “very much,” she replied, “for I felt the old crowd might disapprove of many things which I did.”18

  The “old crowd” was also somewhat astonished by the growing elegance of her clothes. In the twenties it had been fashionable to deplore Eleanor’s lack of interest in what she wore. It conformed with society’s stereotype of a strong-willed woman of good works to see her in bulky tweeds and a hair net, and to whisper that without a corset her stomach showed. Eleanor had dressed acceptably in the governorship years, but now the top couturiers of the country, who naturally wanted her patronage, pressed their advice and most stylish models upon her. If she did not devote more time than in the past to the selection of clothes, she was more willing to be guided by friends like June Hamilton Rhodes, who had helped in the campaign and now worked as a fashion publicist for the elegant Fifth Avenue shops. “I got a lot of clothes for myself and Anna in one afternoon last week,” Eleanor wrote Franklin three weeks before the inauguration. “It is better to have plenty and not buy any new ones for quite a while!”19 But the dress shops argued that such restraint in shopping did not help business recovery, and she evidently agreed, for in May, Lilly Daché shipped her six blue velvet hats “of the June Hamilton Rhodes material” and asked her to return those that did not please her entirely. “Mrs. Roosevelt kept all of the hats as she likes them all very much and would like to have you send a bill for them,” replied Malvina “Tommy” Thompson who had come to Washington as her secretary.