It was a speech the girls understood, delivered with such earnestness and evident good will that even the most hardened yielded to its spell. “My prediction was correct,” Dr. Harris wrote her afterward; “many of the girls have referred to it and quoted from it to me, and what I hear myself is only a small part of the comment it aroused.”12
Her speeches held her listeners because they reflected her own efforts to think through to what was right and true. “You talk the language of the new America,” wrote Frank P. Graham, the president of the University of North Carolina, after her talk at the university. A Negro woman, explaining her willingness to wait an hour and a quarter to get into one of Mrs. Roosevelt’s lectures, put it more colloquially: “She’s got a message. And gosh! she’s given it to ’em hot!”13
By the end of 1935 Eleanor was in such demand as a speaker by forums and other groups accustomed to paying fees that she signed a contract with W. Colston Leigh to do two lecture tours a year under his management at a fee of $1,000 per lecture. The Leigh brochure advertised five subjects on which she was willing to speak:
RELATIONSHIP OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE COMMUNITY
PROBLEMS OF YOUTH
THE MAIL OF A PRESIDENT’S WIFE
PEACE
A TYPICAL DAY AT THE WHITE HOUSE
One thousand dollars was a large fee, larger than she would have commanded—at least at the outset—had she not been the president’s wife, and since she did not feel obligated to turn over the whole of these fees to the American Friends Service Committee, some saw this as further proof that she commercialized and cheapened the First Ladyship. But she shrugged off such criticism, sensing perhaps that no one had done more to ennoble the First Lady’s role; and if people came to her lectures because they were curious about the First Lady, they stayed and felt they had obtained their money’s worth because of the personality with which they had come in contact.
Her first tour for Leigh began with an appearance at Grand Rapids, “and as usual I was very nervous until I found myself standing up and actually speaking.” A confidential report to Leigh from his own correspondent in Grand Rapids was ecstatic. The audience of 1,700 to 1,800 “listened intently to every word.” The observer noted that Eleanor was especially admired for the “dignified, authoritative manner” with which she handled all questions, including those meant to embarrass her. “Of course, everyone was amazed at all that she was able to do in a few hours that she was in the city. . . . I am sure that she won over all of the Republicans who heard her that evening, and there were many.”14
Eleanor liked Leigh because he was “hard-boiled” and sought to protect his lecturers from being overwhelmed by local hospitality, but Leigh’s best efforts to shield her were unavailing. “All goes well but very hectically,” she wrote Franklin. “It would be easy to be a lecturer or the wife of the President but both, Oh! my.” She was to speak in Omaha on a Sunday evening to the Delphians, and would like to have a “quiet day,” Tommy advised the local committee. A sympathetic reporter described that “quiet day.” It began with Eleanor and Tommy’s arrival by train at 7:00 A.M., when they were met by a half dozen Delphians and given flowers. En route to the hotel they were trailed by two detectives who kept themselves out of sight because Eleanor’s distaste for bodyguards was by now well known. At 10:30, after they had bathed and breakfasted, Tommy let in the press for a half-hour’s questioning. As they filed out, a delegation of WPA supervisors came in. “This time,” the reporter noted, “Mrs. Roosevelt asked the questions.” They were succeeded by representatives of the National Youth Administration, who invited her to inspect an exhibit of NYA handicrafts, which she did after lunch, donning low-heeled oxfords because she insisted on walking to the exhibit. An hour later, having changed to an afternoon dress, she met some forty Delphians at tea. Then came a group of women Democrats. After dinner in her suite alone with Tommy when she wrote her column, she looked in on a private party at the hotel, toured an exhibit in the hotel of bug extermination devices on display for the convention of the National Pest Control Association, and, thus “rested,” wrote the reporter, “the First Lady left at 7:45 for the city auditorium to give the speech for which she had come to Omaha.”15
In 1937, Leigh persuaded her to do the first three-week tour. A “bit too long,” she confessed to Bess Furman afterward. “Two weeks is all I can do in one-night stands and keep feeling polite towards the people who meet you at seven a.m. with bouquets and flowers and expect you to wear a smile!” Sometimes the hotels were poor, she wrote her husband, and sometimes, as was the case with the Danville, Illinois, hotel from which she was writing, they were “delightful. When they like you we get much attention. When they don’t we are completely neglected!” Yet exhausting as these tours were, when local sponsors wanted to make special arrangements for her, she objected. The lecture committee in Jackson, Mississippi, distressed to learn there would be no Pullman car from Meridian to Jackson, were arranging for a special car when Eleanor wired, “I do not mind riding in day coaches. Please do not put yourself or the railroad to extra expense.”16
She might gently complain to her husband, to Bess, or to Tommy, but to those receiving her it was their comfort, their feelings that were always paramount with her. At Oak Park Junior College in Illinois she had been told that the subject of her speech would be “Peace” and was prepared to speak on that when she suddenly heard the chairman announce, “Mrs. Roosevelt will speak on ‘A Citizen’s Responsibility to the Community.’” She had no notes but went right ahead, saying “a little prayer that I would get through without them!” He was grateful, the embarrassed man wrote afterward, for her “courtesy in not changing the subject matter after I had announced it and the ability with which you handled the surprise subject.”17
Women, of course, were interested in what she wore and how she carried herself. “I have seen five queens, and this queen is regal,” remarked a cultivated Frenchman who watched her model a gown at a debutante cotillion. Dress designers chose her as “the best dressed woman in the United States” in 1934. “To have that title,” she commented, especially in the light of her family’s feeling that she never paid sufficient attention to her clothes, had been one of the “funniest” but also one of the “grandest” things that had happened to her. “I have come to the conclusion,” she advised dress designer Lilly Loscher, “that a dress for this type of trip should be low cut but should have very thin sleeves coming over the shoulder which would not interfere with having a long-sleeved jacket to go with it. It should either be of lace or some crepe material which does not require a lining and which does not crush. If it is lace and has to have lining, the lining should be put into the dress because it is very annoying to have a lot of little snaps to keep straps together across the shoulders.”18
She had a cultivated diction and pronounced her words with a singular clarity, although a few patriots objected to her preference for “shedule” to “skedule.” Her platform voice was no longer a monotone but an instrument of shading and cadence, capable of a controlled intensity or easy relaxation. But it remained high-pitched until she was taken in hand by Mrs. Elizabeth von Hesse, a voice teacher: “Our Dear First Lady—may I speak frankly and to the point? I am a teacher of speech, particularly of tone production. . . . Mrs. Roosevelt, if I were permitted I would give you a simple set of exercises for the development of resonance and depth of tone that would give you richness of quality. You could project your voice without losing any of its beauty.” The exercises were such that she could do them while dressing, even while riding. Eleanor was about to reply that she was “too busy” but changed her mind. What would they cost and what did Mrs. von Hesse think could be accomplished in two or three days “if I gave you an hour each day?” Not everything could be done in one week end, Mrs. von Hesse replied, but a set of exercises and speech habits could be established that would give her more effective use of her resonant chambers on which depended the richness of tone and would help her achieve “better d
iaphragm control.”19
Mrs. von Hesse came down, charging $50 for the week end, and within a few months Eleanor was being congratulated on the improvement. Her voice did “carry better and more easily,” Eleanor agreed, but she was playing truant from her exercises when she traveled: “I could probably exercise my head and my voice, but my body is out of the question because trains and hotel rooms do not lend themselves to space enough and there is a feeling the floor may not be clean which may have something to do with it.”20
Because of her success with Eleanor Roosevelt, Mrs. von Hesse’s professional reputation boomed, but when Mrs. von Hesse discussed with Colston Leigh lecturing under his management, Eleanor hastily wrote “I would not want to be used as Exhibit A, with a comparison of my defects and improvements,” adding, however, that it was “quite all right for you to state in your publicity that I have had lessons from you.”21
A “one-season-wonder” in the lecture field, Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen wrote disparagingly in their newspaper column, “Washington Merry-Go-Round.” As reporting, this was wildly inaccurate, since in November, 1938, when the column appeared, Eleanor had been lecturing for three years; as prophecy it was even worse since until nearly the end of her life she was one of Colston Leigh’s most sought-after speakers. Evidently Pearson and Allen recognized their blunder because a few months later they wrote that “a check-up of Mrs. Roosevelt’s lecture audiences shows that she has definitely made friends for her husband, despite large fees charged by her agent.” The columnists particularly admired the way she subjected herself to a “grueling fire of questions” after her lecture, and her effective replies. In Akron, Ohio, she was asked, “Do you think your husband’s illness has affected your husband’s mentality?” Except for a slight firmness about her jaw, she betrayed no emotion as she read out the question, and replied: “I am glad that question was asked. The answer is Yes. Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.”22 The audience rose and gave her an ovation.
Because she spoke from notes rather than from a text she had to think about what she was saying, and this kept her speeches “a little fresher,” she thought, and prevented her from becoming bored.23
The naturalness, good sense, and spiritual energy, which made her a durable presence on the lecture circuit, also explained her success as a newspaper columnist. Two months after her arrival in Washington the United Feature Syndicate asked her to do a daily two-hundred-word article “on topics of general interest with particular emphasis on the home.” Regretfully she had turned it down because of prior commitments to the North American Newspaper Alliance and to the Woman’s Home Companion. In 1934 the latter publication, on its own initiative, increased her fee, but in 1935 it decided that “two years was about as long a time as we should continue a special feature of this type.”
A few months later the United Feature Syndicate renewed its invitation to do a daily column, a diary of some four hundred to five hundred words in length. “When do I start?” was Eleanor’s speedy reaction; her second question was, “What’s my deadline?”24 On December 31, 1935, she sent off her first piece of copy, carefully marking it PRESS RATES COLLECT.
No columnist had a more newsworthy setting or a more fascinating cast of characters upon whom to report. Her first column described the White House family quarters teeming with young people during the Christmas holidays. Her husband was in bed with a cold, she reported, “so I said a polite good night to everyone at seven-thirty, closed my door, lit my fire, and settled down to a nice long evening by myself.” There had been sixteen that day for lunch, and one young guest had burst out, “Every meal is different in this house. Yesterday we talked about philosophies of government. Today we have talked about movies and punging.” Eleanor did not explain, although a good reporter would have, that “punging” is a form of sleighing. The discussion about philosophies of government had been occasioned by Franklin Jr. and John who, in discussing a sociology course at Harvard they were taking with Professors Zimmerman and Boldyraeff, had described the professors as being highly critical of the AAA, whereupon the president had suggested inviting the professors to dinner so they could confront Henry Wallace and Chester Davis. Eleanor’s concluding comment revealed that she was not going to shun controversy: “There are so many things which you do not have to consider if you are developing and studying a thing in a classroom. . . . It is quite different to be faced with actual situations that have to be met in one way or another in a given period of time.”25
It soon became evident that her appeal as a columnist was not based only on her relationship to the president. Readers were enchanted with the personality that disclosed itself in little flashes such as “I sallied forth and in two brief hours ordered all my Winter clothes” or how she had spent “half an hour having a whole new monetary system thrust upon me,” or how, when speaking about the District Training School for Delinquent Girls, she had stated, “Never have I seen an institution called a ‘school’ which had so little claim to that name.” She discoursed on plays and books, expressing her judgments crisply and unambiguously. “Crude in a way because the thoughts hit you like hammer blows,” she said of Irwin Shaw’s anti-war play Bury the Dead, “but it was a great performance.” “One line from S. N. Behrman’s play End of Summer will stick in my head for a long time—‘At the end of every road you meet yourself.’” She had just finished Santayana’s The Last Puritan: “There is altogether too much concentration on himself in Oliver’s makeup. He was a fine character but missed, I think, the greatest fineness which is the ability to minimize your own importance even to yourself.” John Golden was “funny” when he said there will never be any great women writers in the theater “because women do not know as much as men.” The assumption of male superiority amused her “because as a rule women know not only what men know, but much that men will never know. For how many men really know the heart and soul of a woman?”26
She stayed away from politics but sometimes could not resist a gentle if oblique thrust. When the Supreme Court climaxed a series of rulings cutting down New Deal measures with its decision holding the AAA unconstitutional, she painted this picture of a relaxed reaction in the White House: she had gone down to the White House swimming pool for what she thought would be “a rather quiet and subdued swim at six o’clock. . . . My husband was already in the water, and before I reached the door, I dropped my wrapper, plunged into the water, and swimming about very quietly, I inquired hesitatingly how they were all feeling. To my complete surprise instead of either discouragement or even annoyance, I was told that everyone was feeling fine, and on that note we finished our swim.” At dinner instead of the events of the day they discussed, violently, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, and the Renaissance. At midnight she went in to say good night: “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”27
It was a picture of grace under pressure and at that moment of constitutional crisis her portrait of a steady-handed, non-vindictive president was worth more than a score of political pronouncements. As Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote two years later, after the tension-filled days of the Munich crisis, “No one should underestimate the reassuring effect on public opinion of the figure of the many-sided father of a family who slips in and out of the diary of the accomplished White House character who manages to sublimate the typical American woman in the person of the First Lady of the Land.”28
Sometimes readers complained because Eleanor refused to be a pundit or to deal with serious matters all the time. “I am asked to write a diary and I cannot write on politics,” she replied to one such critic; “I simply tell small human happenings which may interest or amuse the average reader. . . . Daily happenings are trivial, certainly, and not worth your time to read, but it may help some people to feel that lives they think must be important are after all filled with homely little things.” To another faultfinder she wrote, “I learned a long time ago that too
much crusading for any cause is almost as bad as too little. People get weary of too much preaching.”29
She loved doing her column and longed to be accepted as part of the newspaper fraternity. She noted approvingly that at a Hyde Park picnic “before long we had to find a quiet spot where Mr. [Heywood] Broun could write his column.” She wrote and filed her column under the most adverse circumstances; neither illness, travel, nor crowded calendars were permitted to interfere. She would arrive late in the day, she informed Flora Rose, the head of Cornell’s Home Economics Department, and would ask if she could have a stenographer when she arrived “as I will have to do my daily column and get it off right away.” When winter storms forced her to take a train rather than fly to Washington after visiting her daughter Anna in Seattle, her biggest worry was where would she file her column: “Yesterday all wires were down along the railroad for almost five hours and I thought I would never get my column filed in time. Today I’m taking no chances and am getting it off while we wait. . . . It is good for my typing anyway, as I have to do it myself, but I am a bit sorry for those who have to read it.” On another occasion she dictated the column to Tommy, who was balancing her typewriter on her lap while Elliott drove them from Denton to Fort Worth, Texas.30
In September, 1936, she came down with the grippe and a fever so high that Franklin canceled some campaign speeches to hurry back to the White House to be with her. Who was doing Mrs. Roosevelt’s column? he asked Tommy, and said he would be very glad to do it for her. “His offer was deeply appreciated,” Eleanor reported to her readers. “We want to pass it on to you so that you will realize what you missed, but we refused courteously and rapidly knowing that if it once became the President’s column we would lose our readers and that would be very sad.”31
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