Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  William Laas, who edited her column, explained why he had deleted the sentence, “I must not go to sleep on my good ear or the telephone will ring indefinitely and I will not hear it.” The general public “can be very cruel,” he wrote, “and it is seldom wise to leave one’s self open to their gibes by revealing some personal idiosyncrasy.” No one ever is as inwardly composed as they outwardly appear, Eleanor once wrote, “but it is a very good thing to cling to appearances.”4

  She was outwardly controlled, so much so that she had seemed to Cissy Patterson to be the most serene woman in Washington, yet there was an occasional reminder “of untamed Nature.” An unknown writer felt it when she heard one of Eleanor’s great bursts of laughter over the absurdity of some situation. Her hearty laughter reflected a natural exuberance but it was also a release from the resentment of a strong nature when it feels hemmed in by circumstances. With two such strong personalities as Franklin and Eleanor, it was a wonder the household was not torn apart between the president’s realistic deference to what is and Eleanor’s spirited impatience for what ought to be. It was held together not only by respect and mutual understanding and the interests that they shared in their children and their own careers, but by their ability to find a release from strain and tension in laughter and entertainment.

  Louis, in addition to his other services to Franklin and Eleanor, had been a master of gaieties, and Eleanor, who had been his apprentice in this as in so many other things, carried on the tradition after he died. “I thought instead of making speeches at the dinner this year,” her invitation to the 1938 Cuff Links dinner read, “it would be amusing if each person would come either in costume or with something to present to the President as a reminder of some special incident, and the President will be asked to guess what the incident is. . . . The ladies as usual will leave the gentlemen free after dinner for their usual entertainments.” For Franklin’s 1939 birthday party she asked everyone to come prepared “with a forecast of what may happen to the President in the coming year. It will be a general fortune-telling party.”5

  She enjoyed organizing the birthday parties for Franklin and making them gay occasions with Franklin the focus of all the to-do, and she did the same for close friends. For Elinor Morgenthau’s birthday, she wrote Agnes Leach, “I am asking everyone to either write a poem or make a little speech to her on some event during the past year.” But her own birthdays she preferred to have celebrated with as little fuss as possible. Franklin usually gathered the friends she really cared about for a birthday dinner, “but I was always glad when I ceased to be the center of attention.”6 She was unable to enjoy the limelight the way her husband—and her mother-in-law—did. At the president’s birthday ball in New York City, Sara sat calmly amid a press of photographers in the glare of floodlamps enjoying “every bit of the commotion” that she caused, and when Helen Robinson left at 12:30 “she was still there, grand old war-horse that she is.”7

  At one of Franklin’s birthday parties at the White House Eleanor contributed some verse which she read while wearing a chef’s hat. It was a gentle apology to her husband because the menus at the White House were often not up to his gourmet standards.

  Ducks, deer, salmon,

  Turkey, pheasant, trout

  Quail, moose and reindeer

  All arriving by the ton

  May be eaten with a pout

  By the household, but the master

  Never, never has enough.

  On those who cook he’s pretty rough

  And when terrapin appears

  Till he tastes it we’re all ears

  Fearing something’s wrong again,

  But without these delicacies

  Life would lose full half its flavor

  So to the senders in these races

  For the Presidential favor

  Go his thanks and our apology

  Mistress, housekeeper, and cook we’re the sorry trilogy!

  Usually Eleanor could not admit that the White House menus were on the dull side and not what her husband wanted, yet it was a subject on which almost all guests and members of the family were agreed. Once Franklin stated his feelings in writing. The situation had improved, sizzled a memorandum to Eleanor, since he had protested being served chicken six times in one week; now he was getting sweetbreads—“about six times a week. I’m getting to the point where my stomach positively rebels and this does not help my relations with foreign powers. I bit two of them today.”

  One reason he wanted to be re-elected to a fourth term, he confided to Anna during the war years, and not wholly in jest, was “so I can fire Mrs. Nesbitt!” He was re-elected, James wrote, “but the housekeeper stayed on.” James’ account of his father’s sufferings at the hands of Mrs. Nesbitt was one of the few points in James’ book to which Eleanor took exception and asked her son to print her letter saying so. If the menus were not what the president wanted, it was her responsibility, since Mrs. Nesbitt submitted the menus to her; nor did Mrs. Nesbitt cook the food. “It was cooked by very competent cooks,” and while Eleanor conceded that they had not known at first how to cook game and terrapin, the president had brought a man in once who did, and the cooks had learned from him.8

  Partly, Franklin was a victim of the ascetic in Eleanor. She herself had little interest in food, she confessed, or, at heart, in other things that she considered time-wasting frippery. Once she distressed the nation’s hairdressers with a columnar quip, “And now like all other women I must waste my time, at the hairdressers!” Why “waste”? Ralph and Anna, the owners of a beauty shop, wanted to know. “We are as necessary as the milliner and dressmaker.” “My dear Ralph and Anna,” she hastily retreated, fearing she had dealt a blow to the nation’s economy:

  The hairdresser is not wasting time; it is I who sit doing nothing while she works or while the drier works. The same is true of the time spent at the milliner’s or dressmaker’s, but we can’t help wasting it and perhaps it is necessary for us all to do so now and then!9

  The puritan in her kept her from yielding to the frivolous and sensual as her husband could do on occasion. The Morgenthaus provided the champagne for one of her birthday parties; it had contributed to the gaiety of the occasion, her thank-you note said: “I think perhaps Franklin was more appreciative than I could have been, but I do know the champagne tasted very good.”

  It was not only that she punished herself by this form of self-denial but that she had to punish her husband. His very enjoyment of good food, high-living, and pleasure-loving company pushed her in the opposite direction. Such appetites were tied to the self-indulgent side of his nature from which she had suffered so greatly, as she had from her father’s and her brother’s, who was currently drinking himself to death.

  When guests came to the White House for a family dinner one of the ushers showed them their places at the table on a seating chart; when all the guests had assembled in the Red Room, Eleanor came down, greeted them, and led them into the family dining room to join the president, who was already seated.

  What went on at the executive-office side of the White House was controlled by Missy and the president’s secretaries—Mac, Steve, Pa Watson, Jimmy—but in the family quarters her understanding with Franklin was that she gave the orders to the social secretary, the housekeeper, and the ushers. Even the invitations to the president’s birthday dinners—the famous Cuff Links affairs—were left to her. “I am wondering,” wrote Steve Early, “because I know how much pleasure the President gets out of Colonel Watson, whether you could care to include him among those invited to the birthday dinner. He is always loads of fun.”10

  The seating plan symbolized Eleanor’s control of the social side of the White House, and she could mete out swift punishment to someone who tried to tamper with it. A Washington lobbyist whose ideas interested Eleanor and Franklin came for dinner, and when Mr. Crim, the usher, showed him the seating chart, the lobbyist expressed unhappiness that he was to sit some places removed from the presi
dent.

  “My dear Mr. G . . . :” Mrs. Roosevelt wrote him later:

  Mr. Crim tells me that you were extremely upset the other night because of the change I had made in the seating. However, you will remember I told you I would put you next to the President at dinner if I did not get you an appointment with him beforehand. Inasmuch as you had an appointment, I considered it was only fair that someone else should be given the opportunity to talk to the President at dinner.

  Mr. Crim says you remarked that you were not here entirely for pleasure, but because you were doing things for the President. I realize quite well that you have taken a great deal of trouble and have done several things. However, I think in all probability the benefits have not been entirely one-sided.

  In the future, I feel that it will be better for you to arrange your appointments with the President through Mr. McIntyre and keep them on a purely official basis.11

  The gentleman felt himself undone. “To know you is a privilege and a joy and whether you are Mistress at the White House or living in a little one story frame house in Central Kansas, it would always be a grand human experience to travel out there and visit with you as often as possible,” he wrote back hastily, giving his version of the incident. She appreciated his explanation, she replied, “and understand that your anxiety was caused by your desire to have a few minutes’ talk with the President,”12 but it was the end of their relationship.

  His mistake was not only one of good manners; in undertaking to rearrange her seating order, he had also revealed that all his professions of loyalty to her were an expedient way of reaching the president. Franklin’s charm was so overpowering, his instinct for predominance so strong, the power of his office so irresistible, that men and women who Eleanor thought were devoted to her and who shared her ideals often showed themselves more eager to have the president smile upon them when she introduced them into the White House circle than to stand with her for the principles they had previously voiced.

  The White House was in a sense divided into two households—the president’s and Eleanor’s. She was much amused, Eleanor wrote in her column, to see a newspaper caption under a photograph of Missy, Grace Tully, and Betsy Roosevelt sailing for Europe describing Grace as her secretary. “I fear the lady must be much annoyed for she much prefers the gentlemen to the ladies and her affiliation with the White House staff is on the President’s side.”13

  Both she and the president demanded a fierce and absolute loyalty from friends and associates. Harry Hopkins warned an attractive young woman for whom the president had shown a liking but who was a special friend of Eleanor’s to be careful: Mrs. Roosevelt could freeze if she felt you were succumbing to the president’s charm and abandoning her. He knew from personal experience, he added.14

  Harry’s introduction to the White House inner circle had been through Eleanor. It was she who had arranged occasions for the president to get to know him by having him and his wife Barbara, of whom Eleanor was very fond, visit Hyde Park and Campobello when the president was there. He was flattered by her constant calls. “Mrs. Roosevelt wants to see me about ‘lots of things,’ his diary for 1935 noted. The president, Louis, and Missy also were taken with Hopkins. Louis had found him “most congenial company,” Aubrey Williams observed, and Missy was “a very devoted follower of his.” During the 1936 campaign, Franklin gave Eleanor the impression that Harry might be his choice as Democratic candidate in 1940, and immediately after the election she began to press Franklin to act accordingly. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Harry were the only cabinet members she invited to the 1937 Cuff Links dinner and to her own birthday party. In 1938, she hinted at her advocacy of him as Franklin’s successor, writing in her column that Hopkins “seems to work because he has an inner conviction that his job needs to be done and that he must do it. I think he would be that way about any job which he undertook.” A few months later Roosevelt announced Hopkins’ appointment as secretary of commerce, an appointment that was widely heralded as designed to transform the warmhearted social worker into a hard-headed business-statesman and thus pave the way for the presidential nomination.15

  Another telling sign of Eleanor’s fondness for Harry was her solicitude for him and his five-year-old daughter, Diana, after Barbara died in 1937:

  This is just to remind you that we are counting on inviting you and Diana to stay with us over Christmas. Sara and Kate [James’ children] feel that Santa Claus will be less apt to overlook them if they stay at the White House than if they stay at home, so they will be here Christmas Eve and Diana will have company.16

  A memorandum Harry left for Diana underscored the closeness of their relationship:

  Just before Christmas in 1938 Mrs. Roosevelt came out to our house in Georgetown to see me. At that time I was feeling none too well. I had seen a great deal of Mrs. Roosevelt during the previous six months and the day she came out she told me she thought I seemed to be disturbed about something and wondered if it was a feeling that something might happen to me and that there was no proper provision for you. She told me that she had been thinking about it a good deal and wanted me to know that she would like for me to provide in my will that she, Mrs. Roosevelt, be made your guardian.17

  Harry was greatly relieved at this offer and made out his will accordingly, and Eleanor took care of Diana until Harry’s marriage to Louise Macy in July, 1942.

  In 1939 Harry’s health collapsed completely and he had to enter the Mayo clinic again; when he returned to Washington it was eight months before he could leave his Georgetown house. Eleanor and Missy kept him “in touch with Roosevelt’s state of mind through frequent telephone calls and visits.”18

  She had seen Harry, Missy reported to Eleanor when she and the president came to Val-Kill for a Sunday lunch in January, 1940. He still seemed to feel he might run for president that year, Missy said, and someone should tell him that his health put it out of the question; perhaps four years later. Missy lamented that he was seeing too few people, and Eleanor agreed with her. Both women spoke affectionately of him.19

  Missy was right about his health. On May 10, 1940, Hopkins went to dinner at the White House. “He was feeling miserable,” wrote Sherwood, “and Roosevelt prevailed upon him to stay overnight. He remained, living in what had been Lincoln’s study, for three and a half years.”20

  Mrs. Roosevelt would never admit it, Tommy said, but once he was in the White House Harry dropped her and transferred his complete loyalty to the president.21

  Harry’s companionship and help, even before he moved into the White House, filled much of the void that had been left in Franklin’s life by Louis Howe’s death, and Eleanor approved and encouraged it. But Louis had been her ally and confidant as well as Franklin’s. She had inscribed Louis’ copy of It’s Up to the Women: “Dear Louis, Always my most helpful critic & best adviser.” She hoped that Harry would play a similar role and, as Louis had done, hold the two sides of the White House together and instead of reinforcing the division there would help to heal it.

  But Louis, as she noted, had helped to shape Franklin, had been his friend and counselor before he was surrounded by the aura of the presidency, while Harry, a younger man than the president, was shaped by him. On occasion Louis swore at the president and hung up the telephone on him. Harry had to tread warily. What Eleanor failed to acknowledge was that she, too, was a very different person from the insecure, inexperienced woman she had been in 1921 when Louis took her in hand. Louis said things to her that no one else could, and she had a greater respect for his political judgment than for any other man’s except Franklin’s. She, too, regarded herself as Harry’s teacher, not his pupil, in politics. “In Harry Hopkins my husband found some of the companionship and loyalty Louis had given him,” she wrote, “but not the political wisdom and careful analysis of each situation.” She thought that Franklin might have avoided some of the mistakes of the 1938 purge if Louis had been around, and she wrote May Craig that “we wish with you that Harry Hopkins had not s
aid a word about the primaries anywhere, but I haven’t the faintest idea who urged him to.” Mrs. Roosevelt still was “off of Harry,” Ickes rejoiced in his diary after Roosevelt’s election to a third term, and when she gets back from her lecture trip “she will put Harry in his place.” Ickes lamented that the president was isolating himself “more and more” and that Harry, who played up to the president, was the only liberal seeing him.22

  Harry, Eleanor wrote later, “frequently agreed with the president regardless of his own opinions, or tried to persuade him in indirect ways.” When the president discussed a course of action with Harry, Sam Rosenman, or any of his own people and came to a conclusion, the discussion was closed. “That was not true with Eleanor. She stuck to it,” said Rosenman. She had seen many people go in to talk with the president, prepared to tell him how much they disagreed with him: “They went in,” Eleanor wrote, “but if I had a chance to see them as they came out, they usually looked at me blankly and behaved as though they never disagreed at all.”23

  “There were only two people who stood up to Franklin,” Eleanor once said to Henry Morgenthau, Jr.; “you and Louis.” Morgenthau demurred. “No, you are wrong. There were three people—Louis, myself and Eleanor Roosevelt.” But Henry was as careful as Harry not to give Roosevelt the impression that he was in league with “the Missus.” Henry’s wife, Elinor, suffered keenly because she felt that the president kept her at arm’s length. Once when she was sitting next to him at Sunday lunch she confronted him with her worry. “I want you to know that I am not a bearer of tales from your entourage to Mrs. Roosevelt’s. I don’t even report to my husband, nor does Henry tell me what goes on in your entourage.”