by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets;History of the World's Most Famous Home
That first Lincoln Bedroom remained in the northwest corner during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. One of its longtime tenants was FDR’s close friend and adviser Louis Howe. Some years earlier it had been the room where Grover Cleveland’s daughter, Esther, was born and where TR’s daughter, Alice, was operated on for appendicitis. Some years later it became my sitting room after another history-minded president, Harry S Truman, aided and abetted by his wife, Bess, moved the furniture to its present location and installed other pieces of Victoriana from the White House storerooms to create what is essentially a shrine to our sixteenth president. At least that’s the official story.
The truth of the matter is I started the whole thing. Before we moved into the White House, Mother and I made an inspection tour. We had no trouble selecting the pair of rooms on the second floor that would be my bailiwick. The space was perfect, but the decor left a lot to be desired. (I don’t think I used the word hideous, but I may have. You have to remember I was only twenty-one.)
In any case, I made it clear that the dark, clunky furniture that was cluttering up my future sitting room had to go. Preferably as far away as possible. Happily, Mother agreed with me. She took up the matter with Dad and the result was the present, and now famous, Lincoln Bedroom at the opposite end of the White House.
II
The second most famous White House guest room is also one of the prettiest: the Queens’ Bedroom, which is just across the hall from the Lincoln Bedroom. This was the president’s secretary’s bedroom when the job was a live-in post. During the Lincoln administration it was shared by John Hay and John George Nicolay—and I’ll bet any amount of money it would never have been called pretty.
The room was converted into a guest room after the White House renovation of 1902. It became known as the Rose Room because the curtains and bed hangings were in shades of red, rose, and white. The Rose Room was rechristened in 1942 after a parade of royal refugees bedded down there. Among them: Queens Wilhelmina and Juliana of the Netherlands, Queen Frederika of Greece, Queen Sonya of Norway, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, and her daughter, Princess Anne.
Queen Elizabeth II made her first visit to the White House during the Eisenhower administration in 1957. (She had previously visited Washington as Princess Elizabeth and stayed with Mother and Dad at Blair House.) For Mrs. Eisenhower, the queen’s visit was the high point of her husband’s presidency and the Queens’ Bedroom became almost sacred territory. When Jack Kennedy was elected to the presidency, Jackie made a study of the White House floor plan to see which rooms they could use while the family quarters were being redecorated. “Please put me in the Queens’ Room,” she told Chief Usher J. B. West, “and my husband will stay in the Lincoln Bedroom.”
West passed the word along to the White House staff but when Inauguration Day dawned and the departing first lady read in the papers that her successor would sleep in the Queens’ Bedroom, she was quite perturbed. Mrs. Eisenhower thought the Queens’ Bedroom should be reserved solely for queens. Jackie didn’t qualify.
III
The visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England in June of 1939 was a momentous occasion. It was the first time a British monarch had set foot in the former colonies. The royal couple came at President Franklin Roosevelt’s invitation—an effort on FDR’s part to send a signal to Adolf Hitler that the two countries had a special relationship that could lead to trouble if Hitler decided to declare war on England.
The imminent arrival of these ultimate royals touched off a frenzy of activity in the White House. Rugs and draperies were replaced or dry-cleaned and the staff waxed floors and dusted furniture until everything gleamed to housekeeper Henrietta Nesbitt’s satisfaction.
The king and queen spent a mere forty-four hours in the White House and, as you might expect, they behaved like proper houseguests. Their servants, however, were a different story. They ensconced themselves on the third floor and proceeded to treat the staff as if they were their servants. They demanded menus so they could order their meals as if they were in a hotel and haughtily explained that in Buckingham Palace they had their own servants to tend to their needs. Needless to say, this did not sit well with their counterparts in the former colonies. Chief Usher Howell Crim had to use all the diplomacy he could muster to avert a second American revolution.
IV
When Winston Churchill came to visit Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, shortly after the United States entered World War II, he stayed in the Rose Room. Churchill, who could easily qualify as the houseguest from hell, tried a couple of other rooms before consenting to sleep in the one that had been assigned to him.
The British prime minister’s visit was shrouded in secrecy. A few days after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt asked his wife for a list of the people who were coming to the White House over Christmas but gave no indication of why he wanted to know. Not until December 22 did Eleanor discover the reason for the president’s query. That day, FDR casually announced that Churchill would arrive around nightfall. The secrecy had been necessary to guarantee Mr. Churchill’s safety.
When the British leader arrived, complete with cigar, he found the Roosevelts ready to offer him and his entourage tea in the West Hall on the second floor. “But they preferred more stimulating refreshments,” Mrs. Roosevelt noted.
Churchill’s preferences continued to be at odds with his host’s and hostess’s. FDR was inclined to go to bed early and rise at a reasonable hour. Churchill was used to working until three A.M. and sleeping late. Eleanor Roosevelt reported that it took “Franklin several days to catch up on his sleep after Mr. Churchill left.”
The prime minister made several visits to the White House, often staying as long as two or three weeks. He was an unpredictable and demanding guest. A team of White House staffers had to be assigned to get him the food and drink that he might ask for at any time. He also tended to take baths at odd hours and to rush up and down the corridors in his dressing gown.
In his memoirs, Churchill claimed that his and FDR’s “work patterns coincided.” They both were in the habit of doing “much of our work in bed,” so they frequently visited each other’s bedrooms to discuss outstanding problems. One of these visits produced a memorable scene. FDR unceremoniously pushed open Churchill’s door and wheeled himself into the room to find the prime minister in the altogether. Churchill gave him a cheerful grin and said: “You see, Mr. President, I have nothing to hide!”
On another evening, Churchill decided his room was overheated and tried to open one of the White House windows. The window, which probably hadn’t been opened in decades, resisted. The prime minister kept at it with mighty grunts— and suddenly felt an excruciating pain in his chest. He summoned an aide, who in turn summoned a doctor, who told the great man he had strained his heart, and if he wasn’t more careful, he could become the war’s best-known casualty. Thereafter, when a window needed opening, the PM called on the White House staff.
The English leader’s 1941 visit added a profoundly touching dimension to that first Christmas of World War II. The traditional community Christmas tree was set up on the South Lawn and an enormous crowd gathered behind the iron fence to watch the lighting. They cheered when the tree came aglow. Both leaders gave brief speeches from the South Portico. Churchill’s talk summed up the struggle against Hitler in a few unforgettable words:
Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.
Deeply moved, the crowd began singing Christmas carols. Those who were there remembered the scene as one of the most unforgettable moments of their lives. It remains an imperishable part of the White House’s glory—and mor
e than made up for Churchill’s deficiencies as a houseguest.
V
If there had been a Lincoln Bedroom back in 1824, one of its denizens definitely would have been the Marquis de Lafayette. President James Monroe had invited the Revolutionary War hero to cross the Atlantic to help the country celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution.
Lafayette spent the year after his arrival traveling through all twenty-four states and being fêted at dinners and balls in almost every town he passed through. By the time the old warrior returned to Washington in the summer of 1825, James Monroe was no longer in office. The marquis, dressed in his Continental Army uniform, was greeted at the White House by President John Quincy Adams, and invited to stay for as long as he pleased.
First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams was appalled. It meant she had to turn most of her family out of their beds to accommodate Lafayette and his party. She also had to find room for the staggering amount of luggage they brought with them, much of it gifts collected on their grand tour. One item that added to Louisa’s consternation was a live alligator. The creature and the rest of the booty were stored in the East Room while the marquis enjoyed the final phase of his triumphal tour.
On September 6, 1825, Lafayette’s sixty-eighth birthday, President Adams gave a farewell dinner to the nation’s guest in the State Dining Room. The table was as splendid as the White House steward could make it. The speeches rang with patriotic fervor. At one point, the two men were so carried away, they burst into tears and embraced. The president summed up the meaning of the grand occasion in his closing words:
“We shall always look upon you as belonging to us. . . . You are ours . . . by that tie of love, stronger than death, which has linked your name for the endless ages of time with the name of Washington.”
VI
In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary released the following statement to the press: “Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee, Alabama, dined with the president last evening.” Washington was a distinguished educator and author of the popular book Up from Slavery.
Across the country, especially in the South, headlines erupted in dozens of newspapers. With them came angry editorials, denouncing Roosevelt for daring to cross the “color line.” The incident was a dismaying example of American racism in full, ugly bloom. Roosevelt had no large agenda in mind when he issued the invitation. He had simply heard Washington was in town and invited him to dinner, as he invited many other celebrities he wanted to meet. He also wanted to “show some respect to a man whom I cordially esteem as a good citizen and a good American.” Roosevelt was finding out very early in his presidency how outspoken about certain issues the public could be. He never invited Washington or any other black American again.
Almost thirty years later, a courageous first lady, Lou Hoover, made another attempt to bring racial equality to the White House and found herself in similar hot water. She invited Mrs. Oscar DePriest, wife of an African-American congressman from Chicago, to the White House for tea.
Southern newspapers accused the first lady of “desecrating” the White House. The Texas legislature passed a resolution denouncing her. Sulfurous letters cascaded into the White House mail room. But Lou Hoover stood her ground. After carefully screening the other guests she had invited to the tea, she decided to split the group in half. The women who said they would be pleased to meet Mrs. DePriest were invited to one party, the naysayers to the second.
Years later, Herbert Hoover recalled that the incident had left his wife feeling wounded and appalled. But the president showed that he, too, had the right stuff. He coolly invited Dr. Robert R. Moton, Booker T. Washington’s successor as president of the Tuskegee Institute, to have lunch with him a few months later.
VII
I don’t have any exact figures but I’m willing to bet that World War II produced the greatest number of VIP White House sleepovers of all time. Security concerns made it advisable for FDR to confer with world leaders at the mansion and their conferences were more easily arranged, and less subject to scrutiny by the press, if the leaders stayed there, too.
The White House logbooks of the era list, among others, the king of Greece, the king of Yugoslavia, the president of the Philippines, the president of Peru, and the prime contender for Winston Churchill’s title of houseguest from hell: Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The imperious and temperamental wife of China’s embattled Nationalist leader, General Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Chiang was a Wellesley graduate who spoke excellent English and was her husband’s partner in political and diplomatic affairs. She was also as willful as any blueblood in her expectations and demands.
Madame Chiang refused to sleep twice on the same sheets. Even when she retired for a brief nap, which she did several times a day, she wanted the entire bed changed. She brought along her own silk sheets, which had to be washed by hand and stitched into the heavy quilted bag she had also brought with her. Howell Crim, the chief usher, gave Madame Chiang a secret nickname: the China Doll. Other members of the staff called her Mrs. Generalissimo, because of the way she ordered them around.
Madame traveled with an entourage of forty. Some of them were given rooms on the third floor, others slept at the Chinese embassy. On the second floor, beds were found for Madame’s personal maid; her nephew and bodyguard, Mr. Kung; and a second nephew also named Kung.
As it turned out, the second Mr. Kung’s clothes and haircut were deceptive. A valet who was sent upstairs to help him unpack came flying back to Chief Usher Crim’s office to report in horror: “Your Mr. Kung is a girl!”
Miss Kung proved to be as much of a pain as her famous aunt. She not only made demands, she delivered them directly to the first lady. An exasperated Eleanor Roosevelt finally called the chief usher’s office: “Mr. Crim,” she said, “will you please explain to Miss Kung that she is to call you if she needs anything? She pops into my room a dozen times a day!”
Apparently the chief usher was not high enough in rank for Miss Kung. She transferred her complaints to the State Department, who solved the problem by moving her to a suite at the Mayflower Hotel.
Madame Chiang stayed at the White House more than once. She got along well with the president and she was an effective spokesperson for her country, but the only good thing the staff could say about her was that she was a very generous tipper.
VIII
During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, the White House had a number of more or less permanent houseguests. In May 1940, FDR was meeting with his closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, and invited him to stay for dinner. Hopkins became ill during the meal and FDR offered him a bed for the night. Three years later, Hopkins was still using it. His young daughter, Diana, whose mother had recently died, was given a bedroom on the third floor, adding another member to the household.
Harry Hopkins’s room was one of the state guest rooms on the southeast side of the house, which later became the Lincoln Bedroom. When the Hopkinses moved to a house in Georgetown in 1943, the Roosevelts’ daughter, Anna Boettiger, and her family took over their quarters.
A great many of Eleanor Roosevelt’s houseguests were women she had met in the course of working on the various causes she supported. I’m sure the women were all very high-minded but at least one of them had a dark side. The guest, who shall remain nameless because the teller of the tale, Alonzo Fields, was too discreet to reveal it, was having trouble closing her suitcase and asked one of the maids to do it while she went down to breakfast.
The maid had to rearrange the woman’s clothes, and in the course of repacking them she discovered a fourteen-inch silver tray that had been bought for the White House in 1898 and bore the inscription “The President’s House.”
The maid called Fields and asked him what she should do about it. “Maybe Mrs. Roosevelt gave the tray to her,” the maid suggested. “Should I tell the chief usher?”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Fields advised. “Just give it to me and I’ll take it back to the kitchen.”
The maid was still concerned. Suppose the woman discovered the tray was not in her bag and wanted to know what happened to it?
Fields laughed and said, “The lady will never question you about this, and if she ever returns as a guest she will be ashamed to look you in the eye.”
I’m sure that’s true, but I’m also sure that if the woman ever returned as a guest, Fields kept an extra sharp eye on the silver.
IX
These days, when someone does something remarkable, he or she may be invited to the White House for a handshake and a photo op with the president, but that’s usually about as far as it goes. The world moved at a slower pace back in 1931, which explains why a sixteen-year-old boy from Kiowa County, Colorado, was able to spend four full days at the White House as a guest of President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover.
The boy, Bryan Untiedt, had become a national hero for saving the lives of a group of younger children when they were trapped in a school bus during a blizzard. He had kept them awake and moving to prevent them from freezing to death until they were finally rescued thirty hours later.
Whoever made the arrangements for Bryan’s visit to the White House had neglected to tell Mrs. Hoover. She was dismayed to discover that he was due to arrive on the same day as the king and queen of Siam. Not very convenient. On the other hand, the White House has coped with far worse crises.