Lorena then made a decision that ultimately would prove to be the biggest miscalculation of her life: She resigned from the Associated Press.
That decision meant that Hick was forfeiting her identity as a pioneering newswoman and her daily bylines that had, for twenty years, provided the sustenance that had given meaning to her life. In 1933, however, career sacrifices were irrelevant to Lorena; Eleanor’s well-being was paramount in her life. Lorena officially left the world of journalism in June and began her new job as soon as she and Eleanor returned from French Canada in late July. In that job, Lorena was to traverse the country to gauge the effectiveness of the nation’s relief programs and then write detailed reports on her findings for Hopkins, identifying which programs were working and which were not. Hoping that Lorena’s vivid snapshots of America’s suffering multitudes would touch the hearts of even the most recalcitrant of New Deal opponents, Hopkins sent copies to the senators and congressmen whose support the Roosevelt administration so desperately needed in this era of social revolution. Lorena also sent copies of her reports to Eleanor, who often showed them to Franklin. After seeing how compelling Lorena’s reports were, FDR read them out loud at Cabinet meetings.
Regarding ER and Hick’s relationship, Lorena’s new job kept them apart for weeks—sometimes months—at a time. Between her fact-finding trips, though, Lorena lived at the White House. During those respites, which varied from a few days to several weeks, she slept on a maple daybed—a Val-Kill piece Eleanor gave her—in the room adjoining the first lady’s bedroom.
This chapter contains the earliest correspondence from Lorena. As did Eleanor, Lorena wrote her letters at the end of the day and often while lying in bed.
When Eleanor wrote this letter, she was vacationing on Cape Cod with Anna, Anna’s children, and Louis Howe. The first paragraph filled with references to John Boettiger and his public activities with Anna and her children suggests that Eleanor fully accepted and supported her daughter’s relationship with Boettiger, even though Anna was still married to Curtis Dall.
[September 6]
[Cape Cod]
Dearest, It was nice to find your letter here. I started the day by signing mail from 7-8 then Tommy came from 9-9:20 & then Nan [Cook] & drove up & saw “Sisty” [Eleanor Dall, Anna’s daughter] drive her pony in the show and win a red ribbon—was she proud? She fairly beamed. I stayed to see John show New Deal [Boettiger’s horse] but he won nothing so 1 blue for New Deal & a 4th for John & Anna riding as a pair is all they have won so far. There is a different kind of beauty here from any we have seen this summer & sometime you & I must go up the Cape to-gether.
How funny you are about your reports, of course they are good, absorbingly interesting. F.D.R. told me he wished your letters could be published! He is hard to please and always asks if I’ve anything to read from you.
I am glad I took this jaunt tho’ I wasn’t keen to do it, it would have been easy to stay put but I think it is a pleasure to Louis [Howe].
Only Friday, Sat. Sun. & Mon. & we will be to-gether! I can hardly wait—A world of love—
E.R.
ER’s comments about Missy LeHand in this letter provide an example of Eleanor being catty about the vivacious and handsome woman who had been Franklin’s personal secretary since 1920. Eleanor surely recognized that Missy was in love with the president, as she was completely immersed in aspects of his life in ways that ER refused to be—sharing his hobbies, reading the same books that he did, even adopting his characteristic accent and patterns of speech.
November 17th
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
Hick darling, In ten minutes I go down to supper & then Betsey & I leave on the Federal to Boston. I’m glad I’m not motoring. I’d miss you too much!1 No letter from you to-day so I hope for one to-morrow.
It was a busy and rather fruitless day. Henry Morgenthau wanted a ceremony to swear him in [as Treasury Secretary] so by 12 [when] that took place it was too late to ride. Well, Russia is recognized,2 [William] Bullitt3 goes as ambassador. I wonder if that is why F.D.R. has been so content to let Missy play with him!4 She’ll have another embassy to visit next summer anyway!
I’m holding a meeting here on Monday on the [problem of] unemployed women—17 for lunch, tea for F.D.R. entourage, packed5 & now must go to supper.
A world of love to you, darling, take care of yourself. I’m getting so hungry to see you.
Devotedly,
E.R.
[November 18]
Val-Kill Cottage
Dearest one, It was so good to see your letter this morning & to find you comfortable & happy with the Dillons.6
“Time” has a dreadful cover picture of me & pages on me, not too scathing I’m told.7
Does it ever occur to you that it would be pleasant if no one ever wrote about me? Mrs. Doaks would like a little privacy now & then!8
I’m back writing to you & wishing you were here. We’ve had such good times here [at the Val-Kill cottage] to-gether & I would have enjoyed every minute on the train too with you. We do have such good times to-gether but I’m not unhappy for I like to think of our times here & hope we’ll be here again!
Dear, I shouldn’t have told you so often I was tired for while I’ve kept rather late hours I am very well & not really tired only a little sleepy & temporarily tired now & then!
How quietly everyone takes resumption of intercourse with Russia.
The 18th, less than a month till you return.
Bless you & keep well & remember I love you,
E.R.
[November 20]
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
Dearest one, A feast of letters, 3 to-day, your report & a road map!9
Got home here late for dinner having Mrs. [Margaret] Fayer-weather10 talk a steady stream & found it rather restful, fell into my clothes & dined, went & spoke a few words for TB [tuberculosis] stamps & went to [the play] “Alice in Wonderland,” entirely delightful & why didn’t we go to-gether? I loved it till I got sleepy towards the end. Fjr. wires he & another boy come to-morrow to go to Warm Springs11 as the Dr. thinks he needs to get over his cold. Of course all he needs is sleep but he says he can’t get it in college! What is one to do to teach one’s children backbone?
Dear one, I’m tired but very well. I can’t bear to get no letters Friday or Saturday so I’m wiring you my addresses and from the 29th-3rd I’ll be in Warm Springs. I would give a good deal to put my arms around you and to feel yours around me. I love you deeply & tenderly.
Devotedly,
E.R.
November 21st
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
Hick darling, For some strange reason no letter to-day but I expect I got two yesterday! Busy till twenty minutes before twelve on entertainments, mail & routine, had Eva LeGallienne,12 Frances Perkins & Isabella [Selmes Greenway] to lunch, much talk on a national theatre & she [LeGallienne]’s anxious of course to be subsidized. I asked her to write out her ideas & I’d try to arrange a meeting with F.D.R. on his return.13 I like her, she has charm. I’ve just had one tea & in fifteen minutes there is another & Tommy & I work to-night. Anna telephoned she wouldn’t be here to-morrow. John [Boettiger] has his divorce.
I hope Earl [Miller]’s annulment goes off as quietly & smoothly next Saturday!14
Dear one I think of you always with tender love & every day that passes brings you nearer. I don’t know just how I shall behave! A hug goes to you.
Devotedly,
E.R.
When Lorena traveled to the coal mining region near Morgantown, West Virginia, to investigate the relief programs there, she found the living conditions so appalling that she telephoned Eleanor, who then came to see for herself—the first time Eleanor had ever seen poverty close up. When ER returned to Washington, she lobbied her husband to make the area the site of the pilot project for the subsistence homestead program that he had proposed and that Congress had approve
d but had not yet actually started. The concept was for the government to move unemployed workers to houses that the government built but that the residents gradually purchased. The program then began on a 1,200-acre farm previously owned by the Arthur family, so the homestead community became known as Arthurdale. In this letter, Eleanor makes her first of many references to the project that informally became known as “Eleanor’s Baby.” It is also in this letter that Eleanor makes her revealing statement about the Washington wags not gossiping about her relationship with Lorena because they both were women.
November 22d
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
Hick darling, I found your two letters of the 19th & 20th here to-night with all the enclosures & your excellent report. I wish you had looked Elliott up. I imagine that Ruth is having a baby. I have a letter from her thanking me for their dining room furniture, very sweet but I feel pretty distant!15
Dear me, how I laughed over your reminiscences. Well, if I have stopped your drinking of too much corn liquor I probably have increased your chances for health in the next few years16 & as hangovers can’t have added much to the job of life perhaps this last year’s changes aren’t all bad! For me they’ve been all good & I hope you are going to find that so also as time goes on!
The day at “Arthurdale” was interesting. We had breakfast with the workers & everyone asked about you. Little Pabywork17 kissed me when I got there this morning & asked for you! The village is going to be nice. Left at 2 & got in at 8. Anna has gone to meet John [Boettiger]. Louis [Howe] tells me one of the newspaper men casually mentioned the other day to a group of them “now that John Boettiger has his divorce I suppose we’ll soon hear of Mrs. Dall’s getting hers”! One cannot hide things in this world, can one? How lucky you are not a man!
My dear one I love you devotedly. Take care of yourself & goodnight. Sleep sweetly—
E.R.
This letter refers to President Roosevelt’s support of the United States departing from the gold standard as a major step in the country’s effort to regain economic stability. Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate whom Eleanor had worked to try to elect, publicly disagreed with FDR and insisted that the country should remain on the gold standard.
[November 24]
49 East 65th Street
New York City
[the Roosevelt townhouse]
Darling, Well, how do you feel about Al [Smith]’s pronouncement on sound money! He certainly feels no obligation to loyalty but I don’t think it will hurt.
Dear one, I always want you here in this room with me. Somehow you visualize easily here because we’ve been here to-gether so much.18 Well perhaps you’ll come up & spend the night of Dec. 21st here with me. It is sentimental & I didn’t mean to tell you but I’d like to have you here that night & celebrate a little X-mas of our own! Probably you can’t do it but perhaps—who knows!
A world of love to you dear one.
Devotedly,
E.R.
This letter is the earliest of Lorena’s letters to Eleanor that has been preserved, as well as one of her earliest reports on the status of the country’s relief programs. Lorena wrote her letters on the stationery provided by whatever hotel she was staying in that particular night. She ended her letters with “H” for Hick. Regarding writing style, Lorena wrote in a much more flowing narrative form than Eleanor did.
November 26th
The Ottumwa
Ottumwa, Iowa
My dear:
I’ve slept most of the day. I left Des Moines at 11 a.m. and arrived in Ottumwa at 2. Flopped on the bed the moment I landed in this room and just woke up, at 5 o’clock. After I’ve finished this and have done my expense accounts for the last two weeks, I think I’ll dine early and perhaps go to a movie, and then I’ll go to bed early tonight—by 10 o’clock or so. Should work—see people. But the week has been strenuous, and I seem to be about at the end of my rope. So I think I’d better get some rest and a little relaxation. Probably I’ll work all the better for it tomorrow. I think probably “the curse” is imminent, and that’s perhaps what’s the matter with me. I feel so gloomy and “uncertain”—unstable nervously and emotionally—the way I felt a couple of times last summer. Remember? I’ll be alright in a day or two.
Well, no matter how they may be pounding the president in the East,19 Iowa and Nebraska seem quiet and contented enough. I mean people generally. And, although I’ve been moving so rapidly that I haven’t been so aware of it as I might have been had I remained in one locality—Sioux City, for instance—I believe that in the month since I came out here there has been a remarkably swift and strong change in the current of public opinion in the “Farm Belt”—sweeping back toward the administration. They never were really against the president. NRA is not at all popular, to be sure.20 Well, how could it be? Their prices did go up faster than their incomes. And practically every city and town in Iowa, from Des Moines down, is almost wholly dependent on agriculture.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota, interested me. Its population, in figures, hasn’t changed since the depression—which is 10 or 12 years old out here, remember. But in the character of its population there has been a change most disastrous from an economic standpoint. It’s the largest city in the state. It’s always been purely a trading center, and many, many traveling salesmen working out through the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and down into Western Nebraska have their homes there. There are darned few traveling salesmen on the road out there any more—and, if you could have overheard, as I did the other day, an oil-burner salesman trying to sell an oil-burner to a small town restaurant proprietor, you’d understand why. Only the man selling the absolute necessities of life can get by, even take a commodity like paint, for example, why, there obviously hasn’t been a paint brush on those farm buildings in years. And that’s true of Iowa, too. What chance has a paint salesman had out here? And the condition is the same this year—what with closed banks, low prices, and crop failures.
Well, the result, they tell me, has been that most of those traveling men and their families—good, solid, paying customers—have left Sioux Falls or have been forced on to the relief rolls, and their places have been taken by farmers and their families who lost their farms and moved to town, hoping they’d be able to get work there.
And yet, despite NRA, things are beginning to look up—in Iowa and Nebraska at any rate. Wheat allotments have come in, corn loans are arriving, the corn-hog program is getting under way. Henry Morgenthau is apparently going to kick some of the “Tories” out of the credit picture, and the farm strike died on its feet.21
I think I shall have to quit reading the Chicago Tribune.22 Their latest was to run—today—two weeks after it was all over—pages of farm strike pictures. Battles! They looked to me as though they’d been posed, by the scrub football teams of Northwestern and Chicago universities! They do make me so damned mad!
I must go and eat.
Darling—only eighteen more days!
H
Eleanor’s comments in this letter show that Lorena was concerned that people were gossiping about the closeness of their relationship. Eleanor’s response suggests a cavalier attitude on her part, which provides evidence that, as Lorena later would write, Eleanor was not “discreet” in her letters to Lorena—the reason Lorena ultimately destroyed so many of them.
November 27th
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
Hick dear, I found two letters & a road map to-day & did I devour them!
I forgot [to] write you that after 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 15th I will be free to meet you & I will have nothing to do so come as early as you can. Why don’t we, if the weather is nice[,] take our lunch & go off each day to neighboring places? If we think we’ll be tempted to stay the night we could take a bag & telephone [back to the White House] what we decided to do. There may be people staying here so I think one night anyway we’ll stay away as otherwise we might have to be poli
te a while in the evening unless the guests all dine out which is quite unlikely!
There’s a bit about you & a picture in the Literary Digest. It’s nice! Tommy is mailing it to you.23
Press conference at 11 this morning then 2 women to see, had five of the girls [the women reporters who attended Eleanor’s weekly press conferences] to lunch & worked all the rest of the time on accumulated mail but I’m fairly caught up tho’ I won’t be able to ride to-morrow.
John [Boettiger] came in to-night & dined with us. I do like him. They sat on my sofa all evening & seemed to have a swell time while I worked!
Dear one, & so you think they gossip about us. Well they must at least think we stand separation rather well! I am always so much more optimistic than you are. I suppose because I care so little what “they” say!
I rather think some of the girls [woman reporters] are getting [to be] pretty good champions! There have been one or two inaccurate stories & I spoke about them this morning [at the press conference] & I trusted the majority of them were with me!24
Dear heart I would like to be with you when this letter reaches you. If I were free I would meet you in Minneapolis Wed. only my sense of duty keeps me from doing it! I’ll call you anyway about one on Thanksgiving day.
A world of love & my thoughts are always with you,
E.R.
The letterhead for this hotel included a drawing of the building. At the top of the first page of her letter, Lorena drew an arrow pointing to a room on the second floor. Beneath the arrow she wrote: My room—for Two Dollars! And I suspect bed bugs!
November 28th
Hotel Hildreth
Charles City, Iowa
Madame!
Now will you please tell me what in the world one is going to do about cases like these?
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