Loving Eleanor

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  But when I asked about her husband’s new job and their move to the governor’s mansion, the animation disappeared from her face and voice, as if she had suddenly retreated into some kind of emotional shell concealed under that fetching hostess gown. Later, I would come to understand this ability of hers to step abruptly into a freezing reticence. But at the moment, I felt as if I were facing a blank wall, a chilly wind blowing down my neck. I had expected that excitement—about her husband’s surprising victory, beating the odds, moving to Albany. Not this.

  But thinking about what little I knew of the lady and reading between the lines (where the story usually lives), her frozen impenetrability made a certain kind of sense. Before last night, Mrs. Roosevelt had been her own independent person, a leader in national politics and women’s issues, passionately committed to teaching and to the Val-Kill crafts. She had made a life for herself. Now, she was the governor’s wife, expected to manage the governor’s mansion, serve as the governor’s hostess, dedicate herself to the governor’s political career. Now, she was a character in his story. She didn’t want to know this or feel it; she didn’t want me to know it or feel it—and certainly not to say it in print.

  I closed my notebook and laid it aside. “I’m wondering,” I said mildly, “how you’re going to manage.”

  Her glance was guarded. “Manage?”

  “Yes. It will be a juggle. What will you give up?”

  She tilted her head to one side, studying me, as if she were taking my measure. After a moment, she said, “I was awake all last night, thinking about that ‘juggle,’ as you call it.” Another hesitation, then, “Can we keep this just between ourselves, Miss Hickok?”

  “You mean, off the record?”

  “That’s what you journalists say, isn’t it? Yes, off the record.”

  “Done.” I put my pencil on my notebook.

  She seemed to relax. “Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that while I’m very glad for my husband, I’m not terribly thrilled about his election—for myself, that is.” She sighed. “I know that he has to take what he thinks is the best course, and I will do my part. But for myself, I have to find a way…” She stopped.

  I heard the struggle in her voice, saw it on her face, and understood. This was a woman caught between her hopes for herself and his demands, his needs. “You have to find a way to do your own work, as well as the work that’s expected of you.”

  She was startled, as if she hadn’t expected to hear her intentions in another’s voice. “Yes, that’s it exactly. And I mean to do it.” She straightened her shoulders and began describing a complicated plan that would be my first introduction to Mrs. R’s efforts to cram a great many activities into a very small space.

  “Monday and Tuesday, I’ll teach and do political work in New York. On Wednesday, I’ll take the early train to Hyde Park, stop in at the crafts workshop, then take the afternoon train to Albany, where I’ll spend the rest of the week managing cabinet dinners, afternoon teas, ladies’ groups, and the like. My husband employs Miss LeHand, who is devoted to him and his work,” she added. “She’s coming to Albany with him, so the governor’s household will be under her supervision on the days I’m not there. She is quite able.”

  Ah. I just managed not to raise my eyebrows, although I had certainly heard of Marguerite LeHand—Missy. A confident, attractive young woman, she had joined FDR’s staff during the 1920 presidential campaign, stayed on during his illness, and regularly accompanied him to his spa in Georgia, where she did his secretarial work, served as his hostess, and performed other duties as required. The boys in the AP newsroom liked to grin about “the office wife” and her other duties. I had seen Missy with FDR on the campaign trail, where she seemed supremely unaware of the curious eyes that followed her attractive figure. I understood the newsroom jokes.

  As if she had looked into my thoughts, Mrs. Roosevelt lifted her chin and remarked, dryly, “In Tibet, I’ve read, the ladies find it necessary to have three husbands each. They say that the three together add up to a nearly perfect life partner. Which seems to me a very good thing, since so many husbands have several wives.”

  I was startled into laughter. “Never had one husband, and certainly don’t want one—let alone three.” I raised my teacup in salute. “But here’s to the wise ladies of Tibet.”

  The lines around Mrs. Roosevelt’s blue eyes crinkled, and she broke into a rich, low laugh that softened her face. At that moment, she was actually rather lovely—or would be, if she would get rid of that wretched hairnet.

  “To the ladies of Tibet.” She raised her own cup. “May they find what they seek—although when it comes to husbands, I personally find that one is more than enough." She added hastily, “Off the record.”

  I chuckled. “Oh, too bad. That would have made a dandy headline.” Another low laugh, and I thought again how pretty she was. I put down my teacup. “This plan of yours—can you really bring it off? The teaching, the crafts, on top of being the governor’s wife?”

  “I hope to—no, I must.” She was emphatic. “My work is where I find myself. It’s my salvation.”

  Ah, but is it where we ought to find ourselves? I wondered. But honesty compelled me to say, “Work keeps me going, too.”

  She smiled gently. “But you are so much more accomplished than I, Miss Hickok. Just look at all you’ve done—at all you do. I envy you, you know. You’re at the top of your world. I’m at the bottom of mine.”

  I frowned. Surely the woman was joking. But at that moment the door opened, and a little man, scarcely five feet tall, sidled cat-like into the room. Frail and gaunt, almost skeletal, he wore a rumpled, coffee-stained white shirt and carried a cigarette in one hand, a foul-smelling Sweet Caporal. His pockmarked, gargoyle-like face had to be one of the ugliest I had ever seen, yet in that ugliness there was a compelling, almost magnetic energy.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Roosevelt.” He turned to me with a sardonic grin and a wave of his hand, ashes sifting onto his shirt, his tie, the carpet. “And Miss Hickok, the AP’s celebrated girl reporter.”

  Mrs. Roosevelt intervened. “This is Mr. Louis Howe, Miss Hickok. He is Mr. Roosevelt’s political advisor.”

  I knew who he was, of course. FDR’s consigliere, the man who had packaged the candidate and sold him to the electorate. A political wizard, a mastermind, he was called by some; a goddamn son-of-a-bitch by others. I wasn’t surprised to see him here. I knew that he had made his home with the Roosevelts, more or less, since FDR was overtaken by polio, and that during those terrible months in the summer and autumn of 1921, he and Mrs. Roosevelt had worked to exhaustion together, tending to FDR’s physical needs around the clock. Howe’s wife, Grace, lived in Fall River, Massachusetts, where he visited on the occasional weekend. But his personal life was completely consumed by his work for FDR, as Tommy Thompson’s life was consumed by ER. I wonder now what I might have done if I had guessed, at that moment, that I would be consumed in the same way, at once filled and emptied by this woman, so tightly, so fatally fused that neither of us could let the other go. Would I have closed my notebook and left? Would I have stayed and accepted the risk? I’m glad that I didn’t know, that I didn’t have to choose.

  “I took the liberty of telling Mr. Howe that we would be chatting this afternoon,” Mrs. Roosevelt remarked in an offhand way. “He wanted to meet you.”

  Howe sucked on his cigarette. I could feel his dark eyes on me, at once critical, calculating, curious. He wanted to meet me? And then it occurred to me that perhaps the purpose of today’s interview was other than I had thought. It was as if a door had opened a few inches in front of me, and I could feel a slight breeze.

  I had to say something. “Congratulations on last night’s win, Mr. Howe,” I managed. “I’ll bet there are dozens who would like to know how you pulled that split-ticket rabbit out of your hat.”

  “Wasn’t too sure it was going to happen myself until the upstate polls reported.” He sat down and accepted a
cup of tea from Mrs. Roosevelt. “I’ve read some of your stuff, Miss Hickok. Liked the piece about the female undercover narcotics investigator.” He recited the headline, using two fingers to sketch quotation marks. “‘Little Woman With Brown Bobbed Hair Holds Dangerous N.Y. Police Job.’ A nice, tight piece of writing. Ironic. Irreverent.”

  “‘Little Woman’ wasn’t my headline,” I said. “But I like writing stories about women who do things nobody expects them to do. Things that go against the grain.” I grinned, feeling easier now. “Used to be a policewoman myself, down by the Navy pier.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Roosevelt leaned forward, her eyes on me, her gaze intent. “How fascinating, Miss Hickok.” The corners of her mobile mouth turned upward. “You must have stories to tell about that particular work.”

  The conversation went on from there, but now it seemed to be more about me than the woman I had come to interview, and by the time Mr. Howe stood up and thanked Mrs. Roosevelt for the tea, I knew I was right: Louis Howe had been evaluating me, although I couldn’t think why, or where that open door—if that’s what it was—might lead. But I rather liked the man. He seemed to have Mrs. Roosevelt’s best interests at heart, and she was relaxed and comfortable with him.

  When Mr. Howe had gone, Mrs. Roosevelt walked downstairs with me, past the dozens of framed pictures of ships and other nautical items that filled the walls. I paused to admire them.

  “They’re my husband’s,” she said. “He’s always bringing home a new ship’s model, or more paintings and prints. Stamps, too, and campaign buttons.” Her voice was rueful. “His things are treasures, but it’s hard to find room for all of them. They take up every inch of space in this house.”

  Exactly, I thought. And just where did FDR’s wife find room for her treasures? What space, in the life they lived together, was left for her doings, her dreams?

  At the door, I said goodbye. “And good luck with your juggling act,” I added. “I’ll be curious to see how your plan turns out.”

  Mrs. Roosevelt hesitated, her head on one side, considering. “You know, I think we might just go ahead and publish that bit about my plan, Miss Hickok. When my husband reads it in the newspaper, it will give him a clearer idea of what I have in mind for myself. And when it’s in print, in your story, it will be settled, and he can’t very well argue with it.” She smiled and held out her hand. “I’ll have Mrs. Thompson type up something you can quote in your article. I find that it’s always nicer to be able to read someone’s actual words, don’t you?”

  Direct quotes? From the governor’s wife? I swallowed my surprise. “That would be swell,” I said, and we shook hands warmly.

  It wasn’t until I was hailing a cab that I replayed her remark: once it was in print, her husband couldn’t argue with it. What an odd way for a married couple to communicate, I thought. Didn’t these Roosevelts talk to one another?

  Over the coming years, as I found myself deeply, irrevocably involved with her—and inevitably with him, in ways I didn’t like—I would wonder many times about their relationship. What was it? Why? How did it become what it was? Each of them kept secrets from each other, from their children, from the people who worked for them, from the public. They were not lovers (not, at least, each other’s lover); sometimes they weren’t even friends. That theirs became a successful political partnership was a mystery even to those who knew them best—and I think a mystery to each of them, to her, and certainly to him.

  But I couldn’t begin to ask myself these questions—not yet. I climbed in the taxi and went back to my AP desk, where an hour later, an envelope arrived by messenger from Mrs. Roosevelt’s office. When my article appeared a couple of days later in the New York Times and in newspapers all over the country, it included several direct quotes from the new First Lady. The headline gave fair warning of her intentions: “Mrs. Roosevelt to Keep on Filling Many Jobs.”

  Many jobs. It would be the story of her life. And mine.

  Part Two

  1932–1933

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hello Again

  During FDR’s four years as governor, I thought of the First Lady many times—not the always-in-a-hurry woman whose name appeared daily in the newspapers, but the lonely woman whose wistful, half-hopeful vulnerability had so surprised and touched me. In the newsroom, I heard a few intriguing remarks (not all of them complimentary) about her and her friends, and I wondered whether—and how—she had been able to make time and space for herself, given the widening encroachments of her husband’s political career. I kept telling myself I would follow up with her, but it was FDR who claimed my attention. I reported on the governor when he was in New York City, followed him on occasional trips around the state, and covered his successful 1930 reelection campaign. He noticed me, and since I was the only reporter who wore rouge, red lipstick, earrings, and a skirt, I got a heavy-duty dose of his banter.

  “Ah, the glamorous Miss Hickok!” he would exclaim, lifting his cigarette in salute. Or with a glint in his eye: “Let’s have a question from the AP’s Girl Wonder.”

  I’m thick-skinned about my work, so while his teasing rankled, I didn’t take it personally. I thought it was his way of cutting women down to size, diminishing them, especially women who amounted to something. And, like most reporters, I’d rather be noticed than overlooked.

  I was getting noticed. On my political beat, I covered the increasingly ugly messes at Tammany Hall and the corruption in Mayor Jimmy Walker’s office. I covered the Wall Street panics of 1929 and ’30. I wrote about the disastrous plunge in the gross national product and the tens of thousands of banks and businesses that failed and the thirteen million workers—thirteen million!—who were unemployed. I wrote about the Hoovervilles in the freight yards along the East River, makeshift shelters thrown together out of used lumber, rusty sheets of corrugated metal, old tires, flattened tin cans, even cardboard. Hopeless, hungry, the occupants ate what they could get from the bread lines and soup kitchens and whatever else they could beg or scavenge. Later, I would understand just how shallow and superficial my understanding of their misery had been. But their despair made for good copy, and my stories got plenty of national play. Somebody wrote that I had “standing with the AP that no other woman can match.” Somebody was right.

  And then, in April of 1932, I got noticed again. My city editor, Bill Chapin, beckoned me to his desk. “I just got a call from Louis Howe. He’s inviting you to take a personal, one-woman tour of the Roosevelt family estate.”

  “They’re angling for a color piece,” I said cynically. “‘The Roosevelts at Springwood.’ They want the public to see a scene of domestic bliss.”

  Chapin nodded. “The Howe publicity machine is building up a head of steam for the Democratic presidential convention. Hoover is history. If FDR gets the party’s nod, he’ll get the White House.” He cocked his head. “You want the story or not?”

  “As long as it’s an exclusive,” I said. “It’ll be interesting to write about the rich, for a change, instead of the down-and-out.”

  But I had another reason. I wanted the story behind the story. I wanted to know how well Mrs. Roosevelt had managed that juggling act, commuting between New York, Hyde Park, and Albany, how well she had preserved her personal interests. And there was the most interesting question of all: How did she feel about becoming the nation’s First Lady?

  Before I went to Hyde Park, I did my usual background research on the estate so I’d know what I was seeing when I got there.

  Springwood had been in the Roosevelt family since FDR’s father bought a square mile of Hudson River farmland in 1866. Like an English country gentleman, “Mr. James” (whose money came from coal, steamships, and railroads) cantered around the Dutchess County countryside decked out in tweeds, breeches, and riding boots. Mrs. James—Sara Ann Delano Roosevelt (whose family money came from the China opium trade)—was very much the squire’s lady. Franklin was her only child and the apple of her eye. When he joined the Wilson
administration and his political future star seemed to glow as brightly as Cousin Teddy’s, she more than doubled the size and splendor of the family home, the Big House, providing her son a suitable setting in which to entertain his political friends.

  Franklin had inherited Mr. James’s passionate interest in Springwood, but his father had left the family estate to his mother. Sara Roosevelt also owned the two summer houses at Campobello (one for herself, one for her son), the twin Manhattan townhouses, and the Roosevelt family bank accounts. She exercised a controlling interest in everything that went on at Springwood—except for Val-Kill Cottage. That had been built on a small piece of land owned by FDR and now belonged to Eleanor Roosevelt and two of her friends.

  Reggie Davis, an AP stringer, was glad to fill me in on the governor’s wife. We sat down together one afternoon over a beer at Big Johnny’s, the reporters’ bar in Albany. Reggie lit a cigarette and said, “Scuttlebutt has it that Eleanor would rather stay at Val-Kill than at the Big House.”

  I frowned a little at the First Lady’s first name, but I didn’t say anything. The boys in the AP newsroom called her Eleanor and snickered at my more respectful “Mrs. Roosevelt” or even “Mrs. R.”

  Reggie picked up his beer mug and leaned back in his chair. “The thing is, y’see, Eleanor likes it at Val-Kill because her mother-in-law won’t go on the place. Granny doesn’t like Eleanor’s friends.” With a glint in his eye, he lowered his voice to a teasing whisper, almost drowned out by a chorus of hearty male laughter at the bar. “They’re lesbians.”

  I didn’t answer. Reggie was a good source and I liked him, but I wasn’t going to rise to his bait. I had learned to keep my private life and my work life separate, and I guarded that right for others—as far as I could, given my job as a reporter. It wasn’t easy now, and it would get harder as time went on, but I drew a line between what lay in the legitimate public interest and should be accessible to the press and what was nobody’s damn business.