Loving Eleanor

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  There’s a lot of talk these days, after the Kennedy-Nixon campaign and Theodore White’s The Making of the President, 1960, about “creating the candidate’s image.” The techniques and technologies of the 1930s were less sophisticated, and political strategists didn’t use those words. But Louis Howe was a kingmaker, and if he had lived to write the book he planned, it might have been called The Making of the President 1932. It could have included a chapter on the making of the First Lady, as well. Over time, her image would become as important and enduring as her husband’s—in some people’s minds, even more so. It was my AP stories that crafted the new First Lady’s narrative and created the first national image of her. If Bill Chapin had read all my pieces carefully and in sequence, he might have seen what I was doing, but he didn’t. Was he careless—or complicit? Did Howe get to him, or was Bill simply thinking of how many wire service newspapers would pick these stories up?

  But although it might have been described as “deference,” complicity was the real name of the game among the reporters who covered the president-elect. In a widely distributed photo of FDR and ER taken in front of the Sixty-Fifth Street townhouse, he is standing without any visible means of support. In fact, he is clinging to Eleanor’s arm and—braces locked—he’s leaning against a metal railing like a life-size cardboard cutout. I know this because I was there, watching with a small cadre of reporters and photographers as two men propped him up. When Steve Early, FDR’s new press secretary, gave the word, the president-elect began talking about his plans for the new cabinet and the flashbulbs began popping. The press were helping to shape the myth that Roosevelt had overcome his disability. They knew but they didn’t tell the biggest story of them all, the true story: the man could not bathe or dress himself or walk. If one of them had told the truth, it would have spelled the end of that reporter’s access, the end of his reporting career.

  As far as the press were concerned, complicity was the name of the game. I wasn’t the only one who played it.

  Madam and I spent as much time together as we could, which was a great deal, actually. FDR was the focus of everyone’s attention now. While he held center stage with the press, his wife could slip into the wings.

  Oh, I did my necessary work, and she did, too. She met the last of her obligations at the governor’s mansion in Albany, finished the term at Todhunter, and carried out a few First Lady duties: buying a new wardrobe and meeting with the planners of the upcoming inaugural events. But from the November election until the March inauguration (the last of the lengthy four-month interregnums that once divided presidential terms), she was in New York or at Val-Kill. And I was with her.

  It was usually dinner. “Italian this evening?” I would ask, or she would say, “How do you feel about Hungarian, Hick?” Or we would send out for Chinese or Cuban. But I loved it best when I could cook for her. My specialty was a hearty oven-baked steak smothered in catsup and served with a baked potato, salad, and hot dinner rolls. She enjoyed my “plain fare,” as she called it, and she coveted the luxury of eating in private, without being accosted by people who recognized her. And I loved simply sitting across the table from her, watching her graceful hands, the candlelight dancing in her eyes, and feeling the mirrored light dance in my heart. After dinner, we listened to records or read aloud and then put on our coats and took Prinz for his late-night walk before she went home to Sixty-Fifth Street.

  And then one night, she didn’t. The evening before, she had said, “The Philharmonic is performing a Wagner program tomorrow night. Would you like to go?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Oh, lovely!” I exclaimed. “I’m wild for Wagner.” Since I was a very young child, music has run through me, echoing in my head, singing softly in the back of my throat. And of all composers, Wagner is to me the most powerful. I learned to love his music when Ellie and I were living together. It has a sensual, erotic quality that thrills me to my deepest center.

  It had been a difficult day for Madam, with a long session on inaugural planning that once again brought her up against the implacable reality of what was to come. She was subdued when we went to dinner at our favorite mid-town French restaurant, and I tried to match her mood. It was snowing when we came out, white flakes sifting in a white silence through the incandescent halos of streetlights. At Carnegie Hall that night, Wagner seemed even more dramatically magnificent than ever, the finale of Tristan performed with a force that lifted me on a shining current of sound, making me weep. And weep with an even greater joy because Madam was beside me.

  When the lights came up, I dashed the tears from my eyes, but not before Madam saw them. She put an arm around my shoulders and whispered, “Oh, my dear, I wish I could care as deeply as you do. Such passion must be a gift.”

  Ah, passion, I thought. Madam, you don’t know the half of it.

  It was still snowing after the performance, harder and with a stinging bite to the wind, and we taxied back to Mitchell Place through streets that were nearly empty of traffic. I took Prinz out while she made hot chocolate for us. (“I know how to do that, at least,” she said with a rueful laugh.) We drank it while she talked about the day she had spent with the inaugural planners, going over details of the mammoth White House reception planned for the afternoon of the ceremony, the dinner afterward for family and friends, and the inaugural ball. The day had reawakened all her fears about Washington, and I could hear the quiet despair in her voice.

  “I don’t see how I can do this, Hick. It feels… it feels completely beyond me. Marion and Nan don’t understand—they think I should be pleased by Franklin’s victory. Tommy understands, but she’s too busy to think about it. If it weren’t for you, I would be utterly alone.” She faltered. “And when I get to Washington, I won’t even have you.”

  I reached for her hand, feeling her despair and sharing it, for I was reminded that in the time to come, she would be there and I would be here and we would have no more evenings like this. The loss suddenly felt enormous, like a gaping hole opening up in the center of my life, like a massive cloud swallowing all that I care about. And suddenly I knew what I had to do.

  “You won’t be alone,” I said. “I’m going to Washington with you.”

  She stared at me, puzzled. “But you work here, Hick. You’ve made a wonderful reputation in New York, and your political reporting is so widely respected. You can’t just—”

  “Yes, I can. I’ll ask for a transfer to the AP’s Washington bureau. It’s a logical request. I’ve been covering FDR for four years, and now you. I should be covering the White House.”

  “But why would you do that?” she asked blankly.

  On the floor at our feet, Prinz sighed and turned in his sleep. “Because I love you,” I said.

  “I know.” She smiled, patted my arm. “And I love you, Hick. I’m so grateful to you for—”

  “No,” I said. “I love you, Madam. Passionately.”

  There. It was said. My hired-girl self shook a scolding finger, stamped a foot, and told me that I didn’t fit into her life, that there was no future in loving her, that this made no kind of sense. But it was the truth, my truth, and I needed to tell it. I tried to lighten it with a self-mocking chuckle.

  “It’s in my nature. After all, you said it yourself. ‘Such passion must be a gift.’ You’re right. It’s a gift and I’m sharing it. With you.”

  “Ah,” she said. After a moment, she added, tentatively, sadly, “And if I can’t care as deeply as you do?”

  “How do you know you can’t?” I challenged her and then softened my voice. “Because you don’t want to? Because it isn’t wise?” I paused deliberately. “Because it’s against the rules?”

  She weighed that for a moment. “Because if I care,” she said, so softly that I had to bend toward her to hear, “you will be taken away from me.”

  I thought of those she had loved. Her mother and father, dead. Franklin, lost to his career and to Missy. Earl, married now. “I suppose that’s true,” I said, and
managed a rueful smile. “But it’s not going to happen tonight. I love you tonight, my dear.” I raised my hand to her neck, her throat, feeling a daring tenderness. “I want you tonight. And tomorrow. Probably next week, too.” I lightened it with a laugh and a little shrug. “Not sure about next year, though. We’ll have to see when that time comes.”

  That made her smile. She took my hand and kissed my fingers. “Thank you,” she said. “Oh, Hick, you don’t know how much I need you.”

  I captured her eyes. “And want?”

  There was a brief hesitation, as if she were turning the words over in her mind before she gave them voice, and I wondered if she had ever spoken them before.

  “And… want,” she said, even more softly.

  I leaned forward and kissed her. “Then come to me, dear,” I said, urgent now, direct.

  And in the sweet, silent dark, she did. With only our hearts as witness, we lay together, the length of our bodies measuring our passion as we taught each other to become the lovers neither of us had ever had, the lovers both of us had only imagined.

  In another space of time, I would come to understand the many differences between wanting and loving and loving and needing. But on that night and for some time to come, these words were all synonymous to me, and I think to her, as well. I wanted her and loved her and needed her. She needed me and wanted me and loved me, and I was content with that.

  Part Three

  1933–1934

  CHAPTER SIX

  Off the Record

  I’m going to Washington with you.

  Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that, and I knew it even as I said it. While it was true that covering the White House was a logical continuation of my coverage of the Roosevelts, it was also true that in those days, the Washington AP bureau had very little to report. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover avoided making news whenever possible, and Congress moved with glacial slowness. Asking to trade my staccato New York political beat for the adagio of the nation’s capital was asking for a demotion. In terms of my journalistic career, it was worse than a bad move. It was stupid.

  I did it anyway.

  “Are you nuts?” Bill Chapin looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head. “I need you here, Hick. The Mitchell case is going to trial at the end of March, and you know that story, inside and out. Why the hell would you want to go to Washington? Roosevelt talks a good game, but when he gets there, he’ll find out that the bureaucracy is so completely hidebound that he won’t be able to do a damn thing. Anyway, the AP has a girl in D.C. Bess Furman, her name is. She’s going to handle the White House social calendar, teas and dinners, all that society page stuff. Byron Price has already assigned her to Eleanor.”

  The disappointment was so sharp I could scarcely swallow it, but there was no arguing with Bill. The Mitchell case pitted an ambitious assistant U.S. attorney named Thomas E. Dewey against Charles E. Mitchell, the former director of New York’s prestigious National City Bank. The case, which was the talk of the city, involved charges of tax evasion and speculation with other people’s money. I understood the issues, had studied the facts, and was ready to follow the testimony when the case came to trial. Bill was right. He needed me in that courtroom.

  He did, though, ask if I would be willing to stick close to Mrs. Roosevelt until she moved into the White House in March. “I hope you won’t mind,” he added, as if my minding mattered. “There’s not much going on at Tammany, and FDR is putting his cabinet together behind closed doors. No public appearances for him—but maybe you can dig up some news on Mrs. Roosevelt.”

  “If that’s what you want,” I said in a not-quite-grudging tone and went off to my typewriter to write a note to Bess Furman, congratulating her on her assignment to the new First Lady. I couldn’t help adding that I would miss Mrs. R—which was the bitter truth, so help me.

  That evening, after dinner with Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, Madam and I went back to her townhouse, where she was alone for a few days, and I told her that my request for a transfer to the Washington bureau had been turned down. I would be staying in New York.

  She stared at me for a moment, incredulous. “You actually asked to leave New York? I know you said you’d do that, but I didn’t believe you would.”

  I sighed. “I’m flattered that Bill wants me to cover the Mitchell trial. It’s a plum assignment for a woman. But I’m very, very sorry that I won’t be in Washington.”

  “I’m sorry too.” She smiled softly. “But that you want to do it—oh, Hick, dear, that means so much!” In an impulsive gesture, she held out her arms and drew me to her. “So very, very much.”

  We held one another until our tentative beginnings took on their own movement, their own motion, and pulled us forward with an energy we couldn’t deny. I felt my breath come short and wished with all my heart that time would simply stop and we could hold each other forever.

  In those betwixt and between months, we often went out together in the evening. The Depression had hit New York theater hard. Many venues closed and the actors had fled to Hollywood, where the movies were still making money. But Eva Le Gallienne had produced Alice in Wonderland at the Civic Repertory Theater, and it was quite well received. Eva (who played the White Queen) and her life partner Josephine Hutchinson (who played Alice) were friends of mine, and the four of us went out for ice cream after their performance, lingering at our table until the lights were turned out. Another night, we went with Madam’s friends, Esther and Elizabeth, to see Josephine Hutchinson in Dear Jane, a play about the life of Jane Austen, and afterward to their brownstone on East Eleventh, a block east of Fifth Avenue, where we had dessert. I spent my days in the company of men, and Madam lived in a world dominated by them. It was a comfort to find ourselves in the companionship of women.

  During those weeks, Mrs. R often included me when she entertained. At lunch on Sixty-Fifth Street one day, I was seated next to FDR’s Aunt Kassie, an elderly lady who was complaining, loudly, about the number of newspaper articles in which her nephew’s wife was featured—mostly my stories, I realized, with a kind of guilty pleasure. By way of veiled explanation, I suggested that it would be difficult for a woman in Mrs. Roosevelt’s position to avoid the press.

  “Rubbish!” The old lady’s tone was acid. “The newspapers are like rats, beneath a lady’s notice. I have never in my life spoken to a reporter.”

  Mrs. R told the story to her husband, and he couldn’t resist ribbing me, the next time he saw me. “Has my dear old Aunt Kassie discovered your secret identity yet, Hick?” he asked, with a sly chortle and a sideways glance that hinted at other meanings. “Has she learned that you are a rat in female clothing?” I couldn’t tell from his expression exactly what he intended, and the question about my “secret identity” made me shiver. I was afraid that for all my efforts at concealment, he might have sensed my feelings toward his wife.

  Ah, my feelings. If I had imagined that they would diminish or change, I was very wrong. I understood that loving Madam was entirely hopeless. She was cultured, sophisticated, well-read, well-educated, well-traveled. She was married—to the man who would soon be president of the United States. Loving her was absurd, illogical, and unthinkable. And I was a fool.

  But that didn’t change a damn thing.

  After the election, Mrs. R began making it clear that, while she had to include other reporters on occasion, she preferred to work with just one. I knew her calendar and was already on the scene whenever she made an unscheduled appearance. I ran interference for her with the rest of the press, sometimes handing out scraps of news so they wouldn’t go away hungry. I got the exclusive on her activities and turned even the most ordinary events into stories, so that while FDR was out of the public eye, his wife was making news.

  And while I was at it, I thought of a way that Mrs. R could make news on a regular basis, on her own terms, once she got to Washington. I dropped in at Louis Howe’s office and pitched the idea, knowing that unless he supported it, the scheme
would get nowhere fast.

  “I think she should hold press conferences,” I told him. “For women reporters only. By a woman, for women, about women. Weekly.”

  “Women only?” He frowned. “Never heard of such a thing.”

  “Women only, with a spotlight on news for women. Mrs. Roosevelt has ideas and she likes dealing with people. This will make her a new kind of First Lady, especially where the press is concerned. She’ll be making news. And the Washington newswomen will eat it up. They’ll be delighted by the access.”

  I didn’t have to lay out the advantages for Howe. He knew that a First Lady’s press conferences would be a breath of fresh air blowing through the stuffy old White House. The male reporters and their editors would sit up and take notice. The women press corps would feel distinctly privileged. What’s more, their stories wouldn’t stay in Washington. They’d go out on the various newswires and editors all over the country would grab them for their women’s pages. And women voted.

  “She’ll have to stay out of politics,” Louis said cautiously. “But I’ll pass the suggestion to FDR and Early.”

  Everybody in the news business agreed that Steve Early had been a first-rate choice for the White House job that was, for the first time, called “press secretary.” He was a talented newsman who had been at the UP, then at the AP’s Washington bureau, and most recently at Paramount Pictures, where he had headed up the newsreel division. He’d convinced Roosevelt to hold twice-weekly presidential press conferences and to use radio, which Hoover had refused to do. Clearly, he was going to be one of the power people in FDR’s administration. His appointment was an indication that the new administration was taking press relationships seriously.