Loving Eleanor

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  Yes, of course I knew. I had worked at one of the tabloids when I came back to New York.

  “I suppose he has a plan,” I said uneasily. “Or you do.”

  Louis held up his glass. “For starters, he’s asked me to find another place for this maid, an agreeable job at an increase in pay.” He drained his scotch. “Outside the White House.”

  “Well, at least she gets to keep her head. What does he have in mind for me?”

  Louis tried to speak, coughed, tried to stop, and couldn’t. He kept on coughing as I got up from my chair, went into the small adjacent bathroom, and got him a glass of water. Everybody who liked Louis (not all people did) worried about that hacking cough of his—and we were right to worry. He wouldn’t live to help elect FDR to a second term.

  He took the water gratefully, and when he could speak again, he said, “Of course, the president is aware that you were an enormous help during the campaign, and he’s confident that you wouldn’t want anything disagreeable to reflect on the First Lady.” He eyed me. “Or on the administration.”

  I nodded. Yes. Those things were true.

  “He’s also aware that you are considering leaving the AP. So he suggested that I look around for a situation that might engage your capabilities and interests.” He sat up and swung his feet off the bed. “‘She’s a smart one, that Hickok. You do right by her.’” He coughed. “That’s a direct quote. But off the record, of course.”

  There it was. The left hook. Buried in a compliment and off the record, but a hard jab just the same. I pulled on my cigarette, exhaled, and watched the smoke eddy toward the open window.

  “Engage my capabilities and interests in another city, I suppose,” I said. “As far away as possible. What’s it to be? Seattle? San Francisco? He could probably work a deal with Hearst to put me on the staff of the Chronicle or the Post-Intelligencer.”

  I sounded bitter, but I had to admit that it would be a smart move, from FDR’s point of view. Washington might titter about the rumor for a few weeks, but most would attribute it to servants’ nonsense. Once I was out of the picture, it would be forgotten—or more accurately, overwritten by a later, juicier rumor about somebody else.

  “Now, now, Hick.” Louis stood up, giving me a beetle-browed frown. “Don’t get the wrong idea. The president isn’t out to get rid of you. I’m not, either. What we’re thinking of is temporary, just until the gossip quiets down. And helpful to you, professionally speaking.” Head down, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, he clasped his hands behind his back and prowled around the room in what FDR called his “Felix the Cat” posture, after the famous 1920s cartoon cat. Outside on the rainy street, a car honked. In the hallway, a tray rattled. It was teatime, and Mrs. R would soon come looking for me.

  “Well?” I asked. “What’s it to be?”

  He stopped, turned, and regarded me. “The president would like you to have a talk with Harry Hopkins. It’s not an order, mind you. Just a suggestion.”

  Not an order? Of course it was an order. But I was so surprised by his mention of Hopkins that I didn’t dispute him on that point.

  “Hopkins? Talk to him about what? I’m a reporter, not a social worker.”

  Harry Hopkins was the recently named head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, or FERA. He was in charge of all the government-funded relief in the country—to the tune, I had heard, of half a billion dollars. People were calling FERA the most important card in the entire New Deal deck.

  “Harry doesn’t need any more damn social workers,” Louis growled, resuming his pacing. “He’s got enough of those. What Harry needs is an experienced, sharp-eyed field investigator who can walk into the worst trouble spots around the country and find out what’s happening. He needs somebody who’s independent, knows how to ask a question and when not to, and refuses to suffer fools gladly. Any fools. At any time. For any reason.” His grin was crooked. “The president would like to see you take the job.”

  “And if I… decline?”

  “We didn’t get that far.”

  The threat was plain as day, and I heard it. I was to be a field investigator who would do a lot of traveling. Who would be on the road for weeks, maybe months at a time. A convenient way to separate Eleanor and me and keep us out of the way of the press—with the obvious hope that by the time my travel assignment was finished, one or both of us would have found new interests.

  “And what do you think, Louis?”

  He stopped pacing. “I think,” he said quietly, “that a reporter should never get too close to her source.”

  After a moment I said, “So now you’ve delivered the president’s message. Are you supposed to talk to the First Lady, too?”

  Outside in the hallway, a small silver bell tinkled. It was teatime. Louis sat down on the bed and began pulling on his shoes.

  “I already have.”

  Of course. He would go to her first, push her for her cooperation, then tell me that she believes it’s the right thing to do.

  “And she says?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “She knows you’re not happy at the AP.” He bent down to tie his shoelaces. “She’s fond of Harry and likes the idea of your working with him. She thinks it’s an excellent place to put your journalistic skills and experience to work. She thinks you need a mission. She likes the idea that you would be helping get relief to people who need it.” He sat up. “FERA is something she believes in and supports.”

  Yes, there was that. If I went to work for Harry, I would be doing something that Eleanor thought worthwhile. In a sense, she and I would be working together, on an agenda that was personally hers as well as the administration’s. And it was true that I needed a mission.

  He began coughing again and reached for the glass of water. “The job pays a pretty decent salary, too.”

  “Oh, really? Like what?” I’d been temporarily cut back to sixty dollars a week at the AP for failing to turn in the story on Mrs. R’s gaffe, but that was still good money in comparison to what was being offered by other newspapers. Government work couldn’t come close.

  “Six thousand a year,” he said. “Five dollars a day for food and lodging plus five cents a mile, if you’re driving, train fare otherwise. Harry said he’d be glad to give you the details.” He stood up and a shower of silvery ashes drifted toward the floor. “He knows your work, Hick—especially your Tammany Hall investigative pieces and your coverage of the Mitchell trial. He thinks you’d be a swell choice.”

  I was speechless. Six thousand dollars a year? Ye gods and little fishes, that was twice what the AP was paying me! FDR’s left hook was a fistful of money.

  Louis started toward the door. “Harry’s set up his office in the Walker-Johnson Building. He’ll be working over the weekend. I’ll be glad to arrange a meeting for you tomorrow.”

  “It won’t hurt to talk to him, I suppose.” I was still thinking of the six thousand—and the alternative. “Not promising anything,” I added hastily. “I need to think about this.”

  “Please do.” He opened the door. “And you’ll want to discuss it with Mrs. Roosevelt.” He paused, his hand on the knob. “You will keep this between the two of you.”

  I heard that threat, too. “Of course,” I faltered.

  “Good. I’ll let the president know you’ll be talking with Harry. He’ll be glad to hear it.” He gave me that cat-like grin of his. “In fact, he’ll be dee-lighted.”

  I’ll just bet he would.

  Hopkins had been on the job for just a week. On Sunday morning, I found him alone on the tenth floor of a dilapidated yellow brick office building a couple of blocks from the White House. He was sitting in a wooden tilt-back chair that had seen better days, behind a battered gray government-issue desk. The windows needed washing, the bookshelves needed painting, and Hopkins needed a clean shirt. But he was already spending money. When I came in, he was two-finger typing a yellow telegram flimsy on a Royal that probably dated back to the Wilso
n administration. He rolled it out of the typewriter and flung it at me. It authorized two million dollars to relief efforts in the state of Illinois.

  “Chicago’s dying,” he said, dropping another flimsy into the typewriter. “If they don’t get money fast, the city’ll be dead inside a month.” The next day, the Washington Post would remark, “The half-billion dollars for direct relief to the states won’t last long if Harry Hopkins maintains the pace he set in his first week. He’s a man with a mission.”

  The guys in the AP office were saying that FERA was the toughest top job in all the New Deal programs. Hopkins had to figure out how and where to spend the bales of money Congress was giving him, put people to work, and—most difficult of all—insert the federal government into the state and local agencies that had always administered relief. Some of these agencies were run by state and county political bosses who were in the habit of using local relief funds to build little empires for themselves. In other words, it would be no surprise if there was already a fair amount of graft and corruption out there. When the big federal money hit, some folks would start looking for a score.

  And there would be big money. Roosevelt had managed to convince Congress—at least for the time being—that relief wasn’t charity or a handout. It was a civic duty. In this view, giving people cash grants to tide them over the rough places meant that they had something to hang onto until they could stand on their own. But this philosophy flew in the face of the American tradition of sink-or-swim self-reliance and personal responsibility, and the squawking from the right wings of both political parties was already getting loud and louder.

  In the midst of this cacophony, Hopkins was building a distribution system for funneling cash to those who needed it. “We didn’t have much to go on,” he would say later. “We had to invent the whole goddamned thing. It was like asking the Aztecs to build an airplane.”

  Now, he lit a cigarette and started to talk. Ten minutes later, he was lighting another cigarette and finishing his spiel. “Well, there it is, Miss Hickok. I need to know what’s going on across the country. I need an investigator, somebody smart, somebody who can go out and turn over a few rocks, look in the corners, open the closet doors. I don’t want statistics. I don’t want the social worker angle. I just want somebody to tell me, confidentially and objectively, what’s happening out there. All of it, the good, the bad, the hellish. Without pulling any punches. You interested?”

  I was interested, yes. But I hedged my bets.

  “How about if we agree to a test run? I’ll take one assignment, and we’ll see how it works out. But I can’t start until the end of July. I’m covering the Mitchell trial for the AP, and it’s likely to go another couple of weeks. After that, I’ll need a vacation.” I didn’t give him the details. Eleanor and I were trying to keep it quiet.

  “You’re on.” He eyed me through the smoke. “But I want you to remember a couple of things. First, don’t get involved in what you’re seeing. Stay out of the story. Second thing, keep your head down. No byline, no recognition. You’re an objective eye, that’s all.” He pursed his lips. “And keep quiet about your Washington connections—to me, to the White House.” With a dispassionate emphasis, he added. “Especially the White House.”

  “Understood,” I said.

  He nodded. “Good. Glad to have you with us. I’ll get the paperwork started.”

  So it was settled. I would go to work for Hopkins after the Mitchell trial was over. And after Eleanor and I returned from the three-week summer trip we were planning.

  The Roosevelts were in the habit of taking separate summer holidays. FDR would go ocean fishing or sailing with friends and spend a few weeks in the pool at Warm Springs. Mrs. R would travel to Campobello and along the way, visit friends and relatives who lived on the Northeast coast. This year, she had decided that—having dutifully met her First Lady obligations in Washington—we would take a holiday trip, just the two of us, alone, a romantic escape to New Hampshire, Vermont, Quebec, and the Gaspé Peninsula. She would drive her sporty blue Buick roadster. We would be incognito.

  “It’ll be such fun, Hick,” she said, with her usual enthusiasm. “We’ll drive with the top down and see the sights and stay wherever we want. We’ll be Jane and Janet Doe. We’ll be ordinary.”

  “But won’t people recognize you?” I asked doubtfully. It was hard to believe that the First Lady could get away with what she was planning. “And don’t forget the press. Every chance they get, they’ll want photos.” The thought of seeing photos of us in the newspapers made me shrink.

  “They won’t know who I am.” She smiled confidently. “They’re all Republicans and Canadians up there.”

  I had to laugh at that. “But what about the Secret Service?”

  Another smile, and a wave of the hand. “The Secret Service isn’t going either. I’ve already told Franklin.”

  The Secret Service was furious. Bill Moran, the man in charge, was quite sure we’d be kidnapped, which Mrs. R pretended to think was very funny. It wasn’t, of course: the Lindbergh kidnapping had occurred just the year before, and kidnapping-for-ransom was almost a national sport. At the end of May, a twenty-five-year-old Kansas City woman was taking a bubble bath when four armed men broke into the house and abducted her. She was released (dried and clothed) after her wealthy father paid a thirty-thousand-dollar ransom. At the time of our trip, the case was still a media sensation, and Bill Moran brought it up as an argument for sending a Secret Service car escort.

  Mrs. Roosevelt rolled her eyes. “What would they do with us? Haul us out of our baths and cram us into the trunk of a car?” With a laugh, she added, “They’d find us quite a handful. One of us is six feet tall and the other weighs nearly two hundred pounds.”

  She was exaggerating my weight by twenty-five pounds, just to make a point. But it didn’t matter. Mrs. R prevailed, although Bill Moran insisted on giving her a gun, which she locked (unloaded) in the glove compartment of her roadster. Thank heavens, we didn’t need it.

  As it turned out, Eleanor was surprisingly right about our anonymity, and we enjoyed a wonderfully private holiday, driving without a plan or a schedule through the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire and north into Canada. She was determined that we would stay wherever we felt like it, small tourist cottages, a secluded hotel on a lake, a log cabin hideaway, and as we made our way north, that’s what we did. In Quebec, we indulged ourselves for several glorious nights at the grand Château Frontenac, a castellated and turreted hotel in old Quebec City, overlooking the Saint Lawrence River. The First Lady had one official function, but after that, we were free.

  The July days were lovely, the landscape was delightful, and best of all, we were entirely alone and utterly anonymous. Of all the time I would spend just with her, over all the years we knew one another, those three weeks would be the brightest, the happiest. Perhaps I can be forgiven for believing that, since we had these days of focusing entirely on one another, we could have them again someday, when she was no longer First Lady. She believed it, too—then, when both of us could imagine a future together.

  On the coast of the rugged Gaspé Peninsula, we met a priest who invited us to his rectory for a lunch of fresh-caught fish, garden vegetables, chunks of warm, buttered bread. Learning that one of his two unexpected guests was a “Mrs. Roosevelt,” he asked if she might be related to President Theodore Roosevelt. The man was charmed when he learned that the woman at his table was TR’s niece. Back in the car, we decided that he didn’t know that another Roosevelt was now living in the White House.

  “Isn’t that delicious?” Eleanor crowed. “I absolutely love being incognito. I’ll have to write and tell Franklin about it.” Which she did, for she wrote to her husband regularly while we were away. “I don’t want him to worry about me,” she explained. She addressed the envelopes with a flourish: Mr. F. D. Roosevelt, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington D.C. U.S.A.

  Worry? Did he, really? By this time, I knew something abou
t the way the Roosevelt marriage functioned, but its inner life was still an intriguing mystery. She had been in love with him once, as a very young woman—did she love him still? In what ways did she love him, exactly? As a wife, or as a sister? How were devotion and love related? Both husband and wife were committed to a common cause—their political universe of beliefs and goals and actions. Did it create enough of a bond to keep them connected, despite the forces that pulled them apart? The answers to these questions would forever elude me, and close as I was to her, then and in later years, I would never fully understand her relationship with FDR.

  We stayed for several quiet days at Campobello, then drove back to Washington. The night of our arrival, we had dinner with the president, who wanted to hear about our travels. He was attentive and pleasant and laughed at his wife’s stories and—most heartily of all—at my report of her pleasure when she learned that the Canadian priest had no idea that there was another Roosevelt in the White House.

  But I kept thinking about that left hook and wasn’t surprised when he asked me—pointedly, I thought—how soon I planned to see Harry Hopkins and get my first FERA assignment. His genial smile masked the suggestion I heard in his tone: I wasn’t to linger in Washington, where gossip still linked my name with hers. (I would later learn that Princess Alice had exclaimed, loudly, and in a fashionable Washington restaurant, “I don’t care what they say, I simply cannot believe that Eleanor Roosevelt is a lesbian.”)

  “Tomorrow, Mr. President,” I replied. “I have an appointment with Mr. Hopkins first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Bully!” He lit a fresh cigarette. “Your boss is a man with a mission—yours. He has your first trip all planned, I understand. Should be interesting.”