Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  The assassin, Joseph Zangara, an unemployed thirty-three-year-old bricklayer, told the court: “I do not hate Mr. Roosevelt personally. I hate all Presidents, no matter from what country they come, and I hate all officials and everybody who is rich.” Following Mayor Cermak’s death on 6 March, Zangara was executed.

  An additional note of gloom came with the sudden death of Senator Thomas J. Walsh, who was to have been FDR’s attorney general. A vigorous and early Roosevelt supporter, the popular seventy-three-year-old senator from Montana had exposed and relentlessly pursued the Teapot Dome scandal. An aging widower, he secretly married the former Señora Mina Nieves Perez Chaumont de Truffin of Havana. Aboard the train to Washington from their honeymoon in Florida, he died of a heart attack. His wife of less than one week found him in their stateroom at dawn on 2 March, the day FDR and his entourage arrived in Washington.

  Senator Walsh had chaired the almost-deadlocked Democratic convention in Chicago, and ER believed that “Franklin owed much to him for his skillful handling” of that unruly situation. Without him, FDR might have been denied the nomination. FDR considered Walsh “one of the three or four wisest men in the Democratic party,” and he was stunned by his death.

  At the inaugural, flags flew at half-staff in Walsh’s honor, and ER initially canceled several social events and declined to attend the Inaugural Ball. But after countless protests, “the pleas of hundreds” demanding her presence, expressions of fear that all the money raised by the charity ball would be lost, and the disappointment of her own friends, she agreed to attend.

  FDR did not attend this first ball, or any subsequent ones. Rarely seen in a wheelchair, he avoided public appearances that might reveal the full extent of his polio disability. Moreover, he was reportedly visiting with the woman he had promised never to see again, Lucy Mercer Rutherford.

  The ball opened to a concert-reception during which the Army, Navy, and Marine Bands played, followed by the U.S. Indian Reserve Band, “composed of twenty full-blooded Indians, representing 18 tribes,” many from Dakota and Oklahoma reservations. Chief Yowlache, a Cherokee leader and noted baritone, gave a concert in “full Indian regalia, including a $5,000 headdress of golden eagle feathers.”

  ER was resplendent. Her eyes sparkled with warmth and delight as she greeted everybody and was escorted through the vast throng to the platform by an enthusiastic floor committee. The fact is, ER loved to party, and to dance.

  According to Cissy Patterson’s Washington Star, “The new First Lady was a striking figure in a gown of blue and silver lamé.” She greeted her friends in their boxes and mingled throughout the auditorium. Rosa Ponselle, “the Metropolitan Opera prima donna,” sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Given a prolonged ovation, she contributed “Dixie” for an encore. After the ceremonies, three dance orchestras presided: Rudy Vallee and “his famous Connecticut Yankees, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, and the Central Park Casino Orchestra.”

  ER’s personal party included her mother-in-law, her brother Hall and his family, her children and their guests, Earl Miller and his wife, Louis Howe and his family, Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, Mary Dreier, and a full assortment of Roosevelts and Delanos. Although Lorena Hickok returned to New York after a supper reception but before the ball, ER’s friends in attendance included publisher Eleanor (Cissy) Patterson, former member of Congress Ruth Bryan Owen “in a striking gown of black satin,” and novelist Fannie Hurst, “perhaps the most picturesque figure at the reception.”

  Never again would ER be the wallflower at a Washington party, the silent partner off in a corner. The circumstances of 1933 demanded experiment and challenged all tradition, and ER was not the same woman who had been so blithely mistreated during those drear Wilson years. Nor was FDR the same man. However much Eleanor resented Franklin’s presumptions, she admired his aplomb, fearlessness, vigor. However much Franklin resented Eleanor’s goading, he admired her principles, honesty, loyalty.

  If ER resented FDR’s political wiles, his conniving and duplicity, she believed that his “desire was to make life happier for people.” He faced life with a contagious courage. He gave people hope, and she trusted him generally to act on behalf of human betterment: “I have never known a man who gave one a greater sense of security. I never heard him say there was a problem that he thought it was impossible for human beings to solve…. I never knew him to face life or any problem that came up with fear.”

  In addition, she admired his mind, the range and intensity of his interests. He read voraciously, biography and history particularly, and remembered everything significant. ER was proud of her husband’s “amazing ability to skim through any kind of book and get everything out of it.” When she gave him Gone With the Wind, he returned it “in a very short time.” She doubted he “read it so quickly.” But he answered every question, and “I couldn’t catch him out on a single point.”

  ER was happy when others recognized her husband’s talents, and eagerly passed on compliments. A Swedish diplomat told her, for example, that when he met Calvin Coolidge, “he marvelled how any one could be president and know so little. But when he talked with you he marvelled how any one could know so much….”

  For all their differences, ER and FDR respected each other, depended on each other, understood each other. FDR never contemplated an uninvolved or silent First Lady. His wife was his adviser, partner, inspector general of choice. He relied on her advice, trusted her vision.

  On 8 March 1933, when he asked his friend and mentor Felix Frankfurter to accept the post of solicitor general, the Harvard Law School professor was reluctant. FDR encouraged him, and said: “Well, there’s no hurry about this. I tell you what I want you to do. I sometimes find it useful, and you might find it useful—I wish you would talk to your Mrs. about it.” Frankfurter took the president’s advice, consulted his wife Marion, who thought it was a bad idea and he declined.

  Throughout the White House years, ER was to spend between sixteen and twenty hours a day running actually a parallel administration concerned with every aspect of national betterment. Domestically, nothing was beyond her range of interest, and she monitored every department through a friend or agreeable contact. FDR never credited ER with a job well done or publicly acknowledged her political influence. But little of significance was achieved without her input, and her vision shaped the best of his presidency.

  *Known as a generous hostess whose parties in partnership with her companion Elsie de Wolfe had highlighted the social season in Paris and New York before World War I, Bessie Marbury was a theater and literary agent with offices in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Madrid. Her clients included James M. Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde.

  *In addition to Perkins and Wallace, FDR’s original cabinet included Cordell Hull, secretary of state; William Woodin, secretary of the treasury; George Henry Dern, secretary of war; Homer S. Cummings, named attorney general after Thomas J. Walsh’s sudden death; Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior; and Daniel Calhoun Roper, secretary of commerce.

  *”And now abideth, faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

  2: Public and Private Domains

  Each night ER placed memos in her husband’s bedside basket urging him to do what she believed needed most urgently to be done. Above all, she sought to extend her husband’s efforts so that the New Deal would become at least in part a “square deal for women.”

  But no matter how many memos she wrote, no matter how much she influenced policy, the First Lady’s official domain was the White House, where she presided over the domestic continuity of the nation’s highest office. From 5 March until 15 June, while FDR worked on legislation to transform the country, ER had only one specific assignment: As first housewife she was to create a gracious and pleasant environment. The “President’s House” was intended to be democratic and simple. ER was mindful that she now lived “in a house owned by all the American people.” Within days, ER settl
ed in and overhauled the entire place. It suited the moment—and the style of her own high-spirited and growing family. She rejected staff opposition, and insisted that the stately dignity of the old trees and the rolling greensward would survive her decision to install tree swings, slides, and a sandbox for her grandchildren. Such playthings were, after all, no less aesthetic than Pauline, the Tafts’ executive cow, who grazed the White House lawns.

  The election profoundly affected ER’s children, and she sought to shield them from the dazzling new privileges, unrelenting demands, and public scrutiny heaped upon America’s First Family. Privately, the first hundred days coincided with major family upheavals.

  Her youngest sons, Franklin, Jr., and John, at school in Groton, were more protected from Washington’s glare. But her daughter Anna and her children, Sistie and Buzzie, considered the place home. Anna was in love with John Boettiger, a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune whom she had met on the campaign train, and in the throes of a messy separation from her husband, Curtis Dali. ER was fond of Boettiger, but nothing was settled.

  ER was particularly disturbed by her son Elliott’s decision to leave his wife, Betty Donner, and their infant son, William. Elliott at twenty-two was still the family’s most unpredictable child. He had refused to go to college and ended his formal education to marry as quickly as possible. Then, on 8 March, he left his wife and baby in the White House, announcing he would discover his true self on the Texas range. Betty, the daughter of an anti-Roosevelt family whose fortune in partnership with Andrew Mellon was associated with Pittsburgh’s steel industry, was depressed and confused by Elliott’s actions.

  ER agonized over Elliott’s decision to abandon his family, and soon realized that there was little she could do to control her children or protect them from relentless press attention and scandal. But she was determined to make the White House comfortable and welcoming for her family, their extended community, and the American people.

  Her first day in residence she met her own guests at the door and ended the ritual of military aides and liveried ushers announcing visitors in “sepulchral tones.” “My feeling about the White House is that it belongs to the people. Their taxes support it. It is really theirs. And as far as possible they should be made to feel welcome here…. And I want the visitors to be given every courtesy.” By courtesy ER did not mean official correctness but personal attention: “Sometimes, when visitors are being shown through, I may be passing by, and if I can, I shall stop and talk with them and show them about…. I hate the idea that I might ever lose touch with people….”

  The new First Lady’s public style as national hostess amazed even her closest friends and seasoned journalists. Bess Furman wrote: “The century-old White House wore a startled air today, as though listening to the sound of shattering precedents…. She had expected 1,000 guests for tea, but 3,000 came….”

  She kissed her guests as they arrived, and served tea in both the state dining room and East Room, Nothing so dramatic had occurred in the East Room since “Abigail Adams had hung her wash there to dry!”

  Since FDR “was much too busy finding ways and means of meeting the financial crisis… to be bothered with anything else,” ER reorganized “the household”—and practically everything she did “shocked the ushers.” ER seemed rather proud to have distressed the man most noted for his exquisite knowledge of protocol, the longtime chief usher Irwin (Ike) Hoover, whom she had first met when her uncle, TR, was president: “My first act was to insist on running the elevator myself without waiting for one of the doormen to run it for me.” Ike Hoover announced that “that just wasn’t done by the president’s wife.” But she entered the elevator, closed the door, and replied: “Now it is.”

  Nancy Cook, her Val-Kill partner, known for her carpentry skills and love for detail, stayed on to help redecorate. Nan and ER concentrated first on the second-floor family quarters: They hung her pictures, and FDR’s pictures and prints, and “much to the horror of the household’ staff” lugged and hauled furniture about. The long corridors, divided into East and West Wings, were remade into public sitting areas at the east end, a cozy breakfast nook and luncheon corner at the west end.

  ER selected for herself Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom suite, a spacious room with brick fireplace and a bank of windows, a smaller room with corner windows, and a bathroom at the southwest end of the house. Just above the large magnolia tree planted by Andrew Jackson, her windows faced south onto a lovely view of the Rose Garden and the Washington Monument. ER converted the larger space into her study/sitting room. “It took me so long to move from bed to dressing table to wardrobe [in that very large room] that I decided I was wasting good time, so I had my bed moved into the small adjoining dressing room.”

  The West Wing breakfast nook/luncheon space was just outside her doors, and across the corridor a small bedroom and study facing northwest was generally reserved for Hick. ER moved a Val-Kill daybed into her sitting room, and her closest friends slept there when the house was full, which it often was. Since no beds in the house were long enough for any of the extra-long Roosevelts, she ordered new Val-Kill beds made for the entire family.

  ER often felt Lincoln’s presence in her room. Especially when she was working late at night, the room would get cold, and there was always the knocking of old pipes. She felt chilled as odd changes of light and air occurred, and then she would get the “curious” but “distinct feeling” that there was somebody there. The image of Lincoln would come vividly to mind, standing by the window gazing thoughtfully out over Washington. If he ever spoke to her she never mentioned it. But she never doubted that his presence and the shades of others filled the house.

  FDR’s bedroom and study adjoined her rooms to the east. His bedroom faced out over the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial; his study was a place of historic action, known over time as the Treaty Room, the Monroe Room, and TR’s Cabinet Room. When seated at his desk, FDR faced a pastel portrait of his wife which hung above the hall door. A portrait of his mother was directly behind him. When he sat on the long leather couch, which he frequently did during meetings and in moments of relaxation, he faced his mother and had his wife behind him.

  While the images of his mother and wife were always present in his study, at some point FDR decided to place a large seven-drawer highboy in front of the sliding doors that connected ER’s study/sitting room with his bedroom. FDR’s barrier to free and spontaneous access was no casual gesture. ER herself had placed a similar piece of furniture in front of shared doorways to end her mother-in-law’s unannounced intrusions on the bedroom floor of their twin East 65th Street home.

  ER’s favorite space was the completely open and bright corner breakfast area in front of the large lunette window at the west end of the hallway. There she held her morning meetings with staff and relaxed with friends and family. Formerly Lou Henry Hoover’s solarium, the West Hall sitting area had been filled with exotic birds, wicker furniture, and extraordinary California plantings. ER brought in large wooden screens, a Val-Kill walnut drop-leaf table, and old Grant-era leather furniture, which she covered in “cheerful” cretonne slipcovers. She had breakfast and lunch there, until the weather warmed and she could eat outdoors. From spring to first frost, ER preferred breakfast and tea on the South Veranda, just below her own windows under the magnificent magnolia tree.

  The corridor area outside FDR’s suite was known as the East Wing, and it served as a screening room after many dinner parties. Louis Howe’s bedroom, once Lincoln’s study, and corner sitting room were east of FDR’s suite. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on 1 January 1863 in Howe’s bedroom. These rooms were among the largest in the house, and Howe initially complained they were too grand for him. But as his health deteriorated and he became bedridden, the space seemed a small comfort.

  Across from Howe’s rooms were guest suites, each consisting of bedroom, sitting room, and bath. Over the years the spacious northeast corner suite housed Wins
ton Churchill, various visiting royals, and an endless stream of more intimate family and friends who happened by.

  Like many women at midlife, ER at forty-eight experienced a new level of freedom, excitement, energy, robust health. She rarely slept more than four to six hours. She arose each morning at seven or seven-thirty, filled with anticipation and high purpose. After a glass of hot water and lemon, she did stretches and calisthenics; then rode her horse Dot, a gift from Earl Miller, in Rock Creek Park for an hour or more, usually between eight and ten.

  After her ride she took a cold shower, then breakfasted. Her breakfasts tended to be hearty, with a large café au lait. She allowed nobody else to pour the steamed milk and coffee together into the oversized porcelain mugs and French coffee bowls she and FDR had collected on their travels.

  FDR preferred breakfast in bed or in his large oval sitting room. Usually ER returned from her ride when her husband arose, about ten, and she went in to greet him after his tray was delivered. Occasionally he joined ER in the West Hall for coffee or lunch with special friends.

  In late afternoons, after the day’s work but before her teas and his cocktails, she went for a brisk walk and then swam in the new pool, often with FDR. According to ER, the White House’s “fine pool” was built by public donations in response to an appeal made by the New York Daily News. New Yorkers responded generously to ensure the health of their former governor and favorite son.

  Completed by May, it became FDR’s main form of exercise and physical recreation. Hick recalled that FDR “was a wonderful swimmer” and could “beat any of his boys across the White House swimming pool. Once in a game of water polo… he knocked one of the newspaper correspondents out cold, dragged him out and revived him! With apologies.”