Initially charmed by Labour Party leader Ramsay MacDonald, whose views of the World Court, disarmament, and international economic policies coincided with her own, she considered him “a great man.” “What delightfully well-read, cultured people some Englishmen are!” His lunchtime stories fascinated her. “How do they read so much when they are so busy? I think they take more holidays.” She was impressed by his daughter Ishbel, who was subsequently elected to Parliament, and they became friends.
A lifelong pacifist, one of the founders of Britain’s Union of Democratic Control (UDC), which opposed World War I and called for democratic control of international affairs, Ramsay MacDonald was associated with America’s leading pacifists and social reformers, including Lillian Wald, who had been president of the American Union Against Militarism, and Jane Addams, who was president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
In 1924, MacDonald became England’s first Labour prime minister in a disastrous government that lasted less than a year. Now he headed a minority coalition government, sought to end imperial rule, and worked ardently for world peace and economic amity, particularly the reduction or erasure of wartime debts the Allies owed the United States. To right the wrongs of the Treaty of Versailles, his controversial “MacDonald Plan” emphasized military parity between Germany and France and voluntary British disarmament. Winston Churchill thought him mad, especially after Hitler achieved power.
The disarmament conference, which continued to meet irregularly in Geneva, had been stalled since 1931 and all MacDonald’s other efforts collapsed during the worldwide Depression. Now he hoped to achieve an accord with FDR, to present Anglo-American unity at the London Economic Conference in June. FDR was delightful company, but vague and elusive. He seemed always to agree, but promised nothing.
ER feared that FDR’s campaign deal with William Randolph Hearst, during which he promised to keep America aloof from Europe and its woes, remained his priority. She deplored isolationism and economic nationalism and doubted that her husband intended to agree to anything. On international issues he was vague and elusive with her as well, and it galled her. Ardent for peace, ER turned to her mentors for support, and astonishingly gave presidential correspondence to MacDonald’s old ally, Lillian Wald.
The day before ER sailed on the Sequoia, Lillian Wald wrote to Mary Rozet Smith, Jane Addams’s partner of forty years, promising to “send you and JA the correspondence between the Prime Minister and the President which brought about this visit.”
Presumably, when ER visited Wald in April she had brought the letters with her, determined to pursue her convictions regarding this urgent meeting to secure economic stability and world peace. But FDR made it clear that international issues were not ER’s business, and she was furious to be excluded from decisive conversations.
On 20 April 1933, ER addressed the annual meeting of the Travelers Aid Society, which had cared for over 2,600 homeless men and women during the year, over half under the age of twenty-one. The First Lady was irate that no relief was even contemplated for these young people, and spoke sharply about their neglect: “I think there has been so much emphasis on family relief work and family welfare that single men and women are having pretty much of a hard time. A basket of food does not do much good when the recipient has no place to cook or eat it.”
ER was outraged that no New Deal legislation had even considered these facts, and she said so publicly. It was the beginning of her lifelong campaign for youth, affordable housing, and economic opportunity for all people.
That night, with advance press notice, ER flew over Washington with Amelia Earhart. Press secretary Steve Early’s memo to photographers, “all right for movies and stills,” enabled full documentation of the after-dinner party. According to The New York Times, “The First Lady of the Land and the first woman to fly the [Atlantic Ocean] went skylarking together tonight in a big Condor plane.”
The flying party included ER’s brother Hall; Amelia Earhart’s husband, George Palmer Putnam; the plane’s captain, E. H. Parker; and several reporters.
Amelia Earhart flew from Washington to Baltimore “without even removing her white evening gloves.” ER told reporters: “It does mark an epoch, doesn’t it, when a girl in evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night.” Also in evening dress, ER flew part of the trip in the cockpit with Captain Parker.
She was delighted: “It was lovely. Out there in front with no obstructions to the view one could see everything and it felt like being on top of the world!”
When “the plane made a most peculiar serpentine side swing,” Amelia Earhart laughed: “Oh, Mrs. Roosevelt’s flying the plane!”
ER had taken flying lessons and this flight was in part a celebration for the Amateur Air Pilots Association, which she had joined. She was always disappointed that FDR specifically asked her not to fly herself, not to become a pilot. He had enough to worry about, and it was one of the few limitations he imposed, or asked her to make—for his sake. She complied, but she flew as a passenger whenever possible, and logged more miles in the air than many pilots.
ER rejoiced in the modern adventure. The world had changed so dramatically within her own lifetime: electric lights, long-distance telephone, radio, automobiles, movies, airplanes. A “new woman” in the 1920s, ER was a “modern” woman in the 1930s. Occasionally her modernity astounded the world, but she celebrated the best of the changes: “We can know and see many more people, we can do so much more in a day…. There is greater opportunity to develop.” And all the new opportunities guaranteed a more “valuable and interesting” life than was previously available to women. “It is almost impossible to compare the girl of today with the girl of thirty or forty years ago.”
For ER, even social obligations offered political compensation: Teas and receptions were the means by which the American people entered the White House and came face to face with the hearth that symbolized her husband’s government. ER considered her job as First Lady important, even if “standing and shaking hands for an hour or so, two or three times a week,” was “not exactly an inspiring occupation.”
“At the first few receptions of each season, my arms ached, my shoulders ached, my back ached, and my knees and feet seemed to belong to someone else. However… I was lucky in having a supple hand which never ached.” She was particularly grateful to the military aides who gave her wise advice about “how to stand and not grow weary.” After an especially long reception line, when ER complained that she had become so stiff she could no longer bend her knees or actually move, a young Marine told her: “Oh, you should not stand so rigidly. Just bend your knees a little, frequently. No one will notice and you will be much less tired.”
People noticed ER’s warmth. One visitor wrote that she went through the line and then stood about to watch the First Lady’s energetic greeting. She wondered: “Do you shake and think, or do you just stand and shake?” ER replied that she concentrated on faces,
because being a little deaf I never really heard names. Of course, when you look at people carefully, you have various reactions: you think “what a pretty and intelligent face,” or “what a kind face,” and so on. However, when there are a great many people, toward the end faces become blurred. Once I walked into the dining room after the receiving was over and saw two old friends. “Where did you come from?” I said, and they told me they had gone through the line and that I had shaken hands with them warmly.
For all her public concerns, a peculiar flaw haunted ER’s household administration: The food served at her table was notably dreadful, and each household decision was channeled through the routinely churlish acts of Henrietta Nesbitt, ER’s stubborn choice for White House chef and head housekeeper.
3: ER’s Revenge:
Henrietta Nesbitt, Head Housekeeper
ER’s careless attitude toward food during the White House years has long been dismissed as a reflection of her lack of interest in mundane matters. But ER was actual
ly fussy, obsessed with details. She and FDR personally researched and designed the new White House dinner service of a thousand pieces of ivory china. Dirt and dust annoyed her to the point of conducting top sergeant equivalents “of a white glove inspection.” She personally arranged fresh-cut flowers and centerpieces from the White House greenhouse and selected from a variety of silver and crystal decorations, always mindful of FDR’s favorite, a silver boat sailing on a sea of glass. Flowers pleased ER. She attended flower shows and studied her friends’ gardens. She took and gave cuttings; she was proud of her own garden at Val-Kill and fully appreciated the White House gardens and greenhouses. In light of her attention to detail, ER’s determination to retain Henrietta Nesbitt, who exasperated FDR, reveals an aspect of ER’s complex emotional reality.
Whatever the First Lady’s conscious reasons, no household decision was better suited to dampen the president’s pleasure. She could have had the services of the most accomplished chefs and household managers in North America. But she insisted on Henrietta Nesbitt, a political ally in the League of Women Voters and Hyde Park neighbor. She had operated a pleasant tea house, and ER liked her baked goods. Because her husband, Henry, was ill and out of work, she needed a job. ER also gave Henry Nesbitt a job on the White House staff. Moreover, ER transferred to Mrs. Nesbitt full responsibility for the White House. She supervised the kitchen, dominated the staff, controlled the food and the flavors.
White House meals served by “La Nesbitt” were noteworthy. The porridge was runny; the soups were watery; the salads were tossed with chunks of marshmallow and canned fruit. FDR complained. Guests commented. Gossips gossiped. The staff was embarrassed; friends and intimates were distressed. Some, like Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior, were discreet and relegated their thoughts to their private diaries:
The President and Mrs. Roosevelt gave their annual official dinner to the Cabinet last night. There were about eighty at table. I am bound to confess that the White House dinners are neither inspiring nor do they stand out as Lucullan repasts. I am not very fussy about my food… but it does seem a little out of proportion to use a solid-gold knife and fork on ordinary roast mutton.
It was not that ER did not herself care about food. When she traveled, she wrote home about new dishes, flavors, and spices that delighted her. She routinely took her friends to fine restaurants, and, in homage to her great mentor Marie Souvestre, preferred French cuisine. She regularly paused to compliment the creators of well-prepared dishes and sent praise to various chefs she considered exceptional. Nevertheless, tough meat and exhausted vegetables became expected White House fare.
Despite her genuine consideration for the needs and wants of her guests, ER allowed the food and drink served at her White House table to become a subject of derision. When wine was again served for the first time since Woodrow Wilson’s administration, ER was quick to say the prewar custom of four to six dinner wines would not be revived. She would serve only “light American wines,” and only two of them—a white and a red, “perhaps a sauterne and a burgundy.”
According to Ickes, “Mrs. Roosevelt had announced that she would serve one glass each of two domestic wines and she kept her word. The sherry was passable, but the champagne was undrinkable. I hopefully took one drink and then set my glass down with a final gesture.” Elizabeth Ann Farley, James Farley’s wife, “almost made a face when she tasted the champagne. She was quite indignant…. She seems to be quite fussy about the quality and quantity of her wines, although Jim [the son of a saloonkeeper] never touches a drop…. It does seem to me that if decent champagne can’t be made in the United States, it ought to be permissible, even for the White House, to serve imported champagne.”
Days later, FDR “joked” about the dreadful drinks and explained that only minutes “before dinner he had asked Mrs. Roosevelt about the wine and she said she was going to serve domestic champagne from New York State, recommended by Rex Tugwell. The President told her that she ought not to serve domestic champagne, but she replied that it had been on the ice and that it was too late to change. The President said that he has been apologizing ever since.”
ER’s failure to consult a wine steward about what was possible or agreeable to serve after so many years of Prohibition was consistent with her refusal to employ anybody but Mrs. Nesbitt to preside over the kitchen. In anticipation of ghastly repasts, some White House guests routinely dined before they arrived.
ER was not unmindful of the complaints. She brought FDR’s objections to Mrs. Nesbitt. But the head housekeeper always had an excuse: She was saving money, as she was told to do. But you said there would be thirty for dinner, and there were forty-two; of course the soup was watery.
Undoubtedly, some of the criticism heaped upon Mrs. Nesbitt actually belonged to ER. Gracious and generous, ER invited people to dinner throughout the day. House guests filled every room. Each had their own menus and needs; some were served separately on trays in their rooms. Teas and larger social affairs were attended by literally hundreds more than originally planned for.
Also, ER was interested in inexpensive and experimental foods that her nutritionist friends promoted for Depression-ravaged America. Enthusiastic about “new foods” Flora Rose and her team of nutritionists had developed at Cornell University, ER introduced them into the White House. For weeks, she served “economy meals” to illustrate the new range of inexpensive and healthful diets.
Until ER’s efforts, the home economics movement in New York State was an under-funded educational Cinderella. ER championed it as a life-enhancing part of the struggle for women’s rights and empowerment. One of ER’s earliest trips as First Lady was to Cornell in March 1933. She and Hick were impressed with Flora Rose’s inexpensive, “correctly balanced” meals. At a cost of 7 1/2 cents for each adult and 9 1/2 cents for each child (the difference between the 1933 costs of coffee and milk), the first 7 1/2-cent White House lunch consisted of hot stuffed eggs with tomato sauce, whole wheat toast, mashed potatoes, prune pudding, and coffee or milk. ER assured the press that her low-cost menus would be limited to “occasions when there were no guests.”
But neither household generosity nor her interest in 7 1/2 cent meals explained ER’s twelve-year defense of Henrietta Nesbitt, who was one of the greatest anomalies of the Roosevelt White House. Completely unprepared for her job, she was fifty-nine years old and had never worked for anybody else before. She told her husband: “It’s just keeping house, and I’ve kept house all my life. Only, instead of seeing that you and boys are cared for, I’ll have the President and his family to worry about. You’ll see how simple it will be. I’ve been keeping house for six. Now I’ll multiply by ten, and keep house for sixty!” She recognized that the “White House would be a big responsibility, but Mrs. Roosevelt had said I could do it, so I knew I could.”
Politically, Mrs. Nesbitt was a fervent Democrat, and she credited ER for her views: She had studied “astrology, and the stars foretold that this was the start of the woman’s era, that the man’s world was coming to an end… Think of the progress women have made in the last eighty years! Before then a woman couldn’t call her second-best bonnet her own.”
However flamboyant Mrs. Nesbitt was politically, even ER was mystified by her culinary disasters. When confronted by the damage done to new peas she had herself bought from a woman’s stand in the country, she complained: “Will you tell whoever cooked the peas tonight that they were just as hard as bullets, though they were small and should have been very nice.”
Since Mrs. Nesbitt managed to ruin even salads and steamed vegetables (ER’s favorite foods), ER proposed that Mrs. Nesbitt visit Schrafft’s to learn how their chefs worked: “So I went to New York and spent a couple of days in Schrafft’s kitchens, and… they showed me just how they managed to get every bit of vegetable from kitchen to plate, looking as if it were specially cooked.” But all the “tricks” she learned were sabotaged by her discovery that she could cook “the vegetable water down to a broth” wh
ich she then used to smother the fresh steamed vegetables: That “was a trick of my own,” and made everything “tastier.”
Mrs. Nesbitt dismissed all criticism. When FDR said, “The vegetables are watery,” he was bored by sweetbreads and brains, or “sick of liver and beans,” she said, “these were figures of speech.”
The White House food situation actually made national headlines in 1936: “FDR DEMANDS NEW DEAL—REFUSES SPINACH—CRISIS STRIKES.” Mrs. Nesbitt “felt terrible. I was sensitive and overworked, and this was ridicule that curled up my very soul.” And “I was doing my best. Keeping him content was my job….”
But she failed, as did ER. He was merely given to “tizzy-wizzys” over food, she once told her head housekeeper. ER had persuaded herself that FDR, widely known for his epicurean tastes, really had no serious gourmet interests. Actually, before Henrietta Nesbitt entered the scene, ER told a reporter that if she served FDR “bacon and eggs three times a day he would, be perfectly satisfied.”
ER’s curious disregard for her husband’s tastes suggests an explanation for her persistent defense of Henrietta Nesbitt: The housekeeper was one expression of her passive-aggressive behavior in a marriage of remarkable and labyrinthine complexity.
Endlessly embattled but irrevocably united, Eleanor and Franklin had in their separate courts achieved a balance of power. ER only rarely but modestly complained about Missy; Franklin only rarely but quietly complained about Mrs. Nesbitt. Later, after Louis Howe’s death in 1936, the balance between them was temporarily upended by the presence of Betsey, James’s wife, in FDR’s court. During that tense time, FDR bellowed rather loudly about Mrs. Nesbitt. ER reached for-her pen, and seemed to jest at her husband’s distaste and distress in her column. When his “tizzy-wizzy” over spinach made headlines, he became furious, and it was a serious moment between them—not actually healed until ER took to her bed, after which FDR worked earnestly to restore his wife’s good cheer.
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