Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Finally, ER decided to return to the role of Apple Mary: “I like my miseries better this way.”

  After Howe died, for theatrical staging for the Gridiron Widows skits, ER relied on Elinor Morgenthau, and Gabrielle Forbush, a professional writer who worked in the Treasury department. According to Time, the 1936 Gridiron Widows party was “the most intimate show ever seen at the White House.” There was a burlesque in which “a plump newshen did a striptease, another in red flannel underwear did a fan dance,” and a scene in which the Roosevelts were honored because they liked people, “they marry so many of them.”

  “The big act” was “Romeo and Juliet, 1936” in three episodes: Juliet du Pont warned Romeo Roosevelt that if “my kinsmen see thee, they’ll make thee join the Liberty League.”

  John Boettiger Juliet asked William Randolph Hearst Romeo: “Shall I deny my father-in-law and accept thy jack?”

  Mrs. Simpson Juliet and Edward Romeo loved and lost “Pomp and Circumstance.”

  ER’s act was off the record, but in song and square dance celebrated Tobacco Road’s transformation into a model community.

  Competitively, ER noted that her parties were more fun, and “lasted longer than the men’s, so Franklin was usually home and in bed before I went upstairs after bidding my last guest good-night.”

  On 22 December, ER wrote Hick that she had decided to go to Boston to be with her ailing son FJr, and had to cancel all her plans including the special parties she had planned with Hick, and with Tommy and Henry: “Hick darling, I hate to write you this but you can’t possibly feel lower about it than I do.” She asked Hick to do her the favor of taking “Tommy’s and Henry’s things to them on Xmas eve and either take your own Xmas stocking there and open with them or here early in AM and I’ll telephone you as soon as I get to the hotel on Xmas morning….”

  Instead, Hick went with ER to Boston, and they spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning together. As she returned to New York, Hick wrote: “I love being with you more than with anyone else, of course, but I don’t ever want to intrude or make you feel you’ve got to ask me to save my feelings. You don’t need to worry about that, you know.” Also Hick loved her gifts: the Val-Kill desk and chair—which she received earlier:

  And all the nice little things you remembered—like the black lace stockings—they mean so much—I may have had my bad times, dear, but they weren’t your fault. And you’ve made me happier, too, than anyone else ever has. A happy Christmas and my love—all the best of it—

  ER shared Hick’s feelings about their unexpected journey together. After she left for New York, ER wrote her Christmas column, about loneliness. She recalled other lonely Christmas days, “one in Paris with a French family, and another in Rome, when I was at school.” Then there was one “in bed with a baby two days old.” But never before did she see “the children hang up their stockings in one city” only to arrive in another to be in a hospital “with one lone child. There were so many at home this year that I hated to leave, but we couldn’t any of us bear to think of Franklin, Jr., alone by himself… so here I am in Boston.”

  While her son slept, she read, and noted with dismay that a newspaper announced “that $3,600 a year was really the minimum on which an average family could lead a satisfactory existence. Most of us know that a considerable percentage of our people see only from $200 to $600 … during the course of a year. Many other have incomes under $1,000….”

  This problem is so vast, ER wrote, the government needed help to solve it: “We, as a people, must solve it by deciding on the type of social and economic philosophy which we wish to see established in this country….”

  Unlike the New Deal’s opponents, ER did not consider it communism, or near communism, to suggest that a certain amount of economic planning for social welfare was in order. Americans needed to think boldly or nothing really would get done: “When we know what changes we want, we can then set government machinery to work to accomplish them.”

  After Christmas, Ethel du Pont arrived, and ER wrote Anna that she was “a sweet child” with “much to learn. However, there is a practical streak there which may save many a situation!”

  Weary and depressed, surrounded by journalists everywhere, ER wrote Hick from her hotel room:

  [One reporter] said I’d be saved a lot if I had the AP girl along who used to travel with me! I told them you came up with me but had returned to NY. I’ve become utterly unreasonable I know but I simply don’t feel I can do anything but go in and out of the hospital and this hotel. I dread people’s eyes and how stupid it is!

  Bless you dear for coming up with me … it was the nicest Xmas present you could have given me tho’ I love all those others you did give me. The quilt, underclothes, raincoat, etc. are all a great joy…. You yourself were the grandest present….

  With her son’s condition both painful and perilous, and press gossip about her family routinely unkind, ER was exhausted. But Hick admired the way ER handled the most fearsome situations:

  I think probably you are a lot more worried than you admit. Lord, I admire your courage and your calm. I know plenty of women—and so do you—who would be all in pieces if they were in the spot you are in right now. Madame, I salute you!

  Hick urged ER to work on her book, and not think about her detractors: “Honey, don’t let ‘the eyes’ get you! Just look right over their heads as you’ve always done and go about your business. You mustn’t get that way, you know….”

  After several days, ER asked Tommy to join her and she agreed to. move from her dreary hotel room to a friend’s lovely home to work on the galleys of This Is My Story between hospital visits.

  At last, FJr’s nose stopped bleeding for forty-eight hours. His life had evidently been saved by an experimental antibiotic, and ER left immediately for New York. She wanted to surprise Hick with a visit on New Year’s morning as soon as she arrived. But Hick’s apartment was filled with her old friends, including Carolyn Marsh, and Hick was unprepared. ER wrote: “Dearest. It was good to see you today even if I did rout you out of bed! I hope Mrs. Marsh didn’t mind!” Mrs. Marsh did mind a little. It was, after all, a curious way to meet Mrs. Roosevelt, and it was Carolyn Marsh’s first trip to New York and away from her husband and children in decades—Hick chided.

  ER concluded her New Year’s letter with a reference to Hick’s houseguests and social schedule, which kept her from her writing, with an uncharacteristic flourish: If Tommy and I “do as much on the train tomorrow as we did today it will be swell for I won’t feel so guilty about ‘my’ book. I hope YOU feel guilty as Hell!”

  From New York, ER raced to Washington for the diplomats’ New Year dinner, the first big reception of 1937. The family took bets on whether Alice Longworth would appear after her nasty campaign against her cousins. ER noted the evening was a success, but “Alice came and FDR was rude, looked straight at [his aide Pa Watson] and said ‘I won my bet’!”

  Hick replied:

  I chuckled over your hoping I felt “guilty as Hell.”… It always amuses me so when you get profane! And I also chuckled over the President’s reception of Alice Longworth. He was bad, of course—but, oh, she so richly deserves it! Your indifference and your poise simply are more than human!

  As Hick pulled away, and ER’s family crises mounted, ER wrote a revealing New Year’s column: “I have always thought the Japanese idea of keeping works of art put away and bringing them out one by one is a very good one, for you can always choose the ones which fit your mood,” from light-hearted to gloomy. ER wondered if this was not also true about human relations. One could say in the morning:

  “This is the day I must look up Jane; she is just the person my mood requires.” Or: “This is just the day for Alice.” We never seem to take into consideration that there is an art in human relationships and that our appreciation of people may vary….

  There are really very few things you want to look at every day in the year.

  Still, ER countere
d Hick’s withdrawal with suggestions for several exclusive trips together: In January they would tour Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans in April. Hick was agreeable: The dates “are grand dear”; “I’d love to go to Charleston”; “I don’t care which car we take.” But, “Will you let me drive yours?”

  They would take ER’s new convertible, “and you can drive all you want.” Hick was thrilled about New Orleans: “We’d enjoy that place together.”

  Hick was not ER’s primary worry as she contemplated her next four years. The political future, her children, and also her own health disturbed her: “I hear less and less. My voice gets worse and worse too. I’ll probably be deaf and dumb in a few years more and perhaps that will make me really write—because I can’t do anything else! Queer world!”

  Because FDR insisted he required a groundswell of public activity in order to move toward real action on health security, ER invited Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read to Washington to attend the cabinet dinner and FDR’s Annual Message to Congress on 6 January. They planned to introduce their new agenda to FDR during a relaxed moment.

  Lape and Read had refocused the American Foundation’s work on a national health care program for mandatory health insurance. The American Medical Association had blocked 1935 efforts to include health care in the Social Security Act. Now Lape and Read had assembled a distinguished roster of physicians and health educators to counter the AM A. Their team of 2,100 specialists in every branch of medicine worked to prepare a two-volume study, American Medicine: Expert Testimony out of Court, to arouse the nation to America’s dismal health care realities, and with ER they planned a well-considered strategy to get their views before the nation and onto FDR’s schedule of priorities.

  In his 6 January message, FDR outlined his plans. First of all he sought an extension of the Neutrality Act to cover “the unfortunate civil strife in Spain,” then he wanted to modernize and overhaul the executive structure to carry out the mandate for recovery.

  Except for his words on Spain, FDR’s speech echoed ER’s interests and included new programs for slum clearance, the creation of healthful dwellings, and the end to “an un-American type of tenant farming.” FDR proposed to end peonage and make tenant farmers “self-supporting on land which can eventually belong to them.” As ER had demanded months earlier, he called for “the intelligent development of our social security system” through “frequent amendment of the original statute.”

  In conclusion, FDR devoted an undramatic paragraph to the Supreme Court: “The Judicial branch also is asked by the people to do its part in making democracy successful…. The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of essential powers of free government” acting “for the common good.”

  That paragraph heralded a secret plan that FDR had brooded over and developed for weeks. He consulted nobody except his attorney general, Homer Cummings; ER and his closest advisers were kept in the dark about this looming surprise—not to explode for another month.

  Following his 6 January State of the Union message, ER had several conversations with her husband that resulted in what she considered an almost perfect second Inaugural Address. Although he again refused to mention lynching, ER’s most urgent concerns were supported by FDR’s powerful rhetoric on 20 January 1937:

  I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of national resources….

  But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens … who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life….

  I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day….

  I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children….

  I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished….

  We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s concern…. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little….

  FDR’s speech was brilliantly delivered, despite dreadful weather, and ER marveled at her husband’s dramatic skills. America’s first winter inaugural occurred on a wet, springlike day. Grass was greening, forsythia was in bloom; an epidemic of flu and pneumonia raged. As FDR spoke, the rains came down in torrents on the presidential party, wearing lightweight formal attire.

  In the lull between FDR’s speech and the inaugural parade, ER wrote her column. Her impression so far was: “Umbrellas and more umbrellas!”

  It was a day of mishaps and confusion. At nine in the morning, ER was presented with a profusion of her favorite flower, violets from Dutchess County, and “the entire family [left the White House] with bunches of violets.” But en route to St. John’s Church, the car with her grandchildren Sistie and Buzzie was stopped by policemen, who refused to let them in until the service was half over. Then she caused a delay at the Capitol while she arranged sheltered seating for her friends.

  Edith Helm had forgotten to reserve seats for cabinet wives and other important guests. ER was furious. She actually spent almost thirty minutes looking for various notables to get them on the stand, including Dr. Peabody, Nan, Marion, Molly Dewson, and Laura Delano.

  Hick reported that while ER scouted, holding up the ceremonies, radio announcers filled the air with rhapsodic praises of the First Lady: “Because of the delay, the announcers had to ad lib…. It was nice—they really said lovely things about you. You would undoubtedly have hated it.”

  ER confessed to Hick: “Yes, I gave Mrs. Helm a very bad time tho’ I said nothing to her! She simply can’t do that kind of work, and I should know it by this time.”

  ER’s ability to give somebody a bad time, without saying a word, was one of her most unpleasant traits. But neither her irritation nor the weather spoiled the day: “Hardened as I am to official occasions, I could not hear the oath … without a catch in my throat.” ER believed FDR’s speech represented his sincere commitment to “the opening of the second stage in a long period of change.”

  FDR insisted they drive home with the top down. Bareheaded, they smiled and waved and became, wrote ER, “well soaked through.” She had “a minute and a half” to change dresses before she greeted her luncheon guests. ER endured it all in appropriate style, and wrote her daughter, who was sorely missed that day:

  You would have been proud of Buzz taking off his cap whenever Pa did and standing by him all thro the parade. Sisty looked sweet too….

  Well, another four years begins. I thought Pa’s speech very good, what did you think? It is a new job & a hard one however. For me, some struggle for a personal life, an effort to do some good because of the position and a continuing effort to make Pa’s life as far as the mechanics go easy so he can have what he wants materially and not think about it. I’m a bit weary as I think about it but I guess I’ll live through it! I love you both a great deal.

  ER wrote a more introspective letter to Hick:

  I went around and thanked everyone today for they were all wonderful and when you think that 710 ate lunch and 2700 had tea and everyone so far tells me things moved smoothly I think everyone deserves a pat on the back. I confess that arrangements and people bothered me beforehand but even more my sense of four years more beginning bothered me….

  Why can’t someone have this job who’d like it and do something worthwhile with it? I’ve always been content to hide behind someone else’s willingness to take responsibility and work behind them and I’d rather be doing that now, instead I’ve got to use my opportunities and I am weary just thinking about it! Well, we’ll live through it and worry along and see the irony of it and laugh at ourselves!

  With Louis Howe gone, there was nobody to hide behind, or work behind. ER was on her own as never before.

  22: 193
7: To Build a New Movement

  Cwo days after the inauguration, on 22 January 1937, ER embarked upon a more independent phase of her political life. She promoted Senator Robert Wagner’s bill for federal aid to initiate a ten-year plan to rehouse low-income Americans in affordable decent housing, which FDR had not yet endorsed.

  In her keynote address to the National Public Housing Conference, ER reaffirmed her conviction that decent affordable housing was the basic requirement for a better future. She read FDR’s greetings, which celebrated PWA’s housing efforts to date: fifty-one community projects were under way. The well-attended conference, chaired by pioneering housing advocate Mary Simkhovitch, seemed an auspicious way to begin the New Year, and the new administration.

  January closed with FDR’s annual birthday frolic. The first year without Louis Howe, it was also the first year Harry Hopkins attended. ER invited him:

  As you know, what we call the “Old Guard,” who were in the 1920 campaign with Franklin, have for years had a dinner on his birthday. We used to have a stunt party, but none of us have the heart to do that now without Louis, who was always the moving spirit.

  We have decided that we would like to invite some guests, the gentlemen to sit in after dinner at a poker game. I hope very much that you will be among the guests this year….

  While the men drank and gambled, ER’s “job” was to attend the fund-raising “Birthday Balls” that raised thousands of dollars annually for polio research and other good causes.

  ER’s gift to her husband was a bound unfinished manuscript of her memoir, This Is My Story, accompanied by a handwritten note:

  This may not look it but it is,

  A book which will some day appear