by Susan Quinn
Eleanor also brought: Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, vol. 2, The Defining Years, 1933–1938 (New York: Penguin, 1999), 13.
“All the sorrow”: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 90–92.
Later that day: Ibid., 94–96.
“Stepping out of the elevator”: Teletype version of story, March 1933.
Increasingly, however, her name: Lowell (MA) Sun, May 20, 1933; Gettysburg (PA) Times, July 6, 1933; Salamanca (NY) Republican Press, July 8, 1933; Olean (NY) Times Herald, July 26, 1933.
she had “achieved standing”: Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), 204.
“Hick, my dearest”: ER to Hick, March 5, 1933, FDRL.
CHAPTER FOUR: LORENA
“I can still feel”: Amazingly, I found the want ad for this bindery job in the Aberdeen paper when I visited South Dakota. “WANTED—Girls to work in bindery,” Aberdeen (SD) Daily News, March 14, 1907.
Hick’s puppy Mayno: Hick believes the name derived from the French “mais non.”
“A very sad death”: “Sad Indeed,” Bowdle (SD) Pioneer, September 20, 1906.
“The hands she held out”: Lorena’s story, including quotes (unless indicated otherwise), is taken from her incomplete autobiography, written in 1949 but never published. Her outline for the book contained summaries of twelve chapters. She wrote two chapters on her girlhood, a chapter on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, a chapter on life in the White House, and a final one on the war years. Hickok papers, FDRL.
“Now my dear girlie”: Aunt Ella to Lorena, June 1, 1913, Hickok papers, FDRL.
Edna Ferber, whose novels: For an insight into the life of a young reporter in Milwaukee, see Ferber’s Dawn O’Hara, the Girl Who Laughed (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1911).
“Being a big hearted”: Lorena Lawrence, “Girls! Here’s Your Chance to Get a Husband! Cupid Points the Way, Provided You Qualify,” Milwaukee Sentinel, November 4, 1915. Hick later claimed her first byline was on a story about Geraldine Farrar, but this one actually preceded it.
soprano Geraldine Farrar. After a muddy: Lorena Lawrence, “Geraldine Proves She’s a Prima Donna,” Milwaukee Sentinel, November 19, 1915.
“I would die for Melba”: Lorena Lawrence, “Melba Charms Large Audience at the Auditorium, Diva Plants Kiss on Cheek of an Interviewer,” Milwaukee Sentinel, December 4, 1915.
a whole series of stories: Lorena A. Hickok, “Wherein Girl Reporter Gets Her First Taste of Sunday Golf,” June 11, 1922; “Uninitiated Girl Reporter ‘Covers’ Coppers Ball Game,” September 26, 1922; “Dominoes More Fun, Less Work Than Boxing, Girl Reporter Opines,” October 22, 1922; “Gopher Secrets Perfectly Safe When Girl Writer Sees Practice,” November 5, 1922, all in Minneapolis Morning Tribune.
“Santa, who has been overworking”: Lorena A. Hickok, “Juvenile Unbelievers Quick to Detect Fake Santa Claus,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 12, 1921.
She wrote touchingly: Lorena A. Hickok, “Life of Midget Actors Often Filled with Many Embarrassing Situations,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, March 30, 1922.
“a lump in my throat”: Lorena A. Hickok, “‘Men? All Alike,’ Jailed Heiress of 15 Declares; Dejected Youngster Details Part in Holdup of Her Mother,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, June 4, 1922.
a World War I veteran: Lorena A. Hickok, “Leach Asks War Veterans to Aid Needy Comrades,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 16, 1921.
“We dispatched . . . the Invincible”: Lorena A. Hickok, “‘Red’ Grange Carried Home on His Shield,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, November 16, 1924.
“Even here in enemy country”: Lorena A. Hickok, “Calm Prevails at Ann Arbor; Dubious Pep Seems Omen Gophers Will Get Brown Jug,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, November 21, 1925.
“I guess there’s just one more thing”: Paul A. Dana, as told to Lorena A. Hickok, Associated Press staff writer, “Drifted 22 Hours with Woman in Sea,” New York Times, November 15, 1928.
Eleanor was roundly criticized: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 66.
They even docked her pay: Maurine H. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt: Transformative First Lady (Lawrence University Press of Kansas, 2010), 59.
“Well, it won’t be long now”: Hick to Bess Furman, 1932 (n.d. on letter), Furman papers, Library of Congress.
CHAPTER FIVE: ELEANOR
“With my father”: ER, This Is My Story, 6.
“intoxicated by the pure joy”: Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, ed., Hunting Big Game in the Eighties: The Letters of Elliott Roosevelt, Sportsman (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), 37.
his “pretty, companionable”: Ibid., 172.
“sink through the floor”: ER, This Is My Story, 17–18.
“We rarely fail”: Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Hunting Big Game, 176–77.
“got two elephants”: Ibid., 119.
“my big tiger skin”: Ibid., 81.
“he and I must keep”: ER, This Is My Story, 20.
“I walked them off their feet”: Ibid., 21.
“so often said ‘no’”: Ibid., 46.
three strong locks: Geoffrey Ward, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882–1905 (New York: Random House, 1985), 365: “The existence of triple locks on Eleanor’s bedroom door was revealed to me by Laura Chanler White, who stayed in the room as a young woman and had their purpose explained to her.”
“an almost exaggerated idea”: ER, This Is My Story, 98.
“She always knew more”: Ibid., 58.
the work was “shoddy”: Ibid., 62.
had an “infectious ardor”: Dorothy Strachey Bussy, quoted in Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:105–6.
“every idea is brought”: Ibid., 105.
“purity of heart”: Ibid., 109–10.
“I still remember”: ER, This Is My Story, 79.
“Do you love her?”: Olivia (London: Hogarth Press, 1949), 47. The author, it was later revealed, was Dorothy Strachey Bussy.
“I am glad you liked Olivia”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:120.
“There were perhaps”: ER, This Is My Story, 63.
“Young girls have crushes”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:116.
“I really marvel”: ER, This Is My Story, 67.
“We simply fell off”: Ibid., 83.
“had become one”: Ibid., 96.
“I miss you”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:122.
felt “deeply ashamed”: ER, This Is My Story, 100–101.
“to go on a real spree”: Ibid., 102.
“Though I was only nineteen”: Ibid., 111.
“For ten years”: Ibid., 163.
“I knew you were”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:220.
“I still lived”: ER, This Is My Story, 173.
“appalled by the independence”: Ibid., 206.
was “somewhat shocked”: Ibid., 181.
“All my executive ability”: Ibid., 253.
“the budding of a life”: Ibid., 323.
the words “toujours gai”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:297.
“Their interests played”: ER, This Is My Story, 325.
“as much as ever”: ER to Marion Dickerman, February 5, 1926, FDRL.
a “rough stunt”: Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 31–32.
Teapot Dome scandal: The Teapot Dome is a rock formation in Wyoming that looks like a teapot and marks one of the locations of the oil deposits.
“whose public service record”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:352.
style for “my missus”: Davis, Invincible Summer, 35.
“from her affectionate Uncle”: Davis, Invincible Summer, 50.
“Hick dearest,” she wrote from Maine: ER to Hick, June 23, 1933, FDRL.
CHAPTER SIX: GETAWAY
“Poor Hick,” Eleanor had written:
ER to Hick, June 8, 1933, FDRL. These are the letters that Hick retyped, presumably cutting some parts.
“I couldn’t bear”: ER to Hick, March 11, 1933, FDRL.
“Never in all the years”: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 156.
“Mr. Woollcott is”: Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” February 27, 1941.
“Remember no one”: ER to Hick, March 10, 1933, FDRL.
“I am so glad”: ER to Hick, April 2, 1933, FDRL.
“My dear if you meet me”: ER to Hick, March 9, 1933, FDRL.
“I never talked”: ER to Hick, April 8, 1933, FDRL.
“Poor kid, blind faith”: ER to Hick, April 7, 1933, FDRL.
“got on very well”: ER to Hick, August 6, 1933, FDRL.
“I’m to talk to Betty”: ER to Hick, April 5, 1933, FDRL.
“I went over everything”: ER to Hick, June 1, 1933, FDRL.
“My heart aches”: ER to Hick, April 12, 1933, FDRL.
“I am acutely conscious”: ER to Hick, June 1, 1933, FDRL.
“a pretty unwise teacher”: ER to Hick, May 27, 1933, FDRL.
“zest in life”: ER to Hick, May 31, 1933, FDRL.
“I must have looked funny”: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 122.
“try[ing] on all”: Eleanor Roosevelt, It’s Up to the Women (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1933), 45.
a dramatic departure: Rodger Streitmatter, ed., Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok (New York: Free Press, 1998), 27.
just as it had loving women before them: Susan Ware, Partner and I: Molly Dewson, Feminism, and New Deal Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987). Also, Stephen, the main character in The Well of Loneliness, the 1928 novel by Radclyffe Hall, finally finds a measure of self-esteem as an ambulance driver in World War I. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas traveled together by car, and Stein drove an ambulance in World War I as well.
“It is a word”: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 128.
“vote for Franklin!”: Ibid., 130.
“as easily and confidently”: Ibid. 130.
as a “personal friend”: Chautauquan Daily, July 25, 1933.
“new social order”: Eleanor Roosevelt at Chatauqua, July 25, 1933.
by looking at the washing: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 134.
“go around the country”: John F. Bauman and Thomas H. Coode, In the Eye of the Great Depression: New Deal Reporters and the Agony of the American People (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988), 1.
CHAPTER SEVEN: PARTNERSHIP
“bug-infested rags”: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 136–37.
“I have the sense”: Hick to ER, Wheeling, WV, n.d., FDRL.
her partner, Nadia Danilevsky: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 2:133. Davis and Danilevsky met in Russia after the Revolution. Davis worked in Russia for the Quakers for eight years.
began to elicit their stories: “First Lady Leaves After Brief Visit to County,” Morgantown (WV) Post, August 18, 1933.
“the kind you or I”: ER, This I Remember, 126–27.
She told Eleanor: Morgantown Post, August 18, 1933.
“a swell guy”: Fred Schroeder, “MRS. ROOSEVELT VISITS MINES HERE, Relief Projects in County Camps Given Attention,” Dominion News (Morgantown, WV), August 18, 1933. For background on the West Virginia trip: Michael Golay, America 1933: The Great Depression: Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Shaping of the New Deal (New York: Free Press, 2013).
“Can you tell me”: Morgantown Post, August 19, 1933.
a freight car: Ruby Black, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940), 247.
They thought hundreds: Hick to ER, August 22, 1933, FDRL.
“You and Eleanor”: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 140.
“It is Paradise for us”: ER typed essay, FDRL.
as “our angel”: Arthurdale was privatized in 1941. It is now a National Historic District, with a museum documenting the history of the first families. One original house is available for touring, but the rest are still in use and well maintained. Scotts Run has its own small museum in Osage, proudly documenting lives of mining families who lived in rare racial harmony.
“I seem . . . to have become”: Hick to ER, from typed excerpts of a letter written in Philadelphia in August 1933, FDRL.
“scenery I’ve ever beheld”: Hick to ER, August 22, 1933, FDRL.
“before he was born”: Hick to ER, August 25, 1933, FDRL.
“makes me sick”: Hick to ER, August 23, 1933, FDRL.
“35 bushels of pole beans”: Hick to ER, August 22, 1933, FDRL.
“I talked to you”: ER to Hick, August 25, 1933, FDRL.
“I am glad”: ER to Hick, September 14, 1933, FDRL.
“Sorry the report”: Hick to Kathryn Godwin, September 23, 1933, FDRL.
“It’s the first time”: Hick to ER, October 10, 1933, FDRL.
“Of course the long separation”: ER to Hick, December 7, 1933, FDRL.
“Hick dearest,” she wrote: ER to Hick, December 5, 1933, FDRL.
“Floyd Olson really is”: Hick to Harry Hopkins, December 12, 1933, FDRL.
“a deep blue cloudless sky”: Hick to ER, October 31, 1933, in Hick, One Third of a Nation, 59–60.
“keep them from starving”: Ibid.
She wrote of two small boys: Ibid.
“flat brown country”: Hick report to Hopkins, November 9, 1933, Hick, One Third of a Nation, 84–85.
The stories poured out: Hick to ER, November 11 and 12, 1933, ibid., 91.
“What a picture”: ER to Hick, November 14, 1933, FDRL.
“from doing it!”: ER to Hick, November 27, 1933, FDRL.
“I knew it wouldn’t”: ER to Hick, December 1, 1933, FDRL.
“Darling,” Eleanor wrote: ER to Hick, November 28, 1933, FDRL.
“Good night, dear one!”: Hick to ER, December 5, 1933, FDRL.
“Dear one,” Eleanor wrote four: ER to Hick, December 9, 1933, FDRL.
“I know I’m not up to you”: ER to Hick, December 23, 1933, FDRL.
“Dearest one bless you”: ER to Hick, December 25, 1933, FDRL.
“Franklin said I could ask”: ER to Hick, December 25, 1933, FDRL.
CHAPTER EIGHT: LA PRESIDENTA AND THE NEWSHAWK
“I want you to get this”: Emma Bugbee, “Crowds Follow Mrs. Roosevelt in Island Slums,” New York Herald Tribune, March 10, 1934.
“Photographs don’t give”: Hick, One Third of a Nation, 200.
“I cannot crawl”: Emma Bugbee, “Mrs. Roosevelt Routs Escorts in Puerto Rico,” New York Herald Tribune, March 9, 1934.
“only a crying baby”: Emma Bugbee, “Mrs. Roosevelt Finds Life Busy in Mountains of Puerto Rico,” New York Herald Tribune, March 12, 1934.
“a flowered chiffon with a spray”: Emma Bugbee, “Reception Ends Mrs. Roosevelt’s 300-Mile Day,” New York Herald Tribune, March 13, 1934.
“Puerto Rico’s greatest oppressor”: “Liberals Oppose Welcome,” New York Herald Tribune, March 12, 1934.
“You can’t fool Mrs. Roosevelt”: Emma Bugbee, “Mrs. Roosevelt Shops, Reviews Troops,” New York Herald Tribune, March 14, 1934.
“I can never be”: Hick to Bess Furman, n.d. but June 26, 1930, Furman papers, Library of Congress.
attended them “incense-burners”: Maurine H. Beasley, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 47.
“These things happened naturally”: Bess Furman, Washington By-Line (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 153.
“I rather think”: ER to Hick, November 27, 1933, Streitmatter, Empty Without You, 45.
“Fog Interrupts Flight”: New York Herald Tribune, March 15, 1934.
“a diamond mon
ogrammed watch”: Ibid., March 11, 1934.
“Mrs. Roosevelt,” Bugbee wrote: Ibid., March 16, 1934.
“President Welcomes Wife”: Ibid., March 18, 1934.
“It was announced”: Time, February 19, 1934.
“get through with this”: Hick to Kathryn Godwin, in Hickok, One Third of a Nation, 191–92.
“Mrs. Joe Doaks”: Ibid.
“a rotund lady”: Ibid.
the “amistad íntima”: “La Dama Que Acompanara a la Sra. Roosevelt a la Isla,” clipping, FDRL.
“would get all the publicity”: Hick to Kathryn Godwin, in Hick, One Third of a Nation, 192.
“because you grow closer”: ER to Hick, March 26, 1934, FDRL.
“We do do things”: Hick to ER, December 5, 1933, FDRL.
“It will do us no harm”: ER, It’s Up to the Women, x.
“One of the girls”: ER, This Is My Story, 11–12.
as a “bad habit”: Ibid., 73–74.
“a combination of wet-nursin’”: “Eugene Talmadge,” Spartacus Educational, http://spartacus-educational.com/USAtalmadge.htm.
“I take it”: David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–45 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 193–94.
“No niggah’s as good”: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–36, vol. 3 of The Age of Roosevelt (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 521.
“Savannah must be”: Hick to Hopkins, in Hick, One Third of a Nation, 151–52.
While at the Minneapolis Tribune: Lorena Hickok, Minneapolis Tribune, December 5, 1925.
“the ‘Old South’”: Hick to Harry Hopkins, January 11, 1934, FDRL.
“we’ve had a little Jew”: ER to Esther Lape, Key West, 1925, FDRL.
“the country is still full”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 2:316–17.
“Many of us do not appreciate”: “A colored couple was married and immediately reports spread far and wide of their unhappiness, the wife, Beatrice, being known as the possessor of a hot temper. Some time after the marriage a lady who knew Beatrice met her in town and remarked: ‘I hope you and your husband do not quarrel any more.’ ‘We sho’ don do dat no mo!’ ‘What caused you to stop it?’ ‘He’s daid!’” “My Day,” March 12, 1937.