by Susan Quinn
“very sorry every minute”: Davis, Invincible Summer, 153.
“My cottage difficulties”: ER to Anna, November 13, 1938, Halsted papers, FDRL.
“It has done something”: Ibid.
“She has been so”: Tommy to Anna, November 1938, Halsted papers, FDRL.
Never before had she: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 2:530.
“recovered from my disappointment”: Ibid., 532.
“This is TOWARD”: Ibid., 551.
“couldn’t understand how”: Hick to ER, November 17, 1938, FDRL.
“if some day”: Hick to ER, October 12, 1938, FDRL.
“on a money-making basis”: ER to Hick, October 15, 1938, FDRL.
“I don’t want to go”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 2:520.
“best agents for peace”: “Mrs. Roosevelt Hails World Youth as Best Agents for Peace,” New York Times, August 17, 1938.
“I felt what they said”: ER to Hick, August 27, 1938, FDRL.
lead a chorus: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 2:523.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: TIME TEARS ON
“not telling anyone”: ER telegram to Hick, May 1, 1939, FDRL.
“Bring warm wraps”: Hick to ER, May 1, 1939, FDRL.
“my young niece”: “My Day,” May 2, 1939.
“It is very”: Hick to ER, April 27, 1939, FDRL.
“I have seen the fireworks”: “My Day,” May 4, 1939.
“no one should go”: “My Day,” May 4, 1939.
“material comfort for those”: Robert Morss Lovett, writing of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, quoted in the New York Times, April 30, 1939.
“My personal investigation”: New Yorker, April 30, 1938.
“the World’s Fair”: “Spotlight at Fair Swings to Dedication of Palestine Pavilion,” New York Times, May 29, 1939.
“Let us turn our eyes inward”: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 386.
“Let us consecrate”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1:291.
“How can we be”: “My Day,” April 6, 1938.
“I think of those people”: Gellhorn to ER, July 1937, FDRL.
“very moved by it”: Gellhorn to ER, July 8, 1937, in Caroline Moorehead, ed., Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 55.
There was a famous story: “Tales in Tidbits,” syndicated column, Hammond (IN) Times, January 4, 1938.
“So long until tomorrow”: “Edward J. Neil Dies of Wounds in Spain,” New York Times, January 3, 1938.
It was “a waste”: “My Day,” January 6, 1938.
“It seems to me”: Gellhorn to ER, February 1938, FDRL.
“one of two things”: Susan Hertog, Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson (New York: Ballantine, 2011), 254.
“waiting in an operating room”: Gellhorn to ER, June 29, 1938, FDRL.
“War itself,” Gellhorn wrote: Gellhorn to ER, 1938, FDRL.
“I do not believe”: Gellhorn to ER, 1939, FDRL.
“For sheer eloquence”: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 423.
“Roosevelt put his chin out”: Ibid., 424.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: AFRAID NO MORE
“What can one say?”: Hick to ER, September 3, 1939, FDRL.
“who wouldn’t be?”: ER to Hick, June 14, 1939, FDRL.
“He is very nice”: ER to Hick, June 8, 1939, FDRL.
she still hoped: ER to Hick, September 3, 1939, FDRL.
“We must not fight”: “My Day,” September 27, 1938, FDRL.
“afraid of many things”: Typed essay by ER, to be submitted to Look magazine, March 1939, FDRL.
“My dear,” Hick wrote Eleanor: Hick to ER, March 15, 1939, FDRL.
“slight stiffening of the backbone”: Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 2:526.
commenting that “sometimes actions”: Ibid., 564–65.
“with a special fire”: Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marion Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 95.
“just as I was”: Marion Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning (New York: Viking, 1956), 188.
“I am afraid”: ER to Mrs. Henry M. Robert, president of the DAR, February 26, 1939.
“weight of the Washington affair”: Arsenault, Sound of Freedom, 160.
“In this great auditorium”: Ibid., 159.
“felt for a moment”: Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning, 191.
volume with each phrase: In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. used the phrase “let freedom ring” as a repeating rhetorical device in his “I Have a Dream” speech at the same location.
“I think the Youth Congress”: ER to Hick, November 30, 1939, FDRL.
“a house full”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 285.
“we have found it a good thing”: Ibid.
“I had a feeling”: ER to Joe Lash, December 11, 1939, Lash papers, FDRL.
“My children could”: ER to Hick, in Lash, Love, Eleanor, 314–15.
“It amuses me”: Hick to ER, April 22, 1939, FDRL.
“confidence in you”: Hick to ER, April 17, 1939, FDRL.
“with the white”: New York Times, May 1, 1939.
“It made me”: Hick to ER, January 8, 1938, FDRL.
“It was bad”: Hick to ER, December 31, 1939, FDRL.
“This job is such fun”: Hick to ER, February 20, 1940, FDRL.
“nearest thing to newspaper”: Hick to ER, February 21, 1940, FDRL.
“Darling, I’m sorry”: Hick to ER, March 8, 1940, FDRL.
in two words: “I groan”: ER to Hick, February 11, 1940, FDRL.
A showdown of sorts: Leslie A. Gould, American Youth Today (New York: Random House, 1940), 10–13, 26–27; Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 325.
“How dare you insult”: Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 326.
“Why I Still Believe in the Youth Congress”: Published in Liberty, April 1940.
“I don’t believe”: Hick to ER, March 14, 1940, FDRL.
“sane and dispassionate”: Hick to ER, March 17, 1940, FDRL.
Back in 1917: Hick to ER, February 28, 1940, FDRL.
“I am sitting”: “Hi” Austin Simons to Hick, Fort Leavenworth, KS, March 23, 1918, Hickok papers, FDRL.
“you don’t want to go to war”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt; The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 84.
“role of elder statesman”: ER, This I Remember, 212.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A BETTER POLITICIAN THAN HER HUSBAND
“Love Eleanor”—Eleanor’s telegram: Telegram from ER to Hick, July 18, 1940, FDRL.
“I’m the only one”: “Farley Stays In; Urges Unanimity,” New York Times, July 16, 1940.
“the boys knew”: New York Times, July 16, 1940.
“I have thought”: Harold Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, vol. 3, The Lowering Clouds, 1939–1941 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), 240.
The shouting, interspersed: “Roosevelt Leaves Third Term to Party; Releases Delegates for a Free Choice; Move to Draft Him Set for Tonight,” New York Times, July 17, 1940.
“the kind of man”: Henry H. Adams, Harry Hopkins: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977), 175.
“Harry has been”: ER, This I Remember, 214–15.
“gone completely over”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 89.
“Well, would you”: Ibid., 127.
“tell her I mean it”: Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, Ladies of Courage (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954), 282.
“a real sense of exhilaration”: ER, This I Remember, 215.
“Happy!” she replied: “No Campaigning, First Lady States,” New York Times, July 19, 1940.
“I don’t know why”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 130.
“on that occasion”: Charles Michelson, The Ghost Talks (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944), 159.
“When it seemed”: Senator George Norris to ER, July 19, 1940, FDRL.
“She is truly”: Tommy to Hick, July 25, 1940, FDRL.
“I felt,” she remembered: ER, This I Remember, 218.
to “sell Czechoslovakia”: Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 354.
“Golly he must be”: Hick to ER, September 15, 1940, FDRL.
“The more he hollers”: Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 469.
“a national evil”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 184.
“The overwhelming majority”: David Kaiser, No End Save Victory: How FDR Led the Nation into War (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 133.
FDR happily obliged: Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 355.
“Along about 1 am”: Hick to ER, November 7, 1940, FDRL.
“very good in applauding”: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 464.
“I did not think”: Churchill to Roosevelt, November 6, 1940, in Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds., Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975), 119.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: IN RESIDENCE
“One of my friends”: “My Day,” December 23, 1940.
“He’d lie on the floor”: Hick to ER, December 27, 1940, FDRL.
“to answer endless letters”: ER to Hick, November 15, 1940, FDRL.
“Be a self-cranker”: Dewson papers, FDRL.
“the greatest she-politician”: Michelson, The Ghost Talks, 36.
“I am oblivious”: Dewson to Felix Frankfurter, February 8, 1938, FDRL.
“I honestly don’t think”: Hick to ER, November 16, 1940, FDRL.
“What a newspaper career”: Hick to ER, September 2, 1940, FDRL.
“You are under her”: ER to Hick, December 14, 1940, FDRL.
“one of the most eloquent”: Hickok papers, FDRL.
So one day in March: Hick to ER, March 18, 1940, FDRL.
her $6,000 a year: Streitmatter, Empty Without You, says it was $5,000, but Eleanor’s letter of December 14 puts it at the higher amount.
“Well, if that is the way”: Unpublished autobiography, Hickok papers, FDRL.
“That business of moping”: Hick to ER, January 29, 1940, FDRL.
“more interested in the person”: Hick to ER, November 11, 1940, FDRL.
“The personage is an accident”: ER to Hick, November 15, 1940, FDRL.
“I try to be a machine”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 331.
“No other engagement”: Ibid., 354.
dreaded “getting accustomed”: ER to Hick, November 8, 1940, FDRL.
“If you hear”: ER to Hick, August 28, 1940, FDRL.
“I must say”: “My Day,” December 11, 1939.
“at his sparkling best”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 150.
“this situation seems”: ER to Anna, from Rochester, MN, Halsted papers, FDRL. The letter is marked August 8, 1938, though the visit to the Mayo Clinic was in September.
“It is stupid”: San Antonio Light, June 7, 1941.
“Many a ruffled feather”: Unpublished autobiography, Hickok papers, FDRL.
“In residence today?”: Ibid.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: IN IT, UP TO THE NECK
“the one and only person”: Adams, Harry Hopkins, 206.
“warm and deep”: Loewenheim, Langley, and Jonas, Roosevelt and Churchill, 155.
“The fact that”: ER, This I Remember, 226.
“it was an important moment”: “My Day,” August 16, 1941.
“I found Mama”: Penciled letter, May 30, 1941. Streitmatter, Empty Without You, puts this into a later letter.
“shut himself off”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 272.
“That big house”: Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 148.
“Hick dearest,” she wrote from Hyde Park: ER to Hick, September 7, 1941, FDRL.
“my idea of hell”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 357.
“He had great energy”: ER, This I Remember, 229.
In 1938, in the midst: Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 271–72.
“I think you will”: “My Day,” October 25, 1940.
“Father struggled to her side”: James Roosevelt, My Parents: A Differing View (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976), 113.
“I know he would want”: “My Day,” September 27, 1941.
“He enjoyed life”: ER to Eleanor Wotkyns, October 21, 1948, FDRL.
Sometimes at White House parties: Hick, Reluctant First Lady, 87.
“in a horrid frame of mind”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, 361.
“I think Hall’s illness”: Hick to ER, October 11, 1941, FDRL.
“He had no more tricks left”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 283.
“TAKE ACTION!” she typed: Dorothy Thompson to ER, Thanksgiving 1941, Dorothy Thompson papers, Special Collections, Syracuse University Libraries.
remained “deadly calm”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 289.
“as though it had died”: Unpublished autobiography, Hickok papers, FDRL.
“didn’t see anything funny”: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWENTY: RISKING EVERYTHING
“It just didn’t seem”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 307.
there was his drinking: Ibid., 302.
“There is no question”: ER interview for Robert D. Graff, ABC television series, 1961, FDRL.
“When I hear a man”: Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (New York: Random House, 2003), 146.
“They looked like”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 310–11.
“I grow deeply resentful”: ER to Hick, March 23, 1942, FDRL. Senator Kenneth McKellar, Democrat from Tennessee, and Senator Harry Flood Byrd, Democrat from Virginia, were segregationists who opposed many New Deal reforms.
“At the end of this war”: “My Day,” January 28, 1942.
“better nutrition, better housing”: Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 653.
“absurdity and contempt”: El Paso Herald-Post, February 23, 1942.
“I still believe”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 324–25.
yet “very attractive”: ER to Hick, May 30, 1934, FDRL.
“the best boss”: Hick to Gladys Tillett, March 7, 1942, Tillett archive, University of North Carolina.
and felt “safer”: Molly Dewson to James Farley, February 3, 1938, FDRL.
Norton told Hick: Hick to ER, February 27, 1942, FDRL.
“an intelligent tongue-lashing”: Chicago Defender, April 28, 1945.
“made the boys mad”: Norton to Hick, September 29, 1942, FDRL.
“exactly six meetings”: “‘No respect’ for Hartley, Mrs. Norton Quits Committee,” Associated Press, February, 1947.
Serving under Hartley: Norton to Hick, February 22, 1947, FDRL.
“which would have”: Hick to ER, February 27, 1942. Later the Smith-Connally antistrike act, which prohibited strikes in war-related industries, was passed by Congress, then vetoed by FDR. The veto was overridden by Congress.
presence of Marion Harron: Daniel R. Ernst, “Marion Janet Harron (1903–1972),” Legal History Blog, May 25, 2012, http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/marion -janet-harron-1903-1972.html.
“You don’t even”: Marion Harron to Hick, March 22, 1942, FDRL.
“how good the week”: Marion Harron
to Hick, May 12, 1942, FDRL.
“How in God’s name”: Marion Harron to Hick, January 6, 1944, FDRL.
“where my eyes travel”: Marion Harron to Hick, February 2, 1944, FDRL.
confidante, as “the Lash”: Joseph P. Lash, A World of Love: Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Friends, 1943–62 (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1984), xxiii.
“Hickok is still here”: Ibid., xix.
“Our friend, Hick”: Ibid., xxxi.
“a great, ringing”: Unpublished autobiography, Hickok papers, FDRL.
“I owed her that much”: Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 385.
FDR liked having: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 361.
“Bring the Germans”: Ibid., 363.
“one of those beautiful ships”: Ibid., 368.
the Democratic Digest: Democratic Digest, January 1941 through December–January 1944–45, Library of Congress.
“Republicans and the worst Democrats”: Hick to ER, November 5, 1942, FDRL.
“the one bright spot”: Hick to Helen Douglas, November 11, 1942, FDRL.
“what he stands for”: Hick to ER, November 5, 1942, FDRL.
that, “everything considered”: Nigel Hamilton, The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–42 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 419.
“For weeks,” she wrote: Ward, Closest Companion, 184.
the day Operation Torch: Hamilton, Mantle of Command, 349–77.
“We have landed”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 388.
“It never crossed my mind”: Ibid., 316.
“These are days”: “My Day,” June 28, 1943.
Clapper wrote that “because of”: Raymond Clapper, Lowell (MA) Sun, October 27, 1942.
“This is to impress you”: ER to Hick, October 23, 1942, FDRL.
“Each empty building”: “My Day,” September 27, 1942.
“I don’t want”: ER, This I Remember, 275.
“a sweet baby”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 382.
“a boy playing the piano”: “My Day,” October 28, 1942.
“Every soldier I see”: “My Day,” November 5, 1942.
“They take refuge”: Excerpt from ER’s diary, October 26, 1942. FDRL.
“Darling,” Hick wrote Eleanor from Washington: Hick to ER, October 26, 1942, FDRL.
“we are fighting together”: “My Day,” November 10, 1942.