The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (27 page)

The night of the election we were in New York City, and I circulated between the State Committee headquarters and those of the National Committee.

I was happy for my husband, because I knew that in many ways it would make up for the blow that fate had dealt him when he was stricken with infantile paralysis; and I had implicit confidence in his ability to help the country in a crisis. Naturally he had wanted to win, and he wanted this opportunity to serve his country in public life.

But for myself I was deeply troubled. As I saw it, this meant the end of any personal life of my own. I knew what traditionally should lie before me; I had watched Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and had seen what it meant to be the wife of a president, and I cannot say that I was pleased at the prospect. By earning my own money, I had recently enjoyed a certain amount of financial independence and had been able to do things in which I was personally interested. The turmoil in my heart and mind was rather great that night, and the next few months were not to make any clearer what the road ahead would be.

Life began to change immediately. As soon as my husband’s election was established, the Secret Service assumed responsibility for his protection. Our house in 65th Street was filled with Secret Service agents, and guests were scrutinized and had to be identified when Franklin was in the house.

Herbert H. Lehman had been elected governor. We turned the Executive Mansion over to him and Mrs. Lehman on Inauguration Day, January 1, 1933, and drove to Hyde Park. The work of the governorship was familiar to Mr. Lehman, so he took over with complete confidence.

Soon after the New Year my husband paid a visit to Washington. President Hoover asked him if in the interim before inauguration he would take joint responsibility for certain policies, but Franklin felt that until he had the control he could not share the burdens.

Later in the winter I paid the customary visit to Mrs. Hoover and decided how, on moving in, I was going to use the rooms. She showed me some of the rooms herself, but when I asked to see the kitchen, she turned me over with relief, I am sure, to the housekeeper and to Ike Hoover, the chief usher in the White House, whom I had known in President Theodore Roosevelt’s day.

Inauguration of 1933 was not a lighthearted occasion for the man going out of office or for the man coming in or for the people of the country as a whole. President Hoover had been through a trying period. His great anxiety had been reflected in his inability to preserve his equanimity in his daily contacts with the people in the White House. We were told afterwards how difficult it had been for him even to say good morning or smile at the people of his household.

He was a victim of circumstances and of economic and political beliefs that could be changed only by a complete crisis and courageous new actions. He had served the country well during World War I, and there is no question but that during his term of office he wanted to do what was best for the country. He has, since those unhappy days, rendered service to his country and to the world on numerous occasions.

My husband often told me of his drive with Mr. Hoover from the White House to the Capitol and of how he, Franklin, tried to keep up a cheerful conversation in the face of a silent companion. Crowds were cheering and unconsciously my husband responded, until he realized that Mr. Hoover was sitting motionless. There was hope in my husband’s heart and mind, but he realized that could not be the state of mind of the man sitting next to him. Finally, as they reached one of the government buildings which had been begun during Mr. Hoover’s administration, my husband found himself remarking on the “lovely steel.” It must have sounded inane, but it indicates how desperate he was in his search for small talk.

The condition of the country was so serious on that Inauguration Day, March 4, 1933, that little time was given to purely social amenities. Almost at once my husband began calling meetings, and the first thing that happened was the bank holiday. I was concerned because we had been staying at the Mayflower Hotel for two or three days and I had no extra cash. I went to my husband and asked him what would happen if we needed some money, particularly since the boys, some of them, had to leave soon. He smiled and said he thought we should be able to manage whatever was absolutely necessary. I began to realize then that there were certain things one need not worry about in the White House.

In the first days of his administration my husband was too busy finding ways and means of meeting the financial crisis in the country to be bothered with anything else, so I went to work to organize the household and the secretarial side of the office which did the work for the President’s wife.

The inauguration was on a Saturday. The following day Miss Thompson and I went over the White House from basement to attic, looking into closets and generally inspecting the entire house. Unconsciously, I did many things that shocked the ushers, especially Ike Hoover. My first act was to insist on running the elevator myself without waiting for one of the doormen to run it for me. That just wasn’t done by the President’s wife.

Mrs. Hoover had furnished what we called the West Hall as a solarium, with birds, wicker furniture and plants. I decided to use that end of the wide hall as an extra sitting room, and in order to hurry things along I helped with the moving and placing of the furniture, much to the horror of the household staff.

Fortunately for me, Miss Thompson had been willing to go with me to Washington. She had lived in New York while my husband was governor and had made only occasional trips to Albany. Until now Miss Tully had helped me as well as Franklin, but from the time we went to Washington she worked only for him.

Long before Inauguration Day, Mrs. James M. Helm had offered to help us out at the White House on a voluntary basis for a “few days,” until we learned our way about. Mrs. Helm, the daughter of an admiral and the widow of an admiral, had lived in Washington for many years and knew all those formidable people called the “cave dwellers,” a term applied to the few people who really live in Washington and are not birds of passage. Franklin and I had seen her with the President and the second Mrs. Wilson in Paris, when Mrs. Helm was Mrs. Wilson’s secretary. Franklin liked her very much, so we were all equally grateful for her offer of assistance.

The mail kept piling up around Miss Thompson’s desk—letters, books, gifts and various other packages. She tried to cope with it singlehanded, because no one had told us we had a staff to help us, until finally Edith Helm could stand it no longer and said: “Why don’t you give that mail to Mr. Magee? He is sitting downstairs with nothing to do and he is there with his staff to help you.” After that we worked out a system which operated very well, and we were always complimented on the fact that all the mail was answered in a fairly short time after it was received.

Later Edith Helm’s volunteer work developed into the permanent position of social secretary. Miss Thompson soon found that handling the mail and doing my personal work was all she could possibly manage, and she had as little interest in mastering the intricacies of Washington social life as I had.

From the beginning I made it a habit to breakfast in the West Hall at eight or half past. My husband breakfasted in bed and I always went to his room as soon as his breakfast tray was brought up. I stopped only to say good morning, for he liked no conversation at this hour, which he devoted to reading all the newspapers.

After breakfast each morning I went to my desk in my sitting room to see in turn the housekeeper, the usher and the social secretary. My grandmother and my mother-in-law had taught me how to run a house and I assumed, in accordance with their teachings, that all good housewives made out their own menus, put away and gave out the household linen, bought the food and gave all the orders for the day. In the White House I learned this was done under the housekeeper’s supervision. As far as the house was concerned, I had no work and little responsibility.

I had brought down a housekeeper, Mrs. Henry Nesbitt, who had worked for me at Hyde Park in the League of Women Voters. Her husband came down with her to do the bookkeeping. She herself did the buying, prepared the menus and generally supervised the household. She was the first person who came to see me after breakfast every morning, with her menus prepared for the day. I tried to tell her approximately how many people were expected for meals, but we soon discovered that the number frequently changed at the last minute, so she had to be prepared for any contingency.

I was surprised to find how inadequate the arrangements were for the household help in the White House. A few of them had rooms on the third floor and stayed at night. Most of them came in by the day, as they do in most southern communities, but the arrangements for changing their clothes, as well as their dining-room facilities, were extremely inadequate. I tried to organize things more comfortably but I never was happy about it until extensive changes were made on the basement floor.

Some aspects of housekeeping in the White House might be of general interest. For one thing, I think few people realize what the expenses are of a man who holds a public office such as the Presidency or even a governorship. Both New York State and the federal government pay the wages of the household help, but whatever it cost to feed them came out of my husband’s own pocket. In Albany we had eight or ten regular household employees and in the White House usually about thirty. I have always thought that the governments of both the state and the nation should pay for their food.

In the White House the yearly thousands of visitors meant that we had to employ many more people than we should otherwise have needed, simply to keep the public rooms clean. In addition, the Christmas parties that we gave every year for the guards and all the people working in the White House, on the grounds and in the garage were paid for by my husband. Formal parties and state dinners were paid for by the government, but if Franklin and I had any of our children or personal friends at a formal dinner, we had to pay their pro rata share of the cost. Then, of course, the requests for contributions were countless—and a president is always expected to give more generously than anyone else. Every president, I am sure, leaves the White House poorer than he was when he went in.

All this made the bookkeeping and the housekeeping complicated jobs. There were also complications and difficulties about purchases made for the White House. Nothing that is worn out and discarded can disappear. It must be produced when you say you have bought something to replace it. As a result, warehouses are filled with old furniture which is disposed of only when there is no longer a square foot of room left. If the housekeeper has to buy even a new tea strainer, the old one has to be kept in case she is asked to produce it.

Everything is used until it is worn out. Any items no longer usable are destroyed in the presence of witnesses. Anything of historical interest, such as the gold piano and the old elevator cage, is placed in the Smithsonian Institution.

The replenishing of curtains and rugs and the re-covering of walls and furniture in the formal rooms have to be seen to carefully and constantly, because a house that is always on exhibition should look its best at all times. Mrs. Hoover told me that some visitors wrote her that one of the curtains over the large staircase window had a darn in it, not realizing that the height and size of the windows made new curtains a great expense.

Every morning after Mrs. Nesbitt and I finished our discussion of the relevant housekeeping matters the usher would come to my sitting room. His purpose was primarily to check over the comings and goings of guests and members of the family. He also had to have a list of any people who were coming to see us, because otherwise they would not be admitted.

Then Edith Helm would arrive with her list of invitations to public functions, of receptions I should hold, or whatever else she thought I ought to do. These three interviews took comparatively little time. I think Edith Helm often felt I did not take enough interest in the social side of the White House duties, but at that time they seemed to me rather unimportant; indeed, there never came a point when I felt the world was sufficiently stable for us to take time to think very seriously about purely social matters.

Certain duties, however, which I thought at first were useless burdens I later grew to realize had real meaning and value. For instance, the teas. It seemed to me utterly futile to receive anywhere from five hundred to a thousand people of an afternoon, shake hands with them, and then have them pass into the dining room to be given a cup of tea or coffee by Mrs. Helm and Miss Thompson.

I soon discovered that, particularly to people from out of town, the White House has a deep significance. It is a place where the people’s hospitality is dispensed to the representatives of other countries; in a way, it is with a sense of ownership that citizens of the United States walk through the simple but dignified and beautiful rooms. To many people the White House symbolizes the government, and though standing and shaking hands for an hour or so, two or three times a week, is not an inspiring occupation, still I think it well worth while. I did it regularly, three times a week, during the winter months.

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.

My husband found the formal receptions tiring, since standing for a long period of time with braces on was something of an ordeal. He tried never to have more than a thousand people to greet, and after the reception was over he went upstairs at once.

All protocol was foreign to me, and until I learned that it was really required for two purposes—protection and orderly procedure—I resented it deeply, as do most Americans. One congressman’s secretary, in replying to a formal invitation for him, addressed the envelope to “The Chief of the Proletariat” instead of “The Chief of Protocol,” which indicates how little protocol means to the average American.