The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (48 page)

After my years of work with the UN I became a volunteer in charge of organization work for the American Association for the United Nations. On my lecture tours and other journeys, Miss Corr often goes along because I must find time to do my column and a monthly page for a magazine. I dictate the column, which Miss Corr takes down on the typewriter. Then I correct it and she puts it in final shape for the messenger who comes each day before two o’clock.

I usually try to arrive at my office at the A.A.U.N. by ten o’clock. In the early 1950’s when I was a member of the United Nations delegation I often had to be present for a meeting as early as nine o’clock. At the A.A.U.N. office there is always some routine work in connection with organizing new chapters—we had thirty when I took the job in late 1953 but by 1960 we had about two hundred and fifty, and sometimes there is a meeting that I must attend in the afternoon.

I try to get back to my apartment for luncheon, if possible, and then in the afternoon I usually have engagements or errands to run or friends to see or perhaps a meeting of the board of some organization in which I am active. But, if not, I start work on the mail. I receive an average of about a hundred letters a day from relatives, friends and—mostly—from strangers. Virtually all of them are answered but obviously that is a task that requires sound organization. Miss Corr opens all except my personal letters and is able to draft answers to most of them because she is familiar with what I would say.

By the time my secretaries have drafted answers to these letters there are probably only a dozen or fifteen left for me to read and answer. I go through them at odd times, whenever I have the opportunity, and scribble a note indicating my reply. Then, usually in the late evenings, when all the answers have been typed, I read and sign them all. Many times, especially if I have guests or go out during the evening, I am still signing at one o’clock in the morning. I don’t have to stamp the letters that are going to towns or cities in the United States because all wives of former presidents have the franking privilege, but I do have to buy stamps for the large number of letters that I send abroad.

Occasionally I do something on radio or television. One radio broadcast across the Atlantic I remember clearly. It was with Lise Meitner, who had helped to give us the secret of the atom bomb. She had worked on uranium research in Germany in the 1930’s but had been expelled from that country under the Nazi regime because of her Jewish blood. In 1945 she was in Sweden and I, in New York, was asked to speak to her on a transatlantic broadcast. It was a strange experience. While I was in the National Broadcasting Company studio prior to the start of the program, the technicians hooked us up by telephone to the studio where Dr. Meitner was waiting in Sweden. When I spoke to her I found a very famous but very frightened lady on the other end of the telephone. We could hear the NBC man in Sweden coaxing her to open her mouth and speak. She almost wept. Finally I tried to reassure her, saying: “Don’t be afraid. Listen carefully to what I say and then answer slowly, thinking exactly of what you want to say, and you will be good. You really speak English well.” That was only one minute before we went on the air and I prayed that she would follow my advice. She did, and I believe the broadcast was successful.

Of course, I do not spend all my time in New York City. I cannot even guess at the number of miles I travel a year, but during the winter I am on the road perhaps one week and sometimes two weeks in every month, including fairly regular trips abroad. Many of these trips to deliver lectures (I give about 150 a year) or to work for the A.A.U.N. are quick ones, because whenever I have to speak at a luncheon or dinner I try to arrange it so I can go by plane, arriving just in time to keep my engagement, and return the same evening or at least early the next morning.

I do not grow weary of travel and I do not tire easily—not so easily as some younger people I know. Sometimes, it is true, my feet hurt. What I call my “White House feet” hurt largely because of a change in the bones in my instep caused by years of standing at receptions in the White House. I generally find pleasure in travel because it gives me an opportunity to catch up on my reading. In fact, I do most of my reading for pleasure on airplanes, since at home there seldom seems to be time to pick up the many books that interest me. Incidentally, if I have a complaint about the kind of life I lead, it is that I simply cannot find time to read as much as I wish.

Twenty-nine
    

Not Many Dull Minutes

MY MOTHER
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IN
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LAW
once remarked that I liked to “keep a hotel” and I probably still do when I am at Hyde Park. There usually seems to be plenty of guests there and they may include almost anyone from the Emperor of Ethiopia to my newest great-grandchild. Sometimes there are so many guests that they arrive by the busload—perhaps a group of college students from various foreign countries who come for a few hours to sit under the trees and talk with me on any subject they please, or perhaps a crowd of seventy-five or so employees of the United Nations who have been invited for a picnic.

Each year I also have a picnic for about 150 youngsters from Wiltwyck School for delinquent boys. On that occasion I always try to enlist the help of my grandchildren, who wait on the guests and organize outdoor games. We feed the boys plenty and then they usually lie on the grass for a while and I read them a story such as Kipling’s “Rikki-tikki-tavi” or “How the Elephant Got His Trunk.” We also have a package of candy for each boy before they go home.

My picnic ground is a large one and in summers it is used perhaps once or twice a week by some school or social group and, if I am there, I always try to stop by to speak to them for a few minutes. Otherwise they have to take care of themselves. For that matter, my own guests at Hyde Park usually have to fend for themselves much of the time because there are certain periods every day when I have to be busy at my work. There are a pool where they can swim, a tennis court, a stream full of water lilies and a boat, and plenty of room for walking over the countryside—accompanied by my Scottie if he feels in the mood.

I drive my own car at Hyde Park, sometimes meet guests at the railroad station five miles from my cottage and do much of my own shopping at the roadside stands. During the summer months I keep the deep freeze well stocked and always try to be prepared to feed any number up to twenty—most of them unexpected—for luncheon.

A number of my visitors are friends or acquaintances connected with my work for the American Association for the United Nations or with my earlier life in the White House, while others are official visitors to the grave of my husband. One of the most interesting was Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who came to Hyde Park while on an official visit to the United States. He was a slight, bearded man with dignity and strength of character and, I felt, a desire to foster freedom, peace and progress in his country. It seemed to me that the Western clothes he wore on his journey were less impressive on him than the robes and sandals of his own land, but he was a person I liked and admired.

The Department of State had, of course, made all arrangements for his visit. A representative of the department advised me that there would be nineteen persons in his entourage. He would arrive at noon and I was to meet him at my husband’s grave in the rose garden. He was to visit the library, where the records of my husband’s administration are kept. He positively must get to the house by one o’clock because he wanted to see a television broadcast of a film that he had made. Then, the State Department representative added sternly, it was imperative that the Emperor have a half hour alone in his room before luncheon for rest and contemplation.

I thought this a rather crowded schedule but I didn’t try to argue with the State Department protocol officer. I met the Emperor and accompanied him to the library. He was much interested in modernizing his own country, and when he saw the excellent system for keeping records in the library he became excited and ordered his staff to be assembled.

“Look,” he exclaimed, “study this system. Here is how you do it—here is how you keep history.”

I barely managed to get him to the house on the stroke of one. He found a low stool in the living room and seated himself in front of the television set and seemed to forget everything else as the film of himself came on the screen. I am not sure that he had ever seen television before. The minutes passed and no sign that he was ready to retire to his room for the scheduled half hour before luncheon. At last I approached him.

“Your Majesty, I believe you want to rest for half an hour alone.”

“Oh, no, it is not necessary to be alone. I only wanted to take off my shoes for a while and you see my shoes are off.”

Another distinguished visitor to Hyde Park was Prime Minister Nehru of India, who came to luncheon one day when a number of my grandchildren and their friends were there. A striking figure in his long, dark coat and white trousers bound tightly at the ankles, the prime minister seemed delighted to see the young people and after luncheon sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room and talked to them for a long time. He appeared to be just as interested in asking them questions as they were in hearing his views.

As I got to know the prime minister better, when I later visited India, I felt he was a man of great physical and moral courage. But I discovered that his remarkable intellectual abilities did not free him entirely from prejudice. In the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, Mr. Nehru was completely emotional because of his personal ties to Kashmir. I felt that he suffered a stoppage of all reason on that particular subject and contradicted the high ideals that he normally expressed in regard to the right of peoples to decide their own destiny.

It seems to me that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’ method of dealing with Prime Minister Nehru was unfortunate and unwise. In the 1950’s India was newly independent and the Indians were highly sensitive in regard to their independence. Then, too, after the Communists came into power in Asia, India was the only large non-Communist nation in Asia. Mr. Nehru firmly expects India will remain non-Communist and this is of great importance to the West. Yet Secretary Dulles made several grave errors in dealing with India. While negotiating the Japanese treaties he did not go to India. Mr. Nehru felt this was an obvious slight. Then, when India and Pakistan were in conflict, we sent arms to Pakistan, theoretically at least for defense on her northern (Russian) borders. It created against us in India a bitterness that might well have been avoided by limiting our aid to Pakistan to the economic field. I cannot help feeling that Mr. Dulles failed to understand the feelings of many of the peoples with whom we deal.

After Franklin’s death I did not plan to travel alone or purely for pleasure, but in recent years various circumstances have taken me on trips that covered a large part of the world. I do not want to tell about them in chronological order, like a secondhand Cook’s tour, but I do want to say something here about the invitation I received in the spring of 1948 to visit England for the unveiling of the statue of my husband in Grosvenor Square, when I was also invited to spend a weekend at Windsor Castle.

The King and Queen were kindness itself. They showed me to my room and sitting room and told me that the King’s mother, Queen Mary, was staying over at the castle in order to greet me. At dinner a Highland piper, dressed in kilts, came in to march once around the table, playing his bagpipes. There was, of course, much formality but I was impressed by the easy manner of the King, dressed during the day in tweed jacket and slacks like a country squire, and by the skill of the Queen in keeping their family life on a warm friendly level even in such a historical setting as Windsor Castle. Princess Margaret, for example, had some young friends in who promptly turned on the phonograph to listen to popular records. I was amused to notice that, like most fathers, the first thing the King said when we came into the room was: “Meg, the music is too loud. Will you please turn it down?”

On our first evening at the castle we were taken on a tour of the galleries after dinner. Like my mother-in-law at her Hyde Park home, Queen Mary knew where every painting and
objet d’art
was placed—or at least where she thought each one should be placed. She promptly observed with no particular pleasure that the King had changed the hanging of several paintings.

I was particularly struck by the then Princess Elizabeth, still a young girl at the time of my visit but very serious-minded. She came to me after a dinner given by the Pilgrims and said: “I understand you have been to see some of the homes where we are trying to rehabilitate young women offenders against the law. I have not yet been to see them but could you give me your opinion?”

I told her I was favorably impressed by the experiment. The government had taken over some of the country’s historic houses that the owners could no longer afford to maintain and had put them under the care of young women prisoners, who, with expert guidance and advice, had done the work of rehabilitating the houses and gardens to preserve them as national monuments. What struck me at the time was that this young princess was so interested in social problems and how they were being handled.

One evening during my visit at Windsor Castle, when Mr. Churchill was there, we played The Game—a form of charades. Queen Elizabeth acted as a kind of master of ceremonies and chose the words that the rest of us were called upon to act out. She puzzled for some time over various words and occasionally turned to Mr. Churchill for assistance, but without success. The former prime minister, with a decoration on the bosom of his stiff white shirt and a cigar in his hand, sat glumly aside and would have nothing to do with The Game.

When Mr. Churchill, now Sir Winston, had been at the White House during the tense years of the war, he and Franklin would talk for hours after dinner. It had been a terrible strain on my husband to sit up until one or two o’clock and then have to be at his desk early the next day while his guest stayed in his room until eleven. I suppose I showed my concern about this at the time and the prime minister probably remembered it when on a later occasion in London he said, “You don’t really approve of me, do you, Mrs. Roosevelt?”