Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (65 page)

As a representative of the president, Howe felt obliged to improve his manners and appearance. He still smoked his Sweet Caporals, and he still played the horses. But he brushed the ashes aside when reporters from the major dailies and magazines dropped by for an interview, and he had his suit pressed when a photo with the president was on the schedule. While he felt well enough to get out, he drove around Washington in a big Lincoln sedan equipped with a short-wave radio that filled up the rear seat and allowed him to eavesdrop on conversations momentous and trivial. The Secret Service worried, after the attempt on Roosevelt’s life, that persons close to the president might be in danger. Lacking the manpower to guard Howe and the persuasiveness to keep him from his rounds, the agency issued him a revolver for self-defense. The license that accompanied the weapon, identifying Howe as a “special operative,” gratified his sense of the absurd.

M
ISSY
L
E
H
AND
completed the live-in portion of the White House family. She had been with Roosevelt for thirteen years and had abandoned all semblance of a normal life in order to serve him. She was too busy for suitors, too old for many of them, and uninterested anyway. She had followed Roosevelt to Florida, Warm Springs, and Albany, and there was no question that she would move to Washington with him, nor any that she would live in the White House—and be on duty around the clock. Her universe was bounded by her bedroom on the third floor, near the bedrooms of Anna’s children, and her office on the first, next to the president’s office. She handled Roosevelt’s most important correspondence, diverting lesser missives to Grace Tully and other assistants. She drafted many of Roosevelt’s replies, instructed merely by a nod of his head or a wave of his hand. She often lunched with Eleanor, leaving Franklin to Howe or official visitors. She frequently attended state dinners. “She is one of the best groomed women in Washington and attractive, with her soft gray hair bringing out the youthful contours of her face,” a capital columnist noted. She almost never spoke to the press, partly because she didn’t want to, partly because Roosevelt preferred that she not, and partly because she gave reporters nothing they could use. Her rare quoted comments reflected credit upward. “One never seems to be working hard with the Roosevelts because they work so much harder than anybody else,” she self-effacingly said.

A
S FOR THE MAN
who had brought them all there, he settled into the White House and quickly made himself at home. He knew he would be living there for four years; he hoped for eight. He didn’t imagine he would spend the rest of his life there. He shared the public parts of the building with the American people, and the residence with Eleanor, Anna, James, Louis, and the rest of the White House family. But two rooms on the second floor were his private sanctum, open to others only by invitation—with the exception of Louis, who allowed no door to come between him and Franklin.

Frances Perkins remembered the president’s bedroom. “A little too large to be cozy, it was not large enough to be impressive,” she wrote.

A heavy dark wardrobe stood against a wall. (There are no closets in the White House and wardrobes are necessary.) A marble mantelpiece of the Victorian type carved with grapes held a collection of miniature pigs—Mexican pigs, Irish pigs, pigs of all kinds, sizes, and colors. Snapshots of children, friends, and expeditions were propped up in back of the pigs. There was an old bureau between the windows, with a plain white towel on top and the things men need for their dressing arrangements. There was an old-fashioned rocking chair, often with a piece of clothing thrown over it.

Then there was the bed—not the kind you would expect a president of the United States to have. Roosevelt used a small, narrow white iron bedstead, the kind one sees in the boy’s room of many an American house. It had a thin, hard-looking mattress, a couple of pillows, and an ordinary white seersucker spread. A folded old gray shawl lay at the foot. “Just the right weight,” the President once said. “Don’t like these great heavy things.” An old gray sweater, much the worse for wear, lay close at hand. He wore it over night clothes to keep his shoulders warm when he had a cold.

A white painted table, the kind one often sees in bathrooms, stood beside the bed, with a towel over it and with aspirin, nose drops, a glass of water, stubs of pencils, bits of paper with telephone numbers, addresses, and memoranda to himself, a couple of books, a worn old prayer book, a watch, a package of cigarettes, an ash tray, a couple of telephones, all cluttered together. Hanging on the wall were a few pictures of the children and favorite familiar scenes. And over the door at the opposite end of the room hung a horse’s tail. When one asked what that was, he would say, “Why, that’s Gloucester’s tail.” Gloucester, a horse raised by the President’s father, had been regarded by the family as one of the finest examples of horseflesh in the world.

Next to the bedroom was Roosevelt’s study. John Adams, the building’s first resident, had used the oval-shaped room as a parlor; on New Year’s Day 1801 he and Abigail hosted a reception for their Washington neighbors and the citizens of the republic. Millard and Abigail Fillmore made the room into a library; Benjamin and Caroline Harrison installed the first White House Christmas tree there. Roosevelt converted the room into his private study. Its formality softened, and then disappeared, beneath the clutter of books, knickknacks, and personal treasures that followed him around. He had old friends join him there after hours, and also persons he hoped would become his new friends. Catholics were a vital Democratic constituency; Grace Tully recalled an afternoon with Cardinal Joseph Dougherty of Philadelphia. Roosevelt guessed that Tully, an Irish lass, would like to meet the cardinal, and he invited her to join them. “I’d love to, Mr. President,” she responded, “but I’ll follow in a few minutes. I must freshen up a bit.”

“You’re fine as you are, child,” Roosevelt said. “Remember, this doesn’t call for lipstick. He’s a cardinal.”

Tully ignored the president’s remark. “Why not a dab of lipstick,” she remembered asking herself. “Doesn’t a cardinal wear red?” By the time she reached the study, the president and the cardinal were engaged in lively conversation. Eleanor and Anna were there, along with Anna’s young son Johnny. Tully had heard that the cardinal was stout; in person he was more than stout. “Seated beside the president on a sofa, he was so relaxed that his chest seemed to reach his chin, and his stomach reminded me of a promontory much like the pictures of an outline map in our elementary geographies.” Eleanor had the kitchen send up refreshments, which the cardinal obviously enjoyed. “While he talked he drank deeply of his tea and worked steadily at a serving of dainty sandwiches,” Tully recalled. “Crumbs began to speckle the promontory of clerical cloth spreading across his ample front…. Despite my better intentions, I could not help but recall the legend of beloved St. Francis of Assisi dispensing bread to the birds.”

The others noticed, too. Anna was tense throughout the visit, and upon the cardinal’s departure she voiced her relief that he had gone.

“Why, Sis,” Roosevelt responded, surprised. “I thought the old cardinal was grand.”

“So did I,” Anna said. But she explained that she was almost sure Johnny was going to come up to her and say, “Mummy, that fat man is spilling tea and crumbs all over his tummy. Shall I tell him?”

G
UESTS WHO CAME
later in the day than Cardinal Dougherty were treated to Roosevelt’s famous cocktails. The Democratic landslide of 1932 encouraged Congress, even before Roosevelt’s inauguration, to propose the repeal of Prohibition; the proposal went to the states and became the Twenty-first Amendment. Roosevelt had never taken Prohibition personally, but the repeal allowed him to practice his bartending craft more openly than he had in Florida and at Warm Springs during the 1920s. He liked to make a show of mixing drinks, and the more imbibers the better. His specialties were old-fashioneds, for which he squeezed each drinker’s orange personally, and martinis, which Eleanor’s brother Hall, on occasional visits to the White House, claimed the president didn’t know the first thing about making. Hall, perhaps taking after his and Eleanor’s deceased father, liked his martinis much stronger than Roosevelt mixed them. He thought, moreover, that olives were effete, and he flavored his martinis with onions instead.

Roosevelt’s guests typically drank what he served them, but the regulars got what they wanted. Grace Tully drank rum during the summer and preferred her old-fashioneds made with scotch rather than bourbon. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Roosevelt said when Tully requested the substitution. “It’s absolutely sacrilegious.” But he poured her the scotch. Harry Hopkins insisted on whiskey sours, which Roosevelt ordered from the kitchen. Henry Morgenthau didn’t like his liquor diluted at all. “What does a fellow have to do around her to get a real drink?” he complained. Roosevelt feigned exasperation. “Ring for Lucas and tell him what you want, Henry,” the president said. “We want you to be happy.”

Roosevelt wasn’t as good a bartender as he fancied himself, but his concoctions were generally drinkable. Not always, though. Princess Marthé of Norway visited Washington and brought the president a bottle of aquavit, the fiery staple her compatriots relied on to keep the Scandinavian winter at bay. Some while later Roosevelt asked Tully what she wanted to drink that evening. How about a martini? he suggested. She said that would be fine. Arthur Prettyman, the president’s valet, brought the ingredients and Roosevelt mixed them. “This will put hair on your chest,” he said, handing her the drink.

Tully took a sip. “Mr. President, that’s horrible!” she said. “It will take all the hair
off
your chest,” she said.

He tested the drink and whistled at its strength. He looked at the bottle and discovered that Prettyman had brought the aquavit rather than the gin. They laughed, and Tully told the story on her boss for years.

The cocktail hour was sacred as a respite from work. Roosevelt called it the “children’s hour” serious discussion ceased and the talk turned light and even frivolous. Guests who violated the custom were quickly made to appreciate their mistake. Yet Eleanor never caught on—or perhaps she simply refused to honor her husband’s preference. She would bring him correspondence she wanted him to read or would raise issues she thought he needed to consider. Sometimes he would put her off, and even when he acquiesced he did so in a way that indicated his annoyance that she was intruding on the scant time he had away from work. She found the experience fruitful enough to bear repeating, but it did nothing good for their personal relationship.