by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets;History of the World's Most Famous Home
Andrew Jackson imported slaves from his Tennessee estate, The Hermitage. President Zachary Taylor, another slave owner, used blacks from his Louisiana plantation. But a change in the American attitude toward slavery was beginning to take hold in many people’s minds. Fearful of political repercussions, Taylor kept his slaves out of sight. They worked only in the second-floor family rooms and slept in the attic. Free blacks, who had previously comprised most of the household staff, were dismissed lest they be mistaken for slaves.
When the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution brought an end to slavery in 1865, blacks returned to the White House workforce but they were not always integrated. In President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, the inside servants were white and the outside ones black.
In later administrations, white and black servants worked side by side and those who were entitled to meals ate together as well. This was the norm until 1909, when Helen Taft hired an arrogant housekeeper named Elizabeth Jaffray, who decreed that henceforth white servants and black servants would eat in separate dining rooms.
When Calvin Coolidge discovered the whites were getting better food, he gave orders that the same meals be served to both groups, but it was not until Eleanor Roosevelt got to the White House that anyone addressed head-on the issue of segregation.
Mrs. Roosevelt’s solution was to fire the whites on the household staff, except for the housekeeper, and hire only blacks, which solved the problem—up to a point. Integration finally came to the White House during my father’s administration. The man who banned segregation in the armed forces in 1948 could hardly tolerate it in his own household. The President’s House has been an equal opportunity employer ever since.
IV
It took many years and several presidents to finally convince Congress that the government should bear the expense of running the White House. Until federal funds were forthcoming, only the wealthiest chief executives could afford to hire an adequate staff and host a suitable number of social events.
Congress’s decision to allot funds to remodel the White House in 1902 was followed by a willingness to pay for a decent-sized staff. When Woodrow Wilson took office, Abigail Adams’s ideal number of thirty had at last been attained. By the time the Trumans got there, Chief Usher Howell Crim presided over a staff of almost fifty people, including two assistant ushers, two electricians, five engineers, five carpenters, seven gardeners, two plumbers, a housekeeper, six cooks, three butlers and a maître d’hôtel, seven doormen, four housemen, five maids, and several typists and messengers. It seemed enormous at the time but now it is twice that size.
V
The transition from one administration to the next is always difficult for the household staff. As of twelve o’clock on Inauguration Day, they have a whole new family to deal with—a new set of personalities, different likes and dislikes, and more often than not, a complete change in routines.
The president’s first dinner in the White House is an especially tense occasion. It’s hard to be certain what his and his family’s food preferences might be, especially on such a busy day. When the Nixons moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 1969, chef Henry Haller and the housekeeper, Mary Kaltman, stood by in the kitchen. They had been stocking up on groceries for the previous two weeks. They knew that steak was a Nixon favorite but, just to be on the safe side, they bought everything they could think of that might please the presidential palate.
That evening, Mrs. Nixon called down to the chef. The president and his daughters, Tricia and Julie, and Julie’s husband, David, wanted steak for dinner. Mrs. Nixon would dine in her room and all she wanted was a bowl of cottage cheese.
The steak was a no-brainer but there wasn’t an ounce of cottage cheese in the house. Although Chef Haller was sure that every grocery store in the District of Columbia would be closed at that hour, he called for a White House limousine. Minutes later, the head butler was speeding around Washington searching for cottage cheese. Luckily, he found some in a local deli. Mrs. Nixon’s dinner was soon served and cottage cheese quickly became a White House staple.
Herbert Hoover and his wife complicated the staff’s lives when they insisted that, as far as possible, the servants should keep out of sight. “Heaven help you if you were caught in the hall when the president was coming,” one maid recalled.
People dove into closets and empty bedrooms at the first hint that the president or first lady might be on their way. One particular closet on the second floor near the elevator would often be full of butlers, maids, and housemen as the president strode down the hall.
For the residence staff, the arrival of the Franklin D. Roosevelts was like the return of sunshine. When FDR saw people ducking into closets as he was wheeled toward them in the upstairs hall, he asked what in the world was going on. When the Hoovers’ predilections were explained to him, he told everyone to relax. There was no reason to be afraid of him or the first lady.
With every change of administration, the maître d’hôtel, who is in charge of organizing and serving the food at White House social events, may be called on to issue new orders to his staff of butlers. After Richard Nixon’s first state dinner, he complained about the slow pace of the meal and suggested cutting the soup course. When his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, demurred, Nixon growled: “Men don’t really like soup!” Haldeman retreated and called the president’s valet, who told him Nixon had spilled soup all over his vest while trying to slurp and talk simultaneously. Haldeman fired off an “action memo” banning soup at future dinners.
The staff has long since learned to be philosophical. They are there to please the first family. They also know that no matter how outlandish the tenants’ demands become, in four or, at most, eight years they’ll be gone.
VI
White House doormen don’t open doors. They welcome people to the President’s House. At formal dinners, they take the guests’ coats and present them with the escort cards that tell them which table they will sit at.
In the early days of the White House, there was only one doorman. He lived in a small room or lodge on the west side of the entrance hall and kept track of who went in and out. As more and more people started calling on the chief executive, the doorman began keeping a list, which was sent upstairs to the president or his secretary to decide who would be admitted.
If there were a prize for the doorman who witnessed the most history, it would probably go to Thomas Pendel, who became a doorkeeper in Abraham Lincoln’s White House and stayed for over forty years. Even in his old age, Pendel retained vivid memories of the night Lincoln was shot. He could bring tears to the eyes of listeners as he told of hugging a distraught Tad Lincoln when the news of his father’s death reached the White House.
When Ira Smith, another man who would become a White House fixture, went to work in the McKinley mail room in 1897, he encountered a graying Tommy Pendel.
“I’m the man who let him out,” Pendel told him.
“How’s that?” young Smith asked.
“The way it was that night,” Pendel said. “He come down to the front door where the others was waiting for him. I remember it clear. The carriage was waiting and ready to take them to the theater where some famous lady was performing in a stage show. They was all ready to go and they come over to the door where I was standin’ because I was an usher then like I am now. He was walkin’ tall and straight and he smiled pleasant-like at me and I opened the door for him to go down to Ford’s Theater. I’m the man who let him out.”
It dawned on Smith that Pendel was talking about Lincoln on the last night of his life.
VII
The White House doorkeepers had a reputation for being independent but a couple of the housekeepers could give them a run for their money. One of the most difficult was Elizabeth Jaffray, who arrived with the Tafts.
Helen Taft may have been imperious but her housekeeper was a veritable despot. She would not allow her subordinates to sit down in her presence and they c
ould not speak to her unless she spoke first. She also disapproved of automobiles, which were rapidly becoming popular. She dismissed them as “vulgar contrivances” that would never last, without mentioning the fact that she was scared to death to ride in one. When the White House acquired a fleet of cars, Mrs. Jaffray took over President Taft’s discarded horse-drawn brougham. It would pull up to the North Portico each morning and the housekeeper would appear wearing a large hat with a veil and toting a parasol, to be driven off to do the marketing.
Elizabeth Jaffray’s reign of terror continued through the Wilson and Harding administrations but the tyrant met her match in Calvin Coolidge. Cal started calling her “Queenie” behind her back, refused to treat her with the deference she felt she deserved and, unlike previous presidents, took an interest in what was going on in the kitchen. He revised the menus for state dinners and demanded to know what happened to the leftovers.
After a couple of years of Cal’s needling, “Queen” Elizabeth decided to retire. The rest of the staff silently cheered. Coolidge replaced Queenie with a genial dietician from Boston named Ellen Riley. He liked her so much he invited her to join his guests at White House musicales and movie screenings and gave her the combination to the vault where the gold and silver services were stored. He also gave her a wacky title: Custodian of the Plate, Furniture, and Public Property of the Executive Mansion. Despite his public image as a dour New Englander, Coolidge was a master of deadpan humor. Only a few people have noted that at his Amherst College graduation he was chosen by his classmates to deliver the Grove Oration, which gave the college and the professors a farewell horse-laugh.
VIII
Another tyrannical housekeeper, Henrietta Nesbitt, arrived at the White House with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. She had worked as a cook at the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, and Eleanor, impressed by her frugality, brought her along to Washington. The Roosevelts not only had a large family, they often invited friends for lunch or dinner. Since the president has to pay for his personal entertaining, Eleanor was counting on Mrs. Nesbitt to keep the expenses from getting out of hand.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had always loved good food; quail and pheasant were among his favorites. Fluffy, as the staff referred to the new housekeeper when she was out of earshot, disapproved of such delicacies. “Plain foods, plainly prepared” was her motto. FDR had announced more than once that he disliked broccoli. “Fix it anyhow,” Fluffy told the cooks. “He should like it.” At one dinner, when the president and his guests requested hot coffee, Fluffy sent them iced tea instead. Her explanation: “It was better for them.”
Mrs. Nesbitt also had her own ideas about what the president should eat for breakfast: oatmeal. After one too many bowls of the stuff, FDR exclaimed to his secretary, “My God! Doesn’t Mrs. Nesbitt know there are breakfast foods besides oatmeal? It’s been served to me morning in and morning out for months and months now and I’m sick and tired of it!”
Later that day, the president ripped out a newspaper ad for several other cereals including Corn Flakes and Cream of Wheat and had the secretary take it to Mrs. Nesbitt as a “gentle reminder.”
Unfortunately, the Trumans inherited Mrs. Nesbitt. There was some improvement after Mother took over the meal planning, but when she had to go out of town and left me in charge, Dad and I found ourselves on a steady diet of brussels sprouts. Dad detested the things, but did Mrs. Nesbitt care? Of course not.
I got the impression Mrs. Nesbitt enjoyed ignoring my father’s preferences and disregarding the menus I planned. I was ready to evict her on the spot but Mother told me to hold off; she would speak to her when she got back. By that time, Mrs. Nesbitt informed us that she was planning to retire, which saved Mother the trouble of firing her and guaranteed that we would finally get some decent food.
IX
Out of the thousands of people who have worked at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over the years, two lemons—Queenie and Fluffy—are not a bad average. In the Trumans’ experience and that of other first families I’ve talked to, the staff gets universally high marks for going out of their way to be helpful.
Barbara Bush was amazed when she arrived in 1989. “By this time I had lived [in] or visited many places but never had seen a household where every living human’s only concern was to make us, our children, and our guests happy,” she said.
One of my favorite memories of the White House staff underscores Barbara’s comment. It involves Alonzo Fields, the tall, personable maître d’hôtel during our seven-year-and-eight-month sojourn. I loved the bread pudding the house chefs prepared to accompany the pheasant they generally served at state dinners. (Now you couldn’t pay me to touch anything so fattening.)
At these sumptuous affairs, with everyone in white tie and tails and evening gowns galore, I was seated so far below the salt, I was practically in the kitchen. Seating at these fêtes was (and still is) done by rank, and a president’s daughter has none worth mentioning.
With pheasant and bread pudding on the menu, there was high anxiety for yours truly. Were they going to run out before they got to me? The stuff was so popular, it was all too possible. But I soon learned that Fields had stored in his capacious head some precious information about me. One evening, I watched the bread pudding supply dwindle as the butler who was serving it got closer to my place. My hopes sank until I heard Fields call softly into the kitchen: “More bread pudding for Miss Margaret!”
X
The White House staffers have some interesting memories of their own. I particularly like a couple of stories involving my father. Dad was in the habit of doing some work in his private study on the second floor while waiting for lunch to be served. When he left, houseman George Thomas would go in and make sure the room was tidied up.
One day Thomas yielded to temptation and sat down in Dad’s big leather chair. Who should appear in the doorway but the chief executive himself, returning to pick up some papers he’d forgotten. “George,” Dad said to the paralyzed Thomas, “I’ll tell you one thing. You’re in a mighty hot seat!”
With that, Dad picked up his papers and returned to the Oval Office and George Thomas breathed an enormous sigh of relief.
Another houseman, Herman Thompson, handled the dozens of phone calls that came into the kitchen from various people both inside and outside the White House. One day Herman answered the phone and a voice he didn’t recognize said: “I’d like to order lunch for Mrs. Wallace [my grandmother] and me.”
“Who is me?” Herman jauntily asked.
“I happen to be the president of the United States,” the voice replied.
The rest of the staff told Herman to clean out his locker. He was definitely out of there. But, of course, he wasn’t. Instead of reprimanding him, Dad got a good laugh out of the episode.
XI
Working at the White House has become a way of life, not only for individuals but for families. Johnny Muffler was hired as an electrician in 1945 and celebrated his fiftieth year on the job by making sure every clock in the place was ticking and telling the same time. Johnny’s father-in-law had been a chauffeur, and his son Rick worked in the calligraphy office, where the invitations to the state dinners and receptions are penned by a professional staff.
In recent years there have been three butlers named Ficklin: Charles, who later took Fields’s job as maître d’hôtel; John; and Samuel. Samuel Ficklin recalled the training he received from his brother, Charles, and Fields before he got the job. He was told to take some bricks and use them to strengthen his hands and arm muscles by hefting them until he could hold a heavy tray without the slightest tremor. He was also trained to set the table with each plate exactly the same distance from the edge.
The tradition of impeccable service and the determination to keep first families contented and comfortable has been exhibited in hundreds of ways. Plumber Howard Arrington was proud of using his metalworking skills to build the elaborate stand for Tricia Nixon’s wedding cake. Preston Bruce, who was a doorman fr
om the Eisenhower through the Ford administrations, liked to say that people had only to visit once before he could greet them by name the second time around.
All these men and women are imbued with the same dedication that my favorite among them, Alonzo Fields, epitomized when he said in an interview at the age of ninety-two: “I never felt like a servant to a man. I felt I was a servant to my government, to my country.”
There it is again, backstairs as well as frontstairs: glory.
Questions for Discussion
What job skills does a chief usher need?
What problems occurred when presidents had to pay for the expense of running the White House?
Why does it take so many people to run the residential area of the White House?
FDR looks underdressed beside his royal houseguest, King George VI of England. The king and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, stayed at the White House in 1939. Credit: AP/Wide World photos
9
Bed, Breakfast, and Beyond
THE WHITE HOUSE has no shortage of guest rooms. I’ve stayed in a couple of them and I can assure you they’re the equal of anything you’ll find in the world’s best hotels. More to the point, every one of them is steeped in history.
The most famous of the White House guest rooms, the Lincoln Bedroom, is on the southeast side of the second floor. It is highly unlikely that Lincoln ever sought repose in the elaborately carved rosewood bed that is the centerpiece of the room, although it was bought during his administration. Mary Lincoln originally put it in the northwest bedroom (where the Prince of Wales stayed when he visited President James Buchanan in 1860). Theodore Roosevelt, with his strong sense of history, had it moved into his own bedroom. Calvin Coolidge also slept in it, but after the Coolidges departed Lou Hoover moved it back to the Prince of Wales Room. She added a suite of parlor furniture that was supposedly owned by Lincoln and rechristened the room the Lincoln Bedroom.
