Grandmère

by David B. Roosevelt

  Franklin had Missy LeHand, who was by his side all hours of the day, as factotum and devoted confidant. Missy even fulfilled some of those duties expected of but despised by Eleanor, like mixing drinks at cocktail hour, chatting and making small talk, and keeping up with the continuous flow of guests. Because of Eleanor’s primordial fear of the effect alcohol had on people—after all, it ruined both her father and her uncles—she withdrew from many of Franklin’s cocktail hour gatherings, and Missy took over. But Grandmère’s greatest fear was that the White House routine would destroy her working partnership with Franklin, that the Cabinet would compromise her role as a first-line advisor and counselor. She could not bear the thought of being merely a superficial feminine symbol for the nation.

  My zest in life is rather gone for the time being… If anyone looks at me, I want to weep… I get like this sometimes. It makes me feel like a dead weight & my mind goes round and round like a squirrel in a cage. I want to run, & I can’t, & I despise myself. I can’t get away from thinking about myself. Even though I know I’m a fool, I can’t help it.3

  Perhaps for the first time we see the vestiges of depression settling in. Grandmère had successfully overcome depression before by taking up tasks, making herself useful, and following a code of self-discipline. By directing her focus to what was required of her, she was able to not think of things she found painful or depressing. Many of Grandmère’s writings throughout her life give hints of periods of depression, and toward the end she admitted that she had suffered for years.

  Despite the feelings that threatened to drown her happiness yet again, Eleanor would in moments of crisis renew her faith and gather strength from the emotional and spiritual resilience she had cultivated since childhood. It is always difficult to surmise another person’s religious beliefs and the faith they derive from them, but I think Grandmère always professed a strong underpinning of religious belief. The age in which she was raised was one of loyalty to both family and the institutions of life, such as the church, not to say that hers was one of blind acceptance. For Grandmère there was significance to the ritual of the Episcopal Church in whose tenets she was reared (although the early Roosevelt family were followers of the Dutch Reformed movement), and she gained strength from its teachings. She believed that religion could and should be intellectually interpreted as one wished. Perhaps her faith can best be summarized by one of her favorite sacred passages, the Prayer for a Better World, which she almost always carried with her:

  Dear Lord keep us from being complacent and self satisfied, make us understand our shortcomings and work for a better understanding of others in order that we may learn to live in peace and harmony with our brothers throughout the world. Let us learn that seeking for good and giving love are more important than finding evil and developing hate. Give us the courage to go forward in spite of discouragement and when we ask Thy blessing, grant us a sense of Thy peace and Thy strength.

  I think most would agree that Grandmère was a moralist, and her intellectual embrace of religious faith was an important part of her morality. However, as she once explained to Edward R. Murrow, the noted columnist of the day, “I don’t know whether I believe in a future life. I believe that all you go through [in this life] must have some value, therefore there must be some reason. And there must be some ‘going on’… there is a future—that I’m sure of. But how, that I don’t know.”

  The President’s grandchildren and Miss Hopkins on the White House balcony.

  A bread line in New York City

  unemployed men at a Volunteers of America soup kitchen

  squatters’ shacks filled practically every vacant lot in New York City. Few escaped the ravages of the Depression.

  I see a nation ill clad, ill housed, ill educated, and ill nourished.

  —Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  A Remarkable First Lady

  In retrospect, the initial loss of moorings in those early White House days were but a blink of an eye in the chronicle of who Eleanor Roosevelt became as First Lady and what she attained during FDR’s long presidency. Within a few months she had already started to carve a new identity, coming back to life with a vengeance, forging a path previously unimagined for someone in her position. Soon she would be more firmly established in the public mind than she had ever allowed herself to conceive: She offered a moral standard, an acutely sensitive conscience, a sharply defined personality, and an intellectually forceful mind; in short, an ideal of femininity. But more than possessing a conscience and setting a moral standard, Grandmère became an activist within and without the White House. She recognized that she had gained influence not only in national Democratic Party circles, but with many of FDR’s own advisors. She had the power to influence and was not reticent to use it in attempting to shape policy decisions within the Administration. Often she circumvented her husband’s advisors, going directly to the President to forcefully lobby her views on matters she considered of crucial importance. It was not unusual for her to invite leaders of the labor movement, civil rights, or other causes to meet with FDR at the White House, and seldom was she denied this privileged access. She not only served as a resource for the presidency, but more importantly for those whose voices could have no audience. And her imprint on many of the early programs of the Roosevelt presidency are indelible, such as the National Youth Administration, the Federal One programs (which included the Federal Writers Project, Federal Theatre Project, Federal Arts Project, etc.).

  Her initial unhappiness mirrored the mood of the nation. No decline in American economy would carve such shockingly deep lacunae in industry and in the very fabric of society. Buoyant and sparkling America became a country where breadlines and soup kitchens formed in every city, and families everywhere were evicted from their homes, to stand shivering on pavements and by railway tracks that led only to more poverty and less opportunity. In the eleven-year Depression, industry would grind to an almost complete halt, leaving 10 million Americans, almost 17 percent of the workforce, jobless. More than one-third of the 35 million homes lacked running water; 32 percent had no hygienic facilities; 39 percent lacked a bathtub or shower; and 58 percent had no heat. Of 74 million Americans twenty-five years or older, only two in five had gone beyond eighth grade and one in twenty to college.

  The Roosevelts presided over a nation that was “ill clad, ill housed, ill educated, and ill nourished,” as FDR so appropriately intoned. Above all, America had lost its faith. Eleanor wrote that the nation was gripped by “… fear of an uncertain future, fear of not being able to meet our problems. Fear of not being equipped to deal with life as we live it today.” 4 She recognized that people needed to have something “outside of one’s self and greater than one’s self to depend on… We need some of the old religious spirit which said ‘I myself am weak but Thou art strong oh Lord!’ ”5 Franklin, too, saw that renewing the bond with God would be “… the means of bringing us out of the depths of despair into which so many have apparently fallen.”6 During his first inaugural speech, confident of the nation’s ability to renew its faith in its own power, he would encourage everyone to forge ahead with confidence with the famous line “… the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” adding that “This nation asks for action, and action now.” And action was what the nation got from them both.

  Grandmère, volunteering in a soup kitchen or other places, was not an uncommon sight, but many thought it “unbecoming” of the First Lady.

  Eleanor’s recovery was the first step in the nation’s recovery: with inexhaustible energy, high spirits, and deep faith, she went about setting an example for everyone, talking to people about what really mattered to them. She saw the main cause of malnutrition, for instance, as being not lack of food but a lack of knowledge of menus that were both inexpensive and used simple but nourishing ingredients. She gave a lecture and served “a 7 cents luncheon” at the White House: hot stuffed eggs with tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, prune pudding, bread, and coffee. This eve
nt was so successful that soon American women started preparing “Eleanor Roosevelt meals” for their families. While Franklin tried to bolster industry and the economy, Eleanor worked to uplift morale: “At the president’s press conference, all the world’s a stage; at Mrs. Roosevelt’s, all the world’s a school,”7 Bess Furman, an Associated Press reporter, remarked. She also wrote that Grandmère enchanted the press, captivated the public, and became America’s greatest champion. In her elegant, direct, unaffected way she talked to everyone about everything, and in order to do so she traveled constantly and visited every area of the United States, descending down mineshafts, crossing muddy fields, flying fledgling airlines when weather conditions were treacherous, and driving with friends and aides to as many places as she could. Eleanor Roosevelt was everywhere.

  Eleanor was so efficient that she achieved a great deal every day, beginning at 7:30A.M. with exercise (a habit from Allenswood that she never abandoned) or a ride in the nearby Rock Creek Park on her mare, Dot, often with Missy LeHand or her best Washington friend, Elinor Morgenthau. After breakfast she would see in turn the head usher, the social secretary, and the housekeeper. Raymond Muir, the head usher, oversaw the comings and goings of everyone who came into the White House to see the Roosevelts, including family, guests, and people with appointments. Edith Helm, Eleanor’s social secretary, was tall, elegant, and very correct. Together, Edith and Grandmère went over formal arrangements for suppers, gatherings, invitations, and table seatings. Henrietta Nesbitt, the house-keeper, did all the buying, prepared the menus, and oversaw the household staff. (Grandfather found Mrs. Nesbitt’s menus so bland and unappealing that even Grandmère’s simple dinners of scrambled eggs were more palatable. He had a palate for exotic foods like wild game and fresh fish, and although Mrs. Nesbitt had nothing to do with the actual cooking, only menu planning, she would ultimately bear the brunt of FDR’s displeasure and was often the subject of his many complaining memorandums to Grandmère. One reason he sought a fourth term, he joked with Anna, was so he could “fire Mrs. Nesbitt.” He was reelected, but Mrs. Nesbitt remained faithfully in place.)

  Another common sight was Grandmère taking her rides through Rock Creek Park in Washington.

  The annual Easter Egg Roll for children on the White House lawn was always a welcome event; here with my aunt Anna, her daughter “Sistie,” and head White House usher Ike Hoover.

  Finally, Eleanor would retire to her office with her longtime confidant and assistant Malvina Thompson (“Tommy”) to attend to the avalanche of mail that flooded into the White House every day. Letters and letters and letters filled wire baskets all around Eleanor’s office, and she and Tommy would even take unanswered correspondence back to Val-Kill, Campobello, or Springwood and continue to write replies on weekends, vacations, and late at night. As was her regimen until her death, all correspondence deserved an answer; if someone took the time to write, she would find the time to answer. This was Eleanor’s way of keeping in touch with ordinary people everywhere who truly felt she was a friend in touch with their needs, requests, and feelings.

  Grandmère always extended herself to those in need.

  When Grandmère wasn’t writing letters, she was writing articles, in another successful attempt to be in touch with the people. Louis Howe acted as her literary agent and engineered a contract with the North American Newspaper Alliance to do a monthly 750-word piece for $500 an article. She was asked to write “as one woman to another, of your problems as the woman of the household.” Later she wrote a monthly column for the Woman’s Home Companion, a magazine that also employed Aunt Anna to help answer the correspondence that came flooding in from American women.

  Eleanor remained tireless in her efforts to uplift hearts and revive the spirit of the nation, and within the first few months she had already broken the mold that formed all previous First Ladies. Many were critical of her active involvement and would have preferred her to behave in a more traditionally feminine role, grinning and bearing the burden of anonymity behind an all-powerful husband. But Eleanor was sharply aware that women had a crucial role to play in the rebuilding of a nation gripped by the devastation of the Great Depression. It was, as she had always believed, up to the women to help the nation.

  It was Lorena Hickok, who had been assigned by the A.P. to cover Grandmère during the 1932 campaign, who suggested that Eleanor hold press conferences restricted to women reporters, a revolutionary idea at the White House. The conferences proved a great success: They not only gave women reporters the opportunity for “exclusive” coverage of the First Lady, but they also accomplished the higher mission of galvanizing women across the United States to work together with the First Lady to help the country crawl out of the Depression. Hickok also suggested that the “diary” portion of Grandmère’s daily letters to her be published. These contained details of Grandmère’s workday activities that Lorena felt would interest the whole nation. They would eventually be published as the popular “My Day” column and syndicated to scores of newspapers across the nation.

  “Hick,” as Grandmère and all of us would come to call Lorena, became a close friend and companion to my grandmother soon after she was assigned to the White House. When they first met, Hick was one of the most highly respected female journalists in the nation and a trophy for the Associated Press. Many considered her brilliant. She had prestige, her writing had earned many awards, her articles were “front page,” she was perhaps the best-paid woman journalist of her time, and, of utmost importance, she had friends and sources at the highest echelons of government. These were the qualities that first attracted my grandmother to this exceptional woman. Hick was equally impressed by Grandmère, whose activities never made for dull copy and whose intellect attracted her like a magnet.

  One of the first First Ladies to hold her own press conferences, Grandmère insisted that they be limited to women reporters only (here in the Monroe Room of the White House, in 1933).

  Like FDR, Grandmère demanded absolute loyalty from the people she considered her friends. If you were part of her inner circle, you were expected to be trustworthy and totally devoted to her. Within two years of their meeting, Hick had become Grandmère’s closest friend: They wrote to each other every day, went on trips, and spent much of their free time, such as it was, together. Friends and even White House staff began wondering about the true nature of the relationship, and speculation arose that they were having an affair. Of these speculations, some made on the basis of endearing correspondence between them, I can draw no conclusions. I do believe, however, that my uncles, my aunt, and my father placed little stock in the rumors. Aunt Anna, in her interviews with Joe Lash, reckoned that the friendship damaged Hick’s career as a journalist, a fact Grandmère felt terribly guilty about:

  I think Mother ruined Hick as a newspaper woman by taking her in too close. I knew her on the campaign train in 1932… But it was not too long after this that Hick would be sleeping in Mother’s sitting room and the other reporters came to regard her as a sort of privileged character. That was not good for her professional status… Mother did not realize that… Hick was truly devoted to Mother but on too emotional a basis.8

  In March 1933 FDR gave his first “Fireside Chat,” from his Oval Office desk.

  Grandmère’s first portrait as First Lady in early 1933.

  Whatever the truth, Lorena Hickok remained a close and trusted friend the remainder of Grandmère life.

  Mary R. Beard, a historian and feminist, echoed the admiration of millions when she reviewed It’s Up to the Women in the New York Herald Tribune in 1933: Through her articles, press conferences, and speeches, Eleanor Roosevelt was giving “inspiration to the married, solace to the lovelorn, assistance to the homemaker, menus to the cook, help to the educator, direction to the employer, caution to the warrior, and deeper awareness of its primordial force to the ‘weaker sex.’ ” If the country was used to “the Great White Father in the White House” instructing people in right cond
uct, now the nation had a “Great White Mother [who] emerges as a personality in her own right and starts an independent course of instruction on her own account.”9

  Never before had the presidency been conducted in such partnership, with Franklin being the politician and Eleanor his wisest and most active ambassador for domestic affairs. She would constantly bring to his attention issues that he would not otherwise have seen, and their Sunday suppers of scrambled eggs in the chafing dish became a time when Grandmère would invite different people to speak informally of what mattered to them. She would also send her friends on fact-finding missions, such as the time when she sent Lorena Hickock to investigate the Federal Emergency Relief Administration programs and report back to the President and his aids of their shortcomings. In this way FDR was able to form policy based on the living realities of Americans, and his great success as president was founded on never losing touch and the constant and enduring connection between the White House and ordinary households everywhere.

  The Roosevelt genius of using informality to preside over a nation was a great gift to a country plunged in hopelessness. It was this informality, this sense of being in touch with the people, that made FDR’s famous “fireside chats” so effective at galvanizing a weakened nation. Together Eleanor and Franklin reached out, and in return millions of Americans responded with a renewed confidence and trust.

  On the more formal occasions Grandmère excelled as hostess: “The White House had an aura of power and impressiveness about it, but they were themselves,” remarked Mrs. Ames, a frequent guest. “They acted as if they had always been there. It was like visiting friends in a very large country house. One was put instantly at one’s ease. She was the fantastically most thoughtful hostess I have ever met in my life.”10