After that week together, ER had high hopes for their future: “Someday we will do lots of work together! I love you deeply, tenderly and my arms feel very empty….”
The ardor of their winter correspondence lasted until their March Caribbean trip, after which Hick became depressed. Then in April and May Hick confused and rankled ER by her blustery diatribes against racial minorities on the dole. Their disagreeable May reunion, when harsh words were exchanged, was the worst time they spent together. Now, ER hoped to restore harmony with her plans for their July holiday.
FDR had declared 1934 “National Parks Year,” and ER intended to take Hick to some of nature’s most wondrous sights—places that had been part of her heritage since childhood, when her father and uncle spoke of their grandeur. While she kept the “itinerary” secret so there would be surprise adventures, she assured Hick that it would be an anonymous time, just the two of them far away from it all. “We must be careful this summer and keep it out of the papers when we are off together.”
Hick’s spirits lifted, and a playful tone reappeared in her letters:.
And now I’m going to bed—to try to dream about you. I never do, but I always have hopes. The nearest I ever came was one night this week—I think it was the night I ate the Mexican dinner. My dream that night was that I was going to marry Earl, and your Mother-in-law was simply furious! Isn’t that a honey?
Together, they planned visits with family and friends. Anna had found refuge from the press and a pleasant sanctuary for the children (Sistie and Buzzie) at the sprawling Nevada ranch home of her friends Bill and Ella Dana. There were horses to ride, and ER and Hick were welcome.
Then, Hick wanted ER to meet her former lover Ella Morse, with whom she had lived in San Francisco. Ella was the first woman who had encouraged Hick to give up her career. Worried about Hick’s early diabetes, she had encouraged the thirty-two-year-old star reporter to leave her work at the Minneapolis Tribune, to live in comfort with her in San Francisco, travel to Europe—and write novels.
Hick loved San Francisco, and she wanted to write novels. But within several months Ella eloped with her childhood sweetheart, Roy Dickinson. Bereft, Hick journeyed to New York, where she resumed her career. Although they eventually corresponded regularly, Hick and Ella evidently had not seen each other since 1926. Now, once again in love and in a professional wilderness, Hick reconnected with Ella, and she wanted ER to meet her old friends, to know her past. ER replied with “dread” and uncertainty,
but I know I’ve got to fit in gradually to your past, meet your friends and like them so there won’t be closed doors between us later on…. Love is a queer thing, it hurts one but it gives one so much more in return!
ER was surprisingly direct about her jealous feelings. Frequently flirtatious, Hick met women in her travels who found her attractive, who squired her about, took her home for dinner, and for weekends. The names and details are lost, but ER’s letters indicate that she was in no mood to entertain dalliances. When Hick confided that a new situation with yet another had emerged, ER wrote firmly: “How hard for you to have a lady who is in love in her mind with you. Well if she is in love you can tell her how to snap out of it!”
The lady was never again mentioned. Now ER was convinced their summer holiday of solitude and adventure would rekindle their relationship.
At Bill Dana’s ranch neat Lake Tahoe, Anna began the six-week residency required for a Nevada divorce. ER advised her daughter not to “take these days too hard. Remember even disagreeable things come to an end!”
ER was with her godmother, Cousin Susie, when newspapers headlined Anna’s divorce: “This has been a long day and I am feeling very weary and so low in my mind—I could weep.” Everything had gone wrong: She had car trouble, and an unpleasant visit with Elliott’s former wife Betty—who was an hour late. Then Cousin Susie “made a scene and I became cold and calm.” She apologized, but ER felt “somehow 1 never can thaw.”
She missed Hick, “and would give the world to fly to you tonight.”
Back in Washington for a day, ER found Hick’s letters and her returned money order—which ER had sent as a gift for Hick’s new car, a Plymouth convertible. ER was “glad about the car,” but annoyed by the returned check: “I could spank you.” ER now began to “count the days … what happy times we will have.”
The last days of June were busy. FDR left for his tour of the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, and Hawaii, and ER completed several magazine articles, wrote radio speeches, and fulfilled an amazing array of responsibilities in order to be perfectly “free” with Hick until 26 August. In the meantime she was pleased and relieved that Hick was being comforted and cared for by her old friend Ella Morse: “I am so happy that Ellie met you and that the old companionship is there and I do hope she stays with you right along.”
However delightful the visit, her time with Ella and Roy intensified Hick’s insecurities. In response to a lost letter, which detailed those feelings, ER wrote:
Yes, dear, I think you will remember that I once told you I wished you had been happy with a man or that it might still be. I rather think the lack of that relationship does create “emotional instability” but people do seem to weather it in time and who knows what the future holds. In the meantime Ellie and I will try to do a little stabilizing or at least help you to do it!
Nobody doubted in ER’s circle that it was easier to be with a man in a man’s world, even though her circle was composed of many women who chose a more difficult path. Women of privilege, status, and economic security, such as Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, were content in their individual lives and as couples. They had done better than “weather it in time.” But Hick was now with Ella, who had found contentment with a man; and she felt alone, without work or status, or at least without the work that had given her an identity she was proud of. And she was in love with the First Lady, who was surrounded by her husband, her children and grandchildren, other friends, and endless obligations.
ER did not dismiss Hick’s doubts and fears. It was hard to be an independent unmarried career woman without job security during the greatest depression in United States history, waiting to spend some private time with the First Lady. But ER assured her repeatedly that there was no cause for despair. They would have years of contentment in a relationship she believed would be enduring and lifelong. ER failed to appreciate the enormity of Hick’s lost profession, which she minimized by assurances that she could always help find her useful work.
But Hick was apprehensive about their time together, despite ER’s promise to “keep my itinerary quiet.” ER became irritated, and insisted that there was nothing to worry about: “Things happen often enough, but for heaven’s sake don’t anticipate them!”
Hick’s anxieties now extended even to ER: “Dear one, why should you feel shy and worried about seeing me, you don’t feel that way about your old friends. I suppose it is just that you haven’t known me long enough—well, try to feel you just saw me yesterday and we will pick up just where we left off!” Perhaps ER had dismissed from her mind how stormy and unpleasant their last meeting in May had been:
I can’t understand why you are so worried dear, why can’t you just be natural? Of course we are going to have a good time together and neither of us is going to be upset.
One reason for Hick’s increased worry was that ER had become during the spring of 1934 a controversial, well-known, easily recognized public figure. In the summer of 1933, ER might walk into a town and remain unknown. But her face was now seen by newspaper readers almost daily, and her voice heard in every home that had a radio. Not only had Arthurdale and her statements about race created a public stir, she had become a radio star.
In April 1934, she was approached with an offer she felt she could not refuse. It would help her advance all the causes she believed in, particularly Arthurdale: “I’m sorely tempted to take a radio contract for $3000 a week.” The broadcasts would be “p
icked up wherever I am.”
In May, ER decided to accept the controversial commercial contract for a regular six-minute broadcast offered by Johns Manville. She was criticized throughout the nation as a publicity hound who used her husband’s office to make “large and easy earnings.” One writer wondered how anybody might be worth $500 a minute. ER replied that indeed “no one is worth $500 a minute,” but that she accepted the fee to give it away to the many people and the many causes that so desperately needed help. It was not paid to her directly, but to the American Friends Service Committee, which would spend it.
Her contract with Johns Manville was just the first among many. Selby shoes, a mattress company, even food and beverage concerns paid for her broadcasts. She was criticized but unrepentant. Her earnings financed worthy projects, and ER kept in closer touch with the American people.
In July, she began her vacation—and imagined that she might return to anonymity. From the Tennessee Valley she went to Chicago, where she toured the World’s Fair with her brother Hall, and visited with John Boettiger, whose love for Anna seemed deeply genuine: “I loved seeing you in Chicago, John dear. I’ve grown to love you like one of my dear ones & I’m grateful beyond words for the happiness you’ve already given Anna & I trust you for the future.”
Then she flew to Sacramento, dedicated to dodging the press and under another name—and believed she was invisible. But somebody leaked her presence on the plane, and she was greeted by an army of reporters and photographers. From the airport to the hotel, she was followed and hounded. Hick recorded the entire drama.
Having met the press corps in her hotel lobby the night before, Hick tried to outwit them. She later considered her effort “the silliest thing I ever did in my life.” But she felt “really desperate” to get to Colfax and their hideaway at a friend’s home without publicity. She appealed to the hotel staff for help. And they obliged:
First they called the state police. I left my keys with the clerk, and during the night a state trooper drove my small gray convertible away and hid it.
A Secret Service man accompanied him and removed my D.C. license plates, substituting California plates. He also had some Nevada and Oregon license plates, which he hid, along with mine, under the seat. Every time we crossed a state line on that trip, a Secret Service man would appear and change our license plates. Mrs. Roosevelt and I used to amuse ourselves by conjecturing what would happen to us if we were picked up for some traffic violation, and the police found four sets of license plates and a gun in our car!
Hick explained that ER had brought her gun in order to continue her target practice in the mountains. But on this trip the police remained their allies, against an invasive army of resourceful reporters.
Before they left the hotel, Hick pleaded with them, reporter to reporters: Wouldn’t they give ER some private time to freshen up before their interviews? They agreed. “Looking as innocent as I could,” she told them she did not know their first destination.
We left them in the lobby, took an elevator up, then another down to the rear entrance to the hotel, where we found my car, with a state trooper at the wheel. We threw our bags into the rumble seat, jumped in and started off, the state trooper driving.
Still in Sacramento, the trooper glanced into the rear-view mirror and announced:
“Sorry ladies, but they’re right behind us, a whole carload of ’em.”
The reporters had monitored every hotel exit. And they were hotter in pursuit after Hick’s double-cross. The trooper made a dash for it, reaching speeds of seventy-seven miles an hour in Hick’s new little coupe. Another trooper escorted them with his red lights flashing. But it was no use, and ER stopped the chase. They pulled off the road, and ER thanked the troopers: “You have been most kind, and we are very grateful, but I think you’d better leave us now. We’ll have to find some other way out of this situation.”
The press demanded ER’s destination, the one question she would not answer: “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to tell you. This is my vacation, and I expect to be treated as any other tourist would be treated. I’ll answer any other questions you want to ask.” When they insisted, ER reached behind her seat for her knitting bag and calmly observed: “It’s nice here in the shade, and I like to knit. I’m willing to sit here all day, if I have to, but I’m not going to tell you where we’re going.’ “
Eventually, ER persuaded the reporters to telephone their editors that there would be no story, or she would simply return East and relinquish her vacation. They drove to the next town, and ER invited them for breakfast while they put in their calls. Breakfast was pleasant, and the reporters were given permission to “lay off!”
Finally ER and Hick proceeded to Colfax, a small town north of Sacramento, where they were to spend a week near Ella and Roy in another friend’s home, where nobody could find them.
ER and Hick had a “peaceful and enjoyable” time in Colfax. They dined occasionally with friends, occasionally alone; picnicked in the mountains; had “wonderful evenings,” highlighted by ER’s readings from the Oxford Book of English Verse. Hick had “never known anyone else who could read poetry as beautifully.”
On 12 July ER wrote Anna the details of their “horrid” escape, and concluded with relief:
So far no one has found me here. We’re in a house way off the road which belongs to a friend of Hick’s who owns a T.B. sanitarium & they send us in our meals! It is up in the pines & lovely & we ought to … make our exit unnoticed…. Goodbye dear till Tuesday, I won’t write again. Hick sends her best love.
After Colfax, they drove up through the Donner Pass in the High Sierras and down into Nevada to join Anna and the children at the Dana ranch. A green oasis in the desert, with its own electric plant and water pump, it bordered an Indian reservation and Pyramid Lake.
Bill and Ella Dana were fun-loving and worldly, and they became life-long friends particularly close to Hick. ER described their home in the August issue of the Women’s Democratic News as “a unique place on a very unique ranch … with a most beautiful lake from which the Indians derived their livelihood as very large trout inhabit it.” Called Pyramid Lake because “of the shape of some of the islands, it is also one of the three breeding places in the U.S. for penguins and I commend them to anyone as an amusing study. They are so tame on this lake that they come up to the children cavorting in the shallow water and their expressions remind me of … an elderly wise old maid who wonders if the young are really quite sane in their gambols!”
In addition to daily swims in Pyramid Lake, ER rode Ella Dana’s beautiful Palomino, Pal, while Hick rode a long-retired big gray, called Old Blue, who had to be kicked to keep awake. Hick had no desire to ride, but ER insisted that she would get very lame during the last part of their trip, which required horses, if she did not.
At some point during the week, ER finally revealed that part of their itinerary she had kept as a surprise:
They were to spend four days camping in one of nature’s most magnificent cathedrals, Yosemite National Park. But Hick was amazed to read:
“Miss Hickok will require a quiet, gentle horse, since she has hot ridden for some time….”
“How could you do this to me?” I asked her reproachfully.
“Oh, you’ll manage,” she said comfortably.
Hick, who had actually never ridden, persevered, and put up cheerfully with ER’s bullying notions of a good time. She got to enjoy Old Blue—well, at least sitting astride Old Blue while she listened to their guide, the Danas’ horsetrainer, Bar Frances, a former Western “bad man” and sheriff, steeped in cowboy lore. Hick liked his company. They went out “just before sunset” and “always walked the horses, the reins hanging loose, while he taught me to roll cigarettes” and feel comfortable in a saddle.
Although ER made every effort to be unavailable, truly away on vacation, urgent business reached her. Clarence Pickett, for example, needed to transmit Arthurdale information: Elsie Clapp had arrived; there
were school building delays; fifteen houses were almost ready, “and they are most attractive.” All this sent on 18 July, when he knew she was on holiday.
He had tried to wire, but learned from White House receptionist Mary Eben that ER was unreachable, hence he addressed her as “Mrs. Dana,” as instructed, and sent his letter off to her hideaway at Arrowhead-D Ranch in Sutcliffe, Nevada—with a curious note: “The fact that this letter goes to you under an assumed name, I hope means that you are having complete isolation from the world and rest for a little while.” Evidently, he saw nothing incongruous about his intrusion. For once ER did not reply until her trip was over, which Hick surely counted a little victory.*
From Nevada into California, ER wrote, “I drove over a very beautiful road past Mono Lake which is so highly mineralized that no fish can live in it. It may in time be somewhat changed because it is part of a development plan for the Los Angeles water supply.”
Past Mono Lake, they drove over Tioga Pass into the Yosemite Park, where they left their car and met the park rangers who were to be their guides. They continued on horseback up beyond the Tuolumne Meadows “for two and a half hours, making camp at six o’clock in the evening on the edge of Young Lake in the High Sierras, 11,000 [feet] above sea level.”
They set up camp at lower Young Lake, with snow-capped Ragged Peak glistening above. ER wrote: “Around the lake rose high white granite peaks and as we sat around a camp fire after our supper, the moon rose over the top of the mountain, a sight which I shall long remember for its beauty was breath taking.”
Their days at Yosemite were exhilarating. They were accompanied by five “unobtrusive rangers,” who served as guides and cooks, seven trail horses, and five pack mules, which carried their gear—which included a “canvas-concealed collapsible toilet and an umbrella tent.” ER and Hick used the tent as a dressing room and spread their sleeping bags beyond the campsite, under the stars and pines. For ER “the first rays of morning light over the mountain peaks were almost as lovely as the moon light.” From this base, “we spent several days climbing on foot and exploring on horseback and fishing for trout….”
Eleanor Roosevelt Page 30
