Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  472 FDR read it, and ER hoped Hick “wont find it worthless,” ER to Hick, 18 Sept; Hick found it tremendous, and sent a letter and a telegram: “the best article you’ve ever written on any subject. Gosh, it packs some good hefty wallops, and I wonder how the President liked it….” Hick to ER, 28 Sept. 1937.

  472 ER dedicated what she always called her “little book on peace” to Carrie Chapmann Catt, “who has led so many of us in the struggle for peace.”

  473 “a great speech”: Ickes, p. 222; see Dorothy Borg, “Notes on FDR’s Quarantine Speech,” Political Science Quarterly (Sept. 1957).

  473 FDR “always looking for slams”: ER to Hick, 18 Sept. 1937.

  473–74 For ER it was an arduous ten days, and she was “glad to get on plane alone”: ER to Hick, 29 Sept. 1937.

  473 ER at Tribune forum: NYT, 6 Oct. 1937.

  474 “iron in the soul”: ER to Hick, 5 Oct. 1937.

  474–75 In her 7 Oct. 1937 column ER referred specifically to FDR’s press conference: “They want to know so many things I would like to know also….”; her calls for diplomatic action: My Day, Sept., p. 186; Oct., pp. 192–93.

  475 Hick to ER, 25 Sept. 1937, about the Herald Tribune “dope story” re Farley; on Hugo Black see Durr, Outside the Magic Circle; Allie Freed to ER, 19 Sept. 1937; ER to Freed, 22 Sept., 100, Box 1423.

  475 at Little House: ER to Anna, 8 Oct. 1937, next day to Barbara Hopkins’s funeral, Halsted, Box 57.

  475 Hick refused to visit Hyde Park: 2 Nov.; Barbara Hopkins indispensable: Hick to ER, 7 Oct. 1937; NYT obit, 10 Oct. 1937.

  476 “gay party”: ER to Hick, 11 Oct. 1937; FDR to ER, Letters, p. 716.

  477 “feeling of being hollow”: ER to Hick, 30 Oct. 1937.

  477 Fight for NYA and federal aid to education: ER to Hick, 18 Oct., 30 Oct. 1937.

  477 nothing “to tire her”: Tommy to Anna, 26 Nov. 1937.

  478 ER’s November activities: Democratic Digest, Jan. 1938; no exercise “makes me sleepy”: ER to Hick, 10 Nov. 1937.

  478 In Indiana: ER to Hick, 13 Nov.; in Illinois: ER to Hick, 14–15 Nov. 1937.

  478 “write it myself or not at all”: ER to Hick, 16 Nov.; “swore at drivers”: Hick to ER, 15 Nov. 1937.

  479 “only interested in a First Lady!”: ER to Hick, 18 Nov. 1937.

  479 on Tommy: Hick to ER, 14, 16, 17 Nov. 1937.

  480 Reviews of TIMS: ER to Hick, 16 Nov. 1937; Katherine Woods, NYTBR, 21 Nov. 1937; Mary Ross, NY Herald Tribune, 21 Nov. 1937; Cousin Alice and Dorothy Canfield Fisher quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 433.

  480 Isabella Greenway, 19 Dec. 1937, Tuscon; ER to Isabella, 30 Dec. 1937: “A world of thanks for your letter….” ER missed Isabella, who left Congress, many assumed, because of her differences with FDR. She had actually sent a copy of a notarized affidavit that testified Isabella Greenway was not in fact a member of the anti-Roosevelt group “Americans, Inc.” Isabella Greenway to ER, 7 June 1935: “Dearest E. I just thought this would amuse & interest you …”; affidavit, J. W. Haverty, 21 May 1935, 100, Box 1340. Nevertheless, their personal relationship endured.

  480 ER to Morris, 13 May 1938; North American Review, “An Education for Life,” pp. 202–6, 100, Box 1470. Most newspaper reviews appeared Sunday, Thanksgiving weekend, spent at the White House in 1937. Hick was thrilled. They were “marvelous,… at last you are coming into your own …” Hick to ER, 21 Nov. 1937.

  480–81 Thanksgiving a hard day: ER to Hick, 23–24 Nov. 1937.

  481 Doris Duke to the homesteads: Tommy to John Boettiger, 26 Nov. 1937, Halsted, box 75; ER on Duke in Arthurdale and Penncraft: Democratic Digest, Jan. 1938.

  481 Special Christmas Dinner, ER to Hick, 7 Dec. 1937; “Love means so much more”: ER to Hick, 11 Dec. 1937. On 11 Dec. ER hosted the Gridiron Widows party, which “far surpassed all previous parties.” Guests included Agnes Brown Leach, Fannie Hurst, Mary Dreier, Nancy Cook, Tiny Chaney, June Rhodes, and Dorothy Schiff Backer of the NY Post. Dem. Digest, Jan. 1938.

  481–82 ER’s lunch with Vera Brittain and Cissy Patterson in Democratic Digest; “duchess-like dignity”: Vera Brittain, Testament of Experience (Macmillan, 1957), p. 183. For the Panay, and the Dec. 1937 events, see Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (Penguin, 1997); Waldo Heinrichs, American Ambassador: Joseph C. Grew and the Development of the U.S. Diplomatic Tradition (Little, Brown, 1966), pp. 255–59; and Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor (Atheneum, 1964), pp. 6–7. Before Pearl Harbor, Japan was regarded as an “effective opponent of Communism in Asia.”

  482 on diplomatic dinner, and family tensions: ER to Hick, 14, 17 Dec. 1937; also, ER to Anna 19 Dec., Halsted, Box 57; diplomatic dinner: My Day, 18 Dec. 1937; abruptly changed her plans: My Day, for Dec., 209–12.

  483 “—just you”: Hick to ER, 22 Dec. 1937. Hick was “darned glad” ER decided to go to Seattle. “I think you’ll be much happier out there. Oh, do have a happy, contented Christmas, without feeling low or discouraged or under a nervous strain”: 23 Dec. 1937; also 24–25 Dec. letters of relief that ER away, and happy.

  483 Anna to Tommy, 31 Dec. 1937, ARH, 75; for details of ER’s stormy winter trip, Democratic Digest, Feb. 1938.

  25: This Troubled World, 1938

  484 “little book on peace has been very successful”: Tommy to Anna, 18 Jan. 1938, ARH, Box 56.

  484–85 ER is celebrated: “Speaking of Mrs R,” Canton Repository and Denver Democrat, reprinted, Mar. 1938, clippings, ER Papers.

  485 “really good on make up”; Hick ill: ER to Anna, n.d., Jan.-Feb. 1938; 13 Feb. 1938; in Asbell, pp. 97–98.

  485 anguished correspondence: Hick to ER, 6, 8, 9 Jan. 1938.

  486 “It seems so hard”: ER to Hick, 8 Jan 1938; Ickes on FDR’s speech, and on his own “It Is Happening Here,” a war between democracy and fascism—if the unbridled tycoons Ford, du Pont, Girdler, and Rand were allowed to continue, pp. 282–83, 287–88.

  486 Annie Griffen Baruch’s death: ER to Hick, 16 Jan. 1938; see Coit, pp. 456–57 passim.

  486 “I was hurt”: Hick to ER, 18 Jan. 1938.

  487 Hick, 17, 18 Jan.; “I never meant to hurt you”: ER to Hick, 19 Jan. 1938. This exchange included praise for Erskine Caldwell’s Have You Seen Their Faces, illustrated by Margaret Bourke-White. Hick offered to send the “magnificent” book about tenant farmers and sharecroppers to ER. But Caroline O’Day had given it to her for Christmas. Then on 22 January Hick wrote: “The AP called me today wanting to know where you were. Where are you, by the way, I wonder. I told them I had no idea!”

  487 Patience Strong column: My Day, Jan. 1937, p. 219.

  487 Plans for FDR’s birthday, and peppy birthday balls: ER to Hick, 29, 30 Jan.; on arrangements, invitation ER to Colonel Edwin Watson, 13 Jan. 1938, 100, box 1481.

  487 Lohengrin “a real joy,” One Third of Nation: ER and Hick, 20, 22, 26 Feb.; 3, 4 Mar. 1938.

  488 Cause and Cure luncheon: ER to Hick, 19 Jan. 1938.

  488 Romania gone Fascist: On 23 Dec. 1937 meeting, Ickes, p. 287; 8 Jan. entry, p. 291.

  489 Chamberlain anti-American: Bullitt to FDR, 5 May 1937, p. 213.

  489 Churchill “breathless with amazement”: The Gathering Storm, pp. 251–55.

  489 long parade of death: Churchill, pp. 257–58.

  489 For an eyewitness account of 11–14 Mar. events see William Shirer, Berlin Diary, pp. 96–108; Blumenkrieg: Davis, p. 184.

  490 Churchill asked, Dawson: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone, 1932–1940 (Little, Brown, 1988), p. 283.

  490–91 Hitler ushered his homeland into his Reich: See Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (Harper Torchbooks, 1962); and Peter G. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (John Wiley, 1964).

  491 Churchill to House, 14 March: “The Rape of Austria,” Gathering Storm, pp. 272–75; Manchester, pp. 287–88; “think only of the Red danger”: Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, Feb.-Mar. 1938.

  491 “Ten Commandments of Good Will”:
My Day, Feb. 1938, p. 230.

  491 all news terrible: Ickes, 12 Mar. 1938, p. 335.

  491 Joe Davies, U.S. ambassador to Russia, Worried about a “Fascist peace.” He believed the purge trials proved a massive plot between anti-Soviet traitors within the government and Nazi and Japanese forces. Joe Davies, Mission to Moscow, letters and journal, pp. 261 ff.

  492 ER letters to FDR, 15–17 Mar. 1938; “future wars will have no fronts”: This Troubled World (H. C. Kinsey, 1938), pp. 41ff.

  492 “war as murder,” ER 1924: quoted in Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt (Feminist Press, 1987), p. 200; In 1934, she called for: Delegate’s Worksheet, Conference on the Cause and Cure of War, 16–19 Jan. 1934; ER’s address, p. 9; copy, Hick, Box 1.

  492–93 In her speeches, ER defended new naval spending, and attacked Jeannette Rankin’s proposal without naming her, My Day, 29 June 1937. ER to Katherine Devereaux Blake, 31 July 1937, 100, Box 1415; Iola Kay Eastburn, Middlebury College, to ER, 18 July 1937, 100, Box 1422; ER to Eastburn, 31 July 1937.

  493 “More Arms Needed Mrs R Says,” NYT, 15 Feb. 1938; press conference notes, 14 Feb. 1938, Beasley, p. 48.

  493 From This Troubled World: need to define aggressor nation, trade embargoes, p. 15; Good Neighbor Policy, pp. 10–12; religious freedom, p. 19; mountain climbing, p. 23; “change in human nature,” p. 25–26, 28; “commit suicide—and we will!” 1934 speech, Cause and Cure of War conference.

  494 glamour of war, Troubled, pp. 29–32.

  494 influenced by Nye, profits out: Troubled, pp. 34–37.

  494 “power of love”: Troubled, pp. 45–46; see also NYTBR, 2 Jan. 1938; and news item, 2 Jan. 1938.

  495 Diana Hopkins: Hick to ER from White House, 12 Mar. 1938.

  495 no word from FDR: ER to Hick, 16 March 1938. In the White House, Hick enjoyed several guests, including Betty Lindley, who was “fun but a great slob with ashes all over and nothing put away.” Hick to ER, 14 March; ER replied: “I smiled over Betty as a guest. You and I are old fuss cats!” ER to Hick, 16, 17 Mar.

  495 first word: ER to Anna, 17 Mar. 1938; Betsey to Warm Springs: ER to Anna, 5 Mar. 1938; “This is a busy world”: ER to Hick, 17 Mar. 1938.

  496 “your Wife is bringing you nearer to the People”: James Metcalf to FDR, 21 Mar. 1938, ppf, 2.

  496 felt irrelevant at Warm Springs: ER to Hick, 30 Mar. 1938.

  496 felt trapped and worried about Harry Hopkins: ER to Hick, 31 Mar. 1938.

  496 Hick loved Pins and Needles, 27, 28 Mar.; ER also wrote a column to celebrate the ILGWU’s “theatrical venture,” which was a “delight.” Nobody “could be disappointed by this entertainment.” ER went to the musical with Esther Lape, and hoped “We’ve Just Begun” was “prophetic.” My Day, 15 Feb. 1938.

  496 ER and Hick did not see each other: Hick to ER, 11, 13, 14 Apr. 1938.

  Hick was, however, inspired by FDR’s 14 April address on economic conditions: It “aroused the first spark of interest” she felt in a long, long time…. Please tell the President, for me, ‘More power to you!’ Oh, he is alright, but, my God, some of the people around him!” Hick to ER, 15 Apr. 1938.

  497 to defend WPA and NYA costs: ER to Hick, 1 Apr. 1938; by April, the economy had lost “two-thirds of the gains made since March 1933”: Davis, p. 205.

  497 After the Anschluss; Irvington, New Jersey: Frieda Elias to ER, 8 Feb. 1938; ER to Elias, 10 Feb. 1938, 100, Box 1457; Ruth Bessell to ER, 30 Mar. 1938; ER to RB, 11 Apr. 1938; 100, Box 1449; Doris Bernstein to ER, 19 May 1938; ER to DB, 24 May 1938, 100, Box 1449.

  498–99 Karl Ohm deportation case: Lillian Strauss to ER, 28 Jan. 1938; James Houghteling to Malvina Thompson, 10 Feb. 1938; Thompson to Lillian Strauss, 11 Feb. 1938; Strauss to Thompson, 14 Feb. 1938,70, Box 738.

  499 Upton Sinclair to ER, Norman Thomas rudely arrested: see NYT, 3 May 1938.

  499 campaigned for Hanns Eisler: ER to Sumner Welles, 11 Jan. 1939; 7 Feb. 1939,70, Box 766.

  499 “every morning with apprehension”: My Day, Mar. 1938, p. 234; ER to EM, 17 Mar. 1938, Elinor Morgenthau Papers.

  500 “every gallant soul”: Dorothy Thompson, quoted in Peter Kurth, American Cassandra: Biography of Dorothy Thompson (Little Brown, 1990), p. 241; Thompson detailed both Hitlers excesses and the “‘cowardice’ that sustained it”: Kurth, p. 280.

  500 “behaved like worms”; Nancy Astor “a little mad”: Harold Nicolson to Vita Sackville-West, 25 Feb. 1938, in Nicolson, pp. 325–27; Coincidentally, ER and Nancy Astor: NYT, 26 Feb. 1938.

  501 appointment of Joe Kennedy “a great joke”: Michael Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (Norton, 1980), p. 157.

  501 Hugh Wilson—considered much more acceptable in German circles: See Joseph Lash on ER and Bullitt, A Friend’s Memoir, pp. 86, 154; also William Shirer on the Nuremberg rallies. See esp. The Diplomats, for the astonishing record of Anglo-American appeasement; cf. Britain’s pro-Nazi ambassador to Germany, Neville Henderson, who told his friend Goring that Hitler could have Austria, “so far as he is concerned,” 5 July 1937, p. 76; Vienna, Mar. 1938; pp. 110–11.

  502–3 Deeply grateful for Nancy Astor’s assistance, Frankfurter nevertheless used the occasion to inquire about her and the alleged Cliveden crowd: Nancy Astor rejected the propaganda which began in Claude Cockburn’s “communist sheet,” The Week It was all a plot “to create suspicion and class war” and bring down the government. She was not a fascist, “and I am very much surprised that you, knowing me and having visited Cliveden, should have swallowed this propaganda against us!…”

  Frankfurter replied, on 2 June 1938, that he did not refer to “the silly chatter regarding plots and conspiracies,” but rather to Cliveden’s “political philosophy. I had in mind the views expressed in the summer of 1935 by Montagu Norman [governor of the Bank of England] when he said that Hitler saved Europe from Bolshevism, a point of view that I often encountered during my year in England and again in the summer of 1936; the point of view of ‘appeasement’ by acquiescence in the series of violent measures taken by Hitler and the general undermining of international law and order and the decencies of civilization….”

  To demonstrate his alternative views, Frankfurter enclosed two articles—by Norman Angell and Dorothy Thompson. “And since we are talking with the candor of friendship let me suggest to you that you must not be too surprised if you are widely misunderstood regarding the anti-Semitic aspect—an essential aspect—of Nazism…. I wish we could talk all this out.” But that was the last letter between them, Frankfurter/Astor exchange in Freedman, ed., pp. 473–75; see Christopher Sykes, Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor, pp. 382–89; re Lady Astor’s remarks, NYT, 30 June 1937. Although FDR appointed Frankfurter to the Supreme Court in 1939, he never told the president of his uncle’s difficulties, and they evidently never discussed the death of Austria. See Freedman.

  502 “Our isolationists must see”: Nicolson Diary, 6 June 1938, pp. 345–46; “The suicides have been appalling….”: Nicolson to Vita Sackville-West, 17 June 1938, p. 347.

  502–3 “Jews to be made to eat grass”: Nicolson Diary, 30 June 1938, p. 348.

  503 Nicolson contemplated “the Decline and Fall of the British Empire,” while Lindbergh circulated his reports of German military superiority. On 18 May Nicolson heard “three young peers” declare they preferred “to see Hitler in London than a Socialist administration.” Nicolson Diary, 18 May 1938, p. 342; Lindbergh visit to Sissinghurst, 22 May 1938, p. 343.

  503 ER at Val-Kill, birds fly: May 1938, My Day, pp. 249–50.

  503–4 China and Barcelona: My Day, Apr. 1938, p. 238.

  504 ER at Empire State Building, thought intruded: My Day, Apr. 1938, p. 241.

  504 ER loved to hear the songs of the International Brigade: Joseph Lash, A Friend’s Memoir (Doubleday, 1964), pp. 198–99; see also Leslie Gould, American Youth Today (Random House, 1940), p. 71; ER wrote the foreword for this AYC celebration.

  504 FDR and Spain: FDR had discussed Spain with congression
al leaders, Speaker Bankhead and Majority Leader Sam Rayburn. Ickes Diary, 7 May 1938, 12 May, pp. 388–90.

  505 ER joined Bowers’s plea: My Day, May 1938, p. 253.

  505–6 Hall and Daniel in Paris: Bullitt to FDR, telegram #970, 21 June 1938. Bullitt, pp. 274–76. Freidel argues that FDR was part of this effort. Perhaps he was; but it is unlikely that he would have encouraged Hall or ER to communicate with Bullitt if he wanted it to succeed. Bullitt’s views were well known: On 24 November 1936, Bullitt wrote FDR: “The war in Spain, as you know, has become an incognito war between the Soviet Union and Italy…. My own impression is that Mussolini has decided to put through Franco whatever the cost may be. I think that the cost will be very high.” Bullitt, pp. 186–87. See Herbert L. Matthews, Half of Spain Died (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), p. 179.

  507 Too late to help Spain, ER and Churchill: TIR, p. 275.

  507–8 Danny in Spain for six weeks, confirmed ER’s convictions: Daniel Stewart Roosevelt, “Wings Over Spain,” in Hall Roosevelt with Samuel Duff McCoy, Odyssey of an American Family: An Account of the Roosevelts and Their Kin As Travelers, 1613–1938 (Harper & Brothers, 1939), pp. 328–35. With gratitude to Diana Roosevelt Jaicks.

  508 ER received set number two of Goya’s Los Proverbios: Matthews, NYT, 8 Sept. 1954; see Armstrong, p. 477, cf. 470–78; ER, “I am not neutral”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 569.

  26: Race Radicals, Youth and Hope

  509–10 ER’s address at Hampton Institute: 21 Apr. 1938; The Southern Workman, July 1938, pp. 164–77.

  510–11 Lucy Randolph Mason: Lucy Randolph Mason to ER, 1 Feb. 1938; 11 Feb. 1938; re SCHW, 28 July 1938; Mason to Frances Perkins and ER, 24 Mar. 1930; ER to Mason, 7 Feb., 18 Apr. 1938. ER sent Mason’s reports to FDR via Missy LeHand: “FDR should read. She is a level-headed person and an old hand.” He returned her letters, with a memo: “The President has seen.” On FDR’s FBI proposal on lynching, and Evian, see editorials, The Crisis, Apr. 1938, esp. p. 119.

  511 Oversight for women’s prisons: Mason to ER, 7 Apr.; Mason to ER, 9 May 1938; ER to Aubrey Williams, to protest WPA and PWA funding for armories and new women’s prisons in Georgia and South Carolina. Gay Shepperson protested; and Dr. lean Davis of Wells College and Bedford Reformatory; on West Virginia discrimination, ER to John Fahey, 25 May 1938; John Hager to ER, 28 May, 70.