Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady

By Lorena A. Hickok

LORENA HICKOK is in a unique position to write the story of Eleanor Roosevelt’s transition from a private individual to First Lady of the land. As a newspaper reporter, she had known Mrs. Roosevelt since Al Smith’s campaign for President, and she was assigned by the Associated Press to cover her during her husband’s presidential campaign in 1932. With this new assignment, the two shortly became, as they have remained, very good friends.

The author was at Mrs. Roosevelt’s side throughout the momentous days of the campaign, election and inauguration. A frequent guest at the White House, she witnessed the adjustment of its new mistress to the occupancy of that residence. Together, they took the last trips that Mrs. Roosevelt attempted in a vain effort to preserve her anonymity. Reluctant First Lady gives a fascinating and heart-warming insight into the problems and sacrifices that confront an active private citizen, wife and mother, whose husband becomes President of the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: May 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839744846

Lorena A. Hickok

Lorena Alice “Hick” Hickok (March 7, 1893 - May 1, 1968) was an American journalist known for her close relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. After an unhappy and unsettled childhood, Hickok found success as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune and the Associated Press (AP), becoming America’s best-known female reporter by 1932. After covering Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first presidential campaign, Hickok struck up a close relationship with the soon-to-be First Lady, and travelled with her extensively. She later worked as chief investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and promoted the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and then served as executive secretary of the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee, living mostly at the White House. Hickok was the author of several books, including The Story of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1956), The Story of Helen Keller (1958), The Story of Eleanor Roosevelt (1959).

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RELUCTANT FIRST LADY

AN INTIMATE STORY OF ELEANOR ROOSEVELT’S EARLY PUBLIC LIFE

BY

LORENA A. HICKOK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

About the Author 3

Dedication 4

Acknowledgments 5

Illustrations 7

1—Train Ride to Albany 8

2—First Impressions 8

3—The Governor’s Lady 8

4—Convention—1932 8

5—Campaign Trail 8

6—She’s All Yours Now! 8

7—Roosevelt Wins! 8

8—Just Mrs. Roosevelt? 8

9—One Day in Washington 8

10—One Cannot Live in Fear 8

11—Inauguration Eve 8

12—A Little Terrifying 8

13—Getting Settled 8

14—Incognito 8

15—Arthurdale 8

16—White House Guest 8

17—Yosemite Safari 8

18—Last Attempt 8

About the Author

LORENA HICKOK is in a unique position to write the story of Eleanor Roosevelt’s transition from a private individual to First Lady of the land. As a newspaper reporter, she had known Mrs. Roosevelt since Al Smith’s campaign for President, and she was assigned by the Associated Press to cover her during her husband’s presidential campaign in 1932. With this new assignment, the two shortly became, as they have remained, very good friends.

The author was at Mrs. Roosevelt’s side throughout the momentous days of the campaign, election and inauguration. A frequent guest at the White House, she witnessed the adjustment of its new mistress to the occupancy of that residence. Together, they took the last trips that Mrs. Roosevelt attempted in a vain effort to preserve her anonymity. Reluctant First Lady gives a fascinating and heart-warming insight into the problems and sacrifices that confront an active private citizen, wife and mother, whose husband becomes President of the United States.

Dedication

One day quite a few years ago, one of Mrs. Roosevelt’s grandsons, then aged five, asked the late Malvina Thompson, her secretary:

Tommy, who is Grandmère?

Why, she’s your grandmother, of course, Tommy replied.

I know that, he said patiently, but who is she? Daddy listens to what she says. You do what she tells you to do. Everybody stands up when she comes in. Who is Grandmère?

To that little boy, now a young man, and to all her other grandchildren, this book is dedicated, with affection.

Acknowledgments

The story in this book is a very personal one. It had to be. For it was written largely out of the memories of two persons—Mrs. Roosevelt’s and mine. This is especially true of our vacation motor trips, since on those trips we were alone or with strangers most of the time. Neither of us ever kept any notes or diaries.

Neither Mrs. Roosevelt’s memory nor mine is infallible, of course. A great deal of checking had to be done. And for that I am deeply indebted to the staff of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. This book could not have been written without their help. I should like to express my gratitude to Miss Elizabeth B. Drewry, Director of the Roosevelt Library; Raymond H. Corry, Curator of the Museum; Joseph W. Marshall, Librarian; Miss Margaret L. Suckley, Archivist, who found most of the pictures; Jerome V. Deyo, Archivist; William F. Stickle, Staff Photographer, who copied the pictures; and Mrs. Clarice D. Morris, Secretary to the Director. No matter what I asked for—and some of it required some hard searching, I’m sure—they always found it.

I want to give special thanks to Mrs. Anne S. Morris, Library Assistant. The most accurate source for material for this book was The New York Times. The Roosevelt Library has bound volumes of the Times, starting before President Roosevelt’s first inauguration and ending sometime after his death. The volumes are big and heavy, and the print is fine. Because of some eye difficulty, I could not read them. The weather while this book was being written was hot and humid most of the time. The Times volumes are kept in the attic of the Roosevelt Library, and the heat up there must have been almost beyond endurance. Never a week went by when I did not call once or twice and ask for some date, a name, a quotation from one of my own stories, written while I was covering Mrs. Roosevelt. And it was nearly always Mrs. Morris who went up there, dragged out one of those heavy volumes and phoned back to me the information I needed. When I apologized for all the trouble I was giving her, her answer was always the same, a cheerful That’s what I’m here for. Thanking her this way isn’t really adequate—but I mean it, from the bottom of my heart.

I also wish to thank a thirteen-year-old girl, my friend, Sandra de Vries, who spent one long summer day in a hot, stuffy dark room at the Adriance Memorial Library, in Poughkeepsie, reading aloud to me, from microfilm, stories I had written about Mrs. Roosevelt that had appeared in the Poughkeepsie New Yorker. She refused to take the take the pay I offered her. Many of the quotations in the early chapters are taken from those stories.

My agent, Miss Nannine Joseph, has, as always, been much more than an agent—a thoughtful, constructive critic. And any writer must find it a pleasure to work with my editor, Allen Klots, Jr. Also there is Jean Taylor Hartwig, who copied the manuscript for me, in very hot, disagreeable weather, with a husband, a baby and a house to look after, too. Again and again, after I had turned the manuscript over to her, I’d think of changes—substituting a word or a sentence here, inserting a paragraph there. I’d dictate them to her over the telephone. She never complained—and she never got them mixed up either!

Finally there is Mrs. Roosevelt herself. To her I can only say, after a friendship that has lasted nearly thirty years, Thank you, my dear, for some of the happiest and most memorable days of my whole life!

LORENA A. HICKOK

Illustrations

Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932

Mrs. Roosevelt and her secretary, Malvina Thompson

Sistie and her Grandpa, the Governor of New York

Mrs. Roosevelt leaving the White House, January, 1933

Grief, the Adams Memorial by Saint Gaudens

The President, Mrs. Roosevelt and James on inauguration day

Mrs. Roosevelt with Sistie and Buzzie

The President and his Missis at Warm Springs

Mrs. Roosevelt with the author in Canada

Mrs. Roosevelt with Aroostook County potato farmers

Mrs. Roosevelt and the author in Massachusetts, July, 1933

The Roosevelts at Hyde Park, August, 1933

Mrs. Roosevelt on the Yosemite National Park camping trip

Mrs. Roosevelt on trail in Yosemite National Park

Mrs. Roosevelt fishing for trout

Mrs. Roosevelt and U.S. Forest Rangers

On the summer night in 1932 when Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York won the Democratic nomination for President, reporters, photographers, newsreel men—along with his friends and well-wishers—swarmed all over the old Executive Mansion in Albany. Some of the reporters went looking for Mrs. Roosevelt.

They found her in the kitchen, cooking scrambled eggs for her husband, who had had no dinner. It was nearly midnight. She was wearing a pale green chiffon hostess gown, and she somehow managed not to get a single spot on it.

One of the more enthusiastic girl reporters gushed:

Mrs. Roosevelt, aren’t you thrilled at the idea of living in the White House?

Mrs. Roosevelt did not answer. She merely looked at the girl. And the expression on her face, almost angry, stopped all questions along that line.

It puzzled me, but I finally concluded that she had merely thought it was a stupid question. Yet I wasn’t quite sure.

1—Train Ride to Albany

IF I WANTED to be selfish, I could wish Franklin had not been elected.

Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, wife of the newly elected President of the United States, gazed out the train window at the Hudson River, gray and misty under slanting sheets of rain. Her expression was wistful—and a little guilty.

Well, anyway, you’ll be First Lady, her companion observed. And felt foolish after making the remark.

I suppose they’ll call me that, Mrs. Roosevelt replied with a sigh.

Then she added emphatically:

But there isn’t going to be any First Lady. There is just going to be plain, ordinary Mrs. Roosevelt. And that’s all.

As a reporter for the Associated Press, I had been assigned to cover Mrs. Roosevelt in October, when the political experts decided that her husband would probably be elected. That November afternoon I was accompanying Mrs. Roosevelt to Albany to get an interview en route.

We were riding in a day coach. It would never have occurred to Mrs. Roosevelt to take a seat in the parlor car on a trip between New York and Albany or Hyde Park. (It still doesn’t.)

Mrs. Roosevelt continued to gaze out the window.

I never wanted it, she said, even though some people have said that my ambition for myself drove him on. They’ve even said that I had some such idea in the back of my mind when I married him. I never wanted to be a President’s wife, and I don’t want it now.

She glanced at me with a slight smile.

You don’t quite believe me, do you? she asked. Very likely no one would—except some woman who has had the job.

She was mistaken. I did believe her. For weeks we had been together almost constantly, the reporter dogging her footsteps day in and day out. It had been a little difficult at first, for Mrs. Roosevelt was extremely shy, especially with reporters. Not with the political writers, who covered her husband, but with the reporters who covered her—or tried to. The fact that this particular reporter had been a political writer covering her husband before she was assigned to take on Mrs. Roosevelt might help some, I had hoped. Thrown together as we were, we would have become mortal enemies or very good friends. We had become very good friends. I was now fairly well aware of how Mrs. Roosevelt felt about what lay ahead of her, although she had never talked so frankly about it before.

For him, of course, I’m glad—sincerely, Mrs. Roosevelt added after a pause. "I couldn’t have wanted it to go the other way. After all, I’m a Democrat, too.

Now I shall have to work out my own salvation. I’m afraid it may be a little difficult. I know what Washington is like. I’ve lived there.

For eight years, during the administration of President Wilson, her husband had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy. They had not been very happy years for Mrs. Roosevelt.

Almost defiantly, she continued:

I shall very likely be criticized. But I can’t help it. Mrs. Roosevelt, when her husband was elected President, held two jobs. She taught at the Todhunter School for Girls in New York, of which she was part owner. And she was editor of a magazine called Babies—Just Babies, a Bernarr McFadden publication. Most of the McFadden publications were not the sort with which a President’s wife could be expected to be associated.

She said she would be giving up her teaching job on March 1, three days before the inauguration, which that year for the last time was held on March 4.

I hate to do it, she said, shaking her head. I wonder if you have any idea how I hate to do it.

I thought I knew. The celebration at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel on election night had been crowded, jubilant and prolonged. But at 8:30 the next morning we met at the Roosevelt town house, on East 65th Street, and went to the school, where at nine o’clock she held her first morning class. We were accompanied by her little blonde grandchild, Sisty, Anna’s daughter, who had recently entered the first grade.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s pupils were girls of high school age, studying American history. They sat around a table, as college students do in a seminar course. The atmosphere usually must have been friendly and informal.

That morning the girls all stood up as Mrs. Roosevelt entered, and one of them made a shy little speech about how pleased they were to have the First Lady of the Land for their teacher.

Mrs. Roosevelt looked embarrassed as she thanked the speaker and motioned for the class to be seated. Her expression was sad, as she said softly:

But I haven’t changed inside. I’m just the same as I was yesterday.

Now she turned away from the train window and said earnestly:

"I’ve liked teaching more