The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (32 page)

Jimmy did a good job and it meant a great deal to Franklin to have him, but he was more vulnerable to jealousies and rivalries than were the other secretaries, and he did get into trouble when he began to work with people in Congress. As a result of the work and anxiety, he developed ulcers of the stomach and eventually had to go out to the Mayo Brothers hospital for an operation. They told James the nervous strain was bad for him, and he accepted their advice not to return to his duties at the White House.

In 1937, about the time he brought Jimmy to Washington, Franklin became much troubled over the decisions that the Supreme Court was rendering. His advisers were divided, some of them feeling that it was unwise to have any change made in the Court. Franklin felt that if it was going to be possible to pass progressive legislation only to have it declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, no progress could be made. He also felt that people became too conservative as they grew older and that they should not be allowed to continue indefinitely to wield great power.

The defeat of the Supreme Court bill seemed to me to be a real blow to Franklin, but he spent no time in regrets and simply said, “Well, we’ll see what will happen.”

Later he was able, little by little, to change the complexion of the court. He remarked one day that he thought the fight had been worth while in spite of the defeat, because it had focused the attention of the public on the Supreme Court and its decisions, and he felt that aroused public interest was always helpful. He had a firm belief in the collective wisdom of the people when their interest was awakened and they really understood the issues at stake.

Though I had been in complete sympathy with what he was trying to do, I used to think that he might have saved himself a good deal of trouble just by waiting awhile, since it was death and resignations that really gave him the opportunity to appoint new people to the Supreme Court. However, if he had not made the fight, perhaps fewer people would have resigned.

As we neared the Congressional election in 1938, I could see that Franklin was again troubled. The way he had felt about the Supreme Court was in line with the way he felt about reactionary legislators. He believed it was essential to have liberal congresssmen if his liberal program was to continue. The fact that the Democratic party had a large majority had not unified it as a fighting group, but rather had divided it into factions; at times it seemed that within the Democratic party there was, to all intents and purposes, a group of people who might work better with the more conservative Republican party. This situation led to a division among the presidential advisers and within the Cabinet, and resulted finally in what was known as “the purge.”

If there were political mistakes in this campaign, some of them, I think, might have been avoided if Louis Howe had been alive. After Louis’s death, Franklin never had a political adviser who would argue with him, and still give him unquestioned loyalty. Louis gave Franklin the benefit of his sane, reasoned, careful political analysis and even if Franklin disagreed and was annoyed, he listened and respected Louis’s political acumen. Whether he ignored his advice or not, at least all the reasons against the disputed action had been clearly stated and argued.

In Harry Hopkins my husband found some of the companionship and loyalty Louis had given him, but not the political wisdom and careful analysis of each situation. Louis would argue, but Harry would not do this. He gave his opinion honestly, but because he knew Franklin did not like opposition too well—as who does?—he frequently agreed with him regardless of his own opinion, or tried to persuade him in indirect ways.

Louis Howe had been older than Franklin and, because he had helped him so greatly in so many ways during his early political life, could be more independent than Harry Hopkins. Franklin, in turn, shaped Harry; he widened his horizons and taught him many things about domestic politics and foreign affairs. Consequently, Harry’s opinion did not carry the weight with Franklin that Louis’s had.

Jim Farley would argue with Franklin, but never very effectively, because his reasons for advocating a course were always those of political expediency. Ed Flynn told him the truth as he saw it and argued fearlessly, but he was not always on hand. Consequently, after Louis died, Franklin frequently made his decisions without canvassing all sides of a question.

Much, of course, can be done by the vice-president, the speaker of the House, the party leaders both in the Senate and in the House, and the Cabinet members, if they develop strength in Congress. In the last analysis, however, the President is the one responsible for the action of his followers; when they do not follow, he feels that his leadership has been weakened. Of course, it is impossible to have 100 per cent agreement within a party, particularly when that party has a comfortable majority in Congress, but the larger proportion of it must be united to be effective.

Of course, Franklin did not expect Congress to go down the line on every occasion. From his lifelong study of American history, and from his own experience, he keenly appreciated the value of the checks and balances established in our government by the Founding Fathers. He realized that the willingness of Congress to vote whatever powers were necessary to meet an emergency was not a situation it was desirable to perpetuate in a democracy.

Franklin never resented constructive criticism from the members of Congress. What he did resent was the refusal of certain congressmen to understand the over-all needs of the country, the narrow point of view which let them pit their local interests against the national or international interest. Franklin always said that no leader could get too far ahead of his followers, and it was because he felt that Congress was close to the people that he had a healthy respect for its reaction to any of his proposals.

Franklin’s activities in the campaign of 1938 were thought by many people to have been a political mistake. I am not a good enough politician to know, but I have tried here to set forth the reasons that I think actuated him.

Harry Hopkins threw his whole heart and all his abilities into organizing relief on a national scale. He was a man whom I not only admired but came to have a deep trust and confidence in. Later, after the death of his second wife, I began to see a side of him that I had not known before. It is a natural development, I imagine, to seek entertainment and diversion when your life is lonely. What surprised some of us was the fact that Harry seemed to get so much genuine pleasure out of contact with gay but more or less artificial society. People who could give him luxuries and the kind of party in which he probably never before had the slightest interest became important to him. I did not like this side of Harry as much as the side I first knew, but deep down he was a fine person who had the courage to bear pain and who loved his country enough to risk the curtailment of his life in order to be of service, after all chance of fulfilling any personal ambition was over.

My own work had to go on regardless of anything else. When I first went to Washington I had been writing a weekly column and a page in the
Woman’s Home Companion
, as well as many articles for other magazines.

The weekly column seemed a dull affair, and finally an enterprising gentleman, Monte Bourjaily of the United Feature Syndicate, had an idea that he thought would vastly increase its interest. He said he felt sure that if I would write a daily column in the form of a diary it would be of great interest to the people of the United States, who were curious about the way anyone who lived in the White House passed his time, day after day. At first I thought it would be the most dreadful chore; but I was so dissatisfied with what I was doing in the way of writing that in January, 1936, I decided to sign a five-year contract with the United Feature Syndicate for a daily column, which would be shorter and perhaps for that reason easier to do. From that time on I wrote a column six days a week, and only once failed to get it in on time. I wrote Sundays through Fridays, which meant that I had Saturdays off. When I went on trips I sometimes had to write a number of columns ahead. Otherwise, I wrote the column during the morning or at noon every day, though occasionally, if the following day looked like a very busy one, I wrote it in the middle of the night before. It had to be in by six
P
.
M
. Writing this column became so much of a habit that when people remarked that it must be difficult to do I was always a little surprised.

When I went to the South Pacific in 1943 on a five weeks’ trip, I did not take anyone with me to act as secretary. Every night, after a long day of hard work, I painfully typed my own column unless I had been able to do it on a flight during the day. I learned to type many years ago but, not having had much practice, I am slow, and it took me a long time to write about what I had done during the day.

The
Ladies’ Home Journal
page, which I wrote from 1941 until the spring of 1949, when I moved over to
McCall’s
, was an experience suggested to me by Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Gould and Mr. George Bye, who was then my literary agent. The page turned out to be a successful feature and is something that I really enjoyed, though I was much amused by some of the questions. Occasionally they were rude and personal, but on the whole, they came from people sincerely seeking information or asking for help. At first, unable to believe that people would really ask me some of the questions which were sent me, I accused the editorial staff of making them up. As a result, they always sent me the letters on which the questions were based. Frequently they took a number of letters containing questions on similar subjects and made one composite question.

At least, I have never known what it was to be bored or to have time hang heavily on my hands.

Twenty
    

The Royal Visitors

THE ARRIVAL
of the Swedish crown prince and princess in the United States in the summer of 1938 marked the beginning of a series of visits from members of Europe’s royal families. The people of Europe were deeply troubled by the general feeling of unrest and uncertainty on the Continent and were looking for friends in other parts of the world—hence their sudden interest in the United States.

The crown prince and princess were making a trip through the country to visit the various Swedish settlements, and on July 1 came to stay at Hyde Park, where we had a dinner for them. In May, the following year, the day after a dinner and musical for the President of Nicaragua and Señora de Somoza, we entertained the crown prince and princess of Denmark at tea. In June we had another South American guest when the chief of the Brazilian Army paid my husband a visit, and later that same month the crown prince and princess of Norway arrived and came to tea. They, like the other royal guests, visited the settlements of their countrymen here, later coming to Hyde Park for a short time.

In each case we had a few people to meet them at dinner and a picnic at Franklin’s newly built stone cottage on top of the hill. There are a number of Norwegians living near us at Hyde Park who asked to put on a show for the crown prince and princess of Norway. I shall always remember that as one of our pleasantest parties.

We were to come to know Princess Marta and Prince Olaf and their children very well, for during the long years of the war, though the prince was here only occasionally, the princess with the children lived in this country.

At the time of his visit our impression was that the Danish prince was more interested in his holiday than in the serious questions of the moment and had perhaps less realization of the menace of Hitler than we had expected of one in his position.

My husband welcomed these visits and encouraged everyone to come here whom he had any chance of persuading. Convinced that bad things were going to happen in Europe, he wanted to make contacts with those who he hoped would preserve and adhere to democracy and prove to be allies against fascism when the conflict came.

That same spring the King and Queen of England decided to visit the Dominion of Canada. They, too, were preparing for the blow that might fall and knew well that they would need the devotion of every subject in their dominions. My husband invited them to come to Washington because, believing that we all might soon be engaged in a life-and-death struggle, in which Great Britain would be our first line of defense, he hoped that their visit would create a bond of friendship between the peoples of the two countries. He knew that, though there is always a certain amount of criticism and superficial ill feeling toward the British in this country, in time of danger we stand firmly together, with confidence in our common heritage and ideas. The visit of the King and Queen, he hoped, would be a reminder of this deep bond. In many ways it proved even more successful than he had expected.

Their visit was carefully prepared for, but Franklin always behaved as though we were simply going to have two nice young people to stay with us. I think he gave some of the protocol people, both in the State Department and in the entourage of the King and Queen, some difficult moments.

There was one person, however, who looked on the visit as a very serious affair—William Bullitt, then our ambassador to France. He sent me a secret memorandum, based on experience gained from the King and Queen’s visit to Paris the year before, in which all the smallest details were noted. I still keep that memorandum as one of my most amusing documents. Among other things he listed the furniture which should be in the rooms used by the King and Queen, told me what I should have in the bathrooms and even the way the comfortables on the beds should be folded. He admonished me to have a hot-water bottle in every bed, which I did, though the heat of Washington must have made them unbearable. One thing that was listed and that I was never able to find was a linen blanket for the queen’s couch. Nobody I asked on this side of the ocean knew what it might be.

The Scotland Yard people had to stay in the house, of course, and outside the King and Queen’s rooms were chairs where messengers always sat. It seemed foolish to me, since the rooms were just across the hall from each other. Not until 1942, when I spent two nights in Buckingham Palace and saw how large it was, did I understand the reason for the messengers. There they wait in the corridors to show guests where to go, and to carry any messages one wishes to send.