Kati Marton by Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History Page A

the needy one and something of a burden for the first lady.

    FROM THE MINUTE Eleanor crossed the threshold of the White House, it was apparent that things were about to change. As is customary, her predecessor, Mrs. Herbert Hoover, greeted Eleanor and proceeded to relatethe many improvements she had made in the management and the decor of the mansion. “Mrs. Roosevelt listened attentively,” Chief Usher Hoover later wrote, “but it was obvious that it was not what she wished to know.” Following a quick tour, Eleanor declined the offer of a limousine and quickly hailed a passing cab.
    “My first act,” Eleanor remembered, “was to insist on running the [White House] elevator myself without waiting for one of the doormen to run it for me. That just wasn’t done by the President’s wife.” With a respectful press corps rarely transgressing beyond strict boundaries, the American people knew little about how the new first lady abdicated her role as traditional wife in exchange for the freedom to travel, to write and to speak out. Eleanor and Franklin rarely dined alone or shared intimacies. Franklin’s placement of a chest of drawers in front of the sliding doors that connected his wife’s study to his bedroom was only the physical manifestation of their separate lives in the White House.
    Eleanor and Franklin soon discovered that the big old house suited their lives and their relationship remarkably well. They turned the White House into an informal place of high energy and spontaneity. In those days, anyone could walk through the gates and stroll the grounds without ever having to show any identification. To compensate for the absence of real warmth in their marriage, the Roosevelts needed the stimulation and companionship of others. Among the dozens of people invited to reside for a time in the White House was a young writer named Martha Gellhorn (not yet married to her future husband Ernest Hemingway), recently fired from her government job. “It was just a great big house … always full of chums and funny people, and it was one of the most pleasing and easygoing amusing places you could possibly be in. And there was absolutely no sign of imperial nonsense.” Gellhorn soon discovered that things could turn serious as well, especially at mealtime. “I was seated next to him [FDR] and Mrs. R. at the far end of the table at a given moment rose up the way she did and said, ‘Franklin, talk to that child at your left. She says that all the people in the South have pellagra or syphilis.’”
    Eleanor gave the shortest shrift to both the ceremonial and housekeeping aspects of her role. “People just came to dinner,” Gellhornrecalled, “took off their coats and went into whatever room downstairs. Mrs. R. was waiting for them to serve them some rotten wine. They always had terrible food and terrible wine. She didn’t know anything about food, or care about it. I don’t suppose he [FDR] did; he cared about his martinis, which he mixed upstairs. And they just sat about and chattered and then they went into the dining room, which I don’t remember as being in any way overpowering, except that there were a lot of people at table, because it was a combination of people who were supposed to be fun and amuse the President, or chums, and people that they had to have.”
    It is clear from their choice of companions how different were the Roosevelts’ needs and expectations in relationships. Eleanor won people over with intensity and idealism, Franklin with ebullience. “If Father became friendly with a princess or a secretary,” their daughter, Anna, recalled, “he’d reach out and give a pat to her fanny and laugh like hell and was probably telling a funny story at the same time, whereas to Mother that was terrible. He loved to outrage Granny, to tease her. He could never do that with Mother. She was much too serious. Mother was inhibiting to him. She would never go along. That’s why he turned