First Friends by Gary Ginsberg

Author:Gary Ginsberg [GINSBERG, GARY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

In 1936, Roosevelt easily won reelection in a romp over Landon, capturing a record 98 percent of the Electoral College vote and the highest share of the popular vote since the uncontested election of James Monroe in 1820. Meanwhile, the cousins continued their elaborate planning for Top Cottage, right down to selecting books for what they called “OL”—Our Library on “Our Hill,” as Daisy began referring to it. The president was just as enthusiastic. Such projects with Daisy proved to be a delightful distraction for the president, who was nursing ever-growing concerns about Hitler’s designs on Europe and his threat to the Western world.

One way that FDR dealt with these crushing burdens was to convene what he called “the Children’s Hour,” a gathering at the end of the day in a second-floor study of the White House where he could unwind with close friends and associates. The cardinal rule of the Children’s Hour, which often lasted well into a second hour, was that no important work be transacted while FDR mixed martinis, which he served and refilled. Whenever Daisy visited Washington, which was often, she was an integral part of this gathering. Writing about one such “hour” later in his presidency, Daisy observed, “[It was] when the P. seems to relax. He casts off his heavy responsibilities talks nonsense, teases etc. as he mixes cocktails.” One person who did not attend was Eleanor, who wasn’t wired for small talk and couldn’t refrain from using whatever time she had with her husband to press the issues important to her. “The P.,” Daisy noted, whenever “Mrs. R. is here… gets tense & concentrated again.”

Even when Daisy wasn’t at Children’s Hour or in his presence, she remained privy to some of the most intimate moments of FDR’s life. In late summer 1938, Roosevelt’s son James needed emergency surgery to remove gastric ulcers. Both Eleanor and Franklin traveled to Minnesota for the surgery. While tending to his son, Roosevelt wrote Daisy on September 14: “Oh! I wish so that C.P. were here.” By then, the two had developed their own parlance to describe their relationship, “C.P.” standing for “Certain Person.”

That exceptional closeness was also made clear by the front-row seat Daisy occupied at the most famous “picnic” in American history, when the king and queen visited Hyde Park in June 1939. After the weekend’s festivities, “F” related to Daisy some of his insights on the royal couple, including that the king was “grand” with an almost “American sense of humor,” while the queen was humorless. He also recounted four separate episodes after Daisy departed during which his jittery servants committed faux pas directly in front of the royals, including dropping trays full of glasses and breaking brand new china ordered especially for them.

In colorful, fast prose that could have doubled as a script for an I Love Lucy episode, Daisy recorded in exquisite detail each of the four episodes FDR joyfully recounted to her. “Later in the evening, a butler carried a tray with 6 ginger-ale bottles & a few tall glasses.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.