The Plots Against the President by Sally Denton

Author:Sally Denton [Denton, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-six

A Balanced Civilization

The White House, like the rest of America, came to life when Franklin and Eleanor took over. The somber rooms of the Hoover occupation were now bubbling with laughter, the hallways bursting with frolicking children, and the bedchambers filled with a continuous influx of guests. Not since the previous Roosevelt presidency had the White House been such a vibrant headquarters of gaiety, banter, conviviality, and entertainment. With his mischievous sense of humor and devotion to his sacrosanct cocktail, the president himself set the tone. The staid decorum of previous administrations gave way to an informality reminiscent of the Andrew Jackson era a hundred years earlier.

The Roosevelts brought with them a lifestyle that had been honed at the governor’s mansion in Albany, where Eleanor, in particular, constantly strived for a balance between private and public life. It was Eleanor who struggled to maintain a semblance of family normality, while Roosevelt relished the chaos with a more-the-merrier attitude. Both thrived on the intellectual stimulation of the ceaseless socializing, though Eleanor, as the daughter of an alcoholic, eschewed the regular evening mixers. Eleanor oversaw the cuisine, planning meals based on traditional American recipes and instilling the same frugality that restrained other Depression-era housewives. She decided it would be “highly appropriate to serve purely American dishes at the White House,” she said in her first interview. “I want to work out some meals that consist entirely of American food, prepared in the American manner, from American products.” Gone were the seven-course meals, the formal dinner attire, and the pretentious trappings of footmen and butlers that had attended the Hoover presidency. One guest of the Roosevelts reported receiving a meager dessert consisting of a slice of pineapple topped with whipped cream, two maraschino cherries, and one walnut—three nights in a row.

Roosevelt had asked his wife to cut the White House operating expenses by 25 percent, in keeping with his call for national sacrifice. She efficiently managed to fit her large family—which now included two grandchildren—into the small living quarters and to find space for other friends and employees who would be full-time residents. Marguerite “Missy” Le Hand, Roosevelt’s longtime secretary, moved into the former housekeeper’s quarters. Eleanor’s closest friend, Lorena Hickok, who had resigned from the Associated Press when she felt her personal relationship with Eleanor clouded her objectivity, took over an upstairs bedroom. Resembling a boardinghouse more than a presidential mansion, the place was a twenty-four-hour hub of activity; one Washington traditionalist derisively described the atmosphere as being like “Saturday night at a country hotel.” Roosevelt reserved the best guest suite, where Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, to host those he was courting politically.

The president’s typical sixteen-hour day involved a firmly structured routine that necessarily revolved around his infirmity. He awakened at eight thirty every morning and took breakfast in bed. After finishing his eggs, toast, and orange juice, he would settle in with five morning newspapers and a strong cup of coffee, and light the first of his forty Camel cigarettes of the day, which he would slip into a long ivory holder.

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.