Young Mr. Roosevelt by Stanley Weintraub

Author:Stanley Weintraub [Weintraub, Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306822353
Publisher: Da Capo Press

Livingston Davis with FDR at Hyde Park, March 31, 1913. FDR LIBRARY

JUST BEFORE THE annual family retreat to the island in 1917, Eleanor had been interviewed at home by a New York Times newspaperwoman about how the transplanted New Yorker’s large brood was adapting to wartime food restrictions. Eleanor had signed, innocently, a pledge card from the Patriotic Economy League. When “How to Save in Big Homes” appeared on July 17, she suffered acute embarrassment. In Washington, Eleanor would have been exposed to more open mortification. Had Lucy Mercer assisted at the interview—not out of the question for a social secretary—Eleanor might have been more prudent, but before she departed for her Campobello summer, Lucy had been dismissed. Whether Eleanor’s suspicions had been aroused by intuition or rumor, letting her go, if only during the season’s social vacuum, would not keep Lucy distant from Franklin. A week later, on June 24, as one of 11,000 women recruited by Daniels, she enlisted as a Navy Yeoman (F), 3rd class at $28.75 monthly, plus $1.75 daily for meals.

By what seems no coincidence Lucy was assigned to the office of the Assistant Secretary, and on July 25 Franklin wrote to Eleanor breezily, not mentioning Yeomanette Mercer’s new role, that a cruise on the Sylph, ostensibly a “visit to the fleet,” included among others Lucy Mercer and Nigel Law, “and they all got on splendidly.” The incautious letter arrived just as The New York Times interview appeared, multiplying Eleanor’s anxieties.

The wartime “food-saving” regimen at the extravagantly staffed Roosevelt home, the article reported,

has been selected by the conservation section of the Food Administration as a model for other large households. Mrs. Roosevelt on her pledge card said that there were seven in the family, and that ten servants were employed. . . . Mrs. Roosevelt does the buying, the cooks see that there is no food wasted, the laundress is sparing in her use of soap, each servant has a watchful eye for evidence of shortcomings on the part of the others. . . .

No bacon is used . . .; corn bread is served but once a day. . . . Meat is served but once daily, and all “left overs” are utilized. Menu rules allow two courses for luncheon and three for dinner. Everybody eats fish at least once a week.

“Making the ten servants help me do my saving has not only been possible but highly profitable,” said Mrs. Roosevelt today. “Since I have been following the home-card instructions, prices have risen, but my bills are no larger.”

With unkind humor, Franklin wrote to Eleanor the next day that her embarrassingly unanticipated “newspaper campaign” was a “corker”:

I am proud to be the husband of the Originator, Discoverer and Inventor of the New Household Economy for Millionaires! Please have a photo taken showing the family, the ten cooperating servants, the scraps saved from the table, and the handbook. I will have it published in the [illustrations insert of the] Sunday Times.

Honestly, you have leaped into

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