Henrietta Nesbitt - White House Diary

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Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

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WHITE HOUSE DIARY

BY

HENRIETTA NESBITT

F. D. R.s Housekeeper

There will be five thousand to tea...

The President of Iceland will have breakfast at nine in his room.

These are the sort of messages Mrs. Henrietta Nesbitt took in stride during her eleven years in the White Houseone of the largest, most complicated, and most fascinating households in America. Her story is a succession of intimate anecdotes of the great and the near-greatAlexander Woollcott, Paderewski, the King and Queen of England, Jos Iturbi, Winston Churchill, and of course the Roosevelt family itself. It is also a salty and sprightly record of the worlds most demanding job of housekeeping.

Contents

It was my first view of the White House. For that matter, Id never been in Washington before. Dad and IDad being my husband, Henry F. Nesbittgot up early the morning before the inauguration and went through the streets straight to the presidential mansion, as if wed lived in the capital all our lives. This was Mr. Roosevelts first inaugural, in March 1933.

We went up to the White House and stood looking through the northwest gate, and I felt like the old woman in the ditty, not certain if it were I, or somebody else. To tell the truth I was scared half to death. It was the biggest home I had ever seen.

Like a big wedding cake, I said to Dad. The kind with the white mountain frosting.

We walked all around, peeking through the eight gateways and the iron fence to the green lawns and the flower beds, all planted new for the new president, and across the semi-circular drive to the big beautiful house with the tall-pillared porte-cochere. Even the trees looked important, with their names set in the bark, like trees in a park.

I didnt know these very trees had been singed when the British soldiers set fire to the White House, in 1812, that Dolly Madison and her James led cotillions under the elms, and that the big magnolias, starting to bud even this early in the spring, were planted by President Jackson because he was homesick for his Tennessee. All the Presidents, it seems, planted trees to add to the beauty of the grounds.

But I didnt learn these facts until later, along with a lot of other patter I memorized to reel off to guests in the White House, such as commenting on the classic architecture and the historic pieces, and the fact that the cornerstone was laid in 1792 and President Washington hadnt been there to see it put down. I never did find out why.

All I knew this morning was that the White House had me awed, and I didnt know how Id ever get up enough courage to walk in. But we were going to do just that, Dad and I, right after the ceremonies that had the whole city, and the country itself for that matter, all stirred up. We were going through those gates and into the White House as if we belonged there.

I said to Dad, not to show how nervous I was, It must take a sight of gardeners to keep all the leaves raked up and this place looking right.

Of course I wasnt thinking much of the garden, because it wasnt my business. The White House was my affair. I was trying to count all the windows, but I gave up somewhere around ninety. How were we going to keep them all clean!

But those windows would have to shine. The handsome, dignified building was the most important in the United States, and that meant in the world. As soon as the Roosevelts moved in, Id have the care of it.

Care of the White House. I didnt know it that morning, hut this would be my job and my address for the next thirteen years. Through three Roosevelt administrations I would have personal charge of the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

But we didnt know it would be that long, back in 33. So I just hung onto Dads arm and spoke as pertly as I could.

Pshaw, its only four years. I can stand anything for four years. I guess the Roosevelts, back where wed left them in the Mayflower Hotel getting ready for the inaugural, had the same idea then.

The White House would be a big responsibility, but Mrs. Roosevelt had said I could do it, so I knew I could. Already the newspapers had thought up a lot of fancy titles for me, along with all the publicity about the new President. Mrs. Nesbittfirst housekeeper of the land. Our nations first housekeeper. The little lady who rules the President. Keeper of the White House.

The papers had started calling me all these things, and we hadnt even moved in.

I didnt know a soul in Washington outside of Dad and the Roosevelts. I didnt have another friend in the place. I was small-town and a homebody, and up to this time Id been content in both categories. Now I was being thrust through the White House doors into a new life and a first job, and in a few days I was going to celebrate a birthday in that big mansion. Id be fifty-nine years old.

Id start on my White House job pushing sixty, and through those sixtiesthe sunset years women call them who have the chance to sit down and restI was going to work harder and shoulder more responsibility than ever in my life before. I wasnt going to have the chance to sit down. And it would be harder for me than for women who had always worked, because Id be trying, not only to keep up with tie Roosevelts, but to keep a jump ahead of them, for the next thirteen years.

Dad couldnt admire the White House enough.

They say an Irishman designed it, he said, with the pride of a man born in Dublin.

I laughed and felt better. I was glad Mrs. Roosevelt had asked us both, bless her, when she asked me to be their housekeeper in the White House. Therell be work enough for you both, she had said, in that wonderful tactful way of hers, as if she hadnt guessed how blue Dad had been, being out on his luck for so long. I was glad he was with me and Dad was as grateful about things as I was.

I like remembering what an adventure Washington was for us, and how happy we were.

Because, if I was scared to my bones that March morning it was for reasons beyond this new job and its responsibilities. I was afraid of everything that was happening in the America that was the only country I knew. It was the start of the panic and the depression years, and everyone we knew seemed to be out of work and everything wed had faith in seemed to be crumbling away. Something terrible was happening inside the land in which I had been born. A woman like myself was reared in a home, grew to love and tend that home, and left it for another where her married days were spent and her sons and daughters were reared. No matter how little there was in it, for women of my generation there was always the home.