Susan Quinn - Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady

B Y THE TIME F RANKLIN D ELANO R OOSEVELT was nominated for president, in August 1932, some doubted whether a survivor of polio, paralyzed from the waist down, had the strength to conduct a vigorous campaign, let alone lead the country out of the worst economic depression in its history. Even his advisers were worried. FDR came up with a defiant answer to all of them: a nine-thousand-mile, twenty-one-day trip through seventeen midwestern and western states aboard the Roosevelt Special.

It was a trip perfectly suited to both FDRs temperament and his physical limitations. As soon as the train came to a stop, FDR stepped out on the rear platform, gripping the arm of his son Jimmy. The railing cut off sight of his lower body, so the public saw only his broad shoulders and chest as he delivered his one-minute address. Its nice to be back in Dubuque, he would begin, flashing his wide smile, adding, Im just here to look, learn, and listen. His speech was patrician, but his message was friendly, and his physical courage buoyed his worried listeners.

Between stops, FDR had only to look out the train window to see just how bad things had become. In Chicago, there were blocks of lifeless factories, overgrown parks, and rows of vacant stores with blackened windows. Shantytowns, clustered along the railroad tracks, sent up smoke from cooking fires. In the rich farm country of Iowa and Ohio, the farmhouses were unpainted, the fences were crumbling, and food was rotting in the fields. By the time the Roosevelt Special reached Seattle, Roosevelt had reason to speak in the name of a stricken America and a stricken world.

Even in such terrible times, however, Franklin Roosevelt managed to enjoy himself. He loved everything about campaigning, from the enthusiasm of the local crowds to the sparring with the newspaper boys. FDRs sitting room was open to all comers: local politicians got on and off, and close advisers and future cabinet members huddled late into the night, plotting a future course for a country in crisis. FDR enhanced his listening and learning with healthy doses of jokes, storytelling, poker, and booze.

Eleanor Roosevelt waited until the return journey from the West Coast to join the Roosevelt Special. She didnt share her husbands enthusiasm for the cheering admirers on the campaign trail. It seems undignified and meaningless but perhaps we need it! she once confided. She wasnt comfortable with the jocular atmosphere around FDR, either. Try as she might, Eleanor didnt always get the jokes and was uncomfortable with the teasing. On her honeymoon, she had refused to join a bridge game that involved money, because she had been raised to think it was improper. Drinking, especially, made her uneasy. She had her own reasons for disliking even the smell of alcohol: her father had drunk himself to death, and it now looked as though her brother was going down the same path.

Eleanor had plenty to say about policy issues. But the politicians and brain trusters who surrounded Franklin rarely thought to include her in their discussions. The exception was Louis Howe, a wizened little man with a scarred face and bulging eyes who had been a true believer in FDRs greatness since they met in 1911. Eleanor Roosevelt had been repelled by Howe in the early days: he was an inelegant chain-smoking newspaperman, the sort of person she had been brought up to avoid. But Howes attentions to her in 1920, when FDR was running for vice president on the ill-fated Democratic ticket, went a long way toward changing her mind. When Franklin was stricken with polio on Campobello Island, Eleanor and Louis became a team. They were the only ones who believed that FDR had a political future in those years immediately following the diagnosis. Howe came to understand then that Eleanor could keep Roosevelt aspirations alive while FDR recovered. He urged her to lower her high-pitched voice and suppress her nervous giggle when she spoke in public, and he encouraged her to get more involved in New York politics. In time, he even had the idea that Eleanor should run for president herself.

For Louis Howe, the trip on the Roosevelt Special was a dream come true: hed been working toward the presidential run ever since Franklin Roosevelt first served in the New York state legislature. Shrewd political operative that he was, Howe was confident that the Hoover campaign was doomed and that FDR was about to become the next president of the United States.

Eleanor Roosevelt didnt want to believe it. The spark that Howe had ignited in her had led to a new, independent life. She was the cofounder of a craft workshop called Val-Kill Industries, a cofounder and teacher at a girls school, and an activist with other women in New York politics. Whats more, she knew a fair amount about the ceremonial burden involved in being First Lady: her aunt Edith had been an exemplary one for her uncle Theodore. She didnt want any part of it. She had been as passionate as Howe about FDRs political rehabilitation. But she didnt share his excitement now, as the Roosevelt Special gained momentum.

It was comforting, under the circumstances, when the campaign train went off on a side rail so that she could pay a visit to an old friend who would understand and sympathize. Eleanor and Isabella Greenway had endured coming out as debutantes in consecutive yearsboth looked upon it as more duty than pleasureand Isabella had been a bridesmaid in the Roosevelt wedding, staying by Eleanors side as they organized the myriad presents and even composing some of the thank-you notes. Since then, Isabella had married Robert Ferguson, an old family friend, and moved with him to Prescott, Arizona, in hopes that the dry climate would cure his tuberculosis.

Since Eleanor and her husband kept friends forever, it was natural for them to take a day off from the campaign trail, away from press and public, to visit Isabella and her husband in Prescott. Journalists were more obliging in those days: photographers agreed not to take pictures that included FDRs wheelchair. No picture of FDR in a crablike position, as his prone and helpless body was lifted in and out of his automobile, ever made the newspapers. Giving the family a day off to visit friends was all right with them.

What did surprise and rankle the reporters, though, was that an exception was made for one rookie Chicago Tribune reporter named John Boettiger, who for some reason was asked to come along on the private visit. No one resented this slight more than Lorena Hickok. Hick was the only female reporter on the Roosevelt Special and one of the top female reporters in the country, and shed gotten there by fighting for stories. Most women, fellow reporter Walter B. Rags Ragsdale noted, were society editors or worked the social beat. The rarities were women who fought and scratched their way to the street as regular reporters. Another reporter who knew her well noticed that a red rash tended to develop on the back of Hicks neck if she thought she was getting cheated out of a plum assignment.

Hick had already complained when she discovered that all the men on the Roosevelt Special had compartments or drawing rooms in which to sleep and work, while she was stuck with a small berth up toward the engine, in the neighborhood of the local reporters. So naturally she was furious about John Boettiger, an inexperienced reporter, getting special treatment. She decided to complain to Eleanor Roosevelt about it.