The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (33 page)

One day before the visit I invited Lady Lindsay, wife of the British ambassador, to tea and asked her if she was being given any instructions which might be helpful to me. Lady Lindsay was an American whom I had known a long while, and we looked at things from more or less the same point of view. She looked at me rather wickedly when she said: “Yes, Sir Alan Lascelles has told us that the King must be served at meals thirty seconds ahead of the Queen. The King does not like capers or suet pudding. I told him we did not often have suet pudding in the United States and that I really had not expected the King to like capers.”

In the White House there are in the dining room two special, high-backed armchairs, one for the President and one for his wife, and no one else ever sits in them at meals. They presented a great problem for the household on this occasion. Should only the King and the President have the armchairs? That did not seem respectful to the Queen, but we could not take his chair away from the President. Finally Franklin solved the difficulty. “Why don’t we buy two more armchairs identical with those we now have?” This was done and all was well.

I told Franklin that British protocol required that the head butler, Fields, stand with a stop watch in his hand and, thirty seconds after he and the King had been served, dispatch a butler to serve the Queen and myself, and I inquired what was to happen about the White House rule that the president was always served first. “We will not require Fields to have a stop watch,” he said. “The King and I will be served simultaneously and you and the Queen will be served next.”

Then came another serious question: Should the President sit with the King on his right and the Queen on his left and me on the right of the King? Or should we follow our usual custom? Franklin finally decided we would follow the usual custom of the United States. The King would sit on my right and the Queen on Franklin’s right. The reason for this decision was that since the King and Queen were going to see a good deal of us, it did not seem quite fair to box the King in between us when he had so little time in which to meet and talk with other people. Franklin later explained this to the King, who accepted every arrangement in the most charming and delightful manner.

The secretary of state and Mrs. Hull with their party had met the members of the royal party at Niagara Falls, and accompanied them on the train to Washington. There was much pageantry about their arrival and the procession to the White House. That was something my husband always enjoyed, for he liked to put on a show. I dreaded it. At the appointed time we went down to the station and, with the government officials who were members of the reception committee, stood waiting in the President’s reception room for the train’s arrival.

After the presentations were over, my husband and I escorted the King and Queen through the Guard of Honor, which was drawn up in front of the station. The British National Anthem and “The Star-Spangled Banner” were played, and there was a twenty-one gun salute. Then the inevitable photographs were taken and finally my husband and the King and the Queen and I got into our respective cars and started with military escort on the slow drive to the White House. There were crowds all along the way and I was fascinated watching the Queen. She had the most gracious manner and bowed right and left with interest, actually looking at people in the crowd so that I am sure many of them felt that her bow was really for them personally.

In spite of the heat, a light cover had been placed by her footman over her knees when she got into the car. She sat upon a cushion which I afterwards discovered had springs to make it easier for her to keep up the continual bowing. The same arrangements were made for the King.

Immediately on our arrival at the White House, what is known as a Diplomatic Circle was held in the East Room for the heads of all the diplomatic missions and their wives. At that time the British ambassador, Sir Ronald Lindsay, was dean of the diplomatic corps, so he presented the chiefs of missions and their wives to the King while Lady Lindsay presented them to the Queen.

After lunch, the King and my husband in one car and the Queen and I in another drove about Washington. Our route was given out beforehand, so that people could have an opportunity to see Their Majesties. It meant, of course, that we had little chance to talk except when we were driving where people could not line up on the sidewalks. At one point the Queen endeared herself to me by saying suddenly: “I saw in the paper that you were being attacked for having gone to a meeting of the WPA workers. It surprises me that there should be any criticism, for it is so much better to allow people with grievances to air them; and it is particularly valuable if they can do so to someone in whom they feel a sense of sympathy and who may be able to reach the head of the government with their grievances.”

While we were out, some amusing things had happened at home. The housekeeper, Mrs. Nesbitt, was harassed and when she was harassed she usually went to Miss Thompson. The fact that the many servants quartered in our servants’ rooms were requiring as much attention as she had expected to give to everyone combined was an unexpected burden. The first intimation of any difficulty between our staff and the royal servants came when the housekeeper reported that the King’s valet was making unreasonable demands and did not like our food and drink. Even the ushers were not having an easy time, for they were not accustomed to having protocol hold good among the servants. As the Queen’s maid was walking down the middle of the second floor hall on her way from the Queen’s room to the elevator, one of the ushers asked her if she would tell the lady in waiting that the Queen wanted her to come to her room. The maid drew herself up and said, “I am the Queen’s maid,” and swept down the hall. The usher, who by this time was exhausted by the heat and the extra work, reported, “Oh, so you’re a big shot?”

When finally everyone got to bed that night, they must all, including the King and Queen, have breathed sighs of relief.

The next morning, before Their Majesties left the White House, they walked down a line of newspaperwomen and greeted them, then went to the British embassy, where they received members of the British colony, and from there to the Capitol. At the Capitol they were received by the vice-president and by Speaker Bankhead, and escorted to the rotunda where they received members of the Senate and the House. After that they met us on the U.S.S.
Potomac
and we had lunch on the way down the river. At Mount Vernon the usual ceremony was observed and the King laid a wreath on Washington’s tomb. Time was growing short, and some people who had driven out there were presented to the King and Queen as they hurriedly got a glimpse of the old Mount Vernon house and grounds.

On the way home we stopped at Fort Hunt to visit a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. My husband, of course, could not walk with the King and Queen, but I have a vivid recollection of that visit; it taught me many things.

The King walked with the commandant of the camp toward the boys, who were drawn up in two lines in the broiling sun. A large bulletin board had been put up with pictures of the various camps throughout the country, showing the different kinds of work done by the boys, but he did not stop to look at them.

As we went down the long line, the King stopped at every other boy and asked questions while the Queen spoke to the intervening boys. I, of course, walked with the Queen. At the end of the first line, the commandant was prepared not to go down the second one, but the King turned automatically and started down. He asked really interested questions, such as whether they were satisfied with their food, what they were learning and whether they thought it would help them to obtain work and, lastly, how much they were earning.

He had explained to us beforehand that for a long time he had had a summer camp for boys from the mining areas of Great Britain. He had been deeply troubled to find that many boys had no conception of doing a full day’s work, because they had never seen their fathers do a day’s work, many of Great Britain’s miners having been on the dole for years. This spoke volumes for the conditions of the mining industry in Great Britain, but the King seemed interested chiefly in the effect it had on these young men; he wanted to set up something as useful as the CCC camps in Great Britain.

When we reached the end of the second row of boys, the commandant said: “Your Majesty, the day is so hot that, while the boys have prepared their barracks and mess hall for your inspection, we shall all understand if you do not feel it wise to cross the field in this sun.” The King responded: “If they expect me to go, of course I will go.” This was a kind of
noblesse oblige
that I had not often seen in our own officials with whom I had inspected CCC camps and NYA activities and other projects.

The Queen and I followed slowly across the field in the hot sun, and I saw one of the most thorough inspections I have ever witnessed. They looked at the shelves where supplies were kept, and when they heard the boys made their own equipment, they had tables turned upside down to see how they were made; they looked into pots and pans on the stove, and at the menu; and when they left there was little they did not know. In the sleeping barracks the King felt the mattresses and carefully examined shoes and clothes.

My husband had carefully coached me for the tea party that followed this trip, for he said the King had particularly asked to meet the heads of all the agencies which were contributing to the recovery and doing new things in the government. As I introduced each agency head I was supposed, as briefly as possible, to outline the work that person was doing, and then give the man or woman, as the case might be, about three minutes alone with the King, then take him over to the Queen and present the next person to the King. I had rather dreaded trying to engineer this and wondered how I was going to condense the introduction into a brief enough explanation, but I soon found that my explanation could be very short, for the King seemed to know at once, as I spoke the name, what the person was doing, and he started right in with questions. I had expected to have a hard time keeping the line moving; I had watched my husband’s secretaries struggling with him and it was impossible, if he got interested, to pry anyone away, but the King proved much more amenable.

The party seemed to go off successfully for all concerned. I was so impressed with the King’s knowledge that at the next meal at which I sat beside him I asked him to tell me how he knew what work every person in our government did. He told me that before he came he had made a study of the name and occupation of everyone in the government; that the material had been procured for him, and was only part of his preparation for this trip to Washington.

After they left we took a train to Hyde Park, where we had the day to prepare for the twenty-four hours which the King and Queen were to spend with us there. My husband always loved taking people he liked home with him. He felt he knew them better once they had been to Hyde Park.

The day in New York City was interesting but completely exhausting, for Mayor LaGuardia had filled every minute to overflowing. As the day advanced the King and Queen realized they were going to be late reaching us; but they were not told how late they were until they actually started, whereupon the King insisted on stopping and telephoning at intervals along the way.

We sat in the library in the Hyde Park house waiting for them. Franklin had a tray of cocktails ready in front of him, and his mother sat on the other side of the fireplace looking disapprovingly at the cocktails and telling her son that the King would prefer tea. My husband, who could be as obstinate as his mother, kept his tray in readiness, however. Finally the King and Queen arrived and I met them at the door and took them to their rooms. In a short time they were dressed and down in the library. As the King approached my husband and the cocktail table, my husband said, “My mother does not approve of cocktails and thinks you should have a cup of tea.” The King answered, “Neither does my mother,” and took a cocktail.

Two startling things happened at dinner. They seem funny now, but they caused my mother-in-law much embarrassment. We had brought up the colored butler from the White House. My mother-in-law had an English butler who, when he heard that the White House butlers were coming up to help him, was so shocked that the King and Queen were to be waited on by colored people that he decided to take his holiday before Their Majesties came, in order not to see them treated in that manner!

Just exactly what happened to our well-trained White House butlers that night I shall never know. My mother-in-law had the extra china that was needed put on a serving table that was not ordinarily used, and suddenly in the middle of dinner the serving table collapsed and the dishes clattered to the floor. Mama tried in the best-bred tradition to ignore it, but her stepdaughter-in-law, Mrs. James Roosevelt Roosevelt, from whom she had borrowed some plates for the occasion, was heard to say, “I hope none of my dishes were among those broken.” As a matter of fact, the broken dishes were part of a set my husband had been given; none of the old family china suffered.

One would think that one mishap of this kind would be enough for an evening, but just after we had gone down to the big library after dinner there was a most terrible crash; the butler, carrying a tray of decanters, glasses, bowls of ice, and so on, fell down the two steps leading from the hall and slid right into the library, scattering the contents of the tray over the floor and leaving a large lake of water and ice cubes at the bottom of the steps. I am sure Mama wished that her English butler had stayed. I wrote about this in my column at the time because I thought it was really funny, but my mother-in-law was indignant with me for not keeping it a deep, dark family secret.

Dinner had been so late that the evening was soon over and we all retired, leaving Prime Minister Mackenzie King and the King to talk with Franklin. It seemed so late when they came upstairs that I felt sorry for them, but the next day Mackenzie King told my husband that the King had knocked on his door and asked him to come to his room for a talk; he added that the King had said: “Why don’t my ministers talk to me as the President did tonight? I felt exactly as though a father were giving me his most careful and wise advice.”