Books: Secretary of the Interior

WHITE HOUSE DIARY (314 pp.)—Henrietta Nesbitt—Doubleday ($3).

“Pshaw, it’s only four years. I can stand anything for four years,” said Henrietta Nesbitt when she became housekeeper of the White House in 1933. But Mrs. Nesbitt, who was “pushing 60” when she became “First Housekeeper of the Land,” stayed in office, like her boss, for 13 years. Unlike the memoirs of other members of President Roosevelt’s entourage, her diary of those years has no political importance whatever—for the simple reason that Mrs. Nesbitt was much too busy feeding the politicians to bite off more than she could chew herself. Nonetheless, her prattling, naive, lively record will take its place among the source books as an invaluable inside story of the 31st President’s domestic life & times.

“We’re just Hyde Park friends of the Roosevelts, come down to look after them,” Husband (“Dad”) Nesbitt blandly told the world. (Mrs. Nesbitt had often baked and cooked on big occasions when F.D.R. was governor of New York.) Mrs. Roosevelt was waiting in the Red Room when the Nesbitts arrived, and she said: “I’ll show you over”; and so “we started out together at a trot, the way she always goes about things . . . We kept on bumping into Roosevelts … I can’t recall how many [but] they all seemed glad to be there . . . Then we reached the kitchen, and I tell you my heart sank . . . Dark-looking cupboards . . . sinks with time-worn wooden drains, one rusty wooden dumbwaiter.” Rats, cockroaches, ants, moths shared living space with 32 servants: there wasn’t a cookbook in the whole place, or “enough utensils to cook a fair-sized family meal.” “You’re not to worry . . . You’re going to be all right,” said Mrs. R.

Gasping Housekeeper Nesbitt spent her first term struggling against chaos. Already, “world leaders were swooping down on us from all directions”—and terrifying memos were swooping down from Mrs. Roosevelt (“Mrs. Nesbitt: There will be 5,000 to tea”). Salesmen stormed the doors with “gift” samples of everything from cravats to cheese; Peach, Cherry and Potato “Queens” left laden bushel baskets all over the floor; deputations stamped in & out; photographers’ flashbulbs exploded like small arms. Eighty-three thousand casual visitors streamed through every month, leaving a trail of mud and cigarette butts.

Swoons & Spoons. The Roosevelts occupied the whole second floor, which swarmed with children, grandchildren and pets. Affectionate, easygoing, they were the least of Mrs. Nesbitt’s worries.

“Secret Service boys” pried into the presidential steaks and fillets; members of the Fine Arts Commission studied the least new drape with a beady eye; maintenance officers checked the smallest bill. Breakfast began at 6 a.m., ended at noon, when lunch began. It was hard to tell how much silver there was, because visitors not only pocketed the monogrammed spoons and forks but even managed to get away with large trays and colonial bowls.

White House hospitality demanded that each guest be given whatever he asked for—and thus, President Prado of Peru must be served his eccentric breakfast (beans and cauliflower); and ailing Madame Chiang Kai-shek (who “swept us all off our feet speaking of … democracy”) must have her special bed linen and a silk spread with lace inserts changed each time she stepped out of bed (“I couldn’t help wondering how she had managed . . . while she was campaigning with the general in China”).

If squab was the order of the day, each guest must get his squab, even if Mrs. Nesbitt had to comb every store and hotel in Washington. And, of course, the whole fate of parties and nations seemed to depend upon who sat where at an official dinner (“a headache, but not mine”). “I sit to the right of our desk,” guffawed Dad Nesbitt, who was White House custodian, “because I’m the purtiest!”

“I have never known a woman except Mrs. Roosevelt,” says Housekeeper Nesbitt, “whose motives were always pure kindness.” Out of this kindness, Mrs. Roosevelt invited all & sundry to stay at the White House—and guests such as Youth Leader Joe Lash just stayed & stayed. Some guests seemed to come merely in order to show how unspeakably rude they could be to the staff; many were “ulcerites” who clung to fantastic diets (“It’s like getting religion with some of them”); and even the dogs had special food lists. ” ‘Secretary of the Interior,’ they called me in joke.”

Mrs. Nesbitt soon reached the point where she could whip “up a formal dinner for the President of Brazil with only one afternoon’s notice,” and think nothing of it. By the end of 1935 she had installed her “New Deal kitchen,” but she often wanted to retire quietly to Hyde Park. When she once said as much to the President’s mother, “Mrs. James” looked her up & down and “said to me then, in the queerest way: ‘But you’ll never go back.’ I wondered later if [she] hadn’t been thinking of him . . .”

Peeves & Popcorn. Mrs. Nesbitt hardly ever saw “him,” but she saw his normally hearty appetite rise or fall in tune with international relations. He was in fine spirits, for example, when Mrs. Nesbitt’s nerves were most frayed—on the occasion of the royal visit of 1939. Months before the visit, Scotland Yard cameramen were on the spot, filming every inch of house and grounds. Gallons of London water (for royal tea) were specially “built” by American chemists.

From Buckingham Palace came a helpful list of royal needs, including the size and type of penholders, towels, clothes hangers, “a large solid table for cleaning shoes” (in the room of the King’s valet), and “newspapers [which] never should be produced” in sight of Their Majesties (Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Sunday Pictorial, News of the World). The thermometer was “bubbling close to 100” when the royal party arrived, which did not stop them from retiring to bed that night with winter blankets, hot milk and hot-water bottles.

It was the last brilliant event of Mrs. Nesbitt’s career: soon, the strain of war permeated the whole establishment. The President fell into frequent “tizzies” (“Damn it, I don’t want beef!” Mrs. Nesbitt heard him cry over the phone). Harry Hopkins kept phoning “for popcorn”; table cloths came back from military conferences perforated with cigarette burns; Mr. Churchill rolled down the passages zipped up in his zoot-suit; exiled monarchs filled suites of rooms.

It was a Thursday when the White House heard that the President had died at Warm Springs. By Saturday, when his body arrived in Washington, the whole staff was in tears and, for the first time in 13 years, “the House itself . . . was paralyzed.” On Monday, Mrs. Nesbitt pulled herself together and “went right up to [Mrs. Roosevelt’s] room for instructions, as if nothing had happened . . . She had all her clothes out of the wardrobes and over chairs, and was sorting them. ‘I’ll be out by Friday,’ she said . . .

“I stayed on until the Trumans got settled.” ‘