XVII
The White House
The members of my family, and especially my children, are prone to indulgence in good-natured personalities and they like to make the most of my serious attitude toward my domestic responsibilities, saying that I make them three times as difficult as they need be by a too positive insistence on my own methods.
Perhaps I did make the process of adjusting the White House routine to my own conceptions a shade too strenuous, but I could not feel that I was mistress of any house if I did not take an active interest in all the details of running it.
The management of the White House is, of course, a larger task than many women are ever called upon to perform, and, incidentally, the same “white light that beats upon a throne” sheds its sometimes uncomfortable radiance upon the usually unprepared heads of America’s Chief Executive and his family. Accustomed as I had been for years to publicity, yet it came as a sort of shock to me that nearly everything I did, and especially my slightest innovation, had what the reporters call “news value.”
I have lived too much in other countries ever to underestimate the importance of outward form, yet I think I may claim a wholesome regard for and a constant acquiescence in the principles of democratic simplicity, though not the kind of “democratic simplicity” which is usually written in quotation marks.
I made very few changes, really. As a matter of fact no President’s wife ever needs to unless she so desires, because the White House is a governmental institution thoroughly equipped and always in good running order. Each new mistress of the house has absolute authority, of course, and can do exactly as she pleases, just as she would in any other home, but in the beginning I confined my efforts largely to minor matters connected with the house service itself. I wished to install certain members of the house personnel of my own choosing, and this I did. Later I made some changes in a few important social usages.
There are certain duties connected with the White House routine which have been performed by the same employees throughout one Administration after another and each new President’s wife finds these men invaluable and wonders, I am sure, how the White House could ever be run without them. For instance, there are Mr. Warren S. Young, who has been for thirty years the Social Executive Officer, and Colonel W. H. Crook, who became Chief Custodian under Lincoln in 1865 and is holding the same office today. The duties of each of these men are delicate in the extreme, but they know their work down to the minutest detail and it would be difficult to measure their value to the woman who, in public opinion, is wholly responsible for the White House.
As to my own innovations, I decided in the first place to have, at all hours, footmen in livery at the White House door to receive visitors and give instructions to sightseers. Before my time there had been only “gentlemen ushers” who were in no way distinguishable from any other citizen and many a time I have seen strangers wander up to the door looking in vain for someone to whom it seemed right and proper to address a question or to hand a visiting card. The gentlemen ushers I retained, the head usher, Mr. Hoover, having become invaluable through similar service under every Administration since Cleveland’s first, but I put six coloured men in blue livery at the door, two at a time, relieving each other at intervals, and I think many a timid visitor has had reason to be thankful for the change. Incidentally they lend a certain air of formal dignity to the entrance which, in my opinion, it has always lacked.
These footmen received everybody who sought to enter the White House. If it happened to be a party of tourists they were directed to such parts of the building as are open to the public at stated hours; if it were a caller, either social or official, he or she was conducted to one of the drawing rooms. But sensible as this innovation seemed to me, it met a varied criticism from the adherents, sincere and otherwise, of our too widely vaunted “democratic simplicity.”
Another change I made was the substitution of a housekeeper for a steward. I wanted a woman who could relieve me of the supervision of such details as no man, expert steward though he might be, would ever recognise. The White House requires such ordinary attention as is given by a good housekeeper to any house, except, perhaps, that it has to be more vigilantly watched. Dust accumulates in corners; mirrors and picture glasses get dim with dampness; curtains sag or lose their crispness; floors lose their gloss; rugs turn up at corners or fray at the ends; chair covers get crumpled; cushions get crushed and untidy; things get out of order generally; and it is a very large house. Kitchen helpers grow careless and neglect their shining copper pots and pans and kettles; pantry boys forget and send in plates or glasses not polished to perfection; maids forget to be immaculate and linen is not properly handled; they are just like employees in other homes and they need a woman’s guidance and control. I engaged my housekeeper before my husband’s Inauguration and she reported for duty on the morning of March fifth.
If I could remember how many turkeys the President gives away every Christmas I could tell just how many persons there are in the White House service. I know it is something like one hundred, but they go to employees of all kinds, to important house officials, to minor officials, to servants
