Travels with Eleanor #9: Hick - by Nan Brooks

Eleanor's favorite photo of Lorena Hickok

Please see the disclaimer at the very end of this post. Thanks.

It wasn’t long after I started performing as Eleanor Roosevelt that I realized I was also traveling with Lorena Hickok. Everyone wanted to know about her. Were she and Eleanor lovers? What was the big secret? I had my opinion and I was cautious about offending the Roosevelt family. It wasn’t long before the reality of their relationship began to emerge and before I realized how much the family, and the FDR Library by extension, wanted to hide the truth.

Getting to the truth in general about Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t easy. For one thing, she was skilled at hiding her emotional life even from herself. It took her women friends, especially Lorena Hickok, to help her heal from the early neglect and derision dished out by her mother and from the abandonment of her beloved alcoholic father. Societal expectations of a woman of her class and the necessities of her husband’s political career meant that even when she was able to express the truth of her experiences, she had to keep them as private as possible. The press at the time was not as voracious or invasive as it is now, but it was still a struggle for her to have her own life.

Imagine what today’s news media would do if the president’s wife turned out to have a woman lover who had her own room in the White House.** But Lorena Hickok did have such a room across the hall from  Eleanor’s. (See Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time.) And 10 years after Hickok’s death, the truth was out. And I do mean Out.

Lorena Hickok and Eleanor were very different – and alike. Both were unloved daughters whose mothers died when they were young. Both had difficult alcoholic fathers. While Hick’s father was abusive, Eleanor’s adored her. After her mother’s death, eight-year-old Eleanor was sent to live with her maternal grandmother. Her father would come for visits, which were the highlight of the girl’s life – she remembered sliding down the banister into his arms. But his drinking was an embarrassment to the family, especial his older brother, Theodore Roosevelt. So he was sent away, paid off, and banished from Eleanor’s life. Of course, no one told her anything and he died when she was ten. She mourned him the rest of her life. So, the two women had a bond because they understood one another’s losses.  Both Hick and Eleanor were told how ugly they were, both were neglected at best. And both of them were driven by their work for social justice, their care for those who suffered because of their race, sex, and poverty.

They met in 1932 during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential campaign. Those were the years of whistle-stop campaigns, when candidates traveled by train across the country, stopping in small towns where the train whistle would notify the residents that the train was stopping rather than rolling right on through as usual. Lorena Hickok was a star reporter for the Associated Press, a career triumph she had worked for since her early twenties. She was sometimes treated as one of the guys, but as the only woman in the press contingent, she was also constantly pushing not to be ignored. She played poker with the men, smoked cigars with them, and worked harder than any of them. Often while her Associated Press colleague was covering FDR’s speeches from the train platform, Hick would move through the crowd and gather information. She was adept at finding stories from the real lives of “ordinary” people. The depression had hit the country hard in 1932 and the stories Hick found made clear the hardships people were facing. Reporting their stories could help make a difference and those stories drew readers to the newspapers the AP sent them to.

There was only one place on the train for a woman to sleep, so when Eleanor joined the campaign for a long trip from the west coast to the east, she had to share the quarters with this highly driven investigative reporter. They became friends and ER remembered their talking late into the night as the train rolled along. Eventually they became more than friends. When they were apart they wrote each other letters, a correspondence that lasted thirty years, from 1932 until shortly before Eleanor’s death in 1962.  There were over 3,000 letters. Eleanor had entrusted both sides of the correspondence to Hick, who was torn about what to do with them. Should she burn them all? Burn only the most blatant love letters? Edit all of the letters for posterity? Friends and Roosevelt family members had definite opinions and Hick felt the pressure. She did some of each, burning the letters that history would judge most harshly. Then she attempted to re-type the milder letters, leaving out personal details, but that proved daunting and the letters lost all sense of liveliness. Eventually, she left the correspondence to the Roosevelt Presidential Library with the stipulation that they be sealed until ten years after her death.

So, in 1978 Doris Faber happened upon the letters. Faber was a journalist who had written young adult books about famous Americans. She was shocked at what she found in the letters and found the idea of the physical expression of the love between Eleanor and Hick “unthinkable.” But the evidence was clear. Even in Faber’s rather homophobic book there are two quotations that I remember. Eleanor wrote to Hick, “I long to kiss the southwest corner of your mouth.” That Is pretty clear! And there was this letter dated March 7, 1933:

The White House

Washingon

Hick darling…Oh, I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it…

Ah, the ring!  When she was in her early twenties and working as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune Hick was sent to interview a touring opera singer, Madame Ernestine Shumann-Heink. They enjoyed each other’s company so much that Shumann-Heink invited the young Hick to return the following night. She gave Hick a gold ring, suitable for wearing on a little finger. Pinkie rings were a lesbian signal in those days (and still are in some circles today) and that may or may not indicate something. In any case, Hick and Schumann-Heink remained friends and corresponded for years. Some time between when Eleanor and Hick met in 1932 and when the Roosevelts moved into the White House, Hick gave the ring to Eleanor, who wore it for many years. When I performed for lesbian and/or feminist audiences, I always enjoyed “suddenly noticing” the ring on my finger and telling that story.  

                                 Eleanor is wearing Hick's ring here, probably in the late 1940s

                                                                    And years later

In 1999, over thirty years after Hick’s death, actress Pat Bond was touring her play Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt: A Love Story.  Hyde Park local historian Patsy Costello saw the play and then discovered that Hick’s ashes had never been claimed for the mortuary after death. Hick had specified that her ashes be scattered under a tree, to provide nourishment. But even those wishes had been ignored and eventually her cremains were buried in the “paupers’ corner” of the cemetery in Rhinebeck, New York. Patsy contacted Linda K., who had produced the play. The two of them went to work contacting women’s studies professors and historians, including Blanche Wiesen Cook, who had written the definitive biography of E.R.  A plan emerged to honor Lorena Hickok by planting a tree and installing a bench and plaque in that cemetery corner. The ceremony would be followed by a luncheon in Rhinebeck.

I had performed in the area a few years earlier in an evening produced by Suzanne McHugh and Annamae Schuler, who sent word that Linda wanted to produce Dear Mrs. Roosevelt in nearby Poughkeepsie and wondered if I would play Eleanor at the luncheon. She wondered if my Eleanor would introduce Blanche Wiesen Cook who would be the speaker. What? Eleanor would introduce her biographer? I wanted to meet Dr. Cook, I wanted to honor Hick, so I said yes. It got stranger and stranger, and more touching too.

The Events

The remote corner of the cemetery was bordered on one side by chain link fencing that protected the big yellow grave-digging machines and a metal shed. On another side I remember trees and more chain link fencing. It was pouring rain and would have been dismal except for the words of the women who honored Hick and her work as an individual, not just as Eleanor’s friend and lover.  The plaque on the bench there reads

Lorena Hickok

“Hick”

Mar, 1893  May 1968

East Troy, WI    Hyde Park, NY

A.P. Reporter

Author

Activist

And

Friend of E.R.

We moved on to the luncheon at an inn in Rhinebeck that had been standing since the American Revolution.  he stalls were occupied in the restroom, and I sat down at a small dressing table, using the mirror to apply my makeup. I could hear the conversation from the stalls:

Voice 1:  “Did you get the file from the FBI?”

Voice 2:   “Yes, finally.”

Voice 1:   “How tall is it?”

Voice 2:    “About eighteen inches, I think.”

Voice 1:   “That file is at least three feet tall. They haven’t sent it all. Write back and demand the                            whole file!”

Voice 2:   Sighing, “Yes, I know.”

The women emerged – Blanche Wiesen-Cook and a woman I didn’t recognize. But I sure did want to know who she was.

I changed clothes and walked into the luncheon, where I was to mingle with the crowd until lunch was served, then introduce Blanche later. I went from table to table, saying, “How do you do, I’m Eleanor Roosevelt,” which led to laughter and then to my “Eleanor” asking the women about their work. At one point, I looked up to see  Annamae bringing Blanche toward me. I took a deep breath. These twenty years later, I don’t remember our conversation, but I do remember sitting at the big round speakers’ table with the movers and shakers who had organized to honor Hick. I was struck by the level of competition among the women for recognition of the work they were doing. Then I remembered I was in the company of academics and competition in academia is relentless. 

I also learned that the woman I’d overheard in the restroom was the new curator at the presidential library. There was hope for access to E.R.'s papers after all!  (More about that next week.)

Best of all was the story from Eleanor’s driver’s daughter. E.R. loved to drive, but in her later years must have had a local driver. After E.R. was buried at St. James Church in Hyde Park, after Presidents Kennedy, Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson and the other distinguished guests had left and evening fell, the man took Hick to Eleanor’s grave, where she stood in silence for a long time. Their romance had ended long before, but their friendship continued. Patsy Costello remembered Eleanor visiting Hick at her apartment in Hyde Park and the two of them sitting under a tree in quiet conversation. I was moved to tears.

But then it was time to speak. By this time in 2000, I had been portraying Eleanor for 15 years in all sorts of situations. I had some practice at bending time – as if Eleanor were both present in the here and now and in the past at the same time. So, I shifted into that mode and talked about Hick for a couple of minutes before I introduced Blanche. About Hick, my “Eleanor” talked about how she gave up her reporting career to move into the White House and work for Franklin as a traveling inspector and reporter to him, about how she gave up so much to be with “me.”  Sometimes I heard my Eleanor say things I had not planned to say. I felt I was stepping aside to let her – or someone – or my subconscious – or who knew – speak through me. So I heard “Eleanor” say, “I hope you have someone in your life who believes in you and supports your work like Hick did.”  I don’t remember how I introduced Blanche, though sure do I wish I could.  I sat down relieved to have done the whole thing at all. Then Blanche talked about how she hoped no one in the room had someone who had given up her own career for them. She was very firm and obviously annoyed. I had screwed up.

I had good reason to be worried about introducing Blanche or appearing at all. I has having trouble just functioning every day.  I had been on mediations for atrial fibrillation for three years and none of them had worked for long. My day job was in jeopardy and I had stopped touring – all because I could not rely on my body to function or my mind to work through the fog of deep cardiac-induced fatigue. My heart arrhythmias could stop me in my tracks and I was sometimes near fainting. I was so eager to honor Hick and to meet Blanche Wiesen Cook that I had accepted this gig and mini tour, all arranged by Linda K. It was my friends Suzanne and Annamae who helped me to get through it.

The next task was a gig at Vassar. We set up Eleanor’s sitting room in the center of a large room because the stage crew never appeared and there was no lighting on the stage. We had to demand that some students who were chattering in a corner leave before the audience arrived. Finally one couple appeared. Suzanne and Annamae expected I would cancel the performance, especially since I was quite fatigued. But instead, we pulled up more chairs and invited the couple to sit down. The five of us talked for about an hour, they shared their memories of Eleanor and FDR, and we all had a good time.

The next night was a performance at a local bar.  Yes, a bar. Though I had been assured it was more like a coffeehouse and the audience would be mostly feminists, respectful and fascinated. I’d heard it all before. It turned out the performance was in a basement bar with no lighting much of anywhere, least of all on the stage. The stage itself was shoulder height off the floor of the room which left about a foot and a half between the top of my head and the ceiling. To get onstage, I had to climb up a rickety wooden two-step stool in sight of the audience. The stage was a wonder – obviously where bands usually played. We had to insist more than once that the bar employee help move the large amps to a back corner. Suzanne and Annamae worked hard to get an armchair and other small pieces of furniture up onto the stage where the carpet was sticky and reeked of booze. As I dressed and made up in the dismal restroom, I could hear the conversation from the bar and wasn’t even surprised when I emerged to make my entrance and discovered about 8 people in the audience, two of whom were the stalwart Suzanne and Annamae.  

One of them steadied me as I climbed onto the stage. As I looked up to take in the Sex Pistols poster on the wall of Eleanor Roosevelt’s erstwhile sitting room and I knew in that instant that my performing career was over.

Linda did promise to give Balance Wiesen Cook my promo video tape, but I never heard anything further. Linda had to be persuaded over the  next few weeks to pay me the contracted amount for my work. Suzanne, Annamae, and Linda all told me Blanche had been highly impressed by my “Eleanor”.  But a few weeks later there appeared in a feminist publication an article by Blanche Wiesen Cook elaborating and lamenting on Hick’s sacrifice of her career as part of her relationship with Eleanor. It felt like salt in a wound.

It was time to quit. But, wait, there’s more… (next week)

Notes:

For the best reading or listening about it all, see Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn.  I’m grateful to be reminded about how the dedication of Hick’s burial site came about.

For the White House living arrangements and much more, see the Pulitzer Prize winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The definitive biography of Eleanor Roosevelt is in the three volumes by Blanche Wiesen Cook:

   Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 1: 1884-1933

   Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2: The Defining Years,1933-1938

   Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939-1962

The letter mentioning the ring is quoted from Nytimes.com/1979/10/21/archives/leters-by-eleanor-roosevelt-detail-friendship-with-lorena-hickok.html  

For a fascinating account of E.R.’s funeral and the presidents and first ladies in attendance, see https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/eleanor-roosevelts-anything-but-private-funeral/264460/

Disclaimer:  Because I do not currently have access to my records, archive, or library, all information here about performances and touring in general is based upon my memory. If you, dear reader, have corrections, please do comment. All other information is available in the resources listed above.

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