White House Diary
Cód:
491_9781406775976
BY HENRIETTA NESBITT There be five ihuu Aitd -j , The Preside if nf lec. uic vi71 have These are the sort of messages Mrs. Henrietta Nesbitt took in stride during her eleven years in the White House one of the largest, most complicated, and most fascinating households in America. Her story is a succession of intimate anecdotes of the great and the near-great Alexander Woollcott, Pade rewski, the King and Queen of Eng land, Jose Iturbi, Winston Churchill, and of course the Roosevelt family it self. It is also a salty and sprightly rec- ord of the worlds most demanding job of housekeeping. ne It was my first view of the White House. For that matter, Id never been in Washington before. Dad and I - Dad being my husband, Henry F. Nesbitt got up early the morning before the inauguration and went through the streets straight to the presidential mansion, as if wed lived in the capital all our lives. This was Mr.. Roosevelts first inaugural, in March 1933. We went up to the White House and stood looking through the northwest gate, and I felt like the old woman in the ditty, not certain if it were I, or somebody else. To tell the truth I was scared half to death. It was the biggest home I had ever seen. Like a big wedding cake, I said to Dad. The kind with the white mountain frosting. We walked all around, peeking through the eight gate ways and the iron fence to the green lawns and the flower beds, all planted new for the new president, and across the semicircular drive to the big beautiful house with the tall-pil lared porte-cochere. Even the trees looked important, with their names set in the bark, like trees in a park. I didnt know these very trees had been singed when the British soldiers set fire to the White House, in 1812, that Dolly Madison and her James led cotillions under the elms, and that the big magnolias, starting to bud even this early in the spring, were planted by President Jackson because he was homesick for his Tennessee. All the Presidents, it seems, pla
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