October 1942
It had been a week since Mrs. Roosevelt’s arrival in London, and Ruby, along with every other journalist following the first lady on her goodwill tour of Great Britain, was half dead with fatigue. The woman got up at the crack of dawn, no matter how busy she’d been the day before, and was a perpetual motion machine from the moment her eyes opened.
Yesterday had been a blur, and today promised to be no better. Kaz had told Ruby not to worry if she couldn’t keep up; as long as she and Frank captured a representative sample of Mrs. Roosevelt’s activities, that would be more than enough for a story. But that seemed like giving in, and she couldn’t stand the idea of pulling back and missing something truly newsworthy. The day before, for instance, the president’s wife had not only gone to visit U.S. Air Force personnel at Bovingdon airfield, but she’d also crawled into the cockpit of a B-17, no small endeavor for a tall and stoutly built lady in her fifties.
It had been an effort, but Ruby had managed to drag herself out of bed on time and to work by just past eight o’clock. It was Saturday, which meant a half day of work and then home for a long, long nap. Unless, of course, Mrs. Roosevelt had other plans.
Evelyn, who was never late and never anything less than immaculately dressed, greeted Ruby with an understanding smile. “This just arrived for you,” she said, and handed her a small envelope.
“Thanks.” She looked it over, but there was no return address. “Wonder what it could be?”
“Go on and open it.”
30 October 1942
Dear Miss Sutton,
The pleasure of your company is requested by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt at an informal luncheon for American journalists to be held tomorrow, October 31st, at 11:30 A.M. at the American embassy, 1 Grosvenor Square.
Yours sincerely,
Doreen Wolfort
per Malvina Thompson
“Goodness. It’s an invitation to a luncheon with Mrs. Roosevelt. Today.”
Ruby looked down at the outfit she’d chosen, which was serviceable but by no means attractive. Her shoes needed a good polish, too, and she’d worn the oldest and plainest of her hats.
“Will I do? Or should I go home and change?”
Evelyn shook her head. “I wouldn’t bother. I don’t mean to insult Mrs. Roosevelt, but she isn’t what you’d call a snappy dresser. Do you think she’ll care? Or even notice, for that matter?”
“I doubt it. And it’s sure to be a cast of thousands. If I’m lucky, I’ll get close enough to shake her hand, but no more than that.”
It wasn’t quite a cast of thousands, in the end, but the reception room at the embassy was packed full of journalists, nearly all of them unfamiliar to Ruby. Of course she’d only been at The American for a matter of months before moving to London, and since then she hadn’t socialized with other journalists beyond her modest circle of colleagues. With the exception of her dinner with Dan Mazur, she hadn’t spent any time with other Americans—not unless you counted jostling shoulders in a press scrum.
Today they were all on their best behavior, all doing their best to look responsible and sober. It didn’t change the fact that nearly every guest there would have happily pushed his or her own grandmother in front of an Underground train for the chance of a lively quote from Mrs. Roosevelt.
A door opened at the far end of the room, the ensuing commotion offering ample proof of the first lady’s arrival. A flock of aides came forward, some in civilian dress, others in Red Cross uniforms, and marshaled the guests into a long receiving line that stretched nearly the length of the room. It was that, or risk having Mrs. Roosevelt trampled.
Ruby was near the end of the line, not having been audacious or desperate enough to insert herself closer to its beginning, and as the minutes ticked by she began to worry that Mrs. Roosevelt, or one of her aides, would decide that enough was enough and it was past time she moved on to her next event.
And then the great lady was before her, much taller than Ruby had expected, and she was wearing the same shabby coat she always had on, with an enormous fox-fur stole slung around her neck and a truly awful hat, a round of dark velour that sat on top of her head like a forlorn and very wrinkled pancake. And Mrs. Roosevelt was shaking her hand, the hand of a girl who had no right to be in her presence, let alone meeting the most famous woman in the United States, and she was introducing herself to the first lady.
“Ruby Sutton, ma’am. I’m a staff writer with Picture Weekly here in London.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Sutton,” Mrs. Roosevelt said, her homely face transformed by her smile.
People were always going on about her looks, and it was true that she was far from beautiful—until she smiled. Her smile was so warm, so entirely genuine, that it left Ruby feeling as if the first lady had actually enjoyed meeting her. As if that instant of connection between the two of them had been the high point of Mrs. Roosevelt’s day.
The next person in line received the same, equally heartfelt smile, and the next, until the receiving line was finished and the boldest of the guests surged forward around the first lady, and soon all Ruby could see of her was the top of that terrible hat.
With that kind of crowd, there was no chance of getting close enough to even hear what Mrs. Roosevelt had to say, let alone speak with her. And it did mean she and the remaining guests had first crack at the luncheon buffet. The food wasn’t much to speak of, little more than corned beef sandwiches and pickled vegetables, but it would get her through the day.
She scanned the crowd, but didn’t see Dan Mazur. As far as she knew, he was still in London. Perhaps he felt a luncheon with the first lady, as opposed to the president himself, wasn’t worth his time. Perhaps he had gotten turned around on his way to Grosvenor Square. This last thought left her smiling, but only until she happened to glance down at her watch. It was a quarter past twelve, and at twelve thirty she was meant to be at a press conference for British magazine writers, again hosted by Mrs. Roosevelt.
She wasn’t late, not yet, for the guest of honor was still standing on the far side of the reception room. She still had time, assuming of course the press conference wasn’t miles and miles away. Unlike the first lady, she would have to travel by Underground or bus to get to her next appointment.
Ruby returned her plate to the buffet table, which had been all but denuded of its modest lunch, and ran into the hall. She dug through her bag, trying and failing to unearth the memo she’d received earlier that week with details for the press conference. It had been there yesterday, so what had happened to it since?
It wasn’t there. She would have to ring up the office, and hope the memo was somewhere on her desk. Failing that, it might be in her room at home, except that Vanessa was probably out doing her volunteer work at the hospital, and Jessie was so hard of hearing that she would only hear the phone ringing if she was standing next to it.
“Drat, drat, drat,” she muttered, only just resisting the temptation to hurl her handbag and its incomplete contents down the hall. “Of all the days . . .”
“May I help you?” came a pleasant voice. Ruby turned to see a group of women approaching, two in Red Cross uniforms and one in civilian clothes.
“Sorry about that,” Ruby said, smiling a little sheepishly. “I’m meant to be at the press conference for Mrs. Roosevelt that starts soon, but I lost the memo with the address. I could just kick myself right now.”
“Isn’t that for British journalists?” one of the Red Cross women asked, not unpleasantly.
“It is, but I work for Picture Weekly. I’ve a foot on both sides of the pond, I guess you could say.”
The woman in civilian dress, her face vaguely familiar, looked up from the day diary she’d been examining. “You can come with me,” she offered, and extended her hand for Ruby to shake. “I’m Malvina Thompson.”
“Oh, ah, thank you, Miss Thompson,” Ruby stammered, recognition dawning. “That’s really nice of you to offer.”
Miss Thompson. Tommy Thompson. Mrs. Roosevelt’s personal secretary, press secretary, and chief aide, all rolled into one terrifyingly capable person. Miss Thompson, who had just offered to give Ruby a ride across town.
“It’s no trouble at all, since we’re going there, too. The ladies here will show you out to the car—I’ll be right behind you.”
Ruby dutifully followed the women in uniform outside, to a parking area at the side of the embassy where an enormous black car was waiting. Guarding it were two extremely serious-looking soldiers in U.S. Army uniforms.
“Can’t let you go any further, miss.”
“It’s all right, Private Dunn,” said one of the Red Cross ladies. “Miss Thompson is giving her a lift.”
“I see. We’ll need to see your identification, miss.”
Ruby dug in her bag again, and fortunately was able to unearth her pocketbook right away. “Here’s my press card, and I’ve also got my identification card.” She prayed he wouldn’t ask to see anything else, for her passport and birth certificate had both been lost when the Manchester had been blitzed.
“These look fine. In you go, Miss Sutton. Won’t be long.”
She thanked Private Dunn and the Red Cross women, and got into the car. The interior was huge, far bigger than a black cab. It seemed a bit bold to take one of the forward-facing seats, so she pulled down one of the jump seats and perched on it, wondering how long Miss Thompson was going to be.
The car door opened. Ruby was very glad she had taken the jump seat, for Miss Thompson was preceded into the car by Mrs. Roosevelt herself.
“How are we for time, Tommy?”
“Only a few minutes off the mark, Mrs. R. We’ll make it up at the press conference. Oh—this is Miss Sutton from Picture Weekly. We’re giving her a ride.”
“Good, good. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to talk, Miss Sutton.”
“Oh, no. I mean, there’s no need to apologize, ma’am. You’re the busiest woman in England right now.”
“Ha! Well, I don’t know about that, but I’m glad you understand.”
If Ruby had been dazzled during their introduction back at the embassy, she was utterly star-struck now. Of course she noticed the aspects of Mrs. Roosevelt’s appearance that critics were always going on about: the protuberant teeth, the unfashionable clothing, even her high-pitched and somewhat singsong voice. She noticed, and then she instantly forgot, because those superficial details faded away to nothing when set against the things that did matter: the brightness of Mrs. Roosevelt’s gaze, the warmth of her regard, the acuity of her interest in the person before her.
Only then did it dawn on Ruby that a heaven-sent opportunity had just fallen into her lap, and that she would be no kind of journalist if she didn’t pull herself together and at least attempt to pose a few questions.
“Have you had a busy day so far?” she asked.
“Fairly busy, I’d say. Tommy?”
“Oh, busy enough, Mrs. R.”
“We started with Mr. Winant, who took me to see a photo exhibit. Very interesting—showed the damage done by the RAF to targets in occupied Europe. Then I had a visit from the president and foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, and then a short visit with the Dutch queen. I thought it was very kind of her to come into London to see me. Don’t you agree, Tommy?”
Mrs. Roosevelt plunged on, not waiting for an answer from her secretary, who was busily annotating a stack of documents. “Then we were off to the British Red Cross to see parcels being made up for prisoners of war. I am concerned that the parcels are only going to men whose families can help pay for them. Would you make a note of that, Tommy, so I can follow up? Last of all was our little luncheon just now. Did you get anything to eat?” she asked Ruby, motherly concern animating her face.
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“So now we’ve got this press conference, which should be interesting, and then I’m off to see the Duchess of Kent, poor woman. I wish I could stay with her longer. And then what?” she asked, turning to Tommy.
“We said we’d visit some of the YWCA centers in London, and there’s a Halloween dance for servicemen after that.”
Eight engagements in one day alone, with barely a moment to sit or eat or even gulp down a cup of coffee.
“I honestly don’t know how you do it, Mrs. Roosevelt,” Ruby admitted. “We’re all of us—the press who’ve been covering your visit, that is—we’re just about to fall over trying to keep up with you.”
This provoked an especially broad smile from the first lady. “There’s no secret, you know. You simply get up and start your day and keep going. You don’t get tired because you don’t have time to be tired. If I could, I’d do more, but Tommy won’t let me.”
“It’s for your own good,” Miss Thompson said, not looking up from her papers.
Ignoring this, Mrs. Roosevelt turned back to Ruby. “How did you end up working for a British newsmagazine, Miss Sutton?”
“I was seconded, I guess you could say, from The American. They wanted someone in London, and Picture Weekly needed another staff writer.”
“Do you still write for The American?”
“I do, although they don’t use as many of my stories as they used to. Mainly because they’ve another staff writer over here now. But that’s fine. PW keeps me busy enough.”
“How long have you been in England?”
“Since the summer of 1940, ma’am.”
“So you’ve been here through thick and thin,” Mrs. Roosevelt observed.
“Through the Blitz? Yes. It was awful, just awful, but I’m glad I was here. It was . . . I’m not sure how to put it. A privilege? I mean, how many people get to witness something so extraordinary, in ways that are both bad and good?”
“What did you see that was good?”
“Nothing about the Blitz itself was good—I don’t mean that at all. I guess I mean the way people reacted to it. The courage I saw every day. No matter how bad it had been the night before, people would get up and go to work. Even if they had to climb through wreckage to do it. Even if they had to walk for miles. I saw people working in offices and shops with the windows blown out, and they’d find a way to joke about it. I remember one sign in a shop that said, ‘Even More Open for Business,’ and this was a place with its windows just gone, even the front door gone, but they’d opened and were working as if it was a normal day.”
“You say this as though you weren’t doing the same thing yourself,” Mrs. Roosevelt observed.
“Well, the Picture Weekly offices escaped any real damage. We had a few windows shattered, but that was it.”
“You lived through the same nights of bombing, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Was your home damaged at all?”
“It was. I was living in the Manchester hotel, but it burned down at the end of 1940. It was the same night that St. Paul’s came so close to being destroyed.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Roosevelt said, nodding gravely. “I remember that night.”
“A friend found me a place to stay right away. I’ve been very happy with the family who took me in, so I can’t complain.”
“I think you are a very brave young woman,” Mrs. Roosevelt said decisively.
“With the greatest of respect, ma’am, I’m no braver than anyone else,” Ruby insisted. “I came to London to report on the war, and I knew it would be dangerous. So I can hardly object when danger came calling.”
“Well said, Miss Sutton.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt. The thing is, though, if anything happens to me, the world won’t stop spinning. Far from it. But you take a lot of risks by traveling overseas and working yourself to the bone, and there are some people who say it would be better for you to stay at home, or that you should confine yourself to the sort of good works first ladies have always done. What would you say to such people?” Ruby readied her notebook and pencil, hoping and praying to get the sort of quote that journalists across England would faint over.
“Well, of course it’s hard work. Anything that is truly worth doing is going to be hard and difficult and even dangerous at times. But peace will only be won with sacrifice and hard work, and I believe I must set an example for others to follow.”
“May I ask what you think of England and its people?”
“I hold them in the highest regard. I can’t help but admire their sense of obligation in fulfilling their duties, for I see it everywhere I go. From the ordinary man on the street to the king himself, I have observed, in my time here, an unswerving devotion to duty, no matter the cost to self. And I firmly believe such devotion to duty will win the war.”
“We’re here, Mrs. R,” Miss Thompson observed.
“Good, good. Did you get enough from me, Miss Sutton?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. More than enough.”
The car drew to a gentle stop; outside, a crowd of reporters and photographers already lay in wait. Mrs. Roosevelt sat up straight, adjusted her awful hat, and shook Ruby’s hand with the vigor of a lumberjack. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you, Miss Sutton. I shall look out for your work.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt, and thank you as well for allowing me to come along.”
“That was Miss Thompson’s doing. Onward, Tommy?”
“And upward, Mrs. R,” her faithful aide replied. The car door opened, the crowd surged forward, and Mrs. Roosevelt was off, striding forward, shaking hands and dazzling everyone with the glow of her attention.
“Are you coming, miss?” Private Dunn asked, coming round to peer inside the car.
“Oh, yes—sorry. Was feeling a little bowled over. Is she always like that?”
“Always. Never forgets anyone’s name, always has a smile. Always doing nice little things for us. ‘How are you today, Private Dunn?’ she said to me this morning. ‘Have you had a letter from your wife this week?’”
“I’d always thought the stories about her . . . well, they seemed too good to be true.”
“And now?”
“Now? Now I feel like doing cartwheels down the street!”
“You do that, Miss Sutton—but wait until after the press conference. And you’d better hurry on in. Time, tide, and Mrs. Roosevelt wait for no one.”
Dispatches from London
by Miss Ruby Sutton
November 3, 1942
It’s a strange thing to sit in a car across from the most famous woman in the world and have the gift of her attention for a few minutes. She’s the busiest woman in the world, too, and she does more in one average day than most of us manage in a week. If ever a woman were fitted for her place in history, our First Lady belongs to this time and this place . . .