The Time of the Great Feasts is upon us, with Thanksgiving this week. This year Etiquetteer was reminded somehow of Henrietta Nesbitt, the White House Housekeeper We Love to Hate, and her account of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt’s large, boisterous, and traditional Thanksgivings and Christmases. It’s one thing to go down in History, but quite another to go down in History for doing your job badly. Eleanor Roosevelt brought Mrs. Nesbitt in 1933 to supervise the running of the White House. Alas, her only sterling qualification was that she was a capable baker. She was not a manager, or an expert on protocol, or even that knowledgeable about Washington. And she turned out to be very bossy and unimaginative about food, which led Roosevelt White House meals to be remembered as “undistinguished” at best.
Henrietta Nesbitt, left, with Eleanor Roosevelt and Harriet Elliott, taking the “Consumer Pledge for Total Defense” during World War II.
Her self-defensive memoir, White House Diary, includes valuable information about just what was served on the Roosevelt family’s White House table, including their Great Feasts. That family had a curious tradition Etiquetteer has been unable to find mentioned anywhere else: the sausage necklace. “The President loved the sight of a turkey. It had to come onto the table whole, so he could have the pleasure of carving, and the whole dinner was spoiled for him unless a necklace of little sausages was smoking all around the bird.” How many times did Mrs. Nesbitt forget the sausages to earn that knowledge?
“They had to be a certain kind of sausage,” she went on to say. Going through the Christmas dinner menu of 1933, she gives it as “deerfoot sausage.” What, sausage made out of venison? In fact no, Deerfoot Sausage is a now-defunct luxury brand of sausage. This 1933 Christmas menu is, Etiquetteer bets, representative of the Roosevelt Thanksgiving dinner, too. The 23 Roosevelts seated in the State Dining Room were served:
Clam Cocktail Saltines
Clear Soup Beaten Biscuit
Curled Celery* Stuffed Olives*
Filet of Fish Sauce Maréchale Sliced Cucumbers
Rolls
Roast Turkey Chestnut Dressing Deerfoot Sausages Cranberry Jelly
Creamed Onions Green Beans Candied Sweet Potatoes
Grape and Rubyette** Salad Cheese Straws
Plum Pudding Hard Sauce
Ice Cream
Small Cakes Cookies
Coffee
Candy*
Notice how unexceptional this menu is. Mrs. Nesbitt insisted “Plain American it was, the way the Roosevelts wanted it . . . roast turkey and plum pudding were traditional, and the Roosevelts didn’t want it any other way.” Doris Kearns Goodwin explains in her absorbing book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II that this was in part due to Eleanor’s lack of interest in food. “. . . she never thought about what she was eating. To her mind, good conversation created a good meal, and the food was secondary.” To which Etiquetteer can only respond with the words of the late Mrs. Stephen Haines: “They are equally important, darling.”
As you prepare for your own Great Feast this week, Etiquetteer wishes you Joy, as well as Ease and Expertise, in its preparation and presentation.
*These would have been on the table in small crystal or glass dishes.
**Rubyettes appear to be imitation maraschino cherries made from grapes. They have not been produced for decades now.