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That is the kind of whimsical and sardonic oversimplification to which Hopkins is addicted. Actually there are many other reasons why he has lasted as long as he has. For one, he and the President are alike in many respects. Both have been severely racked by illness. The clinical history of Harry Hopkins would alone fill a book, and his friends talk as freely of his illnesses as they do of his other characteristics, like chain-smoking, his fierce pride, his easy rationalizations, or the lean, gaunt frame on which his clothes hang with scarecrow looseness.
The "Hick." One of Hopkins' friends who has made a fortune as a judge of character has said of him: "Harry is a hick. Harry will always be a hick. He still gets a small-towner's thrill out of going to a New York nightclub and spotting famous people." Yet Harry Hopkins is certainly as sophisticated a hick as ever came down the road: the hayseed on him has charmed more notables than an ascot tie ever would have.
Hopkins has been married three times. The first was in 1913 when, as a young Manhattan social worker just out of Grinnell College, he met, ardently wooed and won another young social worker named Ethel Gross. They had four children. One died in infancy. The others, all sons, entered the Army, Navy & Marines when war came. Pfc. Stephen Hopkins of the Marines was killed in action last February on Namu Island. Lieut. David Hopkins of the Navy is in the South Pacific, and Sergeant Robert Hopkins is in Europe.
After 17 years the Hopkinses were divorced. Soon after, Harry married Barbara Duncan, a secretary at the New York Tuberculosis and Health Association, of which Hopkins was then head. They had one child, Diana, now a student at Washington's Potomac School. Barbara Hopkins died in 1937.
In 1942, Hopkins met Mrs. Louise Gill Macy, Manhattan divorcee and onetime Paris fashion expert for Harper's Bazaar. They were married in the White House and lived there for a year before moving to their home in Georgetown. Mrs. Macy was well known in Manhattan cafe society, and some of Harry's old friends of WPA days began mumbling that Harry was deserting them in favor of glitter and wealth. But long before he met his present wife, Hopkins had had many friends among the rich—the Whitneys, the Harrimans, the Forrestals, the Stettiniuses, the John Hertzes—moving as effortlessly in their circles as he once did among the poor of Manhattan's lower east side. Bernard Baruch's wedding present to the Hopkinses was a sumptuous dinner for 50 at Washington's Carlton Hotel— a fairly routine affair of its kind, which raised the blood pressure of anti-New Deal newspapers.
The Politician. There are two patterns present in Harry Hopkins' life. The first is that he has always been a large spender of other people's money while earning very little himself. As head of New York City's Board of Child Welfare in 1915 (when he was 25) he spent $10 million annually; his salary was $3,000. As head of the New York Tuberculosis and Health Association, he spent $2 million (salary: $10,000). As WPAdministrator he disposed of $9½ billion (salary: $8,500). Now as head of the Munitions Assignments Board, he often has the final say on cutting up the tremendous pie of U.S. munitions. Salary: $10,000.