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White House hospitality demanded that each guest be given whatever he asked for—and thus, President Prado of Peru must be served his eccentric breakfast (beans and cauliflower); and ailing Madame Chiang Kai-shek (who "swept us all off our feet speaking of ... democracy") must have her special bed linen and a silk spread with lace inserts changed each time she stepped out of bed ("I couldn't help wondering how she had managed . . . while she was campaigning with the general in China").
If squab was the order of the day, each guest must get his squab, even if Mrs. Nesbitt had to comb every store and hotel in Washington. And, of course, the whole fate of parties and nations seemed to depend upon who sat where at an official dinner ("a headache, but not mine"). "I sit to the right of our desk," guffawed Dad Nesbitt, who was White House custodian, "because I'm the purtiest!"
"I have never known a woman except Mrs. Roosevelt," says Housekeeper Nesbitt, "whose motives were always pure kindness." Out of this kindness, Mrs. Roosevelt invited all & sundry to stay at the White House—and guests such as Youth Leader Joe Lash just stayed & stayed. Some guests seemed to come merely in order to show how unspeakably rude they could be to the staff; many were "ulcerites" who clung to fantastic diets ("It's like getting religion with some of them"); and even the dogs had special food lists. " 'Secretary of the Interior,' they called me in joke."
Mrs. Nesbitt soon reached the point where she could whip "up a formal dinner for the President of Brazil with only one afternoon's notice," and think nothing of it. By the end of 1935 she had installed her "New Deal kitchen," but she often wanted to retire quietly to Hyde Park. When she once said as much to the President's mother, "Mrs. James" looked her up & down and "said to me then, in the queerest way: 'But you'll never go back.' I wondered later if [she] hadn't been thinking of him . . ."
Peeves & Popcorn. Mrs. Nesbitt hardly ever saw "him," but she saw his normally hearty appetite rise or fall in tune with international relations. He was in fine spirits, for example, when Mrs. Nesbitt's nerves were most frayed—on the occasion of the royal visit of 1939. Months before the visit, Scotland Yard cameramen were on the spot, filming every inch of house and grounds. Gallons of London water (for royal tea) were specially "built" by American chemists.
From Buckingham Palace came a helpful list of royal needs, including the size and type of penholders, towels, clothes hangers, "a large solid table for cleaning shoes" (in the room of the King's valet), and "newspapers [which] never should be produced" in sight of Their Majesties (Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Sunday Pictorial, News of the World). The thermometer was "bubbling close to 100" when the royal party arrived, which did not stop them from retiring to bed that night with winter blankets, hot milk and hot-water bottles.