‘I think I’d notice if my husband moved another woman into the next bedroom’

Amy Bloom on a First Lady’s affair in the White House

THE president’s spouse has moved her lover, with whom she is passionately enamoured, into an adjoining bedroom in the White House. Another twist in the ongoing TV reality show that is the Trump presidency? Well, no, but then nothing is beyond the realms of possibility under the current regime, agrees renowned American novelist Amy Bloom.

Bloom -- who is writing the screenplay for a TV series based on her latest novel, White Houses, which tells of such a long-camouflaged if richly rumoured real-life relationship between that sainted iconic First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a trailblazing newspaperwoman, Lorena Hickok -acknowledges that no novelist could make up current events in America.

“It would take a combination of Monty Python and Philip Roth and David Sedaris working 24 hours a day to write about this White House,” she sighs. What if Melania moved in a beloved friend -- as Eleanor did with Hickok? “Oh, Sarah Huckabee Sanders would stand up and say it didn’t happen, that there is nothing wrong with it anyway. If you say there is, you are not a patriot,” says Bloom who grew up in a staunchly Democratic family. “My parents were New Yorkers and Jews so of course they supported Roosevelt and everything he stood for.”

While researching her bestselling last novel, Lucky Us, which tells of half-sisters in search of fame and fortune in 1940s Hollywood, Bloom, 64, found the Roosevelts ubiquitous. “Eleanor, Teddy, Franklin, the cousins, all that intermarrying... They are just everywhere in American history. I read the biography of Franklin then turned to the excellent biography of Eleanor by Blanche Wiesen Cook and there is this woman, referred to as the ‘First Friend’ and the ‘First Press Secretary’.

“I found that there were 3,000 letters between Eleanor and this woman journalist, Lorena Hickok -- ‘Hick’ -- and that she lived with [Eleanor and Franklin] in the White House -- that big boarding house which was then very, very shabby -- on and off for 12 years.

“I read all the letters -- Hick burnt about a hundred because she felt they were too explicit -- and I thought, ‘Oh, this was a great love affair and an enduring friendship!’ Then I wanted to know what was it like to be a great admirer of the president and a great supporter of his, as Hick was, and be madly in love with his wife who is madly in love with you. Franklin and Eleanor were, after all, the New Deal power couple.

“When her book came out, Wiesen Cook was crucified for writing about Eleanor and Hick’s relationship, which was at its peak from 1932 to 1936. All the other historians -- male! -- were rude and disbelieving and kept asserting it was her own agenda because she is a lesbian, that Eleanor was a Victorian lady who was just effusive in her language. Eventually, however, they all spent the next five years writing notes of apology, saying, ‘Oops, I did read the letters and that is a very reasonable conclusion to draw’.

“The letters have things like, ‘I look at your ring on my finger and think, oh, she must love me or I would not have this.’ Or, ‘Oh, I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close.’ These are love letters, physically specific about romantic intimacy.

“As close as I am to my girlfriends, I have never written to one of them, ‘I long to kiss you on the south-east corner of your lips and lie beside you all night.’ This relationship was eliminated from American history. Hick was actually cut out of many photographs. FDR was a great president, of course, but he was definitely not a perfect man since he had many affairs, the most obvious was with White House secretary Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, whom Eleanor picked for the job because she knew Franklin needed to be adored.”

Did he know about the affair between his wife and Hick? “I think I would notice if my husband moved another woman into an adjoining bedroom!” exclaims Bloom. “After Hick quit her job at Associated Press, FDR sent her on the road as an investigator for his Depression-era Federal Emergency Relief Administration. But I think those 3,000 letters broke up the narrative of American history, which is that the Roosevelts fell in love, that Eleanor adored him and he broke her heart by having a big affair with her secretary, Lucy Mercer, then she discovered their letters and offered him divorce.

“He didn’t take it because his mother said she would cut off his funds. Then he became this great president changing the country so Eleanor took her broken heart, became a saint and did good deeds. That is standard American history, but then ten years later she actually fell in love with a woman -- and it was passionate, tender and physical, and it changed her life. And that’s a very different narrative.

“Sure, FDR made our country different, but it’s the other side of Me Too. Nothing stays behind closed doors forever. Once that snowball starts rolling down the hill, it is going to pick up some traction.”

White Houses, Bloom’s fourth novel, is related by Hick, who rose from a brutally abusive, dirt-poor childhood in South Dakota to become a tough, successful newspaperwoman. Bloom admits it took her a while to find her voice. “Still, I love Hick as a narrator. She’s a straight-talker and she’s not a lady like Eleanor. As she said, she will forever be identified with servants because that’s how she made a living. But she also covered major news stories, particularly the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, and was the first woman reporter to have her byline in the New York Times.”

The novel spools back to tell Hick’s story. Employed as a hired girl after being raped by her father, she runs away to join the circus and has an affair with a hermaphrodite. Is this true? Or is it fake fact?

“Sorry,” Bloom apologises. “I made that up -- so little is known about Hicks’ early life and I’ve always wanted to write about the freak shows and the carnivals.” Which is hardly surprising given that I first met Bloom some years

I read the letters and I thought, ‘Oh, this was a great love affair and an enduring friendship’