For my blog post today about Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician,
I'll use as my starting-point something that Morris says on page 56.
Essentially, Morris expresses skepticism of Richard Nixon's claim that
he grew up poor:
"...the well-dressed Nixon children, the tractor
and car, the hired help, the china closet----all belied the later,
well-publicized images of poverty, and bespoke, for those who knew, both
Milhous subsidies and pride. Richard Nixon had not been born or left
to the grim impoverishment depicted in his political mythology. The
reality seemed very different to others nearby who lived much the same
existence, and even in the same larger family. 'We had our own good
small happy life,' Jessamyn West once said of her comparable childhood
in Yorba Linda, separated from the Nixons by the irrigation ditch.
Measured against the poor-boy origins Richard seemed to claim later,
against genuine poverty in the basin and elsewhere, she concluded, 'We
were the landed gentry.'"
Jessamyn West was one of Richard Nixon's
cousins, and she became an author. Nixon in one of his books that I
read (I forget which one) referred to a conversation that he had with
her.
Morris may be right that the Nixons were not as poor as many
of their neighbors. Some may say that Nixon fabricated the whole story
about his childhood poverty for political purposes----so he could
portray himself as someone who understands people's problems, or so he
could glory in his rise from humble roots. But, while Nixon may very
well have appealed to his alleged humble roots for political purposes, I
don't think that's the whole story. Perhaps Nixon looked back and
thought that he was poor in his childhood, in comparison to his
affluent lifestyle and all of the money that he made as an adult.
Moreover, while his immediate family of origin may not have been as poor
as others, it also was not rich. It struggled.
What's
interesting is that Morris himself narrates that Richard Nixon's mother,
Hannah, thought that she was poor. Morris quotes a family friend who
said that Hannah "seemed sometimes overwhelmed by the poverty." Morris
also quotes Hannah herself as saying: "While we were there, the lemon
grove only kept us poor. Many days I had nothing to serve but corn
meal. I'd bring it to the table and exclaim, 'See what we have
tonight----wonderful corn meal!' And they would gobble it up as if it
were the most delectable of dishes." Morris also narrates that one
reason that the Milhous family did not care for Frank Nixon (Hannah's
husband, and Richard's father) was "Frank Nixon's failure to do more
than scratch a living from the tract" (page 56, the Milhous family
provided the Nixons with financial assistance, though). But Morris also
quotes the Nixons' neighbors, who didn't think that the Nixons were
particularly poor. While Morris does appear to have his own opinions
and conclusions about this issue, one reason that I am liking his book
so far is that he includes different perspectives. Not only on this
issue, but also on the question of whether Nixon was introverted as a
child, Morris includes different views from eyewitnesses: he quotes
Jessamyn West, who says that Nixon was not the sort of child you'd want
to hug, but he also quotes someone who related that the young Nixon
jumped on her lap and told her he would grow up to hunt wild animals!
On
the issue of Nixon's discussions of his alleged childhood poverty, I'd
like to relate to you a story that Stephen Ambrose told in volume 3 of
his Nixon trilogy----a story that I enjoyed but did not get an
opportunity to write about. Nixon liked to tell the story about how he
wanted a pony when he was a child, but did not get one. On page 586,
Ambrose talks about what Hugh Sidey said happened when Nixon tried to
tell his pony story to Yugoslavian Communist leader, Marshal Tito:
"Nixon
overdid his boyhood experiences to elicit sympathy. He told the story
of the pony he wanted but never got so often that reporters turned it
into a joke. Hugh Sidey relished the time he watched Marshal Tito and
President Nixon in the tiny bedroom of Tito's boyhood home. Nixon got
going on the pony story; Tito cut him off: 'We had eleven kids who were
in this room.'"