Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

One of the most entertaining White House memoirs in history was written not by a president, but by a maid.

Her name was Elizabeth Jaffrey. From 1909 to 1926,

Jaffrey was the chief housekeeper to four presidents,

William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge.

In a book titled Secrets of the White House,

Jaffrey chronicled their personal triumphs, foibles, and domestic lives.

The mediest of her stories concerned her mediest boss,

President Taft, a man so profoundly rotund

that after telegramming his secretary of war about a horseback ride,

the secretary replied, referring to your telegram. How is the horse?

As a housekeeper, in addition to cleaning up after presidents, Jaffrey was also responsible for their food,

not just what they ate for themselves, but what they served to guess. Doing their grocery

shopper and gave Jaffrey great insight into presidential taste and appetite. At one end of the

spectrum, President Coolidge, her last boss.

Coolidge was a cheap skate who complained that the hams he was served were too large. He could

eat just one slice. Also, according to another book, Real Life at the White House by Claire and John Whitcomb,

his breakfast consisted of four pecks of wheat.

How he survived on that caloric intake is one of history's great mysteries.

At the other end of the spectrum, Taft, who occupied the White House from 1909 to 1913.

He was Jaffrey's hungriest boss.

For him, Jaffrey bought butter by the tub, potatoes by the barrel, fruit and green vegetables by the crate, she wrote.

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