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The earliest photograph of Edgar shows a glum-faced little boy, hunched at his parents’ side wearing a brass-buttoned jacket, a watch chain and knickerbockers. By one account, he was a ‘high-strung’ child, ‘sickly and excessively fearful, clinging to his mother whenever he could.’ He started at Brent Elementary School in 1901, when he was six and as Theodore Roosevelt was about to become President, and he was a star student from the start.

‘I passed 5th highest in the first year with an average of 93.8,’ Edgar was to write in his leather-bound notebook. The school reports confirm it. From Third to Eighth Grade, Edgar received ‘Excellent Plus’ or at least ‘Good’ in Arithmetic and Algebra, Grammar and Language, Penmanship and Reading, History and Civics.

Not only did the teachers report on Edgar, he made notes about them: ‘Miss Hinkle, 4th Grade, who raised me in discipline … Miss Snowden who raised me intellectly [sic]… Miss Dalton, 8th Grade, a fine lady who raised me morally …’ Edgar was never ever, he boasted to his notebook, kept back by the teacher after class.

When he was old enough, Edgar would walk the streets of Washington – safe in those days – to meet his father at his office. Dickerson, Sr., seems to have doted on his youngest child, and both the affection and the father’s modest origins shine through the language of a letter Edgar kept. ‘Dear old man,’ Dickerson wrote from St Louis in 1904. ‘I wish you was [sic] here so that I could fight you in the morning. Mamma might think you ain’t strong, but just let her try to fight you and she will find out … Be a good boy. With a big kiss. From Papa.’

‘Don’t study too hard,’ the father wrote cheerfully. Annie was different. ‘Study hard both your lessons and your music,’ she wrote, ‘and try to be a good boy … Was so glad to hear you were perfect in your spelling and arithmetic. Take care of everything nicely and don’t run the streets.’ Annie was strict, but according to Dorothy Davy, ‘Edgar, of all her children, was the one she spoiled.’

In 1906, the year he turned eleven, Edgar started his own ‘newspaper.’ He collected two pages of material each week, and persuaded his elder brother – then twenty-six – to type it up. Edgar called his paper The Weekly Review, and sold it to family and friends for one cent a copy.

The Review offered snippets of family news along with items about Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin. One early headline reported the marriage of the President’s daughter Alice to the Speaker of the House. Alice Roosevelt, beautiful, brave and outrageous, was the woman of the decade.

By 1908, when he was thirteen, Edgar was keeping a diary. He noted daily temperatures and cloud cover, births and deaths in the family, his income from doing odd jobs, even lists of his own hat, sock and collar sizes.

‘All the family,’ said Edgar’s niece Dorothy, ‘had that horrible thing about organization. Everything had to be organized and catalogued, and the pictures had to be straight on the wall – always. It sounds crazy, but we were all like that.’

On Sunday evenings, an old man with a flowing white beard would come to dinner. This was Great-Uncle John Hitz, from Annie’s side of the family, and his visits to the Hoovers meant a solemn Bible-reading session. The entire family would kneel while Uncle John, a staunch Calvinist, prayed.

Contrary to common assumption, though, neither of Edgar’s parents was especially devout. Dickerson considered himself a Lutheran. Annie fitted in but, according to Dorothy Davy, ‘she was a Catholic, more or less. Edgar’s mother attended Catholic schools, and she would die with a crucifix in her hands.’ Edgar’s nephew, Fred Robinette, confirmed that Annie was ‘no Bible-thumper.’ Neither she nor her husband attended church regularly.

Out of the religious mix came anxiety and confusion. In later life, in an overwrought moment, Edgar’s sister Lillian threw the family Bible into the fire. Edgar, who publicly spoke of himself as