Upstairs at the Roosevelts'

by Roosevelt, Curtis;

  But with sharp-eyed onlookers such as Eleanor’s first cousin, Alice Roosevelt, around, Lucy and Franklin being often seen together would not go unnoticed. Observers like Alice might have noted, “perhaps a little too frequently?” She, in short, would have concluded that something was up. And so it was. Franklin and Lucy had fallen in love, deeply in love. It may have been my grandfather’s first experience of being head over heels.

  Considering Franklin’s natural reserve, and the close eye he kept on his future political career, the situation must have been overwhelming. But I can guess that he was quite aware that such an emotional response to Lucy was fraught with imponderables. Perhaps it was her uncritical acceptance of him that entranced him, just as he had always dreamed a spouse would be. Lucy offered admiration and affection in a natural and unaffected way. Whatever the case, FDR was smitten. Caution was thrown to the wind.

  Whether they were physically intimate— and this we will never know—is not that relevant in my view. Personally, I doubt it, for Washington’s small upper-crust circle was very visible, and FDR’s tall figure in his bowler hat was easy to spot. As a senior official in the Wilson administration, he was well known. Undoubtedly the fondness of Miss Mercer and Mr. Roosevelt for each other was noted, but they must also have been much on guard, trying to maintain a proper front—no matter how difficult this must have been for two people so infatuated.

  If Franklin thought about it, as I suspect he did, he knew that he did not want to be divorced from Eleanor. But in such situations, clear thinking about consequences is usually not what happens. That FDR could meet a person with whom he could share intimate feelings must have bowled him over, offering him a totally new experience, and one he desperately wanted to hang onto. Still, I’m guessing, he knew it could not possibly be sustained.

  As might be expected, the affair eventually came to the surface. The jig was up when Eleanor found love letters from Lucy to Franklin when unpacking his suitcase upon his return from an official trip to Europe. FDR had been seriously ill, and on arrival in New York he had had to be carried off the ship on a stretcher. Delirious from his illness he must have forgotten about the incriminating correspondence in his suitcase.

  Soon, news of the revealed relationship made for high drama in slumberous Washington. And Cousin Alice Roosevelt led the pack in this gossip-starved little society. No doubt my grandmother felt deeply hurt, feelings that remained buried within her even after FDR had promised to end the affair and never see Lucy Mercer again. In later life, talking with her friend and biographer Joseph Lash, my grandmother would dwell on FDR’s disloyalty.4 She was, she told Lash, “deeply hurt, and remained so.” In other words, she never really forgave Franklin. Yet what Eleanor described as “hurt” was more accurately, I feel, a deep exposure to humiliation. One she never forgot.

  The sad fact, however, is that while politeness and good form were always maintained in their marriage, the more than ten years of unresolved tension between Franklin and Eleanor had made the time ripe for Mercer—or another woman—to make an appearance in his life. I offer the above simply as an explanation of FDR’s behavior, not as an excuse. There is no ignoring that her husband’s affair with Miss Mercer caused my grandmother great pain. Franklin’s mother, Sara, was horrified and fully supported her daughter-in-law, saying that she would cut off all further financial support for her son if he divorced Eleanor—which was something that Eleanor had offered. (A perfunctory gesture, I feel sure.)

  Historians cite FDR’s political ambitions and the continual need for his mother to top up the family’s finances as the basic reasons why Franklin decided to maintain his marriage. Both are accurate, but they form only part of the picture. While the overriding reality is that FDR had no future as a divorced man, either financially or in politics, I think, too, that, deep down, he cared a great deal about his large family.

  These realities, however, mask a more subtle point. Franklin’s rash reaching out to another person for affection and approval might be understood, even condoned, by today’s standards. However, in that era, divorce was a social disgrace, surely leading to very awkward situations, with friends disapproving and taking sides. Being in love is one thing, finding a way to live with this love is another. Such circumstances may be routine today, but it certainly wasn’t the case in 1918.

  Both Franklin and Eleanor were very conservative when it came to social form, particularly with institutions such as marriage. I don’t think separation or divorce could ever have been carried through by either of them. They were both raised to endure and to make the best of things. And so they did. Their marriage was to continue but under constraint, and in a different mode.

  My grandfather’s affair with Lucy Mercer continues to leave me puzzled. He always had a shrewd sense of his political position—his political future—and he was quite open about his ambitions. I cannot imagine that the practically minded Franklin Roosevelt did not occasionally pause in his infatuation and wonder about this. The only explanation is that infatuation is indeed blinding.

  On the other hand, my grandmother’s writing and her repeated comments to Joe Lash, indicate to me that her resentment, and the continual replay of her feeling so, was devoid of any sense of her own role in her husband’s loneliness. She saw herself as the injured one. Franklin had broken their marriage vows—as simple as that. For Eleanor the violation of the vows was a betrayal. All too true. But recognition of her own limited capacity to give of herself in the marriage never seems to have crossed my grandmother’s mind. (And I never heard of anyone suggesting it to her.)

  FDR was not alone in his frustrations with his wife and his feelings of loneliness. My mother and uncles also felt keenly about their mother’s limited approach to mothering. She brought this element of her personality, her innate reserve, into her marriage, and neither children nor husband, nor life experience over the years as a wife and mother altered it. In conversation with a noted psychiatrist later in life, Eleanor commented that she saw Franklin as “the comforter” and her role as “the disciplinarian” in the family.5

  Writing later, she acknowledged that she hadn’t been a very good parent, yet she gave no explanation other than her inexperience—the “not knowing how,” as I’ve said, and feeling nervous about picking up her baby for fear she would drop it. (My grandmother ruefully acknowledged this to me one day as we were discussing my having gone to a “father’s class” at New York Hospital when anticipating my own daughter’s arrival in the world.)

  Eleanor’s plight wasn’t helped by Franklin always being circumspect in his thoughts. If not an “impenetrable forest”—Robert Sherwood’s description earlier cited—everyone agrees that he was not an open person. Indeed, no one writing about him can ignore his limited capacity to reveal the inner man—in sharp contrast to his up-front charisma, the overt charm that marks the memory of him for most Americans.

  When in the aftermath of the affair he had settled into a “normal” relationship with Eleanor—although a different normal—Franklin continued his political career, hardly missing a beat. In 1920 he was chosen to run for the vice presidency alongside the Democrat presidential candidate, the Ohio governor James Cox. Campaigning was exhilarating for Franklin. Touring the country and making friends all over America, he quickly became a national figure. Eleanor joined the campaign train once for a brief period, but she kept her distance from the glad-handing of politics. She preferred to stay with the children, she said. Unfortunately, the team of Cox and Roosevelt was doomed to failure; their support of the League of Nations was not popular, and after the First World War and eight years of Woodrow Wilson in the White House, it was the Republicans’ turn to occupy the Executive Mansion. The Democrats’ defeat was fully expected. But the campaign had made for a large step forward when it came to the political career of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was now recognized as a political figure on the national scene, with a future that seemed assured.

  After the election, FDR returned home to New Yo
rk City and entered the world of business to provide the necessary income for his family. It was trying. After eight stimulating years in Washington in the thick of government politics, the return to civilian life and working for an insurance company, as he now did, must have been boring. He was making good money, but in no way did it compensate for the excitement of a senior post in the nation’s capital. Continuing the tedium, he engaged in the expected “noblesse oblige” endeavors during his free time, the activities that help keep out-of-office politicians in the public eye. Among many other things, he headed the fundraising for the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and chaired a supervisory committee for the Boy Scouts in the New York area. All routine.

  However, in New York the revised marriage relationship of Franklin and Eleanor led to my grandmother expressing a new independence. In spite of still rearing at home several small boys—aged four, six, and nine, with one more in boarding school—as well as my then teenage mother, Eleanor, upon returning to New York, stepped free from being confined to raising children and the usual hostess duties entertaining Franklin’s circle that had been her obligatory routine in Washington.

  She now made friends of her own. Her first close acquaintances were Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, both intellectuals who carried on professional careers but who made it a point to fill their lives with books and discussions about the political issues of the day. (Theirs was reputed, I was told, to be a “Boston Marriage,” a companionship of two women committed to each other, as if married.) My grandmother sat at their feet, enjoying the new freedom, and finding a place for herself. It was quite a different scene from the usual cocktail hour–dinner table conversations dominated by FDR. Read and Lape encouraged Eleanor to accept a role that saw her reporting on the state legislature in Albany for the League of Women Voters. She did so and very successfully. As Eleanor writes, she began to find within herself a new confidence.

  All this change had barely emerged in the Roosevelts’ lives when another crisis hit. Franklin was stricken with poliomyelitis during the summer of 1921. It was serious from, the start, initially crippling the lower half of his body, then it moved upward, stopping just short of his heart, and finally leaving him unable to walk, paralyzed from the hips downward. Normally it was children who were polio’s victims, but here was a politically ambitious man in the prime of his life. FDR would never walk again. He had enjoyed trout fishing, had been an active golfer, a tennis player, and an avid dancer; all that now became impossible. Even playing strenuously with the children, occasions that both he and they so loved, would be limited to sprawling on the living-room floor, wrestling.

  In the immediate aftermath of his contracting polio, when he was very ill, moving any part of his body was painful. Eleanor’s response to her invalid husband was to assume the role of nurse, one that was stressful and soon was exhausting her strength.

  For the next eight years, FDR concentrated on efforts to recover feeling in his lower limbs—devoting all his energy to trying to achieve any movement that would indicate progress. But despite the intensity of his dedication to his goal, his physical therapy garnered nothing. When swimming in warm pool water he would experience the sensation of movement in his legs but, alas, it was illusory, caused mainly by the buoyancy of the water. He put on a good front, especially if anyone was watching him perform his painful exercises. Within himself, however, he was depressed—and understandably so for a man whose only ambition in life, a political career, had just been shattered.

  Except perhaps for the regular visits of Louis Howe, there was no one really to talk with about how discouraged he felt. As Geoffrey Ward quotes FDR’s secretary, Missy Le Hand, “There were days on the Larocco [FDR’s rented houseboat in Florida] when it was noon before he could pull himself out of depression.”6 At the same time, it is clear to me that choosing to live on a houseboat in the sunny South was also a means of distancing himself from the rancor between his mother and his wife. My grandfather liked to be surrounded by cheerfulness and amusement, or at least a pleasant atmosphere. He disliked unpleasantness. No matter how much Franklin loved his home, life at Hyde Park was no longer congenial.

  Luckily, the insurance company where he worked kept him on the payroll even after the polio attack, although the job, what he could do of it, remained of little interest. Only politics ignited him. FDR had always put forward his unabashed ambition to be president of the United States, and meant it. Being struck out of the only game in life that matters to you cannot help but be devastating, agonizingly so. What was left to him was his stamp collection, any charitable work, and his correspondence with former political peers. Governor Al Smith appointed him chairman of the Taconic State Park Commission, something thought a suitable recognition for this ex-politician who, Smith felt, now wouldn’t even be able to run for dogcatcher.

  Out of a sense of duty, I suspect, my grandmother would make a perfunctory visit whenever her husband repaired to his boat in Florida. She was ill at ease, slept on the deck due to the crowded conditions, and kept her visits to the Larocco brief. Her life remained very much focused on New York, where both the children and her friends engaged her.

  At Louis Howe’s suggestion, Eleanor began to do some politicking on FDR’s behalf—as a way of keeping him alive in the public’s eye. To help prop up her husband’s spirits, she joined Howe in supporting the notion, the hope, of his returning to the political arena. Yet she felt it was a fantasy, given the extent of his disability. Rather, it was about keeping his attention occupied, and was certainly better for him than merely vegetating at Hyde Park with nothing except his hobbies and tree planting. In fact only Franklin Roosevelt and Louis Howe were convinced that FDR would make a return to active politics.

  After his brief turn as a vice presidential candidate, FDR had been considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. But now, losing the use of his legs meant he had become a man on crutches, dragging himself along. His former cronies visited, always polite and encouraging, yet they all considered him a political has-been. In their estimation he was finished. The condescension FDR endured from people like Governor Smith must have been galling.

  Franklin’s illness naturally had resounding implications for his family. My mother told me of the difficult time she and her brothers had. They felt left out. The two youngest were only five and seven years old when they watched their father being carried in a canvas sling from the shore of Campobello Island onto a small boat to be ferried to the mainland. From then on, their time with him would be curtailed and measured by their father’s limited energy. Gone were the days when he would lead them through the woods on paper chases. FDR tried whenever possible to include his children during this period of rehabilitation. He talked openly to them about the effects of polio upon his body. He invited them to join him on vacation on the houseboat in Florida, and subsequently at his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia. But for the children it was nothing like their previous romps with him. They could see that their father’s concentration was focused on his recovery efforts.

  With her husband’s support, my grandmother concluded that the best way of helping him was to assist him with his efforts to stay alive on the political scene. It was also a way of forming a new and useful relationship with her husband while continuing to see her friends and expanding her budding confidence. She was attending meetings and making speeches on FDR’s behalf. What followed was recognition—and in her own right—of Eleanor as a competent and politically savvy person. If not quite a political pro, she was demonstrably not just useful but good at helping to organize the Democratic Party for an election.

  She quickly became chairperson of the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Party, and the editor of their publications. There she had met and become fast friends with the head of the women’s division, Nancy Cook—and her partner, Marion Dickerman. In addition to her continuing friendship with Read and Lape, my grandmother began to spend a lot of time with this other couple in their home.


  My grandfather, concentrating on his physical therapy, was often away for weeks on end. Although my grandmother spoke of trying to be both mother and father to the children, I have often wondered just how much time and attention was given to them during this period. I do know from my mother that it was a period of great anxiety for her and her younger siblings. Polio was mysterious, and considered by many people to be contagious. (Its victims might be relegated to living in isolation in the attic.) When I had a brief illness in 1948, probably influenza, it was diagnosed as polio, and I was actually hospitalized for a few weeks because it was still considered to be contagious by the Los Angeles public health authorities.

  My grandmother was increasingly in the company of Marion and Nancy, who seemed very pleased to have the companionship of Eleanor Roosevelt. (While Nancy and Marion were obviously, so I was told, a lesbian couple, Eleanor attached herself like a third wheel—but not of the same diameter.) Nancy and Marion would join my grandmother at Hyde Park when FDR was there having a rest between his therapy sessions. He said he enjoyed their company because they could talk politics.7

  I remember well “Aunt Marion” and “Aunt Nancy” joining us at the Big House in the mid-1930s for a meal, even though it was a time long after my grandmother had distanced herself from the close friendship she had previously had with them. Early on in her friendship with Cook and Dickerman, in the mid-1920s, Eleanor had mentioned her wish for a place in the country that all three women could share. So Franklin suggested building a cottage for them, near a stream called Val-Kill, on land owned partly by him and partly by his mother. A small Dutch colonial stone house was built that today is open to the public as part of the historic sites at Hyde Park. Franklin himself made the original sketch of the plans and followed closely the construction. (If you visit, ask the Park Service guide to show you pictures of the cottage before John Roosevelt made several additions—a big dormer and the enclosure of the porch.) My grandfather’s attitude toward my grandmother’s newfound friends I find most unusual. He welcomed them—as simple as that—never expressing any reserve toward them.