Whenever her husband returned to the Big House, Eleanor dutifully joined him, keeping the small room next to his as her bedroom. Otherwise she would be working in New York City or on the weekends at Val-Kill cottage with Nan and Marion. She was, as always, busy, busy, busy.
Granny’s response to her daughter-in-law’s new friends was more reserved but not unfriendly. After Val-Kill was occupied by Marion and Nan—and as a weekend place by Eleanor—Sara sometimes noted in her letters that Eleanor was often not at home where, Granny felt, she belonged. But there was never any overt friction, and my great-grandmother was always a gracious hostess to Nan and Marion, as both women would confirm.
That Eleanor did not feel “at home” in the Big House is well known. But what is often forgotten is that Sara was the matron—the owner—of Springwood, and would continue to be so until she died late in 1941. When staying there, as I often did, it was obvious that Sara Delano Roosevelt was the mistress of the Hyde Park estate. She ran the household. She regularly made the rounds of the property, just as “Mr. James” had done, until she was in her early eighties.
No, it wasn’t Eleanor’s home. Yet living with one’s mother-in-law could be quite normal—as it could be to have adjacent houses, as the Roosevelts did on Sixty-Fifth Street in Manhattan. Even that was not that unusual. (My grandparents had been married in the double house of cousin Henry Parrish.)
With regard to Eleanor’s new relationships—with Esther and Elizabeth as with Nancy and Marion—I see my grandmother stepping out on her own, expressing her independence by establishing close, indeed loving, relationships with these women. As such it couldn’t help but be a very significant period in the development of Franklin and Eleanor’s marriage. FDR was giving all his energy to trying to recover some use of his legs, and he still hoped to return—someday— to active politics. But he needed his wife, and she was responsive in very practical ways. In this crisis they learned to be supportive of each other. I see the period from 1920 to 1928 as the time for feeling out and developing the partnership that would be further developed when Franklin returned to public life, eventually occupying the White House.
Throughout this period my grandmother continued to have her own life, her own friends, and her own work. She wrote extensively for popular magazines, and by the time Franklin returned to politics as governor of New York in 1928, Eleanor was, in fact, making more money than he was. But she always carried out her “wifely” institutional responsibilities at the governor’s mansion in Albany just as she would do in the White House in Washington—all the while maintaining at full speed her own activities.
As governor of what was then the biggest state in the United States, Franklin’s return to active political life found him a much tougher man—as well as a more sensitive one. His eight years of therapy for his polio may not have produced any improvement in his physical condition but it had taught him patience, fortitude, and humility. In practical terms he would learn a great deal more during those four years as governor, 1928–32, for the Great Depression had just settled into America. FDR tested his political strength, his views widened, his confidence increased.
As a politically aware spouse, Eleanor now offered valuable support. She was already well known within the New York State Democratic Party, and now deemed a professional by those who had worked with her. Many years later when I accompanied my grandmother to Paris for the 1948 session of the UN General Assembly, I watched the other members of the U.S. delegation and its staff being terribly surprised at what an experienced politician Mrs. Roosevelt seemed to be. They were completely unaware of her honed political experience gained even before FDR became president.
In spite of their stresses and difficulties, or perhaps because of them, Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage did evolve into the partnership that so many people have written about. As far as I know, this mutuality wasn’t anything they ever talked about; both just implicitly understood it. Quite unlike other prominent political couples, particularly recently, the Roosevelts relied on their shared values and practiced restraint in order to understand each other. It was more than a profound respect for each other, far more than a front of politeness. Each trusted the integrity of the other. Eleanor and Franklin shared a common heritage, beginning with their Victorian background, and this continued as a guide for their marriage and behavior. At times it weighed heavily on the latter part of the vow, “for better or for worse.” But I emphasize the “for better” as the relationship evolved.
Indeed the partnership blossomed further, taking on a new dimension during the White House years, 1933–45. In my view my grandmother found that being “Mrs. Roosevelt” was an identity that fitted her perfectly. She now had a reputation of her own across America, and of course her influence as the wife of the president. The partnership of Eleanor and Franklin was tacitly recognized by everyone in Washington. They were not a “team,” but they worked together in a complementary way.
An extraordinary example was Eleanor being trusted with the task of going to the Democratic National Convention in 1940 to speak to the rancorous delegates who were about to deny FDR’s choice for the vice-presidential nomination. Key Democratic Party leaders had been urging FDR to come to Chicago, but he wouldn’t budge from Washington. So they pressed Eleanor to come. Naturally, she asked her husband if he wanted her to go. In her autobiography she wrote of his reply: “It would be nice for you to go, but I do not think it in the least necessary.” Eleanor then repeats to him what party leaders had been saying to her and asks, “If Jim Farley asks me to go, do you think it would be wise?”8 FDR replied, “Yes, I think it would be.” (These are my grandmother’s recollections. Why was my grandfather being so coy, I wonder? Or is it my grandmother pumping up another good story?)
Eleanor Roosevelt’s address at the convention was brief, quite extemporaneous. (She recalls having jotted down a few phrases on the back of an envelope.) It was made up of generalities but with many implications—and the delegates got the point. They agreed to nominate Franklin’s choice of Henry Wallace. Soon afterward, FDR telephoned to say that he had listened to her speech. As she modestly reported, he told her “that [she] had done a very good job.” I remember the smile on my grandmother’s face as she told this story.
One question, regularly asked, remains—especially by those who would attribute much of the New Deal to Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts. How much influence did she have on her husband, the president? This is one of those “iffy” queries to which no one has a definitive answer. Primarily from talking with my mother and grandmother, I conclude that Eleanor’s influence with her husband varied from one issue to the next. On some, her opinion carried great weight, while on others very little. Not a brilliant analysis perhaps, but it does make sense if you appreciate FDR’s sense of timing in politics, which was a major element of his thinking process, one he always kept to himself.
Throughout, one basic variable was always in play: If it was a political issue on which my grandfather and grandmother agreed, and one for which FDR could see a politically viable way forward, there was no problem. But if it was a politically touchy piece of legislation before the Congress, FDR could be evasive, if not downright secretive. As I say, timing in politics was his game, one he alone knew best how to gauge. I feel it was instinct that guided him. His evasiveness with my grandmother could irritate her no end, so she would shrug her shoulders and then let off steam with my mother or one of her friends.
After her husband’s death, my grandmother expressed some amusement at her own frustration. She came to see that her influence was always subject to his game, his canny ways—all of which made him an extraordinary president. Indeed, I suspect my grandfather often did not know what he would do until it felt right within his guts or circumstances forced his hand. And that could be at the last moment!
Another very important element in Eleanor and Franklin’s relationship stemmed from the role she played by bringing information and firsthand observations to her husband, u
sually from sources that would not otherwise have been available to him. Often there were simply poignant letters she had personally received from individual Americans, or significant conversations she had had with people hoping to obtain her influence with FDR. Also it was her extensive traveling across America that enabled Eleanor to see firsthand how our country was faring. Because of her travels she was able to offer her husband a wide perspective. And, most importantly, he trusted her views. She always said that it was he who had taught her to be such a perceptive witness.
Eleanor saw her husband tête-à-tête at his bedside every morning, usually just before his staff arrived for the morning briefing, and also in the evening, before he relaxed with his mystery story. By the time she became first lady, Eleanor had had a long experience of gathering information for her husband. She knew he valued her observations and her assessment of situations. People like Robert Sherwood put it forward that one always “got through” to the president via Mrs. Roosevelt, but, as my grandmother would be the first to acknowledge, this wasn’t always the case. She writes in her autobiography: “I know Franklin always gave thought to what people said, but I have never known anyone less influenced by others.” Always modest, she chose to ignore the substantial influence she had with FDR.
With her sharp eye and wary judgments (“You have to taste the food dear,” she would advise me, “not just ask what the menu was.”), I see my grandmother as indispensable for FDR. Since he had become a cripple and was unable to get about to see things for himself, she had turned herself into a very good reporter for her husband. She detested the press labeling her as the president’s “eyes and ears,” but it wasn’t far from the truth. FDR talked with many people but it was to his wife’s perceptions, to her continuing accounts of the world beyond his own, to which he attached considerable credence.
Thanks to Eleanor’s keeping her ear to the ground, her husband was better informed than most presidents. People don’t realize that all presidents are very quickly blocked in by their White House staff, who wish to act as gatekeepers, using their own regular access to the president to, as they imagine it, protect him. Especially from information they weren’t controlling. FDR countered this by giving direct access to his many contacts across America, men and women he’d come to know, dating back to his 1920 vice-presidential campaign, often to newspapermen whose views he valued, with his wife being principal among his sources.
Additionally he used her popularity with the public—as well as with those who loathed her—to test new ideas or approaches on thorny social issues. The quality and quantity of the comments or flak she often received, particularly from a hostile press, proved a useful gauge for FDR, guiding him as to how far he could advance this or that policy.
Whether her intervention concerned citizens out of work or those blocked by the bureaucracy from obtaining a benefit to help them survive the Depression, or took on such broad issues as racial hatred—epitomized by the lynchings in the segregated South—the press, or columnists like Westbrook Pegler, would chastise the first lady for not knowing her place. In response, she invited Pegler to lunch at Val-Kill for her frequent Sunday barbecue. There were enemies who called her a “nigger lover,” particularly after she invited Marian Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This was when the Daughters of the American Revolution had forbidden her to give a concert in their Constitution Hall.
In the early years of their marriage Eleanor and Franklin were what I would term conservative. Neither were much involved with the revolution in social patterns that began to evolve in the early days of the twentieth century, ones often sponsored by the Roosevelts’ upper-class peers like Dorothy Whitney. While definitely interested in social issues, they did not join social-reform groups—Eleanor avoided being a suffragette for example. At the same time, they had always been “liberals.” According to my dictionary’s definition of the word, it is, roughly, a generous attitude toward other people. To be liberal was both a view of life and the way one felt about the people who shared your life. That’s certainly the understanding I have of my heritage.
By World War I, Franklin and Eleanor had begun identifying their liberalism with specific political and social issues. For example, they supported President Wilson’s progressive views and his efforts to gain Senate approval of America joining the League of Nations. But one can best see FDR’s growing political liberalism during his term as governor of New York State from 1928 through 1932. The Great Depression, then coming into full swing in American life, focused his sense of the important role government needed to play in aiding its citizens mired in economic distress. In contrast, President Hoover had been flatly against government intervention in the economy, despite the onset of the Depression. Only in his last year in the White House did he begin to change his view.
Figures like Frances Perkins and Rex Tugwell widened FDR’s awareness, just as Molly Dewson and Harry Hopkins broadened Eleanor’s. Across the board she was now active in supporting liberal issues. But both Roosevelts were never doctrinaire; they avoided ideology or rigid thinking. This was especially true of FDR, who wanted to let his mind roam to explore a variety of options—from whatever source.
Nevertheless, in my view, my grandparents never moved far from their fundamental cultural orientation—the upper-class form and parameters that had shaped their outlook since they were young. He enjoyed equally the White House and the Big House of our Hyde Park estate. The title of a book, one written to damn FDR, Country Squire in the White House, was not far off the mark.
And yet it would not be inaccurate to refer to him, as his detractors did, as a “traitor to his class.” Why? He was both the leader of the New Deal and a country squire. Sharing the president’s background, the first lady could also have been labeled a traitor to hers. My grandmother’s background and early training also always marked her, even when she was visiting miners several hundred feet down a shaft. Perhaps today’s politicians should note: most Americans didn’t seem to mind my grandparents’ obvious good manners. Both were simply true to the best of their origins.
Her husband’s health had long been a major issue in their marriage, from the day he contracted polio until the day he died. FDR’s continuing effort to regain feeling in the lower part of his body was always on his mind. (“Even in one toe!” he quipped to my mother.) But he achieved nothing, no improvement from all the therapy he underwent. Her husband’s condition preoccupied my grandmother continually—even when they were apart. She was on the telephone daily to remind him to do his exercises. Yet it was his health that had pushed Eleanor out into the political arena, where she learned to enjoy “the game” and its challenges.
My grandfather continued to hope that a magic bullet might be produced, a way to reverse his paralysis. Even as late as the end of 1944, only a few months before he died, Cousin “Daisy” Suckley arranged for an Indian “healer” to work on Franklin’s legs. My mother, Anna, was invited to be present at the therapy session—indicating to me her father’s own reservations—which was carried out in his bedroom in the White House. Nothing came of it, just as with all of his previous efforts.
A year after his coming down with polio—when he was in physical therapy and concentrating exclusively on regaining some feeling in his legs—one of his therapists suggested that my grandmother stop telephoning daily to nag her husband about doing his exercises.
In 1932, when FDR had just been elected president, my grandmother faced, or refused to face, going to Washington as first lady. She was dismayed. Despite her significant role in the achievement, she didn’t like having to give up her own work in New York, teaching and politicking. From her previous exposure to the White House—both during Uncle Ted’s administration and in Woodrow Wilson’s—she saw no reason to look forward to presiding over never-ending White House receptions, affairs at which she would have to be polite and smiling. This life, she knew, would bore her stiff. In New York she had interesting work and lots of friends. With these friend
s, she was quite open in bemoaning her soon-to-be-taken-up role as first lady. Louis Howe, FDR’s éminence grise, ordered that one of her letters to Nancy Cook be burned, owing to its bluntness about her despair over the imminent move into the White House.
But I don’t feel this brief drama—quite overplayed by historians in my view—posed any real question about her continuing partnership with Franklin. She was disappointed when he declined making her his secretary. I wonder if she’d been really serious in suggesting it. So in what had become her usual way, she looked to her own resources. The result would be the legendary “Mrs. Roosevelt.” In short order Eleanor Roosevelt had found for herself a very satisfying role, an identification that fully suited her.
The partnership between Franklin and Eleanor, as I’ve indicated, was not always smooth sailing—far from it. At times, my grandmother was a bit of a “hair shirt” for her husband. To put this in a more positive light, she forced him to think about matters he might have preferred to avoid.
For example, during the election of 1944, Eleanor relentlessly pressed FDR to get out and actively campaign against his opponent, Governor Dewey. Franklin refused to budge from the White House because, he said, his role as commander in chief, his responsibility for running the war, was his priority. And that’s where the American people expected him to be. Not until the last four weeks before the election did he campaign—and he then won very handily. Thus proving his point, I would say.
Upstairs at the Roosevelts' Page 6