Upstairs at the Roosevelts'

by Roosevelt, Curtis;

  Also, in contrast to her father, Eleanor could see the confidence exuded by his brother, her uncle Theodore Roosevelt. She admired his exuberant style, but “the vigorous life” he espoused scared her. She did not enjoy the paper chases at Sagamore Hill that his children reveled in. And, as Eleanor writes, her contacts with people of her own age were very restricted. In many ways she grew up alone. Her education was neglected—she was not taught to read until after the age of seven, and then only because an aunt intervened.

  Certainly Eleanor Roosevelt was very well-mannered—you could see and feel the upper-class background within her—but she was also extremely shy. She was very different from Theodore Roosevelt’s children, and from the Hall children on her mother’s side of the family.1 Not unlike Sara, these children accepted their privileged role in the society of that day, whereas Eleanor always seemed slightly apologetic about it.

  People of the Victorian upper class were supposed to have both rights and duties. Most were more conscious of their privileged position and less of their duties. Eleanor emphasized the obligations. I was instructed by my grandmother to pay special attention to “those less fortunate than we are.” Duty and obligation remained driving forces in Eleanor Roosevelt’s life.

  Beneath her well-mannered exterior, however, was an insecurity, which could not be hidden after she was married. In Sara’s company she may well have been in awe of her always self-assured mother-in-law, but it is apparent from the exchange of letters at that time that Eleanor Roosevelt had hoped—desperately—that she would find in Sara someone to fill the gap her own mother had left in her psyche. But is that not asking a lot of your mother-in-law?

  After marrying she turned to this new figure in her life with eager anticipation. The early letters between them show my grandmother overflowing with phrases of love, adoration, and devotion, calling Sara “Mummy.”

  “Thank you so much dear for everything you did for us. You are always the sweetest, dearest Mama to your children and I shall look forward to our next long evening together, when I shall want to be kissed all the time!” She signed, “Ever and ever so much love my dearest Mummy from your devoted Eleanor.”2

  Granny replied lovingly, in no way unwilling to offer personal attention to her new daughter-in-law. But Sara was, I would guess, perplexed by the expectations laid upon her by Eleanor. Granny had been raised with loving parents and had many siblings, all of whom were socially poised, well-trained to assume their responsibilities. The Warren Delanos were a close-knit family. Although typically paternalistic, they were loyal and loving kin—and confident!

  Sara must have wondered at Eleanor’s inadequacy when it came to fulfilling the usual responsibilities of a wife and mother from their background. Running a house with servants and (with nurses in tow) supervising the care of her children was the accepted routine. Yet Eleanor always backed off, saying she was afraid, that she “didn’t know how.” She further excused herself by adding that she had never played with dolls when a child.

  She would later write: “For the first year of my married life, I was completely taken care of. My mother-in-law did everything for me.” At the time, her own letters showed a deep gratitude for Sara’s assumption of the simple chores that frightened her so inordinately. There was no indication that Eleanor resented her mother-in-law’s help; indeed, she saw it for what it was intended to be—an expression of love.3

  In contrast, Sara had gotten down on her knees and bend over the tub rim to bathe baby Franklin herself, the nurse standing to the side ready with a towel. Her daughter-in-law, on the other hand, let the hired nanny do everything, feeling that the nurse knew far better than she did.

  Her husband’s mother was, I expect, puzzled by Eleanor’s hesitancy—almost a lack of maternal instinct—and some disapproval may have crept into her voice when giving advice to her daughter-in-law. However, Jan Pottker writes in her book Sara and Eleanor:

  Sara was either oblivious to or confused by Eleanor’s hidden emotions. . . . Sara never referred to these issues in her comprehensive journal or in her many letters. Although she may not have understood her daughter-in-law—nor did Franklin—she continually offered love, helped with the children, and gave constant support to the family, including large chunks of her personal fortune.4

  I find the last sentence a definite overstatement, though she regularly assisted with school fees, clothes, and special events such as journeys to Europe. In later years she did become rather extravagant when giving gifts to her grandchildren. But that’s another story.

  Leaving the financial interrelationship aside, there was also the fact that my grandparents often left their children at Hyde Park in their grandmother’s care, and for weeks on end. Much as Eleanor later ignored such facts, her own and Franklin’s many dependencies upon Sara are plain to discern in the letters exchanged at that time.

  While Eleanor always wrote expressing her gratitude for this largesse, I believe that part of her may well have resented it. It makes me wonder if my grandmother didn’t somehow perceive this perpetual dependence as an expression of her own inner weakness. Over the years this feeling may have grown and become the background for her accusing Sara of being domineering and taking over their domestic lives. “They were more my mother-in-law’s children than mine,” Eleanor often said in later years—apparently not recognizing how this reflected upon her.

  Though acknowledging she didn’t do well at raising her children, Eleanor typically blamed Granny, but not entirely. She told Joe Lash, “It did not come naturally to me to understand little children or to enjoy them.” But as Lash notes, when writing about my grandmother’s trying to engage her children in games and other activities, “she was not easygoing in such matters. The moralist in her was always in command.”5 As Geoffrey Ward surmises: “Eleanor’s real trouble lay within. Her own accounts of her children and their doings, both in the letters she wrote during their infancy and in her much later autobiographical writings, are singularly joyless. For her, young children seem to have been for the most part merely sources of further anxiety—fragile, undisciplined, [and] uncontrollable.”6

  Jan Pottker writes: “Eleanor was unhappy at what she saw as her mother-in-law’s usurpation of her children, just as Sara may have been displeased by Eleanor’s lack of steady involvement. . . . There seemed to be no middle ground for Eleanor between arguing with Sara, as she records, and abjectly pleading for forgiveness. As for Sara, she never put down any record of these crosscurrents either in her many letters or in her journal.”7 But I think “usurpation” is too strong a word. Granny may have spoken plainly when she found my mother and her brothers’ behavior rude and offending, and Eleanor may well have taken offense at the criticism. But I don’t consider this to be “taking over.”

  The financial dependency was two-edged. Even though Eleanor and Franklin together had reasonable incomes to support a very pleasant lifestyle, they always overspent, knowing that Sara would supplement their income whenever needed. I have the impression that my grandfather saw nothing wrong with this pattern, while my grandmother was both accepting of and, I think, secretly resentful of it—but not raising her voice to limit it, either. Knowing your extravagances would always be covered was the easy way out when you were too shy to challenge anything.

  It is accurate to note Granny’s overindulgence of her grandchildren. As my uncle James once wrote, he and his siblings found that the best way to get around their parents, when they were being denied anything they wanted, was to appeal to Granny. My mother said she felt guilty about this, but I never heard my uncles express any regrets, or gratitude.

  But Uncle Jimmy fails to note that most of the discipline in their life as children came from their grandmother. Sara was plainspoken. She would not tolerate rudeness from her grandchildren; she expected them to be well mannered, especially in the presence of adults. Boisterous rivalry was their style, and that did not always go down well with their grandmother, who saw how incapable their mother was at disci
plining them.

  Eleanor moved from offering a measured reprimand to permissiveness, in fact, opting out, perhaps not knowing quite what to say or do, perhaps afraid of doing the wrong thing. Franklin was of little help. His view was that the children needed to get it out of their system. But I feel he was more often wishing to avoid confrontation with his wife.

  Granny’s candor about her grandchildren was expressed without rancor, but there was no misunderstanding her meaning. Unlike my grandmother, there was nothing pejorative in her reprimands. Sara’s expressions of discipline were straightforward, but her open and consistent love for her grandchildren was apparent both to my mother and her brothers. They did not feel a burden had been laid on them in the same way they did when their mother would attempt to discipline them.

  My uncles complained of the pained look that would come over their mother’s face, expressing her implicit judgmental response to them. No doubt Eleanor loved her children, but expressing it directly was apparently an emotion she could not bring forth. She cared deeply about them, but her expressions of this were limited to “doing” practical things for them.8

  When her children’s disruptive behavior at the dining table brought rebukes from Sara, her daughter-in-law felt that the criticism was as much directed at herself as at the children. Perhaps some of it was, but even if the fracas was only about a minor infraction, Eleanor might leave the table in high dudgeon—choosing, as I see it, to make a scene.

  Criticism within the family, even when only implied, was not something Eleanor could tolerate. It immediately provoked her dark moods, as she acknowledged. And yet she made a point of not paying attention to the abundant public criticism directed at her from congressmen and newspaper columnists!

  Granny believed in good manners—she felt they made life pleasant—and believed the children should be taught them. I remember the ease with which I could accept my great-grandmother’s discipline, especially with regard to my sloppy table manners. Faced with my mother and my grandmother’s admonitions, I closed off, resenting it, always super-sensitive to their judgmental manner. They were not teaching me something, but rather seemed to be criticizing me as if I had done something wrong.

  When Granny first visited my grandmother and grandfather in their new house in Washington in 1912, after Franklin had been appointed assistant secretary of the navy, Sara noted in her diary: “Dined at 1733 N Street. Moved chairs and tables and began to feel at home.” From reading the correspondence it is clear that Granny did feel that Franklin and Eleanor were her children, and part of that intimacy evidently included rearranging their furniture.

  So what could Eleanor Roosevelt do about it? After listening to my grandmother tell stories of how her mother-in-law interfered in her life, I have always thought that all Eleanor would have had to do would be to say quietly but firmly to Sara, “Mama, please stop interfering, especially on matters relating to the children.” But she didn’t—she couldn’t. Instead, she remained resentfully silent. My grandmother’s letters to my mother indicate that even in the White House years, when Granny would suggest something being done differently, the first lady was not able to ask her mother-in-law to please stop intervening in household matters.

  My guess is that probably no more than a few years after Eleanor’s marriage to Franklin, it was inevitable that mother-in-law and daughter-in-law would prove a disappointment to each other. But rather than acknowledging this and settling into a reasonable relationship—one that papered over disagreements in order to avert hostility—Eleanor’s resentment seemed to intensify and become more pointed over the years.

  By the time I came on the scene, 1930, my grandmother was in early middle age, but there still wasn’t any mellowing. On the contrary, in the instinctive way that children have of understanding relationships, I knew—I could feel—that my grandmother and my great-grandmother were not at ease with each other. Even when it was politely stated, I could sense my grandmother’s actual core attitude. However, although I lived for many weeks at a time at Hyde Park with Granny, she never gave any indication of a reciprocal hostility toward her daughter-in-law.

  Although writing sympathetically to her mother, Eleanor’s only daughter, my mother, carefully avoided taking sides. I knew from my mother’s comments that she toed a thin line between the love and respect she felt for her grandmother, Granny, and her compulsion to seek her own mother’s approval. But it was not until I began writing my book that I read this correspondence closely and saw clearly that my grandmother was quite open in her critical remarks against Granny, clearly taking against her mother-in-law. My mother, Anna, so much in need of her own mother’s approval, went along with it.

  Joseph Lash’s biography notes that Eleanor admitted that the problem was partly her fault— for not speaking up, and for having allowed Sara to keep her “under her thumb.” This puzzles me. Eleanor Roosevelt was a strong woman, determined, even willful. I never felt my grandmother was under her mother-in-law’s thumb, not for one moment—indeed, not under anyone’s thumb! Unfortunately I lacked the courage to speak up and ask my grandmother why she didn’t speak plainly to Granny about her grievances.

  But the point that puzzles me most is why in this situation one woman exceeded to such a degree the usual strain and resentment that often appears between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, acting out so profoundly. “Taking against” an individual is a strong expression of hostility, one sharply focused on that other person. Especially when you consider the “good form” manners in which both women were groomed, this seems to me quite odd. Poor form! The ingrained good manners of both should have provided them with acceptable ways of expressing their differences—and keeping a respectful distance. But Eleanor chose to focus on the grievances she held onto, allowing her dark moods to prevail.

  One noticeable truth I find when reviewing my grandmother’s unsparing criticism of Sara is that how much she was, in fact, very much like her mother-in-law. As I have noted, there was no mistaking Eleanor Roosevelt’s background. Indeed there was a charm to it—a trait I see as one element of her extraordinary popularity with the American public—just as there was with her husband. David McCullough writes about Sara in an issue of Psychology Today of March 1983: “She had standards, and she had the gift for making everybody want to measure up.” Might not the same be said about her daughter-in-law?

  Eleanor went out of her way to champion the rights of people deprived of their dignity or barred from employment due to race or class or creed. But in my observation, her manner always subtly revealed the noblesse oblige she had been taught to practice, the obligatory behavior of someone who came from a privileged background—the same background as Granny had. Although of different generations, my great-grandmother and my grandmother were thus cut from the same Victorian-style cloth, in terms of class status. Both were reared with the accepted dictum of behaving in a tolerant and measured way.

  Nonetheless, Sara and Eleanor were entirely different in terms of self-confidence and emotional stability. Sara, my Granny, had both. People remarked on her serenity. Eleanor had neither until she was well into middle age. Granny had always had a strong personal sense of identity. I don’t think my grandmother firmly settled into any identity of her own until she became “Mrs. Roosevelt” in the White House. And even then she was unable to be normally assertive with her mother-in-law. She lived with her outrage—but was not above telling her friends of her ordeals with “Franklin’s mother.” With neither her children nor her mother-in-law was Eleanor capable of putting her foot down.

  As a matter of principle, Eleanor Roosevelt made every effort to step beyond the class system and the condescension implied in the phrase “for those less fortunate than we are”—even though she used it herself. Her personal background could be seen in the quiet and dignified way she presented herself. She may have felt strongly about anyone taking his or her social position too seriously, but her own class origin was clearly evident to everyone. At the same time, I observ
ed how my grandmother had neither friends nor even many acquaintances from her own class background, perhaps manifesting in this way her distancing herself from it.

  My grandmother was very much in tune with the changing social scene in America but had not always felt as strongly about progressive social issues. For example, she hadn’t been a suffragette. Most of her liberal inclinations developed into convictions when she was in her middle thirties. Although basically a tolerant person, Eleanor became outraged when she saw people being hurt, such as by racial segregation. She identified with them.

  Sara Delano Roosevelt, on the other hand, was not passionate about social issues. This is not surprising, but unlike many people of her class she wasn’t against the changes her daughter-in-law was writing and speaking about. Compared to the total engagement of Eleanor, Granny’s life held but limited contacts outside her friends and “the people on the place,” our Hyde Park estate. Yet, when called to participate more broadly, usually as the president’s mother, she complied with enthusiasm.

  After living in the White House but a short time, I knew well what the correct positions—attitudes, really—were for those of us living under Eleanor Roosevelt’s wing. I sensed the rights and wrongs in my grandmother’s portfolio, who we were for and who we were against. Yet I also plainly saw that in practice, in my life in the White House, the classless society was full of holes. Simply put, that wasn’t the way that life was, at least for me. I knew very well who was above me and who was below me. One was polite and friendly to everyone—that was the accepted style—but the pecking order was ingrained in me through my everyday contacts.