Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  Sara, at Tuxedo Park, where she had gone with her sister Kassie, finished the day’s chronicle:

  March 17th. Took Mrs. Peabody out in the electric to do some errands. Had all the ushers to lunch. Left at 2.30 for 76th Street. Franklin is calm & happy. Eleanor the same. All the family at the wedding. Dora, Annie & Fred, Fred & Tilly, Kassie & all & Mlle. Mathieu. About 200 at the ceremony, a large reception afterward. Theodore Roosevelt, President, gave Eleanor away.

  Then she wrote her “precious Franklin and Eleanor” that it was “a delight to write you together & to think of you happy at dear Hyde Park just where my first happiness began.”

  And the president, addressing the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick at Delmonico’s after the wedding, spoke in words intended as much for the Vanderbilts, Sloans, Burdens, Chanlers, Winthrops, Belmonts, and van Rensselaers who had applauded his quips in the Ludlow-Parish dining room as for his immediate audience:

  American is not a matter of creed, or birthplace, or descent. That man is the best American who looks beyond the accidents of occupation or social condition, and hails each of his fellow citizens as his brother, asking nothing save that each shall treat the other on his worth as a man, and that they shall join together to do all that in them lies for the uplifting of this mighty and vigorous people.7

  It began with Theodore Roosevelt as the American century but would progress toward a more ecumenical outlook; and in the broadening of loyalties that the United Nations would represent, the marriage that had been celebrated that day was destined to figure significantly.

  * An inspection of the 1907 class roster showed 21 Jewish names in a graduating class of 74.

  † Grace Tully, Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary during the White House years, once asked him why he departed from custom and congratulated the prospective bride as well as groom. “With the mock sense of injury he sometimes affected, he said that when his engagement was announced, all the congratulations were showered on him for securing Eleanor as a wife. He felt, he said, that some people at least should have congratulated her for securing him as a husband.” Grace Tully, F.D.R. My Boss (New York, 1949), p. 120.

  II

  WIFE

  AND

  MOTHER

  14.HONEYMOON

  SOME SITUATIONS BROUGHT OUT ELEANOR’S COMPETENCE, AND others touched the secret springs of her insecurity; her marriage did both. The pathos of orphanage was ended, but the poignancy of wishing to please and be fully accepted by her young husband and his mother began.

  For five years before her marriage, beginning with the beneficent influence of Mlle. Souvestre, she had begun to assert her individuality, sense her potentialities, and emerge as a tower of strength to those around her. Suddenly the pattern was reversed, and in return for the privilege of loving and being loved she stifled any impulse to assert herself. “I want him to feel he belongs to somebody,” she had said of Hall in the 1890s to explain why she wrote him so often, and it reflected her own yearning to belong, to be part of a family whose members came first with her as she came first with them. She had had the self-discipline to do what she thought needed to be done to bring that about, and now that she wanted to be fully accepted by her mother-in-law she was prepared to dismiss her own wishes and values to gain Sara’s love.

  There was, moreover, that conscience of hers; if there was any conflict between what she might enjoy doing and what she ought to do, the voice of duty prevailed. The result was that she totally subordinated herself to her husband and her mother-in-law. Their wills became hers; not what she wanted, but what they wanted, mattered.

  Since Franklin had to finish his year at Columbia Law School and they could not yet leave on an extended honeymoon, they were to have a week to themselves in Hyde Park and then stay at the Hotel Webster in New York. When Franklin finished his exams they would depart for a three-and-a-half-month honeymoon in Europe. Fifty years later, Eleanor’s recollection of the week at Springwood focused on “Elespie”—Elspeth McEachern, the highly competent Scotswoman who, under Sara’s direction, ran the efficient and spotless household at Hyde Park. She had been at the door to welcome Sara as James’ bride in 1881. “She was in the house when we went to Hyde Park the day of our wedding,” said Eleanor, “and she looked me over critically and appraisingly, wondering if I could come up to her expectations as the wife of ‘her boy.’”1

  When they returned to New York on March 25, Sara was there to greet them. “Went to F. & E.’s apartment at Hotel Webster,” she noted in her diary; “arranged flowers and went to my French lecture. Returned to find my children and brought them home to lunch with me.”

  Now that Eleanor was faced with the fulfillment of her dream—an intimate normal life of her own with the man she loved—she was frightened. In her grandmother’s house she had never had a chance to learn what went into a serene, well-run household. The hotel apartment was a godsend, because Franklin would not discover how little she knew about managing a household right away. All she had to do was “a little mending.”

  Despite her inner anxieties, on the surface she was busy cheerfulness and left Franklin free to prepare for his examinations. She arranged for Hall to stay with them at the hotel when he came down from Groton; she went with Franklin and Sara to the wedding of Lucius Wilmerding and Helen Cutting; and there was much family visiting—the large Delano clan, the Oyster Bay and Hudson River Roosevelts. Helen and Teddy Robinson returned from their honeymoon trip around the world, and Sara had everyone to dinner—“Rosy, Corinne and Douglas, Bammie, F. & E.” Eleanor had many things to take care of for her own forthcoming honeymoon—purchases to be made, trunks to be packed, letters of credit arranged, tickets to be picked up. She organized it all competently—and quickly. On June 6 Sara wrote, “Franklin got all their luggage put on board the Oceanic & lots of friends came to say goodbye. We had Rosy, Helen & Teddy to dine.” Then, overcome with a sense of her good fortune, she added, “My dear Franklin & Eleanor.”

  For Eleanor her honeymoon was a bittersweet affair. Its sweetness was recorded in the long, detailed letters she wrote to her mother-in-law at the time; its harsher side emerged only in her reminiscences three or four decades later when she had become a freer, more independent woman.

  “There were certain subjects never discussed by ladies of different ages,” she wrote thirty-five years later, “and the result was frequently very bewildered young people when they found themselves faced with some of life’s normal situations!” She was commenting on the scene in Life with Father where Father announces that he will tell his son “all about women” and then informs him promptly that there are certain subjects never discussed between gentlemen.2

  And to the extent that there was any discussion between generations of what a woman faced, it was in terms of marital duty. That was Grandma Hall’s view. It was also Sara’s, so one of her grandchildren, Franklin Jr., learned one day when he sat on the edge of “Granny’s” bed and she pressed him to tell her about his girls. The young man parried the question. “What was life like with Grandfather?” he wanted to know. “Did you have any fun?” She was not at all unwilling to answer the charming young man. “Well, you know we were Victorians. I knew my obligations as a wife and did my duty.”3

  That was the case with Eleanor. Sex was an ordeal to be borne, she would later confide to her daughter Anna.4

  She began her honeymoon trip fearful that she would be seasick and become a burden to her nautical husband, who was never more at home with himself than when on the water. But after four days out Franklin reported to his mother, “Eleanor has been a wonderful sailor and hasn’t missed a single meal or lost any either.” And she exulted, “Franklin has been a wonderful maid & I’ve never been so well looked after.” With Eleanor there to prod Franklin, for once Sara would not feel she was being neglected. Almost daily they sent her long letters full of information and affection. Eleanor’s effusive avowals of love were pathetic evidence of her eagerness to be fully accepted by the older woman. “Tha
nk you so much dear for everything you did for us,” she wrote from the Oceanic. “You are always just 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!”5

  She shared amused observations about Franklin with the adoring Sara. “The stewardess informed me the other morning that my husband must be English, he was so handsome and had the real English profile!” she wrote archly. “Of course it was a great compliment but you can imagine how Franklin looked when I told him.” Eleanor was always observant, always learning, her heart easily stirred. They toured the ship with the captain, and “it was very interesting, but I am more sorry than ever for the Steerage passengers.” Some Japanese were on board on their way to supervise two Japanese battleships being built in England; Franklin spent most of his time “trying to talk to the Japs,” Eleanor reported, “and they have proved interesting companions.”

  After a stop in Liverpool to visit Eleanor’s Confederate relatives, the Bullochs, and to weep a little with Aunt Ella, whose heart still ached over her “Ellie boy,” they went on to London. Wherever they went in Europe there were family connections or friends of the family to introduce them into the highest circles of society, politics, and art. Their greatest joy, however, was to poke around London, Paris, or Venice—just the two of them. For Eleanor it was a new experience to be able to do the things she had always wished to do without worrying about the cost or what “G’ma” or Cousin Susie would think. Some places had special meaning for her because she had first seen them with her father or Mlle. Souvestre, and she delighted in exploring them anew with Franklin; for his part, he could not wait to take his bride to his favorite bookseller, mountainside spot, or café.

  They walked themselves weary in London while Franklin searched for rare books and prints, and ordered, he teasingly wrote his mother, “thousands of dollars worth of clothes.” They lunched at the Embassy with the Reids, Eleanor reported, and “I sat next to Mr. Reid!” They had supper at the Carlton and, she said, “were much entertained by some of the English women. It is quite out of date here to appear with your own face or hair. In fact it really looks immodest!” She visited Allenswood, “but it was dreadful without Mlle. Souvestre.” She had died a few weeks earlier.

  Doing Paris with Franklin was an even greater joy. She went shopping for clothes and ordered “thousands of dollars worth of linen,” according to Franklin, while he spent “all I owned” in the first bookshop he entered. He accompanied her to the dressmaker’s but insisted that he had dozed off while she ordered “a dozen or so new dresses and two more cloaks.” Eleanor scribbled a P.S.: “Don’t believe all this letter please. I may be extravagant but——!!!” Franklin enjoyed introducing his new wife to the world of high fashion. “This A.M. we went out and Franklin got me such lovely furs,” Eleanor wrote; “I don’t think he ought to give them to me but they are wonderful and of course I am delighted with them.” They dined in out-of-the-way places, ordered spécialitiés de la maison, and, since Franklin thought he spoke French well, they had a gay time talking with the patrons. Although Franklin’s French was hardly as good as Eleanor’s, it was good enough for some hard bargaining with booksellers. He would not let Eleanor come along on these bargaining sprees, because her sense of fairness interfered with hard trading. Her Italian, however, was fair, while his was only poor, so in Italy he had to rely on Eleanor for such transactions. In Paris they also visited “Cousin Hortense” Howland, the French woman who had married a brother of James Roosevelt’s first wife and whose salon was described in Proust as a meeting place of the Jockey Club. “You would have laughed if you could have heard Mrs. Howland flatter Franklin yesterday,” Eleanor wrote. “This isn’t true,” Franklin commented in the margin; “Eleanor got buttered on both sides!”

  For Eleanor, Venice was full of memories of her father and Mlle. Souvestre. Of course they hired a gondola and gondolier. Charles Stuart Forbes, an artist and kinsman, lived in Venice and was their guide. They visited the Palace of the Doges and the artistically interesting churches with him, and at the end of tiring days they all went to little Italian restaurants where they learned the pleasures of superbly cooked but simple Italian food.

  They had tea at the Lido, and again Eleanor’s strait-laced attitudes asserted themselves. “It is a lovely island with a splendid beach but I never saw anything like the bathing clothes the ladies wear. . . . But Franklin says I must grow accustomed to it as France is worse!” For Eleanor a decorous bathing costume consisted of a skirt, a long-sleeved, high-necked blouse, stockings, slippers, a sun-bonnet, and gloves. They left Venice reluctantly. Franklin, who had expected to be disappointed with Venice, found the reality “far more wonderful than he had imagined.” Eleanor felt that “nothing could be quite so lovely,” but then the stern voice of conscience welled up “as long as you wished to be idle!”

  From Venice they proceeded to the Dolomites and to Cortina. “An old lady’s Paradise,” Franklin complained, “and I feel like Satan all right.” But among the not-so-old female guests was Kitty Gandy, the attractive owner of a fashionable New York hat shop. She joined them at bridge and, according to Franklin, was “quite nice (smoked all my good cigarettes) and promised me a new ostrich feather hat for next winter.” When Eleanor, a poor mountain climber, declined to accompany him up the 4,000-foot Faloria, Miss Gandy gaily volunteered. To his letter describing the jaunt, a piqued Eleanor appended: “E.R. spent the morning with the Miss VanBibbers climbing up the landslide, to meet a husband who never turned up till after they got home!” Much later, in her autobiography, she confessed that she had been unspeakably jealous of Kitty Gandy and hadn’t breathed easily until they left Cortina to drive through the Alps to St. Moritz. The drive over the Stelvio was “wonderful,” and Franklin, in an exuberance of good spirits, leaped out of the coach to pick wild flowers for Eleanor—“the wild jasmine smells sweeter than anything I ever had,” she wrote. Aunt Tissie, who often stayed at St. Moritz with her family, had reserved rooms for them, and Eleanor had been a little anxious as to what they might find awaiting them, since Tissie’s “ideas of the necessities of life and ours differ”; but, she reported, “we are surviving her extravagance.” She went to have her hair washed while “Franklin found a paper and devoured it.” They had tea and then went down to dinner, “since when I have been writing this and he has been mending his Kodak and occasionally telling me that I have a wonderful husband, so I suppose he is being successful!”

  Fashionable St. Moritz did not respond to their young romantic mood. Eleanor always remembered—and recounted with a smile—that they were underdressed for the Palace Hotel and the management relegated them to a table—with a view of the lake, to be sure—well out of sight of the other guests. Fifty years later, when she was world famous, she returned to St. Moritz but stayed at a rival hostelry and explained to her companions why she was amused by the aggrieved message from the management of the Palace Hotel: “But why didn’t Madame Roosevelt stay with us!”6

  Their next destination was Franklin’s boyhood haunts in southern Germany, where they journeyed through the Black Forest. From St. Blasien Franklin reported: “We are full of health and bursting with food (at least I am) and the only unkind word Eleanor has ever said to me is that she would like to see me bust!” Her letter, Eleanor insisted at the beginning of a twelve-page report, was bound to be “unbearably dull”; all her letters were dull, she said deprecatingly, compared to Franklin’s “amusing ones.” “We are having such a nice lazy time,” she reported from St. Blasien. She was reading Anatole France in French, but “he occasionally disgusts me so that I have to stop.” Sara had sent them a check, and she had decided to spend her share in Paris. “How I would like to kiss you and tell you instead of writing my thanks.”

  On their return to Paris her clothes and furs were awaiting her for fittings. And awaiting Franklin were his law-school grades, which—not surprisingly for the year in which he was married—include
d two F’s. They immediately cabled for his law books so that Franklin could study on board ship on the way home. He wanted to take make-up examinations in the autumn, Eleanor wrote. “I’m not very confident about his passing but it won’t hurt him to try and the work will be that much gained next winter.”

  In Paris Franklin ran into some college friends who took Eleanor and Aunt Dora to a very “French” play, hoping to shock the ladies, Eleanor reported, a little irritated with their sense of humor. The only one shocked was Eleanor; Mrs. Forbes did not lift an eyebrow. Eleanor’s primness came out again at Voisin’s, where she saw, she wrote, Mrs. Jay Burden and Mrs. Harry Whitney with Mr. Bertie Goelet and Mr. Meredith Hare, “so you see it is not fashionable to go out with your husband!”

  The honeymoon drew to an end with a visit to Novar, the home of the Ferguson clan, and to Mr. and Mrs. Foljambe, friends of Sara’s who lived in a part of England that included Sherwood Forest and was known as the “Dukeries.” The opulent estates there eclipsed the great houses on the Hudson, and for Eleanor the visit to Osberton-in-Worksop, as the Foljambe estate was called, was “terrifying.” There was a punctilious emphasis on correct behavior, and dinner was austerely formal. Guests of such a great house, it was assumed, would all know each other and thus there were no introductions. After dinner, bridge was played for money, which was against Eleanor’s principles, and so arrangements were made for her to be carried by her partner. She was the more embarrassed by this to-do because she was convinced she played badly. She described her feelings at Osberton-in-Worksop with a metaphor whose grisliness underscored her insecurity: she felt like “an animal in a trap” who did not know how to get out or how to act where it was.