Grandmère

by David B. Roosevelt

  Finally, in the autumn of 1904, Franklin made the decision to enter Columbia University Law School rather than continue his law studies at Harvard. Although this was a decision prompted by his feelings for Eleanor and his desire to be near her, Sara found great pleasure in the fact that her beloved son would also be closer to her. During that first year at Columbia, his law studies commanded little of FDR’s attention, and even the activities surrounding TR’s presidential campaign seemed to hold little interest to the couple; they were fully involved with their feelings for each other. On October 7 Franklin went shopping for an engagement ring, and after much deliberation selected one from Tiffany’s. On Grandmère’s twentieth birthday he presented the ring to her. Still under the spell of her promise to Sara to keep their relationship a secret, Eleanor found it hard not to wear the token of their engagement until December, when the news was finally announced. Both sides of the family were ecstatic with joy, congratulating Franklin on his ability to attract such an extraordinary woman. A few of Grandmère’s unsuccessful suitors were not quite so pleased, first among them being Nicholas Biddle, who confessed to his friend Franklin in his congratulatory note that he had “thrown away three unsatisfactory starts” at winning Eleanor for himself. Even her cousin Alice sent a warm greeting, “Oh, dearest Eleanor—it is simply too nice to be true… you old fox not to tell me before.” The love and affection that her uncle Theodore held for Eleanor was obvious when he wrote to congratulate Franklin:

  My grandmother on her wedding day.

  … We are greatly rejoiced over the good news. I am as fond of Eleanor as if she were my own daughter; and I like you, and believe in you. No other success in life—not the Presidency, or anything else—begins to compare with the joy and happiness that come in and from the love of a true man and a true woman…. You and Eleanor are true and brave, and I believe you love each other unselfishly; and the golden years open before you.

  Although the plans were to hold the wedding in New York at the adjoining Seventy-sixth Street brownstones of her cousin Susie (Mrs. Ludlow’s daughter) and Mrs. Ludlow, Theodore (whom Grandmère had asked to stand in for her father to give her hand in marriage) tried to entice the couple to hold the wedding at the White House. Despite the generous offer, they decided to keep their original plans. Finally, after enduring the long and secretive months of waiting, Eleanor and Franklin were married on March 17, 1905, her mother’s birthday. Immediately following the announcement that the couple were husband and wife, the happy high-pitched voice of the president of the United States could clearly be heard proclaiming, “Well, Franklin, there’s nothing like keeping the name in the family!” Of course, having the president in attendance of the bride caused great fanfare, and soon during the reception the newlyweds found themselves quite abandoned, with all the attention being joyously garnered by TR. As soon as the president left to give a speech elsewhere in Manhattan, so many of the other guests began departing that the young couple decided they too would leave, retreating to Springwood. Graciously, Sara had turned the place over to them to spend some time at her sister’s in Tuxedo, New York.

  FDR and ER in San Remo, Italy, during their honeymoon in 1905.

  A Very Close Partnership

  Success in marriage depends on being able, when you get over being in love, to really love… you never know anyone until you marry them.

  —Eleanor Roosevelt

  I BELIEVE THAT GRANDMERE HOPED TO FIND in her marriage the sanctuary she had sought all her life, moorings that would provide her with the security and connection to the sympathetic nucleus of a supportive family. The catalogue of tragedies and deaths in her own family created in Eleanor a deep yearning to belong to and to be contained safely within the intimate confines of her life with Franklin. Her past must have risen like a ghost to bring on the fear of further loss and to make her need of her husband all the more poignant.

  Following their wedding ceremony, Eleanor and Franklin had but a few short days at Hyde Park before returning to New York, where they made their home in an apartment at the old Webster Hotel. He resumed his studies at Columbia, and she became engrossed in the details of starting a home. As bleak as a hotel apartment might sound, this unusual arrangement was quite welcomed by Grandmère, as it would give her and Franklin time to adjust to their life together. She also hoped the experience would help conceal how ill-prepared she felt she was to assume the role of housewife and homemaker. Their plans for a honeymoon holiday had to be delayed until FDR finished his exams, but in the interim Eleanor busied herself making the arrangements for their much-anticipated three-month honeymoon abroad. In those early days, the young bride eagerly hoped to forge a solid relationship with Sara, who from the beginning became a constant presence in Eleanor’s daily routine. Once Franklin successfully completed his term at Columbia Law School, family and friends threw a rousing society bon-voyage party, after which the newlyweds finally departed on the Oceanic for their honeymoon… alone.

  The late Victorian era had a remarkable ability to sweep “delicate” subjects under the carpet, especially sexuality, the most delicate subject of all. In Grandmother Hall’s household the subject was completely evaded—a closed door—and that aspect of married life was simply not discussed. Thirty-five years later, Grandmère confessed the puzzlement of her early married life in saying, “There were certain subjects never discussed by ladies of different ages, and the result was frequently very bewildered young people when they found themselves faced with some of life’s normal situations!” She would later confide to my aunt Anna that like all women of that era she was taught that sex was an ordeal to be borne—a wifely obligation and duty. According to my aunt, the sexual nature of a marital relationship had always seemed to Grandmère an extremely difficult part of married life. She had been told before marriage that this was something one simply had to endure.

  For Eleanor, who naturally shied away from expressing distressing emotions, this ill-preparedness must have proven difficult, especially as she was confronted by Franklin’s obvious pleasure in the attentions showered upon him by admiring young ladies. His playful flirtations could only have heightened Eleanor’s feelings of anxiety, and perhaps she even experienced fear at the unnerving power with which sexual attention could change people. Although certainly without malice or intent, the stage may well have been set during this period for the evolution of their future relationship.

  My grandfather took this photograph of Grandmère on a gondola in Venice on the very last day of their European sojourn.

  During the couple’s absence from New York, Sara too had been busy. Although Eleanor had looked forward to house hunting on their return, Sara had taken it upon herself to rent the Draper House (a mere three blocks from her own home) for them, and had staffed the house with three servants settled into the routine of his last two years of law school, finally completing the bar exam in 1907, while Eleanor, under the erstwhile guidance and observation of her mother-in-law, became the proper social matron, attending luncheons and teas and serving on the boards of “acceptable” and “proper” charitable organizations. Her keen interest in working in the settlement houses and among the poor had not diminished, but Sara and her friends convinced her that being around “those people” could have terrible consequences—she could bring home unspeakable diseases—and promptly dissuaded her from pursuing her social concerns.

  Sara’s view of the less privileged was different from the principled perspective Grandmère had inherited from her grandfather, father, and from TR. My aunt Anna explained that “[Grandmère’s] brand of concern goes back to her childhood—if you read the credo of the TR family it was different from Granny’s [Sara’s] family; which was truly noblesse oblige and charity. That wasn’t so with the TR clan. They got in with the newsboys.”

  Perhaps Sara wanted only to mold the young bride to fit within the inner circle of privileged society by bringing her into her own circle, as she would have her own daughter. Aunt Anna cast light on the dif
ferences between Sara and TR’s brands of society:

  The TR clan were real extroverts. They loved to recite poetry (and write it). They made up limericks, etc. and were very outgoing whereas with Granny there was great affection but there was also a reserve mixed in with it. Halls were very much the same. The Delanos stayed very much with their own class while TR picked up a friend anywhere and expected his family to make that friend feel at home.1

  A Douglas Chandor portrait of Sara.

  This photograph of Sara’s house in New York City, to which my grandparents’ first residence was attached, comes from my aunt Anna’s photo album.

  The young couple’s social life pivoted around the old and staid order, skirting the newer, gayer social crowd, but it was nevertheless eventful. Eleanor acquired a new set of friends, contemporaries of Sara, with whom she discussed art, music, and literature. She encouraged Franklin to enjoy his male contemporaries, return for visits to Harvard and old haunts at Cambridge, play polo, and take part in the hunts. Far from wealthy, they nevertheless benefited from income provided by their trust funds. Although Franklin’s new job as a clerk in the law firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn paid no salary the first year, they were able to live comfortably, without financial burdens or concern.

  Eleanor later remembered this as a time of change, recognizing that old psychological patterns of insecurity and self-effacement began to erupt in the early months of her marriage. Eleanor confronted a life dominated by Sara with powerfully mixed feelings. An extraordinary intimacy existed between mother and son; by marrying Franklin, Eleanor had threatened to loosen, perhaps even sever, a bond that had existed since nursery days. Franklin had invited a stranger, another woman, into the most private recesses of his life, places where Sara had dwelt alone up to now. From the beginning Eleanor was caught in a tug-of-war between conciliation and restraint of feelings; quickly she found herself in an emotionally charged triangular situation. My aunt Anna was able to cast an interesting perspective on the triangle when biographer Joseph Lash asked her why she thought Grandmère had submitted, subordinating her own personality to Sara’s:

  … it went back deep into her childhood and her hunger for love and security. She thought at first she would find that love and security between Father and Granny. Her self-effacement and submission was a natural thing—here was a family that always had love and security and she was going into it and was part of that family. Once Granny accepted the fact of FDR’s marriage, she gave FDR and ER more than love. She was a widow and this son was her only child. She took literally the statement that she was going to have both a son and a daughter now… In those days people didn’t analyze themselves as they might do today. For Granny this was simply a matter of self-preservation. She had an only child and she thought she might acquire a daughter as well, but to get her, she had to give them everything—at the level of material things—so she made arrangements for servants and a house, etc. for her little daughter-in-law. The implication was that she did these things not because she wanted to take ER over, but to fasten her closely to her.2

  My grandparents with baby Anna in Springwood in 1906.

  Love is never simple, and for Grandmère it was complicated from the beginning. On the one hand, her growing need for Franklin and her commitment to the marriage proved to be positive and strengthening. Having found the one person she had sought for so long to love—and the one to be loved by—Eleanor finally had her own home. Such as it was, she had found a sense of contentment. However, feelings that had been buried early in her childhood began to resurface in her relationship with my grandfather. In some of the letters to FDR she signed herself “Little Nell,” the name her father had used for her. Again, my aunt Anna was most eloquent about this aspect of my grandparents’ relationship:

  That false picture she had of her father she invested FDR with. He had similar qualities—debonair, charming—but FDR was her contemporary. He was a purely human being with all the faults of a human being and all the faults of his super-security and super-love that he had had from his father and mother. Against the idealized picture she had of her father, FDR was bound to disappoint her. And because of his super-security FDR took her very much for granted and that she couldn’t take.3

  FDR and ER sailing with their baby daughter and friends in Campobello.

  These early dynamics took years to develop into the many strands that would make up the extraordinary partnership my grandparents shared. Initially their marriage was a source of happiness and fulfillment to them both. Not long after their return from Europe, one of Grandmère’s greatest pre-marriage fears was proven unfounded… she was pregnant! The excitement of the good news was soon overshadowed by the difficulties of her first pregnancy, and although she kept up a good face, she was plagued with considerable discomfort during the whole term. In February 1906 Eleanor was confined to bed, and she remained there until the announcement on the afternoon of May 3 of the birth of a beautiful little girl, Anna Eleanor, a strong baby weighing in at ten pounds one ounce. Although Sara had hoped for a boy, which may have been a common desire in families of that day and age to ensure continuation of the name and heritage, Eleanor was ecstatic at her daughter’s arrival. It was, perhaps, a small source of triumph over her mother-in-law’s dominance.

  Grandmère with Anna and baby James, in the fall of 1908, at Springwood.

  With her first baby boy, James.

  Motherhood

  For the next ten years Eleanor settled into the role of mother, as planned by Sara, who continued to be in evidence in practically every aspect of her life, from the choice of servants and nannies to the planning of meals for the household. Grandmère’s insecurities became more pronounced at this time. She walked a thin line between wanting to be guided by and to have the support of her strong mother-in-law and resenting the loss of power this entailed. She was seemingly unable to establish rules and boundaries, even with her own children. As they would later confirm, whenever Eleanor denied one of their requests, no matter how insignificant, they could always turn to their grandmother, who would often countermand their mother’s denial. Sara’s constant presence only intensified Eleanor’s feelings of inadequacy, breaking down the qualities of solidity and security she had sought in marriage and family. Eleanor’s silent endurance was made steadfast by her acute need to be loved and accepted by both Sara and Franklin, and although resentful of the constant intrusions, she continued to depend upon Sara.

  By 1909, Franklin, Jr., the first, was born, and here we see him with Anna and James.

  Grandmère with baby Franklin, Jr. just before he died.

  These ten years were characterized by pregnancies and the rearing of a young family, a decade when she was “either getting over having a baby or getting ready to have one.” James was born in 1907. Their second son, the first Franklin Jr., followed in 1909, but was born with a weakness of heart; he died at eight months after a bout of influenza and pneumonia. His death was devastating to Eleanor, and she assumed much of the blame for it. During these months of grief she became pregnant again. The deep sorrow she felt at the death of her baby boy had reawakened the melancholy of her relationship with her own father, and so she named the new baby—my father—after him. Eleanor would later say that Dad reminded her most of her father, and was thus perhaps her favorite of all her children.

  My father’s birth consoled Grandmère’s grief after the death of Franklin Jr. Here we see him as a baby with James and Anna in 1911.

  The children were educated by “proper English nannies”—as was the Roosevelt custom—who made all decisions about their upbringing. As she would later state, “If I had it to do over again, I know now that what we should have done was to have no servants those first few years…. Had I done this, my subsequent troubles would have been avoided and my children would have had far happier childhoods.”

  Sara’s authority over Eleanor’s family reached a climax when she and Franklin, with no consultation with Eleanor, decided that the yo
ung family would move into a house immediately next door to one Sara was building on East Sixty-fifth Street, a house with connecting doors on each of the three levels. Even with Grandmère’s capacity for absorbing shock, this was something she could not endure silently. Once again, even the furnishings and decorations of the house were planned and executed by Sara, right down to the choice of Eleanor’s dressing table. Eleanor was livid, and shortly after moving in made her unhappiness an issue with FDR. His reaction was feigned bewilderment at her dissatisfaction, a skilled avoidance of all confrontation arising from the two women of his life. My aunt Anna commented that the tensions erupting in this powerful triangle were due to the diametrically opposite childhood experiences my grandparents had had: