by FDR
29. Quoted in Kleeman, Gracious Lady 35.
30. For an extended treatment of Chinese complicity in the opium trade, see William Travis Hanes and Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another 42–49 (Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2002). Also see John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast 65–68 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969); William O. Walker III, Opium and Foreign Policy 4–14 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); David Edward Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India 204 ff. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1934).
31. Warren’s letter was written from Canton on April 11, 1839, but the sentiments expressed apply a fortiori to his stint in Hong Kong in the 1860s. Warren noted that if the Chinese authorities disapproved of the opium trade, they could easily extinguish it. Quoted in Frederic D. Grant, Jr., “Edward Delano and Warren Delano II: Case Studies in American China Trader Attitudes Toward the Chinese, 1834–1844” (honors thesis, Bates College, 1976) 183–185, 260–261. Also see the lengthy notation concerning Warren Delano and the opium trade in Ward, Before the Trumpet 87–88n as well as Daniel Delano, Franklin Roosevelt and the Delano Influence 163, which frankly acknowledges, “Warren was now engaged in the opium trade and it paid large and handsome returns.” For additional background, see Jacques M. Downs, “American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800–1840,” 42 Business History Review 418–442 (1968), and the sources citied therein.
32. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 90.
33. R.J.C. Butow, “A Notable Passage to China: Myth and Memory in FDR’s Family History,” Prologue, Fall 1999, 159–160. Also see Kleeman, Gracious Lady 43–60.
34. FDR to Felix Frankfurter, April 18, 1942, in Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence 656, Max Freedman, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
35. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 95.
36. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 65.
37. Suzannah Lessard, The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family 203 (New York: Dial Press, 1996).
38. Quoted in Steeholm, House at Hyde Park 36. Also see Davis, Beckoning Destiny 35.
39. Quoted in Kleeman, Gracious Lady 111.
TWO | My Son Franklin
The epigraph is from Sara (Mrs. James) Roosevelt, My Boy Franklin 7 (New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, 1933).
1. James’s handwritten diary entry is displayed in the museum at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
2. The conflict between Sara and James is described in James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 34 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).
3. Warren Delano’s comments are from letters to his son Warren III, in the Delano Family Papers, FDRL.
4. Sara Roosevelt diary, March 19, 1882, FDRL. A facsimile of Sara’s entry is reproduced in Rita Halle Kleeman, Gracious Lady 129 (New York: D. Appleton– Century, 1935).
5. Warren Delano to Warren Delano III, FDRL.
6. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, The Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present 7, 23, 57 (Stamford, Conn.: Fairfield Publishers, 1965); B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970 85, 89 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975).
7. GDP (in millions of 1990 Geary-Khamis dollars):
1870 1882
France 71,419 89,167
Germany 44,101 55,126
United Kingdom 95,651 122,459
United States 98,418 177,153
Source: Angus Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy, 1820– 1992 180, 182 (Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1995).
8. Statistical History of the United States 207, 212, 369, 416–417.
9. Franklin D. Roosevelt, untitled, undated reminiscences dictated at the White House, FDRL.
10. SDR, My Boy Franklin 44–46.
11. Mittie Roosevelt to Elliott Roosevelt, June 7, 1882, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL. Mittie’s emphasis.
12. Rita Halle Kleeman, untitled notes, FDRL.
13. Sara was an indefatigable journal keeper and recorded daily events at Algonac and Springwood with clipped precision. This was a trait bred into the Delanos, who seemed to believe everything that happened to them was noteworthy. Yet for some reason Sara destroyed her journals for the years 1884 to 1887. No one knows why. Various authors suggest that evidence of marital stress might have found its way into the diaries and Sara chose to obliterate it. See Geoffrey C. Ward, Before the Trumpet 124–125 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985); also see Nona Ferdon, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Psychological Interpretation of His Childhood and Youth” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Hawaii, 1971).
14. SDR, My Boy Franklin 6.
15. FDR to Jeanne Rosat-Sandoz, March 31, 1933, FDRL.
16. FDR to SDR, 1888. 1 The Roosevelt Letters: Being the Personal Correspondence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt 30, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1949). A facsimile copy of FDR’s letter is reproduced between pages 128 and 129.
17. SDR, My Boy Franklin 33.
18. Ibid. 20–21. The president’s son Elliott wrote, “In some sense of the word, [FDR] had no father, only a man old enough to be his grandfather, who, no matter how hard he tried, could not keep up with his growing son.” Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park 35 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).
19. FDR to JR, June 7, 1890. 1 Roosevelt Letters 32.
20. Ward, Before the Trumpet 140.
21. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 151–152. Germanic was not only the newest but the fastest ship on the North Atlantic run and won the Blue Riband for record transatlantic crossings three times. In February 1899 the vessel sank in New York harbor, covered with 1,800 tons of ice accumulated during a severe North Atlantic storm. She was raised and refitted, sailed under a number of flags, and after seventy-five years of service was scrapped at Messina, Sicily, in October 1950.
22. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 144.
23. Ibid. 146.
24. SDR, My Boy Franklin 4.
25. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 138.
26. The Philadelphia Record, April 6, 1913.
27. SDR, My Boy Franklin 7. “His father felt that an only son should not choose a profession which would take him so much away from home,” said Eleanor. Autobiography 47 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).
28. Ernest K. Lindley, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Career in Progressive Democracy 47 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931).
29. Admiral Ross T. McIntire, White House Physician 78–79 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946). At his death, Roosevelt’s stamp collection was appraised at $79,267. Shortly afterward it sold at auction for $212,847, or roughly $2.5 million in today’s currency. That figure neglects the value the collection would have accrued in the intervening fifty-eight years. The New York Times, June 7, 1945. For FDR’s collection, see Brian C. Baur, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Stamp Collecting President (Sidney, Ohio: Linn’s Stamp News, 1999).
30. Lindley, Franklin D. Roosevelt 48; SDR, My Boy Franklin 27.
31. No detail of the St. James’ operation escaped FDR’s attention. In 1941, when the church treasurer resigned, the president proposed a candidate of his own. “What would you think of the young man who runs the drug store?” he wrote his neighbor Gerald Morgan. “He seems up and coming. He is a violent Republican!” President’s Secretary’s File (PSF) 154, FDRL. Also see Ward, Before the Trumpet 156–157.
32. Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story 149–150 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937). After the president’s death, Eleanor wrote, “I think he felt that in great crises he was guided by a strength and wisdom higher than his own, for his religious faith, though simple, was unwavering and direct.… I have always felt my husband’s religion had something to do with his confidence in himself.” This I Remember 69–70 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949).
33. FDR to Muriel and Warren Robbins (Aunt Kassie Delano’s children by her first
marriage), May 30, 1891. 1 Roosevelt Letters 35. FDR remained in contact with the Robbinses for the rest of his life and in 1933 appointed Warren to be U.S. minister to Canada.
34. The New York Times, January 17, 1933. Also see Christian Bommersheim to Roosevelt family, July 1, 1891, FDRL.
35. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 166. On the eve of World War II, when he was under fire from isolationist critics for being pro-British and pro-French, Roosevelt could not resist alluding to his youthful days in imperial Germany. “I did not know Britain and France as a boy,” the president said, “but I did know Germany. If anything, I looked upon the Germany I knew with far more friendliness than I did on Great Britain or France.” 3 Roosevelt Letters 943.
36. Quoted in Bernard Asbell, The F.D.R. Memoirs 24 (New York: Doubleday, 1973).
37. September 18, 1896, 1 Roosevelt Letters 47–48.
38. Ibid. 45. Also see Frank D. Ashburn, Peabody of Groton 45 (New York: Coward McCann, 1944). “We had a sad shooting affray the other day,” Peabody wrote to a friend back east on July 8, 1882. “[A] worthy young deputy sheriff was murdered by a drunken Mexican. They tried to get up enough excitement among the populace to lynch the murderer—but there was no leader. I really think that an example of frontier justice with the next white murderer would be a good thing—for the place is full of desperados who hold the lives of others and themselves very cheap.” Ibid. 59.
39. Statistical History of the United States 91.
40. Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order 321 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).
41. Roosevelt was so impressed with the elder Peabody’s reading of A Christmas Carol that as soon as he had a family of his own he undertook to read a condensed version every year on Christmas Eve, insisting that the assembled family join him in repeating the final words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us every one.” James Roosevelt, Affectionately, F.D.R. 57. Also see Rexford G. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt 510 (New York: Doubleday, 1957).
42. Peabody to Camp, November 23, 1909, reproduced in Ashburn, Peabody 195.
43. The New York Times, June 3, 1934. Shortly after he became president, FDR wrote Peabody, “I count it among the blessings of my life that it was given to me in my formative years to have the privilege of your guiding hand and the benefit of your inspiring example.” Reprinted in Ashburn, Peabody 349.
44. Quoted in 1 Roosevelt Letters 47. Not all students fared as well as FDR. For example, Peabody considered Dean Acheson [Groton ’11] “an undesirable citizen … so flippant and unpleasant” that the faculty wanted nothing to do with him. Peabody to Acheson’s father, March 13, 1909, Peabody Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
45. FDR to Mama and Papa, May 14, 1897, 1 Roosevelt Letters 97.
46. Ibid., June 25, 1900, 356–357.
47. In 1933 FDR ascribed the remark about boyhood ideals to Phillips Brooks, 1933 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 419, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Random House, 1948).
48. Quoted in 1 Roosevelt Letters 362. Philosopher William James lamented that the young men who lived in the Yard “seldom or never darken the doors of Pudding or the Porcellian; they hover in background on the days when the crimson color is most in evidence, but they nevertheless are intoxicated and exultant with the nourishment they find there.” William James, “The True Harvard,” 12 Harvard Graduates Magazine 7 (September 1903).
49. Eliot, strongly influenced by the intellectualism of German universities, subscribed to the unity of the quest for knowledge. As he expressed it in his famous address on the aims of higher education, “There is today no difference between the philologist’s method of study and the naturalist’s, or between the psychologist’s method and the physiologist’s. Students of history and natural history, of physics and metaphysics, of literature and the fine arts, find that, though their fields of study are different, their method and spirit are the same. This oneness of method characterizes the true university.” For criticism, see Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 342–346 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936).
50. 1941 Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt 460.
51. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 209; Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography 77 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985).
52. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 218–219; Ward, Before the Trumpet 230.
53. 47 Harvard Alumni Bulletin 444 (April 28, 1945). Bowie subsequently became pastor of New York City’s Grace Church.
54. FDR Diary, October 1, 1903, FDRL.
55. FDR to SDR, October 7, 1903, 1 Roosevelt Letters 434–435.
56. Schlesinger, Crisis of the Old Order 324. “Perhaps the most useful preparation I had in college for public service was on the Harvard Crimson,” Roosevelt said many years later. Quoted in Nathan Miller, FDR: An Intimate History 39 (New York: Doubleday, 1983).
57. The Oregonian (Portland), April 20, 1914.
58. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 213.
59. FDR to SDR, January 6, 1902, 1 Roosevelt Letters 403.
60. SDR, My Boy Franklin 55–56.
61. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 243.
62. To Sara, FDR wrote, “Last week I dined at the Quincy’s, the Armory’s and the Thayer’s, three as high-life places as are to be found in blue-blooded, blue stockinged, bean eating Boston!” January 12, 1904, 1 Roosevelt Letters 447.
63. Roosevelt’s remark was made to Bamie’s son, W. Sheffield Cowles, Jr., who was returning from Europe with President Wilson in 1919. Letter, Cowles to Nathan Miller, March 18, 1980, in FDR: An Intimate History 35, 513.
64. Lathrop Brown was elected to Congress from New York as a Democrat in 1912 and later served as joint secretary to President Wilson’s Industrial Conference in 1919. His remark was made to Frank Freidel and is reprinted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 237. Brown himself was a member of Porcellian.
65. Freidel, Apprenticeship 52.
THREE | Keeping the Name in the Family
The epigraph is from James Roosevelt, My Parents: A Differing View 17 (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976). Also see David B. Roosevelt, Grandmère: A Personal History of Eleanor Roosevelt 168 (New York: Warner Books, 2002).
1. The New York Times, March 18, 1905; Town Topics, March 9, 1905.
2. James Roosevelt, My Parents 33. Or, as their son Elliott wrote, “If [father] was no more than a boy in terms of his experience with women at the time of their marriage, mother was no more than a child in her knowledge of men.” Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park 25 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).
3. “Who do you think it would be nice to have at Hyde Park with the crowd?” Franklin asked Sara. “You’d better send me a list.” Two days later Sara complied: “I send a short list of girls either one of whom you may be pleased to dance with, and you ought to write at once—
Mary Newbold [Hyde Park neighbor]
Mary Soley [cousin]
Muriel [Delano Robbins—cousin]
Helen [Roosevelt—Rosy’s daughter and FDR’s niece].
As you know very few girls you ought to make haste.” FDR to SDR, December 4, 1898; SDR to FDR December 6, 1898, 1 The Roosevelt Letters 213–214, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1949).
4. FDR to SDR, October 16, 1901, ibid. 396.
5. Elliott Roosevelt, Untold Story 33–34; James Roosevelt, My Parents 18. After the romance disintegrated, Frances Dana married FDR’s classmate Henry de Rahm. Roosevelt remained on friendly terms with both and spent much time with them in Florida in the 1920s, when he was recovering from polio.
6. The account of FDR’s relationship with Alice Sohier is derived from Geoffrey Ward’s original research with the Sohier family and described in detail in Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt: 1882–1905 253–255 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985). Alice’s 1910 marriage to Herbert Bramwell Shaw, an insurance executive, ended in divorce in 1925. All her life she remained a Republican, professing not to be surprised that FDR was
“so careless with the country’s money since he had always overspent his allowance as a youth.” Alice died in 1972, having made sure that all of FDR’s letters to her had been burned. Ibid. 255n.
7. FDR to Robert D. Washburn, August 18, 1928, FDRL. There is no record of FDR traveling to the West or the South in 1902.
8. FDR was an usher at Alice’s coming-out ball, January 13, 1904. Thirty years later, Alice’s father came across a photograph of the ushers and mailed it to the president. FDR wrote back immediately, “That photograph brings back many delightful memories. I well remember Alice’s coming out dance. Of all the debutantes of that year she was the loveliest.” FDR to Colonel Sohier, March 21, 1934, FDRL.
9. FDR diary entry, November 17, 1902, FDRL.
10. Corinne Robinson Alsop, unpublished memoir, Alsop Family Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
11. Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 101 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971).
12. Eleanor Roosevelt, Autobiography 41 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961). Eleanor’s first letter to Franklin, or at least the first that survives, was October 3, 1905, a matter-of-fact note that she signed “yours in haste.” FDRL.
13. ER, Autobiography 41. “It was years later before I understood what being in love or what loving really meant,” wrote Eleanor. Ibid.
14. Eleanor Roosevelt Genealogy, FDRL.
15. Philip Livingston (1716–1778) was one of four New York signatories to the Declaration of Independence; Brockholst Livingston, then the nation’s leading authority on commercial law, was appointed to the Supreme Court by Thomas Jefferson in 1806 and served until 1823; Robert R. Livingston was the first U.S. secretary of foreign affairs under the Continental Congress, 1781–1783; his brother, Edward, served as Andrew Jackson’s secretary of state from 1831 to 1833. William Livingston, who signed the Constitution, served as governor of New Jersey from 1776 to 1790.
16. Anna (1863), Elizabeth, known as “Tissie” (1865), Valentine, Jr. (“Vallie”) (1868), Edward (1870), Edith (1873), and Maude (1877).
17. According to Joseph Lash, who examined the medical records, there were reports of epilepsy, “but there is no other record of epilepsy in the family and the seizures … were too infrequent to fit such a diagnosis. Some doctors … have noted that Elliott’s seizures occurred when he was confronted with demands that evidently were too much for him and have suggested that they may have been … a form of escape.” Eleanor and Franklin 8. Also see Ward, Before the Trumpet 261; Blanche Wiesen Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 33–35 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992).