Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  18. Dollar conversion factors are based on the table prepared by Professor Robert G. Sahr of the Political Science Department at Oregon State University.

  19. Shandigaff, better known as “shandy,” is one-half beer and one-half ginger beer. Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association Collection, Widener Library, Harvard University, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 11.

  20. Elliott’s account of a tiger shoot in Hyderabad and an elephant hunt in Sri Lanka was edited by Eleanor and published by Scribner’s in 1933 under the title Hunting Big Game in the Eighties.

  21. New York Herald, The New York Times, December 2, 1883. David McCullough and Geoffrey Ward assert that TR was Elliott’s best man. Contemporary coverage in the Herald and Times suggests otherwise. Compare David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback 250 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981); Ward, Before the Trumpet 264.

  22. In Loving Memory of Anna Hall Roosevelt, FDRL, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 265.

  23. John Sargeant Wise, Recollections of Thirteen Presidents 241–243 (New York: Doubleday, 1906).

  24. The quotation is from ER, Autobiography 5. Hall’s full name was Gracie Hall Roosevelt. James King Gracie was Elliott’s uncle, having married his mother’s sister, Anna Bulloch.

  25. TR’s comment is in a letter to Bamie, August 22, 1891.

  26. News of the suit was featured in all New York dailies on August 17, 1891. “Wrecked by Liquor and Folly,” said the Herald. “His Brother Theodore Applies for a Writ of Lunacy,” reported the Sun.

  27. Elliott’s letter was reprinted in the New York edition of the Herald, August 21, 1891.

  28. TR to Bamie, January 21, 1892 (TR’s emphasis).

  29. Undated letter from TR to Bamie, cited in Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt 447 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979).

  30. Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 65n.

  31. Mrs. Sherman blamed Anna for Elliott’s demise. Blanche Wiesen Cook states the case to the contrary with uncompromising directness. “Throughout the entire period,” she writes, “Anna struggled desperately against medical advice, TR’s bullying, and what must have been her own doubts to persuade his family that Elliott was curable. She stood virtually alone in her effort to find an alternative and loving approach to Elliott’s treatment. Only when Elliott became uncontrollable and vindictive, did she agree to leave him in [Paris], and consent to TR’s suit to establish a trust that would protect her children’s financial interest. But she continued to hope for Elliott’s recovery, and to worry about his peace of mind.” Ibid. 66–67.

  32. Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story 12–13 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937). ER omitted this passage when she republished This Is My Story in her Autobiography in 1961.

  33. The New York Times, December 8, 1892.

  34. Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt 848–849; Ward, Before the Trumpet 278.

  35. TR to Bamie, July 29, 1894; August 18, 1894.

  36. Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 80. For the tension between Eleanor and Anna, see pages 70–72. See also Ward, Before the Trumpet 288.

  37. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, quoted in Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth 151 (New York: Doubleday, 1981).

  38. ER, Autobiography 11–12.

  39. Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 95.

  40. Teague, Mrs. L 154.

  41. Ibid. “I had a lot of admiration for her,” Alice recalled. “But I did get bored with her type of piety.… She always wanted to discuss things like whether contentment was better than happiness and whether they conflicted with one another. Things like that I didn’t give a damn about.”

  42. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie, eds., 1 The Diary of Beatrice Webb 277 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982); also see vol. 2, pp. 340–341.

  Before moving to England, Mlle. Souvestre had founded Les Ruches, a girls school at Fontainebleau, in partnership with another woman. This was the school Bamie attended. After Bamie left, the two women quarreled and the school disbanded. A charged account of the breakup is in Olivia, a roman à clef of Les Ruches and Allenwood written by Dorothy Strachey Bussy in 1933 and published under a pseudonym in 1948. Dorothy Strachey Bussy had been a student with Bamie at Les Ruches and taught Eleanor English at Allenwood. In her biography of ER, Blanche Wiesen Cook discusses Olivia perceptively: “It is a very simple love story of a young, uncontrollable romance. A lesbian romance. The passions that devastated Olivia did not devastate Eleanor. But she understood the book.” 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 116–120, 515–517.

  43. Quoted in Joseph Lash, Love, Eleanor 27 (New York: Doubleday, 1982). From an interview with Helen Gifford by the London Daily Mail in 1942.

  44. Mlle. Souvestre to Mrs. Hall, 1899, n.d., FDRL.

  45. ER, Autobiography 29–30.

  46. In her memoirs, Eleanor said Auntie Tissie “was always kindness itself to me.… She was one of those people whom the word ‘exquisite’ describes best.” Ibid. 20.

  47. The comment is by Eleanor’s classmate Dorothy Horn, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 84.

  48. Marie Souvestre to Corinne Robinson (ER’s cousin). Corinne entered Allenwood during Eleanor’s final year. “When I arrived she was ‘everything’ at the school. She was beloved by everybody. Saturdays we were allowed to sortie into Putney which had stores where you could buy books, flowers. Young girls have crushes and you bought violets or a book and left them in the room of the girl you were idolizing. Eleanor’s room every Saturday would be full of flowers because she was so admired.” Corinne Robinson Alsop, unpublished memoir, Alsop Family Papers, Harvard University.

  49. ER, Autobiography 35.

  50. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 303.

  51. Elliott Roosevelt, Untold Story 33.

  52. “Eleanor has a very good mind,” Franklin told Sara. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 307.

  53. Elliott Roosevelt, Untold Story 33.

  54. ER to FDR, January 4, 1904, FDRL.

  55. Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 139.

  56. ER’s letter is in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 135.

  57. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 319. Also see Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 138.

  58. ER to FDR, October 12, 1904, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 136.

  59. Corinne Robinson Alsop’s unpublished journals, Alsop Family Papers, Harvard University.

  60. The congratulatory letters, variously dated, are in the wedding folders, Box 20, FDRL.

  61. TR to ER, December 19, 1904; TR to FDR, November 29, 1904, Box 20, FDRL.

  62. TR received 7.6 million votes to Parker’s 5.1 million. Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate, received .4 million. Roosevelt carried every state except the Solid South, which went for Parker.

  63. January 8, 1938, 1938 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 38, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Random House, 1939).

  64. Contrary to popular belief, TR did not mention his trademark “square deal” in his inaugural address. See instead his Labor Day speech to the New York State Fair in Syracuse, September 7, 1903, or his remarks to the veterans of the Civil War in Springfield, Illinois, July 4, 1903.

  65. James Roosevelt Roosevelt, FDR’s half brother, was in Florida at the time of the wedding and unable to attend.

  66. ER, Autobiography 50. The New York Times noted that Eleanor was “considerably taller than the head of the nation, suggesting to many present her beautiful mother.… She has much of that simple grace that characterized her mother.” March 18, 1905. Town Topics reported one guest to have said, “the bridegroom had been especially handsome,” to which another added, “Surprising for a Roosevelt.”

  67. Teague, Mrs. L. 156.

  FOUR | Albany

  The epigraph is from a conversation between Ed Perkins, Democratic chairman of Dutchess County, and FDR in September 1910, preparatory to Roosevelt’s acceptance of the Democratic nomination for the State Senate. Interview with Ed Perkins, quoted in Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography 112 (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1985).

  1. John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect 201 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950). Donovan, who won the Distinguished Service Cross at Saint-Mihiel, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his action at Landres-et-Saint-Georges, October 14 and 15, 1918. According to the citation: “Lt. Col. Donovan personally led the assaulting wave in an attack upon a very strongly organized position, and when our troops were suffering heavy casualties he encouraged all near him by his example, moving among his men in exposed positions, reorganizing decimated platoons, and accompanying them forward in attacks. When he was wounded in the leg by machine gun bullets, he refused to be evacuated and continued with his unit until it withdrew to a less exposed position.” War Department General Order 56, 1922.

  2. FDR to SDR, August 22, 1905, 2 The Roosevelt Letters 72–73, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1950). I have used the current term, “civil procedure,” rather than “pleading and practice,” as it was delineated in FDR’s time. For FDR’s law school absences, see Morgan, FDR 106.

  3. Interview with Professor Jackson E. Reynolds (1949), Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University. Reynolds, a lifelong Republican, was a good friend of Herbert Hoover from their undergraduate days at Stanford. He was also president of the First National Bank of New York and a committed foe of the New Deal. See Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament 62n (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).

  4. Of the 106 men who entered Columbia Law School with FDR, only 84 remained by third year. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship 76 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952).

  5. ER to SDR, August 29, 1905, 2 Roosevelt Letters 79.

  6. Quoted in Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 151 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971). “You can imagine what a speech on gardening, and the raising of vegetables in general, by your son must have been like,” FDR wrote Sara. “I will say nothing more except that my appetite for those damned weeds has since that time departed.” FDR to SDR, September 7, 1905, 2 Roosevelt Letters 81.

  7. FDR to SDR, July 3, 1905, 2 Roosevelt Letters 35–36. “We went to two churches or so—San Toy and Santa Claus, and in one of them I drew a picture of the ceiling to be copied in the addition to the Hyde Park house,” wrote Franklin.

  8. FDR to SDR, July 5, 1905, ibid. 44–45.

  9. In 1903, seven years after the death of her first husband, William Howard Forbes, Dora married his younger brother, Paul Forbes, who was also associated with Russell and Company in the China trade. After thirty years’ residence in Hong Kong, the Forbeses then moved to Paris, and their spacious Right Bank apartment became the headquarters for the Delano and Roosevelt families in Paris. In 1940, with France at war, Sara returned to escort Dora back to the United States. Sara’s interviews with the French press, which she conducted entirely in French, did much to cement Franco-American relations at that critical time. See Geoffrey C. Ward, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882–1905 61–62 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).

  10. ER to SDR, June 23, 1905, 2 Roosevelt Letters 31. Madame Howland was the widow of Rebecca Howland Roosevelt’s brother. (Rebecca was James’s first wife.) After her husband’s death, James became one of the two trustees of Hortense Howland’s estate. When the other trustee absconded with all her funds, James drew upon his own resources to provide her with the means to continue her style of life in Paris. Ibid. Madame Howland repaid James’s consideration by sending home in Eleanor’s luggage a pair of diamond earrings for Sara said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story 132 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937).

  11. FDR to SDR, August 14, 1905, 2 Roosevelt Letters 67–68.

  12. ER, This Is My Story 131. This passage was omitted by ER when she republished This Is My Story in her Autobiography.

  13. FDR to SDR, June 16, 22, July 8, August 14, 1905, 2 Roosevelt Letters 24–25, 29–30, 39, 67–68.

  14. FDR to SDR, July 22, 1905, 2 Roosevelt Letters 50.

  15. ER to SDR, August 1, 1905, ibid. 59. “[We] will be quite happy if the plumbing is good and the paint and papers fresh and new. If there is a telephone please don’t let it be taken out and is there a safe in the house?”

  16. ER to SDR, August 8, 1905, ibid. 62. “Altogether we feel very jubilant,” wrote Eleanor, “and I am looking forward so much to getting it in order with you to help us. I am afraid my unaided efforts would not be very successful.” Later, Eleanor asked Sara whether the kitchen and basement could be whitewashed (August 13, 1905).

  I have devoted more space than may be warranted to Sara’s renting the Draper house for Franklin and Eleanor because ER in her autobiography implies that she was surprised and put out by Sara’s action, which was made to appear the unilateral meddling of an overprotective mother-in-law. Eleanor’s letters from Europe suggest otherwise. Compare, Eleanor Roosevelt, Autobiography 55 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961). Also see Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny 197 (New York: Putnam, 1972).

  17. The houses are at 47–49 East Sixty-fifth Street. Sara’s 1908 journal entry indicates that the total price for the two houses, each 17½ feet wide, was $247,345.19 (roughly $5 million currently). The two lots cost $105,284.25; construction, painting, and papering, $134,554.84; and Mr. Platt’s architect fee, $7,506.10. Except for a small $26,000 mortgage on her own house at 49 E. Sixty-fifth, Sara paid cash. SDR Journal, 1908. FDRL. Also see James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America 108 (New York: Grove Press, 2001). In 2003, the City University of New York undertook to restore the houses for the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, at a cost of $15 million. The New York Times, March 18, 2003.

  18. ER, Autobiography 61. Eleanor was not as divorced from the project as she later suggested. On August 22, 1907, she wrote Sara from Campobello, “Franklin and I have been working over the plans for lighting, bells, and telephones which [Charles A. Platt, the architect] sent us two days ago. All of the arrangements seem very good except in one or two bedrooms where I think he has made a mistake as one would want lights over dressing tables it seems to me and not in the four corners of the room.” 2 Roosevelt Letters 112.

  19. For this early confrontation, I have relied on the treatment of ER’s friend and biographer Joseph P. Lash. Mr. Lash was privy to Mrs. Roosevelt’s thoughts and offers the most objective appraisal of the episode. See Eleanor and Franklin 162.

  20. ER, Autobiography 61. “I pulled myself together and realized that I was acting like a little fool, but there was a good deal of truth in what I had said, for I was not developing any individual taste or initiative.”

  21. ER interview with Arnold Michaelis, on the recording “A Recorded Portrait” (1958), FDRL.

  22. ER, This Is My Story 162–163.

  23. Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park 40 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).

  24. Horace Coon, Columbia: Colossus on the Hudson 99 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1947).

  25. ER, Autobiography 62.

  26. Ibid. 57–60. Also see Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 178–180.

  27. ER, This Is My Story 142–146.

  28. James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 40 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).

  29. John R. Boettiger, A Love in Shadow 62. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).

  30. Quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 152.

  31. 157 U.S. 429 (1894). Carter’s argument to the Court made few friends among his corporate clients. Granted, the income tax would fall upon only the nation’s wealthiest 2 percent, said Carter. “But that two percent received more than fifty percent of the country’s income. The rapid concentration of wealth in the hands of the few creates an inequitable situation that Congress has the right to correct.” Carter reminded the Court that its authority was limited and it would transgress those limits if it invalidated an act of Congress simply because the justices disagreed with the economic principles involved. Five justices disagreed
, and the Court overturned the tax. Carter also represented the United States before the Tribunal of Arbitration in Paris in 1893, pertaining to sealing rights on the Pribilof Islands. Once asked by Professor Francis Greenwood Peabody of Harvard why he was so successful at law, Carter replied, “I never take lunch.”

  32. United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U.S. 106 (1911). For Ledyard’s role in 1907, see Stanley Jackson, J. P. Morgan 272–275 (New York: Stein and Day, 1983); Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier 584–589 (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

  33. Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911). Milburn and Ledyard lost back-to-back challenges to the Sherman Antitrust Act in the Supreme Court but then succeeded in reorganizing the two trusts so effectively that the government’s dissolution order was rendered nominal. Shareholders suffered no damage, competition remained minimal, and management was barely affected.

  34. Grover Cleveland once said of Milburn, “He usually had a lawbook under his arm in the street and I used to wonder if he was trying to absorb the law through his armpits.” Francis M. Ellis and Edward F. Clark, Jr., A Brief History of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn 30 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Peter E. Randall, 1988).

  35. Quoted in Davis, Beckoning Destiny 213.

  36. Grenville Clark, “Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882–1945: Five Harvard Men Pay Tribute to His Memory,” 47 Harvard Alumni Bulletin 452 (April 28, 1945).

  37. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., Farewell to Fifth Avenue 245 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935).

  38. Extemporaneous remarks at Vassar College, August 26, 1933, 1 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 338, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Random House, 1938).