Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Everything from my point of view went well until the parade started. I sat between Mrs. Helm and Nancy Cook with Mary Dreier on Nan’s other side. Mrs. Helm of course was very enthusiastic about the Navy and applauded, etc., when they went by. Nan made very disparaging remarks and Mary Dreier practically sat on her hands to keep from applauding. They are ardent pacifists (in their theories anyway) and for a moment I thought I should have to get the Marines or at least a few cops to keep the pacifists quiet. Finally I told Nan to shut up and later told her that she and Mary Dreier had no right to accept a seat at a parade which was well advertised as a military one. Gosh how I dislike these crusaders!…

  Anyway we lived through it and your mother and I have had some laughs over it….

  Marion Dickerman wants to buy a building and Elizabeth Read [in her capacity as ER’s financial adviser] is having a fit and wants the thing incorporated so you kids won’t be left out. (Just between thee and me, don’t tell your mother I said anything.) However, I think your mother has had a slight stiffening of the back bone, whether enough or not I can’t tell at this writing….

  Your mother seems very well and perhaps losing her temper did her good. She has been full of pep since.

  Incidentally George Bye told me he could get your Ma a $25,000 a year job without any effort when she leaves here which spikes the chance of her going back to teach for $2,000….

  Tensions increased for over a year. In March 1938, Dickerman hired a professional firm to create a slick, glossy twenty-six-page fund-raising brochure that featured ER prominently. Titled “Our Daughters’ Heritage,” the frontispiece was comprised of a facsimile of ER’s signature and a singularly innocuous quote:

  I think a school, which has as its aim the preparation of pupils to know more about their environment and be better fitted to live in it, is entering the educational field with a new and more practical objective.

  If Marion Dickerman resented the school’s public connection with ER, she was certainly willing to exploit her for fund-raising purposes. And while ER agreed, with reluctance, to have her words and photo used, Dickerman was annoyed by her insipid quote. When asked “to strengthen it,” ER refused:

  I am terribly sorry, but as I do not intend to make the school one of my major interests, I feel it very much wiser to be absolutely honest…. I regret that I cannot change my statement.

  After she learned that Dickerman whispered that ER’s presence upset some of the school’s Republican parents, ER turned Todhunter’s annual senior class visit to the White House into a joint visit with Arthurdale High School seniors, writing Dickerman: “I thought they might be of value to your young people as a contact.”

  At Val-Kill there were displays of unusual pettiness over such details as who paid for lawn mowing, whose dredging caused silt in the pond, who might use the laundry on Tuesday at three o’clock. Tommy wrote Anna:

  I think it is going to resolve itself into an endurance test. Those gals are not going to do anything to cause an open breach if they can help it, and at the same time they are going to grab all they can grab.

  Also, Nan and Marion were rude to Tommy. She wrote Anna:

  One day I inadvertently said something about “my house” and Nan turned on me with real fury and said it didn’t belong to me, that she and Marion had much more money in this building than Mrs. R and Mrs. R could not give me any of it so that I could say “mine.” I refused to get mad and simply said that henceforth I would refer to it as the place where I work and sleep! The unfortunate part of it was that your mother was sitting beside me and heard it all!…

  I must tell you that Miss Dickerman has undertaken to complete my education—she tells me I talk too loud—I use certain phrases too often and I emphasize words when I shouldn’t! I’m having a rare opportunity to polish off the rough corners!

  Then came the bruising summer of 1938. Marion Dickerman was in Europe, sent by FDR at Bernard Baruch’s request as one of a nine-member presidential commission to study industrial relations in England and Sweden. Tommy wrote Anna:

  I know you know all about Marion Dickerman getting herself appointed to the commission that went abroad to study labor conditions…. It was worked between Dr. [Herman] Baruch [whose daughter attended Todhunter] and Barney Baruch. I guess they believe in asking for what they want. It leaves Nan high and dry and very lonesome and rather forlorn looking.

  When Baruch’s transatlantic message about Dickerman’s appointment arrived in Geneva, Frances Perkins was already at the ILO meeting and “thought I should drop.” Perkins called FDR, who told her that he had agreed—since Baruch wanted the appointment and Baruch was a very important man. An amazing thing for FDR to say—since, despite Baruch’s notable friendship with ER, the First Lady’s efforts to get Baruch’s suggestions before the president were rarely successful. It was mystifying. Perkins recalled:

  [I was] pretty well dumbfounded when I hung up. I thought that was about the poorest piece of business that I ever heard of…. I realize that she’s the kind of person who had always been stuck in a corner…. After all, the husband of her great friend, Mrs. Roosevelt, was now President and… she would like to have something conspicuous fall on her. It would boost her stock in her school, her standing in New York….

  Perkins considered Dickerman’s appointment a wild and silly idea. Nevertheless, Dickerman sailed on 28 June, and ER sent a bon voyage greeting with flowers and a check to her cabin.*

  Dickerman’s 1938 sojourn was, according to Frances Perkins, a disaster. In an extraordinarily nasty passage, Perkins wanted history to know that Dickerman and Anna Rosenberg, the only women on the commission, did nothing but party. They went to nightclubs and dances every night. It was the talk of the town. Anna Rosenberg took Dickerman “to a very swell dressmaker… one of the great fashionable dressmakers of London,” and they bought an extraordinarily “handsome dress.” Then “took her to a hairdresser and had her hair all curled, waved, and jazzed up. She looked like a different person.” Then got “a partner for her and they had a good time” every night. “Then they went to Sweden… [where] it was just the same and a little more startling because the Swedish people were so astonished…. This was supposed to be a serious delegation and serious delegations don’t go for fun and flirtation ordinarily.” Perkins concluded: “All this” really had “nothing to do with the [commission], except that Marion Dickerman had the time of her life.”

  There is no evidence that ER agreed with Frances Perkins, and even after their estrangement she wrote in the Women’s Democratic Digest that when Dickerman returned from her trip to England and Sweden, she “told us much of interest.” Dickerman returned filled with rage over Toe Kennedy’s attitude. He saw nothing particularly terrible about the persecution of the Jews and thought the future of European Jews depended entirely on whatever financial arrangements U.S. Jews might make toward their settlement in Africa and the Americas.

  Marion Dickerman observed Kennedy’s sympathies personally when the industrial commission was en route home. Their train was stopped outside of Hamburg and the passengers were searched by Nazi officials. It was a menacing and ugly scene, especially because the commission’s chair, Gerard Swope of General Electric, was Jewish. Dickerman had never seen Swope so “absolutely harassed.” He was “undone.”

  The experience did not prepare Swope for their subsequent lunch at the U.S. embassy in London, where Kennedy expressed “great sympathy and admiration for Adolf Hitler, great antipathy and contempt for certain features of English and American life, and he said so forcefully, crudely.” In reaction, “Swope’s face hardened in cold fury.” He handed Dickerman a note: “In five minutes you and I are leaving this table.” Dickerman thought it would be too rude to leave: To make “a scene,” she felt, would be “a disservice to the government.” They remained, “but it was an unhappy time and left a very unpleasant feeling in my mind in regard to Mr. Kennedy.”

  It was while Dickerman was away that ER’s bitter conversation
with Nan occurred and relations between them permanently soured. Tommy wrote Anna:

  The Cook-Dickerman situation seems to get worse—-I am glad Harry Hooker is going to draw up a legal agreement about what belongs to who around here. I am terribly sorry about the whole thing because I think it makes your mother very nervous.

  When Marion Dickerman returned on the 18th, Nancy Cook met her at the dock. Dickerman “was flabbergasted at the way she looked.” Drawn and pale, Nancy Cook’s eyes were red and raw from a week of tears. She was agitated and mostly incoherent. Dickerman could extract only two facts: Nancy Cook had “a long and tragic talk” with ER and they each had said things “that ought not to have been said.” And “Eleanor had hurt her beyond anything.”

  According to Dickerman, Nancy Cook never told her the full story of their conversation. She neither repeated the cruel words she hurled at ER nor the final words ER spoke to her. But from that moment on, ER was as ice to them. “Eleanor never forgot a hurt, never. There was a forgiveness in Franklin in many instances but I never found it in Eleanor.”

  Nancy Cook’s words were like acid on her heart. According to Nancy, she and Marion actually felt they were responsible for ER’s political and public achievements. They seriously believed, and Nancy had the gall to tell her, that they had created one of America’s most vital leaders. Nancy Cook actually told ER that she and Dickerman did everything they did “to build” her up. Because one of ER’s lifelong difficulties involved her inability really to take credit, to claim authority, to feel secure in her own good work, that pronouncement seemed to ER’s other friends more than calumny—actually hateful.

  Indeed, Tommy had written Anna the year before:

  I agree with you that your mother never takes any credit to herself, but in the next part of the book, she comes to the establishment of the cottage, school, shop, etc., and I will try a little insidious propaganda to make her speak up for herself. However, I guess you and I are alone in thinking that she ever did anything for any one—they the “helped” all seem to think they would have been just as well off.

  Cook and Dickerman always referred to the demise of their friendship exclusively in terms of their own pain. But it devastated ER. For an entire week, ER simply took to her bed. Esther Lape vividly recalled that most unusual time: Tommy telephoned, frantic with worry, to report that ER had been ill for days, refused to see anybody, and showed no signs of improvement. “Never before” had Tommy seen ER silent, brooding, closed to company, politics, diversion. She had simply turned “her face to the wall.”

  The finality with which one of the most important friendships of her life ended was wrenching for ER. Not since her confrontation with FDR over Lucy Mercer had she felt so fundamentally disregarded and misunderstood by her loved and trusted family of choice.

  It was unlike ER to end a relationship, to cut it off entirely, to be permanently unforgiving. Her lifelong criticism of her mother’s cold emotional abandonment of her father in his alcoholic troubles, despite his outside families, caused her to embrace people similarly in need. Whatever her criticisms or private pain, she sought changes, and persevered—as with her Uncle Vallie and her brother Hall.

  Even in the midst of her greatest misery as a young matron, hurt and betrayed by Franklin’s affair, she worked to create an abiding partnership, and a profound respect and friendship endured. Although she lived, perhaps always, with pain in her heart, she was satisfied when her efforts pleased FDR. At the end of August, despite the World Youth Congress and other tensions, she was happy to write Anna: “Pa’s ten days here were very pleasant for him I think— everything went smoothly.”

  Whatever the elements of her friendship with Earl Miller, and his ever-changing young women, he was a continually loyal and protective companion, by her side whenever she needed him. Her deep and easy friendship with Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read seemed never emotionally troubled, as they worked together from issue to issue. Although she and Hick pulled away from each other and ER became impatient with her grumblings, Hick remained a loved and trusted confidante.

  But with her partners of the Val-Kill the break was total. Even if Nancy Cook had been drinking, as she had been that lonely summer in Dickie’s absence, ER could not excuse her words. She felt she had never known her friends until that dreadful fight when Nancy Cook revealed their substance, and their real interests. Their entire relationship, she now believed, had been built on a lie. It all seemed to her now a bitter hoax.

  One can only imagine what images appeared as she contemplated the end of a friendship so cherished, so filled with excitement and travel, freedom, good works, seemingly infinite trust, and love. Only fifteen years before they had planned their lives together, and initialed their towels and various household adornments “EMN.” They had toured Europe with the children, enjoyed countless Campobello picnics, longed for each other’s company when apart. They worked together on every major project, and had been one another’s most intimate companions. During the 1920s, ER and Nan had matching knickerbocker suits; ER called Marion “Dickie,” they called her “Muddie,” which sounded like what the children called her; and they shared convictions, as well as hilarious, important, and wonderful times. Their friendship had seemed devoted, and forever.

  During the White House years, ER included Nancy Cook in her Arthur-dale work, put her in charge of major woodworking projects for the settlement communities, and lavished gifts and money on her—more than $30,000 for one year’s work at Arthurdale. In an undated Easter letter at the time she decided to move into her own space, ER wanted it understood that despite their need for separateness and occasional solitude, “on the whole what is mine is thine.”

  Now it was over, and ER was bereft. Esther Lape wrote that ER’s behavior “drove us to despair.” Both Lape and Elizabeth Read felt Tommy’s call “was incredibly dashing,” and they worried for days. Finally, at her 11th Street apartment, ER snapped out of it, went down to see Lape, and explained:

  I know it is your dinner time and I have guests waiting, but there is something I must tell you. I know you think that I have been very ill. I have not. You know I have always been aware that people anxious to gain my interest were really hoping thereby for a link with Franklin. I have known this but there was one person of whom this did not seem to me to be true. Don’t ask how I could make such a fundamental error. I simply did. I have recovered from my disappointment. That, after all, is based on my own weakness…. I simply had to let you know that all is now well. I am unable to lead a life based on an illusion.

  Cook and Dickerman made several efforts to involve FDR in the settlement arrangements, which dragged out for months. He was not overtly involved, but meddled in a way that only finalized the breach, and deepened the wounds: Evidently he transmitted to ER every petty nasty piece of business that he overheard.

  The legal dissolution of the partnership dragged on, because Cook and Dickerman refused a simple, and generous, cash settlement that ER offered in order to get clear title to the shop building that was now her cottage. On 29 October, ER wrote:

  I thought I had made it very clear to both of you that I did not care to accept the shop building unless I made financial arrangements which would equalize whatever money you claim to have in the building….

  If you will look back, I think you will realize that in all of our relationship I have never before wanted anything, nor suggested anything about the cottage or the school, and therefore it is entirely natural that we have had no difficulties in previous years. This was quite easy for me because I had no objection to acceding to your wishes.

  In this matter I have a distinct preference and as you do not care to handle it in the way I wish, I have decided to turn over to you now, instead of at my death, my entire interest in the cottage, the shop building and the other buildings, exclusive of the stable which was built entirely with my money.

  I shall, of course, take everything out of the building which I have paid for and store it until I build
somewhere else. If I had had any idea of how you both felt when I planned the remodelling of the building, I would never have spent the many thousands of dollars which I have spent. This has been a very costly lesson both financially and spiritually, but it is good for me to know that one can never know how any other person reasons or what motivates them….

  In view of what has happened I feel that I wish also to withdraw entirely from the school. I will give you both with great pleasure my share of the school fund which has been held in my name and on which I have paid income tax every year. I do not expect you to take my name off the letter head this year if that will cause you any embarrassment. I am sure however, that you will prosper better without any connection with the name….

  I shall only come to Hyde Park when the President is at the big house and I will stay at the big house….

  Her total withdrawal pleased nobody, and negotiations continued. Dickerman sent a telegram: “Can not our years of close association help us at such a time?…”

  ER replied: “Very sorry every minute today is filled…. Leaving every-thing in Harry’s hands.”

  ER’s refusal to negotiate was understandable. Tommy sent the details to Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read:

  Nancy is to submit a statement of their “assets” and claims $21,000 as salary for managing the shop. Mrs. R’s money contribution, her name and her work count for exactly zero….

  In essence, what they are worrying about is not the present but what will happen when ER dies. They said plainly and distinctly that they wished always to be able to control the place and they know they could not control it if one of the children had a claim….

  I felt so sorry for ER I could have wept and I don’t think tears were very far away from her. I can’t for the life of me understand why such a fine person as she is has so many chiselers around her. I know the money means nothing whatsoever to her, but it must be a blow to realize that she has been only a money-making opportunity and not a person to them and she can’t help knowing that.