Eleanor and Franklin Read online

  While she did not advocate socialism, she did not approve of Henry Adams’ pessimism, either. A frail one-man Greek chorus, the aristocratic, cynical Adams was at that period commenting sourly on the passing Washington scene from his study overlooking Lafayette Square. He had ceased going out socially in Theodore Roosevelt’s day, but he would stop his victoria in front of the Roosevelt house on N Street and ask to see the children, whereupon all of them, including the dog, would climb into his carriage. Justice Holmes said that Adams turned everything “to dust and ashes” but Adams was nevertheless attracted by this golden couple and invited them to lunch. Sometimes Eleanor stopped in alone for a cup of tea, “rather exhausted after an afternoon of calls,” recalled Aileen Tone, “Uncle Henry’s” secretary-companion, who had taken charge of him after his stroke. “She had the routine of calls so well organized that she kept to a schedule of six minutes a call. Uncle Henry liked her—it was difficult not to,” Aileen continued; Eleanor had “a kind of universal friendliness and kindness that enveloped you.”11

  All the Roosevelts stopped by to see Uncle Henry whenever they were in Washington, and Eleanor had a quiet, old-fashioned kind of charm of which Adams approved, even though her desire to reform the world, rudimentary as it was at the time, “was not much in Uncle Henry’s line.” Once, when Franklin was impatiently holding forth about the Wilson administration, Adams stopped him and, according to Eleanor, said, “Young man, I have lived in this house many years and seen the occupant of that White House across the square come and go, and nothing that you minor officials or the occupants of that house can do will affect the history of the world for long!” Eleanor did not consider this good doctrine to preach to the young. Adams’ pessimism, she concluded later, was “an old man’s defense against his own urge to be an active factor in the work of the world, a role which Henry Adams rejected in his youth.”12

  Washington during the Wilson administration was no longer the slow-moving, parochial Capital it had been when Theodore Roosevelt first arrived there in the 1890s, “where an old resident knew by sight everyone who kept a carriage” and its social life had consisted of walking, driving, bicycling, and paying calls.13

  Society consisted of three groups—old Washington families called “The Aborigines,” top-ranking officials who were also social register, and diplomats. Franklin and Eleanor were immediately placed on the lists of all three. There were the “cave dwellers” like the Misses Patten who knew everyone and at whose Sunday afternoons the latest gossip could be heard (official Washington was said to have three means of communication—telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-Patten). “I called on the Misses Patten this p.m.,” Eleanor reported in 1916 when the social tide was running strong against Germany, “and heard the latest German tale.”

  Another early dinner guest at the Franklin Roosevelts was Belle Hagner, who had been a highly popular Washington debutante and had served as Edith Roosevelt’s social secretary and had stayed on in that position with Mrs. Taft and the first Mrs. Wilson. The William Corcoran Eustises were also guests of the Roosevelts. They lived in the Corcoran House, a landmark on Lafayette Square. Mrs. Eustis was the former Edith Morton, daughter of Levi P. Morton, a Dutchess County neighbor of the Roosevelts and vice president under Benjamin Harrison; Willie Eustis was a member of one of the First Families of Virginia. Edith Eustis said the Franklin Roosevelts were “the most attractive and nicest young couple I know.” Other families (mostly Republican) of distinguished lineage and public eminence who were kind to them were the Longworths, the Lodges, the Henry Whites, and the William Phillipses.

  The Metropolitan and Chevy Chase country clubs were the gathering places of the socially acceptable and politically powerful; businessmen were not admitted—neither were Jews nor, of course, Negroes. (One reason Washington high society suspected Woodrow Wilson of social radicalism was his refusal to accept honorary membership in the Chevy Chase Club.)14 Franklin spent a great deal of time at both. Their acceptance mattered to him. They were the people who counted, and their recognition eased the pain of his exclusion from Porcellian.15 Eleanor later said that it was Louis Howe, who had come to Washington as Franklin’s aide, who saved Franklin from the snobbishness and total dedication to pleasure-seeking represented by the Metropolitan Club. The Howes lived near the Roosevelts, and every day Louis and Franklin walked to the Navy Department together. Eleanor and Grace Howe shopped together and occasionally the Howes were guests at 1733 N Street, but although Eleanor was unfailingly courteous, she still discouraged intimacy.

  In the diplomatic circle the young Roosevelts inherited most of Uncle Ted’s and Auntie Bye’s friends and made many of their own, especially among the younger embassy people. The British ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, had known Eleanor’s parents, and he and his wife became good friends of the young Roosevelts. The French ambassador, Jules Jusserand, who had been a member of Theodore’s “walking cabinet,” also befriended them.

  Within this larger Washington society, the Roosevelts had their own circle of friends, sufficiently intimate, said Eleanor, that protocol could be ignored when they dined together, as they often did. This group included the Charles Hamlins, the William Phillipses, the Franklin K. Lanes, and the Adolph Millers.

  Charles Hamlin was assistant secretary of the treasury, a post he had also held under Cleveland. His wife “Bertie” was from Albany and had met Franklin when as a young boy he had come to Albany for his Uncle Ted’s inauguration as governor. They lived near the Roosevelts, and although Franklin did not find them exciting, he felt they would make real friends, he told Eleanor.

  William Phillips was assistant secretary of state. He was a protégé of Colonel House, who had brought him into the Wilson administration and who often used the Phillips home as his base when he was in Washington. Caroline Phillips, a granddaughter of the Mrs. Astor and a voluminous diarist, was an old friend of Eleanor’s.

  Franklin Lane was secretary of the interior, appointed sight unseen by Wilson on Colonel House’s strong recommendation. Mrs. Lane, it was said, had set up “a code of calling which exceeded in exclusiveness anything attempted by the White House,” but nevertheless the Lanes were not primarily occupied with social affairs. Lane was known for his buoyant temperament and good advice; although he was a Democrat, he had been appointed to the Interstate Commerce Commission by Theodore, who valued his counsel. A western progressive, he argued the need for government to experiment with a distribution of wealth that would be more equitable than the existing economic order while not destroying individual initiative. A young couple could not have had a wiser mentor or a better friend.

  Adolph Miller, an economist brought to Washington by Lane as one of his top aides, was subsequently appointed to the newly established Federal Reserve Board. Although Miller was a strict Dutch Calvinist and not an ebullient conversationalist, his wife Mary was pleasant and gay. Eleanor found both the Millers and the Lanes to be a “joy,” and noted that “talk with them is real talk.”

  These were the friends Franklin and Eleanor saw informally, often on Sunday evenings when Eleanor scrambled eggs in a chafing dish and served cold cuts, a cold dessert, and cocoa. They called themselves “the Club.” “Franklin Roosevelt was always gay and amusing. The Lanes and Millers were brilliant conversationalists. Those evenings were among the best of that Washington sojourn,” Phillips later wrote.

  How little did any of us imagine the great role that Franklin was to play in the future! I knew him then as a brilliant, lovable, and somewhat happy-go-lucky friend, an able Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but I doubt if it ever occurred to any of us that he had the making of a great President. . . . His wife, Eleanor, whom we all admired, was a quiet member of the little group. She seemed to be a little remote, or it may have been that Franklin claimed the attention, leaving her somewhat in the background.16

  Eleanor was essentially domestic, said Phillips, “and her interest in public affairs was centered in her husband’s career rather than in any thoug
ht of a career of her own.” Franklin overshadowed her. Although she was still basically shy, occasionally there were thunderclaps that heralded the political activist and militant equalitarian she was to become in later years. For example, she had a violent political argument with Fred Adams, who had married Ellen Delano. “He is most pessimistic about the ‘common people,’ considers us the worst governed people in the world and would prefer a monarchy! He has about the grasp and vision in big things of a child and it is discouraging to think that he is only one of many who think and feel like that about their country!” She could not see how Laura, Ellen’s sister, could admire Adams: “It would be deadening to see much of him, much less live in the house with him.”17

  Cousin Susie’s preoccupation with herself also irked Eleanor. Now living alone with Henry Parish in big houses in New York and Orange, she complained constantly of her ailments. “She thinks she is dying,” Eleanor scoffed, “someone else to think about would be her best cure.”

  Harry Hooker was in love. Eleanor lunched with the young lady and her mother “and came away with the feeling that Hooligan (Hooker) would never win out unless he could make his own life a big thing and not hang around Tuxedo.” She told him so that evening. He should really go to work for the progressives, she advised him and not always keep the young lady first in his mind. “Harry came up to dine,” she reported to Franklin, “and went home about 9.45 after my having all your theories passed on to him as mine and if they have the desired effect he’ll go to supper after his progressive meeting tomorrow night with all ‘the boys.’”

  Another example of Eleanor’s independent thinking was displayed in 1914 during the family contretemps resulting from Rosy Roosevelt’s announcement that he had finally persuaded Betty Riley, the gentle Englishwoman who had been his companion for many years, to marry him. Betty had tried to discourage him, because she felt that her lower-middle-class origins were not worthy of his social standing. Sara would have agreed. She was shocked by Rosy’s decision and deplored his behavior as a threat to “standards,” feeling that it showed he lacked principle. She wanted Eleanor’s moral support, but did not get it. “She told me yesterday,” Eleanor wrote Franklin, “she could talk it all over with Helen [Robinson] and Helen understood her point of view but I made her feel like a stranger by my curious attitude and I assured her I had no attitude and no opinion and she became enraged and said, that she couldn’t understand!” The marriage took place before Sara was able to get down to Hyde Park, but Rosy later accepted her invitation to come to Campobello. “Somehow it fills me with amusement for Mama is so happy to be ‘the one’ and yet feels she must not let me think she approves!”

  But such stirrings of nonconformism went unnoticed in Washington society, which saw her as an official’s wife who was doing her job, “the embodiment of 20th century activity,” one friend marveled. Eleanor was doing her job “a little better than anyone else” was the surprising verdict of Alice Longworth, who herself refused to play the game of calling and being called upon.18 Alice did only what amused her, but such was her wit and temperament that she could establish her own rules. Eleanor envied Alice’s ability to disregard convention,19 little aware that one day she too would go her own way—but in the interest of those who needed help, not for the sake of her own amusement.

  18.BRINGING UP HER CHILDREN

  IN 1927, ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, BY THEN MUCH FREER AND MORE self-reliant than she had been in the years when she was giving birth to one child after another, wrote an article entitled “Ethics of Parents” in which she briskly and self-confidently summed up her views in a seven-point code.

  1. Furnish an example in living.

  2. Stop preaching ethics and morals.

  3. Have a knowledge of life’s problems and an imagination.

  4. Stop shielding your children and clipping their wings.

  5. Allow your children to develop along their own lines.

  6. Don’t prevent self-reliance and initiative.

  7. Have vision yourself and bigness of soul.

  The next generation will take care of itself.1

  It was observed of Pestalozzi, the great educator, that he could not bring up his own children, and it must be noted that this admirable statement of Eleanor Roosevelt’s was written after her youngest child had been delivered to boarding school and she could be more objective about parenthood.

  While the Roosevelt children were at home and in their most impressionable stage, Eleanor was ambivalent—on the one hand, she was too deferential to the child-rearing views of her mother-in-law and the nurses and governesses who were usually selected by Sara, and on the other, she was too much of a disciplinarian, reflecting her own austere upbringing.

  Two children were born during the years that Franklin was assistant secretary of the Navy. In August, 1914, the second Franklin Jr. was born. Again, as with Elliott, her confinement and recovery took place while Franklin was involved in a political campaign, this time an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic senatorial nomination in New York. August was also the month when war broke out. Eleanor followed these events as best she could from Campobello. She was leading a very quiet life, she assured her husband, and saw no reason for the baby to arrive “before the date, the 26th.” She had arranged with Dr. Ely, one of the country’s leading gynecologists, to come up for the delivery, but Miss Spring was to arrive on August 12.

  It was fortunate that Miss Spring came early and also that Franklin dashed up for a visit, for on the sixteenth Eleanor felt the baby was about to appear. She awakened Franklin, and he sailed over on the Half Moon to get old Dr. Bennett from Lubec. The doctor arrived, but the baby did not. For almost a day everyone sat around while Eleanor felt guilty over the trouble she was causing and sought to persuade Dr. Bennett to leave and take care of his other patients. Finally, late on the seventeenth the second Franklin Jr. made his appearance—another better-than-ten-pound baby. Afterward Dr. Bennett expressed surprise to Miss Spring that when it came to having babies summer people were no different from Down-Easters: “She is just like one of us.”

  As soon as Franklin was sure Eleanor and the baby were all right he hurried back to his primary fight. Her letters mixed reports about bowel movements with political encouragement. They had put up the poster Franklin had sent them; James wanted more campaign buttons; “I have a little more milk.” The baby thrived but Franklin’s six-week bid for the Democratic nomination did not—Tammany’s candidate, James W. Gerard, defeated him. “I wonder if you are disappointed,” his mother wrote consolingly. “I hope not. You made a brave fight and now you can return to the good and necessary work of the Navy Department which must have missed you all these last weeks.” Eleanor was so involved with the new baby that the campaign made little impression upon her, but like Sara she thought that Franklin was quite content to get back to his desk at the Navy Department.

  Eleanor’s last baby, John Aspinwall, was born March 13, 1916. In February she was still dining out almost every night and being hostess at large Navy receptions—“as 225 came last time I don’t think there is anyone left to come!” Caroline Phillips, who was also pregnant, dined with her the evening of March 13. After dinner Franklin went out, and at ten Caroline left. Shortly afterward Eleanor called Miss Spring, who summoned the doctor, and by the time Franklin returned the baby had almost arrived—“born at 11 p.m. in Washington,” Sara recorded in her diary. John’s was the only birth Sara was not on hand for. Later, John, like the other boys, was brought to St. James Episcopal Church in Hyde Park and christened in his father’s christening dress. Henceforth Washington matrons who complained that they could not run their households were told it could be done: “Eleanor Roosevelt . . . has five children and moves them all six times a year—and does everything else besides!”

  In later years Eleanor blamed herself for the way she brought up her children: she had been too stern with them; she had not done enough things that they wanted to do and too many that she had thought it was good for
them to do; she had deferred too much to nurses and to Sara.2 The results of this training were described by Mrs. Frances Theodora Parsons, a friend of Eleanor’s parents and a well-known writer of books on nature. She was at Susie Parish’s when Eleanor was there with Anna and James. Eleanor admired Mrs. Parsons’ creativity and sweetness with the children, but Mrs. Parsons was less complimentary about Eleanor. She met James and Anna “primly parading on the asphalt drive with their nursery-governess one June morning,” she recalled in Perchance Some Day. “I invited them to join me in a hunt for wild flowers up the mountain path. But they were too much appalled by steep curves and outcropping rocks to derive any pleasure” from the expedition.3 That was before Eleanor had become an independent woman, Mrs. Parsons explained. “I can remember at twenty-two expecting my year old baby to sit on the sofa beside me while I poured tea with all kinds of good things on the tray. Her manners had to be so perfect that she would never even reach or ask for these forbidden goodies!” Eleanor later wrote.4

  Eleanor’s nurses and governesses were supplied by agencies that traditionally served New York’s upper-class families, and the schools to which she sent Anna, James, and Elliott were the accepted ones in her milieu. Before she moved the children to Washington in 1913, Anna, then seven, briefly attended classes in New York. Maude had suggested the progressive Ethical Culture school, but Anna was sent to Miss Davidge’s. In Washington Anna went to the Misses Eastman, and James and Elliott to the Potomac School. These schools were well-staffed and highly exclusive.

  Like other young Washington matrons, Eleanor gave much thought to education, a subject that she discussed endlessly with Caroline Phillips and Lily Polk, who had children the same age as her own. She was principally concerned with what she and Franklin could do to reinforce the classroom. She believed that the early years were decisive and that the home was more important than school; if a child was not taught habits of self-control at home and if parents did not encourage curiosity by the way they responded to a child’s queries, formal education was likely to be unproductive.