Eleanor and Franklin Read online

  For the visit of Elizabeth Bibesco, the daughter of Herbert Asquith, leader of the British Liberal party for over a quarter of a century, Eleanor even permitted a cocktail to be made. “I had to break the lock of your drawer to get at the whiskey!” she informed Franklin, who no doubt was slightly startled and amused. It turned out to be a “very bad cocktail” made by Jefferson Newbold, but Elizabeth “was sweet and I like her better than ever.”6

  Louis was an ideal guest. A do-it-yourself carpenter, he had acquired Roosevelt’s passion for model boats and had begun working with Captain Calder to build a workbench for Franklin in the boathouse. He was also an irrepressible writer of doggerel and a water colorist, and his place cards were a continuous delight. He had been a mainstay in the Drama League Players in Washington both as director and actor and was always ready at Campobello to entertain the children and play with them. He was a “godsend” when it came to keeping track of the island workmen who came to repair the pump. “Mr. Howe has endless patience in batting the ball to Elliott and Hartley,” Eleanor wrote Sara, “and he thinks Elliott will be good though I can see no signs as yet.”7 But sometimes Eleanor’s energy and enterprise were too much even for the willing Louis. She read aloud to them in the evenings, “but Grace and sometimes Louis snore before I get far and Russell [James’ tutor] goes to bed before I begin and Mlle. won’t go to bed but props her eyelids up with her fingers!”8

  On July 30 Eleanor wrote Sara that she had expected Franklin that day but instead he was coming on Van Lear Black’s yacht, the Sabalo. She was glad, she said, because the heat was awful and a trip by train would further tax his vitality. “I thought he looked tired when he left,” Miss LeHand advised her. Thus began the harsh events that Eleanor later called “trial by fire,” that left her husband unable to walk.

  The cruise of the Sabalo proved strenuous. The weather in the Bay of Fundy was foul and the visibility low; Franklin was obliged to take the wheel for hours. Dropping anchor in Welchpool Harbor, he plunged into entertaining his guests. They went fishing for cod and he baited the hooks; at one point he slipped overboard and “never felt anything so cold as that water.” His pace was too much for his New York visitors, who discovered that imperative business required their presence in New York.9

  The tempo of the household slackened only slightly. Roosevelt took his babies sailing on the Vireo; he and Louis worked on model boats; he played tennis with the older children; after supper they all turned out for baseball. Some friends sailed in on a yawl “and they spent a late evening with us ending up with a midnight supper!”10 Though Franklin complained of feeling dull and tired, the vigorous life continued. On August 10, when the family was out on the Vireo, they spotted a forest fire and went ashore to flail at the flames with pine boughs. After the fire was under control, they dog-trotted, eyes smarting and smoke besmudged, for a dip in the relatively warm waters of Lake Glen Severn, then jogged back. Perhaps because he could not shake his loginess, Franklin took a quick dip in the Bay’s icy waters but did not get “the glow I expected.” When they returned to the house he sat around in his wet bathing suit looking through the mail, too tired to dress, and at supper complained of chills and aches and soon went to bed.

  The next morning he felt worse. As he got out of bed his left leg dragged; soon it refused to move at all, and by afternoon his right leg was also powerless. His temperature was 102. Though he managed a smile and a joke for Anna when she brought him his tray, Eleanor was worried and sent for the family physician, old Dr. Bennett in Lubec, who thought it was a cold. But by Friday, August 12, paralysis had set in from the chest down. Eleanor, apprehensive, had sent the rest of the household on a previously planned three-day camping trip. A letter to Franklin’s half brother, James Roosevelt Roosevelt, described the inception of the crisis. Harried and apprehensive as she was, the letter was composed, clear, and poignant.

  Campobello

  August 14, 1921

  Sunday

  Dear Rosy,

  We have had a very anxious few days as on Wed. evening Franklin was taken ill. It seemed a chill but Thursday he had so much pain in his back and legs that I sent for the doctor, by Friday evening he lost his ability to walk or move his legs but though they felt numb he can still feel in them. Yesterday a.m. Dr. Bennett and I decided we wanted the best opinion we could get quickly so Louis Howe (who, thank heavens, is here, for he has been the greatest help) went with Dr. Bennett to Lubec and they canvassed the nearby resorts and decided that the best available diagnostician was the famous old Dr. W. W. Keen of Philadelphia and he agreed to motor up and spend the night. He arrived about 7:30 and made a most careful, thorough examination and the same this morning and he thinks a clot of blood from a sudden congestion has settled in the lower spinal cord temporarily removing the power to move though not to feel. I have wired to New York for a masseuse as he said that was vital and the nursing I could do, and in the meantime Louis and I are rubbing him as well as we can. The doctor feels sure he will get well but it may take some months. I have only told Franklin he said he could surely go down the 15th of Sept. He did say to leave then but not before on account of heat and to go to New York but it may have to be done on a wheel chair. The doctor thinks absorption has already begun as he can move his toes on one foot a little more which is encouraging. He has told the Dr. here just what medicines to give and what treatment to follow and we should know in the next ten days or two weeks how things are going.

  Do you think you can meet Mama when she lands? She has asked us to cable just before she sails and I have decided to say nothing. No letter can reach her now and it would simply mean worry all the way home and she will have enough once here but at least then she can do things. I will write her a letter to quarantine saying he is ill but leave explaining to you or if you can’t meet her to Uncle Fred or whoever does meet her. I hope you will think I am doing right and have done all I could. Of course write me if you think of anything else. I do not want particulars to get into the papers so I am writing the family that he is ill from the effects of a chill and I hope will soon be better, but I shall write Uncle Fred what I have told you and Langdon Marvin as Franklin cannot be at the office to relieve him.

  Affly always,

  Eleanor

  For two weeks, until a trained nurse could come up from New York, Eleanor slept on a couch in Franklin’s room and took care of her husband day and night. All the tenderness, solicitude, and devotion that so often were dammed up by his jaunty flirtatiousness now poured forth as she bathed him, rubbed him, attended to his every need. Looking at his collapsed legs brought to mind Michelangelo’s Pietà, that universal symbol of woman, the mother, grieving over the broken body of man, the son, the piece of sculpture that in her girlhood, reminding her of the wasted body of her father, had moved her to tears. She took her cue from Franklin’s courage. Her vitality was equal to his darkest moments. Sometimes with Louis, often unaided, she raised and moved her husband’s large, heavy frame. Dr. William W. Keen, who was witness to her twenty-four-hour ministrations, was worried.11

  You have been a rare wife and have borne your heavy burden most bravely. You will surely break down if you too do not have immediate relief. Even then when the catheter has to be used your sleep must be broken at least once in the night.

  In later years the old doctor never ceased to praise Eleanor’s tireless consecration. “She is one of my heroines,” he wrote Roosevelt in 1926; “don’t fail to tell her so.” He was equally impressed with Franklin’s courage and cheerfulness; indeed, he confided to Eleanor, he had “rarely met two such brave, cheerful and delightful patients. You see I count you as one although you are not going to take my medicine!”12

  Franklin’s cheerfulness at the time was a fugitive affair, as Eleanor’s next letter to Rosy hinted. His temperature had returned to normal, she wrote on the eighteenth, “and I think he’s getting back his grip and a better mental attitude though he has of course times of great discouragement.” She had not yet tol
d Franklin that Dr. Keen had warned that his recuperation would take a long time. “I dread the time when I have to tell Franklin and it wrings my heart for it is all so much worse to a man than to a woman but the 3 doctors agree he will be eventually well if nothing unfavorable happens in the next ten days or so and at present all signs are favorable, so we should be very thankful.”

  Dr. Keen had brought another doctor into the consultations, but in the meantime Uncle Fred, on the basis of Louis Howe’s description of the illness, had consulted doctors in New York who leaned toward a diagnosis of infantile paralysis. “On Uncle Fred’s urgent advice,” Eleanor wrote Rosy,

  which I feel I must follow on Mama’s account, I have asked Dr. Keen to try to get Dr. Lovett here for a consultation to determine if it is I.P. or not. Dr. Keen thinks not but the treatment at this stage differs in one particular and no matter what it costs I feel and I am sure Mama would feel we must leave no stone unturned to accomplish the best results.13

  Dr. Keen tracked down Dr. Robert W. Lovett, a specialist in orthopedics, at Newport, and he went to Campobello immediately. Dr. Lovett promptly diagnosed infantile paralysis, but would not commit himself as to the future course of the illness. Eleanor, determined to know the worst, begged Louis to ask Lovett what the chances were of Franklin’s recovering the use of his lower limbs, because she felt that the doctor would be more frank with someone who was not a member of the immediate family.

  It was impossible to tell, Lovett replied, but whatever chance there was depended on the patient’s attitude. “If his interest in resuming active life is great enough, if his will to recover is strong enough, there is undoubtedly a chance.” Eleanor should be prepared “for mental depression and sometimes irritability.”

  When she heard the diagnosis of polio she felt a momentary sense of panic because of the children, in addition to her anxiety over Franklin.14 She had thought of polio as a possibility, she wrote Dr. Peabody at Groton, and while “it seemed incredible” she had kept the children out of Franklin’s room, but that did not mean they were safe.15 Lovett assured her, however, that since the children were not already stricken they had probably not been infected. When the trained nurse at last arrived from New York, Lovett and Keen, impressed with Eleanor’s skillful care of her husband, felt that she should continue to share the nursing responsibility.

  She also acted as Franklin’s secretary and scribe. She wrote Langdon Marvin not to come up because “you wouldn’t be allowed to see me if you came.” Franklin could not get to the Sulphur Spring meeting, she advised the Fidelity and Deposit home office, but in her letter to Dr. Peabody asking whether James should return to Groton in September in light of his father’s illness, she added, “Franklin says to tell you he can still do lots of work on the committee he hopes!” Miss LeHand, meanwhile, not knowing that Franklin was ill, had asked for a raise in salary. Mr. Roosevelt could not jump her to forty dollars but might manage to get her thirty-five, Eleanor wrote.

  The most difficult letter was to Sara, who was due to arrive August 31.

  Campobello

  August 27, 1921

  Saturday

  Dearest Mama,

  Franklin has been quite ill and so can’t go down to meet you on Tuesday to his great regret, but Uncle Fred and Aunt Kassie both write they will be there so it will not be a lonely homecoming. We are all so happy to have you home again dear, you don’t know what it means to feel you near again.

  The children are all very well and I wish you could have seen John’s face shine when he heard us say you would be home again soon.

  Aunt Jennie is here with Ellen and we are having such lovely weather, the island is really at its loveliest.

  Franklin sends all his love and we are both so sorry he cannot meet you.

  Ever devotedly

  Eleanor

  Louis went to New York. “Everything in connection with your affairs is in the best possible shape,” he reported. “I took breakfast with ‘Uncle Fred’ before your mama arrived, and filled him full of cheery thoughts and fried eggs. That night, being so exhausted with his day’s labors, he decided to take dinner with me and we went together to the movies.”16

  As soon as she arrived Sara went to Campobello. The façade of cheer she found there did not fool her, but if Eleanor and Franklin were able to put up a brave front so would she. She was heartsick, but noted that Eleanor was doing “a great deal” for Franklin and commented, “This again illustrates my point that the lightning usually strikes where you least expect it.” She wrote her sister, Doe (Mrs. Paul R. Forbes):

  It was a shock to hear bad news on my arrival at the dock, but I am thankful I did not hear before I sailed, as I came directly here, and being very well and strong I could copy the happy cheerful attitude of Eleanor and even of poor Franklin, who lies there unable to move his legs, which are often painful and have to be moved for him, as they have no power. He looks well and eats well and is very keen and full of interest in everything. He made me tell him all about our four days in the devastated region, and told me what he saw when there. Dr. Lovett, the greatest authority we have on infantile paralysis, pronounced it that and says he will get well. At best it will be slow.17

  “He and Eleanor decided at once to be cheerful,” she reported to her brother Fred,

  and the atmosphere of the house is all happiness, so I have fallen in and follow their glorious example. . . . Dr. Bennett just came and said “This boy is going to get well all right.” They went into his room and I hear them all laughing. Eleanor in the lead.

  Franklin persuaded his mother to go to Louise Delano’s wedding as there was little for her to do at Campobello. “I am glad you sent her off to the wedding. It will do her good,” Rosy wrote from Hyde Park. “Poor Tom Lynch I told him today about you, and he burst out crying.” Lynch was not the only one. “I simply cannot bear to have beautiful, active Franklin laid low even for a time,” Mary Miller wrote when the news caught up with her. Everyone found it difficult to think of “such a vigorous, healthy person ill,” but they admired the “magnificent spirit,” as Adolph Miller put it, which Franklin and Eleanor were showing. Husband and wife did not yield to self-pity, and they discouraged weeping and wailing by those around them. In the letters that Eleanor wrote for him, Franklin set a tone of optimistic banter that he expected those close to him to follow. “After many consultations among the medical fraternity,” his letter to Langdon Marvin said,

  my case has been diagnosed by Dr. Lovett as one of poliomyelitis, otherwise infantile paralysis. Cheerful thing for one with my gray hairs to get. I am almost wholly out of commission as to my legs but the doctors say that there is no question that I will get their use back again though this means several months of treatment in New York. . . . The doctors say of course that I can keep up with everything and I expect to do this through Mr. Howe, my former assistant in Washington who will act as my go-between from 65th Street to 52 Wall and the F & D Company.18

  Howe and Miss LeHand went along with his tone of cheerful badinage. “By the way, Mr. Howe took me up with him in a taxi,” Miss LeHand wrote Roosevelt; “isn’t that scandalous? I love scandal! . . . I have moved my desk and typewriter into your office right beside the telephone. Do you object?” Eleanor was grateful. “Your letters have amused him and helped to keep him cheerful.” “Dear Boss,” Louis wrote,

  I loved the way Eleanor telegraphed to go into Tiffany’s to buy a watch for Calder without mentioning whether it was to be a $1200 Jorgerson or a Waterbury Radiolite; also to have it inscribed without mentioning what to inscribe on it! Lord knows I have acted as your alter-ego in many weird commissions, but I must positively refuse to risk my judgment on neckties, watches or pajamas.19

  The watch was purchased and given to Captain Calder by Eleanor when the private railroad car that Uncle Fred had obtained pulled out of Eastport with Franklin aboard. It was the captain who, with the aid of some island men, had carried Franklin down the hill to the Roosevelt wharf on a stretcher that he
had improvised and placed him on a motorboat for the two-mile crossing to Eastport. There, Louis, who stage-managed the whole move, skillfully diverted the waiting crowd while the stretcher was placed on a luggage cart and pulled up to the train. Each jolt was agony for Franklin, but Calder and his men could not have been gentler as they passed him through a window into the waiting car. Eleanor was deeply grateful to the captain and promised to let him know how Franklin stood the trip as soon as they arrived in New York. Her thoughtfulness as well as Roosevelt’s evoked the sea captain’s admiration.

  I went over to see Dr. Bennett yesterday afternoon and learned from him just how Mr. Roosevelt is taking everything. Isn’t it wonderful to think how bravely and hopefully he is facing it all? . . . Say to Mr. Roosevelt that I carried his message to the engine driver who was so careful on the way to Ayer’s Junction and he was more than proud.20

  Calder also thanked her for the watch,

  which I can accept from you and Mr. Roosevelt, as the spirit in which it is given is so different, also for the real good friendly note which accompanied the same. Who could dare be disloyal to a friend like you? I only hope that Anna can be just like you as she grows older.

  In New York Franklin entered Presbyterian Hospital and his case was taken over by Dr. George Draper, Harvard friend and orthopedic specialist. Whether Franklin could recover the use of his leg muscles was wholly uncertain. “I told them very frankly that no one could tell them where they stood,” Lovett advised Draper. The case was a mild one and Lovett thought that “complete recovery or partial recovery to any point was possible, that disability was not to be feared.” But then he hedged; it could go either way, he admitted. It looked to him “as if some of the important muscles might be on the edge where they could be influenced either way—toward recovery, or turn into completely paralyzed muscles.” The doctor’s ambiguity heightened the strain on Eleanor. A little later Draper wrote Lovett that he was concerned about his patient’s “very slow recovery both as regards the disappearance of pain, which is very generally present, and as to the recovery of even slight power to twitch the muscles.” Draper shrank from the moment when they would have Franklin sit up and he would “be faced with the frightfully depressing knowledge that he cannot hold himself erect.” He felt strongly that