by Marc Peyser
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Not long after school provided a turning point in Eleanor’s life as well, though as usual she turned in the opposite direction. Like her cousin, Eleanor was a voracious reader who was largely self-taught or tutored. All the Roosevelt women loved reading and learning; Aunt Bye used to keep a pile of books by her bedside that she called “mental manure,” because they primed her for her regular morning chats with her brother and the various politicians who came to talk shop.86 As a result of her time as a young woman in France studying with Marie Souvestre, Bye was the rare woman of her generation to receive a formal education. She was convinced that Eleanor would benefit from Souvestre’s tutelage. Mademoiselle had since moved to England, where she opened a school called the Allenswood Academy just outside London. Bye had been lobbying Grandmother Hall, to no avail. But by 1899, life at Tivoli—with the guntoting uncle and an aunt who was becoming more morose and suicidal with every lost boyfriend—was becoming unlivable. One day, Grandma Hall called Eleanor into her bedroom. “Your mother wanted you to go to boarding school in Europe,” she told a stunned Eleanor. “And I have decided to send you, child.”87
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*1 Even the Roosevelts could get lost in their own family tree. “The Mrs. Roosevelt who thanked you for a wedding gift is the wife of Nicholas Bay Roosevelt—brother of Harry—and working in Philadelphia,” Franklin once had to explain to Eleanor. “I am going to write a new Roosevelt genealogy in words of one syllable for beginners showing everybody’s relationship to everybody else!” FDR to ER, n.d., FDRL.
*2 The two parties at the beginning of the twentieth century differed in a few significant ways from their modern-day descendants. The Republicans were still seen as the party of Lincoln and thus the logical political home for black Americans. Popular in the North and the East of the country, and associated with establishment moneyed interests, the Republicans won eleven of the thirteen presidential elections from 1860 to 1908. The Democratic Party of this era was conservative and generally opposed to big business; its strength lay in farmers and southern white voters, who were still seething with resentment from the Civil War and its aftermath and actively seeking to disenfranchise black Americans. It was not until FDR’s run for the White House that progressives and black voters moved in substantial numbers toward the Democrats.
*3 A sagamore was a type of chief among the Algonquian Indians of the North Atlantic coast.
*4 Following Theodore Roosevelt III (Ted junior) in 1887 came Kermit in 1889, Ethel in 1891, Archibald (Archie) in 1894, and finally Quentin in 1897.
*5 The “Gold Cure,” a popular treatment for alcoholism through the mid-1960s, combined daily injections of a secret, gold-based solution along with talk therapy in residential settings around the country.
*6 Ironically, Vallie had once been an excellent shot—on the tennis court. Before being swallowed up by his drinking, Uncle Vallie, a.k.a. Valentine Gill Hall III (1867–1934), was a tennis champion. He was the U.S. national champion in men’s doubles in 1888 and 1890 and runner-up in 1891 and 1892. His doubles partner in 1892 was his brother Edward Ludlow Hall (1872–1932). Vallie retired in 1894, shortly after Eleanor and her brother Hall moved to Tivoli. In an astonishing coincidence, Franklin Roosevelt’s first cousin, Ellen Crosby Roosevelt (1868–1954), was the women’s champion in 1890, and that same year won the doubles championship with her sister Grace (1867–1945). They were the only pair of sisters to win the U.S. doubles championship until Venus and Serena Williams more than a century later.
*7 Though he did go to court to try to force the Astor trust to raise his children’s allowance, which stood at a mere $30,000 a year, or more than $825,000 in 2015 dollars. The judge not only said no; he cut the allowance down to $15,000 and chastised Rosy for indulging the kids.
*8 In the late nineteenth century, the United States began eyeing the remnants of Spain’s decaying and restive colonial empire, especially Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, for a host of economic and geopolitical reasons. With regard to Cuba especially, prowar Americans veiled their interest in idealistic terms, such as likening the Cuba Libre independence movement to the patriots of 1776. When the Maine exploded in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, killing 266 American sailors, it didn’t take long for the United States to act, despite uncertainty that lingers to this day as to whether the Spaniards had blown up the American ship or if spontaneous combustion in its coal bunker ignited the adjacent munitions stores. War was declared on April 25. By August 12, the Spanish called a truce. The peace treaty signed the following December required Spain to cede all of its colonies outside Africa to U.S. control. Soon to be appointed secretary of state, John Hay wrote to Theodore Roosevelt that the ten weeks of hostilities amounted to a “splendid little war,” in large part because it had propelled the United States to the forefront of world affairs and Theodore Roosevelt to national prominence.
Chapter 2
HOME ABROAD
By the time he was serving only his second term in the New York State Assembly, Theodore Roosevelt had collected enough political enemies to field a small army. In fact, he called his opponents the “black-horse cavalry,” because in his black-and-white worldview they rode with the forces of evil.1 Even at this early point in his career, Roosevelt fashioned himself as a take-no-prisoners reformer, a man who would sink his impressive teeth into any worthy cause. Among his rookie-term targets: railroad monopolies, police corruption, civil-service patronage, undertaxed saloon owners, cigar sweatshops, water pollution, and one particularly venal state supreme court justice, who only escaped Roosevelt’s impeachment campaign after three key Democratic politicians received $2,500 to vote for the judge. In one of his most celebrated campaigns, Roosevelt went after the robber baron Jay Gould’s Manhattan Elevated Railroad Company, which had a monopoly on building New York City train stations. Gould had enough politicians in his pocket that Assemblyman Roosevelt felt compelled to bring reinforcements to a potentially hostile hearing in 1882. “There was a broken chair in the room, and I got a leg of it loose and put it down beside me where it was not visible, but where I might get at it in a hurry if necessary,” he said. “The riot did not come off; partly, I think, because the opportune production of the chairleg had a sedative effect, and partly owing to wise counsels from one or two of my opponents.”2 TR wasn’t being metaphorical when he advocated speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
Roosevelt lost the battle against Manhattan Elevated Railroad, but he won something far more enduring: a reputation as a principled public servant willing to stand up to corruption. “Rarely in the history of legislation here has the moral force of individual honor and political honesty been more forcibly displayed,” the New York Herald wrote after he beat back one of his own party’s power grabs.3 Theodore Roosevelt rode his white horse in every political job that followed. In Washington, he spent six years, from 1889 to 1895, trying to eliminate patronage on a national scale as a member of the new Civil Service Commission. From there he became commissioner of the New York City Police, then went back to Washington to serve as assistant secretary of the navy under President McKinley. In January 1899, less than six months after his triumph on San Juan Hill, he returned to Albany as governor of New York. By then, his reputation was so enormous he had become a bull moose in the political china shop, determined to smash every shard of corruption in sight.
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The brash young governor—he was still only forty at the beginning of his term—succeeded almost too well. The infamous Tammany Hall political machine*1 still controlled much of the state under the leadership of Thomas “Easy Boss” Platt, but Governor Roosevelt leveraged his reputation for reform, his standing as a war hero, and his genius for courting the press to level the field. In his first year, he took on New York’s powerful insurance industry and business franchises, which at the time paid no corporate tax. For an encore, he planned to go after the state’s “defective” laws on the environment and the public utilities. Platt and
his various industry cronies realized they weren’t likely to stop the governor’s stampede, so they looked to sidetrack him. The day after Theodore succeeded in ousting the state’s corrupt superintendent of insurance, two stories appeared in the New York Sun claiming that President McKinley, whose vice president had died in office two months earlier, was considering Governor Roosevelt as his running mate that November.
The stories, planted by Platt, were in fact true; Theodore had traveled to Washington to talk to McKinley’s people. But that didn’t mean Roosevelt wanted the job. He was much happier riding roughshod over Tammany Hall and answering to no one. In 1900, the vice presidency was about as coveted as first runner-up in a beauty pageant. “That he should be in the second place on the ticket offended my family sense of fitness,” said Alice, who, like the rest of the family, wanted him to stay in Albany.4 Besides, the governor of New York actually earned $2,000 more a year than the vice president of the United States, no small consideration for a man with a large family—or for his penny-pinching wife.
On the other hand, he chafed at suggestions that he not run. “Don’t any of you realize,” Mark Hanna, the national Republican boss, told Platt and his New York scheming henchmen, “that there’s only one life between this madman and the Presidency?”5 Ultimately, Theodore couldn’t resist accepting McKinley’s offer—“to my deep disgust, as I well remember,” Alice said.6 It was a sign of his humility but also his ambivalence that 925 out of the 926 delegates to the Republican National Convention voted for him—the only nay was cast by Roosevelt himself.7 Alice remained indifferent, too, even though the move back to Washington meant that the family got to pile in with Aunt Bye again. (The vice president didn’t get his own official residence until 1974.) Alice remained ambivalent for a good six months, until September 6, 1901. It was on that day that President McKinley, on a tour of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, was shot by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. “We put on long faces,” Alice said, “and then my brother and I went outside and did a little jig.”8 McKinley died eight days later. The madman was now president.
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Eleanor didn’t see President Roosevelt until more than a year later, but not because she didn’t support him. She was enormously proud of her uncle, despite ultimately finding herself in the opposing political party. In fact, much of her later activism—and FDR’s—came directly from Theodore’s own tireless, reform-minded political program. But while Uncle Ted, Alice, and the rest of the family were busy moving into the White House, Eleanor’s life was being transformed too. She was fifteen in 1899, when she sailed for the forty-student Allenswood Academy. She was thrilled to be going, despite her mixed emotions about leaving her family. “Thanks ever so much for your letter, there was no danger of my forgetting you but I was awfully glad to hear from you,” she wrote to Alice. “I really must see you for I am to stay abroad two or three years.”9
No one ever accused British boarding schools of coddling their charges, and Allenswood was strict enough to satisfy even crusty Grandmother Hall. Classes were taught exclusively in French; any student who uttered a single word in English during the day was required to report her own linguistic transgression at dinnertime. If a girl was found to have messy drawers, she might come back to her room to find her entire bureau dumped on the floor, sometimes along with her bed. Baths were limited to three a week, each no longer than ten minutes, “unless we happened to have the last period, and then perhaps we could sneak another five minutes before ‘lights out’ was sounded,” said Eleanor, adding that she was “a little appalled” by the sanitary strictures.10
And yet Eleanor had never been more content. Of course, her happiness bar was set exceedingly low. After she had been out in the cold for so long—and the cloistered, semi-crazy life at Tivoli was about as far from warm and fuzzy as any home could be—even a tepid breeze felt good. But Allenswood suited her. She excelled at following the rules. They encouraged her, gave her strength and direction, like a trellis supporting a fast-growing rosebush. “This was the first time in all my life that all my fears left me. If I lived up to the rules and told the truth, there was nothing to fear,” she said.11 It’s no coincidence that she stopped slouching and proudly stood to her full five-foot-eleven height at Allenswood. She even felt better, free from the headaches and assorted ailments she’d suffered with for much of her early life. “I never spent healthier years,” she said.12
Allenswood’s rigid yet supportive atmosphere came directly from its headmistress, Marie Souvestre. Souvestre was sixty-nine when Eleanor arrived at Allenswood, but with her stout body, leonine head, deep voice, and deeper convictions Souvestre was just as imposing as she had been when Auntie Bye had been her student thirty-two years earlier. She was a fearless social progressive; she led class discussions on the Boer War that clearly favored the Boers, not exactly a popular view among the British boarding-school set.*2 On the other hand, she never expected her girls to just ape her opinions. In fact, she discouraged it. “You are giving me back what I gave you and it does not interest me,” Eleanor remembered Souvestre telling one stunned girl as she ripped up the student’s paper in front of the class. “Why was your mind given you but to think things out for yourself?”13
For the bright but long-constricted Eleanor, permission to think freely and independently was a revelation. Souvestre recognized Eleanor’s potential and responded by turning her into a combination of a pet and a project. Souvestre sat “Tottie,” as she called ER, across from her at dinner, the better to share her special food, spicy conversation, and occasional guests. In the evenings Eleanor was invariably one of the select few to repair to little chairs around the fireplace in Souvestre’s cozy library for more discussions on literature and current events. School was just the beginning of their unconventional, Pygmalion-like relationship. During vacations, Souvestre and Eleanor traveled together around Europe. Eleanor was charged with making all the arrangements, from the tickets to the packing. Souvestre selected the locations—Paris, Florence, the Mediterranean—the restaurants, and even, sometimes, the wardrobe, encouraging Eleanor to spend some of her limited allowance on clothes fit for a young woman, rather than her grandmother’s infantilizing choices. “I still remember my joy in that dark red dress made for me by a small dress maker in Paris,” Eleanor said. “I wore it on Sundays and as an everyday evening dress at school and probably got more satisfaction out of it than from any dress I have had since!”14
Eager to foster Eleanor’s budding independence, Souvestre frequently sent her pupil out to explore a select city alone, a decided breach of propriety and maybe even common sense. “Perhaps she realized that I had not the beauty which appeals to foreign men and that I would be safe from their advance,” said Eleanor. “I really marvel now at myself—confidence and independence, for I was totally without fear in this new phase of my life.”15 Not everyone supported Mlle Souvestre’s empowerment methods. One spring day in Paris in 1901, Eleanor was out exploring by herself when she decided to stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens. As luck would have it, she walked straight into the family of Thomas Newbold, neighbors from Hyde Park (and relatives of the novelist Edith Wharton). Mrs. Newbold, a charter member of Mrs. Astor’s four hundred most prominent New York families, promptly fired off a letter to Grandmother Hall, reporting how shocked she was to encounter Hall’s unchaperoned granddaughter. When Eleanor returned home for the summer, a scandalized Grandmother Hall threatened to yank Eleanor out of Allenswood after only two years.
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Ever the guttersnipe, Alice scoffed at what passed for brazenness on her cousin’s side of the family. She and Eleanor spent a good amount of time with each other during those summer breaks—brought together, naturally, by Auntie Bye. When she wasn’t in Washington, Bye now lived at her husband’s ancestral home in Farmington, Connecticut, on a Connecticut River estate called Oldgate. Oldgate became, like Sagamore Hill and Aunt Corinne’s house in Orange, New Jersey, one of the poles in the Roosevelt universe, a place l
arge enough for the family to reconnect and exchange news and confidences. It was during one of those outings when Alice was reminded of her cousin’s Victorian sense of propriety. “I remember one afternoon rowing on the river at Farmington with Eleanor,” said Alice. “For some reason or other she started lecturing me on the sort of presents one could receive from gentlemen—flowers, books, cards were all possible, I was assured, but jewelry of any kind, absolutely not. I listened to her earnest discourse, fingering all the while a modest string of pearls that an admirer had given me the week before.”16
Admittedly, Alice, the daughter of a war-hero governor, had more admirers than your average teenage girl. But that was nothing compared with the following she amassed shortly after the family moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in September 1901. For the first few months, the First Family kept a low profile; out of respect for the late President McKinley, the White House didn’t host any social events until New Year’s Day 1902. Then, on January 3, seventeen-year-old Alice had her “coming out” party, the social rite of passage for every proper young lady of means. Within weeks, she was a bona fide celebrity. “Two years ago she was of no more prominence than hundreds of American girls who, like her, are the daughters of well-to-do men of more or less note,” said the Baltimore Sun. “Now her name is known throughout the world. Such transformation comes to the lives of few.”17
