by Marc Peyser
However, René himself was barely bruised by his brush with the Nazis. The liberation forces detained him and Josée briefly—their arrest was widely seen as a successful maneuver to induce Laval to return from Spain, where he had sought refuge with his fellow fascist Francisco Franco—but de Chambrun quickly turned his work under the Vichy regime into something of a second career. He devoted the rest of his long life to the Sisyphean task of redeeming Laval: creating archives, writing books, and even appearing in the documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, arguing that his father-in-law was a misunderstood patriot who consorted with Germans merely to save France. His reputation as France’s premier advocate for collaborators brought him clients such as Coco Chanel, who had several of her own ugly Vichy skeletons to bury. The de Chambruns’ Nazi fingerprints weren’t entirely forgotten or forgiven. In 1974, Alexandre Rosenberg, son of a prominent French Jewish art collector, showed up with the police at a Paris art auction to claim Braque’s Table with Tobacco Pouch, one of the many Rosenberg paintings looted by the Nazis. The woman selling the Braque was Josée de Chambrun. She surrendered it on the spot. If Alice was bothered by her kinsmen’s compromised past, she didn’t show it. She never cared much about public opinion, and by frequently inviting Adelbert and René to her house for dinners with the Washington establishment, she might well have helped wipe their slates clean. In fact, the year after Josée handed over her ill-gotten Braque, Capitol Hill gossip columnists noted that René was in town for work, and he was staying at Aunt Alice’s place.
—
In April 1943, Eleanor undertook another battlefield tour, this one a twenty-five-thousand-mile journey of the Pacific theater, from Australia and New Zealand all the way to newly conquered Guadalcanal. Despite her exhaustion and the logistical difficulties of filing her column from halfway around the world every day, she continued to file stories, and she continued to lace them with her own political views whenever possible, such as in this report from a cemetery in Guadalcanal:
A flag waves over the cemetery. Someday grass will grow, palms will wave in the breeze and cast their shade over the white crosses and it will be peaceful here. I think, however, the real memorial to show the love we bore for those who lie here, must be built where we live by the way in which we make our lives count. We must build up the kind of world for which these men died. They may never have put it into words, but I think they wanted a world where no one is hungry or in want for the necessities of life as they saw them. I am sure they wanted freedom and opportunity, but I question whether for many of them the results of opportunity would have been measured only by the success in acquiring this world’s goods. Too many soldiers have discovered that the things which bring them happiness cannot always be bought with money.91
If her writing had found a new lyricism, perhaps that’s because no woman—and certainly no other fifty-eight-year-old grandmother writing on a deadline—had paused at more freshly dug graves, comforted more wounded soldiers, or toured more military depots filled with eager and nervous soldiers, sailors, and pilots.
Just as the war was reaching its peak, it became all the more personal for her, and for the rest of the family. Although Ted junior had been in lockstep with Alice in opposition to FDR’s foreign policy, when war came, he was ready to serve. He was in his mid-fifties and hobbled by arthritis, a bad heart, and his wounds from the previous war. But that didn’t stop him from making his way to the front lines in the African and Italian campaigns, just as his father would have expected. And when the Americans trudged through the water and onto the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the highest-ranking officer to make land that day was Theodore Roosevelt Jr. A month later, while sleeping in a truck that had recently been captured from the Germans, he died of a heart attack. He was buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy and received a posthumous Medal of Honor for his extraordinary courage on the beaches of France. But even before that, he received a heartfelt send-off from his cousin and occasional rival:
We were all saddened this morning to hear of the death of Brigadier-General Theodore Roosevelt. When he was young and went into the last war, his father told me that of all his sons, Ted was the one to whom soldiering seemed to be the real fulfillment of an inner desire…
It is a loss to our fighting forces for him to be taken at this time, and to his mother, his wife, and his children, it is a sad blow. And yet even they, I am sure, feel grateful that he was able to render this service to his country. I think he would prefer to leave this world in just such sudden fashion, having done a hard day’s work, and knowing that the tide of victory was turning for the Allies.92
Typically, Alice said nothing publicly about the death of her favorite brother and closest companion. She, too, was a sort of soldier in her father’s mold, someone who merely nods at grief and quickly moves on to the next battlefield. In the summer of 1944, just three weeks after D-day, the Republican National Convention opened in Chicago. Alice, naturally, was there, though unlike the previous two conventions, she was not a delegate. That didn’t mean she was any less in the public eye. The press was eager to get her thoughts on her cousin Franklin’s decision to run for an unprecedented fourth term, and she was eager to tell them. “The Republican Party is here to elect a President,” she said, “and not retain a dictator.”93 They were also interested in Alice’s latest political companion: nineteen-year-old Paulina. It was her first national convention, and her mother had gotten her work as a page, perhaps hoping to sprinkle a little political fairy dust on her. It didn’t seem to work. In a brief interview during the convention, Paulina protested her joy a bit too much: “It’s the greatest thrill of my life. I never dreamed it would be this much fun; something exciting happening every minute…This is something I will never forget.” Yet when the reporter asked Paulina the standard convention question—who was her pick for president?—the allegedly budding political junkie had nothing to say. “Mother’s judgment is worth a lot more than mine there,” she said. “Ask her.”94
To be fair, Paulina had more important things on her mind. Only days after she and her mother returned from the convention in Chicago came word that Paulina was engaged. Alexander Sturm was a polo-playing Yale graduate from a wealthy Connecticut family. Tall, handsome, and talented, he published his first children’s book—The Problem Fox, which he also illustrated—when he was seventeen. After Yale, he worked briefly for the OSS, a precursor to the CIA. He went on to co-found (with $50,000 of Paulina’s money) Sturm, Ruger, and Company, which would become a celebrated manufacturer of high-end firearms. On paper, he was perfect son-in-law material. In fact, Alice didn’t like him. Whether that was because Sturm was eccentric (he often put on a beret and an affected British accent) or a drinker or simply because he challenged Alice’s control over her troubled daughter was never entirely clear.
In any event, the wedding had been scheduled for late August, which turned out to be only six weeks after Ted junior’s death. Alice was unusually subdued as she watched Paulina walk down the aisle on the arm of Ted’s son Cornelius. Paulina’s gown featured the spoils of her mother’s long-ago trips of plunder, including lace from the Russian imperial family and pearls from Cuba. It was a small affair, taking place in an Episcopal church in Massachusetts with a reception at one of Alice’s relatives from the Lee side of the family. Edith, having just lost her third son to war, managed to attend, accompanied by Ted’s and Kermit’s widows. The papers reported that on account of Ted junior’s death Alice hadn’t mailed out invitations. Instead, she phoned and wired the families on both sides. Franklin and Eleanor did not receive a call.
* * *
*1 According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,730 people—3,437 of them black—were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1951.
*2 A determined opponent of federal antilynching legislation, because he believed it infringed on states’ rights, was Alice’s “friend” the Idaho senator William Borah.
*3 Leon Frank Czolgosz (1873–1901), assassin of Pre
sident William McKinley, without whom Alice’s father might never have moved into the White House.
*4 Edwin Martin “Pa” Watson was a major general who was a close friend of Franklin’s and served in a role somewhat like a White House chief of staff.
*5 It would take Anna another year to secure her divorce. She would remarry less than six months later.
*6 Robert Elkington Wood (1879–1969) was a veteran of World War I, chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and a conservative Republican.
*7 Hanford MacNider (1889–1968) was a veteran of World War I, former ambassador to Canada, and occasional Republican presidential aspirant.
*8 In appreciation for Lafayette’s heroic service during the American Revolution, all of his male descendants were entitled to U.S. citizenship.
*9 Clara’s 1933 hagiography of her brother, The Making of Nicholas Longworth: Annals of an American Family, barely mentions his wife.
Chapter 10
COLD PEACE
Every family has its troublemaker, its eccentric, its black sheep. In Franklin’s extended family, the outlier was Laura Delano, Franklin’s first cousin on his mother’s side. The family called her Aunt Polly because when she was young she insisted on drinking only Apollinaris springwater, and those esoteric tastes flowed through the decades. She dyed her graying hair purple and painted on a pronounced widow’s peak every morning with an eyeliner pencil. She wore gobs of jewelry, too. “Rope upon rope of pearls, a silk blouse open to the waist, gold bracelets clattering up and down each arm—until we all wondered how she could lift it,” said one relative.1 Like Alice, Polly specialized in caustic candor. After Winston Churchill’s first visit to the White House in December 1941, her most burning question to Eleanor was, “Now, was Churchill sexy when he was wearing his jump suit?”2 Despite having a fair number of suitors, she never married. Instead, she devoted herself to dogs—she used to judge at Kennel Club shows, still bedecked in her jewels—and to her cousin Franklin, who was three years older than she. In fact, Franklin was her middle name.
It was Aunt Polly who insisted that Alice’s antagonism toward Eleanor sprouted from jealousy over losing Franklin. “Alice was crazy as a coot,” Polly said. “She was angry because she didn’t catch him.”3 Polly specialized in—delighted in—bad tidings. Once, when she was visiting at Campobello, FDR told her that there would be a solar eclipse the next day but not to be scared by the darkness. Polly arrived at breakfast dressed to the nines and with her jewelry box at the ready. “Despite what you have said, Franklin, this clearly is the end of the world,” she explained. “I have dressed for the occasion. I have my jewels and I am ready to go to heaven.”4
So it’s not surprising that when FDR collapsed in the living room at Warm Springs on April 12, 1945, it was Aunt Polly who scurried off to telephone Eleanor. The president had gone south to rest and catch his breath after Yalta; the Russia trip had left him so exhausted that when he addressed Congress on March 1, 1945, he spoke, for the first time, sitting down. He had been recuperating in Georgia for a week, with the help of his Hyde Park neighbor Daisy Suckley, his secretary Grace Tully, and Polly. It was about 3:00 p.m. when she called Eleanor in Washington with the news. The doctor didn’t think the situation seemed dire, Polly reported. His blood pressure was stabilizing—though FDR had been unconscious for almost an hour at that point—and Eleanor should go ahead with her day’s appointments.5 The First Lady had been meeting at the White House with Charles Taussig, one of the members of FDR’s “brain trust,” when Polly called, and she soon took a car to the exclusive Sulgrave Club for a 4:00 p.m. fund-raiser for the Thrift Shop, one of Eleanor’s favorite charities. The First Lady delivered a short opening speech—Louis Howe would have been so proud—then sat down next to President Wilson’s widow, Edith, at the head table to listen to the performers on the program. At about 4:50 p.m., during a piano concerto, one of the ladies tiptoed up to Eleanor and whispered that she had a phone call. Eleanor waited patiently until the pianist finished, excused herself, and took the call. It was from FDR’s press secretary, Steve Early, who said only that she should go home as soon as possible. “I got into the car and sat with clenched hands all the way to the White House,” she remembered. “In my heart I knew what had happened, but one does not actually formulate these terrible thoughts until they are spoken.”6
Early and Tommy Thompson were waiting for the First Lady in her sitting room. They told her what she already knew in her gut: the president was dead. The first thing Eleanor did was write a telegram note to her four boys, who were all out of the country serving in the military. “Father slept away. He would expect you to carry on and finish your jobs. Bless you. All our love. Mother.”7 (Only Elliott would make it home in time for FDR’s funeral.) Then she waited for Vice President Truman, who was meeting with Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn when Early called him and summoned him to the White House without explanation. Anna and her husband, John Boettiger, had arrived and were comforting Eleanor when Truman walked into her sitting room at about 5:25 p.m. ER stepped over to him and placed a gentle, almost motherly hand on his shoulder. “Harry,” she said as quietly as if she were in church, “the President is dead.” Truman was stunned, silent. When he regained his composure, he looked at the First Lady and said, “Is there anything I can do for you?” Eleanor’s reply, so typically selfless and filled with an almost aching devotion to duty, was soon quoted in newspapers around the world. “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”8
It was one of an astonishing series of humble gestures from a woman who had just lost her husband of forty years. The next was to ask Truman if it would be appropriate for her to take a government plane to Georgia to collect Franklin. He assured her it was, and she arrived in Warm Springs just before midnight, greeted by Polly, Daisy, and Grace. Eleanor hugged each of them, then sat down on the living room sofa and asked the women to tell her everything that had happened that day. Daisy and Grace explained how Franklin was sitting in his chair reading the newspapers and smoking a cigarette when he began rubbing his temple before awkwardly letting his left arm fall. “Did you drop something?” said Daisy, looking up from her crocheting. “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head,” FDR said.9 And then he slumped in his chair. He never regained consciousness.
But that was not the entire story. Naturally, it was bad-news Polly who wanted to make that perfectly clear, despite what had obviously been a conspiracy to do the opposite. There were two other women with Franklin when he died, she told Eleanor. One of them was Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who had come to paint the president’s portrait. She had been accompanied by—in fact, hired by—Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. They had been staying at the Little White House for three days at the time of Franklin’s attack and had left immediately when it was clear what had happened. Now it was Eleanor’s turn to be stunned into silence. She had scarcely heard Lucy’s name in thirty years. Had she been lurking in the shadows all that time? Eleanor slowly stood up, walked into the room where Franklin’s body lay, and closed the door behind her. Five minutes later, she emerged looking as if someone had opened a wound and drained her of all feeling. There was no anger. No sadness. She was, in this moment, more like Alice than she would have ever wanted to admit. She was utterly emotionless in the face of death. She also had to live with the realization that it was her husband’s lover who was with him at the end, just as Nick Longworth died in the arms not of Alice but of his mistress, Laura Curtis.
For the last twenty-five years of FDR’s life, the resentment from Oyster Bay had sprouted like weeds around his ever-blossoming career. When he died, the anger withered almost instantly. Eleanor Butler and Aunt Edith, the two women who accused Franklin most bitterly of usurping their husbands’ legacies, wrote Eleanor touching condolence notes, which she responded to with equal grace. “Many thanks for your kind wire,” she wrote to Edith. “It was a shock, but I am glad he died working without pain or long illness.”10 Alice wrote Eleanor a note as wel
l, though the contents have never been made public.11 She didn’t comment publicly on FDR’s death either, at least not until years later. By then, she seemed to blame her side of the family for the feud at least as much as Franklin and Eleanor. “I knew how silly we were,” she said in 1967, five years after Eleanor had died. “Suddenly we see this creature called Roosevelt come in, like a big cookoo, into our nest. That would have been the way I felt about it.”12
And yet despite the moment of détente that accompanied FDR’s death, Alice and Eleanor didn’t manage to repair their relationship. If anything, they seemed to grow further apart. Some of that was geographic: Eleanor moved back to New York, while Alice continued to reign as the queen bee of Washington. But living in separate spheres also magnified their rivalry, like two boxers who had retreated to their opposing corners. For the first time since they were teenagers, the cousins were social and political equals. They were both popular widows of powerful men—at least as beloved, in their circles, as any of the male Roosevelts. If they weren’t the two most famous women in the country, they were among a handful known simply by their first names and in an even more exclusive circle of females to make the cover of Time magazine.
Of course by now Alice had been flying solo for years with great success. With Franklin’s royal reign (as she would call it) at an end, she made the most of her prime perch. A month after FDR’s death, Bess Truman attended her first social event as First Lady, a luncheon with the American Newspaper Women’s Club, and naturally Alice was there. Two months later, she had a front-row seat next to Senator Robert Taft’s wife when the Senate began to debate whether to adopt the United Nations charter.13 She was even gossiped about as someone who could negotiate an end to the United Mine Workers’ strike of 1946, by virtue of her influence with her latest powerful lover, the president of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis. The idea of Alice as peacemaker was dismissed just as quickly as it surfaced, once a columnist pointed out that she wasn’t likely to come to the rescue of FDR’s vice president and successor. “One thing on which both Mrs. Longworth’s and Lewis’s friends agree is that hatred of Roosevelt brought them together,” wrote Drew Pearson in his syndicated Washington Merry-Go-Round column. “Both disliked him passionately, both continue to hate almost everything connected with him. That seems to be the chief bond between them.”14
