*1 A warrior caste of Slavic Russians skilled in horsemanship who served as cavalry guards to the czars.
*2 A light, four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage.
* A form of legalized slavery under which peasants were bound to feudal nobility to till fields, build roads, and perform household chores. They had more rights than African slaves, but it was still a fairly miserable existence.
CHAPTER FOUR
Franklin Roosevelt grew up in Hyde Park, New York, on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson River about a hundred miles north of his more famous cousins the Theodore Roosevelts, on Long Island’s Oyster Bay. Franklin went to school at Groton—in many ways the American equivalent of Churchill’s Harrow. Although he didn’t struggle academically, as Churchill had done, Roosevelt’s grades were about average, as they remained after four years at Harvard. He seemed, in fact, about average in most things—“superficial,” some said, except for his exquisite charm and tall, handsome good looks as he grew older.
Roosevelt married, had children, and lived the life of the wealthy Yankee patrician, becoming a scratch golfer, an elegant horseback rider, an accomplished yachtsman, and a dead-eye hunter and fisherman. He worked for a New York City law firm and served New York as a state senator and the country as an assistant secretary of the Navy. He summered at the family’s home on Campobello Island in Canadian New Brunswick, on the Bay of Fundy off the coast of Maine, where he dreamed of advancing his career in politics. Then, out of the blue, Roosevelt was struck with what most everyone called a great tragedy, from which almost no one expected him to recover.
Infantile paralysis, or polio, had become a new scourge in the early twentieth century. It arrived in epidemics during the summer months, usually striking children, but often adults as well. By 1908 scientists had identified the infectious virus that caused polio, but doctors nevertheless remained baffled as to exactly how it spread or how to treat it. In 1916 in New York City alone, some seven thousand polio deaths were recorded. Districts outside New York began to quarantine city-dwelling youngsters. In the ensuing years the epidemics came and went; Roosevelt was concerned for his five children and kept them on Campobello Island for the summers, where the disease had yet to appear.
By the end of the summer of 1921 Roosevelt had arrived on the island from New York City on the oceangoing yacht of the wealthy investor Van Lear Black. After taking the children for a sail in the family’s sailboat Vireo, he led them on a romp through fields to swim in a warm pond on the other side of the island. When he got back to the cottage, Roosevelt was suddenly exhausted; his legs ached and he felt a fever coming on. At thirty-nine years old, he was healthy, fit, and vigorous and thought it was a cold.
He went to bed and his wife, Eleanor, took his temperature, which had risen to 102 degrees. He smiled it off saying he’d be all right in the morning. He wasn’t. When he got up to go to the bathroom, one of his legs gave way and he fell. He managed to struggle up and complete the task, but afterward his legs became numb and hard to move. He thought he had a cramp and tried to work it out but it only grew worse.
Eleanor sent for a doctor on the mainland, and when he arrived he diagnosed a bad cold. Roosevelt began to suspect that something serious was afflicting him. He repeated over and over to his friend and political adviser Louis Howe, who was seated at the foot of the bed, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Louis. I just don’t know.”1
Another doctor was sent for, an eighty-four-year-old surgeon who was vacationing nearby. His diagnosis was that Roosevelt was suffering from a blood clot that had settled in the spinal cord. He prescribed a massage. The pain was exquisite, but Roosevelt endured it. Soon he realized he had no feeling in his legs; he was paralyzed from the waist down. His temperature soared to 107 and he became delirious. It seemed he might die.
After a week the temperature began to subside; he found he could move his toes slightly on one leg. At last a Boston specialist in infantile paralysis was summoned, who examined Roosevelt and gave his own diagnosis: polio.
The specialist thought there was a chance for a full recovery, which sometimes happened. But, on the other hand, the legs might remain paralyzed. This was something of a relief for Roosevelt, who had thought he would likely not survive. It was nevertheless a frightening prospect to lose the power of his legs and become, in the parlance of the day, a “cripple.” Much later, Eleanor remembered that the look on Franklin’s face as he contemplated this fate was not unlike his expression when he learned the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor—“strained and tired” but “completely calm.”
All they could do now was wait until the disease had run its course. But the waiting was taking a pathetic toll. Roosevelt had always been an active person—some might say superactive. Aside from the offices he held, he was on the boards of various colleges and charities and deeply involved in Democratic politics—he planned to be governor of New York, and he aimed to be president of the United States. Now, here he lay: half paralyzed and bedridden while the world turned without him.
His mother, Sara, arrived, fresh from a summer abroad in Italy. She hadn’t been told of her son’s condition until she got off the ship, because of fears she would have worried all across the Atlantic. When she walked into his room in Campobello after the long journey by train and boat, she found her son sitting up in bed, freshly shaved. “Well, I’m glad you’re back, Mummy, and I got up this party for you,”2 he said, smiling broadly.
It was vintage Roosevelt: the sheer definition of an indomitable spirit. Over the years he coped with his affliction, always hoping for some miraculous cure. Polio was a terrible, lifestyle-altering disease for sure, one that would have sent lesser men into invalidism. Roosevelt overcame it to be elected governor of New York and president of the United States. He was not always a fair man, nor a truthful one; he was a politician, after all. But even to his enemies he was cheerful in all weathers, courteous, and polite. He loved a good joke and a good drink. And in his time he transformed American society in ways that affect us greatly today.
* * *
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT was born January 30, 1882, at Springwood, his parents’ estate at Hyde Park. His mother, Sara, nearly died giving birth and was told she should not make another attempt to do so. Franklin was raised as an only child, although he had a half brother, twenty-eight years his senior. James “Rosy” Roosevelt was by then married to an Astor and living in New York City, sired by Franklin’s father and his late wife.
Franklin’s father, James Roosevelt, was the epitome of a New York Knickerbocker society country squire. His Dutch ancestors had been among the original settlers of the colony, and his family had owned land along the spectacular setting of the Hudson River valley for generations. Over time many of the old Dutch families erected a series of fabulous mansions for a hundred miles along the high bluffs of the Hudson, and eventually James purchased one of these in which to raise his family.
James inherited money from his father, who’d made it in the Caribbean sugar trade. After college, he embarked on a grand tour of Europe, taking time off to fight with Giuseppe Garibaldi’s revolutionary army in Italy. In time, he became a successful businessman in his own right, owning substantial interests in coal mines, railroads, and steel mills and serving them in a variety of positions, mainly as president, vice president, or member of the board of directors. His politics were Democratic—but not the radical midwestern variety, nor the Tammany Hall Irish bunch in New York City. His Democrats were for low taxes, small government, sound money, and free trade. James was also a prominent horse breeder, raising gaited trotters for the racetrack. As young Franklin grew up, James taught him to ride, hunt, and fish, and he was idolized in his son’s eyes.3
Sara, likewise, was a devoted figure in young Franklin’s life. She was a member of the equally wealthy and society-connected Delano family that lived nearby. Although Sara’s father had made his fortun
e smuggling opium to Chinese addicts, it was generally understood that he was merely a successful shipping company owner who dealt in the Far East trade.
James’s wife, and Rosy’s mother, Rebecca, had died in 1876. Four years later, at the age of fifty-two, he met the twenty-six-year-old beauty Sara—who was also his sixth cousin—at a party for their mutual cousin Theodore Roosevelt, who had just graduated from Harvard. They were married that same year. Two years afterward, following a lengthy honeymoon in Europe, she gave birth to Franklin at Springwood, his father’s thousand-acre estate of farm fields and forests with majestic views of the river.
Nearly every year the family went to Europe for several months. Once, when Franklin was only three, they almost didn’t make it back. They were sailing from England on the Germania when two days out they encountered a fierce storm. Heavy seas were tossing the big liner like a toy when suddenly an enormous wave crashed over the ship, causing her to broach. The lights went out and water filled the companionways. “We seem to be going down,” James Roosevelt remarked.
The wave had caused the ship to founder, washing a seaman overboard, ripping away half a dozen lifeboats, and tearing away the bulkhead of the ladies’ reading room, which was right above the Roosevelts’ cabin. One woman was flung across the room where her dress caught on a coat hook, leaving her dangling until other passengers came to the rescue.
“If he must go down, he’s going down warm,” declared Sara Roosevelt, wrapping a mink coat around the child. Water was sloshing around on the cabin floor when Franklin spied his favorite toy floating in it. “Mama, Mama,” he cried, “save my jumping jack!” She did, as the ship miraculously began to right itself. The captain had been knocked unconscious in the chartroom but resumed command and they returned to Liverpool for repairs. It had been a very close call for the future president of the United States.4
As he grew up, Franklin was given a series of governesses and tutors who taught him classical languages and French, mathematics, and literature. The idea of someone of Roosevelt’s social class attending public grade school was out of the question. It has been said of the wealthy English that the men become either grand sportsmen or, if they are not athletically inclined, collectors of everything under the sun. Franklin Roosevelt, although he did become a fine sailing yachtsman, seemed to fall into the latter category. It started with stamps.
When Franklin was ten, an uncle passed on a collection that had once been his mother’s, which was extensive enough to make it the envy of most adult collectors. Roosevelt himself famously enlarged it for the rest of his life until he had millions of specimens, some near priceless. He also began collecting birds’ eggs, until he had assembled under glass the eggs and nests of every type of bird in the Hudson River valley. He then felt compelled to collect the birds themselves and began begging for a shotgun so he could take specimens and mount them as John James Audubon had done for his magnificent series, The Birds of America. Franklin’s mother was horrified, saying he was too young. But James bought him a fine small-gauge doublebarrel shotgun, admonishing him never to shoot birds during their mating or nesting seasons, and to take only one bird of a species.
Over time, Franklin acquired a specimen of every bird in Dutchess County, and he acquainted himself with the rudiments of taxidermy. Before he reached his teens more than three hundred stuffed birds graced the large glass-front cabinet in the living room of Springwood; some were good enough to be included in exhibits at the Museum of Natural History in New York. He remained an ardent birder until he died, having given up killing and mounting the creatures for spotting them with his binoculars and including them in his “life list.”5
From the age of four Franklin took daily morning rides with his father around the estate to check up on things and enjoy the healthy air. His father usually rode one of his prize trotters and Franklin tagged along on Debbe, a sturdy Welsh pony. James also rode in the Dutchess County Hunt, a foxhunting steeplechase that led across miles of farm fields, fences, and other obstacles, the riders in their colorful “pinks” behind a gaggle of yip-ping foxhounds. Franklin was too young to ride in such a dangerous and exhausting exercise. But one day when he was a little older, watching the hunt from afar, he could stand it no longer; he jumped on his horse and gave chase. He arrived right at the time of the “kill,” only to be publicly ordered home by his chagrined father, who berated him afterward more for having his horse in a lather than for his disobedience.
* * *
IN 1890, JAMES ROOSEVELT had a heart attack that left him a semi-invalid until his death at the end of the decade. In that era, doctors knew little about heart ailments, other than to urge the patient to avoid stress. This posed a substantial problem for Franklin, who was told never to do anything that might upset his father. So anytime he got hurt he would hide the wound; if something unpleasant occurred, he would keep it to himself and try to be cheerful. He and his mother conspired to make as quiet and tranquil a home for his father as possible.
The following year, when Franklin was nine, James (despite his illness) took possession at Campobello of the Half Moon.*1 He himself had designed the boat, a broad-beamed fifty-one-foot-long, two-masted, gaff-rigged schooner, after commissioning it from a Maine boat builder two years earlier. It came with a captain and three-man crew, but when James and, later, Franklin were aboard, they became the captains, respectively. Sailing could be a tonic for James, as long as the waters were reasonably calm and the winds light. It was a tonic for Franklin as well, though he frequently preferred a good hard sail in frisky breezes and white-capped seas.
When he was sixteen, Franklin was given his own small yacht, a sleek twenty-eight-foot racing sloop that he named New Moon; he enjoyed sailing it among the fickle tides of the Bay of Fundy. Seamanship ran in his family’s blood, and soon Franklin began collecting sailing prints from all over the world. In time, he became an accomplished sketcher of sailboats. He also collected models of full-rigged ships. By the time he got to the White House he had amassed hundreds of these, many of which were put on display there. One of his favorite sayings during the Great Depression and, later, during the war years was: “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
Taught by James, young Franklin was soon a master yachtsman with all the necessary seafaring skills: navigation, seamanship, weather forecasting, maintenance, and repair. Some years, James would have the Half Moon brought down to the Hudson, where Franklin loved to navigate it along the difficult stream with its tricky currents and rocky obstacles. The family also had a handsome varnished twenty-six-foot iceboat that they would sail when the river froze.
In 1893, when Franklin was eleven, his parents took him to Germany for several months, where the elder Roosevelt intended to “take the waters” (then thought to be useful in the treatment of heart disease) in the mineral baths of Bad Nauheim. While there, young Franklin and a tutor, a Mr. Arthur Dumper, embarked on a bicycling trip through the surrounding towns and villages. They managed to get themselves arrested no fewer than four times by the strict Teutonic constabulary for crimes ranging from “picking cherries by the roadside” to “riding bicycles at night,” which was forbidden by the fortified city of Strasbourg. Mr. Dumper, fluent in German, was able to get them off for these offenses. But in the end they were fined five marks (about $5) for the death of an errant goose that had inadvertently run its silly head into the spinning spokes of Mr. Dumper’s bike and got its neck wrung. Nor did they get to keep the goose.
At one point Franklin’s parents enrolled him for six weeks in a German school, where he recalled years later that, even so early on, the new kaiser’s penchant for militarism had infected even the children. Every schoolboy was expected to learn map reading and military topography.*26
* * *
ONCE BACK AT HYDE PARK, Franklin prepared for his entrance into Groton. The boarding school, a recently created private Episcopal institution in Massachusetts, was
run by the eminent Endicott Peabody, an educator with innovative but inflexible ideas about how boys should be brought up.
The Grotonians slept and studied in stark, puritan nine-by-six-foot cubicles. Pictures, photographs, or other decorations were strictly forbidden, with only a curtain for privacy. Down the hall was a common washroom, where the inmates greeted the day with group ice-water showers. Peabody, a stern taskmaster who loathed “loafing,” “lying,” and “snobbery,” in that order, prized athletic ability over scholarship. Football, which in that day was an extremely brutal pastime, was his passion.*3 All of this was a bewildering, frightening, even horrifying experience for the sons of American society’s millionaires—young Franklin Roosevelt included.
Peabody did not subscribe to corporal punishment as a means of keeping order. Instead—and certainly worse—he permitted, and even encouraged, the older students to administer punishments of their own when a boy got out of line. Such punishments ranged from “bootboxing,” in which the offender was forced into his small, airless coffin-like footlocker where he kept his boots, while the others beat upon it with their fists. The worst of the punishments was called “pumping” (or what is now known as waterboarding, a procedure that has been branded as torture by many in the U.S. government). Following the evening prayers, Peabody would solemnly march out early; an announcement would then be made that the upperclassmen “wanted to see” an erstwhile troublemaker outside the chapel auditorium—immediately. After being admonished for his crimes the boy was then seized by the huskiest punishers (usually football players) and rushed to the cellar, where he was held upside down under a large gushing water faucet until it produced in him the terrifying sensation of drowning. Often, if the offender wasn’t sufficiently repentant the first time, the procedure was repeated.
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