Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Perhaps that night, or on the train from Warm Springs to Washington, Polly told ER the truth about FDR’s last visit, and other visits, with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. There is no record of ER’s reaction. Perhaps she was silent. ER II observed that Polly was often critical and occasionally nasty, even cruel. At one dinner party ER’s niece saw Polly furtively “pour a generous jigger of sherry in ‘dear Eleanor’s’ soup”—even though she was fully aware of ER’s feelings about alcohol. “It was then that I suspected [Polly] felt threatened by a power she could not match.” That was “only embarrassing and rather sad, but eventually she revealed true malice.” ER’s niece believed ER “had not known until that moment that FDR had continued his relationship with Lucy Mercer. But Aunt Eleanor did not allow the revelation to destroy her. She simply had too much good work to do.”

  According to White House assistant chief usher J. B. West, ER entered the White House “tall and stately in black . . . with the flag-draped casket, which had been drawn on a caisson from Union Station by six white horses. . . . The undertaker placed the President’s body on a catafalque in the East Room, where the honor guard [waited].” ER asked the ushers to have the casket, which had been sealed at Warm Springs, reopened: “Can you dispense with the Honor Guard for a few moments . . . ? I would like to have a few moments alone with my husband.”

  ER “waited in our office while we called the undertaker to open the casket.” When it was ready, she requested complete privacy: “‘Please do not let anybody come in.’” Chief Usher Howell Crim “asked the military honor guard to leave the room, and he stationed himself at one door”; his assistant, Charles Claunch, blocked the other door. From where he “stood guard inside the third door,” West observed ER, who “stood at the casket, against the east wall, gazing down into her husband’s face. Then she took a gold ring from her finger and tenderly placed it on the President’s hand. She straightened, eyes dry, and left the room. The coffin was never opened again.”*

  Later that afternoon, at her husband’s crowded funeral in the East Room, ER remained solemn and dignified, comforting others and offering support. During the train ride to Hyde Park for the burial, she saw America in mourning. Huge crowds turned out at every railroad siding, shedding tears of grief. ER recalled Millard Lampell’s funeral poem for Abraham Lincoln, shot on 13 April 1865: “A lonesome train on a lonesome track / Seven coaches painted black / A slow train, a quiet train.”

  On the train to Hyde Park, she had time to read the last words FDR wrote on 11 April, which were to have been delivered the next day. This message remained for her his most profound legacy:

  Today this nation which Jefferson helped so greatly to build is playing a tremendous part in the battle for the rights of man all over the world. . . .

  But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough. We must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and fears, the ignorance and the greed which made this horror possible. . . . Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace. . . .

  The work, my friends, is peace. More than an end of this war—an end . . . of all wars. Yes, an end, forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass killing of peoples.

  To all dedicated “to the making of an abiding peace, I say: The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”

  Galvanized by these words, so reminiscent of his first inaugural address, ER wanted them included in the funeral tribute. Bishop Angus Dun acceded to her request, and FDR’s earlier words, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” ended his final prayer.

  For the rest of her life ER devoted herself to fulfilling the legacy she shared with her husband: the quest for peace in a world united for justice. She never criticized him or revealed her hurt. She “did not tell anyone” about Lucy Mercer’s frequent presence in his life, observed Lash. Nor did she reveal her feelings about Anna’s involvement in FDR’s many meetings with Lucy Mercer. Anna subsequently referred to her mother’s anguish and hurt, and their early-afternoon conversation at the White House shortly before the four p.m. funeral. ER wrote only of how comforted she was by the presence of Anna and John, and all the children present during FDR’s final journey home.

  • • •

  ER wrote Joe Lash on 16 April: “I know you would do anything to help but somehow I am very calm. Only a little keyed up because there is so much to do & to think about! I don’t need much sleep luckily.” For the future, she wrote, “I count on you & Trude for much happiness and don’t ever lets be sad about anything as long as we can be together! I want to cling to those I love because I find that mentally I counted so much on Franklin I feel a bit bereft.”

  Daisy Suckley, who knew most of FDR’s secrets, affirmed that ER “loved him more deeply than she knows herself, and his feeling for her was deep & lasting. The fact that they could not relax together, or play together, is the tragedy of their joint lives, for I believe . . . they had everything else in common. It was probably a matter of personalities or a certain lack of humor on her part. I cannot blame either of them. They are both remarkable.”

  Esther Lape also believed that ER always loved and forgave FDR: “I don’t think she ever stopped loving someone she loved.” After his death ER wrote Lape, “You have an understanding heart dear, but you should know it is more shock & a sense of unreality than loneliness. I think we had all come to think of him as able to carry the world’s problems & now we must carry them ourselves.”

  She wrote on the same theme in her notes to all her beloveds who rallied around her, including Hick, Joe in Virginia, Trude in New York, Bernard Baruch, who returned from London in time for the funeral and remained by her side throughout, and her aunt Maude in Ireland.

  Subsequently, ER wrote more fully:

  All human beings have failings . . . needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another’s failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration. . . . If at the end one can say: “This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task,” then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets. . . .

  He might have been happier with a wife who was completely uncritical. That I was never able to be, and he had to find it in other people. Nevertheless, I think I sometimes acted as a spur, even though the spurring was not always wanted or welcome. I was one of those who served his purposes.

  On 20 April 1945 she left the White House for the last time, having packed twenty trunks of Roosevelt possessions. Upon her arrival in New York, she dismissed the reporters assembled in her Washington Square lobby: “The story is over.” Now free and “on her own,” she embarked on a new chapter of service for peace and worldwide human rights.

  Epilogue

  ER’s Legacy: Human Rights

  ER began her emotional journey into widowhood with deep insights and surprising candor in You Learn by Living, published in 1960. “Like countless other women, I had to face the future alone after the death of my husband, making the adjustment to being by myself, to planning without someone else as the center of my world. . . . But I discovered that by keeping as busy as possible I could manage increasingly to keep my loneliness at bay.” That was in fact how ER had lived her entire adult life. After 12 April 1945, however, she felt independent, relieved from political restraints.

  ER returned to writing her daily column within a week of FDR’s passing. In her 17 April memorial for her husband, she called for a people’s movement to create a United Nations dedicated to a future of peace and human
rights: Today grief “pervades the world, [and] personal sorrow seems to be lost in the general sadness of humanity. . . . There is only one way in which those of us who live can repay the dead who have given their utmost for the cause of liberty and justice.” FDR’s goal had been to build an organization “to prevent future wars,” and that was now ER’s quest.

  After she completed her White House chores and packed belongings that filled twenty trunks, ER held a farewell tea for the sixty women of her press corps. She confided to them that her present work plans were limited to writing her columns; she would not accept public office, and she rejected Congresswoman Mary Norton’s (D-NJ) intention to name her special delegate to the San Francisco Conference to establish the UN organization. Although ER had considered FDR’s decision to convene the first UN meeting before war’s end “a stroke of genius” and actively lobbied for women representatives, she mysteriously held back: “Nothing would induce me to run for public office or to accept an appointment to any office at the present time.” Subsequently, she told her allies and most insistent promoters that she “would rather be chloroformed” than accept any political nomination. She was pleased, however, to continue her writing career—as a magazine journalist and daily columnist. “Because I was the wife of the President, certain restrictions were imposed upon me. Now I am on my own, and I hope to write as a newspaper woman.” That spring she wrote Trude Lash, “I’m glad you like my columns; they are more fun to do now that I am freer.”

  Although ER refused to attend the UN conference of 25 April–26 June for “reasons of protocol,” she was entirely committed to its success in creating the UN Charter. It was, after all, an extension of her intense efforts on behalf of U.S. involvement in the World Court and League of Nations after World War I and the fulfillment of her appeals to FDR to go beyond Churchill’s limited vision of Anglo-American leadership and build a real international alliance for world peace.*

  ER never took any credit for her husband’s decision regarding the UN and repeatedly explained that she worked only to promote his vision, fulfill his legacy. That was her theme both in public and in her intimate correspondence. In her last White House letter to Hick, she wrote, “The Trumans have been to lunch & nearly all that I can do is done. The upstairs looks desolate & I will be glad to leave tomorrow. . . . Franklin’s death ended [an era] in history & now in its wake for lots of us who lived in his shadow . . . we have to start again under our own momentum & wonder what we can achieve.”

  To lift ER’s self-imposed veil of modesty, however, is to reveal a different reality. Eleanor Roosevelt promoted her unique vision of decency in world affairs from a variety of public positions—as lobbyist, critic, and insider. She did not become the “First Lady of the World” solely as a result of her role as the most public, active, and popular of all U.S. first ladies. Rather, her diplomatic interests and skills, and her involvement in U.S. international affairs, began during World War I and continued until her death. She was a key, if often unrecognized, figure in activist international circles.

  ER imagined a world without war, and understood that peace would remain a chimera so long as entire nations and subject peoples were denied access to economic security: food, clothing, education, work, health, comfort. She understood power, sought power, and influenced policy from positions of power. She was a practical idealist who understood the complexities of colonial privilege and revolution and the vagaries of competition and compromise. She was committed to the precepts of America as codified in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Bill of Rights. But she also believed that no individual, community, or nation could be truly free so long as others were fettered.

  On 30 April 1945, she wrote in support of Congresswoman Norton’s efforts for a Fair Employment Practices Committee bill, to end race and gender discrimination in every workplace. This bill, ER wrote, would benefit the entire nation:

  If we do not see that equal opportunity, equal justice and equal treatment are [granted] to every citizen, the very basis on which this country can hope to survive with liberty and justice for all will be wiped away.

  Are we learning nothing from the horrible pictures of the concentration camps which have been appearing in our papers day after day? Are our memories so short that we do not recall how in Germany this unparalleled barbarism started by discrimination directed against Jewish people? It has ended in brutality and cruelty meted out to all people, even to our own boys who have been taken prisoner. This bestiality could not exist if the Germans had not allowed themselves to believe in a master race. . . .

  There is nothing, given certain kinds of leadership, which could prevent our falling prey to this same kind of insanity, much as it shocks us now. The idea of superiority of one race over another must not continue within our own country, nor must it grow up in our dealings with the rest of the world.

  As we survey “the war-torn world,” ER concluded, our struggle is “to find a way [to live] peacefully and cooperatively . . . internationally and within our own borders.” We must boldly create a new system of equality, fairness, and dignity “through our government and as individuals. . . . Where the theory of a master race is accepted, there is danger to all progress in civilization.” Her April 1945 call to create a new world defined by respect and equal opportunity for all became the core of her postwar efforts, which began on 8 May, V-E Day.

  ER’s important correspondence with President Harry Truman also began on 8 May, when she wrote to congratulate him on his V-E Day broadcast: “I listened to your Proclamation this morning and I was deeply moved. I am so happy that this day has come and the war in Europe is over.” But, as she wrote in her column, there was nothing as yet to celebrate, since so many continued to die in the Pacific war. “Some of my own sons with millions of others are still in danger.”

  On 10 May the president wrote a ten-page letter that began with a note of appreciation—“the whole family was touched by your thoughtfulness”—and explained the international situation:

  I noticed in your good column today you expressed some surprise at the Russian attitude on the close of the European War. I think that I should explain the situation to you. On Wednesday, April 25, our Minister to Sweden sent a message to me saying that Himmler wanted to surrender to General Eisenhower all their troops facing the western front and that the Germans would continue to fight the Russians. . . . The matter was discussed with our staff and the offer was very promptly refused. . . . Negotiations went on for two more days—we always insisting on complete, unconditional surrender on all fronts. . . . Germans delayed and delayed, trying all the time to quit only on the western front. . . . Our commanding general [Eisenhower] finally told them that he would turn loose all we had and drive them into the Russians. They finally signed at Rheims the terms of unconditional surrender effective at 12:01 midnight of May 8-9. . . .

  I have been trying very carefully to keep all my engagements with the Russians because they are touchy and suspicious of us. The difficulties with Churchill are very nearly as exasperating as they are with the Russians. But patience I think must be our watchword if we are to have world peace. To have it we must have the wholehearted support of Russia, Great Britain and the United States.

  ER agreed and told him she hoped FDR’s commitment to the Grand Alliance might prevail: “Your experience with Mr. Churchill is not at all surprising. He is suspicious of the Russians and they know it. If you will remember, he said some pretty rough things about them years ago and they do not forget. Of course, we will have to be patient, and any lasting peace will have to have the Three Great Powers behind it.” She suggested that Truman “get on a personal basis” with Churchill: “If you talk to him about books and let him quote to you from his marvelous memory everything on earth from Barbara Fritche to the Nonsense Rhymes and Greek tragedy, you will find him easier to deal with on political subjects. He is a gentleman to whom the personal element means a great deal.” She also
had practical advice about how he might approach the Russians during the Potsdam Conference, 17 July–2 August 1945.

  Truman was grateful for her suggestions and courted her support. She did not criticize his most controversial decision to use the new atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, but subsequently wrote: “The day the atomic bomb was dropped we came into a new world—a world in which we had to learn to live in friendship with our neighbors of every race and creed and color, or face the fact that we might be wiped off the face of the earth. . . . Either we do have friendly relations, or we do away with civilization.” ER’s 12 October column was forevermore part of the movement for global disarmament.

  On 20 November 1945 she wrote a long letter of opinion to Truman on a variety of troubling issues. “We have an obligation first of all, to solve our own problems at home,’’ she urged, since U.S. failures had an impact on the rest of the world. She hoped that all postwar planning would be fair to labor and business interests alike and would take into account the United States’ growing responsibilities in the world.

  The issues were complex, and ER wanted people she trusted, notably Bernard Baruch, to be involved in investigations and analyses. She did not approve of Truman’s initial lending policies: “If we lend only to Great Britain, we enter into an economic alliance against other nations, and our hope for the future lies in joint cooperation.” With 400,000 Jewish survivors of death camps and hiding places now stranded in displaced-persons camps and unwanted everywhere, ER specifically opposed the formation of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into Palestine:

  I am very much distressed that Great Britain has made us take a share in another investigation of the few Jews remaining in Europe. If they are not to be allowed to enter Palestine, then certainly they could have been apportioned among the different United Nations and we would not have to continue to have on our consciences, the death of at least fifty of these poor creatures daily.