Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  The happy time they had together in Campobello was over “oh! so quickly,” Eleanor lamented, and Franklin’s feelings mirrored her own. “I wish you could have seen Franklin’s face the night you left Campo,” Mrs. Kuhn wrote. “He looked so tired and I felt everybody bored him. He could not stand Evelyn’s chatter.”

  And increasingly Eleanor could not stand the chatter and triviality of the social game. She spent a week end on Long Island with Aunt Tissie, and wrote Franklin that a number of ladies were coming to tea and bridge. “If you ever find me leading this type of life, stop me, for it’s not the way to happiness.” Her high-mindedness vexed some of her relatives. She had “the queerest time,” she reported of her visit to her Aunt Joe (Eddie Hall’s wife): “I don’t go there very often and in between times I forgot the impression it always makes on me to see Joe and all the other women there smoking and I find myself constantly the only one who does not do one thing or another, which makes me uncomfortable as they always say ‘Oh! well, Totty hasn’t been here enough to fall into our ways’ and I dare not say that I hope I never shall! Somehow I can’t bear to see women act as men do!”

  In the autumn of 1904 Franklin entered Columbia Law School. He had planned to go to Harvard Law School, but Columbia meant he could be near Eleanor, and that consideration was more compelling than his fondness for the Yard and Gold Coast society. “I am anxious to hear about the first day [at Columbia Law],” Eleanor wrote from Tivoli, “and whether you found any old acquaintances or had only Jew Gentlemen to work with!”* Most of the youngsters in her Rivington Street class were Jewish and although that did not inhibit her solicitude for them, she did share society’s prejudice against Jews.

  Occasionally Franklin met her at the settlement, and once, when a child in her class became ill, he accompanied Eleanor to the tenement in which the child lived. After they came out he drew a long breath of air. “My God,” he said, aghast. “I didn’t know people lived like that!”

  Sara was as pleased as Eleanor that her son was in New York. He should move his chair closer to the light “so as to see the print of those charming and comprehensible law books!” she gaily advised him, adding, “I am so sorry I cannot be there to explain any difficulties you meet with.” But law school commanded little of Franklin’s attention that first year, and even the presidential election does not seem to have been much on his mind, or on Eleanor’s, although the campaign was reaching its climax and there must have been a great deal of discussion of Uncle Theodore’s prospects the first week in October when they were visiting Auntie Bye at Oldgate in Connecticut. But they were absorbed in each other and in the approaching announcement of their engagement. When? Who would write letters to whom? How soon after should their wedding follow? On October 7 Franklin selected a ring at Tiffany’s, “after much inspection and deliberation,” and gave it to Eleanor on October 11, her twentieth birthday. “I am longing to have my birthday present from you for good,” she wrote him from Tivoli that evening, “and yet I love it so I know I shall find it hard to keep from wearing it! You could not have found a ring I would have liked better, if you were not you! This sounds odd but is quite sensible.”

  They disclosed their engagement at the beginning of December. Franklin had planned to be at Fairhaven, where the Delano clan would be assembled at Thanksgiving, to announce the news himself, but he came down with jaundice and had to remain in New York. Excited letters were promptly sent to Franklin and Eleanor from Fairhaven telling them what the family’s response had been. “All those who know you think it is the luckiest thing that ever happened to Franklin,” Muriel Robbins reported. Lyman Delano wrote to both of them: “I have more respect and admiration for Eleanor than any girl I have ever met, and have always thought that the man who would have her for a wife would be very lucky.” And to Eleanor he wrote that he would have given anything if she could have been in Fairhaven on Thursday morning “when Franklin’s letters came. I never saw the family so enthusiastic in my life and I am sure your ears would have burned if you could have heard some of the compliments paid you.”† Lyman’s father, Warren Delano, the senior member of the clan, wrote Franklin that “Eleanor must have no doubt about being taken in by all her fiance’s family—certainly by those who have learned to know and appreciate her.” Another note was struck by Mrs. Hitch, who, aware of the wrench in the relationship between her sister and Franklin that the announcement foretold, wrote Eleanor that she was thankful you “already love my dear Sister” and expressed her pleasure to Franklin “that your devoted Mother will have a devoted daughter in Eleanor.”

  Eleanor’s Hall relatives rejoiced that she would at last have a home of her own, but their hearts ached somewhat at the thought of her leaving Tivoli and Cousin Susie’s. She would miss “dear Eleanor very much,” Grandma Hall wrote Franklin, but was thankful that Eleanor was “going to marry such a fine man as I believe you to be.” Maude, a believer in spiritualism, horoscopes, and fortune tellers, drew a circle in wishing “Totty” happiness, “a perfect circle no break anywhere,” and then added, “Do be good to Grandma I think she will miss you frightfully.” Cousin Henry, who usually was not given to speaking in a personal vein, wrote Eleanor that she filled a place in Susie’s life: “Much as I am to Susie, you are more and I pray that you always will be.” Pussie was in ecstasy. “I’ve always loved Franklin & must write him a tiny line tonight just to ask him if he knows and appreciates what he has won,” she wrote, but asked how Hall felt. “I know that he had a secret longing that Mr. Biddle would be the one.”

  He had to throw away three unsatisfactory starts, Mr. Biddle confessed to Franklin in his congratulatory note. Another disappointed suitor, Howard Cary, wrote him from Cambridge, “You are mighty lucky. Your future wife is such as it is the privilege of few men to have.” He was mortified that at Islesboro he had “thoughtlessly put her in a position which must at times have been embarrassing.” And Howard’s mother, only half in jest, lamented to Eleanor, “and so you are not going to be my daughter-in-law after all.”

  Letters of congratulations also poured in upon them from friends and former classmates at Allenswood, Groton, and Harvard. “I am afraid I shall bear [Franklin] a grudge though,” one of Eleanor’s co-workers in the Junior League wrote, “if in consequence we are to lose the most efficient member of the League.” Many of the letters to Franklin told him how lucky he was, that he could not have made a better match. “It has been a dream of mine for some years that you would be a man widely useful to your country,” Groton’s second in command, the Reverend Sherrard Billings, wrote him, “and a sympathetic wife will be a great help to you on the road to realizing my dream and I am thankful and glad.” The previous spring when Dr. Peabody had officiated at Flossie Twombly’s wedding to William A. M. Burden, Eleanor had said to Franklin, “It seems quite necessary for a Groton boy to have him,” and the rector now shifted an engagement to preach in a Cambridge church in order to be able to officiate at their marriage.

  The Oyster Bay side of the family was delighted with the news. “Oh, dearest Eleanor—it is simply too nice to be true,” wrote Alice from the White House; “you old fox not to tell me before.” Young Corinne Robinson bubbled over—“Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,” she wrote, and recalled that when Franklin and Eleanor had come to Orange in the fall she had suggested to Franklin that he was in love with Eleanor and had called him a hypocrite and gay deceiver when he had denied it.

  “My own darling soft-eyed child,” Auntie Bye wrote Eleanor, “your letter has given me great joy. I love Franklin as you know on his own personal account because he is so attractive & also because I believe his character is like his Father’s whom Uncle Will & I always feel was the most absolutely honorable upright gentleman (the last in its highest sense) that we ever knew.” She was thankful, Auntie Bye went on, “to feel you care for someone in a way that gives you the right to make him first over everyone & be everything to him.” Aunt Corinne was equally moved by the news. “I can only hope that when the t
ime comes for [young] Corinne to tell me such a piece of news, that I shall feel as completely satisfied.”

  Uncle Theodore, always in the pulpit, sermonized a little in his letter to Eleanor: “Married life has many cares and trials; but it is only in married life that the highest and finest happiness is to be found; and I know that you and Franklin will face all that comes bravely and lovingly.” A happy married life, he advised Franklin, was more important than political success.

  White House

  Washington

  Nov. 29th 1904

  Dear Franklin,

  We are greatly rejoiced over the good news. I am as fond of Eleanor as if she were my daughter; and I like you, and trust you, and believe in you. No other success in life—not the Presidency, or anything else—begins to compare with the joy and happiness that come in and from the love of the true man and the true woman, the love which never sinks lover and sweetheart in man and wife. You and Eleanor are true and brave, and I believe you love each other unselfishly; and golden years open before you. May all good fortune attend you both, ever.

  Give my love to your dear mother.

  Your aff. cousin

  Theodore Roosevelt

  A few days after the announcement of their engagement Eleanor and Franklin saw Auntie Bye and asked her to find out if Uncle Ted would be able to attend the wedding, which, like Pussie’s, would take place in the adjoining Seventy-sixth Street houses of Cousin Susie and her mother, Mrs. Ludlow. A few days later Auntie Bye forwarded Theodore’s note: “Tell dear Eleanor that I can attend the wedding if it takes place before March 17.” Eleanor promptly wrote the president that the ceremony was scheduled for March 17 and expressed her pleasure that he could come. “I want you & Aunt Edith so much & as I am to be married in the house do you think you could give me away?” Not only would he do so but, wrote Aunt Edith, she and Uncle Theodore had been talking about the wedding and “he feels that on that day he stands in your father’s place and would like to have your marriage under his roof and make all the arrangements for it.” They would understand if she wished to adhere to her original plans, “but we wish you to know how very glad we should be to do for you as we should do for Alice.” Despite the warmheartedness of this offer, Eleanor and Franklin decided to keep the wedding at Cousin Susie’s and have the invitations sent by Grandma Hall. Eleanor would have “a bevy of pretty bridesmaids,” she wrote to Helen Robinson, including Alice Roosevelt, Ellen Delano, Muriel Robbins, Isabella Selmes, Corinne Robinson and Helen Cutting. “You angel,” Alice replied to her invitation,

  to ask me to be your bridesmaid. I should love to above anything. It will be too much fun. Let me know where I am to hat (&) cloth myself so I can arrange about fittings. . . . Really you are a sair to ask me. . . .

  Before the wedding the engaged couple took time off to attend Uncle Theodore’s inauguration. He had defeated conservative Democrat Judge Alton B. Parker by 2.5 million votes, a landslide, and one of the votes came from Franklin. “My father and grandfather were Democrats and I was born and brought up a Democrat,” he later explained (1938), “but in 1904 when I cast my first vote for a President, I voted for the Republican candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, because I felt he was a better Democrat than the Democratic candidates.”3

  They traveled to Washington in Emlen Roosevelt’s private car and stayed with Auntie Bye. During the ceremonies on March 4 they sat on the Capitol steps just behind the president and his family and heard his ringing appeal: “All I ask is a square deal for every man.” They went to the White House to lunch with the president and again joined him and his immediate family on the reviewing stand for the parade and at the inaugural ball that evening. Then they hurried back to New York, Eleanor, at least, thinking that was the last inauguration of a member of her family that she would attend.4

  With the wedding less than two weeks off, many parties were given for them, and wedding presents began arriving. There were in all 340 gifts—flatware and china, glass candlesticks, silver candlesticks, several silver tea sets, cut glass and vases of many descriptions, four inkstands, thirteen silver trays, and thirteen clocks. For Franklin there were golden cigarette cases and a dozen bottles of Madeira, and for Eleanor there was a great deal of jewelry, including a handsome pearl dog collar with diamond bars, a gift from Sara. There were water colors from Uncle Ted and Aunt Edith and a sketch of Auntie Bye from Ellen Emmet. They were given enough sets of books to fill a library—two of Jane Austen, three of Robert Browning, two Golden Treasuries, and one set each of Campbell, Motley, Emerson, Mrs. Browning, Symonds, Stevenson, Rossetti, Charlotte Brontë, Whittier, Cowper, and Longfellow’s Dante. Bridesmaids helped Eleanor acknowledge her presents, and Isabella Selmes was so carried away she began to sign her own name instead of Eleanor’s.5

  Cousin Susie helped Eleanor buy her trousseau and linen, and Sara went with her to Pach’s for her wedding photo. On March 6 Sara noted in her journal “Tried on my lace dress for my dear Franklin’s wedding. Mama’s black lace over white.”

  On March 16 Sara wrote:

  Mr. and Mrs. Peabody came at 3.15. I took them up to see Eleanor’s presents. Back to tea. Had Bammie, corinne & Douglas, Mr. & Mrs. Jack Morgan to dine. This is Franklin’s last night at home as a boy.

  Franklin, meanwhile, was busy with his ushers. Since Rosy, his half brother, was ill, Lathrop Brown was to be his best man, and the ushers were Nicholas Biddle, Owen Winston, Lyman Delano, Warren Robbins, Charles B. Bradley, and Thomas Beal, who had sailed on the Half Moon with him the previous summer. He had designed a diamond tie pin for his ushers based on the three feathers in the Roosevelt crest, and he gave Eleanor a watch with her initials in diamonds and a pin with the three feathers to hold it.

  On Friday, March 17, Pussie sent Eleanor some last-minute advice:

  Try & forget the crowd & only think of Franklin—if you are wise you will drink a cup of strong tea half an hour before you go down stairs. It will give you color & make you feel well. No sugar or cream in it.

  She sent three kisses, “one for Father & Mother & Ellie.”

  From Maude came a note with the hope “that she will always try & think of me as her sister, one who loves her very much.” A cable signed “Souvestre” was handed her: “Bonheur,” it said.

  Downstairs all was in readiness. The two large drawing rooms that opened into each other glowed in candlelight and the reflected tints of the heavy furniture. The yellow brocade with which the walls were hung picked up the glow as did the portraits of the Livingstons and Ludlows. White lilacs, lilies, and pink rosebuds relieved the stately dignity of the two rooms, and clematis and palms shaped the brocaded walls into a tabernacle of blossoms. An altar had been set up at the back of Mrs. Ludlow’s drawing room, where an enormous shower bouquet of pink roses combined with palms to form a bower in which the ceremony would be performed.

  Outside, traces of winter were still on the street, but the day was balmy, and windows everywhere were open, crowded with spectators. Many little boys had come from the St. Patrick’s Day parade and were holding American and Irish flags as they awaited the arrival of the president. The carriages and cars of the guests continuously pulled up to the canopy, and finally everyone had arrived and was seated. Grandma Hall in black velvet and Franklin’s mother in white silk trimmed with black lace were ushered to the front. Off in a little room on the side Franklin, Lathrop, and the rector were reminiscing, a little distractedly, about Groton; upstairs the bride and her bridesmaids were waiting for the president. A few moments before 3:30 the squeals of the children, a clatter of hooves, and the shouting of commands signaled his arrival, and—top-hatted and buoyant, a shamrock in his buttonhole—he bounded out of the open landau and hastened upstairs.

  The Landers Orchestra, discreetly screened, began to play the wedding march. The bridesmaids, in taffeta, with demiveils and three silver-tipped feathers in their hair, moved with measured step down the circular stairway and up the aisle formed by satin ribbons held by the ushers. Behind them
came the gravely beautiful bride on the arm of her uncle. A few, remembering her mother, gasped—today she looked like the beautiful Anna, they thought. Past and present were everywhere. Her satin wedding gown was covered with Grandmother Hall’s rose-point Brussels lace, which Eleanor’s mother had also worn at her marriage. The veil that covered her hair and flowed over her long court train was secured with a diamond crescent that had belonged to her mother. March 17 was her mother’s birthday.

  At the altar she was met by Franklin. Alice took her bouquet of lilies of the valley and the rector began the Episcopal wedding service. Once he faltered—the light was dim and he could not lay hold of the words, he explained later. Eleanor knew the service so well she could have helped him out, but he recovered quickly. The vows were exchanged. Hand touched hand. It was done.

  “Well, Franklin,” the president’s high-pitched voice could be heard saying, “there’s nothing like keeping the name in the family.” He kissed the bride and marched off to the double dining room where refreshments were being served. Others pressed forward to congratulate them, but as the dining room began to crackle with the president’s sallies and the guests’ appreciative laughter, the bridal couple soon found themselves abandoned. Dr. Dix and his daughter Margaret, arriving a little late for the reception, found Franklin and Eleanor standing quite alone. Eleanor was taking it calmly, Margaret observed, but Franklin was a little put out.6 The Dixes traipsed off after the others, and soon the newlyweds, too, decided they might as well follow. Ushers and bridesmaids gathered round while Franklin guided Eleanor’s hand as she cut the cake. Even the president was made to attend and take his piece. At five the president left, to shouts of “Hooray for Teddy” from the little boys still waiting outside; the president beamed and shook his fist smilingly. Eleanor and Franklin went upstairs to dress, and soon they, too, departed in the traditional shower of rice. With Isabella, they stopped to see Bob Ferguson, who was ill in bed, and then left for Hyde Park, which Sara turned over to them for an interim honeymoon.