Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  By April, however, his political prospects had darkened. The Republican resurgence dimmed his chance of re-election in 1912, and the Tammany bosses detested him. The Democratic boss of Albany, “Packy” McCabe, upbraided Roosevelt as a “political prig” and said it was time the party leaders stopped coddling these “fops and cads . . . these political prudes,” phrases that echoed those used against Theodore when he was an assemblyman. One hope that Franklin and his fellow progressives had of breaking Murphy’s stranglehold on the state Democratic organization was to align themselves with the burgeoning Wilson movement. Although initial efforts to drum up Wilson support at the state convention were a fiasco, Franklin and Thomas Mott Osborne decided to convene a Wilson Conference. But before the preparations were complete Franklin and Hall embarked on a winter cruise to Panama, leaving Eleanor to cope not only with the move back to town but with the Wilson movement as well.

  Osborne wrote Eleanor to ask whether there was any objection to signing Franklin’s name to the call for the conference, saying he was quite sure it was all right “under the approval he [Franklin] gave; but I should prefer to have your advice on the matter.” Eleanor’s reply was deliberately noncommittal, which did not help him much, Osborne commented dryly, and left him “in something of a quandary.” Osborne’s letter, she wrote Franklin, “has given me an uncomfortable day but I can only hope I’ve done as you would wish.” More of a pragmatist in politics than the uncompromising Osborne, he wanted to move slowly. Moreover, he had many irons in the fire, as Eleanor’s next letter indicated. “Louis Howe told me to tell you,” she wrote, “that Evans etc., were grooming you to run for Governor against Mr. Wadsworth! Also he had a long talk with Mr. C. Osborn and felt that you could count on help from him next autumn.”

  She had arranged to meet Franklin in New Orleans on his way back, since they did not like to be separated any longer than necessary. “I simply hated to have you go on Saturday,” she wrote him after he sailed, and he was also upset. “It is hard enough to be away from the chicks, but with you away from me too I feel very much alone and lost. I hereby solemnly declare that I REFUSE to go away the next time without you. . . . ”

  Her husband’s involvement in the Wilson campaign created a dilemma for Eleanor, since she was devoted to her Uncle Ted. Late in March she had lunched with Auntie Bye and Uncle Ted who, with characteristic energy, was preparing his assault on Taft’s renomination. When she joined Franklin in New Orleans in April they went to Cat Cañon for a three-day visit with the Fergusons and found Bob and Isabella passionately absorbed in Theodore’s forthcoming campaign. The younger “progressive” elements were hitching themselves to Theodore’s star, they told the Roosevelts. Franklin’s law partners, Langdon Marvin and Harry Hooker, were for Teddy. Even Sara was in conflict.

  Whatever Eleanor’s private sentiments, her duty was to be at the side of her husband, who had accepted the chairmanship of the New York State Wilson Conference, and she accompanied him to Baltimore for her first national convention. Many people she knew were there, including Alice and Kermit. Theodore was preparing to run as a third-party candidate. “Pop’s been praying for Clark,” Kermit told Franklin. Alice looked bad, Eleanor thought; in fact, all of Theodore’s supporters who came to Baltimore seemed to her “restless and unhappy.”

  She found the convention sessions tedious. A moralist in politics, she felt that the ritual of noisy demonstrations, parades, and seconding speeches, while colorful, did not contribute to the thoughtful consideration of the party’s purposes and policies. After the first roll call Champ Clark, the candidate of the conservatives, was in the lead; but he could not muster the two-thirds majority for the nomination. As the balloting dragged on, Eleanor saw less and less of her husband, and decided to take the children to Campobello and await the results there. But the significance of the battle between Wilson and Clark had not escaped her; what struck her most was “the contempt in which the New York delegation was held and the animosity shown toward the big financiers. If we are not going to find remedies in Progressivism then I feel sure the next step will be Socialism.”14 This was a remarkably sage and sophisticated perception by someone who only a few years earlier had been the shyest of apprentices in politics.

  “Wilson nominated this afternoon,” Franklin wired her in Campobello, “all my plans vague splendid triumph.” Eleanor rejoiced not only for her husband’s sake but because she felt that Wilson offered the best chance for the alleviation of social injustice. However, she felt bad for Uncle Ted, who, she suspected, would not have committed himself so irrevocably to running as a third-party candidate, had he foreseen Wilson would be the Democratic nominee. Wilson’s nomination and Theodore’s third party transformed the political scene. With the prospect of a Bull Moose candidate in his district who would divide the Republican vote, Franklin’s doubts about running for re-election evaporated. He began to press hard for renomination, touring his district tirelessly, rousing his workers, flashing the smile that overcame all resistance. “It appears that Tammany and the ‘Interests’ are really making an effort to prevent my renomination,” he wrote Eleanor, but he thought Tammany’s ally in Dutchess County was spineless and would yield in the end.

  As Franklin predicted, his Tammany opposition did collapse, and on August 24 he wired Eleanor, “Received designation by unanimous vote. Will wire Sunday if I can leave.” He also notified his mother, who was in Paris. She replied, “In one way I wanted you all in New York, but to be sensible and unselfish, I am glad . . . I hope the ‘bull moose’ party will endorse you.” But the Bull Moosers entered a candidate against him. The Democrats on their side closed ranks around Wilson, and Osborne and Roosevelt quietly shelved their independent Wilson organization. This brought Franklin an anguished plea from Louis Howe, who had been on Osborne’s payroll: “If you can connect me with a job during this campaign, for heaven’s sake help me out.” A few weeks later Franklin was flat on his back with typhoid and asked Eleanor to see if Howe would run his campaign. That eccentric-looking little man had early sensed Franklin’s possibilities and had cultivated his friendship. Franklin had reciprocated these overtures, somewhat to the dismay of Eleanor and Sara, who were put off by Howe’s untidiness, his tobacco-specked vest, and a face that he himself cheerfully called “one of the four ugliest” in the state. Nevertheless, Howe had a sixth sense for the movement of public opinion and was something of a genius at political analysis. He loved power, Eleanor later wrote, but recognized his own limitations. In 1911 he spotted Franklin as the instrument through which he could realize his own ambitions. For his part, Franklin sensed that here was the perfect aide, brilliant politically but no potential rival. But many years were to pass before Eleanor appreciated Howe’s remarkable qualities.15 A man of great sensitivity, he could not have failed to notice how uncooperative Eleanor was after he hurriedly came down from Horseneck Beach in Massachusetts to take over Franklin’s campaign. She fussed over his chain smoking, seemed impatient with the length of his visits, and generally made herself a nuisance, she confessed later, to the man who was to carry the district for her husband.

  The fact that she herself was feeling ill no doubt accentuated her irritability. It was Sara who discovered that something was radically wrong when she arrived one day to find her daughter-in-law “so hot I was frightened.” Characteristically, Eleanor shrugged off her symptoms; she would get to bed early and be well in the morning. But Sara was not to be put off so easily, and insisted on taking Eleanor’s temperature, which was over 103. She summoned the doctor at once and his tests showed that Eleanor, too, had typhoid. A trained nurse was brought in and Eleanor went “into the fever.” It was a week before her temperature began to come down. “She sees no one but Franklin, not even me!” Sara reported to Eleanor’s Aunt Maude.

  Thus the crucial election drew to a close with both Franklin and Eleanor flat on their backs. “Poor Franklin,” Eleanor wrote Maude, “has had a horrid time just up and down. . . . He hasn’t been able to c
ampaign at all so he feels a little uncertain of election.” But Howe was doing a first-rate job, and with the Bull Moose candidate expected to draw off Republican votes, Franklin’s chances were good.

  Theodore’s campaign was roaring to a finish. Isabella wrote Eleanor that she had spent the day with Uncle Ted in Albuquerque: “He was more loveable than ever and of you he said so much that warmed my heart.” Eleanor’s Uncle Eddie Hall came to tell her that he had registered so he could vote for Theodore. Sara went to Theodore’s windup rally with the Parishes one night and the next she was at Madison Square Garden to hear Woodrow Wilson. On election night, however, when Eleanor and Franklin were so weak they could barely sit up, Sara chose to go with Harry Hooker to Bull Moose, not Democratic, headquarters. But there was little cheer there. “Governor Wilson has a landslide,” Sara noted in her diary. “Franklin is elected with about 1,500 majority.”

  “Howe did gallant work under very adverse circumstances,” Osborne wrote Franklin. “He was about as loyal and wholehearted as a man could be.” And Sara noted critically, “Mr. Howe here a good deal.” By December, Eleanor could begin to jest about the fact that both she and Franklin had been ill. Her Christmas presents would be small, she informed Maude, “as the campaign was more expensive than it would have been had Franklin been well and of course the doctors’ bills are a bit high for our joint autumn entertainment! However, we ought to be thankful as we got off cheaper than if we had had it separately!” They were not taking a house in Albany this time, only a small apartment, and they planned to be there only from Tuesday to Thursday because, wrote Eleanor, Franklin “thinks he won’t have much work this year.”

  Eleanor was twenty-eight as Franklin’s term in Albany ended. She presided over a large household that had to be moved several times a year—from Sixty-fifth Street in New York, to Hyde Park, to Albany, and in June to Campobello. And on each occasion it was like a small army on the march: a nurse for each of the three children, three to five other domestics, and a vast number of trunks, valises, hat boxes, and pets. The trip to Campobello meant an early train to Boston with a stopover during the day at the Hotel Touraine, then a sleeper to Eastport, Maine, and finally the Half Moon or the motor launch to Campobello—in all, a considerable exercise in logistics. When Franklin could not be with them, Eleanor handled it alone with a minimum of fuss. She had already developed a reputation within the family for crowding an incredibly large number of activities into a morning. “She got hats, ordered dresses, etc.—all very quickly and I dropped her off at Susie Parish’s before one,” Sara noted in admiration. When she moved her family down from Albany, Eleanor “had to work awfully hard,” Sara recorded, “and think very hard before she got away and she seemed to remember everything, even tho’ at one day’s notice she moved a whole day earlier than planned.”

  Eleanor dressed smartly—even the style-conscious Pussie was delighted to get her hand-me-downs. She was slim and tall and the sheath gowns of the era did justice to her Gibson Girl figure. She had tapering, expressive fingers and masses of soft brown hair full of golden tints. Her profile, with its overly prominent teeth and receding chin, was not attractive, but, like Auntie Bye, she had an inner radiance that prevailed over physical looks. Her eyes, as Beatrice Webb had said of her own mother, caressed one with sympathy and studied one with intelligence. Even the self-deprecating Eleanor admitted that her eyes were her best feature. She was glad that her children had inherited their father’s looks—his fair skin, his smile, his jutting jaw—but their eyes, she thought, came from her side of the family, and they were good eyes, she said.

  The Halls still turned to her in every crisis, and the crises were frequent. “Eleanor has been here every day,” Grandma Hall wrote. “She is so good.” Tivoli was decaying. Presided over by the violent-tempered Vallie who brandished a gun at visitors, and Grandma Hall, now a roly-poly lady in black dress and bonnet, Oak Terrace was no longer a proud Hudson house but the setting for a Gothic tragedy. “I am so sorry about Grandma,” Eleanor wrote Maude,

  and one’s hands are tied unless Vallie can be removed from Tivoli, which of course she won’t agree to now. . . . I wish you and I could talk it over as I would do anything to make these next years easier and happier for her. Can’t I let you have some money?

  An equally urgent problem was what should be done with Eddie’s three children, whose beautiful mother had died. “I feel after this,” Eleanor wrote when Eddie had disappeared on another prolonged bat, “he should not dream of taking the children to his own house this spring and hope no one will make it possible so long as the Zabriskies are willing to keep them.” Her stern advice echoed Auntie Bye’s admonition fifteen years earlier to her own family that under no circumstances should Eleanor’s father be permitted to have his children. But Eleanor had never acknowledged the wisdom of keeping herself and her father apart; the world of reality and the dream life she lived with her father were still separate.

  Eleanor was Maude’s confidante in matters of the heart as well as her mainstay in disentangling her private affairs, including some large debts. Maude, with her masses of red hair, great warmth, and puckish sense of humor, charmed men and women alike. She had turned down a Whitney to marry Larry Waterbury, and at one time the society pages were full of her doings. “Seated in a big automobile at the Jockey Club races at Newport last summer, Mrs. Waterbury performed the feat of eating half of a large watermelon without removing her white gloves—and without soiling them.” Although Larry Waterbury was attractive and an outstanding polo player, he had no money. The two lived beyond their means, and contracted heavy gambling debts, and finally the marriage broke up. When Maude decided to sell her pearl collar, “Totty” was her agent in the negotiations with Tiffany’s and Black, Starr and Gorham. To free herself of debts, Maude, like Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, tried running a dress shop and even considered, until Eleanor discouraged her, serving as a hostess in a new restaurant whose owner was eager to have society patronage. Eleanor loved having her aunt at Campobello. Would Eleanor mind, Maude inquired, if a Mr. David Gray joined her on the island?

  Eleanor could not quite make up her mind about the romance but she welcomed Mr. Gray to Campobello and undertook to chaperone them. “If you think best casually mention to Mama that Mr. Gray is boarding in the village,” she wrote Franklin, “but if you think the surprise is better for her, just let it go.” The son of a Buffalo editor, David Gray was witty and charming, wrote fashionable stories about the hunting life, and was much in demand in society.

  Eleanor kept Franklin informed of her reactions to Mr. Gray. He had “the best anthology I’ve ever seen called The Home Book of Verse, compiled by a man called Stevenson. You can give it to me for my birthday as he has mended the turntable so I don’t need a new one!” Mr. Gray read poetry well, and they were having “a grand poetry orgy,” her next letter said. He was a delightful companion “but something is lacking and it worried me. I wish you were here and could form an opinion.” He read them a story he had just written. “He certainly has the gift of the short story. Whether he has it for the big things is not yet proved and I wonder if it ever will be.” How did Eleanor like him, Maude asked after they had been at Campobello several weeks. “I told her I did not feel I knew him yet. . . . I somehow shall never feel quite straight about it all till I’ve told him all my fears for them and seen how he takes it.”

  Meanwhile there was Sara to be dealt with. Appearances meant a great deal to her. Once Harry Hooker, one of Franklin’s law partners, had come to Campobello while Franklin was away, and “Mama has chaperoned us pretty carefully,” Eleanor noted with amusement. When Eleanor first mentioned David’s name to Sara she “fairly snorted,” and Eleanor foresaw trouble. Publicly Sara was kind, gracious, and devoted to Maude, but she “confided in Laura (who promptly told me),” wrote Eleanor, “all her outraged feelings in regards to Maude, David and me. . . . I know I’m in for a grand scene with Mama and tears one of these days.”

  David fi
nally allayed Eleanor’s misgivings: “I think you will like David Gray,” she advised Franklin. If Maude ever made up her mind to marry him, “he will take good care of her. He strikes me as a man who has enjoyed life, had some big disappointments but kept his ideals, though up to now he has wanted a big incentive for work.”

  Her doubts about her brother Hall’s marriage were of a different kind. A handsome young man, Hall had graduated from Harvard Phi Beta Kappa in 1912 and was about to enter engineering school. Eleanor had great faith in his abilities and wanted to be sure the girl he married would bring out the best in him; she thought of Hall as her oldest child, and if he was ever in trouble she was at his side. “Eleanor is a wonder,” a friend remarked who saw them together; “it was delightful to see the sweet feeling between that sister and brother.” When Hall first brought Margaret Richardson, a lovely Boston debutante, to meet Eleanor, Eleanor had some reservations. Margaret was a sportswoman who rode, played tennis, and enjoyed camping trips and dancing. “Hall is holding you up as an example to me,” Eleanor teasingly reported to her. They were different types, and Eleanor could not get on “an intimate footing” with Margaret, she confessed to Franklin, and Margaret had the same problem with her. Eleanor “was perfectly lovely to me,” Margaret recalled, “but I never felt at home with her.”16 Eleanor thought a woman should stir a man to large undertakings and be able to keep up with him intellectually, not just be someone to have fun with, and she was not sure Margaret was the right person for her brother. After Hall and Margaret were married, however, she counseled him not to make too many demands on his young wife. Hall had just awakened to poetry and philosophy, which were like wine in their effect on him, Eleanor observed in a letter to Franklin adding, “He expects Margaret to feel as he does and to grasp things just as quickly and it is very hard on her for she has been accustomed to a sleepy atmosphere. He is impatient of her family and wants her to keep out of the atmosphere of Boston which she has always been in! Oh! these periods of readjustment, they are hard all round, aren’t they?”