Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  Eleanor employed Lucy Page Mercer, then twenty-two, in the winter season of 1913–14 to help with social correspondence three mornings a week. Lucy, an efficient social secretary and a charming person, soon became a household familiar. By later 1914 Franklin was writing Eleanor in Hyde Park that he had arrived safely in Washington, gone to the house, “and Albert telephoned Miss Mercer who later came and cleaned up.” (Albert was the Roosevelt chauffeur and general handyman.)

  Sara approved of Lucy. In the spring of 1915 when she came down to stay with the children during Franklin and Eleanor’s trip to the San Francisco Exposition, a letter that reported such news as “Babs [Franklin Jr.] is splendid, had his one big movement,” also included an enthusiastic reference to Eleanor’s social secretary: “Miss Mercer is here, she is so sweet and attractive and adores you Eleanor.”3

  Sara’s approval was in character—Lucy, descended as she was from the Carrolls of Maryland, had an irreproachably patrician background. Her mother had been a famous Washington beauty and her father was Major Carroll Mercer, one of the founders of the Chevy Chase Club, where Franklin played golf, and a pillar of the Metropolitan Club, another favorite haunt of Franklin’s. But the family had fallen on hard times and the marriage had broken up, so Lucy’s mother had brought her up to be able to earn a living as a social secretary—a job, Jonathan Daniels has written, for young ladies of “impeccable social standing and slim purses.” Lucy did her job well, said Aileen Tone, who performed similar functions for Henry Adams. Lucy would sit down on the floor of the living room, Aileen recalled, strew bills, letters, and invitations about, and in the twinkling of an eye have everything in order. “She was a charmer,” Aileen added. Lucy Mercer’s loveliness, good taste, and exquisite manners enabled her to maintain her footing socially. When Eleanor was short a woman for a dinner party or luncheon, she invited Lucy. Men fell in love with Lucy—“every man who ever knew her,” some said; she was good-looking enough “to be generally admired,” one of the young men at the British Embassy said, and her voice had the quality of dark velvet. She knew how to please a man, to make his life easy and agreeable, to bolster instead of challenge him.

  She had qualities of femininity that Eleanor lacked, and Eleanor was aware of her own shortcomings. Because she could not relax, others found it difficult to be wholly relaxed with her. Duty came first, not fun or pleasure. She still felt awkward at parties, and at dances she put in an appearance and then vanished. While Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., may have exaggerated when he described the Eleanor Roosevelt of that era as “a woman sternly devoted to plain living, invincibly ‘sensible’ in her taste and dress,”4 she herself often spoke of the “Puritan” in her that held her back from high living, frivolity and indolence.

  Franklin, on the other hand, was, as Lane dubbed him, the “gay cavalier,” the “lord lover”—debonair, fun-loving, and able to enjoy making a night of it with the British Embassy “boys” or his intimates at the Metropolitan Club. Franklin was one of the handsomest men in Washington, admired by men and women alike. Walter Camp, the famous Yale coach who came to wartime Washington to keep its executives in trim, described Roosevelt as “a beautifully built man, with the long muscles of an athlete.”5 The assistant military attaché at the British Embassy, Arthur Murray, spoke of Roosevelt as “breathing health and virility.”6 Bill Phillips remembered him as “always amusing, always the life of the party.”7 After Auntie Bye had seen Franklin in Washington, Admiral Cowles (her husband) reported to Franklin that Bye had thought him brave and charming, “but,” Cowles added, “the girls will spoil you soon enough Franklin, and I leave you to them.”8

  Eleanor also teased him about his popularity with the ladies. He was going back to the department at five o’clock, she reported to Sara, to review “the yeomen F” (female).9 She thought that was entertaining, but she might have been happier had the secretary assumed that duty. When Franklin went to Europe in 1918 she was amused at all the lovely creatures in the Navy Department and the Red Cross who took an interest in his safe arrival abroad. The wife of a Marine captain, she wrote Franklin, “told me she knew you were on the way and had been so worried! She’s one of my best cooks on the canteen, so it hasn’t interfered with her work!”10 Everyone was so nice about Franklin’s safe arrival in Europe, she reported to Sara: “I wish I could tell you how many people speak as though they were lying awake nights over him!”11

  She knew that she did not satisfy the frivolous, flirtatious side of Franklin’s nature. She liked the company of older people while he complained that they were always invited to the stodgy parties where he was usually given the “honor” of taking the oldest dowager present in to dinner. Her letters from Campobello and Hyde Park were filled with expressions of pleasure that he was having a gay time,12 which reflected an awareness that companionship and love that were not freely offered were not worth having. But she was also jealous, and undoubtedly the more firmly she urged him to go to a party alone, the more she wanted him to say no. She disciplined herself to treat his flirtations as summer shadows. She had long ago learned to repress her jealousy, to think tolerantly, even fondly, of possible rivals when her adored father had filled his letters from West Virginia with accounts of all the things he did with the little girls in Abingdon. She could treat Franklin’s dalliances lightly so long as she was sure of his love, sure that she came first with him.

  She began to feel uneasy about her husband being alone in Washington during the summer of 1916, the year of the polio epidemic when Franklin insisted that she remain at Campobello until the end of September and she did not want to stay. That was the summer he portrayed himself a veritable wallflower in his letters to Eleanor. “Yesterday I had a very busy time as the Secretary went to Annapolis and left me a thousand loose ends to tie up. I stayed here until just in time to dress for dinner and went out to Chevy Chase with the Blues—a nice dinner. Everybody danced afterwards, except self who lost his nerve, and Mrs. Blue and the Miss Somebody [he couldn’t catch her name] who had a sore on her leg—so I had a peaceful evening—and really enjoyed watching the antics of the three or four hundred other bipeds on the floor.”13 That was the summer, too, when their chauffeur, Golden, went joy-riding through Washington in the Roosevelt car and cracked up both the car and himself. “Isn’t it horrid to be disappointed in someone,” she wrote to Franklin commiseratingly, “it makes one so suspicious!”14 Suspicious only of servants, or was the comment meant to have a broader application?

  In 1917 she delayed her departure to Campobello for reasons that may be surmised from a letter Franklin sent her the day after she left.

  I really can’t stand that house all alone without you, and you were a goosy girl to think or even pretend to think that I don’t want you here all summer, because you know I do! But honestly you ought to have six weeks straight at Campo, just as I ought to, only you can and I can’t! I know what a whole summer here does to people’s nerves and at the end of the summer I will be like a bear with a sore head until I get a change or some cold weather—in fact as you know I am unreasonable and touchy now—but I shall try to improve.15

  Eleanor was nervous about Lucy Mercer that summer; when she reluctantly left Washington she put Lucy and Mary Munn in charge of the Saturdays when she gave out yarn and collected the sweaters, scarves, and socks that had been finished. Eleanor had insisted that Lucy, who had begun to work in the Navy Department as a yeoman (F), third class, in June, be paid and that the relationship be strictly a business one. She had given Franklin notes on how she wanted her “wool Saturdays” to be handled while she was away. “Your letter of Thursday is here and one from Miss Mercer,” she wrote him on July 23. “Why did you make her waste all that time answering those fool notes? I tore them and the answers up and please tear any other results of my idiocy up at once. She tells me you are going off for Sunday and I hope you all had a pleasant trip but I’m so glad I’m here and not on the Potomac!”

  The trip to which Miss Mercer referred combined dut
y with pleasure. “The trip on the Sylph was a joy and a real rest, though I got in a most satisfactory visit to the fleet,” Franklin wrote her.

  Such a funny party, but it worked out wonderfully! The Charlie Munns, the Cary Graysons, Lucy Mercer and Nigel Law, and they all got on splendidly. We swam about four times and Sunday afternoon went up the James to Richmond. We stopped at Lower and Upper Brandon, Westover and Shirley and went all over them, getting drenched to the skin by several severe thunderstorms. Those old houses are really wonderful but not comfy!16

  Nigel Law, the third secretary of the British Embassy, was a bachelor and a companion of Franklin’s in relaxation at the Chevy Chase Club and at the Lock Tavern Club on the Potomac. Before Eleanor left Washington, she had spent a week end on the Sylph at which Lucy Mercer and Nigel Law were present. Did the presence of Nigel Law allay her worry about Lucy?

  She was glad he had enjoyed his trip, Eleanor commented, “but sorry you found things not quite right in the fleet. The party sounds delightful to me except the Graysons’ but I think you were clever to take them.”17 Eleanor’s letter went on to talk of household matters such as reminding him to deposit three hundred dollars into the household account on August 1 as she intended to draw on it that day to pay bills, but she did not manage to conceal her disquiet completely. She was writing for train accommodations early, she announced, but he would see very little of her in Washington in the early autumn because she would have lots of things to do in New York. “I think in spite of all their troubles Mrs. Munn and Miss M. like to run my Sats. so I shall have no scruples there and I don’t think I shall have to take over the packing room.” Then, in a reference to his protestations of how lonely it was in Washington in the summertime, she remarked “I’m glad you are so gay but you know I predicted it! I hope you’ll have this Sunday at H.P.”

  Then Franklin informed her, “I do miss you so very much, but I am getting busier and busier and fear my hoped-for dash to Campo next week for two days will not materialize. Nor can I get to H.P. for Sunday, as I found my absence last Sunday has put me too far back.”18 “I am sorry,” she wrote back, “you can’t get to H.P. this Sunday before Mama leaves. I know she will feel badly about it. I hope you won’t try to come here. It is too far away and you ought not to do it. It will be better to take 2 weeks at H.P. in September and October.”19 But it was a reproach, because only four days earlier she had written, “I am praying no one will come to stay this summer, I am having such a delightful, unbothered time. . . . I wish you could come but I want no one else!” And there was another reproach: “I don’t think you read my letters for you never answer a question and nothing I ask for appears!”

  Although she was having a “delightful, unbothered time” at Campobello, when Franklin came down with his old throat infection at the end of July Eleanor rushed to Washington and did not return to Campobello until the middle of August. En route back she wrote, “I hated to leave yesterday. Please go to the doctor twice a week, eat well and sleep well and remember I count on seeing you the 26th. My threat was no idle one.”20

  She did not say what her threat had been, but whatever her suspicion of an attachment between her husband and Lucy, it is obvious that she hadn’t mentioned it while in Washington, for on August 20 Franklin wrote her, “I had a very occupied Sunday, starting off for golf at 9 with McIlhenny, Legare, and McCawley, quick lunch at Chevy Chase, then in to town and off in car at 2:30 to the Horsey’s place near Harper’s Ferry. Lucy Mercer went and the Graysons and we got there at 5:30, walked over the farm—a very rich one and run by the two sisters—had supper with them and several neighbors, left at nine and got home at midnight! The day was magnificent, but the road more dusty and even more crowded than when we went to Gettysburg.”

  This time Franklin did get to Campobello as he had promised. “It is horrid to be without you,” Eleanor wrote him on September 2, the day after he left, “and the chicks and I bemoaned our sad fate all through breakfast.” But she continued to be reserved and wary toward Lucy, as indicated by a genteel dispute between the two over Eleanor’s insistence on paying Lucy for handling her “wool Saturdays.” Eleanor sent a check, which Lucy declined to accept. Eleanor was immovable and Lucy finally said she would abide by her wishes since Eleanor was mistress of the situation. She apologized for having been unbusinesslike, but then she returned the check as the last two collections were not made, on the assistant secretary’s instruction; furthermore, on Saturday, July 21, she had not been present, and she had participated the previous Saturday only to the extent of answering questions and listing what came in. Eleanor sent this letter on to Franklin with the comment, “I’ve written Miss Mercer and returned the check saying I knew she had done far more work than I could pay for. She is evidently quite cross with me!”21

  “You are entirely disconnected and Lucy Mercer and Mrs. Munn are closing up the loose ends,” Franklin replied.22

  That autumn the Roosevelts moved into a larger house at 2131 R Street, and wool distribution and collection were shifted to rooms at the Navy Department. Lucy Mercer, who had been promoted to yeoman, second class, was released from her Navy duty on October 5, 1917, “by special order of Secretary of the Navy”—perhaps for hardship, since her father had died a few days earlier—but she still helped Eleanor as social secretary and Eleanor still asked her to fill in when she needed an extra woman for a lunch or dinner party.

  On the surface all went on as usual, but Eleanor must have had a sense of impending catastrophe. That winter she wrote almost daily to her mother-in-law, whose standards in regard to the obligations that a husband owed his wife and family were precise and unbudgeable. Her letters to Sara at this time were as warmly affectionate as they had been the year of her honeymoon. It was as if she were seeking to protect herself against the disaster she saw coming by shielding herself in the older woman’s lee.

  “Much love always dearest Mummy,” Eleanor wrote on January 22, 1918. “I miss you and so do the children, as the years go on I realize how lucky we are to have you and I wish we could always be together. Very few mothers I know mean as much to their daughters as you do to me.” “I wish you were always here!” she wrote a month later, “There are always so many things I want to talk over and ask you about and letters are not very satisfactory are they?” She rejoiced when the time came for Sara’s spring visit. “We are all thrilled at the thought of having you, I am particularly hungry for a sight of you, only a stern sense of duty has kept me from running away to see you a number of times.”

  Sara sent Franklin and Eleanor a letter and telegram on their wedding anniversary and Eleanor replied,

  Thirteen years seems to sound a long time and yet it does not seem long. I often think of what an interesting, happy life Franklin has given me and how much you have done to make our life what it is. As I have grown older I have realized better all you do for us and all you mean to me and the children especially and you will never know how grateful I am nor how much I love you dear.23

  Sara reciprocated Eleanor’s regard.

  When Aunt Kassie’s daughter, “Little Kassie,” married George B. St. George, the latter’s mother was delighted with her daughter-in-law. “Well, Kassie, you are running a close second to my Eleanor as a daughter-in-law,” Sara commented. Kassie demurred: “Oh, Aunt Sallie, I never could be as good and lovely as Eleanor is.”

  For some her very goodness was a goad. The romance between Franklin and Lucy did not escape Alice’s keen eyes. She saw Franklin out motoring with Lucy, and called him afterward. “I saw you 20 miles out in the country,” she teased. “You didn’t see me. Your hands were on the wheel but your eyes were on that perfectly lovely lady.”24

  “Isn’t she perfectly lovely?” he replied.

  Alice encouraged the romance. Franklin dined at Alice’s when Eleanor was out of town, and she also invited Lucy. It was good for Franklin, Alice maintained. “He deserved a good time. He was married to Eleanor.”25 Moreover, since she considered Eleanor “overl
y noble,” Alice was not beyond enjoying a little one-upmanship at Eleanor’s expense. Alice and Eleanor had run into each other at the Capitol, but Eleanor had left Alice at the door, she reported to Franklin, “not having allowed her to tell me any secrets. She inquired if you had told me and I said no and that I did not believe in knowing things which your husband did not wish you to know so I think I will be spared any further mysterious secrets!”

  When Franklin returned from his 1918 trip to Europe in September stricken with double pneumonia, Eleanor took care of his mail, and in the course of doing so she came upon Lucy’s letters.26 Her worst fears were confirmed. Her world seemed to break into pieces. After her wedding there had been a period of total dependency and insecurity from which she had slowly begun to emancipate herself. But Franklin’s love was the anchor to which her self-confidence and self-respect were secured, and now the anchor was cut. The thought tortured Eleanor that, having borne him six children, she was now being discarded for a younger, prettier, gayer woman—that her husband’s love belonged to someone else. The bottom, she wrote, dropped out of her world. She confronted her husband with Lucy’s letters. She was prepared to give her husband his freedom, she told him, if after thinking over what the consequences might be for the children he still wanted to end their marriage.

  He soon discovered that divorce might have disagreeable consequences in addition to the effect upon the children. Sara was said to have applied pressure with the threat to cut him off if he did not give up Lucy. If Franklin was in any doubt about what a divorce might do to his political career, Howe was there to enlighten him. Lucy, a devout Catholic, drew back at the prospect of marriage to a divorced man with five children. Eleanor gave him a choice—if he did not break off with Lucy, she would insist on a divorce. Franklin and Lucy agreed never to see each other again.