Grandmère

by David B. Roosevelt

  Tenderly yours,

  M. Souvestre25

  Her heart was never far from her beloved teacher and the happy times at Allenswood that had so validated who she was. Throughout the remainder of my grandmother’s life, Mlle. Souvestre’s portrait would always be prominently displayed, and a final photograph of Grandmère’s study at the time of her death in 1962 will find that portrait on her desk, an ever-present reminder of lessons learned and those to be learned. As she would say in a Look magazine article written in 1951 entitled The Seven People Who Shaped My Life, “For three years I basked in her gracious presence, and I think those three years did much to form my character and give me… confidence…” In another 1932 article in Women’s Home Companion Grandmère would add, “To her [Mlle. Souvestre] I owe more than I can repay for she gave me an intellectual curiosity and a standard [for] living which never left me.”

  It is my belief that had it not been for the impact of Mlle. Souvestre’s influence at this specific time in her life, Grandmère would have been trapped in the dark unhappiness of the world in which she had dwelled prior to Allenswood. So, while much credit has been accorded this remarkable headmistress, in my view it has been too little, for she was the defining factor of Grandmère’s life direction.

  Part Three

  Franklin

  Oh darling, I miss you so, and I long for the happy hours which we have together. I am so happy, so very happy in your love, dearest, and all the world has changed for me. If only I can bring to you all that you have brought to me, all my dearest wishes will be fulfilled.

  —Eleanor to Franklin

  GRANDMÈRE’S RETURN FROM ENGLAND and her Allenswood experience in 1902 must have given her a difficult if not utterly shocking jolt. She had left behind the warmth of lifelong friendships that had developed with her classmates and Mlle. Souvestre, only to face the prospect of being a society debutante, something she truly feared, and of thereby reentering the confining atmosphere of her grandmother’s life. No longer the awkward little girl who had arrived at Allenswood three years before, Eleanor at eighteen was the niece of the president of the United States. Theodore had assumed the presidency following the assassination of President McKinley, making Eleanor a debutante from one of the most prestigious patrician families in the country. A recognized and respected leader among her newfound friends at Allenswood, she returned to the States a blossoming young lady with a developing self-respect and an ability to think for herself. She wanted more than anything to remain at Mlle. Souvestre’s school for a fourth year, and harbored dreams of perhaps continuing there as a teacher. But these hopes and dreams were not to be. Of her time at Allenswood, Grandmère would say, “I have spent three years here which certainly have been the happiest of my life,” and that it marked the beginning of the “second period of my life.”1

  Coming home to Tivoli, however, was not as sweet as she had hoped. Her uncle Vallie, eldest son of her grandparents, Valentine and Mary Hall, was in worsening stages of alcoholism and behaved more and more bizarrely. He was known to sit at a second-floor window taking potshots with a shotgun at neighbors and complete strangers who might arrive on the premises of the estate, while her aunt Pussie Hall was experiencing emotional problems caused by her many dalliances with young suitors. Almost immediately Grandmère was handed the responsibility for her brother Hall’s education and upbringing. In that first summer, when all other debutantes were in gay and carefree moods, Eleanor was once again thrust into emotional responsibilities beyond those of a normal eighteen-year-old. In September, she and her grandmother accompanied Hall to the Groton School, which had become the traditional preparatory school for the Roosevelt clan males, most of whom enrolled at age twelve. During his stay there, Eleanor would visit her brother one weekend every term, joining all the other parents visiting their children. Above all, she didn’t want Hall to experience abandonment or to feel as if he had no one in the world to care for him.

  Her times away from Tivoli were spent making the family rounds, visiting her many Oyster Bay relatives. The nation was experiencing so many changes at that time—socially, economically, and technologically—and at the forefront of the upbeat mood was Eleanor’s favorite relative, her always effervescent and ebullient uncle Ted. Teddy Roosevelt was enjoying the presidency to the fullest; his optimism and enthusiasm had captured the country, and America was enchanted with its youngest president and his entire family, as was his niece. Eleanor still felt the great chasm caused by the loss of her father, and Teddy’s role as her surrogate father was the one true sparkle in her life.

  TR was very fond of her (Eleanor). My father had “tribal affection.” He loved all his nieces and nephews. ER… was Elliott’s daughter and he was very devoted to Uncle Ellie.

  The family was over effusive in a Queen Victorian manner. That may have been a Southern trait. My father naturally felt a great sympathy for Uncle Ellie’s two children who had to live with their grandmother who was a gloomy tartar.2

  Although at the time it was not apparent to Eleanor, I think TR became the role model she had missed in her own father, instilling in her the deeply ingrained characteristics of social obligation and caring so prevalent in generations of Roosevelts.

  If life became too tumultuous at Tivoli, Eleanor could retire to the relatively safe haven of her grandmother’s house in New York City, but she longed to have a place where she could begin to make sense of her life back in the States:

  I was 19. I had returned from school in Europe to the ordeal of trying to be a “belle” in New York City society where I had lost touch with all my girl friends, and where I never had known any young men. My grandmother was in the throes of dealing with a son who was becoming a confirmed alcoholic, and moved with him to our country house at Tivoli, New York. For one winter I lived with a young aunt who was a New York “belle” for many years, Edith (Pussie) Hall, but finally my grandmother decided to sell our New York City house, and my second winter in New York I spent with a very kindly Godmother who was my mother’s double first cousin, Mrs. Henry Parish, Jr. She and her husband were more than kind to me, they had no children of their own and were set in their ways, and I was accustomed to a very unconventional, haphazard way of living. Their household was strictly run and required of me promptness and an accounting of all of my time. There could be no impromptu comings and goings, no young people in and out, no extra demands on the servants. My kindly Godmother would occasionally give for me a lunch or a dinner and now and then in the little room downstairs off the entrance hall, I could have a special guest for tea, but all this had to be arranged and planned for, and seemed to me often, more trouble than it was worth. By spring I went to see my father’s sister, Mrs. William Sheffield Cowles, in Farmington, Connecticut. All of the younger generation called her Auntie Bye. If we wanted advice we went to her, just as we went to our very charming Aunt Corinne (Mrs. Douglas Robinson) when we wanted warmth and entertainment. I asked to talk with Auntie Bye alone and very diffidently I explained that I found my present way of life none too easy, and that I would like to take an apartment of my own in New York City!

  This was fifty-three years ago, and the idea that a young girl could live alone in New York City was rather a startling suggestion.

  “My dear, you will never please everyone in this world. If you think this is the right thing to do, go ahead and do it. Always remember whatever you do, be sure that you would not mind telling someone you love, and who loves you, the truth about what you are doing.” Here was advice that Auntie Bye had herself lived by, and as I did not take the apartment because shortly after that I became engaged to my distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that piece of advice stayed with me all my life.3

  Grandmère, a young debutante when she returned to New York from Allenswood, with her friend Muriel D. Robbins and cousin Helen R. Roosevelt.

  Social Duty

  Eleanor began to spend time with those less fortunate than her. Perhaps this was a way of taking solace from the pr
edicament of her living situation. Perhaps it was also out of concern for the social welfare of others, a concern deeply instilled by Mlle. Souvestre. Coming home from Europe, Eleanor quickly came to realize that not all were sharing in the country’s enthusiasm and providence. New York City itself had blossomed in Eleanor’s absence. It was no longer the quiet, sophisticated city of her early years, but one marked by booming growth and all of the attendant problems. Now known as “Greater New York,” the city had a population of close to 4 million, and an ever-growing presence of slums on its East Side, where some two-thirds of its people were jammed into ninety thousand tenements. Many of Eleanor’s most fulfilling hours during this period were spent volunteering in these neighborhoods.

  A few patrician daughters, all older than Eleanor, had also been moved to action by the terrible conditions of the tenements, which lacked sanitation and suffered from terrible working conditions, overcrowding, deep misery, and increasing poverty. These young women had started a few private welfare programs to help “forgotten” citizens, seeing as how the traditional philanthropists and social do-gooders were not dealing with these problems. An emerging class of women marked this period with the true beginning of the women’s rights movement and a reformation of the traditional role of women. It was these women, sometimes those of the upper social strata, who were addressing the inequities of life in America. Eleanor and some of her friends from before her time at Allenswood decided to join in and helped to found the Junior League for the Promotion of Settlement Movements, making it the “smart” thing to do in New York. She became a calisthenics and dance teacher for the children of the tenements, who soon joined her happy classes and developed a strong bond with their young teacher. She was immensely proud of this work, even if some members of her family did not understand her enthusiasm and worried that she might get an “immigrant’s disease” or that something might happen to her while in the tenements. She insisted on taking public transport to her classes and always refused rides from friends when they were offered, preferring to walk alone even at night through the tenements. What she saw were the ravaging effects of alcoholism, poverty, and lack of hope and opportunity, lessons that would prove valuable to her insight as First Lady many years later.

  Grandmère in 1903, young and beautiful.

  In 1903 Eleanor joined the Consumers’ League and witnessed firsthand the poor working conditions of women in factories and garment shops, gaining knowledge of how many millions of Americans toiled in the name of progress. Marie Souvestre had prompted Grandmère’s initiation into the atrocious conditions of the working classes during visits they made to the settlement houses in London, and now Grandmère became actively involved in a major lifetime vocation. It was in the tenement houses on Rivington Street, and later in other places, that Eleanor’s eyes were opened to the horrors of the poor and downtrodden. She was sickened by the terrible living conditions endured by the families with whom she worked and the children she taught. She would later recollect, “I was appalled… I saw little children of four or five sitting at [work] tables until they dropped with fatigue…”4 Her work also reconnected her to her Roosevelt ideals of a charitable life and brought back happy memories of when she was a child and accompanied her father to the Newsboys’ Thanksgiving dinners. Her good works were perhaps a refuge for Eleanor from the subtle pressure all debutantes feel to find a good husband and to become a successful matron of society. During these times, Grandmère balanced social duty with the expectations placed upon her by the society she lived in. Eleanor, however greatly she might have felt the pressure, did not have to go far to look for the love of her life.

  One day that summer, she was traveling by train from New York City to Tivoli. Walking through the train, the young, handsome Franklin noticed his tall, slim distant cousin, whom he hadn’t seen for four years. After striking up a conversation, he invited her back to his mother’s compartment to say hello to “Cousin Sallie.” Though it wasn’t love at first sight, there was on this occasion certainly an immediate attraction between the two.

  As the fall of her nineteenth birthday approached, Eleanor began the social duties of a debutante, attending parties, dances, and cotillions. Much has been said of her social awkwardness, but her cousin Alice denied any such rumors, hinting that Eleanor may have imagined herself clumsy, whereas she was in fact quite adroit: “She was always making herself out to be an ugly duckling but she was in fact rather attractive. Tall, rather coltish-looking, with masses of pale, gold hair rippling to below her waist, and really lovely blue eyes.” Later she dressed in beautiful, fashionable clothes as Mlle. Souvestre had suggested and that her aunt ordered from boutiques in Paris. More important, she was intellectually vivacious and enjoyed witty and intelligent conversation, staying at parties until the wee hours of the morning if the company was stimulating and original. New York Society, as it was then called, marked its return to the city in November with attendance at the great horse show in Madison Square Garden. The New York Herald reported Eleanor’s presence in a box full of Roosevelts that belonged to her distant cousin James Roosevelt Roosevelt, half-brother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was one of James’ few select guests at the horse show.

  A Most Fateful Meeting

  When our children’s children study the history of the twentieth century, they will see Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of the most influential and decisive of all world leaders, a man possessed of a driving and immensely inspiring force who articulated the dreams of freedom for millions during his presidency. FDR is remembered by the nation as the man who declared, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He waged war against the economic depression that gripped the country at the time of his election; pioneered the politics of inclusion; built a broad and long-lasting coalition uniting different regions, classes, and races; and was pivotal in the battle against fascism and the obliteration of individual freedom. He identified with the hopes and fears of forgotten Americans.

  My grandparents with 13 grandchildren at the White House, January 20, 1945. I’m the little boy sitting on FDR’s knee on the left. My sister Chandler is the first young girl on the right, kneeling in the first row, and my brother Tony is sitting to her left.

  Roosevelt family portrait with my grandparents, their four sons, Sara Delano Roosevelt, and grandchildren.

  FDR holding my brother Tony, Grandmère holding my sister Chandler, and my parents Ruth and Elliott, on occasion of one of my grandparents’ visits to our ranch in Texas.

  Although I was too young to have really known my grandfather, my memories being those of a three-year-old, others of my generation had that opportunity. Photographs of FDR with his grandchildren and recollections of elder siblings and cousins make it clear that he loved having us around him. One well-known photograph, taken in the White House at his fourth inaugural, shows him with thirteen of us, a cousin and me sitting on each knee. In time there would be a total of twenty-two grandchildren, plus five adopted. Those who have the most vivid memories of FDR, or “Papa,” were the two eldest—Eleanor (Sistie) and Curtis (Buzzy) Dall—all my aunt Anna’s children. My own siblings, half-brother William, sister Chandler, and brother Tony (Elliott Jr.), also have reminiscences of visits to Springwood and the White House. And there were several occasions when both FDR and Grandmère would visit my father and mother’s ranch, the Dutch Branch Ranch, just outside Fort Worth. Such visits usually occurred when FDR would make train trips through the South and to other parts of Texas, which he did fairly often. Indeed, as I think about the various holidays and other occasions when aunts and uncles, grandchildren, and various other “extended family” would gather at the White House, they must have been raucous and chaotic times, seldom experienced before at that venerable house, with the possible exception of TR’s own occupancy. And Grandmère, of course, always made such occasions as homelike as possible, planning activities for the children and the always-simple family meals that she preferred over more formal trappings. But whatever the c
ircumstance, FDR always seemed to have time for his grandchildren; he exuded warmth and love and, as with his own children, exercised little discipline.

  Three portraits of my great-grandfather, James Roosevelt, FDR’s father.

  My great-grandfather James traced his lineage back to Jacobus, who is credited with establishing the Hyde Park branch of the family. It is interesting to note that for a time the tradition of this branch followed a pattern of naming first sons by “generation skipping.” After Jacobus there was Isaac “The Patriot,” followed by James, followed by Dr. Isaac, followed by James (FDR’s father). However, the last James broke with tradition by naming his own first son James, despite an intense dislike of the use of “Junior” to distinguish between father and son. So, to make that distinction for his son, he merely added the middle name “Roosevelt,” thus making FDR’s half-brother James Roosevelt Roosevelt (better known as “Rosy”).

  FDR’s father, James, inherited a rather dark and gloomy estate called Rosedale from his father, Dr. Isaac, who lived a cloistered life at Rosedale, virtually shut off from his neighbors. (It was the popular conjecture at the time that the estate served as a way station for slaves making the treacherous trip from the South to Canada.) Shortly following Dr. Isaac’s death in 1863, the original manor house was destroyed by fire, giving James the perfect excuse to sell the property and escape the dreary surroundings of his childhood. He proceeded to purchase a modest 110 acres just two miles upriver, where he established his own estate of Springwood. Eventually Springwood would grow to include more than a thousand acres, making it one of the larger estates of the day.