Grandmère

by David B. Roosevelt

  James was very much a man of his own following, independent minded and restless in his early career. He refused to follow the family tradition of attending Harvard, graduating instead from Union College in upstate Schenectady. He did manage, however, to graduate from Harvard Law School, though he followed his penchant for risky business ventures rather than the practice of law. One of his great dreams was to join the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by canal across Nicaragua, an unsuccessful enterprise yet not altogether without vision, as his dream was attained by his distant cousin Theodore’s Panama Canal project. Finally, in 1888 James joined the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, becoming a highly respected railroad financier.

  Left: James Roosevelt’s first wife, Rebecca Howland Roosevelt. Right: When Rebecca died, James Roosevelt married Sara Delano, photographed here in 1869.

  Left: Sara Delano with her sisters Laura, Kerrie, Annie, and Dora in New York City, on November 5, 1882. Center: Sara in Rome in 1881. She was quite a beauty! Right: A very young FDR, Sara’s pride and joy, sitting on a fur rug.

  James married Rebecca Howland shortly after entering into business. FDR’s elder half-brother, “Rosy,” was born in 1854. Then, after twenty-three years of marriage, Rebecca suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of forty-five. Devastated by this loss, James seemed to founder. He withdrew from much of his business activity and secluded himself at Springwood, becoming a true patrician farmer. In 1880, however, James met the much younger daughter of a close Hyde Park friend, Sara Delano, herself a member of a seafaring merchant family of considerable renown.

  Sara and James first met at the house of Eleanor’s grandmother, Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt. He was a fifty-two-year-old widower who had adopted the lifestyle of an English squire, riding around his estate in formal English country attire. Sara had grown up on the family estate of Algonac, and was an active member of the New York and Hudson Valley social set. She was a close friend of Auntie Bye’s, and a frequent visitor at Theodore Roosevelt’s homes in New York.

  Warren Delano, Sara’s father (who had rejected all of her previous suitors as being unworthy of his daughter), had become a business associate and friend of James. So impressed was he by the achievements of James that when the widower came asking for Sara’s hand in marriage, he happily blessed the union despite the significant age difference, a favorite topic of gossip on the social circuit. Sara was a sophisticated young woman, well educated and widely traveled, and had the classic beauty to match her impeccable patrician background, which dated back to William the Conqueror. The first Delano, called de la Noye, settled in Plymouth in 1621. Sara was born at Algonac, a magnificent property twenty miles south of Springwood on the Hudson, and it seemed from the beginning that she was destined to marry a neighboring Roosevelt. Upon doing so, she easily settled into the life of mistress of the Springwood manor.

  Top left: Springwood, Sara’s country estate, seen from the South. Right: Sara and baby FDR. Above left: The front of Springwood before it was enlarged to accommodate ER and FDR’s growing family. Right: FDR and his father James Roosevelt on horses, with Sara holding their dog, on the south lawn of Springwood in 1891.

  On January 30, 1882, Franklin was born. Even though the pregnancy had been easy, both mother and child nearly died from a near-fatal overdose of painkillers administered by a careless doctor during labor. James proudly reported, “At a quarter to nine my Sallie had a splendid large baby boy. He weight 10 lbs. Without clothes.”5

  James had lived in Europe for a time, and there he had witnessed the extreme deprivation of working-class life, the ravages and squalor of poverty, the overworked and malnourished children, the condition of women, and the horrors deepened by the lack of a social welfare system. These experiences left an indelible impression, and throughout his life he encouraged and campaigned to reach out to the poor and helpless. He imparted these ideals to his son, Franklin, from the beginning, impressing upon him the need to work toward the elimination of the conditions afflicting the socially deprived. These were ideals that Franklin met again in Eleanor Roosevelt.

  While Eleanor’s life had been fraught with instability and loneliness, her fifth cousin Franklin had had a happy, secure, and harmonious childhood. Springwood, set in six hundred acres of dense woods and rolling hills on the banks of the great Hudson River, was a paradise that young Franklin could freely roam and explore. His father taught him to ride, fish, skate, shoot, sail, hunt, and golf—in short, to become a physically confident and self-reliant boy. Both parents doted on their son, who grew up speaking in the clipped English accent his father had adopted, and was more comfortable in the company of adults than that of children, whom he seldom encountered. Under the stern yet doting eyes of his parents, Franklin was raised to assume the role of a typical Hudson Valley country squire, or, as Sara would say in later years, in hopes that he would grow to be a “fine, upright man like his father and [my] own father, a beloved member of his family and a useful and respected citizen of his community just as they were, living quietly and happily along the Hudson as they had.”6

  FDR on his father’s shoulders in June 1883.

  FDR with his aunt Laura Delano in July 1884.

  That Franklin would grow up under the influence of his mother was undeniable, for when his father died in 1900, he stipulated in his will, “I wish him [Franklin] to be under the influence of his mother.” Like Eleanor’s brother Hall and many other Roosevelt boys, Franklin attended Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts, entering at age twelve. Like Eleanor at Allenswood, young Franklin’s eyes were opened to a life beyond the ambitions of his mother while under the exacting tutelage of the school’s headmaster, Endicott Peabody. As Mlle. Souvestre had influenced Eleanor’s future course, so Reverend Peabody would prove to be one of the most influential people in Franklin’s life. A Cheltenham- and Cambridge-educated Anglican minister, Dr. Peabody recreated at Groton the environment of an English public school that prepared the sons of America’s well-to-do for a life of leadership. Franklin did not excel academically, but he thrived at the school and came to consider himself a model Grotonian, studying Latin, Greek, history, and literature for six years; adopting the school’s ideals and manners; and living the Spartan, ethical life Groton promoted. Although Sara never dreamed of a life of politics for her son, Dr. Peabody’s philosophy was one of public service. As he would often say, “If some Groton boys do not enter political life and do something for our land it won’t be because they have not been urged [by their Groton experience].”7

  Although the specific nature of service Franklin would pursue was undetermined, he was deeply influenced at Groton and as an undergraduate at Harvard, which he entered in 1900, by his tremendous admiration for the successes and popularity of his cousin Theodore. But it was during his tenure at Harvard, where Theodore was a greatly admired alumnus whose political actions and personal adventures countered the traditional Harvard student’s “indifference” toward social consciousness, that Franklin’s tilt toward public service and politics began to form. This emergence can best be demonstrated by a passage from an essay titled “The Roosevelt Family in New York before the Revolution,” written during Franklin’s sophomore year:

  Some famous Dutch families in New York have today nothing left but their name—they are few in numbers, they lack progressiveness and a true democratic spirit. One reason—perhaps the chief—of the virility of the Roosevelts is this very democratic spirit. They have never felt that because they were born in a good position they could put their hands in their pockets and succeed. They have felt, rather, that being born in a good position, there was no excuse for them if they did not do their duty by the community, and it is because this idea was instilled into them from their birth that they have in nearly every case proved good citizens.8

  FDR with members of his second football team at Groton, October 1899.

  My great-grandparents, Sara and James Roosevelt.

  Franklin’s pattern at Harvard was much the same as it had been at Groton;
while he didn’t excel as a scholar, he was nonetheless dedicated to his studies and involved in multiple extracurricular activities. However, when he applied to become a member of the prestigious Porcellian, the club to which both his father and TR had belonged, and was turned down, he felt the disappointment to be the worst of his life. He recovered from the Porcellian defeat by becoming more politically aware and by enthusiastically joining and participating in the activities of two other clubs: Hasty Pudding and Alpha Delta Phi. He also became a proud member of the Harvard Crimson, the influential school newspaper. Rising eventually to the exalted position of Editor, Franklin considered his time with the Crimson to be the best training he’d had for his future as a politician. It taught him to be a man of his own convictions and, further, instilled in him a sense of self-determination that throughout his political life would become a defining characteristic.

  FDR at Harvard in 1901 with members of the Freshmen Glee Club.

  Distant Acquaintances, Future Partners

  The blossoming of love between a young woman and a young man who had known each other all their lives as distant cousins was as thrilling as it was unexpected. My grandparents met for the first time when Grandmère was but four years old, and saw each other again on several occasions during visits either by Eleanor to the Hudson Valley or by Franklin to Long Island, and of course in the City at the various social venues enjoyed by the young elite of their day.

  A couple in love. Here my grandparents were photographed at the Delano country estate Algonac on May 7, 1905.

  In the busy days of her social debut, Grandmère was invited to many parties and events where she met eligible young men, but she made again a strong impression on FDR at a dinner following the Madison Square Garden Horse Show on that November 17, 1902, an occasion he noted in his diary. Although she enjoyed the company of adults and thrived in intelligent conversation, the frivolities associated with the whirl of her debut proved agonizing for Grandmère. Constantly in fear of what other girls would think of her, and shy about her height and looks, she seemed to have trouble securing escorts to the many dances to which she was invited, and was most often escorted by a friend of the family or a family member. Every girl attending the dance had a dance card tied to her wrist, where each beau was supposed to write his name among a long line of prospects. A full dance card was indication of a girl’s popularity, and Grandmère was highly conscious that she descended from a long line of beauties who had had no trouble filling up their cards. But to someone totally disinterested in this demeaning custom, the entire thing could be mortifying. As the social season wore on and she became known among her peers, however, her fears diminished, and she experienced for perhaps the first time since Allenswood that sense of acceptance and respect for her inner self, not for superficial qualities.

  Eleanor and Franklin at the wedding of cousin Helen R. Roosevelt to Theo Douglas Robinson, June 18, 1904, in Hyde Park

  Eleanor and Franklin sitting for a portrait with their friends.

  Over the next several months Eleanor and Franklin would see each other at various social events and the coincidental house parties, and would spend New Year’s together at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt and his family. On January 30, 1903, FDR’s half-brother, Rosy, threw a party to celebrate Franklin’s twenty-first birthday. Franklin invited Eleanor as his secret star guest, secret because he was hesitant to reveal any of his feelings to Sara, who was still highly possessive of her son. As their early, casual relationship blossomed into a full-fledged courtship over the ensuing months, Grandfather would often show up at the settlement houses where Grandmère was teaching, and he would often accompany her on tours of these establishments. It was on one such visit that he witnessed firsthand horrendous living conditions and was astonished that “human beings lived that way.”

  As different as Eleanor and Franklin might have appeared—he an outgoing, debonair, and vivacious young socialite, and she a reserved and thoughtfully serious young lady—they shared the bond of their educations, their aristocratic upbringings, and even a kindred way of thinking. Grandmère had been an outsider most of her life, he had experienced his share of disappointments both at Groton and Harvard, and was himself developing something of an inferiority complex. But these early trials only deepened their empathies; in truth, their strong inner personalities and views on life were the single most tinseled thread between them.

  It was late in 1903 that Franklin invited Eleanor to attend a Harvard-Yale football game in Cambridge. As arranged, she left following the game to visit her brother Hall, who was still a student at Groton. To her astonishment (she found it impossible to believe that this, or any, handsome man could truly be interested in her), Franklin followed her to Groton the very next day and promptly extended his proposal of marriage. So taken aback was Grandmère that an immediate answer was not forthcoming. She returned to New York and confided this most frightening yet marvelous proposal to, of all people, her grandmother. Several days later she wrote to him, quoting from a poem she had tried to remember the prior Sunday, “Unless you can swear, ‘For life, for death! Oh, fear to call it loving!’ ” His answer was an obvious and deeply felt “Yes, I swear,” and Eleanor accepted his proposal to marry. Caught in the arms of young love, they began an extensive exchange of letters and poems, and met as often as they possibly could. Both saved each and every correspondence, until years later when Grandmère destroyed all of FDR’s letters to her, saying they were “too personal.” In fact, these letters, which then provided her with much love and warmth, would become a source of great pain.

  Franklin and Grandmère emerge from an invigorating swim in the sea.

  Friends and family alike met Eleanor’s sense of astonishment at her good fortune, and not all regarded the chain of events with happiness. Although there is no verification of this, I have heard it said that perhaps the one person most surprised by the rapid development of Grandfather and Grandmère’s relationship was none other than Cousin Alice. Never a great admirer of her first cousin, Alice apparently did find her distant cousin Franklin most attractive and perhaps worthy of her own attentions. Her feelings may well have been exacerbated by her father’s fondness for and kindness toward his niece. More important, Franklin’s own mother, Sara, could not believe the news of the engagement of the young couple, finding Eleanor a far cry from the woman she envisioned for her son. It is natural, perhaps, that mothers have their own ideas pertaining to their sons’ future life, and certainly Sara had formed hers. She had fully expected that the young FDR would follow in his father’s footsteps, becoming master of Springwood and a country gentleman worthy of his lineage. It would be acceptable if his career included some period in a respectable business, the legal profession qualifying as such. And naturally she had every expectation that her son would “marry well” and up to his life station, preferably one of the beauties of the New York social circles.

  Sara, hoping to waylay the couple’s plans, insisted that there be no public announcement of the engagement for eighteen months, and immediately began planning a five-week Caribbean cruise for her son. For several weeks following the informal and unannounced engagement, Franklin and Eleanor tried to spend as much time together as possible, usually in the company of friends and family but at times slipping away to catch a moment alone. Finally, on February 6, 1904, Franklin, his Harvard roommate, Lathrop Brown, and Sara departed on their cruise of the Caribbean. Miserable at the thought of such a long separation yet undeterred, Eleanor wrote to Franklin almost daily, and both yearned for their planned reunion in Washington, where Grandmère would be visiting Auntie Bye. During these visits, Grandmère gradually acquired yet another layer of social polish as she navigated and began to understand the currents of Washington’s political and social circles. Until then, she had been largely unaware of the meaning of politics and the correlations between the poverty she saw in the New York tenements and the legislations supported by her uncle. With the help of Auntie Bye she began to und
erstand more clearly how politics were played and what a difference they could make to the lives of thousands, and these were invaluable lessons to the life she was, unknowingly, about to embrace.

  Sara Delano Roosevelt, however, was still battling the reality of Eleanor and Franklin’s intense devotion to one another and their growing love, and like all possessive mothers, she was not yet prepared to concede defeat. She attempted to persuade Theodore’s ambassador to England, Joseph Choate, to engage her son as his private secretary back in London. This ploy too failed, as FDR refused to even consider the opportunity, and Sara reluctantly gave up. Writing to him after her return to Springwood from the Caribbean trip and Washington:

  Sara adopted Eleanor as a daughter and sought to give her constant advice. Here they’re seen chatting on the steps of Sara’s Campobello holiday home.

  Darling Franklin,

  … I am feeling pretty blue. You are gone, the journey is over & I feel as if the time were not likely to come again when I shall take a trip with my dear boy, as we are not going abroad, but I must try to be unselfish & of course dear child I do rejoice in your happiness, & shall not put any stones or straws in the way of it. I shall go to town a week from Friday just to be with you when I can… Oh how still the house is but it is home and full of memories dear to me. Do write. I am already longing to hear.

  Your loving Mother9

  Eleanor was well aware of Sara’s concern about the situation, and sympathetic to her feelings of loss. “I knew your mother would hate to have you leave her dear,” she wrote, “but don’t let her feel that the last trip with you is over. We three must take them in the future together that is all and though I know three will never be the same to her still someday I hope that she will love me and I would be very glad if I thought she was even the least bit reconciled to me now….” Although resentful and jealous, Sara was graceful in defeat, realizing that perhaps the best way to preserve her relationship with her son was through Eleanor’s deep sense of duty and loyalty and even greater eagerness to be accepted and loved by her soon-to-be mother-in-law. Hoping that she could win over Sara’s affections, Grandmère spent as much time as possible with her, as well as with other members of the family, and yet Sara continued to insist on the secrecy of the engagement. Eleanor became accomplished at maintaining the charade that she and Franklin were no more than friendly cousins, although to some of her friends and cousins it became clear that Franklin was in love with her even if she seemed indifferent toward him. Perhaps a result of her newfound ability to love, which in turn allowed her to be more open and effervescent, Eleanor soon discovered that more and more men became attentive to her, finding her an interesting conversationalist and companion.