To others, ER wrote letters of complaint. They were almost public notices of estrangement. She had never complained before, but now wrote Lape and Read, FDR, Anna, and even Elinor Morgenthau. Loyal to Hick, ER wrote nothing of her impatience each time she sat down to her column. Rather she complained that Long Island’s heat was hotter and its humidity wetter; the endless sand was obnoxious, and the mosquitos were as big as bats.
To FDR, aboard the USS Houston somewhere between the Galapagos and the Canal Zone, ER wrote:
Dearest Franklin, I wouldn’t live on Long Island for all the world! Every thing sticks and I don’t want to move! I’ve improved much in typing however having to do my own column every day here! Harry [Hooker] asked me over to the Piping Rock Club to spend another week with him and I said I was sorry I couldn’t but I wasn’t sorry at all!
ER wrote her daughter three letters about her putative holiday, and to Anna also acknowledged that emotional tensions were at a new high along the Val-Kill. She expected to be greeted on her return by Earl and three friends; Nan also had friends all summer, but nevertheless “looked mournful because she didn’t see enough of me! I’ve had her for one meal every day I’ve been home but she seems so listless that I begin to wonder if she is ill….”
ER returned from Mastic unwilling to keep up tired illusions. Determined to confront confusing and ambivalent relationships, she wanted to simplify her life. In another letter to Anna she revealed that her intimate world was in disarray:
I’ve been a bit upset over Nan and her attitude here and after I got back a little thing precipitated a scene; so today I went over and had a calm talk explaining why my feeling had changed toward them both and that we must have a business like arrangement. I added that we could have a friendly, agreeable relationship but my old trust and respect was gone and could not be recovered and I thought they probably felt the same way and were quite certainly as justified as I was. I told her to tell Marion of our talk and I now await the latter’s return on the 18th…. I am glad to have been honest at last.
ER admitted to Anna that her summer had not actually been about any kind of holiday. She felt positively “driven” by “work and social obligations.” Although at Val-Kill she spent time with Earl perfecting her dive and riding, deadlines neared for articles and speeches.
[So] I think the exercise will have to go by the board for a while….
I hope the children are home and I long to hear how they are. Tell them I’ve learned to stand on my hands in the pool and get my legs up straight!
Pa looks very well and had a grand trip. He’s enjoying it here too though the stream of visitors never lets up. I’m running both this house and the cottage and I think all is going well….
ER’s conversation with Nancy Cook occurred just prior to the World Youth Congress held at Vassar, 15–25 August, while a dozen AYC leaders were at Val-Kill to prepare their presentations with ER.
Whatever else happened that summer, her attention was riveted on the World Youth Congress. It was the reason she refused to join FDR in Canada. From, the Galapagos, FDR had sent ER two letters asking her to meet him in Canada on the 18th, where he would “get a degree, lunch, motor to the Thousand Islands, and dedicate the bridge.” Mackenzie King would be along, it would be only a day, and then he would spend ten days at Hyde Park. “I do so hope you can come.” Uncharacteristically, ER replied: “I don’t want to go anywhere I don’t have to go until my lecture trip which starts October 12th and takes me into the Middle West and south to Alabama….”
FDR also failed to mention the reason for his equally uncharacteristic plea that she accompany him. He was finally to do what she had wanted him to do since 1933: On 18 August, at the dedication of the International Bridge between Canada and the United States, across the St. Lawrence River between New York State and Ontario Province, FDR extended the Good Neighbor Policy to Canada and made one of the most important international statements of his presidency.
FDR announced: “This bridge stands as an open door. There will be no challenge at the border and no guard to ask a countersign. Where the boundary is crossed the only word must be, ‘Pass, friend.’” Then FDR went beyond his prepared speech to assure Canada “that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other Empire.” It was the first internationalist commitment FDR made as Europe faced war over Czechoslovakia’s impending demise.
ER’s exchange with Nancy Cook, her refusal to go to Canada, even her dissatisfaction with her Long Island visit may be viewed through the filter of her preoccupation with the comings and goings of almost seven hundred young people from fifty-four nations, excluding Germany, who arrived for what ER considered a final chance for peace in our time.
From beginning to end, the World Youth Congress was a thrilling spectacle. Early arrivals stayed in New York at International House; they were treated to a baseball game and a gigantic outdoor pageant at Randalls Island in the East River, under the PWA’s new Triborough Bridge, where 25,000 Americans cheered students, gymnasts, and performers from all over the world. Mayor La Guardia and Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Berle greeted them. Delegates arrived at Poughkeepsie aboard the Hudson River Dayliner, and the week of earnest talk and high hope evoked great enthusiasm—and great resentment by those who dismissed it all as communist, wicked, and dangerous.
When news of ER’s enthusiasm hit the press, she was bombarded by protests. She wrote Hick on 15 August that virtually “every Catholic organization” in the United States deplored her association with the World Youth Congress and protested “my association with such a communistic organization! I don’t think FDR will be able to go unless he is prepared to offend ‘The Church’—… There is a horrible story on Nuremberg.”
ER’s reference to Hitler’s Nuremberg rally, which William Dodd had refused to attend, but which the new U.S. ambassador, Hugh Wilson, did attend, was dedicated to territorial expansion for “Greater Germany.” Opened on 5 September 1938, it was filled with harangues against Czechoslovakia, and pledged to its doom.
While State Department representatives attended the Nazi rally, Catholic protesters chided ER for attending the World Youth Congress at Vassar, which featured young people from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Bishops of the National Catholic Welfare Conference protested: The World Youth Conference at Geneva was “practically controlled by the Communist Youth International, the Spanish Popular Front… and other groups [in] sympathy with Communistic principles.” Now the First Lady endorsed this group that assured their associates, in “Russia and in Mexico, that American sympathy is with them.” The bishops warned Catholic groups not to participate in the meeting, which, fostered “irreligion and the promotion of the class hatreds of Sovietism.” The bishops condemned the meeting as anti-Catholic and un-American and declared America would not survive “unless its people cherished religion and morality.”
ER replied:
I regret very much that I have to differ with the Bishops, though I hold them in great respect….
I do not doubt that there are many Communists among [the delegates], but they are not strong enough to rule the entire group.
I have watched them and met with them over a period of four years and have seen them grow into more sensible and reasonable young people. I think it is a great mistake to simply condemn them….
ER greeted the delegates “as the best agents for peace.” Well covered in the press, the congress was supported by Tom Watson’s donation of new IBM equipment that enabled every speech to be translated into the language of one’s selection. ER and Vassar president Henry MacCracken greeted the delegates from fifty-five nations.*
The Congress was from first to last an extraordinary moment of hospitality and fellowship. Young people whose countries were at war spoke to each other with startling frankness. There were tragic, moving, ironic moments to witness: Chinese and Japanese delegates “exchanging experiences about their hometown YWCAs, each
holding a copy of the Times with a big headline about a Japanese air raid on China.”
AYC conveners, and especially Joe Cadden, who chaired the Arrangements Committee, impressed ER with their sensitive handling of every detail. She impressed them with her forthright manner:
She didn’t go around talking down to us. She came right in to every session, sat with earphones like everyone else. Ate ice cream cones and [conversed] with hundreds of delegates. Never forget the time she became so interested in the story of a Chinese student that she ruined an expensive summer dress by letting ice cream goo drip all over it.
That August 1938 meeting, which ironically coincided with the first public hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by Martin Dies, accelerated ER’s commitment to individual AYC leaders and a politics of direct confrontation.† She spent an hour and a half at the session on economics and their effect on youth and peace, and wrote:
I felt what they said was young and impulsive, but their faces and their earnestness and the good manners and restraint of the audience was remarkable. Many groups heard their countries criticized without hissing or leaving, really a lesson to their elders.
ER “sat knitting” but “listened attentively” throughout the speeches. She heard a U.S. delegate condemn U.S. foreign policy as “basically imperialistic”; European delegates called for a reinvigorated League of Nations and condemned Britain for its “departure from League obligations to Ethiopia, Spain and the Far East.”
After she endured tough questions for an hour and a half, she returned for the evening’s pageant and was greeted with a standing and prolonged ovation. According to The New York Times, the master of ceremonies interrupted the program of songs and dances from around the world, introduced ER seated in the front row, and led the audience in “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The evening included dances by Czech, Indonesian, and U.S. Indian delegates, a comedy by Canadian delegates, Negro spirituals, and Chinese fireworks on the lawn.
The Congress ended with a “Vassar Pact,” which pledged the delegates to work to “reverse the present ominous drift toward international anarchy and armed conflict.” They sought “arms reduction, economic reconstruction, adherence to international law, abstention from the use of force and intervention, free intellectual exchange…, equality of all people and races through establishment of self-determination and democratic suffrage.” They specifically condemned the bombing of “open towns and civilians” and “wars of aggression.” They demanded “no aid for aggressors” and the establishment of “international machinery to settle differences between nations, and colonies.”
ER left Vassar encouraged and involved. She wrote Hick that her dominant feeling was a mixture of respect and sadness for “all those young people so earnest and full of hope.” She worried about their future and vowed to do everything possible on their behalf. Although some reporters considered their questions rude and their behavior pompous, ER admired their grit and honesty.
While youth leaders at Vassar dealt with the world’s woes and aspirations, in Washington they were condemned as communist by J. B. Matthews, leading witness for Martin Dies’s committee. A former communist organizer and professor of theology at Howard University, among other colleges, Matthews now led a vitriolic assault against all popular front organizations, including unions. He claimed that of the fifty U.S. delegates at Vassar, “35 are Communists.” As a former communist leader, Matthews had personally persuaded American notables to sign on to various causes, and they had had no idea they supported “red-tinted” fronts. People like Eleanor Roosevelt were “innocent dupes.”
Both ER and Vassar’s president, Henry MacCracken, dismissed Matthews’s testimony against all liberal causes that communists might in fact support and defended the World Youth Congress—especially its final declaration.
In a letter to disturbed citizens, worried by Matthews’s charges, ER wrote: “I am rather surprised that you should consider Mr. Matthews a very good authority.” She thought it “would be strange in any group of young people not to find some with these ideas…. I do not believe in Communism, nor in any other “ism,” but I do believe in democracy. However, I do not think that refusing to allow people to talk about their ideas is the way to develop the ability to think clearly.”
MacCracken denied that he and ER were “exploited” by communists:
I think I have sufficient intelligence to know when I am being exploited. I am a Mayflower descendant…. [And] if I were to name the five most intelligent women in the world, Mrs. Roosevelt would be one of them. I don’t think she is being exploited by any one.
ER returned to Val-Kill each evening of the Congress determined to relax and exercise. She spent many hours with Earl, who coached her to dive with excellence. Finally, on 21 August, she reported to Hick there was dispatch, spring, dash in her dive. Always protective of his “Lady” and suspicious of chiselers and users, of people generally and youth particularly, Earl may have cautioned ER about her new friends or the dangers of her commitment to them. If so, she wrote nothing about it. She emphasized rather her triumphant dive: The weather was “gorgeous” and “by dint of working every day” on her dive, there was progress: “I never worked so hard on any real work in my life!”
ER’s enthusiasm for the AYC exacerbated her discontent with others—especially Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman. In August 1938, ER saw her own mission clearly: The future depended on youth with vision, they needed her, and she needed new activist allies. Her new course required freedom from lingering dependencies—from people who no longer shared her goals.
Almost immediately after the Youth Congress departed, ER sent Hick the first in a series of letters that detailed the demise of one of the most important friendships of her life, her twenty-year partnership with her boon companions of Val-Kill. The immediate event concerned her brother, a car accident, and a sense of betrayal because she was not consulted. But the event merely reflected a long-simmering sense of betrayal, which had already seeped out in her 12 August conversation with Nan: “Dearest such a day and evening! Hall arrived about 5:30 got very tight, wrestled and threw [his son] Danny and put his shoulder out.” Hall insisted on taking him to the hospital, driving himself, and “no one told me. Marion went with them, Hall met another car on our narrow road by the swamp and drove off” into the ditch at the end of the swamp. Danny’s “collarbone was broken” and Hall was uncontrollably drunk, “so we had plenty excitement.”
ER had been hosting “an enormous picnic” for one hundred people, including FDR, the La Guardias, Missy, Caroline O’Day, Herman Baruch, while Nan and Marion served Hall and a select few cocktails in their walled garden. Furious at her friends for refreshing his drinks, letting him drive, and not alerting her, also overwhelmed by her brother’s behavior, ER exploded: “I’m fed up with life! Too much of it altogether. I’d like to be a fish in a back water.”
Hall’s behavior recalled their father’s:
[The next morning Hall] appeared at 7 a.m. at the cottage having had no sleep and waking Tommy and Henry. They had breakfast and at 9 he was at the big house. Last night is still rather a nightmare to me and it will take me a little while to recover. I wish I recovered more easily! These occurrences hang in the back of my mind for days!…
ER’s fury was part of a deeply painful process that ended forever the Val-Kill partnership. Partly the friendship collapsed because ER embraced new people, many of whom Cook and Dickerman disliked.
Some were too radical, others too rambunctious. Some were crude, others unworthy. ER’s social world had become more democratic. They had gotten used to Earl Miller and his endless parade of friends, including show-business people, but they never warmed to Hick and despised her unpolished, gruff ways. Now there were altogether too many new exuberant people about, children of sharecroppers and lumberjacks; children of immigrants, rude communist youth. What Hick had said about Cook and Dickerman for years was now undeniable: They were self-absorbed snobs.
While SDR had disapproved of their unconventional ways, their ties and knickerbockers, their cigarettes and bobbed hair, their assertive manners and family assumptions, Cook and Dickerman disapproved of all the new unconventional swimming around ER’s pool—their pool.
The peace and harmony of their private world was regularly invaded by an army of outsiders. They no longer controlled their own space, and felt discredited: The press gave ER, one-third a partner, total recognition; it was her school, her factory. At home, the gardens, tennis court, and pool were occupied continually by her children, her grandchildren, her friends, her constituents.
Political women, they were initially interested in new people. After all, they were the chosen insiders in a vast world of outsiders. But as ER’s friendships expanded and deepened, they began to feel like onlookers.
ER had sensed earlier that scores of reporters and hundreds of guests trampling their gardens was not their idea of a charming summer day. She had offered to rent another space for public events: Their privacy would be restored, and tensions between them would subside. But they rejected the idea, and seemed insulted. When, during the summer of 1937, ER decided finally to move, at least into her own space in the renovated factory, they were disgruntled.
As in many separations, the emotional breach was initially translated into petty details, confusing financial arrangements. Dickerman was outraged when her plans to purchase a new building for the school were suspended during the 1937–38 recession. ER did not volunteer to pour more of her own money into Todhunter and bail out Dickerman’s dreams, which had for so long been ER’s as well.
Tommy sent Anna a running record of the situation as it intensified during the second inauguration:
Eleanor Roosevelt Page 75
