The Three Graces of Val-Kill

by Emily Herring Wilson

  Eleanor had reserve that saved her from retreating from the world—she had pride and could pick herself up and present a public face, especially if she had the right help. She began to trust relationships with women that she had formed through shared work. Perhaps some at the party fund-raiser in New York City had heard the Washington gossip about Lucy, an attractive daughter of a well-known family down on its luck, who needed to take a respectable job and came twice a week to help Eleanor with her correspondence. But a man’s wandering affection was not unheard of in political circles, and if the gossip was true, their admiration for the way Eleanor continued to advance Franklin’s name and the way Franklin was handling his life after polio may have tempered their judgment. A few years later, however, Eleanor reported in a letter to her mother-in-law news she had recently heard about Lucy: in February 1920 Lucy had married an older, wealthy widower, Winthrop Rutherfurd. Eleanor must have hoped that the marriage ended any possibility that Franklin would ever break his promise not to see Lucy again.5

  After Franklin came down with polio, not everyone knew that he was not active in his law firm and spent weeks and months away from the city. Louis Howe kept Franklin’s name on so many New York boards and in so many state political discussions that it seemed that he was already back in action. In fact, it would take Franklin most of the decade to come to terms with the realization that he was not ever going to walk again. Meanwhile, Eleanor explored her own independence, not only because Franklin had declared his but also as part of her own natural instinct for doing good.

  The 1920s was a pivotal decade for both Eleanor and Franklin. The winter of 1921 had been the most difficult of Eleanor’s life. Franklin had gone through periods of despondency. He needed to decide how he would live and, most of all, how to regain his optimism. After seventeen years of marriage, multiple pregnancies, the births of six children, and the unthinkable death of an infant, Eleanor undertook her own recovery from depression, a broken marriage, and a domineering mother-in-law. Franklin’s suggestion that she pull herself together as he turned away from her sudden outbreaks of tears was not enough. She needed women like Esther and Elizabeth, who provided what she called “the intensive education of Eleanor Roosevelt.”6 Now she was about to meet a new friend. At Nancy Cook’s fund-raiser, anyone paying close attention knew that she had stepped out on her own.

  Mrs. Roosevelt did not stop to speak to the groups of women seated at the Democratic women’s luncheon who reached out as she passed but walked to the center of the room and asked, “Where is Miss Cook?” Everyone knew the hardworking office secretary, and as heads turned toward her, the curly-haired, impish Nancy Cook—a “striking, crisp-haired, crisp-voiced young woman with eager eyes”—seemed to jump forward.7 Just as she did, Mrs. Roosevelt thrust a small bouquet of violets into her hands, a familiar symbol of affection between women. Perhaps Nan blushed, which might have made Eleanor blush. Perhaps not since the girls at Allenswood in London had filled Eleanor’s room with flowers had she felt the kind of instant wave of affection that passes between female friends.

  While preparing for her speech Eleanor had thought often of Allenswood’s director, the electrifying Mlle. Marie Souvestre, who she said had “shocked” her into thinking for herself. Souvestre had warned her not to get caught up in the society into which her grandmother had summoned her home to make her debut. Now thirty-eight years old, Eleanor trembled but perhaps also liked it that all eyes were on her as Nan ushered her to the front of the New York ballroom. She lacked confidence, but she was not without ambition. At the front table Mrs. Sara Delano Roosevelt thrust her chin high as she turned her head to watch the other women take their seats. Her resemblance to her son was unmistakable, and the audience murmured in recognition.

  Eleanor Roosevelt was certainly at home in the city—born in Manhattan, presented to New York society in a formal debut, and spending her city life in fashionable New York neighborhoods. She joined the newly formed Junior League for rich women but did her volunteer work in settlement houses. She loved all parts of the city. “Some place in New York,” she once observed, “is a bit of every land on earth.”8 She went to city churches, museums, concerts, and theaters. As a child she had ridden in horse-drawn carriages, and then she found her own transport: walking and riding buses, subways, and taxis, which she liked to share with a needy rider. At first she may have been afraid of speaking, but she was not afraid of the city. Looking around at her audience, she saw kindred spirits among these progressive New Women.

  As the program began, Nan stood with Eleanor at the podium, looking as if they were already good friends. The meeting unfolded so quickly that Nan later recalled the flowers Eleanor presented her, not the several thousand dollars raised. When Eleanor began traveling with Nan and sometimes her partner, Marion Dickerman, a few months later to recruit women for the Democratic Party in towns throughout New York, they were pleased to collect a ten-dollar pledge, if not the first time they knocked on a door then on a return visit. Eleanor would become a world traveler, but nothing meant more to her than those years in the 1920s when she drove her own car to many small towns and her love for the state of New York was formed. She had known the city since childhood; now she came to know the countryside around it, and she loved it.

  After the meeting ended, Nan thanked people, tidied up, and hurried home to tell Marion all about it. Marion shared Nancy’s excitement about the fund-raiser and agreed that the violets were an indication that Nan would see Eleanor again. Indeed, within a few weeks Eleanor invited Nan to Hyde Park, where Nan met “Granny” (Sara) and the two youngest children. Nan then was invited to bring Marion to Springwood later that summer, and it was there that they met Franklin for the first time. Soon afterward, Eleanor wrote Franklin a note, “Spent a long time with Miss Cook and agreed to get up a tea with you at once.”9 Eleanor’s eagerness to get down to work inspired Esther to say of her, “The rest of us were inclined to do a good deal of theorizing. She would look puzzled and ask why we didn’t do whatever we had in mind and get it out of the way.”10

  The Roosevelt family made quite an impression on both Nan and Marion, and Eleanor had a rare opportunity to bring her own friends inside the circle. It complicated relations that Marion and Nan were long-time partners: Eleanor felt that she needed to deal equally with the two of them. Marion confessed to an interviewer after Nan’s death, “Eleanor cared very much more for Nan than she did for me,” but declared that she felt no jealousy at all.11 Marion, in fact, was drawn more to Franklin. She was stunned when she saw how crippled he was (she and many others had assumed that he was only lame), but she instantly found him the most charming man she had ever known.12 She also thought that Eleanor’s criticism of her mother-in-law was too harsh. Granny always seemed welcoming. Eleanor, who knew Sara far better, did not trust Sara’s sincerity toward certain of Eleanor’s friends who were not aristocrats. Marion and Nan were small town and middle class, and, worse than that for Sara Roosevelt’s acceptance, they were bohemians—their casual dress in sweaters and knickers expressed their freedom to be themselves.

  Almost at once, it seemed, Nan and “Dickie” were part of the family, both in the Roosevelt townhouse on East 65th Street and at Hyde Park, and they traveled back and forth with an ease that soon did not require a special invitation—they were expected, and they went. They were in awe of Franklin, they were keen on bringing Eleanor into the fold of Democratic New York women—never was a new recruit more promising—and they were respectful of Franklin’s mother. As our story moves closer to the home that Eleanor, Marion, and Nan would share, we need to understand more about the two women who would become Eleanor’s inseparable companions in the coming years.

  Marion Dickerman was born 11 April 1890 in Westfield, in Oswego County, New York, the oldest of five children of Edwin Hull Dickerman and his second wife, Emily Adrienne Dickerman. The Dickermans were among the most prominent families in the Upstate New York village. They were members of the Episcopal church, where
Edwin was a vestryman. For many years he served as supervisor of the town of Westfield. Other famous Westfieldians included William H. Seward, President Lincoln’s secretary of state, and George M. Pullman of Pullman sleeping car fame. Mr. Dickerman, a graduate of Columbia Law School, had established a law firm in Westfield, and in 1881 he built a fine mansion and stable, where he trained his horses on a small track. Twelve years later, when Marion was a young child, he suffered financial losses that required him to move the family to what was always called the “little brown house.” Marion and one sister never married. Two were teachers, and one served as a trained nurse overseas in World War I. At one point three of the sisters were living in New York City.

  After attending the local public schools, Marion took her first two years of college at Wellesley. After her father died, the family could not continue to send her there, and she transferred to Syracuse University. She graduated in 1911 with a bachelor of arts degree, and the next year she earned a graduate degree in education. It was while living at a boarding house in Syracuse that Marion met Nancy Cook, a fellow student six years her senior who was engaged in graduate studies in education. They continued their studies and left together after they graduated. Within a few years Marion and Nan had taken jobs teaching at Fulton High School in Oswego County—Marion taught American history; Nan taught arts and handicrafts. Their students were sons and daughters of factory workers. Marion insisted on helping boys on court probation by making a place for them in her classroom.

  When suffrage speakers came to Fulton, Marion and Nan met them and joined up with women in the town to persuade others to attend their talks. When New York became the sixth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, they had reason to feel proud that they had helped make it happen. Marion and Nan were well respected in the small town, and their lives there gave them a good start to a partnership that lasted for the next half-century, sharing love, a home, political causes, friends, and work.

  Although Marion and Nan were ardent pacifists, they were inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s vision for peace and believed with him that World War I “was a war to end wars” to “make the world safe for democracy.” After working with the Red Cross and the Liberty Loan drive, Marion and Nan were unable to find placement with the American military services, and in the spring of 1918 they applied for a British assignment in London, agreeing to do the most menial work at Endell Street Military Hospital. It was a great test not only for the skills they were to acquire but for their relationship. Marion was willing to do anything, even scrub floors, and took on nursing duties for which she had not been trained. If someone asked her to do something, she simply did it. Nancy, however, discovered that she could not do what the hospital staff expected of her, and after a week she quit.

  Perhaps Marion had already helped Nan out of a difficult situation: Nan had not done well in many of her courses at Syracuse, and living with Marion had helped sustain her. Now in London Marion rescued her again, refusing to allow her to give up, urging her to find things she could do, and insisting that they stay the course. This became the pattern of their relationship. When the staff discovered that Nan knew woodworking, they assigned her to designing and making artificial limbs for the amputees. She wrote home to her father in Massena, New York, “I am in a small ward of twelve soldiers. Have a nurse and two orderlies besides myself, and a kitchen woman. All the cases are from shell wounds. . . . Not any of them will be able to ever do much again. They are all young boys, excepting two, who are men about forty-five or fifty. Our American boys will never know what other countries have suffered.”13 For more than a year Marion and Nan worked hard during the week and on weekends enjoyed the camaraderie of the mostly all-female staff. They made special friends during their hospital work who would remain close in the coming years. Nan had fewer social conquests, but she mastered woodworking, and it would become her passion in later years.

  In August 1919, when the war ended and their services at Endell Hospital were no longer needed, Marion and Nan returned home. Marion’s brother met her at the dock to announce that, although she was a complete novice in politics, on the basis of her good local reputation she had been selected as the Democratic Party’s candidate to run against state assemblyman Thaddeus Sweet. Her brother did not think she should accept, but Marion agreed to run. Quickly turning to Nan for support, she plunged into the campaign, learning along the way. Her opponent ran a dishonest and dirty campaign. A photograph of Marion in her nurse’s hat appeared in the newspaper identifying her as a nun; tires were slashed, and meeting places became suddenly unavailable. Marion kept her sense of humor and her determination. And although she lost, she took enough votes away from Thaddeus Sweet to prevent his becoming the Republican gubernatorial nominee.

  Marion had made her mark as the first woman to run for the New York legislature. It was a good entry into political life. In Albany she met Al Smith during his first term as governor of New York, and she remained close to him even after Franklin Roosevelt had begun to challenge Smith’s dominance of New York politics. Her relationship with Smith cooled somewhat after she met Franklin, and Marion brought to the Roosevelts her own network of political connections, many of them in labor, that proved helpful to FDR. He may have heard about her campaign against Sweet; whether he had or not, Franklin let her think so. She was no longer a novice, and her move into the Roosevelt circle was the biggest step of her life.

  Following the enervating political campaign, Marion took temporary teaching and administrative jobs at New Jersey State College in Trenton and at Bryn Mawr’s Summer School for Women Workers. Nan took a job in the New York City office of the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee. In 1922, the same year she and Nan met Eleanor Roosevelt at the Women’s Division, Marion became an instructor at the Todhunter School, a private school for daughters of wealthy residents of the Upper East Side.

  Those who knew Marion described her as serious, even “mournful,” her long, narrow face a match for her tall, thin body. She was not animated like Nan but rather self-contained—ladylike and composed in demeanor. “She has in repose a somewhat sorrowful countenance,” an interviewer observed when Marion was in her early eighties, and that same look is reflected in photographs from her earlier years.14 Eleanor wrote in her autobiography, This Is My Story, “Miss Cook and Miss Dickerman and I had become friends in just the way that Miss Lape and Miss Read and I had been first drawn together through the work we were doing. This is one of the most satisfactory ways of making and keeping friends.”15

  •

  Nancy Cook was born 26 August 1884 on her father’s cattle farm at the Canadian border of St. Lawrence County, New York. Her mother, Cynthia, was a homemaker. The Cooks had four children. When her father retired from farming, the family moved into the village of Massena on the Grasse River. Nan attended public schools and was always a restless student when made to sit at her desk and do work that didn’t interest her—and not much book work did—but she was known for her independence. If she didn’t like the lunch that was being offered at school, she ran home to eat. It wasn’t far—Massena High School was on Main Street, and the Cooks’ house was nearby. She did have a teacher at Massena High School whom she liked—a Miss Capp—who persuaded her that she should go to college. Nan’s father thought that was a ridiculous idea, or so she later remembered; Massena should have plenty to interest her. The village was on a big shipping lane on the great St. Lawrence River, and there was much to see.

  Mr. Cook was a self-made man who had come to Massena as a teenager to work in a blacksmith shop. Within a few years he owned his own shop and thereafter began to acquire farmland. He bought and sold a large number of farms before retiring and moving back into town. Nan had a lot of respect for her father, as did others in Massena, but she was always looking for ways to escape boredom.

  After graduating from high school Nan bought her first camera and began taking photographs of local sites. She turned the photos into the first picture post
cards sold in Massena stores. Thus began her lifelong interest in photography, and she made enough money selling her cards to pay for college. She applied to Syracuse University and was accepted. She entered the art school, but she and her teachers soon determined that she wasn’t really an artist and that she belonged in education. She transferred to the Teachers’ College, where Dean Jacob Richard Street, a Canadian who had joined the faculty at Syracuse in 1900, took a special interest in her. She excelled, and after graduating in 1915 she was invited back to take charge of the work in the summer school. It was during this time that she met Harriet May Mills, a Syracuse native and leading suffragist.

  Mills was a tireless worker who traveled all over New York State to organize the suffrage movement. She brought Carrie Chapman Catt to Syracuse, and Nan quickly became caught up in the movement for women’s suffrage. Teaching seemed dull by comparison, and she lacked the patience needed to teach adolescent students. Politics drew her, and she was a good organizer. She had a lot to tell Marion when they returned to their boarding house each evening, and by the time they graduated the two women were committed partners and suffragists.