The Three Graces of Val-Kill

by Emily Herring Wilson

  •

  A clear schedule of the weeks and months that followed at the cottage has been impossible to re-create because no records have been archived. Apparently the women kept no engagement books in these early years.7 It is unlikely that they themselves knew from one day to the next how they might spend their time. They were too busy dealing with practical concerns, such as plumbing, heating, furnishings, leaky boats and a rickety bridge, creatures that barked or howled or hooted at night, trees that fell in summer storms, and animals that wandered up from nearby fields.8

  The first Christmas at the cottage found the women deciding on the right place in the main room to put up their tree. Together they hosted an annual Christmas party for family, friends, and others who worked on the Roosevelt estate. They also agreed that their birthdays would be their own special celebration days and a time of gift giving, and this practice remained true for the rest of their lives. Eleanor generally did not like to celebrate her own birthday (although October was her favorite month at Val-Kill), but she never wanted to miss a friend’s, nor did Marion and Nan ever want to miss hers. Eleanor’s birthday was 11 October, Nan’s was 26 August (Eleanor and Nan were both born in 1884), and Marion’s was 11 April (she was seven years younger). If someone was to be out of town or, in Eleanor’s case later on, out of the country, they sent cards and gifts ahead of time.

  The three friends had become so inseparable that Eleanor did not want to do anything without the other two. When Marion could not join her and Nan for a weekend, she lamented, “It doesn’t seem quite right to be seeing things without you,” and when she had to go to join Franklin in Warm Springs, a place she did not like, she wrote to them, “I feel I’d like to go off with you and forget the rest of the world existed.”9

  In the spring of 1926 Franklin’s mother reported to him, “Eleanor is so happy over there that she looks well and plump, don’t tell her so, it is very becoming, and I hope she will not grow thin.”10 Sara’s calling attention to Eleanor’s weight might, as she knew, have been an awful reminder of the months when her marriage was in crisis and she had looked haggard and depressed. She had not told anyone what had happened, even Isabella Greenway, although on 11 July 1919, she wrote, “This past year has rather got the better of me it has been so full of all kinds of things that I still have a breathless, hunted feeling.”11

  A note Eleanor wrote Marion in 1926 indicates that she had begun to reveal her deepest feelings to her friends. “I have just a minute and want to send you a line. I hate to think that you’ve been unhappy, dear; it is new for me to have anyone know when I have ‘moods,’ much less have it make any real difference & if you’ll try not to take them too seriously I’ll try not to let myself have them.”12

  Biographers have made a good deal of Eleanor’s “Griselda moods,” in which she sank into depression and silence, never able to say what was troubling her, driving Franklin away and suffering alone. Her note to Marion indicates that in the first months of sharing the cottage she must have allowed Marion and Nan to see her in her unhappy state, and they were not driven away. Marion clearly had expressed concern. What was troubling Eleanor? If Eleanor did not expect Marion and Nan to help solve her emotional problems, she at least had not concealed them. In the spring of 1926 Eleanor’s emotional landscape was still fragile. She was happier, but she was subject to depression, especially when it came to Franklin. But her recovery was well under way, and Marion and Nan had a good deal to do with it.

  At the same time that Marion gave Eleanor a sense of being cared for, Eleanor reminded Marion that Nan required looking after also. Eleanor apologized for having caused problems in the New York Democratic Women’s office when she had asked Louis Howe to help Nan, who had not welcomed his help. She reminded Marion, “One thing at least this week should prove to you, dear, that Nan needs your protection from the world.”13 Eleanor accepted the difficulties of working in an office with Nan because she felt that Nan was worth it. A visitor seeing Nan for the first time described her as “a most determined person who began by being a paid worker at some Democratic organization and then a sort of political secretary to Franklin and now runs the Val-Kill furniture factory as well as the Roosevelt family.”14

  New York State was a boon to Franklin in his run for governor in 1928, and his victory provided a new lease on life together for Eleanor and Franklin. Eleanor and Nan went to Albany on a cold December Saturday to check out the governor’s mansion. Eleanor’s distancing herself from Springwood had given her confidence in her own decision making, but Nan was intimately involved. It was Nan, not Mama, who would determine how Franklin’s family would now live, and Nan was a master at making a house a home. She helped Eleanor decide how to use and furnish the enormous Victorian house with cupolas and towers that sat like a fortress atop a hill in downtown Albany. Fortunately, the outgoing occupants, Al Smith and his wife, Catherine Anne Dunn Smith, had all the huge fireplaces blazing the day Eleanor and Nan showed up. Nothing could have spelled welcome better for Eleanor, who always loved a good fire. As soon as the Roosevelts moved in, she started arranging for visitors and petitioners to have informal talks with the governor. All commented on what a cozy, homelike atmosphere she had created. In fact, it had been done under Nan’s direction, and she and Eleanor had had a lot of fun doing it. But at the end of the week, the legislators went home and the Roosevelts left for Hyde Park, where Franklin relaxed at Springwood and Eleanor’s heart leapt at the sight of the cottage in the woods.

  •

  In 1927, as Eleanor developed her interests at Val-Kill, Franklin purchased an old inn and spring-fed swimming pool in Warm Springs, Georgia. When he realized that he could not develop the property as a successful resort and treatment center, he determined to develop it exclusively for polio patients like himself. He was buoyed by the comforting waters (thought to have healing properties) and by the experience of being among other polio patients, and he laughed and encouraged them and felt completely at home. He built his own cottage and found his own picnic spots in the beautiful pine hills of Georgia. Despite her initial misgivings about the cost and about the backwardness of the South, Eleanor came fully to support his choice, even when his plans included Missy LeHand, now his constant companion. Louis Howe remained in New York to keep the home fires burning for FDR’s return to politics. Although Eleanor went down for Thanksgiving and occasionally on other weekends, taking Marion and Nan and other friends with her, Warm Springs did not hold the same appeal for her that it did for Franklin. From 1926 to 1928 FDR was to spend nearly half of his time in Warm Springs.15

  In 1927 Franklin was forty-five years old, but his age did not seem to be a factor in anything he did, perhaps because he had always seemed youthful, and perhaps also because his strenuous efforts to appear sporting made age irrelevant. He was a man determined to walk. He could not have forgotten the weeks of intimacy he had shared with Eleanor in the summer of 1921 as she tended to his physical needs at Campobello. First they had weathered the marital crisis, and now they were moving beyond his crippling disease, which had affected not just him but the family as well.

  While Eleanor was making a new life at Val-Kill, Franklin was making a new life for himself in Warm Springs. Henry Toombs, who designed Stone Cottage, now was put to work designing cottages for Franklin, who loved the pine woods and the modest surroundings and was excited by the healing he felt when he was able to stand in the water of the swimming pool. He had the constant companionship of Missy, his secretary and trusted friend, who was absolutely devoted to his every need and who was loved by all the family. Around Missy and Franklin there was a company of local villagers who loved to swap stories with Mr. Roosevelt, as well as old friends and visitors who came to consult with him about his political plans. It was a happy situation—Eleanor with her friends and interests at Val-Kill, Franklin with his at Warm Springs. The two communicated by letter and phone and occasional visits. They were both separate and together. They chose to do whatever they wanted—and
that was quite a positive turn of events for their troubled marriage. Eleanor knew his staff and friends at Warm Springs, and he knew hers at Val-Kill. The lines between New York and Georgia were drawn in pleasant places.

  6: THE WAY THEY LIVED

  The cottage is beginning to look sweet.—Eleanor Roosevelt

  A few months after the New Year’s Day celebration in 1926, Eleanor wrote Franklin on Val-Kill Cottage stationery, “The cottage is beginning to look sweet.”1 “With the completion of the cottage,” Marion remembered, “it became a real home for the three of us. . . . We all were happy and content and Franklin enjoyed it, too. He was glad that Eleanor had found peace and a sense of home in the house which she had taken part in creating.”2 Not until 1933, however, do we have a photograph of the interior (see page 95). Let’s have a look around the main room, fully furnished, with a half-dozen pieces made by Val-Kill master craftsman Frank Salvatore Landolfa.

  Unlike Springwood, the cottage does not have a stately entrance; the “front door” and the “back door” are simply matters of convenience—you go in the one nearest you. Nor is there a grand front hall like the one at Springwood. This is a true cottage, a small place, a place for like-minded friends. And when it became too small for the invited guests, they moved outside to the porches, the patios, and the swimming pool.

  The main room invites comfort and intimacy at the same time that it offers individual spaces when more privacy is needed: the corner desk, which Nan designed, is Eleanor’s, with light streaming in the east window. From the window Eleanor could look out over the swamp, where in autumn loosestrife turned red and gold and brown. The desk is open; some papers are settled in cubbyholes, and others are strewn about on the surface. Above the desk is a shelf, also Nan’s design, that holds a dozen or so books. There is a sturdy straight-backed chair at the desk, and a round table. Nearby there is a lounge chair with a head pillow, and on the table there are books, cigarettes, a cigarette holder, and a book of matches (Nan and Marion were smokers; Eleanor smoked on occasion). The desk chair turns toward the lounge chair as if two sometimes talk there; when it is turned back to the desk, Eleanor can work while Nan or Marion reads nearby. A three-cushioned skirted sofa with comfortable back pillows faces the fireplace. Someone has left her book on the arm of the sofa. Perhaps on the back of the sofa are Eleanor’s or Marion’s papers for a class at Todhunter. There is what seems to be another upholstered chair on the right. Except for the straight-backed leather chair against the front wall, behind Nancy’s lounge chair, there are no more places to sit. At most, the room seats six or seven people—perhaps Eleanor, Nan, Marion, Caroline O’Day, and let’s add Rose Schneiderman and Maud Swartz, two friends who have brought Eleanor into women’s union work and who as union workers were less likely to be welcomed by Sara in the Big House.

  Another frequent guest was Molly Goodwin, a physical education teacher at the Todhunter School. Marion and Nan had met Molly in England, and she was often an overnight visitor. With the outbreak of World War II she had returned home and enlisted in the Royal Navy; she was sent to the Outer Hebrides, where she charted vessels. After the war she lived comfortably in Sussex, where Marion visited her several times. Some later drawings of Val-Kill show “Molly’s room” over the garage.

  The round gate-leg table, another of Nan’s designs, holds a small brass lamp and a leggy houseplant. Casually scattered across the surface are a seed catalog and various magazines. It is both a place to put out things to be read and a place to drop things off as you come into the room—before you build a fire or turn on the electric tin wall sconces and the lamps.

  The overhead chandelier in the main room is a handsome feature. The fire has been laid, the copper kettle for wood is full, and logs are stacked on a grate with circular bronze andirons. Behind the copper kettle fire tools hang from the stone. A hearth brush leans against the fireplace to the left. On the wall above there is a large Navajo rug, possibly a gift from Eleanor’s friend in New Mexico, Isabella Greenway, or something Eleanor bought when she was visiting Isabella. The floor rug near the table may also be southwestern. The naval print was a gift from Franklin, whose vast collection still hangs in the entrance hall at Springwood. On either side of the fireplace are two small framed landscape paintings. This is a room for sitting by the fire, for working alone but near others, for reading, and for conversation.

  Eleanor’s mention in letters and columns of the “sheltered feeling” of sitting by an open fire leads us to imagine her often in this room. There would be a teapot and cups set up on the round table, or perhaps on a small table in front of the fire, where sometimes the women had their simple meals, either prepared by Nan or left by a woman who came from the village to help in the house or kitchen. Unlike Eleanor, Marion and Nan were not used to servants. In the early years before the women held large picnics, it is likely that they made their own meals when they were in residence. When Sara and Franklin and the children were at the Big House, the women were sometimes invited to take their meals there. Sometimes Eleanor, Marion, and Nan had the boys over to spend the night in the cottage, when they likely cooked out.

  From the very beginning, family and friends were invited to the cottage to stay in the downstairs guest room. Val-Kill was on occasion a “honeymoon cottage” for guests. The women lent it to Eleanor’s daughter Anna and her first husband, Curtis Dall, soon after they married in 1926, and later Eleanor had Nan get the cottage ready for Earl Miller and his new wife. Earl, a New York State trooper, had become one of Eleanor’s closest friends after he had been assigned as her bodyguard when Franklin was elected governor of New York in 1928; they traveled together all over the state, gathering information about government affairs in towns and cities, at the same time enjoying each other’s company. Although Earl’s presence at the Roosevelt dinner table alarmed Mama, he had become a permanent member of the inner circle, loyal to Franklin and especially devoted to Franklin’s wife. He felt free to bring his various girlfriends to Val-Kill, and Eleanor accommodated them. Marion and Nan did not like Earl and were alarmed at Eleanor’s show of familiarity—Eleanor’s hand on Earl’s knee—but they knew better than to say so. Earl belonged to the inner circle; best not to tamper with that least they endanger their own special places.

  Marion’s memories make it possible to re-create one unforgettable evening with Eleanor at Val-Kill. “We were very, very close at that time,” Marion said, “and she talked extremely freely.”3 Knowing Marion’s words and the setting, we imagine the scene: Soon after they moved into Stone Cottage, in the winter of 1926, Eleanor, Marion, and Nan were sitting by the recessed fireplace in the tucked-away inner sanctum, and Eleanor confided one of her deepest secrets—her discovery of Lucy Mercer’s letters to Franklin. Marion remembered, “I never saw [Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd], never heard Franklin mention her, needless to say, I never heard Granny [Franklin’s mother]. . . . This was very early in our relationship when Mrs. Rutherfurd was still alive. We never referred to it—she told the story, we were conscious of the depth to which she had been hurt.”4 The closeness of the three women on this occasion seemed to fulfill Franklin’s description of them—the three graces who brought joy and a sense of well-being to one another. A great burden must have felt lifted from Eleanor’s shoulders when the truth was finally shared. One historian speculates that Eleanor made Marion and Nan promise that they would not choose sides.5

  The fire had died out, and the glow of embers was fading. They had been sitting for a long time, and still no one had moved. Marion got up and took their trays, but Nan kept her eyes on Eleanor. Finally, Eleanor spoke, so quietly that Marion had to turn to catch her words.

  “The bottom dropped out of my own particular world,” she said.6

  The silence deepened.

  The next morning a workman bringing a stack of wood let himself in and began stacking it at the hearth. He heard someone speak, and he looked up and saw Mrs. Roosevelt, sitting in the half-light at her desk, and was embarrassed to have d
isturbed her. She murmured that it was fine; then she gathered some papers and went out of the room. Upstairs Marion and Nan began to talk, but one hushed the other.

  Marion and Nan finished dressing and looked at each other. Marion tousled Nan’s hair,7 Nan leaned against her, and they came down the stairs to an empty room.

  •

  On another night, by Marion’s account, the cottage provided sanctuary for Eleanor and Franklin. One summer evening, distraught, Eleanor came to the cottage. She and Franklin had had a “misunderstanding.” Marion had known about other misunderstandings, but this one was serious. “She remained closeted with us for three days.” Finally, Nan called Franklin at the Big House.

  “If you are wise you will come over here,” she said, “and right away!”

  “But will she talk to me?” he asked.

  “You come!”

  And so he drove himself to the cottage and sat waiting in the car.

  Marion believed that Franklin’s “utter helplessness” to get out must have “pierced at last the wall of hurt hostility she had raised against him.” Eleanor went out to the car and sat with Franklin for a long time, “more than two hours,” and then “she went back to the Big House, and the quarrel was not mentioned again.”8

  Nothing has been uncovered to date this anecdote or suggest what the quarrel was about. It could have been something Mama had said, or it could have been Franklin’s usual refusal to hear what Mama had said. Or perhaps Eleanor had refused to spend the night at Springwood. And isn’t it possible that, if Eleanor fled to the cottage for whatever reasons and stayed there three nights, this was not the first or the last time? Given the availability of such a safe haven, wouldn’t that have been natural?