Eleanor Roosevelt

Penguin Books

Chapter One

Becoming First Lady

* * *

After the election of November 1932, ER worried that her talentswould not be used; that she would become a shut-in, a congenial hostess inthe political shadows politically sidelined. In the months before FDR'sinauguration on 4 March 1933, newspaper headlines broadcast thevictories of fascism and tyranny in Europe and Asia as well as the intensifyingagonies of America's worst economic depression. In that bitter climate, ER facedher return to Washington with a burst of activity that defied her sense ofdread. Officially limited to social tasks, she felt at first burdened anddefiant. Her great friend Lorena Hickok was so impressed by ER's initialdistress that she titled her subsequent biography EleanorRoosevelt: Reluctant First Lady.

    ER wanted above all to be a player on the political team that worked tomatch FDR's campaign promises with significant deeds. To counter her fearthat she would instead be forced into a life of political confinement somewherein the shadows, a prisoner to the presidency, she plunged into the politicalfray. With the women activists of the Democratic Party, ER spent hourspreparing lists of notable candidates for every level of government work. Shewrote columns, stunned radio audiences, created endless controversy. TheFirst Lady-elect was in the news almost every day?upsetting the complacent,encouraging people to imagine new liberal efforts to confront the Depression,which since October 1929 had plunged fifteen million unemployed and destituteAmericans into despair.

    It had been twelve years since ER's last sojourn in Washington, that smallungenerous town that had been for her filled with ragged memories. Thereas a child when her Uncle Theodore was president she had felt shy, lonely,outcast. There as a young matron when her husband was Woodrow Wilson'sassistant secretary of the navy, she had felt humiliated, isolated. Betrayed byher husband's affair with Lucy Mercer, her friend and social secretary, she hadsuffered the loneliest time of her adult life.

    She returned to that place that fed on gossip and power, a changedwoman. Surrounded by loyal friends, she was devoted to her work, and feltsecure in her life. During the 1920s, the Roosevelts had reconsecrated theirpartnership and created their own political bases. FDR refortified hispolio-ravaged body, and ER repaired her heart; they both moved beyond theaffair that had threatened their marriage.

    While Eleanor and Franklin rebuilt their private lives, the world theyhad grown up in, the world they knew, disintegrated. The punitive Treaty ofVersailles, which ended World War I and redrew the map of Europe, in additionto war debts and dizzying inflation, inflamed German nationalism andspurred popular movements dedicated to the demise of old ruling classes.Fascism and communism took hold as monarchies dissolved, empires collapsed,capitalism wobbled. While uncollected political and economic debtsleft over from the World War haunted and poisoned international relations,the wounds of Eleanor Roosevelt's earlier time in Washington marked hermemories, and influenced her path.

    After 1920, ER had carefully crafted a life that suited her needs. Like herUncle Theodore, she was an activist?delighted to be on the move, amongpeople, dealing directly with causes and crises. Never idle, she enjoyed manycareers and was all in a day teacher, editor, columnist, and radio commentator.Her primary circle included her business and living partners Nancy Cook,Marion Dickerman, and Caroline O'Day. With Cook and Dickerman, ERshared a home two miles from the "big house" at Hyde Park along a smallriver called the Val-Kill. With O'Day, they co-owned the Todhunter School,the Val-Kill crafts factory, and the Women's Democratic News (WDN), amonthly newsletter.

    ER had resigned as editor and taken her name off the masthead as one ofthe four publishers when FDR was elected governor of New York in November1928, but she had continued to write its unsigned editorials and attendpolicy meetings.

    In February 1933, ER publicly returned to the WDN with a monthlycolumn called "Passing Thoughts of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt." She was toreplace Elisabeth Marbury, who had regularly reported from Washington andhad died suddenly of a heart attack on 22 January at the age of seventy-seven.Eager to be back in print for attribution, ER's first column was in part atribute to Marbury, a Democratic Party stalwart and worldly raconteur.

    Also in this first column, ER promised to provide "some pictures of thevarious activities that I imagine fall to the lot of every President's wife,"and announced that she was free to disagree?even with her husband.

    Like the country and his closest advisers, ER did not know actually whatFDR intended to do as president. His priorities were unclear, since he hadcampaigned as both ardent liberal and fiscal conservative: He would balancethe budget, and decrease taxes. Now, ER stated her own liberal goals for theadministration: She disapproved of lowering taxes in the face of so many urgentsocial needs and wanted relief policies extended to provide work andnew training for the unemployed.

    In both her February column and her unsigned editorial, she emphasizedthe need for more public spending. She lamented recent talk about curtailing"some of these services." More services were needed, and "we will have to payfor [them] through taxes and our people might just as well face this fact...."

    Her views did not coincide with FDR's initial strategy, and he demandedspace in the March issue to answer his wife and defend his first legislativeacts. Between his mother and his wife, FDR was accustomed tooutspoken opinionated women. But he did expect public unity on politicallyvolatile issues. In the future ER would try to be morecircumspect; this would be his only editorial rejoinder.

    ER's views on international matters also departed from FDR's strategy.She deplored America's "isolationist" policies and considered economicnationalism dangerous. She wanted the United States to forgive theentire international debt, in order to end the worldwide depression and therising tide of bitterness that threatened world peace. Her internationalism hadbecome increasingly unpopular among politicians. ER worked most closely on theseissues with her first feminist friends, Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, who,through the American Foundation, campaigned for the World Court and nowalso promoted U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union.

    ERs intimate circle also included Molly Dewson, who directed theWomen's Committee of the Democratic Party; Earl Miller, her personal squireand champion; Louis Howe, the only close friend the Roosevelts shared;and Malvina (Tommy) Thompson, her hardworking secretary and personalassistant.

    Born in the Bronx to an Irish mother and English father, MalvinaThompson was ER's mainstay from the time she spotted her in a Red Crosssecretarial pool in 1917. She worked on every campaign after 1920, and becameER's personal secretary and administrator. Entirely loyal to ER, shewas efficient, protective, and open-hearted. Tommy smoked cigarettes frommorning to night, drank Scotch at day's end, and saw something funny in almostevery situation. ER relied on her quick-witted support, and her fabuloussense of humor. Tommy's robust and hearty laugh lit up many tense situations,and she had a good time wherever she went.

    Then, in 1932, Lorena (Hick) Hickok, a leading political reporter, wasassigned by the Associated Press to cover ER during the campaign. Theirfriendship now eclipsed all others.

    With her activist team ER contemplated the traditional fate of a FirstLady. She was expected to give up her own life and stand by her man, affirmingand silent.

    She could not do it. Unlike her predecessors, ER claimed her right to apublic role. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 1932, she boldlybroadcast her conviction that the tragic economic conditions which prevailedwere due to the "blindness of a few people who perhaps do not really understandthat, after all, the prosperity of the few is on a firmer foundation when itspreads to the many." She believed that everybody would soon realize there wereonly man-made reasons for so much deprivation in a land of overproduction. Andnow, because of her husband's election, she sensed a new spirit of giving allaround her, and she hailed the renewed impulse toward generosity. "We aregoing through a time when I believe we may have, if we will, a new social andeconomic order."

    Nevertheless, she was required by custom to give up her most publicactivities. She even resigned from the Todhunter School, although she lovedteaching "best of all." She also agreed to end her radio broadcasts, with thehope that she might resume them.

    On 3 March 1933, the eve of FDR's inauguration, she gave her lastcommercially sponsored broadcast in a series that had become increasinglycontroversial. On one occasion, she ignored prohibition and counseledwomen on moderate alcohol consumption. The Women's Christian TemperanceUnion (WCTU), and church groups attacked her as America's primary"Jezebel".

    ER ended her last broadcast with a plea to her radio audience for theircontinued correspondence:

The one great danger for a man in public life or for the woman who is that man's wife, is that they may be set apart from the stream of life affecting the rest of the country. It is easy in Washington to think that Washington is the country and forget that it is a small place and only becomes important as the people who live there truly represent the other parts of the country.

I hope that my friends will feel as much my friends as they have always felt, and as free to talk to me and to tell me what they think as ever, and I want to know the whole country, not a little part of it.

* * *

FDR's election had imparted a vast sense of hope to a devastated nation, ERshared that sense of hope, and wanted to support him and be available to hisneeds.

    For the inauguration, for example, ER initially announced that she intendedto drive her own blue Buick convertible from New York to Washington,with her two dogs. But FDR had invited a party of cabinet members andspecial friends as his guests on the train, and ER told reporters that he wantedher with him, "`so my place is there as hostess.'"

    ER did not mention that she also planned to drive down with LorenaHickok. According to Raymond Moley, then virtual leader of FDR's BrainsTrust, she changed her mind after an emotional family drama. When ER announcedthat she "would load her roadster with belongings and drive downwith a woman friend," FDR was stunned: It was the only time Moley heardhim complain about his wife's independence; on this one occasion FDRwanted the entire family together.

    ER consented. But then, early inauguration morning, she and Hick madea pilgrimage to the famous statue Henry Adams had erected to the memory ofhis wife, Clover. There, during ER's earlier years of solitude and sadness, shefound strength in that holly grove while Washington gossiped about her gambolinghusband and his well-known affair. Now she decided to begin hertenure as First Lady by meditating with her First Friend in the holly grove inRock Creek Cemetery. As they sat in silence, Hick pondered ER's mood, andthe power of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' statue, known as Grief:.

As I looked at it I felt that all the sorrow humanity had ever had to endure was expressed in that face.... Yet in that expression there was something almost triumphant. There was a woman who had experienced every kind of pain, every kind of suffering ... and had come out of it serene?and compassionate....

    FDR's train party included his mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt; sons Elliottand James, with their wives, Betty Donner and Betsey Cushing; their twoyounger sons, Franklin and John, students at Groton; cabinet designates,Brains Trusters, Democratic stalwarts, and various intimates including LouisHowe, Marvin McIntyre, Missy LeHand, Grace Tully, Basil O'Connor, Henryand Elinor Morgenthau, and Dorothy and Samuel Rosenman.

    While daughter Anna was already in Washington making arrangements,ER's train party included Lorena Hickok, Earl Miller, Nancy Cook and MarionDickerman, and ERs longtime ally Agnes Brown Leach and her husband,Forum publisher Henry Goddard Leach.

    Also aboard that special train was ERs new wardrobe, which she hadcollected during a shopping spree with Anna the week before. She replacedthe schoolmarm look of the Albany years with a new stylish elegance, appropriateto Washington's social demands. For her inaugural gown she chose ahyacinth shade the press called "Eleanor Blue," and for her wrap a new shadeof blue named "Anna Blue" (in compliment to her daughter). Both gown andwrap were of crystelle velvet, made by Arnold Constable. A "symphony inblue," ER's hat, "a Watteau type of crystal straw," in Anna Blue was coveredwith banded grosgrain ribbon "forming a small wing in the back," tiltingdown in the front. She carried a "large envelope bag" of Anna Blue antelopekid and wore white glacé kid gloves, "the smart eight-button length."

    The press complimented ER's "elegant dignity" and the fact that her outfitswere designed and made entirely in the United States, "so far as known."Her evening gowns especially were "of great beauty." For "very formal dinners,"she ordered a gown of "misty blue satin, a new Lanvin shade," from LeMouchoir of Madison Avenue, who described the effect as "regal." "The waistis draped in front. The back décolleté forms a deep V...." Le Mouchoir alsocreated daytime ensembles of various blues and "a rough tweed coat suit ofmixed brown, beige and blue." Four hats to accompany the daytime costumeswere made by Mme. Lilly Dache, also of Madison Avenue, and nine dresseswere ordered from Milgrim's, including a "misty blue and silver brocade"gown with long sleeves and high neck that could be used for formallate-afternoon and evening affairs. In the evening the sleeves could be removedand the back unfastened to render it décolleté; unclipped "it falls in two widerevers, revealing a deep V...."

    ER was pleased by most of the initial press coverage: "Tall, slim andgirlish, in a dark blue ensemble and hat ... the next First Ladylooked more nearly like an elder sister than the mother of Mrs. Curtis Dall, herdaughter [Anna]...."

    Only Hick, whose campaign articles on ER had emphasized her routinethrift, her plain $5 and $10 street dresses bought off racks and on the run,seemed disturbed. She protested in a letter that ER had spent an unseemlyamount of money on lavish and extravagant display, given America's grave fiscalsituation. But ER believed that it was good for the economy to buy asmuch as possible and give work to many people.

    While the press reported every detail of each outfit, ER referred to herbuying spree in one sentence at the end of a long political letter to FDR: "Igot a lot of clothes for myself & Anna in one afternoon lastweek as I imagine it is better to have plenty & not buy any new ones for quite awhile!"

    The point of her letter was an urgent appeal to FDR:

Henry Morgenthau came to see me the other day & told me he felt he could serve really well only as Sec of Ag. & all the big farm organizations were for him. He had done well on all of your missions, he had made your ag policy in this State a success & got the men who were helpful on your ag speeches. He did not feel he could be Asst. Sec. because he had been so near you he could not be under a chief & loyally work THROUGH him. He does not think [Henry] Wallace will be easy for you to manage or others to get on with and he is no administrator. He won't say he won't take ... anything else but he does not feel he could serve you as well & he wants you to talk it over with him before you settle on Wallace. Please at least talk to him.?I have transmitted my message!

    FDR appointed Wallace to Agriculture. ER was disappointed, as wasLouis Howe. For decades Howe had been FDR's main adviser, closest friend,political confidant. But the presidency changed everything. Although LouisHowe remained first secretary, his influence was now rivalled by the youngColumbia University professors around FDR, the new Brains Trust boysHowe despised.

    Ray Moley, Rexford Guy Tugwell, and A. A. Berle were part of a new politicallandscape marked by intrigue and jealousy, stealth and duplicity. FDRenjoyed the political mix, the harrowing juggling that left everybodyuncertain. It caused ER and Howe to forge an even tighter alliance.Regarded as outsiders among FDR's new insiders, they increasingly relied on eachother.

    ER and Howe ended each day with a drive and a meeting. They collaboratedon big projects, and negotiated petty grievances. Howe was ER's greatestally, and during the first administration, ER and Louis Howe were FDR's mosthonest and critical friends. With his health failing, no longer FDR'sunchallenged lieutenant, Howe increasingly turned to ER for solace,support, and company. Together, they were a formidable team.

    FDR's decision on Morgenthau intensified ERs efforts. With Louis Howeand Molly Dewson, she struggled for influence over FDR's appointments, andit was due to their insistence that he became the first president to appoint awoman to the cabinet: Frances Perkins as secretary of labor.

    ER was pleased to learn that her old school chums rallied behind her.They were not only delighted by her "lovely" new costumes, but they supportedher goals. One of her six bridesmaids, Helen Cutting Wilmerding, acousin and former Roser classmate, wrote with enthusiasm: "All the old tribewe grew up with in New York have turned towards you like sun flowers." ERwas grateful for that information, "for I felt the old crowd might disapprove ofmany things which I did." And she was determined to challenge the women ofher own class and culture. She asked Junior Leaguers, for example, to considerwhat they themselves might do, might contribute, might actually give up inorder to make life better for those rendered homeless or impoverished duringthe Depression. She even suggested they convert space in their many-roomedapartments or country houses to provide temporary shelter for homelessfamilies in distress. Privileged women and men, she repeatedly emphasizedbefore the inauguration, had special obligations during these hard times:"Sooner or later we are going to realize that what touches one part of thehuman race touches all parts. Thus we are going to have to learn that thefew must sacrifice for the good of the many if we are to preserve our presentcivilization."

    The White House itself would be open to all her extended circle, evenwhen they came to carp. ER's most violent detractors, including her increasinglyreactionary cousins Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Corinne RobinsonAlsop (mother of columnists Joseph and Stuart Alsop) were invited wheneverthey chose to attend. Despite nasty imitations of ER, Cousin Alice was notbarred from White House functions until she publicly announced in 1940that she would rather vote for Adolf Hitler than for her crippled cousin onemore time.

As ER prepared herself for the Washington fray, she carefully consideredand often repeated the dreary details of the lives of Washington wives, andher husband understood her discontent. Indeed, FDR's fiftieth birthday on30 January 1933 was celebrated by a surprise party at Hyde Park orchestratedby ER and Louis Howe. It was a well-planned and hilarious affair; every guestplayed a role to evoke an event in Franklin's life. In the end, he respondedwith rhymes for all present. Regarding his wife, FDR recited:

Did my Eleanor relate
All the sad and awful fate
Of the miserable lives
Lived by politicians' wives?

    ER derived little comfort from the examples of the First Ladies who precededher. In her Uncle TR's Washington, she had met Ida Saxton McKinley,and she knew all her twentieth-century forebears. They all seemed to herhardworking earnest women whose lives were limited by invalidism, neurasthenia,depression. Many of ER's predecessors took to their beds, broken downby their efforts to cope with unending publicity, criticism, their husbands'wrath or neglect, the demanding but ill-appreciated responsibilities ofpolitical wifery.

    Athletic, wealthy, and brilliant, Ida Saxton McKinley was raised by herfather to take over his financial interests and run his bank.When she married attorney William McKinley, she was politically ambitious andextravagantly social. But during her husband's first years in Congress, whichcoincided with the sudden deaths of her mother and two daughters, Ida McKinleyplunged into a mysterious invalidism that resembled epilepsy. She became paleand fragile. Grotesquely overwhelmed by her flamboyantly feathered and bejeweledcostumes, she seemed bundled in satin swaddling offset by oversized diamonds.Generally carried to state dinners, she was confined to a wheelchairand propped high by overstuffed pillows. Her fainting spells and seizures weresudden and unpredictable. Whenever one occurred at table her husband simplyplaced a napkin upon her face until it subsided, whereupon she wouldremove it and continue the conversation as if nothing had happened.

    Argumentative and bad tempered, Ida McKinley was called "the most demanding"invalid wife in political history. To "cure" her headaches and quiether manner, she was dosed with "barbiturates, bromide sedatives, laudanum,and other powerful narcotics." She embarrassed her husband's friends, andthey considered him a marvel of devotion: the "saint" of domesticity.

    But when McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, she arranged hisfuneral and her return to private life without assistance. Upon her arrivalhome, Ida McKinley's era of total dependence mysteriously ended. Until herown death on 26 May 1907 she never had another seizure.

    Although Ida McKinley's style was unique, even the women ER most admiredseemed to suffer in the White House.

    Helen (Nellie) Herron Taft trained as a teacher and thoroughly enjoyedpolitics. She was a daughter and granddaughter of congressmen, and manybelieved she badgered her reluctant husband to run for president and advisedhim on all appointments and issues. Most visibly her husband's partner,she was outspoken, progressive, creative. She was the skilled diplomat whoarranged Japan's gift of three thousand cherry trees to adorn Potomac Driveand the Tidal Basin. But in May 1909, less than three months after Taft assumedoffice, she suffered a stroke that temporarily paralyzed her and left herspeech permanently impaired.

    ER was particularly informed and impressed by Ellen Axson Wilson,Woodrow Wilson's first wife. A career artist who continued to paint, she waswidely recognized as a "Great and Good Lady." Renowned as an AmericanImpressionist and associated with art communities in Old Lyme,Connecticut, and Cornish, New Hampshire, Ellen Axson Wilson participated incompetitive exhibits and sold her paintings.

    When her Cornish circle, which included Maxwell Parrish, met at hersummer home in 1913 to consider the kind of national support for the artsFrance enjoyed, they imagined an official government bureau to encourageartists, award prizes, purchase works. Ellen Wilson replied that the congressmenwho would endorse that view were "not yet born."

    Ellen Wilson's efforts to build decent housing and abolish Washington's"alley slums" particularly captured ER's imagination as First Lady. Like Wilson,ER believed that adequate and healthy housing was the fundamental keyto a more democratic future.

    As Ellen Wilson prepared for her daughter's White House wedding, shewrote a relative: "Nobody who has not tried can have the least idea of theexactions of life here and of the constant nervous strain of itall."

    Diagnosed with kidney tuberculosis, or Bright's disease, Ellen Wilsondied on 6 August 1914, having been First Lady for only seventeen months. TheNew York Times concluded that her condition was aggravated "by a nervousbreakdown, attributed to the exactions of social duties and her active interestin philanthropy and betterment work."

    If ER had any particular feelings about the gossip concerning WoodrowWilson's affair with Mary Hulbert Peck, during the time when ER's own marriagewas in such disarray, she never referred to them. Evidently, WoodrowWilson's advisers paid Mary Peck, an attractive divorcée, some still debatablesum of money for the intimate letters he had written to her over the years.The scandal surfaced between Ellen Wilson's death and the election of 1916,when some Wilson advisers hoped the mysterious Mrs. Peck would becomethe new First Lady.

    It was the kind of gossip ER detested, and avoided. She never, for example,referred to Florence Kling Harding's much publicized marital strife,although she spent time with "the Duchess" during the war.

    ER particularly admired two gifted and generous public citizens who became,for different reasons, silent as First Ladies. Her immediate predecessor,Lou Henry Hoover, chose silence; Grace Goodhue Coolidge's husband imposedit.

    Unlike her husband, Grace Coolidge was witty, charming, and gregarious.She had been a dedicated and innovative teacher of the hearing-impaired. Shebelieved all children could learn to speak, and she taught lip-reading as wellas sign language. Calvin Coolidge, on the other hand,believed no woman could or should communicate in public life. He mandated hiswife's silence on all political issues and also denied her many ordinarypleasures, including horseback riding. Her friends complained on her behalf:"Calvin felt that woman's place was at the sink." Although Grace neverprotested, she confided to a friend that lives of political wives were "veryconfining."

    ER's first official act as First Lady-elect was to attend Calvin Coolidge'sfuneral. On 7 January 1933, she journeyed to Northampton with her sonJames. ER's decision to attend was appreciated as "a sign of respect" for herRepublican predecessors, Grace Coolidge and Lou Henry Hoover.

    Geologist, linguist, and scholar, Stanford University graduate and outspokenfeminist, Lou Henry Hoover had been for decades her husband's partner.They traveled together in search of mineral deposits and new speculativeinvestment markets throughout Europe and Asia. In London andWashington during the war, she founded canteens, a war hospital, a knittingfactory, a home for women war workers. She was an equal-rights feminist, headedthe Girl Scouts, and as the only woman on the board of the National AmateurAthletic Association, led a campaign to introduce physical education forwomen "in every institution" in America.

    Nobody believed Lou Henry Hoover when she announced that as FirstLady she would be nothing but a pleasant "backdrop for Bertie." But shemeant it. Except for occasional radio broadcasts, she ended her public role inAmerican life. She hosted dinners and parties to entertain her husband, not topromote causes. Inexplicably, she refused interviews and banished the press.Controversy engulfed her only when she decided to invite Jessie DePriest to atea for congressmen's wives.

    In 1930, Chicago elected Republican Oscar DePriest, the first black memberof Congress since Reconstruction. Despite their Quaker opposition todiscrimination, the Hoovers did not decide immediately to open theirWhite House. But it bothered Lou Henry that Jessie DePriest was not invited withother congressional wives her first year in Washington. Many meetings wereheld on the subject, and the president finally consented. Determined to avoida rude incident, Lou Henry Hoover queried every congressional wife andfound twelve who agreed to be cordial at a tea that would include the firstblack White House guest since TR invited Booker T. Washington and his wifefor lunch.

    On 12 June 1931, Jessie DePriest was received by the First Lady. Her visitin the company of twelve congenial women was brief and pleasant. But astonishinghowls of protest followed. Virtually every Southern newspaper editorializedagainst this "arrogant insult to the South and to the nation." Whileseveral Northern newspapers celebrated the First Lady's effort to "put intopractice the brotherhood of man," Southern editors and politicians predicteddisaster, race intermingling, and Republican defeat in 1932. In response, LouHenry Hoover went on a tour of Southern states, presumably to reassurewhite clubwomen.

Inevitably, as ER contemplated her new role, her thoughts lingered on herAunt Edith's White House. With Edith Roosevelt, rules and ceremony dominated.Sumptuous feasts and formality were her legacy. Guests foregathered,and were greeted after a grand processional whereby the president and FirstLady descended the White House's central staircase "to trumpets." "Not wantingto shake hands, she clutched a large bouquet."

    Edith Roosevelt presided over a circle of scolds who collected informationabout Washington's "immorals." Those who "transgressed her code ofupright conduct" were banished. Working women were not invited; adultererswere shunned. Aunt Edith detested the press and scorned "camera fiends." Herpolitical sensibilities ran counter to everything her niece believed.

    Noted for her ability to walk and talk as fast as her husband, some of TR'sfriends thought she controlled him; others believed she bullied him. HenryAdams always marveled at Edith's ability to silence TR: "He stands in abjectterror of Edith.... What is man that he should have tusks and grin!" But forER, Aunt Edith's assertive, imperious, even terrifying manner was eclipsed byher discontent. A prisoner to her "beloved shackles," she was plagued byheadaches and assorted neuralgias.

    Although never close, ER did not want to sever relations with her father'sfamily. When Anna Roosevelt Cowles (Aunt Bye) died peacefully at her homein Farmington, Connecticut, during the night of 25 August 1931, ER's warmestlink to her father's generation ended. Aunt Bye had been one of ER's greatchampions, the woman who most urgently insisted she be sent to school atAllenswood in England.

    After Aunt Bye's death, ER made a special effort to reach out to her father'ssurviving sister, Aunt Corinne, a lifelong Republican who voted forFranklin because, she said, Eleanor was her niece, after all. But CorinneRoosevelt Robinson died suddenly of pneumonia on 17 February 1933at the age of seventy-one. Her funeral, which both FDR and ER attended, was thelast family gathering before FDR's inauguration. Now Aunt Edith was the lastsurviving member of her father's generation. And she never forgave ER forcampaigning against her son Ted in that Teapot Dome car when he ran forgovernor in 1924.

    Although Aunt Edith actively campaigned against FDR, ER neverthelesswrote from the White House?as if there were nothing but family traditionand warmth between them. Interested in her niece's initial tribulations as FirstLady, Edith replied: "Your letter was an answer to prayer, full of things whichI wanted to know. Much such conditions met me in the WhiteHouse, and I am quite sure that I did not deal with them as efficiently as youhave done."

    ER's ability to invite her cousin Alice Roosevelt Longworth to inauguralevents was even more extraordinary. Alice had, after all, declared war onDemocrats and never missed an opportunity to deride Eleanorpublicly. Her opposition to Franklin was shrill, often vulgar and cruel. She notonly attacked his policies, she mocked his physical condition: "My poor cousin,he suffered from polio so he was put in a brace; and now he wants to put theentire U.S. into a brace, as if it were a crippled country?that is all the NewDeal is about...."

    Alice seemed now to concentrate all her wit and flair into a private crusadeto hurt her cousins. She had been the ruling Washingtonwidow, the only important Roosevelt. Miserably married to Nicholas Longworth,the popular Speaker of the House who had rivaled Eleanor's father Elliott in hisdrinking and romantic escapades, Alice had nevertheless reveled in Washingtonsociety, and few knew the truth of her marriage.

    After her husband's death in 1931, Alice devoted herself to ER's humiliation.She trotted out the old stories of FDR's wartime infidelities. She mockedand minced: "FDR is nine parts mush and one part Eleanor." She contrastedFDR's dependence with her father's robust self-reliance: TR's vigor; TR'sbrawn. ER's sons remembered that only Alice could bring their mother to theverge of tears.

    Although ER never criticized Alice by name, she wrote an article in whichshe described her kind of malicious gossip and concluded that it reflected"not only a cruel but a despicable trait of human nature."

    To fortify her spirits and armor herself against the animus of her closestkin, ER read and studied her father's letters?and decided to publish them.Indeed, ER wrote or edited three books between FDR's election and inauguration:one for children (When You Grow Up to Vote), one for redemption (herfather's letters), and one for the future (It's Up to the Women). Theyenabled her to face her new position with a sense ofpersonal liberation, and a clearly defined political program.

    Moreover, while she abandoned her sponsored radio program and gaveup teaching, she refused to give up editing Babies?Just Babies, amagazine she had started to help mothers avoid the kind ofmistakes her parents had made and she had perpetuated with her own children. Themagazine was filled with droll and informative stories, infant photographs,uplifting and curious advice, prizes, poetry, and whimsy. ER believed it offeredyoung mothers a much-needed service. She personally guaranteed the reliabilityand quality of the magazine's advertisers; and called upon all heracquaintances?rich and famous, hardworking and unknown?to contribute babylore. Daughter Anna detailed "24 Hours of a Baby's Life," not quite a celebrationof her infant daughter's grueling, relentless schedule. Rosamond Pinchot wroteabout "The Most Famous Baby in the World," Helen Hayes's daughter MaryMacArthur. "A Soviet Baby Is Born" featured extraordinary photos to illustratehealthful, contented infants and toddlers in factory nurseries.

    The First Lady-elect wanted every young mother to have a less tormentedand ignorant time than she had endured.

Continues...
Excerpted from Eleanor Rooseveltby Blanche Wiesen Cook Copyright ©1993 by Blanche Wiesen Cook. Excerpted by permission.
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