Eleanor and Franklin (12 page)

After we were installed (at Grandma Hall's house) my father came to see me, and I remember going down into the high ceilinged dim library on the first floor of the house on West 37th Street. He sat in a big chair. He was dressed all in black, looking very sad. He held out his arms and gathered me to him. In a little while he began to talk, to explain to me that my mother was gone, that she had been all the world to him, and now he had only my brothers and myself, that my brothers were very young, and that he and I must keep close together. Some day I would make a home for him again; we would travel together and do many things which he painted as interesting and pleasant, to be looked forward to in the future together.

Somehow it was always he and I. I did not understand whether my brothers were to be our children or whether he felt that they would be at school and college and later independent.

There started that day a feeling which never left me—that he and I were very close together, and some day, would have a life of our own together. He told me to write to him often, to be a good girl, not to give any trouble, to study hard, to grow up into a woman he could be proud of, and he would come to see me whenever it was possible.

When he left, I was all alone to keep our secret of mutual understanding and to adjust myself to my new existence.
⁵

6.
“HE LIVED IN MY DREAMS”

E
LLIOTT
'
S LETTERS TO HIS DAUGHTER WERE TENDER, CHIVALROUS
, playful, and, above all, full of protestations of love. After his death she would carry them around with her for the remainder of her life. People who lived on in the memories of those alive, she said, were not dead. She read and reread her father's letters, and each time it was a fresh invocation of the magic of his presence.

“I knew a child once who adored her father,” she wrote in 1927.

She was an ugly little thing, keenly conscious of her deficiencies, and her father, the only person who really cared for her, was away much of the time; but he never criticized her or blamed her, instead he wrote her letters and stories, telling her how he dreamed of her growing up and what they would do together in the future, but she must be truthful, loyal, brave, well-educated, or the woman he dreamed of would not be there when the wonderful day came for them to fare forth together. The child was full of fears and because of them lying was easy; she had no intellectual stimulus at that time
and yet she made herself as the years went on into a fairly good copy of the picture he had pa
inted
.
¹

In his letters her father addressed Eleanor as “Father's Own Little Nell,” and that was the way she signed herself in the letters to him. His first letter after his return to Abingdon reported on his new puppies. “They are both in the armchair beside me and the old Dog is curled up at my feet in the rug dreaming, I suppose of all the rabbits he
did not
catch today!”

What shall he write about, his next letter asked.

Shall I tell you of the wonderful long rides, of days through the grand snowclad forests, over the white hills, under the blue skies
as blue as those in Italy which you and I and little Ellie, though he was so little he cannot remember it, used to sail over Naples Bay to beautiful Capri. I am afraid in those young “Nell days” you were a little seasick and did not enjoy it as much as you will in the day that is coming when you have worked hard at your lessons and gotten that curious thing they call “education.”

After Anna's death “Professor Roser,” as Elliott dubbed him, had inquired of Grandma Hall about her plans for Eleanor's education, expressing hope that he would not lose such a promising student. Mrs. Hall consulted Elliott. There was no question “as to the wisdom of Eleanor's undoubtedly remaining in his class. Will you write therefore and have the matter attended to? The tone of his note is very nice, did you not think so? Our little girl is a good little girl and conscientious, I believe, as he says.”

His January 20 letter sought to impress on Eleanor the importance of education.

The next time you go walking get your maid to take you where they are building a house and watch the workmen bring one stone after another and place it on top of the one gone before or along side, and then think that there are a lot of funny little workmen running about in your small Head called “Ideas” which are carrying a lot of stones like small bodies called “Facts,” and these little “Ideas” are being directed by your teachers in various ways, by “Persuasion,” “Instruction,” “Love,” and “Truth” to place all these “Fact Stones” on top of and alongside of each other in your dear Golden Head until they build a beautiful house called “Education”—
Then
! Oh, my pretty companionable Little Daughter, you will come to Father and what jolly games we will have together to be sure—And in your beautiful house “Education,” Father wishes you such a happy life—But those little fact stones are a queer lot, and you have to ask your teachers to look well after the Idea workmen that they don't put some in crooked in the walls of your pretty House. Sometimes you'll find a rough hard fact that you must ask your teacher to smooth down and polish and set straight by persuasion, love and truth. Then you'll find a rebellious little factstone that won't fit where it ought to, though it is intended to go just there like the little factstone “music”—maybe you will have to get your teachers
to use Instruction, maybe a great deal of it to get that small stone to fit, but it must go there and it
will
, if the little Idea workmen stick at it long enough. Then there are what seem to be stupid, wearisome, trying factstones that you can't see the use of in your dear house, that the Ideas are building! Like—“Going to bed regularly and early fact stones.” “
Not eating candy
fact stones,” “Not telling
always
exactly the Truth fact stones,” “Not being a teasing little girl fact stones” instead of a precious gentle
Self
amusing and satisfied one.

There are lots of others like those I have mentioned and to have them put in order you must
beg
your teachers to use all four powers of Persuasion, Instruction, Love, Truth and another force too,
Discipline!
Of all the forces your Teachers use, Father and you too, Little Witch, probably like Love best, but we must remember the little fact stones as I said at first are such a queer lot, that we have to trust to your Teachers, who know by Experience in building other Education houses in little brains, how much the Idea workmen can do and how also the character of the fact stones, what forces to apply. Think of your brain as an Education House; you surely always wish to live in a beautiful house not an ugly one, and get Auntie Maude darling to explain what Father means by this letter tale. Little Terrier says I must go to bed. Goodnight
my
darling little Daughter, my “
Little Nell
.”

Miss Tomes was a good teacher who knew how to hold the children's interest, and Eleanor was a diligent pupil. Despite her initial humiliation, she gradually gained self-confidence—only long division eluded her. Usually Mr. Roser urged his girls to skip it on the assumption that well-bred women did not go on to college and would not need mathematics, but her father, while sympathetic, urged her not to give up.

I know division, especially long division, seemed to me at your age a very tiresome and uninteresting study. I too longed to be in fractions—or
infractious
but I found afterwards that it had been better,—as it turns out nine times out of ten, that I stood out against my own impatience and lack of desire to become informed, and devoted myself—howbeit against the grain—to the study of the
life and the interests of those of God's creation, whom He calls not his own.

Arithmetic aside, she did well. “Your letter was undoubtedly without mistake, so far as the spelling is to be considered, and I congratulate and praise you upon the same. You should be proud of, my daughter, Mr. Rosa's [
sic
] unlooked for compliment as to your book, and commendation of the good behavior of so young a child.” She was also doing well in French, not surprisingly since she had spoken French before English and there had always been someone who spoke French in the house as long as her mother had been alive.
²
She liked her French teacher Mlle. LeClerq, and even though she thought memorizing passages of the New Testament in French a waste of time, she dutifully did so. “I have received your beautifully written French note of the 26th,” her father wrote her. “I see well que vos leçons de français vous fait beaucoup de bien, même en style et en facilité il faut me corriger toujours quand je fait des fautes en vous écrivant.”

Eleanor's school work was soon so good that she was singled out for advanced work. Bursting with importance, she reported to her Uncle Eddie.

March 2d, (1894)

Dear Uncle Edie

I hope you are well and Mr. Wright also. Are you having a lovely time in Morroco with hunts and pig sticks and oh so many horses, I should think you were having a beautiful time with so many things to do. Are the people out there very bad ones?

Now I want to tell you about what I am going to have next May in schooll, a written examination in History and Geographay and I am the youngest one who is to have it.

With a great deal of love from all and a great deal from me I am your little niece.

Eleanor.

At Easter time she sent her father books and he sent her white violets, “which you can put in your Prayer book at the XXIII Psalm and you must know they were Grandmother Roosevelt's favorite flower.” Eleanor did not have to be told what the XXIII Psalm was; her mother had encouraged her to learn by heart many verses from the Bible. “Is there anything else in life that can so anchor them to the right?” had
been Anna's view. Elliott was no less religious. He sang in the choir of the little Episcopal church in Abingdon and was a favorite of the local clergy. She wore his flowers to church, Eleanor wrote her father, who replied, “I thought of
You all day long
and blessed you and prayed for your happiness and that of your precious small brothers.” There were always special “love messages” for the little boys, Ellie and Brudie, in his letters to her.

Tragedy struck the little household again in May, when both boys came down with scarlet fever. Elliott hastened to New York and sadly telegraphed the Ludlows, to whom Eleanor had been sent, to prepare the little girl for the worst. In addition, he wrote his daughter “to let you know that dear little Ellie is very, very ill and may go to join dear Mother in Heaven. There is just a little chance that he may not die but the doctors all fear that he will.”

“Dear father,” Eleanor replied,

I write to thank you for your kind note and to tell you how sorry I am to hear Ellie is so sick, but we must remember Ellie is going to be safe in heaven and to be with Mother who is waiting there and our Lord wants Ellie boy with him now, we must be happy and do God's will and we must cheer others who feel it to. You are alright I hope. I play with the [name indistinct] every day.

It is so cold here that Uncle Ned wears a fur overcoat. I met a lady that used to live down at hemmestid and she new me right away.

Goodbye give my love to all and Ellie and Brudie to and for you O so much love.

Nell.

Monday [May 29, 1893]

My darling little Nell,

I am so glad you wrote Father such a sweet note on Saturday. I received it today and it has comforted me a great deal to know my little daughter was well and happy.

Ask Aunt Maggie to tell you what a sad day today was for all of us. I do not want to write it to you though I would tell you if your dear golden head was on my breast; my dear,
loved
little Nell. But do not be sad my Pretty, remember Mother is with Ellie and Aunt Gracie now.

I sent Morris, my groom, on with your pony and cart tomorrow afternoon's boat so that he will deliver him to you on Wednesday morning with Father's tender love to his sweet Daughter. You must
get Aunt Maggie's coachman to teach you how to drive him. He is
perfectly gentle
and only needs reasonable handling for you to drive him
alone
. Tell Aunt Maggie this. In fact let Aunt Maggie or Uncle Ned read this letter. I wish I could be with you to teach you how to drive myself but that can not be. Thank Aunt Maggie for asking me to come on after the 22nd and say that I am writing her.

With a heart full of love,

Ever fondly, your Father.

Sympathetic and considerate as Grandma Hall and Great-Aunt Maggie were, Eleanor had only one thought, one purpose—to rejoin her father. That alone would be home. But the family dared not entrust the children to him. “I cannot tell you dear little girl,” he wrote her two weeks after Ellie's death, “when you are coming home until I have seen Grandma and consulted her.” Mrs. Hall informed Elliott that she did not want him to come to Tivoli during the summer, and that in August Eleanor would be going to Newport. Elliott pleaded with her to bring his children to the city or the seashore “where I can see them and enjoy a little love which my heart craves and for lack of which it has broken. Oh, Mrs. Hall, I have tried so hard and it has been so lonely & weary and the break down seems to me natural in my strained condition. Above all believe me it was not drunkenness. Let me see you soon please Mother. . . . ”