Eleanor and Franklin (24 page)

[Oct. 3, 1903]

Tivoli

Friday

Dear Franklin

Many thanks for your note & the “token from the sea,” which I think I should have sent to someone else however, don't you?

Hall wrote me that he had seen you at Groton last Sunday. It was kind of you to look him up when you must have had so much to do. I hope he is all right. I can't tell much from his letters.

Did you have to work very hard on the “Crimson”? I hoped someone would turn up to help in the end.

I am so anxious to hear what you have decided to do this year & also whether you can come here on the 16th. I am hoping that you will be able to get down & of course I would like you to come back here after the game on the 17th if Cousin Sally does not mind & you are willing to stay in this quiet spot.

Please don't do anything you don't want to do however as I shall quite understand if you decide to go to Hyde Park instead of coming here.

Is the address on this right?

Yours in haste,

Eleanor Roosevelt.

“It is not so much brilliance as effort that is appreciated here,” wrote Franklin in his first editorial, addressed to the freshman class—the “determination to accomplish something.” He felt that with Eleanor at his side his own great dreams would stand a better chance of realization. “It was nice of you to write me,” Eleanor said in her next letter, “and you know quite well you need not apologize for writing about yourself. I should think history and political economy would be most interesting and much the most useful for you in the future and
of course
you are going to get an A.M.”

An indignant reproach in the same letter made it clear that this was more than cousinly advice. “What were you thinking of when you wrote not to tell me whether you could get down on the 16th and come to me or not?” she asked. She cared a great deal, even if convention prescribed that she betray no interest in him and even if her grandmother looked askance when she received a letter from a man. Franklin had not replied to Eleanor because he had wanted to find out first what his mother was planning for the week end of the Harvard–West Point game. Who was coming on the sixteenth, he had written her. “Are H. [Helen] Cutting, Eleanor and Moo [Muriel Robbins] coming to us?” Everything was arranged satisfactorily, and although it poured on the day of the game it was a joyful week end for Franklin and Eleanor. “Harvard wins 5 to 0,” he recorded in his Line-A-Day, “Eleanor and I catch train, others miss it, drive up from Poughkeepsie.” An unexpected participant in some of their gaieties was Alice Roosevelt, who that week end was a guest of the Ogden Millses at their estate a few miles up the Hudson at Staatsburgh; she came down, escorted by a young man, for tea.

“Cousin Sally [Sara Roosevelt] was very sad after you left on Sunday,” Eleanor reported to Cambridge, “and the only thing which cheered her at all was the thought of having you on the 3d all to herself.” The romance was flourishing. She now signed herself “Your affectionate cousin” and made her plans with his in mind. She had been invited to a party at the Levi Mortons' and was unable to decide whether or not to go; however, “I think I'll chance there being someone there I like and accept.”

She worried about his health. “I suppose you are hard at work now, but please be a little careful of your eyes, for it is really foolish to fool with them you know, and besides it worries Cousin Sally so when you are not all right. She spoke of it several times after you had gone.” But then, a little conscience-stricken that she might sound too
schoolma'amish, she apologized. “I am afraid this letter has a good deal of horrid advice in it. Please remember, however, that you have told me I was ‘grandmotherly' and don't blame me too much!”

Grandmotherly! Do Prince Charmings fall in love with “grandmotherly” young ladies? Yes, if under his gay surface the prince harbors large ambitions that require a helpmate rather than a playfellow to bring them to fruition. “Even at that age,” recalled Isabella Greenway, who, as a debutante, took New York society by storm in 1904, “life had, through her orphanage, touched her and made its mark in a certain aloofness from the careless ways of youth. The world had come to her as a field of responsibility rather than as a playground.”
⁹

Neither young Roosevelt was leading a monastic life. Franklin's letters to his mother spoke of a “small dance” at the golf club, a visit to Beverly, a swimming party at the home of Alice Sohier, a Boston belle, week ends at New Bedford. Eleanor moved from one country house to another: one week end she was at Llewellyn Park, Cousin Susie's estate in the fashionable Oranges; she spent another at Ophir Hall, the Westchester establishment of Whitelaw Reid, owner of the
New York Tribune
and the father of Jean Reid, Eleanor's associate at Rivington Street; and she accepted the invitation of Franklin's cousin Muriel Robbins to attend the Tuxedo Ball. The Boston Brahmins had created Brook Farm; New York society had Tuxedo Park, a 600,000-acre country club community thirty miles from New York City whose “cottages” were casemented in the English style, whose clubhouse was staffed with English servants, and whose grounds were enclosed by a high fence to guard against intruders from the lower orders.

“I am glad you think I am going to enjoy the Tuxedo Ball,” she wrote Franklin. “I do not feel quite so confident as I haven't seen any of my last winter's friends in so long that I fully expect to be forgotten.” Did she go to the ball in order to prove to him that she was not too “grandmotherly”? “Tuxedo was great fun,” her next letter insisted, “and I only wish you had been there, though I don't doubt you had a more restful time wherever you were, as we were up till all hours of the night, which nearly finished me.” She would be going up to the Mortons' on the 3:30 train and if he did not have to go up earlier “it would be splendid to go up together.” There was a mild rebuke in this letter, one that would be repeated often in the future. “By the way do you know you were an ‘unconscionable' time answering my last letter and you would not be hearing from me so promptly if I did not want you surely to lunch with me on the 14th.” Sara Roosevelt's entry in
her journal for November 14 indicated that the Morton week end had worked out as Eleanor had planned.

Got up at 7 and at 7:30 Franklin and Lyman came from Boston. After they had their baths, we all had breakfast and we all lunched with Eleanor at Sherry's, also her cousin Mrs. Parish. We came up at 3:30 and Eleanor, Franklin and Lyman went up to Ellerslie to the Mortons to spend Sunday.

Ellerslie was another palatial country house, high above the Hudson at Rhinecliff, owned by Levi P. Morton, who had been governor of New York and vice president under Benjamin Harrison. The Morton girls were sophisticated and fun-loving, temperamentally closer to Alice than to Eleanor. “I am glad you enjoyed the Morton's,” Eleanor wrote Franklin, “as I thought it very pleasant.” Her praise of the party was tepid, but her comments on a poem that Franklin had sent her on his return to Cambridge were much livelier. She thought it was “splendid” poetry, “but what ideals you have to live up to! I like ‘Fear nothing and be faithful unto death,' but I must say I wonder how many of ‘we poor mortals' could act up to that!”
*

In mid-October Franklin invited her to Cambridge for the Harvard-Yale game, after which he hoped to join her at Groton during her visit to Hall. She would accept, she replied, if Muriel Robbins and her mother also were going. Muriel's brother Warren was at Harvard and they could chaperone her. On Saturday, November 21, Franklin wrote in his diary:

In town at 10:30 and Eleanor and I walk to the Library, see the pictures, and then walk up Beacon Hill. I out to lunch in Cambridge and lead the cheering at the Harvard-Yale game, 16–0, but our team does well. Show Eleanor my room and see them off to Groton.

The next day he followed Eleanor to Groton and spent the day with her, beginning with church in the morning and ending with chapel in
the evening. During this visit to Groton he proposed to her. How he put it we do not know. Some biographers have written that he said, “I have only a few bright prospects now,” to which the nineteen-year-old Eleanor is said to have replied, “I have faith in you. I'm sure you'll really amount to something someday.”
¹¹
This account leaves one dissatisfied. Another version seems more in character. According to this account, Franklin said that he was sure he would amount to something some day, “with your help,” and the surprised girl replied, “Why me? I am plain. I have little to bring you.”
¹²

Eleanor returned to New York trembling with excitement even though she was beset by questions. She found Franklin irresistible, but was he sure? Was she? What would happen to her brother Hall? What was her duty to her grandmother? And, as so often in her life, her joy was shadowed by tragedy. Her Great-Uncle James King Gracie had died, and her first letter to Franklin after the Groton week end first dwelt on that. “I am more sorry than I can say for he has always been very kind and dear to us and he and Aunt Gracie both loved my Father very dearly and so it is just another link gone.” She was worried, too, about her Aunt Corinne, for whom the death was a terrible blow and who was “almost crazy” with grief.

In spite of it all I am very happy. I have been thinking of many things which you and I must talk over on Sunday. Only one thing I want to tell you now. Please don't tell your Mother you have to come down to see Mr. Marvin on Sunday, because I never want her to feel that she has been deceived & if you have to tell her I would rather you said you were coming to see me for she need not know why. Don't be angry with me Franklin for saying this, & of course you must do as you think best. Ellen told me they were all coming down Saturday night by boat so you will have plenty of company. Please don't get tired out this week & try to rest a little bit at Fairhaven. I am afraid this letter sounds very doleful, for I really am sorry about dear Uncle Gracie & the whole day has been a bit trying so please forgive me & the next will be cheerier & more coherent I hope! Goodnight,

Always affectionately

Eleanor Roosevelt.

Her next letter reveals something of what she and Franklin had said to each other that Sunday in Groton. It represents the first time she felt free to give voice to the strength of her feeling for Franklin.

Tuesday night

[Nov. 24, 1903]

Franklin dear,

I promised that this letter should be cheerier so I don't suppose I ought to write to-night for the day has been very trying. I wanted to tell you though that I
did
understand & that I don't know what I should have done all day if your letter had not come. Uncle Gracie's funeral is to be on Friday at ten. I have been twice to-day to Auntie Corinne's & I have promised to spend to-morrow morning there also. She looks so worn & I wish I could do something more to help her. She seems to have every thing to arrange & settle. Teddy came this afternoon I am thankful to say so he will be some help to her & a great comfort. I am dreading Friday. I know I ought not to feel as I do or even to think of myself but I have not been to a funeral in ten years & it makes me shudder to think of it. The others have all gone to the play so I am all alone to-night as I would of course go nowhere this week, & I have been thinking & wishing that you were here. However, I know it is best for you not [to] come until Sunday & for me also as I should be a very dreary not to say a very weary companion just at present & there are so many things I know I ought to think of before I see you again. I am afraid so far I've only thought of myself & I don't seem to be able to do anything else just now.

Do you remember the verse I tried to recite to you last Sunday? I found it to-day & I am going to write it out for you, because it is in part what it all means to me:

Unless you can think when the song is done,

No other is left in the rhythm;

Unless you can feel, when left by one,

That all men else go with him;

Unless you can know, when upraised by his breath,

That your beauty itself wants proving;

Unless you can swear,
“For life, for death!”

Oh, fear to call it loving!

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day

On the absent face that has fixed you;

Unless you can love, as the angels may,

With the breath of heaven betwixt you;

Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,

Through behooving & unbehooving;

Unless you can die when the dream is past—

Oh, never call it loving!
¹³

I wondered if it meant “for life, for death” to you at first but I know it does now. I do not know what to write. I cannot write what I want. I can only wait & long for Sunday when I shall tell you all I feel I cannot write.

Goodnight. I hope you will all have a very happy Thanksgiving at Fairhaven & please don't get tired out by working at night.

Always devotedly

Eleanor.

She had wondered whether she, too, cared enough to be able to say that it was “for life, for death,” and she discussed her feelings with Cousin Susie on her return to New York. Whatever her cousin's response, Eleanor's “great curiosity” about life and her “desire to participate in every experience that might be the lot of woman” pulled her toward marriage. She was swept up by “the urge to be a part of the stream of life,” and it seemed entirely natural and right to her to say yes to Franklin.
¹⁴

Franklin, meanwhile, had gone to Fairhaven, the Delano clan's gathering place, where he told his mother that he had proposed to Eleanor. “Franklin gave me quite a startling announcement,” she wrote in her journal. Then he went to New York where there was a note from Eleanor: “Mrs. Parish wants you to lunch with us tomorrow if you can and also to take tea with us. I do hope that you will come to both if you can for I want you every minute of your stay.”