Eleanor and Franklin (63 page)

Her major comfort was Louis. Except for week ends which he spent with his family in Fall River, he lived in the house. Eleanor had moved him up to the fourth floor, but he came to breakfast, was often at dinner, and was always ready to counsel her. There was little she did not talk over with him. The children continued to be resentful of Louis. “I had the room next to his,” James recalled.

We shared the bathroom. I thought him some kind of buddhist monk who burned incense. I didn't realize until later it was some kind of a health thing. I kind of resented the fact that he lived in the house and only later realized his contribution to Mother and Father.
²

Sara remained a source of anxiety. The more confidently Eleanor formulated her views on the rearing of children, the more firmly she resisted Sara's interference, but the older woman had her own ways of bending the children to her will. “Those were the years,” Franklin Jr. recalled, “when Granny referred to us as ‘my children. Your mother only bore . . . you.'”
³
She countermanded Franklin and Eleanor by permitting the children to have things their parents withheld as a form of discipline. If she felt neglected, she would threaten to leave the offenders out of her will. “She would sometimes say before all the children together—‘ . . . is nicer to me than the rest of you. I think I will leave my money to him.'”
⁴

James and Elliott were at Groton, but Anna, Franklin Jr., and Johnny were at home, the boys at the Buckley School, Anna finishing at Miss Chapin's. Eleanor arranged for each of the children in turn to spend part of their holidays with their father. She was in touch with Franklin's many friends who wanted to visit him—the Ledyards, de Rhams, Tom Lynch, Livy Davis, the Morgenthaus, Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley. Disabled though Franklin was, he was usually gay and full of high jinks, and people were more than ever drawn to him.

Eleanor could squeeze in only brief visits, but she was not at home on a boat. Franklin loved a relaxed atmosphere with much laughter, prankishness, and hours devoted to stamp albums and book catalogues,
which did not suit Eleanor, who was content only when she was doing something useful. Fortunately, Miss LeHand (now known as Missy) could go down and stay. Warm, competent, and attractive, she was totally devoted to the Roosevelts. Sara disapproved of this arrangement almost as strongly as she did of Louis living in the Sixty-fifth Street house, but Eleanor was grateful to the young woman. She knew that lack of mobility made the daily routines of life cumbersome and difficult for Franklin, and Missy's presence freed him from housekeeping anxieties and enabled him to stay in touch with the political world through a vast political correspondence, while it eased Eleanor's sense of guilt because she was unable to do more for him.

She herself went down for the first time in 1923, and the log of the
Weona II
, written by Franklin, suggested she was not unhappy to depart.

Eleanor, Louis Howe, Esther Lape went fishing along the viaduct and caught 20 “Jacks.” They packed each other's belongings (sic) and none of their own. From 3 p.m. till 5 they paced the hurricane deck in store clothes waiting anxiously for the train bearing the relief crew—(all of which were 2 hours late).
⁵

Although Eleanor may have had reservations about joining Franklin in the South, her arrival each year was eagerly awaited. “Could we commence the Sabbath in any better way than to proceed to the station to greet the heavenly Mrs. Roosevelt [who] was expected on the morning train from Miami,” wrote Julian Goldman, department-store magnate and legal client of Franklin's. The
Weona II
had been replaced by the
Larooco
, a ramshackle houseboat that Franklin and John S. Lawrence, Boston banker and Harvard friend, had jointly purchased. Frances de Rham recorded on the same day, “Mrs. F.D.R. unpacked—candy, mail, etc. and the serious business of cruising began. Mrs. F.D.R. entertained us at lunch with stories about the children.” Her final entry that day reported “E.R. sleeps on deck peacefully!” Mrs. Roosevelt, Goldman elaborated,

vindicated my high opinion of her by seizing the Heavenly deck for her sleeping quarters. Mosquitoes, flies, etc. mean nothing to her so long as the Citronella holds out. . . . The afternoon was spent by FDR . . . in catching a Fish—with Mrs. FDR . . . knitting and reading. . . . After the usual evening meal Mrs. FDR . . . joined Capt.
Charley in Evening Services which were concluded by all singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Further entries in the log noted that they played bridge “at which E.R. and J.G. are again winners!” They tied up at Key West and Eleanor and Missy went ashore for mail, tickets, and papers.

Find the Admiral occupying most of the front page of the papers again with project for rejuvenating Democratic Party. . . . J.G. and E.R. spend many hours in conversation—many subjects ranging from love and marriage to the price of clothes—Mr. Goldman perfectly happy!
⁶

In her diary Eleanor wrote, “Mr. G. is so good and so nice but loves to talk about himself.” Goldman left and the Henry Morgenthau, Jrs., arrived “tired and hot hollering for a bath. All overboard and have delightful half hour in the water. FDR swimming
much
better.”

A few days later Louis appeared “only 4 hours late . . .
much
conversation. . . . 4 beds arranged on the deck after violent discussion as to where which snore would annoy the least!” Louis and Eleanor played piquet, the rest parcheesi. The women swam in the early morning, clinging to the float because of sharks. “Much festivity in the evening,” the log for March 17 reported, “due to the fact that it is the 20th wedding anniversary of the FDR's. Speech, green table-cloth, place cards and refreshments! Moving speech by H.M. Jr. and a presentation to the Hon. FDR of a pair of
linnen
panties.” The next day there was “heavy gloom at the departure of E.R. and Missy.”

“Missy weeps because last A.M. on boat!” Eleanor noted. The exclamation point indicated her own feeling that getting back to terra firma was scarcely a reason for tears.

Though she was not enthusiastic about life on a houseboat, Eleanor felt it was helping her husband. When in 1925, discouraged by the costliness of the
Larooco
and the vagaries of wind and tide, he wrote that he might sell it and concentrate on Warm Springs, she replied,

I am sorry you ever thought of giving up the boat. I think you must have had a touch of that sadness which in spite of all its sunshine the Florida landscape always gives me! It is a bit dreary as a country but I liked the life better this time than ever before and tho' I'd like to find an ideal spot where you could swim daily still I do feel it is the
best thing now to do. I think you gain more at Warm Springs but it won't be practical in winter for a long time if it ever is and Florida does you
general
good which is important. I thought watching you swim you used your legs more than last summer. Don't worry about being selfish, it is more important that you have all you need and wish than anything else and you always give the chicks more than they need and you know I always do just what I want!
⁷

Eleanor accompanied Franklin when he first visited Warm Springs in 1924 at the suggestion of George Foster Peabody. The New York banker and philanthropist had acquired the ownership of this rundown resort built around “a miracle of warm water” gushing from a massive fissured rock “that never varied in temperature or quantity.”
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At the end of his first stay, Franklin wrote, “I walk around in water 4' deep without brace or crutches almost as well as if I had nothing the matter with my legs.”
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Warm Springs “does my legs more good than anything else.” He saw its possibilities as a therapeutic center and began to negotiate for its purchase.

The financial end worried Eleanor. “Don't let yourself in for too much money,” she begged Franklin,

and don't make Mama put in much for if she lost it she'd never get over it! I think you ought to ask her down to stay for a week, she's dying to go and hurt at not being asked. I'll bring her if you want and Missy could move out while she stayed.
¹⁰

Roosevelt purchased Warm Springs from Peabody in 1926 for $195,000, most of it money he had inherited from his father. Basil O'Connor, who in 1925 had become Franklin's law partner, did the legal work on the transaction. “Something tells me Peabody's doing all right,” he commented.
¹¹
Dr. LeRoy W. Hubbard, a New York orthopedic surgeon with considerable experience in polio therapy, was persuaded to supervise the medical end, and brought Helena T. Mahoney, a trained physiotherapist, with him as an assistant.

“I know you love creative work,” a dubious Eleanor wrote May 4, 1926,

my only feeling is that Georgia is somewhat distant for you to keep in touch with what is really a big undertaking. One cannot, it seems to me, have
vital
interests in widely divided places but that
may be because I'm old and rather overwhelmed by what there is to do in one place and it wearies me to think of even undertaking to make new ties. Don't be discouraged by me; I have great confidence in your extraordinary interest and enthusiasm. It is just that I couldn't do it.

Warm Springs prospered under Franklin's leadership and was approved by the American Orthopaedic Association. “Sixty-one patients is grand but I don't see where you put them,” Eleanor exclaimed a year later. In 1928 the Edsel Fords contributed $25,000 with which to enclose the pool in glass so that it could be used the year round. Franklin built a cottage which became, next to Hyde Park, the place that he loved best, and he stayed there for longer and longer periods. “I can't bear to have you away,” Eleanor wrote him at Thanksgiving, 1927. “Next year if you don't come home, I shall go up to Groton!” She was “not keen to get into Warm Springs life at all,” she told him when Johnny, her youngest, was about to enter boarding school, yet she would have to get involved, she felt, if she stayed “long or often.” The atmosphere of the rural South, with its poverty and the degradation of Negro and poor whites, depressed her.

She felt, too, that Warm Springs was Missy's domain, and there were times she resented this and was even jealous. On her way to join Franklin in Florida in 1925 she had chatted on a train with a lady who told her how she lived in New York in the winter and in Long Beach during the summer and was now on her way to Cuba to “visit some folks.” No, her husband did not mind; he was busy with the Elks and Masons at night and was at his office all day. “An unconscious tragedy told,” Eleanor commented in her diary. She had escaped that kind of loneliness by developing interests that were her own but that also fitted into Franklin's long-range political plans. Nevertheless, she, too, was a lonely woman. “No form of love is to be despised,” she wrote in her diary on the same trip, quoting from
The Constant Nymph
, which she was reading. Franklin did not offer the love for which she yearned, and she had to build her life around the acceptance of that fact. Theirs was now a carefully arranged relationship, but while behavior and action could be managed, she had less control over her feelings. She still was attracted by this man, still hoped and grieved that he could not show her the tenderness and unselfish devotion for which her spirit thirsted. So she was grateful to Missy and treated her almost as one of her children, and kept the pangs she suffered to herself.

Real maturity, she wrote at the end of her life in the little book
You Learn by Living
, was the ability to look at oneself honestly and acknowledge the fact that there is

a limitation in me. Here is a case where, because of some lack of experience or some personal incapacity, I cannot meet a situation; I cannot meet the need of someone whom I dearly love. . . . Either you must learn to allow someone else to meet the need, without bitterness or envy, and accept it; or somehow you must make yourself learn to meet it. . . . There is another ingredient of the maturing process that is almost as painful as accepting your own limitation and the knowledge of what you are unable to give. That is learning to accept what other people are unable to give. You must learn not to demand the impossible or to be upset when you do not get it.

That was the code she had worked out for herself; but her heart sometimes mutinied against that which her mind accepted as harsh necessity.

There were other reasons why she did not wish to become involved in Warm Springs. She was reluctant to have to fit into a life and place that belonged wholly to Franklin. Hyde Park bore the imprint of Sara's personality; Warm Springs that of Franklin's. She was developing her own style of life and did not want to give it up. She was, moreover, more useful to Franklin in New York. None of this persuaded Sara, who was constantly after her to spend less time on public activity and more with her husband and children. “It is nice to have Eleanor back,”
¹²
she wrote her son, “but I feel badly to have you so long without her.” But this rarely was an issue between husband and wife.

Since Franklin was unable to help his younger sons in outdoor activities, Eleanor set about overcoming her own disabilities. She learned to ice skate; she finally mastered swimming by taking lessons at the Y; and she even made an attempt at tennis. “I practiced serving for half an hour today and nearly had apoplexy!” In 1925 she, Nan, and Marion took Franklin Jr., Johnny, Hall's son Henry, and Dr. Draper's son George Jr. on a camping trip through the Adirondacks in the old seven-passenger Buick, then up to Quebec and to Campobello. If there were no public camping sites, Eleanor, the most persuasive member of the group, talked farmers into giving them permission to pitch tents in their fields. “Where are your husbands?” one farmer wanted to know. “Mine is not with me and the others don't have husbands,” she replied. “I don't want women of that kind,” the farmer said with finality.
¹³
Their arrival in Campobello was described in a letter Franklin, who was at Marion, sent to Rosy.