Eleanor and Franklin (75 page)

The sharpest disagreements between Eleanor and her husband were occasioned by his shifts on Prohibition and the League of Nations. She remained a teetotaler, an ardent advocate of Prohibition, and a supporter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. She would not have liquor or wine at her table and it offended her to learn that cocktails were served at the mansion in her absence. It had been difficult for her to go along with Franklin when at the 1930 Governors' Conference he suggested a states' rights solution of the enforcement
problem. She had had great hopes for the Volstead Act, yet “when I see the terrible things that have grown out of it, such as graft and bootlegging, one begins to wonder about it,” and she was realistic enough to see that enforcement was not working. But when Franklin went beyond states' rights and called for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, Eleanor disagreed sharply. “She was,” commented Sam Rosenman, “a rather inflexible person, rather high-minded and averse to compromise. She had very set ideas.”
⁴¹

Although Louis was disdainful of Sam and Doc and was usually allied with Eleanor, on the Prohibition issue he, too, considered her unrealistic.
⁴²
Eleanor's ally in this case was Sara, who was also a Prohibitionist by conviction. “I don't want my son to be elected if he has to be elected on a ‘wet' ticket,” she told a group of Roosevelt's political associates. But Roosevelt and Howe approached the issue politically, and were quite reconciled to see the “great experiment” torpedoed.

The other source of tension between Eleanor and her husband in the spring of 1932 was his retreat from supporting the League of Nations and the World Court. After he became governor, Roosevelt, one of the country's most prominent Wilsonians, fell silent on the issue of adherence to the Court on the grounds that as a governor he should stick to state affairs and not get involved in foreign-policy issues. Eleanor, on the other hand, continued to work with Esther Lape for ratification of the World Court. Pleas for action over her signature were sent to all Democratic senators, and she asked the Democratic national committeewomen from their states to get after any senators who did not respond.
⁴³
“You do stick to the Court through thick and thin,” Mrs. Catt wrote her admiringly in March, 1930.

Until 1932 Roosevelt had managed to escape attack on the issue through a policy of public silence and private assurances to World Court partisans that he was still with them. Now William Randolph Hearst, launching a boom for Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas, began to fulminate against internationalism and the Wilsonians, urging instead an “America First” policy. His first blast named Roosevelt, Newton Baker, Owen D. Young, even Al Smith, but the attack was soon limited to Roosevelt. In front-page editorials with big black type the Hearst papers quoted his pro–League of Nations statements in 1920. By the end of January Howe was advising Franklin that “You may have to make a public statement before we get through, if this gets any more violent.” The struggle over whether to appease Hearst raged among Roosevelt's advisers. Rosenman thought
Eleanor was rigid on this issue, too, even more so than on Prohibition: “She had an awful lot of faith in the World Court as the only thing to rally around once the League of Nations was out of the question.”
⁴⁴
Roosevelt tried to avoid public repudiation of the League and the Court by sending Jim Farley to the editors of Hearst's
New York American
to reassure them about Roosevelt's views on internationalism. The assurances should be given “to the public, publicly, not to me privately,” Hearst stated on the front page next day. Finally, Roosevelt capitulated, and in a speech to the New York State Grange said he did not favor American participation in the League of Nations. He was even ready to turn his back on the Court, but Hearst seemed satisfied and the Wilsonians were up in arms. Cordell Hull, who had been drawn to Roosevelt by his internationalism and was one of the most influential supporters of his candidacy, was deeply upset by Roosevelt's speech. Colonel House warned Howe, “What you said about the League has already strained their loyalty, and many of them have told me that if you take the same position on the World Court they cannot support you.”

Agnes Leach was one of the angry Wilsonians who had occasion to see Roosevelt at the time. “I couldn't believe my eyes,” she said to him. “That was a shabby statement. I just don't feel like having lunch with you today.”

Franklin was taken aback. “I am sorry you are in that mood. One reason I wanted you here today is that Eleanor is very fond of you and you can make peace between us. She hasn't spoken to me for three days.”
⁴⁵

When Eleanor heard about the incident she immediately phoned her friend: “Agnes, you are a sweet, darling girl. I hear you upset Franklin very much. I didn't know you had it in you.” He was eager for Eleanor's approval, Mrs. Leach felt, and cared “a terrific lot about her opinion” even if he disregarded it.

Roosevelt's reversal on the League, his ambiguities on Prohibition, and his efforts to avoid a showdown with Tammany produced widespread doubt about the strength of his convictions. Heywood Broun called him “a corkscrew,” Elmer Davis thought him the “weakest” of the candidates for the nomination, and Walter Lippmann described him as “an amiable man with many philanthropic impulses” who was “not the dangerous enemy of anything.” (Eleanor saved that column.) Many years later, Eleanor's radio and television agent, Thomas L. Stix, who idolized her, confessed that he had voted for Norman Thomas
in 1932. “So would I,” she reassured him, “if I had not been married to Franklin.”
⁴⁶

Political discontent merged with personal unhappiness, as is revealed briefly in a letter she sent Molly after having lunch with her: “Of course there is no other candidate who will do more what we want. I simply had a fit of rebellion against the male attitude. I've had one before but sober sense does come to my rescue & I feel better when I realize that I've thought primarily about myself.”
⁴⁷

“Can't you see that loyalty to the ideals of Woodrow Wilson is just as strong in my heart as it is in yours,” one of Roosevelt's letters to an irate Wilsonian began, and went on to explain that his ideals had not changed, only his methods of achieving them—“and for heaven's sake have a little faith.” He might almost have been arguing with his wife.

“It was all unnecessary,” wrote Mrs. Charles Hamlin to Josephus Daniels about Roosevelt's repudiation of the League. But was it? A moment came in the Democratic convention three months later at the end of the third ballot when the stop Roosevelt movement still kept him short of the two-thirds vote needed for nomination. Several states—Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama—were being held in the Roosevelt ranks with difficulty. If Roosevelt did not gain decisively on the fourth ballot, his ranks might break and disintegrate. After consulting with Howe, Farley went to work on Texas, which along with California had been voting for Garner. Hearst was one of the keys to the California-Texas alliance, and Roosevelt leaders telephoned him at San Simeon to urge him to support a switch. He agreed. Would he have done so if Roosevelt had not satisfied him on the issue of the League? There is no absolute answer to the “ifs” of history, but it seems a reasonable conjecture that if Roosevelt had not compromised on this issue he might not have won the nomination. And if he had not been president when the Hitler menace broke out, would another man have promoted the Wilsonian cause as faithfully and effectively as he did?

Franklin was the politician, she the agitator, Eleanor said in later years.
⁴⁸
“Mrs. Roosevelt's hand is almost exactly complementary to the hand of her husband,” an authority in palmistry wrote. “By this I mean she has just the sort of character that will supplement and aid the character of the Governor.”
⁴⁹
They made a splendid team, but that was not the way it seemed to her at the time. She was a deeply divided woman as the convention neared. She was happy for Franklin—and Louis—as the states fell in line (“So Tennessee is in!” she wrote him on May 21, as things went according to schedule; “Jim Farley grins
more broadly with each State!”), but she saw her husband's entry into the White House as portending a kind of gilded captivity for her.

Friends were baffled by her calmness, almost detachment, as the convention began. She took several hours off on the opening day to drive through a thunderstorm to visit Margaret Doane Fayerweather, an old friend who was recuperating from a very serious operation. For an hour she sat at Margaret's bedside, her knitting needles busy. Not till she left was there a word of politics. Then Margaret, unable to contain herself asked, “What are your plans?”

“Well, we shall either be flying to Chicago—or staying quietly at home.”

“We shall be praying that you will be flying to Chicago.”

“The time when we shall need your prayers will be if Franklin is nominated and elected.”
⁵⁰

When the long night of the nominations began she was with Franklin, who was in his shirtsleeves, silent, waiting. Sara was at the governor's mansion as were Elliott and John, Missy, Grace Tully, and Sam Rosenman. When the speechmaking ended and the balloting began it was 4:20
A.M
., and Eleanor sent out pots of coffee to the newsmen, who had established a listening post in the garage. As roll call followed roll call, Franklin chain-smoked and Eleanor knitted a turtle-neck sweater for asthma-wracked Louis who was in Chicago. At 9:15
A.M
., after the inconclusive third ballot, the convention recessed. Sara found the suspense too upsetting and left for Hyde Park, indignant that some of the “gentlemen” in the New York delegation had voted against her son. The others tried to get a little sleep. Eleanor was the first to come down and was preparing to have breakfast with Louis Howe's grandson when she encountered two Associated Press reporters on their way out after the all-night vigil. Would Miss Hickok and Mr. Fay join her, she asked them. The breakfast went pleasantly, but to the two reporters Eleanor seemed withdrawn, not at all involved in the drama of the tense hours between the third and the final ballots. Fay thought she was worried that her husband would not get the nomination. More perceptively, Lorena Hickok, a woman in her late thirties, observed, “That woman's unhappy about something.”
⁵¹

At dinner that night the telephone call came for which Roosevelt had been waiting. “F.D., you look just like the cat that swallowed the canary,” said Missy. Later the news was on the radio: McAdoo announced that California had not come to Chicago to deadlock a convention but to elect a president and was switching to Roosevelt.
“Good old McAdoo,” said Roosevelt, smiling contentedly. “The rest of the study was a bedlam,” Grace Tully recalled. “Mrs. Roosevelt and Missy LeHand embraced each other. Both embraced me. John and Elliott tossed scratch paper in the air and shook hands as if they hadn't seen each other in years. Mrs. Roosevelt came down out of the clouds before the rest of us. ‘I'm going to make some bacon and eggs,' she announced.”
⁵²

Albany neighbors gathered on the front lawn to cheer. Roosevelt exchanged quips with the photographers and reporters who had come crowding in from the garage. The women reporters, including the owl-eyed Miss Hickok, found Mrs. Roosevelt scrambling eggs. “Mrs. Roosevelt, aren't you
thrilled
at the idea of being in the White House?” one of them “gushed.” Mrs. Roosevelt's only reply, Miss Hickok noted, was a look so unsmiling that it stopped all further questions along that line. Lorena Hickok's intuition that here was a woman strangely unhappy as her husband moved toward the presidency became a bond between the two women, and before the campaign was over she was receiving Eleanor's confidence. “I'm a middle-aged woman,” she said to Miss Hickok on her forty-eighth birthday. “It's good to be middle-aged. Things don't matter so much. You don't take it so hard when things happen to you that you don't like.”
⁵³

34.
“I NEVER WANTED TO BE A PRESIDENT'S WIFE”

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE NOMINATION
R
OOSEVELT FLEW TO
Chicago as a way of serving notice on the country that a new energetic leadership was prepared to take command. Eleanor accompanied him, as did Elliott and John, Sam, Missy, Grace, and two bodyguards, Gus and Earl. Eleanor was the first to emerge from the plane. “A fine job, Mr. Farley. Congratulations!” she said, extending her hand to the beaming chairman. Struck by her poise and composure, Emma Bugbee of the
New York Herald Tribune
commented that she was “one of the calm people of the world.”
¹
Someone asked her whether her life would not “belong to the public after this,” and she quickly replied, “It never has and never could.”