Eleanor and Franklin (35 page)

In the autumn of 1908 Franklin and Eleanor moved into a house Sara had had built for them at 49 East Sixty-fifth Street. She had announced her intentions at Christmas in 1905, and the following year had acquired the land and hired Charles A. Platt, the designer of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to draw up plans for adjoining houses—one for herself and one for the young couple—like the Ludlow-Parish houses on Seventy-sixth Street. The two houses' drawing and dining rooms opened onto each other, there was a connecting door on the fourth floor, and they had a common vestibule.

When Franklin came home on their first evening in the new house, he found his wife in tears. This was not her house, she sobbed. She had not helped plan it, and this wasn't the way she wanted to live. Why hadn't she told him this before, her bewildered husband asked. They had gone over the plans together—why hadn't she spoken up? He told her gently that she was not seeing things as they really were, and quickly left the room.
⁶

If Sara knew of Eleanor's unhappiness, she did not admit it, even to herself. “Some of [my] friends were surprised,” she told her biographer twenty-five years later, that Franklin and Eleanor had not lived with her after their marriage. That had never occurred to her, she blandly averred; she valued her independence too highly.
⁷
“You were never quite sure when she would appear, day or night,” Eleanor later said of the connecting doors.
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With all her benevolence and breeding, Sara was an autocrat and rather enjoyed being regarded as the “redoubted madam” by her staff. She would have been surprised and hurt, however, if she had been told she was trying to rule her children's lives. She was a matriarch who belonged completely to a past generation; she sought to dominate her children's lives as she had dominated her husband's—from behind a façade of total generosity, submission, and love.

“Last night we had such a funny time,” Eleanor wrote from Seabright to Nova Scotia, where Franklin was on a hunting expedition with Hall.

You would have enjoyed it for Anna gave Mama a little exhibition of her will power! She wished to sit on a certain chair and Grandma thought by talking to her and diverting her mind she could be made to sit on another and the result was shrieks and G'ma rapidly took to the desired chair.

When she ceased to weep I said “Oh! Anna where did you get all your determination from?” and she looked up at Mama and said “Gaga!”

Of course I almost expired for it did hit the nail so beautifully on the head.

Sara's husband had advised her never to be materially dependent upon her children, but it was all right, she told Eleanor, to have her children be dependent on her. “I think she always reverted that my husband had money of his own from his father and that I had a small incomes of my own,” Eleanor said many years later. Their son James stated it more bluntly: “Granny's ace in the hole . . . was the fact that she held the purse strings in the family. For years she squeezed all of us—Father included—in this golden loop.”

Few in the family were aware that Eleanor found total subordination to her mother-in-law increasingly oppressive. She did confide, often tearfully, Laura Delano said, in Laura's mother, Mrs. Warren Delano, who lived around the corner. But if she could tell Aunt Jennie, Laura wondered, why couldn't she have had it out with her husband and her mother-in-law?
⁹

A few of her closest friends eventually became aware of the situation and concluded that she kept silent because she did not wish to do anything that might disturb the relationship between mother and son. Moreover, she could not bear being scolded or rebuked herself. She had developed a sixth sense for Sara's velvety “yes” that really meant “no” and was so sensitive even to these indirect reproaches that she preferred to swallow her discontent. That was the period, a friend recalled, when she was saying “Yes, Mama” or “No, Mama” three or four times in a row.
¹⁰
She was “very dependent” on her mother-in-law, Eleanor said forty years later; she had needed Sara's help “on almost every subject and never thought of asking for anything which I felt would not meet with her approval.”
¹¹
But this self-subordination exacted its toll in self-doubt, bottled-up anger, and withdrawal into those “Griselda moods” that her husband found so puzzling.

Whatever Eleanor's private frustrations, Sara was oblivious of them
in her diaries, which were a serene chronicle of the things she did with Franklin and Eleanor and their children: “A little dinner for F. & E.” “To town early. Arranged flowers for F. & E.'s lunch of 22 for the T.R. family.” “Today E. & I walked to church.” In 1908 Eleanor was pregnant for the third time, and a diary she kept briefly before the baby was born revealed only that, like other young wives, she moved in a world that was still limited to family and old friends, to familiar surroundings and activities. She was very precise in noting the time Franklin came in and when he went out alone. She dined alone with Sara, she recorded in January, 1909, while Franklin went to a dinner pary with Teddy Robinson, played poker at the Knickerbocker Club, and “returned home 4 A.M.” Two weeks later there was a similar entry: “F. went to Harvard Club dinner & got home 3:30 A.M. Dined with Mama.”

On Wednesday, March 17, she wrote, “St. Patrick's Day, Mother's birthday. Our fourth wedding anniversary!” The next day Franklin Jr. was born.

Again Sara recorded the event.

March 18th Eleanor had her beautiful hair washed, etc. and nails done. At 2 she went to drive with me. We got home at 4. At 5.30 Dr. Ely came. At 8.10 her second son was born. Franklin got home at 4.45 so he was there very soon after Eleanor got home from her drive. The baby is really lovely and very big, 11 lbs.

Franklin Jr. was indeed the biggest and most beautiful of all Eleanor and Franklin's babies. Eleanor had regretted letting Miss Spring go too quickly after the birth of James, and this time she insisted on keeping Miss Spring for several months.

In the summer of 1909 they returned to Campobello but stayed in a house of their own. Mrs. Hartman Kuhn, who had owned the cottage next door to Sara's, had become as fond of Eleanor, who frequently read to her, as she had always been of Franklin. She had died in 1908, and her will stipulated that Sara could have her house for $5,000, if she purchased it for Franklin and Eleanor. Sara did so.

This was the first house that Eleanor felt was her own. “I have moved every room in the house around,” she gaily reported to her husband, “and I hope you will like the change,” and he should bring up his caribou and wolf skins to spread in front of the fireplace. Now Franklin and Eleanor could have whomever they wished as guests
. Although Sara had encouraged them to invite friends when they stayed with her, her opinions of suitable guests had not always coincided with Eleanor's. Furthermore, Sara did not want her children to form close attachments outside the family circle. Eleanor liked Miss Spring, from whom she had learned a great deal, but when she lunched with Miss Spring she did not dare mention it to Sara and cautioned Franklin not to do so, “for Mama always seems to dislike my doing things with her!” Even after her first summer in her own house in Campobello Eleanor was fearful of Sara's reaction to the announcement that she was inviting Miss Spring to come up for part of the next summer.

“I broke it to Mama Miss Spring was coming up and put it all on you,” she advised her husband. Unable to stand up for herself and say “this is what I want,” she made use of others. It was a conscious tactic that she would employ in the White House years with great subtlety and sophistication in order to get Franklin to do the things which he might otherwise refuse to do if the suggestions came directly from her.

Eleanor was content at Campobello. The pace there was more sedate than at Bar Harbor or Newport. The summer families had a club of sorts and were satisfied with an occasional dance for which a Victor talking machine provided the music. Eleanor even liked the Bay of Fundy's fogs and its prolonged periods of foul weather, for she was an avid reader and enjoyed reading aloud to family and guests in front of the fireplace in the large living room.

She always arrived at Campobello determined on self-improvement. One summer she and Sara read all of Ferrero's volumes on Rome. She began to study Spanish with the help of recordings. “All my Spanish things are here,” she wrote Franklin, “but I am waiting for you to put my phonograph together!” Franklin did, but at the end of the summer she confessed she might never learn the language because she still had not mastered the art of making the phonograph work.

Until his marriage, Hall spent part of his summers at Campobello. Franklin enjoyed and admired his brilliant young brother-in-law, who had been chosen senior prefect at Groton. Whenever Hall arrived, a covey of girls would immediately gather around him, and Franklin and Eleanor spoke teasingly about “Hall and his harem.” Hall looked up to his sister, whose selflessness and devotion he appreciated. “I despair of hearing from Eleanor about herself,” he wrote Franklin from Groton. “I hope you will drop me a postal some time just to let me know how she is getting on.”

When Franklin had to be in New York, Eleanor tried to pinch-hit for him with the children in outdoor activities, and during the summer of 1909, when James was a year and a half and Anna a little over three, she took them sailing on the
Half Moon
. “I think they will sail rather seldom together as James goes round and round the cockpit and won't sit still and Anna kicks him whenever she can.” James had his defenses against Anna, however: “He is very naughty and poor Anna's arm is all blue where he bit her yesterday.”

There were fond letters from Eleanor and the children.

Dearest Honey—

The enclosure was dictated jointly by Anna & James on the
Half Moon
this afternoon. We got off at three but the wind was light & we didn't get up to G. South Bay but the chicks had supper on board & loved it.

This morning I took Anna & James to the beach & as there was no wind & the sun was hot I put on Anna's bathing suit & she waded until just before we came up when she sat down & kicked & splashed & then ran home & slept 2 hours! She is mad about it & James weeps because he can't sit down & when I say he must stop wading he kicks & howls with rage! . . .

Ever so much love.

(Enclosure)

E.R.

Dear Fadder,

I had my bathing suit on & go in the water & walked & sat down & splashed. (James) took off his shoes & stockings & was angry as he couldn't walk to the boat. In the morning I say “Good morning Half Moon, Captain, Mother, Old Mother Hubbard.

(Anna) I wouldn't like to go away from Campobello.

(James) Poor Fadder go to New York.

(A. & J.) Like Fadder to come back soon.

Anna's kiss . . . made by herself.

James' kiss

Your loving

Anne & James

And there were the detailed orders from an efficient wife in cool Campobello to a husband in the sweltering city. “I enclose my list of things to be done,” she wrote Franklin, “and I am sorry for you.”

Ask Mary if she knows of two good,
honest
cleaners to come on Monday, Sept. 13th & start at the roof & clean down & be through on Sept. 21st. To take great care with the white paint & get it clean also sun the children's mattresses on the roof & beat them well the last day. I think it would be well for you to ask Harriet to do the library & tell her to take all the books out, wipe them & put them back. She ought to do it in three days & as she can't work steadily I would tell her that we will only pay her $1. a day. The other cleaners get $1.50.

Telephone R. H. Morisson 73rd St. & 3d Avenue to clean all the chimneys between the 9th & 11th as it must be over before the cleaning begins. Also find out from Max if the [word indistinct] cap is on the chimney as we don't want more work than necessary done after the house is clean.

Bring me Aug. & Sept. Harper's when you come. Go to Putnam's & order some nice book not more than $5. sent to Miss Ellen Shipman, Windsor, Vermont, with enclosed card.

If Mary knows no cleaners ask Harriet.

I am anxiously waiting for the wash trunk. Was Mary at the house when you got home? Will you ask her when the trunk left? Don't forget to look in both houses for [words indistinct]. Tell me what Dr. Dailey's bill was. Send Hall his check book.

Subsequent letters supplemented these instructions.

Their return to New York that autumn was shadowed by the illness of Franklin Jr. Although he weighed eleven pounds at birth, he seemed delicate, like James, and Miss Spring was with the family at Campobello most of the summer to care for him. They were worried about his rapid breathing, but they were not prepared for the worsening in his condition that set in late in October. Sara reported the course of the crisis in her journal and the reaction of the three of them to the tragedy.

Oct. 29
. Baby cried often in the morning, but was sleeping sweetly in the pram at 12.30 when I went in a motor to the Olins for lunch. Mrs. Howard with me. At 2, Annie the housemaid telephoned me to come as Baby was ill. I
flew
home. . . . Dr. Gribbon was here, holding precious Baby. He just got there in time as the little heart had almost stopped. . . . I telephoned E. she and F. came at 8.30 bringing Miss Spring. Dr. Gribbon stayed till 11.

Oct. 30th
. . . . they all leave on the 9.30 train. . . . Dr. Winters in N.Y. confirms Dr. Gribbon that it is serious heart trouble. Some hope is held out. Darling Eleanor is brave and Franklin helps and supports her hopeful spirit.

Oct. 31st
. Eleanor says Baby had a fair night and is quiet. They are hopeful. At 2.30 Franklin telephoned me not so well. I went to town, though just as I left, F. said “don't come down.” I simply had to go. When I got there, E. said, “Oh I am so glad you came.” . . .