Kati Marton (11 page)

For a politician who was a prisoner of his wheelchair, particularly one determined that his infirmity go unnoticed, a trusted partner was essential. A politician must get out and listen to the people, letting them take his measure; Franklin could do this only in the most limited way. And thus his wife became his indispensable partner. “Walking was so difficult for him,” Eleanor wrote,

More and more, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “Missus” were accepted as partners.

Roosevelt was a man who knew what he wanted and who, within obvious limitations, lived his life exactly as he saw fit. He despised being alone, and his paralysis only reinforced that. Forced to part with Lucy
Mercer, he found someone else to fill the role that Eleanor did not. From 1921 until 1941 his secretary, Missy LeHand, was his unofficial “wife.” Pretty, adoring and devoted entirely to the man she alone called “F.R.,” Missy had virtually no other life but to serve him as secretary, companion and hostess during his wife’s absences. She was with him on his houseboat, the
Larooco,
and in Warm Springs when Eleanor was not. Unlike Eleanor, Missy shared his love of nonsense, never tired of hearing his stories, never interrupted. Missy, and not his wife, shared the dark days of his early physical rehabilitation, when it was noon before he could bear to face the world. Though she hated the water, she swam with him and accompanied him on long drives around the Georgia countryside. She fussed and clucked over him and worshipped him in a way that was alien to Eleanor’s personality.

There is little agreement among historians and family members as to whether the Missy-Franklin relationship was ever consummated. Some “experts” as well as members of his own family feel FDR would have been “too embarrassed” to have sex in his condition. But, unlike with Lucy, Franklin was quite open about this relationship, not its emotional or romantic content, but his need of Missy and their obvious rapport. “Everyone in the closely knit inner circle of father’s friends accepted it as a matter of course,” Elliott Roosevelt recalled. “I remember being only mildly stirred to see him with Missy on his lap as he sat in a wicker chair in the main stateroom [of the
Larooco]
holding her in his sun-browned arms, whose clasp we children knew so well …. He made no attempt to conceal his feeling about Missy.”

ELEANOR SEEMS NOT TO HAVE BEEN BLIND
to Missy’s role in her husband’s life. Shortly after William Bullitt, a wealthy businessman and diplomat, began dating Missy, FDR appointed him ambassador to Russia. Eleanor wrote her friend Lorena Hickock, “I wonder if that is why FDR has been so content to let Missy play with [Bullitt]!” “I once asked Mrs. Roosevelt,” Eleanor’s friend Trude Lash remembered, “if she thought her husband and Missy had an affair. She did not say no. She said she didn’t
think
he did.” Eleanor’s feelings for her husband were different now than they had been when she discovered his love affair with Lucy. But
still she was a proud woman, and Missy took pains not to arouse her. She made it seem as if her devotion was to both Roosevelts, rather than only to the man she loved. Outwardly, Eleanor embraced Missy, while at the same time she deftly put her in her place. “Missy was young and pretty and loved a good time,” Eleanor wrote, “and occasionally her social contacts got mixed with her work and made it hard for her and others. To me she was always kind and helpful and when I had to be away she took up without complaint the additional social responsibilities thrust upon her.” Eleanor was able to save face by treating Missy as a family retainer. “In the early days of Warm Springs,” Eleanor wrote, “Miss LeHand spent a good deal more time there than I could. I still had four children at home during the school year …. Also I was carrying on a certain amount of political activity ….”

Franklin and Eleanor turned a domestic situation that might have defeated less resilient souls to their mutual advantage. Eleanor was as free as he was to find her own happiness, within the boundaries of their marriage. “Somehow I wish that we could live in the same town these days,” she wrote Joseph Lash, her young friend from the antifascist student movement, “so if you wanted me at any time I could be available. As it is I just want you to know that having you near makes me happy and I hope it helps you.” In another letter advising Joe on his marriage, Eleanor is clear about what she herself had sought in love. “When you do come home and get engulfed in work, will you stop long enough now and then even if T. is working with you to make her feel she is first in your life, even more important than saving the world?
Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and the desire is the explanation for many strange things women do, if only men understood it!”
How modest and how
ordinary
this woman’s dream—and yet how far from the reality of her own marriage.

Franklin never actually admitted he could not walk. The press cooperated in his “splendid deception.” He made it a rule during his first campaign for governor that he was not to be photographed looking crippled. “No pictures of me getting out of the machine, boys,” he instructed newsmen who observed him being lifted in and out of his car. The request was honored and took on the weight of an executive order. During his presidency, if a newcomer violated the unwritten understanding,
the Secret Service moved in. The public was never to know of the effort it cost FDR to appear a healthy man. The years of saltwater baths, ultraviolet light, electric currents, walking with twenty-pound weights, parallel bars at waist height, the agonizing effort to strengthen his withered muscles were all masked by the jaunty smile and the triumphant tilt of his head. Polio and politics only reinforced Franklin’s natural talent for camouflaging his feelings.

When Eleanor was asked if her husband’s illness affected his “mentality,” she answered, “Yes,” without evasion or embellishment. “Though he learned to bear it, I am afraid [his polio] was always a tragedy.” Still she deftly turned the question in his favor. “Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding ….”

By the time they reached the White House in 1933, the Roosevelts’ pattern of mutual dependence and independence was fixed. But the White House alters every marriage. Partners who previously saw little of each other are now thrown in daily contact, as they share their living and work space, as well as ceremonial duties. They are together and yet—under the blazing light of public attention—they are almost never alone together. Suddenly, they are the most famous couple in the world, and their every movement is subject to scrutiny, comment and criticism. The marriage has to become a partnership, with both partners willing to participate in the office they have fought so hard to attain. For a man like Roosevelt, whose freedom of movement was already severely limited, the White House was not Harry Truman’s “Great White Prison.” For FDR, the White House was compensation for his punishing fate. Now the world came to him.

With the notable exception of Bess Truman, no other modern-day first lady was as unenthusiastic about her role as Eleanor was in 1933. She was “happy for my husband, because I knew that in many ways it would make up for the blow that fate had dealt him when he was stricken,” she wrote. But as she saw it, “This meant the end of any personal life of my own …. I had watched [my aunt] Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and had seen what it meant to be the wife of a president.” She feared the end of her hard-won independence, her ability to earn her own income, to live life as she liked. “The turmoil in my heart and mind
was rather great ….” Once again, Eleanor was about to demonstrate she could take a situation and bend it to suit her needs without betraying her sense of duty. Hoping to shed the ceremonial aspects of her new position, she told reporters there would be no first lady, just plain old Mrs. Roosevelt.

Franklin’s way of dealing with his wife’s fears was characteristic. He made light of them and penned this verse:

The Roosevelts succeeded three undistinguished, unremarkable presidential couples who broke little social or political ground and are primarily remembered as the bridge between their predecessors and successors. The brief tenure of Warren and Florence Harding was notable for its mediocrity and corruption. Harding, best remembered as a reckless philanderer, called his cold, imperious wife “the Duchess.” They were a loveless, childless couple. “Silent Cal” Coolidge and his wife, Grace Ann, followed, without leaving much of a social or political imprint. The third of this transitional trio were the Hoovers, Herbert and Lou. Lou, a graduate of Stanford University, was both intelligent and independent, but her husband’s rigid, insensitive response to the economic and humanitarian crisis of the Depression determined their legacy.

Sometime between FDR’s election and his first inauguration, Eleanor reached out to him, in her way. She asked her husband for a specific responsibility in his office, one that included handling part of his mail. Missy would consider that interference, Franklin told her. “I knew he was right,” Eleanor wrote, “but it was a last effort to keep in close touch, and to feel I had a real job to do.”

Eleanor found emotional sustenance elsewhere. Lorena Hickock, a short, feisty woman, was assigned by the Associated Press to cover the first lady. During an overnight train ride, Eleanor shared with Hickock
the story of her lonely childhood and her disappointing marriage. Hick, as Eleanor would soon call her, revealed her own traumatic history, which included being raped by her father. The reporter and the first lady formed a relationship of need and trust. It was Hick, who eventually left her job to work for the Roosevelt administration, who persuaded Eleanor to hold weekly news conferences for women reporters. Hick also suggested that Eleanor write a daily newspaper column about her activities. Her writing and speaking and her growing self-assurance transformed the role Eleanor dreaded into something substantial. Hick acted as Eleanor’s public relations adviser, editor and confidante. The streetwise reporter provided the first lady a safe outlet for her exasperation with her husband. “I know I’ve got to stick,” she wrote Hick, “I know I’ll never make an open break and I never tell FDR how I feel … I blow off to you, but never to F!”

The intensity of the Lorena-Eleanor correspondence has fueled rumors of a relationship deeper than friendship between the two women. “Hick darling,” Eleanor wrote her friend following the first inauguration, “I want to put my arms around you …to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and I think she does love me.” Eleanor expressed feelings she withheld from her husband. “Remember one thing,” Eleanor wrote Hick during her first week in the White House. “No one is just what you are to me. I’d rather be with you this minute than anyone else ….” Eleanor’s intense need to connect was expressed through her correspondence. This was a passionate friendship, but how far their embraces went seems beside the point. They loved each other, and for a few years, Hickock played a vital role in Eleanor’s life. The dynamic of the relationship shifted once Eleanor gained self-confidence and the love of thousands of people whose lives she touched. Then Hick became the needy one and something of a burden for the first lady.

FROM THE MINUTE
Eleanor crossed the threshold of the White House, it was apparent that things were about to change. As is customary, her predecessor, Mrs. Herbert Hoover, greeted Eleanor and proceeded to relate
the many improvements she had made in the management and the decor of the mansion. “Mrs. Roosevelt listened attentively,” Chief Usher Hoover later wrote, “but it was obvious that it was not what she wished to know.” Following a quick tour, Eleanor declined the offer of a limousine and quickly hailed a passing cab.