The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (15 page)

Stories of “Springy,” as he was called by his intimates, and his peculiarities were current in Washington. They said that one day he came in from a long walk in the rain, went upstairs and dressed for dinner, came back to his study and sat down to read by the fire. In a short time the dressing bell rang and he arose and went back and put on all the wet clothes and came down thus dressed for dinner!

Without Lady Spring-Rice many official engagements would not have been met on time. I have been at the embassy when she has gone into his sitting room and said, “Your appointment with the French ambassador is in ten minutes and the car is at the door,” and a reluctant Springy would get up from his book and his wife, put on his hat, and go to meet the French ambassador or the Secretary of State or whoever it might be.

The French ambassador and his charming wife had many friends. M. Jusserand had been one of Theodore Roosevelt’s “walking Cabinet.” He was a small man and had grown up in the mountains of France and was an expert climber. All his life he had taken walking trips, so he was not daunted by Theodore Roosevelt’s excursions through Rock Creek Park, even when they required crossing the brook in some deep spot.

One other person stands out among the people we knew in these first years in Washington. While I cannot say I knew him well, the few opportunities we did have to be with him left a great impression upon us. The Theodore Roosevelts and Mrs. Cowles had known Mr. Henry Adams well and were constant visitors at his house on Lafayette Square. We knew some of the people who were his intimate friends and so occasionally we received one of the much-coveted invitations to lunch or dine at his house.

My first picture of this supposedly stern, rather biting Mr. Adams is of an old gentleman in a victoria outside our house on N Street. Mr. Adams never paid calls. He did, however, request that the children of the house come out and join him in the victoria; and they not only did join him, but they brought their Scottie dog, and the entire group sat and chatted and played all over the victoria.

One day after lunch with him, my husband mentioned something which at the time was causing him deep concern in the government. Mr. Adams looked at him rather fiercely and said: “Young man, I have lived in this house many years and seen the occupants of the White House across the square come and go, and nothing that you minor officials or the occupant of that house can do will affect the history of the world for long!” True, perhaps, but not a good doctrine to preach to a young man in political life!

Henry Adams loved to shock his hearers, and I think he knew that those who were worth their salt would understand him and pick out of the knowledge that flowed from his lips the things that might be useful, and discard the cynicism as an old man’s defense against his own urge to be an active factor in the world of politics, a role that Henry Adams rejected in his youth.

Nine
    

A Changing Existence

IN MARCH
, 1916, our last child was born. We named him John Aspinwell, after Franklin’s uncle.

That winter of 1916 had been rather hard on my husband, because of a throat infection. He had had such a bad time with it that he had to go to Atlantic City, where his mother met him. He was supposed to take a two-week vacation, but the inactivity was more than he could bear, and in a week he was at work again. I hoped we were through with serious illness.

However, the baby was scarcely two days old when Elliott developed a bad cold and swollen glands. I thought this would amount to very little but in another day he was worse. Anything more trying than to be in bed and have a child ill in a room on the floor above I do not know, so I look back on this spring as a difficult experience. Finally we sent for an old friend of Miss Spring’s, who came down from New York to take charge of Elliott and gradually nurse him back to comparative health.

From that day until he went to boarding school at the age of twelve he was a delicate small boy whom we had to watch carefully. Sometimes when I look at the strong man he has grown to be it is hard to realize the years of anxiety that went into his upbringing. From the spring of 1916 he seemed to have everything more seriously than the others, and spent days and weeks in bed. This gave him a taste for books; and I think of all the children he had the greatest pleasure in reading and developed a real appreciation of literature.

The summer of 1916 I went up, as usual, with the children to Campobello. Franklin came occasionally. That summer there was a bad infantile paralysis epidemic among children. I had never stayed in Campobello late into September, but there I was entirely alone with my children, marooned on the island, and apparently I was going to be there for some time. Finally Franklin was allowed to use the
Dolphin
again, and in early October he came up, put the entire family on board and landed us on our own dock in the Hudson River.

There were beginning to be wild rumors of German submarines crossing the ocean and being seen at different places along the coast, and on the one stop we made on the way down we heard that a German submarine had been sighted and its officers had landed.

The children remained at Hyde Park until it was safe for them to travel, and I went back to Washington. From a life centered entirely in my family I became conscious, on returning to the seat of government in Washington, that there was a sense of impending disaster hanging over all of us.

The various attacks on our shipping were straining our relations with Germany and more and more the temper of the country was turning against the Germans. Stories of the atrocities in Belgium drifted in and were believed, but in spite of an increasing tenseness we had not actually broken off diplomatic relations with Germany. That winter my husband went to Haiti. The marines were in control. Franklin took with him the president of the Civil Service Commission, John McIlhenny, an old friend of Theodore Roosevelt and one of his Rough Riders. Later he was made financial adviser to Haiti and managed his difficult job extremely well, with the result that we later returned to the Haitian government the control of their own financial affairs.

This trip of my husband’s was extremely interesting and took him on horseback through a good part of the island. He was far away from the coast of Santo Domingo, up in the mountains, when a cable came from the secretary of the navy announcing that political conditions required his immediate return to Washington, and that a destroyer would meet him at the nearest port. We had severed diplomatic connections with Germany and the ambassador had been given his papers and asked to leave the United States. The German naval attaché, Captain Boy-Ed, and others had finally succeeded in thoroughly arousing the antagonism of the American people by spying into American affairs. This, however, my husband did not know. When he went to the dinner given him by the Marine officers in charge of this station, he showed the decoded telegram, which he had just received, to the lady who sat next to him. She had lived so long in the parts of the world where revolutions were uppermost in people’s minds that she promptly said: “Political conditions! Why, that must mean that Charles Evans Hughes has led a revolution against President Wilson.”

Back in Washington, my husband plunged into intensive work, for the possibility that the United States would be drawn into the war seemed imminent. The Navy must be ready for action immediately on the declaration of war.

We found it necessary to move in the autumn of 1916 because five children were more than Auntie Bye’s house on N Street was designed to hold comfortably. No. 2131 R Street was a pleasant house with a small garden at the back.

All too soon we were to find ourselves actually in the war, and during those spring months of 1917 my husband and I were less and less concerned with social life except where it could be termed useful or necessary to the work that had to be done. Again my husband frequently brought people home for luncheon because he had to talk to them, and we often entertained particular people who came from other nations because it was necessary that they should know the people with whom they were dealing.

After weeks of tension, I heard that the President was going to address Congress as a preliminary to a declaration of war. Everyone wanted to hear this historic address and it was with the greatest difficulty that Franklin got me a seat. I listened breathlessly and returned home half dazed by the sense of impending change.

War was declared on April 6, 1917, and from then on the men in the government worked from morning until late into the night. The women in Washington paid no more calls. They began to organize at once to meet the unusual demands of wartime. Mrs. J. Borden Harriman called a meeting to form a motor corps for Red Cross work. I attended the meeting but at that time I could not drive a car, so I decided that that was not my field of work.

No work was fully organized until the next autumn, but I joined the Red Cross canteen, helped Mrs. Daniels to organize the Navy Red Cross, and began to distribute free wool for knitting, provided by the Navy League.

I found myself very busy that spring, entertaining members of foreign missions who continued to come to this country to talk over the type of co-operation that we were to give the Allies. Mr. Balfour came over with a mission from England, arriving three days before the French mission. This was a quiet, unspectacular mission, but he had with him men who had served at the front and been wounded. They found their way at times to our home.

In the first French mission were Marshal Joffre and former Premier Viviani, who arrived in this country on April 25, 1917.

Franklin’s cousin, Warren Robbins, was at that time attached to the State Department and was given the responsibility of accompanying the French mission and making their trip in the country as comfortable and pleasant as possible. A great crowd greeted them in Washington, and Joffre, who had been the hero of the stand at the Marne, was received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm. People knew that his soldiers had called him “Papa Joffre” and his appearance suited this name so well that the crowd over here would often hail him in this way.

Viviani was not an agreeable personality, but he was a brilliant speaker. There were, of course, a number of people in the party, and the man who appealed to me most was Lieutenant Colonel Fabry, known as the Blue Devil of France. Before and after the war he was a newspaper editor, a gentle, quiet person to whom this nickname seemed hardly appropriate. Badly wounded many times, he was in constant pain while he was in Washington.

Before our entry into the war, many foolish people like myself said that only our financial resources would be needed and that the only branch of the service which would be called upon to fight would be the Navy. However, on our entry into the war both services were called into action, and the first plea made by the French mission was that some American soldiers be sent to France in July instead of in October, as our government had planned. The argument was that the Allies were tired and that the sight of a new uniform and of fresh men at the front would restore their morale, which was being subjected to such a long strain.

I remember most vividly the trips from Washington down to Mount Vernon on the
Sylph
, especially the first one with Mr. Balfour, Marshal Joffre and Premier Viviani. Secretary and Mrs. Daniels and my husband and I, with other members of the Cabinet, accompanied them, and their first duty was to lay a wreath on the tomb of George Washington. It was a ceremonious occasion, and as we gathered around the open iron grille at the tomb each man made a speech. How odd it must seem to Mr. Balfour to be paying honor to the memory of the man who had severed from the mother country some rather profitable colonies, but he was graceful and adequate in this rather peculiar situation.

Only when someone on the lawn at Mount Vernon told him the story of George Washington’s throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac to the other shore, did his eyes twinkle as he responded, “My dear sir, he accomplished an even greater feat than that. He threw a sovereign across the ocean!”

Immediately after the declaration of war, Uncle Ted came to Washington to offer his services to the President. He had a large group of men who wished to go to the front with him. He felt he could easily raise a division and in it would be many of the best officers in the Army who wished to serve under him, such as General Wood, and many of the old Rough Riders and probably the pick of American youth. Uncle Ted could not bear the thought that his boys should go and he be left behind. He was strong and able enough, he contended, to fight in this war as he had in the Spanish War, and as he had urged the people to enter on the side of the Allies he wanted to be among the first to enlist.

On this visit he stayed with his daughter, Alice Longworth, and I went with Franklin to see him. Though he was kind to us, as he always was, he was completely preoccupied with the war; and after he had been to see President Wilson and the President had not immediately accepted his offer, Uncle Ted returned in a very unhappy mood. I think he knew from the noncommittal manner in which he had been received that his proposal was not going to be accepted.

I hated to have him disappointed and yet I was loyal to President Wilson, and was much relieved later on, when I learned that Uncle Ted’s offer had been submitted to General Pershing and the War Department and that the consensus had been that it would be a grave mistake to allow one division to attract so many of the men who would be needed as officers in many divisions. Uncle Ted certainly did his best to go overseas, but it was felt that the prominence of his position and his age made it unwise for him to be in Europe. I think the decision was a bitter blow from which he never quite recovered.

I did little war work that summer beyond the inevitable knitting which every woman undertook and which became a constant habit. No one moved without her knitting.

The Navy Department was co-operating so closely with England and France that my husband hardly left Washington, but I went back and forth. He came for short periods of time to the coast of Maine. It was decided that we had no right to keep the boat which we had always used at Campobello, and so the
Half Moon
was sold, much to the regret of both my husband and my mother-in-law. The latter had a sentimental attachment for it on account of the pleasure her husband had had in sailing her.