The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (23 page)

My husband’s income was never large and he had to spend some of his principal every year he was in Albany and in the White House. As he died before his mother’s estate was settled, that never was of any help to him.

At the time I married my income varied from $5,000 to $8,000 a year. Franklin knew that I had little knowledge of how to handle money, and he also knew that I had no right to disturb the existing trust arrangements, under which my money was managed largely by older members of my family and I simply received the income at certain intervals.

When I look back on how little we spent in our early married days I appreciate the changes in the cost of living in the past forty years. My husband and I agreed that we would put an equal amount into the house account, and we lived easily and comfortably if not luxuriously on $600 a month.

As our household expenses grew over the years, Franklin assumed more responsibility for running the home, and gave all the children modest allowances up to the time they left school. Before they were old enough to be put on an allowance, I bought their clothes and I always bought my own; however, Franklin thought that once they had an allowance they should buy their own clothes in order to learn how to manage money. Now and then I had to rescue them by giving them useful gifts of underwear, shirts and socks. The habit has persisted and they tease me about it now.

After our daughter Anna was married, both Franklin and his mother gave her a small allowance. However, because of my husband’s theory that once a male child of the family was educated he should be on his own, our two older boys, James and Elliott, were not given an allowance after they finished their schooling. They, therefore, had to begin at once to earn a living. That complicated their lives considerably, because instead of being allowed to start at the bottom and work up, they were offered jobs that gave them too high returns. And they were too young and too inexperienced to realize that they were offered these jobs only because of their name and their father’s position.

Franklin had a strong feeling that our sons should be allowed to make their own decisions and their own mistakes. Occasionally some of his friends suggested that he could give the boys a little guidance, but he always said they must find things out for themselves. I think his attitude came largely from the fact that his mother had wanted to direct his every thought and deed and that he had had to fight for independence.

She always complained that she never saw Franklin alone, but if they were left together by themselves for long they often disagreed. Those two were too much alike in certain ways to be left long alone. Franklin was as determined as she was, and as the years passed he went ahead and did anything he wanted to do in spite of the fact that he had a great respect and love for his mother. But, though out of her devotion to him she did a great many things that were difficult for her, she never accepted the fact of his independence and continued to the last to try to guide his life.

Nevertheless, I often think of how much she had to put up with. For instance, though she entertained them for his sake, she strongly disapproved of Governor Smith and some of Franklin’s other political acquaintances and was unable to believe that they could have any ability. Curiously enough, I think Al Smith respected her in spite of the fact that he must have known how she felt, which only made him more self-assertive in her presence. However, she was always pleasant and one had to know her to appreciate her little barbs.

I remember one time when Huey Long was lunching with me at Hyde Park and Franklin, in order to talk to him about some bill on which he wanted his support, had seated him next to himself. My mother-in-law, who could whisper louder than anyone else I ever knew when she wanted to be heard, was at the opposite end of the table. And suddenly I heard her say to the man on her right, in her piercing whisper, “Who is that dreadful person sitting next to my son?”

As a result of Franklin’s long experience with his own parent, he had an almost exaggerated determination that he would not subject his sons to similar interference, and the feeling became a plan of action. As he became busier in his public life he found it impossible to take time for the boys’ interests, which kept them from asking for advice they might have sought quite naturally had he been freer to give it. One after the other, James and Elliott learned through bitter experience and it was a bitter disillusionment as well. Their early marriages came about largely because they were not really rooted in any particular home and were seeking to establish homes of their own.

For the two younger boys things were easier because, as a great concession, my husband continued their allowances until his death. Franklin Junior went to law school after he graduated from Harvard and married, so he couldn’t earn money; and John started at the bottom in the merchandising business and needed something to keep him going after his marriage. When they went into the Navy they wanted to keep on paying some share of their home expenses. Having an allowance, these two had less immediate need to earn money, so they were not put through the same experiences that the two older brothers had undergone.

Perhaps it is well at this point to clear up a story that has come back to me at various times: that our youngest son, John, was a conscientious objector and a pacifist and did not want to go into the services. Like every other young man I know, he was not, in the years before we were attacked, eager to go to war. But once we were at war there never was any question for him, any more than there was for any of our other sons. Whatever had to be done for the war had to be done, and none of them dreamed of being a conscientious objector or a pacifist.

As life grew busier at the White House, my husband had less time for family affairs, and I can remember how resentful the boys were when they found they actually had to make an appointment to see their father if they wanted to talk to him privately. On one occasion one of our sons had something he felt it was important to talk over with his father, so he made an appointment. My husband was always kind and gentle, and while our son talked he seemed to be listening, though he was reading a document he held in his hand. The boy asked if he had heard him. His father answered, “Yes,” but when there was a pause in the talk, he looked up and handed the boy the paper. “This is a most important document. I should like to have your opinion on it.” I imagine that seemed like a slap in the face to the boy, who thought that what he was talking about was more important than anything else in the world. He looked at the paper, commented on it and left the room.

Soon a very indignant young man came to me saying, “Never again will I talk to Father about anything personal.” It took me a long while before I could bring him to understand that he had happened to strike the wrong moment and that his father had paid him a compliment in asking his opinion.

It may seem that I have gone into a great deal of frank detail about our family affairs and the personal life of the family. I have done so with a purpose, because I sometimes wonder whether the American public, which encourages the press to delve into the private lives of public servants and their families, realizes how much the family of a public man has to pay in lack of privacy for the fact that he is willing to serve his country in an elective or an appointive office.

Fourteen
    

Private Interlude: 1921-1927

AFTER LEAVING
the law office of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn in 1910 and up to the time of his illness in 1921, Franklin had been more or less continuously in public life.

His job in the Navy Department was, I believe, one of the milestones in his life. It would have been easy for him to have become just a nice young society man who, after his work in the department was over for the day, sat around in the Metropolitan Club for a while and talked with his friends. But Louis Howe decided that this was a period when Franklin had better learn something new. He insisted that Franklin find out something about labor conditions in the navy yards, which were his special province in the department, and come in contact with the men. This was Franklin’s first close contact with labor, and it was one of the turning points in his development. Certainly it proved of value to him later, both as governor and as president. In both of those periods he increased enormously in his understanding of people and their needs, and with Louis’s help gradually developed a political flair that gave him great confidence.

My friend Esther Lape had become member-in-charge of the Bok Foundation. At Mr. Bok’s request I helped her to organize the committee and this work. From our past experience in the League of Women Voters we knew that working together would be easy. We had Esther’s friend and partner, Elizabeth Read, who was practicing law in New York City, to count on too, so the thinking and planning proceeded smoothly.

In January of the year following Alfred E. Smith’s 1924 state victory, Franklin became a partner in D. Basil O’Connor’s law firm. The firm became Roosevelt and O’Connor, an association which continued until March 3, 1933. However, from 1924 to 1928 Franklin devoted a good part of his time to finding out how far he could recover from infantile paralysis. The use of his hands and arms came back completely and he developed, because he used them so constantly, broad shoulders and strong arms; but his legs remained useless.

Little by little, through exercise and wearing braces, he learned to walk, first with crutches and then with a cane, leaning on someone’s arm. The first braces were heavy; later, lighter ones were made. However, for the rest of his life he was unable to walk or stand without the braces and some help, though he could still swim and play water polo.

The perfect naturalness with which the children accepted his limitations, though they had always known him as an active person, helped him tremendously in his own acceptance of them. He had so many outside interests that he was always busy, and boredom was something he never experienced in his whole life.

Two things he could still enjoy—swimming and driving his own car, which had special hand controls. He was as good a driver as anyone I have ever known with this specially equipped car.

Franklin’s illness proved a blessing in disguise, for it gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons—infinite patience and never-ending persistence.

People have often asked me how I felt about his illness. To tell the truth, I do not think I ever stopped to analyze my feelings. There was so much to do to manage the household and the children and to try to keep things running smoothly that I never had time to think of my own reactions. I simply lived from day to day and got through the best I could.

We had tried so hard to ignore any handicap he labored under that I’m sure the two youngest boys had never even thought about what their father could not do, and much of his gallant joking was merely a way of forcing himself to accept cheerfully what he could not help. I remember, for instance, one night in New York City, during a campaign, when he had to be carried on and off the speaker’s platform. It was a difficult ordeal, but he passed it off with a smile and a joke.

Franklin went to Warm Springs for the first time in the autumn of 1924. It was then a run-down southern summer resort which had seen better days. The outdoor swimming pool was the one really fine thing about the place. These springs had been known since the days of the Indians, who, even when they were at war with one another, maintained peace in that area, believing the waters had medicinal value. There is no claim made now that they have any healing powers, but the buoyancy and warm temperature of the water make it possible for one to swim for long periods without becoming tired or chilled. My husband loved the place.

For a number of years my husband went to Warm Springs every autumn, and I remember with a mixture of joy and sadness the Thanksgiving Day celebrations. There seemed so much happiness in the children’s faces, but the complete gallantry of all the patients always brought a choke to my throat. Some of them were on stretchers, some in wheelchairs, some on crutches. Some hoped to get well, many faced permanent handicaps, but all were cheerful that one evening at least.

During those years before Franklin went back actively into politics a number of things I did were undertaken at Louis Howe’s suggestion in order to interest Franklin. The organization of state campaigns was primarily my job and, again with Louis Howe’s help, I thought up some of the best stunts that were undertaken. For instance, in the campaign of 1924 Alfred E. Smith was running against my cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who had previously been Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Harding administration. The recent Teapot Dome scandal—with which Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., had nothing to do—had created much excitement; so, capitalizing on this, we had a framework resembling a teapot, which spouted steam, built on top of an automobile and it led the procession of cars which toured the state, following the Republican candidate for governor wherever he went!

In the thick of political fights one always feels that all methods of campaigning that are honest are fair, but I do think this was a rough stunt and I never blamed my cousin when he retaliated in later campaigns against my husband.

It was during these years, too, that I became engaged in two enterprises with Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman. Franklin was particularly interested in one of our undertakings. He helped to design and build a stone cottage beside a brook where we often went to picnic during the first years after he was paralyzed. The brook was called Val-Kill, so we called the cottage Val-Kill Cottage. Franklin was the contractor and the builder and, though Mr. Henry Toombs was the architect, he liked to talk over every detail. We built not only the cottage but a swimming pool in which the children and occasionally Franklin enjoyed much sport. Later we built a more elaborate pool, but by that time Franklin was the President and we had to conform to the regulations set up by his doctor and put in filtration machinery. I do not think we had any more fun, however, in the bigger and more elaborate pool than we had in the original small one, the building of which my husband had supervised.