The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (6 page)

One read in the papers of scandals and of battles but it was all on a small scale. This war of ours had hardly touched my daily life.

In England, however, the Boer War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902, was of a more serious nature, and the tremendous feeling in the country at large was soon reflected in the school. At first there was great confidence in rapid victory, then months of anxiety and dogged “carrying on” in the face of unexpected and successful resistance from the Boers.

There was a considerable group in England and in other countries that did not believe in the righteousness of the English cause, and Mlle. Souvestre was among this group. She was, however, always fair and she realized that it would be most unfair to the English girls to try to make them think as she did. With them she never discussed the rights and wrongs of the war. Victories were celebrated in the gym and holidays were allowed, but Mlle. Souvestre never took part in any of the demonstrations. She remained in her library, and there she gathered around her the Americans and the other foreign girls. To them she expounded her theories on the rights of the Boers or of small nations in general. Those long talks were interesting, and echoes of them still live in my mind.

I was beginning to make a place for myself in the school, and before long Mlle. Souvestre made me sit opposite her at table. The girl who occupied this place received her nod at the end of the meal and gave the signal, by rising, for the rest of the girls to rise and leave the dining room. This girl was under close supervision, so I acquired certain habits which I have never quite been able to shake off.

Mlle. Souvestre used to say that you need never take more than you wanted, but you had to eat what you took on your plate, and so, sitting opposite her day after day, I learned to eat everything that I took on my plate. There were certain English dishes that I disliked very much; for instance, a dessert called suet pudding. I disliked its looks as much as anything, for it had an uncooked, cold, clammy expression as it sat upon the dish. We had treacle to pour over it and my only association with treacle had been through
Nicholas Nickleby
, which did not make the pudding any more attractive. Mlle. Souvestre thought that we should get over such squeamishness and eat a little of everything, so I choked it down when she was at the table and refused it when she was not.

It was a great advantage in one way, however, to sit opposite Mlle. Souvestre, for sometimes she had special dishes and shared them with three or four of us who sat close by. When she had guests they sat on either side of her, and it was easy to overhear the conversation, which was usually interesting.

I think that I started at this period of my life a bad habit that has stayed with me ever since. Frequently I would use, in talking to Mlle. Souvestre, things which I had overheard in her conversation with her friends and which had passed through my rather quick mind, giving me some new ideas; but if anyone had asked me any questions he would soon have discovered that I had no real knowledge of the thing I was talking about. Mlle. Souvestre was usually so pleased that I was interested in the subject that she did the talking, and I never had to show up my ignorance.

More and more, as I grew older, I used the quickness of my mind to pick the minds of other people and use their knowledge as my own. A dinner companion, a casual acquaintance, provided me with information which I could use in conversation, and few people were aware how little I actually knew on a variety of subjects that I talked on with apparent ease.

This is a bad habit, and one which is such a temptation that I hope few children will acquire it. But it does have one great advantage; it gives you a facility in picking up information about a great variety of subjects and adds immeasurably to your interests as you go through life.

Of course, later on I discovered that when I really wanted to know something I had to dig in.

As the summer holidays came nearer my excitement grew for I was to travel to Saint-Moritz in Switzerland to spend my holiday with the Mortimers.

My first view of these beautiful mountains was breath-taking, for I had never seen any high mountains. I lived opposite the Catskill Mountains in summer and loved them, but how much more majestic were these great snow-capped peaks all around us as we drove into the Engadine. The little Swiss chalets, built into the sides of the hills and with places under them for all the livestock that did not actually wander into the kitchen, were picturesque, but strange to my eyes with their fretwork decoration.

However, I was totally unprepared for Saint-Moritz itself, with its streets of grand hotels tapering off into the more modest
pensions
and little houses dotted around for such patients as had to live there for long periods of time.

The hotels all bordered the lake, and the thing that I remember best about my time there was the fact that Tissie and I got up every morning early enough to walk to a little café that perched out above the lake on a promontory at one end. There we drank coffee or cocoa and ate rolls with fresh butter and honey, the sun just peeping over the mountains and touching us with its warm rays. I can still remember how utterly contented I was!

Toward the end of the summer Tissie told me that she had decided to make a trip by carriage from Saint-Moritz through the Austrian Tyrol to Oberammergau, where the Passion Play was being given. She was taking a friend with her, and I could go along if I were willing to sit either with the coachman on the box or on the little seat facing the two ladies. I would have agreed to sit on top of the bags, I was so excited at the prospect of seeing the Passion Play and all this new country.

We had only a one-horse victoria, and much of the country we drove through was mountainous, and when we climbed I got out and walked, so our progress was not rapid and we had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery.

I still think the Austrian Tyrol is one of the loveliest places in the world. We spent a night in a little inn which had housed the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, when he went to fish in the rushing brook we saw below us. We visited his castles, and finally arrived in Oberammergau.

It was the night before the play, and because of the crowds our rooms were separated from each other in simple little village houses. We walked the whole length of the village and found the people whom we should see the next day in the holy play sitting in their little shops, selling the carved figures which they made during the winter.

The Passion Play adjourned only when people had to eat, so we sat throughout long hours of the day. I loved it, though I realize now that I must have been a tired child, for I had to go to sleep after lunch and could not get back until the end of the second period, because no one is allowed to move or make a noise during the acting.

From there we went to Munich, back to Paris, and then I returned to school.

Christmas of 1899, I was to have my wish and, with a classmate, spend the holiday entirely in Paris with the Mlles. Bertaux.

As the Mlles. Bertaux had charge of us, and as we were supposed to take French lessons every day as well as do a great deal of sightseeing, we were chaperoned and our days were carefully planned. I was getting to know Paris and to feel able to find my way about and to decide what I should like to do if I ever were free to plan my own days.

The last few days of our stay, Mlle. Souvestre was back in Paris and we went to see her. She quizzed us about what we had learned. At this time she told me frankly what she thought of my clothes, many of which were made-over dresses of my young aunts, and commanded me to go out with Mlle. Samaia and have at least one dress made.

I was always worried about my allowance, for my grandmother felt that we children should never know until we were grown what money might be ours, and that we ought to feel that money was something to be carefully spent, as she might not be able to send us any more. However, I decided that if Mlle. Souvestre thought I should buy a dress I could have it. I still remember my joy in that dark-red dress, made for me by a small dressmaker in Paris, but, as far as I was concerned, it might have been made by Worth, for it had all the glamour of being my first French dress.

I wore it on Sundays and as an everyday evening dress at school and probably got more satisfaction out of it than from any dress I have had since.

The one great event that I remember in the winter of 1901 was the death of Queen Victoria. Some of my Robinson connections had arranged for me to see the funeral procession from the windows of a house belonging to one of them. It was an exciting day, beginning with the crowds in the streets and the difficulty of arriving at our destination, and finally the long wait for the funeral procession itself. I remember little of the many carriages which must have comprised that procession, but I shall never forget the genuine feeling shown by the crowds in the streets or the hush that fell as the gun carriage bearing the smallest coffin I had ever seen came within our range of vision. Hardly anyone had dry eyes as that slow-moving procession passed by, and I have never forgotten the great emotional force that seemed to stir all about us as Queen Victoria, so small of stature and yet so great in devotion to her people, passed out of their lives forever.

By the following Easter Mlle. Souvestre had decided that she would take me traveling with her. This was one of the most momentous things that happened in my education. The plan was to go to Marseilles, along the Mediterranean coast, to stop at Pisa and then spend some time in Florence, not staying in the city in a hotel, but living with an artist friend of Mlle. Souvestre’s in his villa in Fiesole, on a hill which overlooked Florence.

Traveling with Mlle. Souvestre was a revelation. She did all the things that in a vague way you had always felt you wanted to do. In Marseilles we walked upon the Quai, looked at the boats that came from foreign ports, saw some of the small fishing boats with their colored sails, and went up to a little church where offerings were made to the Blessed Virgin for the preservation of those at sea. There is a shrine in this church where people have prayed for the granting of some particular wishes, the crippled have hung their crutches there, and people have made offerings of gold and silver and jewels.

We ended by dining in a café overlooking the Mediterranean and ate the dish for which Marseilles is famous, bouillabaisse, a kind of soup in which every possible kind of fish that can be found in nearby waters is used. With it we had
vin rouge du pays
, because Mlle. Souvestre believed in the theory that, water being uncertain, wine was safer to drink, and if you diluted it with water, in some way the germs were killed by the wine.

The next day we started our trip along the shores of the Mediterranean. I wanted to get out at almost every place the name of which was familiar to me, but our destination was Pisa and it never occurred to me, the child of regular trips from New York to Tivoli and back, that one could change one’s plans en route.

Suddenly, toward evening, the guard called out “Alassio.” Mlle. Souvestre was galvanized into action; breathlessly she leaned out the window and said, “I am going to get off.” She directed me to get the bags, which were stored on the rack over our heads, and we simply fell off onto the platform, bag and baggage, just before the train started on its way. I was aghast. Here we stood, our trunks going on in the luggage van and we without rooms and, as far as I knew, in a strange place with no reason for the sudden whim.

When we recovered our breath Mlle. Souvestre said, “My friend Mrs. Humphry Ward lives here, and I decided that I would like to see her; besides, the Mediterranean is a lovely blue at night and the sky with the stars coming out is nice to watch from the beach.”

Alas, we found that Mrs. Ward was away, but we spent a wonderful hour down on the beach watching the sky and sea, and though Mlle. Souvestre had a cold the next day, she did not regret her hasty decision and I had learned a valuable lesson. Never again would I be the rigid little person I had been theretofore.

As I think back over my trips with Mlle. Souvestre, I realize she taught me how to enjoy traveling. She liked to be comfortable, she enjoyed good food, but she always tried to go where you would see the people of the country you were visiting, not your own compatriots.

She always ate native dishes and drank native wines. She felt it was just as important to enjoy good Italian food as it was to enjoy Italian art, and it all served to make you a citizen of the world, at home wherever you might go, knowing what to see and what to enjoy. She used to impress on my mind the necessity for acquiring languages, primarily because of the enjoyment you missed in a country when you were both deaf and dumb.

Mlle. Souvestre taught me also on these journeys that the way to make young people responsible is to throw real responsibility on them. She was an old lady and I was sixteen. The packing and unpacking for both of us was up to me, once we were on the road. I looked up trains, got the tickets, made all the detailed arrangements necessary for comfortable traveling. Though I was to lose some of my self-confidence and ability to look after myself in the early days of my marriage, it came back to me later more easily because of these trips with Mlle. Souvestre.

In Florence, we settled down for a long visit. Spring is a lovely time in Florence and I thought it had more flavor of antiquity than any city I had ever seen. I was reading Dante laboriously and had plenty of imagination to draw upon as I walked about the city. Here again Mlle. Sou-vestre’s belief that Americans could be trusted made my trip unique. The morningafter our arrival she took out the Baedeker, opened it at the description of the Campanile, and said, “My dear, I should be exhausted if I walked with you, but the only way to know a city really is to walk its streets. Florence is worth it. Take your Baedeker and go and see it. Later we will discuss what you have seen.”

So, sixteen years old, keener than I have probably ever been since and more alive to beauty, I sallied forth to see Florence alone. Innocence is its own protection. Mlle. Souvestre’s judgment was entirely vindicated. Perhaps she realized that I had not the beauty which appeals to foreign men and that I would be safe from their advances. In any case, everyone was most helpful. Even when I got lost in the narrow little streets and had to inquire my way I was always treated with the utmost respect and deference.