The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (7 page)

From Florence we went to Milan and then to Paris, where again I did my sightseeing alone. One day I met the entire Thomas Newbold family in the Luxembourg, and they wrote home that I was unchaperoned in Paris!

Back in school again for a time, and then in the early summer great excitement, for Pussie had come to Europe with the Mortimers, and she and I were to sail for home together.

I stayed with her in lodgings in London two nights before we sailed, and had my first taste of an emotional crisis on her part. I was to know many similar ones in the years to come. She always had men who were in love with her, not always wisely but always deeply!

At this particular moment she thought she was casting away her happiness forever because she was being separated from the gentleman of the moment. I stayed up anxiously most of the night listening to her sobs and protestations that she would never reach home, that she would jump overboard. Being young and romantic, I spent most of the trip home wondering when she would make the effort and watching her as closely as I could. We were on a slow Atlantic Transport Line boat and shared a cabin. Her moods were anything but placid, but by the time we reached home she was somewhat calmer.

Three
    

Home Again

THAT SUMMER
was a stormy one. One day Pussie was annoyed with me. She told me frankly that I probably would never have the beaux that the rest of the women in the family had had because I was the ugly duckling. At the same time she told me some of the painful and distressing facts about my father’s last years. The combination made me very unhappy, and Mrs. Henry Parish, Jr., with whom I was spending the summer in Northeast Harbor, had her hands full trying to console me. She tried hard to give me a good time but I knew no one and had no gift for getting on with the younger people in Northeast, where they lived a life totally different from the English school life that I was then completely absorbed in.

I wanted to get back to England to school and more traveling in Europe. After much begging and insistence I was finally told I might go if I found someone to take me over.

I went to New York, where Pussie and Maude helped me to get my first long, tailor-made suit. The skirt trailed on the ground and was oxford gray. I was enormously proud of it.

I engaged a deaconess to take the trip to London with me and return by the next boat. As I look back on it, it was one of the funniest and craziest things I ever did, for my family never set eyes on her until they came to see me off on the steamer. She looked respectable enough and I am sure she was, but I might just as well have crossed alone, for we had a rough crossing, and I never saw her till the day we landed.

In the little Cunard ships of those days (I think we were on the
Umbria
), a rough crossing meant that the steamer chairs, if they were out at all, were lashed to the railing. There were racks on the table, and when you tried to walk you felt you were walking up a mountain or down one.

I had learned something since my first trip, and in spite of continually feeling ill I always got on deck and sat for hours watching the horizon rise and fall, and ate most of my meals up there.

My deaconess and I proceeded to London to a large caravanserai of a hotel. The next day I went to school, carefully handed over the return ticket and enough money for her hotel bill to my companion whom I had taken care of and had rarely seen. But she had served the purpose of giving my family the satisfaction of knowing I was well chaperoned.

School was as interesting as ever. Mlle. Souvestre was glad to see me back, and I had the added interest of a young cousin at school that year. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Robinson brought over their daughter, Corinne, and left her with Mlle. Souvestre. She was younger than I, very intelligent, and soon won her way to Mlle. Souvestre’s interest and respect. In athletics she was far better than I was, and established her place with the girls more quickly than I had done.

Having Auntie Corinne and Uncle Douglas in London was a joy for me, as we were allowed an occasional weekend away and frequent Saturday afternoons if we had a relative near enough to take us out, and I know that I went up to London once or twice at least to see Auntie Corinne; later Auntie Bye was there, too.

I was only sorry that I had to go home before the coronation of King Edward VII, as they were all staying in London, where Uncle Ted would join them to act as special ambassador from our government.

During the Christmas holiday of the year 1902 Mlle. Souvestre took me to Rome. We went to a
pension
in one of the old palaces where the rooms were enormous, with high ceilings, and though we rejoiced in their beauty we nearly froze to death trying to warm ourselves over a little portable stove which had a few red coals glowing in its center.

We visited the Forum many times. Mlle. Souvestre sat on a stone in the sun and talked of history and how the men of Rome had wandered here in their togas; pointed out the place where Julius Caesar may have been assassinated and made us live in ancient history. We watched the people on their knees climbing up the “Scala Santa,” and, silly little Anglo-Saxon that I was, I felt self-conscious for them!

One day we journeyed to Tivoli, with its beautiful gardens and the little loophole in the hedge through which you get a view of the city of Rome in the distance.

St. Peter’s was a terrible disappointment to me, for I had remembered as a little girl kissing the toe of an enormous and heroic statue. In fact, my nurse had held me up so I might accomplish this act of reverence; but when I went back to look at the statue it was so small that I would have had to bend over considerably to kiss the toe.

When Easter came around, Mlle. Souvestre again asked me to travel with her. This time we crossed the Channel and went to stay not far from Calais with her friends, the Ribots, who lived in a house entered by a door set in a wall. You pulled a long, iron bell handle and a cheerful little tinkle ran through the house. In a few minutes you were let into a spacious and comfortable garden surrounded by a wall high above your head, making it possible to have complete privacy, which is one of the things French people strive for even in their city homes.

I do not remember the name of this small town, but I do remember sallying forth alone to look at the churches and to see what could be seen. I felt somewhat awed by our two dignified and very kindly hosts. Later I was to discover in a premier of France my host of this visit.

From there we went to Belgium and visited some other friends of Mlle. Souvestre’s, taking a long trip in their coach. Then we went up the Rhine to Frankfort.

The summer was now approaching, and I knew that I must go home for good. Mlle. Souvestre had become one of the people whom I cared most for in the world, and the thought of the long separation seemed hard to bear. I would have given a good deal to have spent another year on my education, but to my grandmother the age of eighteen was the time when you “came out,” and not to “come out” was unthinkable.

When I left I felt quite sure that I would return before long, but I realize now that Mlle. Souvestre, knowing her infirmities, had little hope of seeing me again. She wrote me lovely letters, which I still cherish. They show the kind of relationship that had grown up between us and give an idea of the fine person who exerted the greatest influence, after my father, on this period of my life.

I returned to Tivoli, my grandmother’s country place, and spent the whole summer there. This was not a happy summer, for while I had been away my uncle Vallie, who had been so kind to me when I was a child, had been slipping rapidly into the habits of the habitual drinker. My grandmother would never believe that he was not going to give it up as he promised after each spree, but the younger members of the family realized that the situation was serious. He made life for them distinctly difficult.

Pussie was away a great deal. Maude was married to Larry Waterbury, Eddie to Josie Zabriskie and was proving himself just as weak as his brother, Vallie. This was my first real contact with anyone who had completely lost the power of self-control, and it began to develop in me an almost exaggerated idea of the necessity for keeping all one’s desires under complete subjugation.

I had been a solemn little girl, my years in England had given me my first taste of being carefree and irresponsible, but my return home to the United States accentuated almost immediately the serious side of life, and that first summer was not good preparation for being a gay and joyous debutante.

My grandmother had cut herself off almost entirely from contact with her neighbors, and while Vallie, when he met anyone, would behave with braggadocio, we really lived an isolated life. No one who was not so intimate that he knew the entire situation was ever invited to come for a meal or to stay with us.

That autumn my little brother went off to boarding school. My grandmother and I took him up to Groton. She seemed quite old and the real responsibility for this young brother was slipping rapidly from her hands into mine. She never again went to see him at school and I began to go up every term for a weekend, which was what all good parents were expected to do. I kept this up through the six years he was there, just as I was to do later for my own sons.

That autumn I moved to the old house on West 37th Street. Theoretically, my grandmother lived there too, but as a matter of fact she lived at Tivoli in a vain attempt to keep Vallie there and keep him sober as much as possible.

Pussie, my only unmarried aunt, and I lived together. She was no less beautiful than she had been when I was a child. She was just as popular, with just as many beaux, and several love affairs always devastating her emotions. She went the round of social dinners and dances as hard as any debutante.

Of course, my grandmother could do nothing about my “coming out,” but automatically my name was placed on everybody’s list. I was asked to all kinds of parties, but the first one I attended was an Assembly Ball, and I was taken by my cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Parish, Jr.

My aunt, Mrs. Mortimer, had bought my clothes in Paris, and I imagine that I was well dressed, but there was absolutely nothing about me to attract anybody’s attention. I was tall, but I did not dance well. I had lost touch with the girls whom I had known before I went abroad, though afterwards I picked up some of my old relationships. I went into that ballroom not knowing one single man except Bob Ferguson, whom I had rarely seen since I went abroad, and Forbes Morgan, who was one of Pussie’s most ardent admirers.

I do not think I quite realized beforehand what utter agony it was going to be or I would never have had the courage to go. Bob Ferguson introduced a number of his friends but by no stretch of the imagination could I fool myself into thinking that I was a popular debutante!

I went home early, thankful to get away, having learned that before I went to any party or to any dance I should have two partners, one for supper and one for the cotillion. Any girl who was a success would be asked by many men and accepted the one whom she preferred at the moment. These partners were prerequisites, but you must also be chosen to dance every figure in the cotillion, and your popularity was gauged by the number of favors you took home. Pussie always had far more than I had! I knew I was the first girl in my mother’s family who was not a belle and, though I never acknowledged it to any of them at that time, I was deeply ashamed.

Later on, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer gave a large theater party and supper, with dancing afterwards, for me at Sherry’s, which was the most fashionable restaurant in those days. This helped to give me a sense that I had done my share of entertaining, and for one night I stood and received with my aunt and had no anxieties. Pussie and I together gave a few luncheons and dinners that winter at the 37th Street house.

Gradually I acquired a few friends, and finally going out lost some of its terrors; but that first winter, when my sole object in life was society, nearly brought me to a state of nervous collapse. I had other things, however, on my mind. I ran the house as far as it was run by anyone, for Pussie was even more temperamental than she had been as a young girl, and her love affairs were becoming more serious. There would be days when she would shut herself in her room, refusing to eat and spending hours weeping.

Occasionally Vallie would come to the house for one purpose and one alone: to go on a real spree. Pussie was no better equipped to cope with this difficulty than I was. In fact, not having any other vital interests, I had more time to handle this situation and a certain kind of strength and determination which underlay my timidity must have begun to make itself felt, for I think I was better able to handle many difficulties that arose during this strange winter than was Pussie, who was some fourteen years my senior.

A number of pleasant things happened that winter, however. Pussie’s musical talent kept her in touch with a certain number of artistic people, and I enjoyed listening to her play and going to the theater, concerts and the opera with her. Bob Ferguson, who lived a pleasant bachelor existence in New York and had many friends, introduced me that year to Bay Emmett, the painter, and some of her friends, and I rejoiced that Bob and I had re-established our old friendship. He felt that he was entitled to bring me home after parties we might both attend, which was a great relief to me, as otherwise I had to have a maid wait for me—that was one of the rules my grandmother had laid down. The rule amuses me when I realize how gaily I went around European cities all by myself. However, she accepted Bob as escort, though she would not hear of anyone else having the same privilege.

He took me to several parties in Bay Emmett’s studio and gave me my first taste of informally meeting people whose names I recognized as having accomplished things in the sphere of art and letters. I liked this much better than the dinners and dances I was struggling through in formal society each night, and yet I would not have wanted at that age to be left out, for I was still haunted by my upbringing and believed that what was known as New York Society was really important.