Eleanor and Franklin (13 page)

It was difficult not to yield to these entreaties, and Mrs. Hall turned to Bamie for advice. She would do anything she could, Bamie told her, but Elliott had turned against her, and if she appeared to be intervening he would take the opposite position. She could no longer influence him. She was heartbroken, but he had put it out of her power to do anything for him unless he specifically asked for something. His greatest chance of stability of purpose in regard to his children “lay in the management being purely between you and himself.” There was only one exception to her hands-off attitude: if Elliott tried to take the children from Mrs. Hall, she and Theodore felt that “for Anna's sake” they would have a right to stop him.

Her father's visits brought Eleanor rushing down the stairs to fling herself into his arms, but their reunions were not wholly without anxiety for her. In later years she recalled how one time he called to take her driving in what appeared to be a very high dog cart. On the way to Central Park, along Madison Avenue, a streetcar frightened Mohawk, her father's high-spirited hunter. When the horse shied, her
father's hat flew off, and when it was retrieved, Elliott looked at his daughter and asked, “You weren't afraid, were you, little Nell?” She was but she did not want to disappoint him by admitting it. When they reached the park and joined the procession of carriages and horses, her father said teasingly, “If I were to say ‘hoop-la' to Mohawk he would try to jump them all.” Eleanor prayed he would not. Yet despite her “abject terror,” she later wrote, “those drives were the high point of my existence.”

Worse trials beset the eight-year-old as, for instance, on one occasion when her father came to take her for a walk. “My father had several fox terriers that he seemed to carry everywhere with him,” Eleanor recalled. “One day he took me and three of his fox terriers and left us with the doorman at the Knickerbocker Club. When he failed to return after six hours, the doorman took me home.” It was a shattering experience for a child who was already obsessed with a fear of being deserted by those whom she loved, and when she spoke of it in later years, she sometimes added the terrible detail that she saw her father carried out. It was no wonder that Grandma Hall disapproved of his visits so strongly.

While the adults in the Roosevelt and Hall families feared that the hapless Elliott might commit some irredeemable folly in a moment of lonely despair, his letters to his daughter continued to be full of tenderness. He wanted her to learn to ride, “for it will please me so and we can have such fun riding together after you come to the city next fall.” She was swimming a little in the Hudson, she told him. That was splendid, he commented, and was Brudie “learning new things, too?” She had a bad habit of biting her fingernails. He wanted her to stop: “I am glad you are taking such good care of those cunning wee hands that Father loves so to be petted by, all those
little
things that will make my dear Girl so much more attractive if she attends to them, not forgetting the big ones. Unselfishness, generosity, loving tenderness and cheerfulness.”

But his letters were also full of excuses—why he had not written in “so long,” why he had not been able to see her, why he would not be able to visit her. Nor did his vivid accounts of what he did with the children at Abingdon give Eleanor unmixed pleasure. “Little Miriam welcomed me with the fox terriers at the station though I came by an entirely unexpected train,” Elliott wrote. “The little girl had been down to
every
train for two days.” Realizing perhaps that Eleanor
might be jealous of the girls who could be with him, he added, “No other little girl can ever take your place in my heart.” Another letter must have caused even sharper pangs of envy.

Miriam, Lillian and the four Trigg children all on their ponies and horses and the fox terriers Mr. Belmont gave me (to comfort me in my loneliness) go out about sunrise and gallop over these broad fields for one or two hours; we rarely fail to secure some kind of game, and never return without roses in the cheeks of those I call now, my children.

In the fall of 1893, he moved in and out of New York, and had become evasive with everyone in his family concerning his whereabouts and intentions. He told the faithful Corinne that he was going to Abingdon, but ten days later she discovered he was still in town. Corinne and Douglas went to his hotel almost daily, but could never find him in. He would promise to come to stay with them or Theodore or Uncle Gracie and then would telephone to break the engagement.

He disappeared from his usual haunts, and they learned only later that, although he received mail at the Knickerbocker Club, he was living under an assumed name on West 102nd Street with a woman whose name was unknown to the family. Theodore and Bamie sadly and reluctantly gave up.

To Bye, Theodore wrote in July, 1894.

I do wish Corinne could get a little of my hard heart about Elliott. She can do, and ought to do nothing for him. He can't be helped, and he simply must be let go his own gait.

He is now laid up from a serious fall; while drunk he drove into a lamp post and went out on his head. Poor fellow! if only he could have died instead of Anna!

Eleanor had known for many months, from the talks and whisperings of the grownups, that something was desperately wrong with her father. She also knew it from her own experience. Her father would send her a message that he was coming to take her for a drive and then not appear. Unthinkingly, he would arouse her hopes that she would be coming “home” to him. He disappointed her in almost everything, yet her love never faltered, her trust never weakend.

With the arrival of summer, 1894, Grandma Hall again closed her Thirty-seventh Street house and Eleanor moved to Tivoli and later to Bar Harbor. A handful of Eleanor's letters to her father that final summer have survived.

June 14th, 1894

Dear Father:

I hope you are well. I am very well and so is every one else. We moved to the country and that is why I have not written before we were in such a hurry to get off for it was so hot in New York. We have two people staying with us—cousin Susie Hall and Mable Drake—do you know her? tell me in your next letter. I rode my pony to-day for the first time this summer. I did not go very far but tomorrow I am going for a long ride with Uncle Valley won't it be fun. I wish you were up here to ride with me. Give my love to the puppies and every one else that you know. Madlein Brudie and I often drive with my pony.

With a great deal of love I am your little daughter

Nell

July 5th, 1894

Dear Father

I would have written before but I went to Cousin Susie. We are starting to-day for Bar Harbor we are in a great flurry and hurry I am in Uncle Eddie's room. The men are just going to take the trunks away. We are to have lunch at 15 minutes before twelve. We are going to Boston in the one o'clock train. Brudie wears pants now.

Good-bye I hope you are well
dear Father
.

With a great deal of love to everybody and you especially I am your little daughter

Nell

P.S. Write to me at W. 37th St.

July 10th, 1894

Dear Father:

I hope you are well. I am now in Bar Harbor and am having a lovely time yesterday I went to the Indian encampment to see some pretty things I have to find the paths all alone I walked up to the top of Kebo mountain this morning and I walk three hours every afternoon. Brudie walks from 4 to 5 miles every day. Please write to me soon. We eat our meals at the hotel and the names of the things we get to eat are to funny Washington pie and blanket of Veal are mild to some other things we get. I have lessons every day with Grandma.

With a great deal of love, I am your little daughter

Nell

July 30, 1894

Dear Father:

I hope you are well. I enjoyed your last letter very much. I went fishing the other day I had great fun I caught six fish don't you think I did well for the first time. I am having lessons with Grandma every day and go to a french class from half past eleven till half past twelve. Alice Fix died three days ago and was buried yesterday was it not very sad.

Goodby dear dear Father I send you a great deal of love I am your little daughter

Nell

With a Knickerbocker Club return address, Elliott wrote his “little Nell” that her letters from Bar Harbor had been his “great delight.”

When you go to the Indian encampment you must say “How” to them for your old father's sake, who used to fight them in the old claims in the West, many years before you opened those little blue eyes and looked at them making birch bark canoes for Brudie and Madeleine to go paddling in and upset in the shallow water, where both might be drowned if they had not laughed so much.

Give my love to all the dear home people and all of my good friends who have not forgotten me.

Would you like a little cat, very much like the one you used to have at Hempstead and called an “Angostora” kitten instead of what was his correct name, “Angora?” If so, I have a dear friend who wants to make you a present of one. Let me know after you have asked grandma.

Please do not eat all the things with the funny names you tell me you have,—that is, if they taste like their names—for a Washington pie with a blanket of veal, and Lafayette left out, would be enough to spoil your French-American history of the latter part of the last century, for some time to come, possibly for so long that I might not be able to correct your superstition. The blanket was what Washington needed and the pie should have been laid out of veal and the neglected Lafayette should have eaten it.

Again with dear love, I am

Your affectionate father

Elliott Roosevelt.

On August 12 Theodore wrote Bamie from Washington: “Elliott is up and about again: and I hear is drinking heavily; if so he must break down soon. It has been as hideous a tragedy all through as one often sees.”

On August 13 Elliott wrote his last letter to his daughter.

Darling Little Nell—

What must you think of your Father who has not written in so long, but we seem to be quits about that. I have after all been very busy, quite ill, at intervals not able to move from my bed for days. You knew that Uncle Gracie was back. He is so happy at “Gracewood.” You know he was going to ask you there. Are you going?

Give my love to Grandma and Brudie and all—I was very much amused by hearing my Darkey coachman in his report of Stable News that he had trained all the Dogs to drive together, four and six in hand, and built a wee cart with wooden wheels. It was really funny to see this great big fat “Irish” colored man in this little cart! and six small Fox Terriers driving for all they were worth. I saw Auntie Corinne and the others the other day. They were so funny—They are very well and sent love to you all. How is your pony and the dogs at Tivoli, too? Tell Madeleine and Brudie that Father often thinks of them—With tender affection ever devotedly

Your Father

Elliott Roosevelt

The next day Elliott had a fall, was knocked unconscious, and died with none of his family about him, moaning in his delirium for his sister Corinne.

From the
World,
August 16, 1894:

The curtains of No. 313 West 102nd Street are drawn. There is a piece of black crepe on the door-knob. Few are seen to pass in and out of the house, except the undertaker and his assistants. The little boys and girls who romp up and down the sidewalk will tell you in a whisper; “Mr. Elliott is dead,” and if you ask, “Who is Mr. Elliott?” “We don't know, nobody knows,” they will answer.

At the door a sad-faced man will meet you. “Mr. Roosevelt died at 10 o'clock Tuesday evening,” he will say. In a darkened parlor all day yesterday lay a plain black casket. Few mourners sat about it.
Beneath its lid lay the body of Elliott Roosevelt. Few words will tell of his last days. . . .

The physician and a valet were the only watchers at the end. The first of the family notified was James K. Gracie of Oyster Bay, an uncle of Elliott Roosevelt. To him was left the duty of breaking the news to the others. Many of them did not know that Elliott Roosevelt was in New York. Few of them had seen him for a year. At the clubs no one knew his address. Even the landlord from whom he rented his house knew him only as Mr. Elliott. Under that name he has lived there with his valet for over ten months. He sought absolute seclusion.

Many people will be pained by this news. There was a time when there were not many more popular young persons in society than Mr. and Mrs. Elliott Roosevelt. . . .

Elliott was buried at Greenwood, the Roosevelt burial place. Grandma Hall did not take Eleanor to her father's funeral, and even the flowers she sent from herself and the children arrived too late. Grandma Hall was deeply sorry about that: “Elliott loved flowers and always brought them to us, and to think not one from us or his dear ones went to the grave with him grieves us deeply.”

There was one comfort in his death—the harsh and bitter memories were washed away, Theodore wrote Corinne.

I only need to have pleasant thoughts of Elliott now. He is just the gallant, generous, manly loyal young man whom everyone loved. I can think of him when you and I and he used to go round “exploring” the hotels, the time we were first in Europe; do you remember how we used to do it? And then in the days of the dancing class, when he was distinctly the polished man-of-the-world from outside, and all the girls from Helen White and Fanny Dana to May Wigham used to be so flattered by any attention from him. Or when we were off on his little sailing boat for a two or three days' trip on the Sound, or when we first hunted; and when he visited me at Harvard. . . .

Elliott had spent a few weeks of that final tormented summer with the woman who had been his mistress in Paris, who had summoned the doctor to her house on the New England shore and tried to make
Elliott rest. He had often spoken to her of his sister, Corinne Robinson, and she now wrote Mrs. Robinson,