Eleanor and Franklin (30 page)

But this was all froth on the waves of their love. Franklin impatiently urged her to abbreviate her stay at Dark Harbor, and she did her best to accommodate him without wounding Aunt Corinne's feelings. The quickest route to Campobello was by way of Millbridge, and Franklin begged her to take it so that he could meet her there. That would not do, she wrote primly; if the train missed connections, they would be stranded, and even with her maid to chaperone them, that would not be proper. “That is one of the drawbacks dear, to not announcing our engagement, and though we did not think of it at the time, it is one of the things we gave up until January 1st.” But she, too, was longing to get to Campobello. Although she had greatly enjoyed Islesboro, “I want a quiet life for a while now and above all I want you.”

Franklin's fondness for Campobello was second only to his feeling for Hyde Park, and Eleanor soon came under the enchantment of the “beloved isle,” as the James Roosevelts had named it when they first discovered its beauty and peace in 1883. It was pine-smelling and spruce-laden, nine miles long and from one and a half to three miles wide. Franklin took Eleanor for walks over mossy paths and showed her his favorite picnic spots. In the morning the fog rolled in and shut out the world, but in the evening spectacular sunsets were arrayed in the western sky. At Franklin's urging Eleanor ventured onto the tennis court, but even though she loved him dearly she did not see why she had to prove her inability over and over again—play with Evelyn, she entreated him. She went sailing on the
Half Moon
and portrayed a willow tree in the end-of-the-season
tableaux
at the club for the benefit of the island library; Franklin impersonated “a very funny ‘Douglas' in kilts.” They made eighty dollars, Sara recorded, plus twenty-five
cents that Eleanor later sent from Tivoli—“I came away and entirely forgot that I owed it . . . for a ticket the night of the
tableaux
as I took a small boy in.”

The happy time they had together in Campobello was over “oh! so quickly,” Eleanor lamented, and Franklin's feelings mirrored her own. “I wish you could have seen Franklin's face the night you left Campo,” Mrs. Kuhn wrote. “He looked so tired and I felt everybody bored him. He could not stand Evelyn's chatter.”

And increasingly Eleanor could not stand the chatter and triviality of the social game. She spent a week end on Long Island with Aunt Tissie, and wrote Franklin that a number of ladies were coming to tea and bridge. “If you ever find me leading this type of life, stop me, for it's not the way to happiness.” Her high-mindedness vexed some of her relatives. She had “the queerest time,” she reported of her visit to her Aunt Joe (Eddie Hall's wife): “I don't go there very often and in between times I forgot the impression it always makes on me to see Joe and all the other women there smoking and I find myself constantly the only one who does not do one thing or another, which makes me uncomfortable as they always say ‘Oh! well, Totty hasn't been here enough to fall into our ways' and I dare not say that I hope I never shall! Somehow I can't bear to see women act as men do!”

In the autumn of 1904 Franklin entered Columbia Law School. He had planned to go to Harvard Law School, but Columbia meant he could be near Eleanor, and that consideration was more compelling than his fondness for the Yard and Gold Coast society. “I am anxious to hear about the first day [at Columbia Law],” Eleanor wrote from Tivoli, “and whether you found any old acquaintances or had only Jew Gentlemen to work with!”
*
Most of the youngsters in her Rivington Street class were Jewish and although that did not inhibit her solicitude for them, she did share society's prejudice against Jews.

Occasionally Franklin met her at the settlement, and once, when a child in her class became ill, he accompanied Eleanor to the tenement in which the child lived. After they came out he drew a long breath of air. “My God,” he said, aghast. “I didn't know people lived like that!”

Sara was as pleased as Eleanor that her son was in New York. He should move his chair closer to the light “so as to see the print of those charming and comprehensible law books!” she gaily advised him, adding, “I am so sorry I cannot be there to explain any difficulties you
meet with.” But law school commanded little of Franklin's attention that first year, and even the presidential election does not seem to have been much on his mind, or on Eleanor's, although the campaign was reaching its climax and there must have been a great deal of discussion of Uncle Theodore's prospects the first week in October when they were visiting Auntie Bye at Oldgate in Connecticut. But they were absorbed in each other and in the approaching announcement of their engagement. When? Who would write letters to whom? How soon after should their wedding follow? On October 7 Franklin selected a ring at Tiffany's, “after much inspection and deliberation,” and gave it to Eleanor on October 11, her twentieth birthday. “I am longing to have my birthday present from you for good,” she wrote him from Tivoli that evening, “and yet I love it so I know I shall find it hard to keep from wearing it! You could not have found a ring I would have liked better, if you were not you! This sounds odd but is quite sensible.”

They disclosed their engagement at the beginning of December. Franklin had planned to be at Fairhaven, where the Delano clan would be assembled at Thanksgiving, to announce the news himself, but he came down with jaundice and had to remain in New York. Excited letters were promptly sent to Franklin and Eleanor from Fairhaven telling them what the family's response had been. “All those who know you think it is the luckiest thing that ever happened to Franklin,” Muriel Robbins reported. Lyman Delano wrote to both of them: “I have more respect and admiration for Eleanor than any girl I have ever met, and have always thought that the man who would have her for a wife would be very lucky.” And to Eleanor he wrote that he would have given anything if she could have been in Fairhaven on Thursday morning “when Franklin's letters came. I never saw the family so enthusiastic in my life and I am sure your ears would have burned if you could have heard some of the compliments paid you.”
†
Lyman's father, Warren Delano, the senior member of the clan, wrote Franklin that “Eleanor must have no doubt about being taken in by all her fiance's family—certainly by those who have learned to know and
appreciate her.” Another note was struck by Mrs. Hitch, who, aware of the wrench in the relationship between her sister and Franklin that the announcement foretold, wrote Eleanor that she was thankful you “already love my dear Sister” and expressed her pleasure to Franklin “that your devoted Mother will have a devoted daughter in Eleanor.”

Eleanor's Hall relatives rejoiced that she would at last have a home of her own, but their hearts ached somewhat at the thought of her leaving Tivoli and Cousin Susie's. She would miss “dear Eleanor very much,” Grandma Hall wrote Franklin, but was thankful that Eleanor was “going to marry such a fine man as I believe you to be.” Maude, a believer in spiritualism, horoscopes, and fortune tellers, drew a circle in wishing “Totty” happiness, “a perfect circle no break anywhere,” and then added, “Do be good to Grandma I think she will miss you frightfully.” Cousin Henry, who usually was not given to speaking in a personal vein, wrote Eleanor that she filled a place in Susie's life: “Much as I am to Susie, you are more and I pray that you always will be.” Pussie was in ecstasy. “I've always loved Franklin & must write him a tiny line tonight just to ask him if he knows and appreciates what he has won,” she wrote, but asked how Hall felt. “I know that he had a secret longing that Mr. Biddle would be the one.”

He had to throw away three unsatisfactory starts, Mr. Biddle confessed to Franklin in his congratulatory note. Another disappointed suitor, Howard Cary, wrote him from Cambridge, “You are mighty lucky. Your future wife is such as it is the privilege of few men to have.” He was mortified that at Islesboro he had “thoughtlessly put her in a position which must at times have been embarrassing.” And Howard's mother, only half in jest, lamented to Eleanor, “and so you are not going to be my daughter-in-law after all.”

Letters of congratulations also poured in upon them from friends and former classmates at Allenswood, Groton, and Harvard. “I am afraid I shall bear [Franklin] a grudge though,” one of Eleanor's co-workers in the Junior League wrote, “if in consequence we are to lose the most efficient member of the League.” Many of the letters to Franklin told him how lucky he was, that he could not have made a better match. “It has been a dream of mine for some years that you would be a man widely useful to your country,” Groton's second in command, the Reverend Sherrard Billings, wrote him, “and a sympathetic wife will be a great help to you on the road to realizing my dream and I am thankful and glad.” The previous spring when Dr. Peabody had officiated at Flossie Twombly's wedding to William A. M.
Burden, Eleanor had said to Franklin, “It seems quite necessary for a Groton boy to have him,” and the rector now shifted an engagement to preach in a Cambridge church in order to be able to officiate at their marriage.

The Oyster Bay side of the family was delighted with the news. “Oh,
dearest
Eleanor—it is simply too nice to be true,” wrote Alice from the White House; “you old fox not to tell me before.” Young Corinne Robinson bubbled over—“Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,” she wrote, and recalled that when Franklin and Eleanor had come to Orange in the fall she had suggested to Franklin that he was in love with Eleanor and had called him a hypocrite and gay deceiver when he had denied it.

“My own darling soft-eyed child,” Auntie Bye wrote Eleanor, “your letter has given me great joy. I love Franklin as you know on his own personal account because he is so attractive & also because I believe his character is like his Father's whom Uncle Will & I always feel was the most
absolutely
honorable upright gentleman (the last in its highest sense) that we ever knew.” She was thankful, Auntie Bye went on, “to feel you care for someone in a way that gives you the right to make him first over everyone & be everything to him.” Aunt Corinne was equally moved by the news. “I can only hope that when the time comes for [young] Corinne to tell me such a piece of news, that I shall feel as completely satisfied.”

Uncle Theodore, always in the pulpit, sermonized a little in his letter to Eleanor: “Married life has many cares and trials; but it is only in married life that the highest and finest happiness is to be found; and I know that you and Franklin will face all that comes bravely and lovingly.” A happy married life, he advised Franklin, was more important than political success.

White House

Washington

Nov. 29th 1904

Dear Franklin,

We are greatly rejoiced over the good news. I am as fond of Eleanor as if she were my daughter; and I like you, and trust you, and believe in you. No other success in life—not the Presidency, or anything else—begins to compare with the joy and happiness that come in and from the love of the true man and the true woman, the love which never sinks lover and sweetheart in man and wife. You and Eleanor are true and brave, and I believe you love each
other unselfishly; and golden years open before you. May all good fortune attend you both, ever.

Give my love to your dear mother.

Your aff. cousin

Theodore Roosevelt

A few days after the announcement of their engagement Eleanor and Franklin saw Auntie Bye and asked her to find out if Uncle Ted would be able to attend the wedding, which, like Pussie's, would take place in the adjoining Seventy-sixth Street houses of Cousin Susie and her mother, Mrs. Ludlow. A few days later Auntie Bye forwarded Theodore's note: “Tell dear Eleanor that I can attend the wedding if it takes place before March 17.” Eleanor promptly wrote the president that the ceremony was scheduled for March 17 and expressed her pleasure that he could come. “I want you & Aunt Edith so much & as I am to be married in the house do you think you could give me away?” Not only would he do so but, wrote Aunt Edith, she and Uncle Theodore had been talking about the wedding and “he feels that on that day he stands in your father's place and would like to have your marriage under his roof and make all the arrangements for it.” They would understand if she wished to adhere to her original plans, “but we wish you to know how very glad we should be to do for you as we should do for Alice.” Despite the warmheartedness of this offer, Eleanor and Franklin decided to keep the wedding at Cousin Susie's and have the invitations sent by Grandma Hall. Eleanor would have “a bevy of pretty bridesmaids,” she wrote to Helen Robinson, including Alice Roosevelt, Ellen Delano, Muriel Robbins, Isabella Selmes, Corinne Robinson and Helen Cutting. “You angel,” Alice replied to her invitation,

to ask me to be your bridesmaid. I should love to above anything. It will be too much fun. Let me know where I am to hat (&) cloth myself so I can arrange about fittings. . . . Really you are a sair to ask me. . . .

Before the wedding the engaged couple took time off to attend Uncle Theodore's inauguration. He had defeated conservative Democrat Judge Alton B. Parker by 2.5 million votes, a landslide, and one of the votes came from Franklin. “My father and grandfather were Democrats and I was born and brought up a Democrat,” he later explained
(1938), “but in 1904 when I cast my first vote for a President, I voted for the Republican candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, because I felt he was a better Democrat than the Democratic candidates.”
³

They traveled to Washington in Emlen Roosevelt's private car and stayed with Auntie Bye. During the ceremonies on March 4 they sat on the Capitol steps just behind the president and his family and heard his ringing appeal: “All I ask is a square deal for every man.” They went to the White House to lunch with the president and again joined him and his immediate family on the reviewing stand for the parade and at the inaugural ball that evening. Then they hurried back to New York, Eleanor, at least, thinking that was the last inauguration of a member of her family that she would attend.
⁴