Eleanor and Franklin (31 page)

With the wedding less than two weeks off, many parties were given for them, and wedding presents began arriving. There were in all 340 gifts—flatware and china, glass candlesticks, silver candlesticks, several silver tea sets, cut glass and vases of many descriptions, four inkstands, thirteen silver trays, and thirteen clocks. For Franklin there were golden cigarette cases and a dozen bottles of Madeira, and for Eleanor there was a great deal of jewelry, including a handsome pearl dog collar with diamond bars, a gift from Sara. There were water colors from Uncle Ted and Aunt Edith and a sketch of Auntie Bye from Ellen Emmet. They were given enough sets of books to fill a library—two of Jane Austen, three of Robert Browning, two
Golden Treasuries,
and one set each of Campbell, Motley, Emerson, Mrs. Browning, Symonds, Stevenson, Rossetti, Charlotte Brontë, Whittier, Cowper, and Longfellow's
Dante
. Bridesmaids helped Eleanor acknowledge her presents, and Isabella Selmes was so carried away she began to sign her own name instead of Eleanor's.
⁵

Cousin Susie helped Eleanor buy her trousseau and linen, and Sara went with her to Pach's for her wedding photo. On March 6 Sara noted in her journal “Tried on my lace dress for my dear Franklin's wedding. Mama's black lace over white.”

On March 16 Sara wrote:

Mr. and Mrs. Peabody came at 3.15. I took them up to see Eleanor's presents. Back to tea. Had Bammie, corinne & Douglas, Mr. & Mrs. Jack Morgan to dine. This is Franklin's last night at home as a boy.

Franklin, meanwhile, was busy with his ushers. Since Rosy, his half brother, was ill, Lathrop Brown was to be his best man, and the
ushers were Nicholas Biddle, Owen Winston, Lyman Delano, Warren Robbins, Charles B. Bradley, and Thomas Beal, who had sailed on the
Half Moon
with him the previous summer. He had designed a diamond tie pin for his ushers based on the three feathers in the Roosevelt crest, and he gave Eleanor a watch with her initials in diamonds and a pin with the three feathers to hold it.

On Friday, March 17, Pussie sent Eleanor some last-minute advice:

Try & forget the crowd & only think of Franklin—if you are wise you will drink a cup of strong tea half an hour before you go down stairs. It will give you color & make you feel well.
No
sugar or cream in it.

She sent three kisses, “one for Father & Mother & Ellie.”

From Maude came a note with the hope “that she will always try & think of me as her sister, one who loves her very much.” A cable signed “Souvestre” was handed her: “Bonheur,” it said.

Downstairs all was in readiness. The two large drawing rooms that opened into each other glowed in candlelight and the reflected tints of the heavy furniture. The yellow brocade with which the walls were hung picked up the glow as did the portraits of the Livingstons and Ludlows. White lilacs, lilies, and pink rosebuds relieved the stately dignity of the two rooms, and clematis and palms shaped the brocaded walls into a tabernacle of blossoms. An altar had been set up at the back of Mrs. Ludlow's drawing room, where an enormous shower bouquet of pink roses combined with palms to form a bower in which the ceremony would be performed.

Outside, traces of winter were still on the street, but the day was balmy, and windows everywhere were open, crowded with spectators. Many little boys had come from the St. Patrick's Day parade and were holding American and Irish flags as they awaited the arrival of the president. The carriages and cars of the guests continuously pulled up to the canopy, and finally everyone had arrived and was seated. Grandma Hall in black velvet and Franklin's mother in white silk trimmed with black lace were ushered to the front. Off in a little room on the side Franklin, Lathrop, and the rector were reminiscing, a little distractedly, about Groton; upstairs the bride and her bridesmaids were waiting for the president. A few moments before 3:30 the squeals of the children, a clatter of hooves, and the shouting of commands signaled his arrival, and—top-hatted and buoyant, a
shamrock in his buttonhole—he bounded out of the open landau and hastened upstairs.

The Landers Orchestra, discreetly screened, began to play the wedding march. The bridesmaids, in taffeta, with demiveils and three silver-tipped feathers in their hair, moved with measured step down the circular stairway and up the aisle formed by satin ribbons held by the ushers. Behind them came the gravely beautiful bride on the arm of her uncle. A few, remembering her mother, gasped—today she looked like the beautiful Anna, they thought. Past and present were everywhere. Her satin wedding gown was covered with Grandmother Hall's rose-point Brussels lace, which Eleanor's mother had also worn at her marriage. The veil that covered her hair and flowed over her long court train was secured with a diamond crescent that had belonged to her mother. March 17 was her mother's birthday.

At the altar she was met by Franklin. Alice took her bouquet of lilies of the valley and the rector began the Episcopal wedding service. Once he faltered—the light was dim and he could not lay hold of the words, he explained later. Eleanor knew the service so well she could have helped him out, but he recovered quickly. The vows were exchanged. Hand touched hand. It was done.

“Well, Franklin,” the president's high-pitched voice could be heard saying, “there's nothing like keeping the name in the family.” He kissed the bride and marched off to the double dining room where refreshments were being served. Others pressed forward to congratulate them, but as the dining room began to crackle with the president's sallies and the guests' appreciative laughter, the bridal couple soon found themselves abandoned. Dr. Dix and his daughter Margaret, arriving a little late for the reception, found Franklin and Eleanor standing quite alone. Eleanor was taking it calmly, Margaret observed, but Franklin was a little put out.
⁶
The Dixes traipsed off after the others, and soon the newlyweds, too, decided they might as well follow. Ushers and bridesmaids gathered round while Franklin guided Eleanor's hand as she cut the cake. Even the president was made to attend and take his piece. At five the president left, to shouts of “Hooray for Teddy” from the little boys still waiting outside; the president beamed and shook his fist smilingly. Eleanor and Franklin went upstairs to dress, and soon they, too, departed in the traditional shower of rice. With Isabella, they stopped to see Bob Ferguson, who was ill in bed, and then left for Hyde Park, which Sara turned over to them for an interim honeymoon.

Sara, at Tuxedo Park, where she had gone with her sister Kassie, finished the day's chronicle:

March 17th. Took Mrs. Peabody out in the electric to do some errands. Had all the ushers to lunch. Left at 2.30 for 76th Street. Franklin is calm & happy. Eleanor the same. All the family at the wedding. Dora, Annie & Fred, Fred & Tilly, Kassie & all & Mlle. Mathieu. About 200 at the ceremony, a large reception afterward. Theodore Roosevelt, President, gave Eleanor away.

Then she wrote her “precious Franklin and Eleanor” that it was “a delight to write you together & to think of you happy at dear Hyde Park just where my first happiness began.”

And the president, addressing the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick at Delmonico's after the wedding, spoke in words intended as much for the Vanderbilts, Sloans, Burdens, Chanlers, Winthrops, Belmonts, and van Rensselaers who had applauded his quips in the Ludlow-Parish dining room as for his immediate audience:

American is not a matter of creed, or birthplace, or descent. That man is the best American who looks beyond the accidents of occupation or social condition, and hails each of his fellow citizens as his brother, asking nothing save that each shall treat the other on his worth as a man, and that they shall join together to do all that in them lies for the uplifting of this mighty and vigorous people.
⁷

It began with Theodore Roosevelt as the American century but would progress toward a more ecumenical outlook; and in the broadening of loyalties that the United Nations would represent, the marriage that had been celebrated that day was destined to figure significantly.

 

*
An inspection of the 1907 class roster showed 21 Jewish names in a graduating class of 74.

†
Grace Tully, Franklin Roosevelt's secretary during the White House years, once asked him why he departed from custom and congratulated the prospective bride as well as groom. “With the mock sense of injury he sometimes affected, he said that when his engagement was announced, all the congratulations were showered on him for securing Eleanor as a wife. He felt, he said, that some people at least should have congratulated her for securing him as a husband.” Grace Tully,
F.D.R. My Boss
(New York, 1949), p. 120.

II

WIFE
AND
MOTHER

14.
HONEYMOON

S
OME SITUATIONS BROUGHT OUT
E
LEANOR
'
S COMPETENCE, AND
others touched the secret springs of her insecurity; her marriage did both. The pathos of orphanage was ended, but the poignancy of wishing to please and be fully accepted by her young husband and his mother began.

For five years before her marriage, beginning with the beneficent influence of Mlle. Souvestre, she had begun to assert her individuality, sense her potentialities, and emerge as a tower of strength to those around her. Suddenly the pattern was reversed, and in return for the privilege of loving and being loved she stifled any impulse to assert herself. “I want him to feel he belongs to somebody,” she had said of Hall in the 1890s to explain why she wrote him so often, and it reflected her own yearning to belong, to be part of a family whose members came first with her as she came first with them. She had had the self-discipline to do what she thought needed to be done to bring that about, and now that she wanted to be fully accepted by her mother-in-law she was prepared to dismiss her own wishes and values to gain Sara's love.

There was, moreover, that conscience of hers; if there was any conflict between what she might enjoy doing and what she ought to do, the voice of duty prevailed. The result was that she totally subordinated herself to her husband and her mother-in-law. Their wills became hers; not what she wanted, but what they wanted, mattered.

Since Franklin had to finish his year at Columbia Law School and they could not yet leave on an extended honeymoon, they were to have a week to themselves in Hyde Park and then stay at the Hotel Webster in New York. When Franklin finished his exams they would depart for a three-and-a-half-month honeymoon in Europe. Fifty years later, Eleanor's recollection of the week at Springwood focused on “Elespie”—Elspeth McEachern, the highly competent Scotswoman
who, under Sara's direction, ran the efficient and spotless household at Hyde Park. She had been at the door to welcome Sara as James' bride in 1881. “She was in the house when we went to Hyde Park the day of our wedding,” said Eleanor, “and she looked me over critically and appraisingly, wondering if I could come up to her expectations as the wife of ‘her boy.'”
¹

When they returned to New York on March 25, Sara was there to greet them. “Went to F. & E.'s apartment at Hotel Webster,” she noted in her diary; “arranged flowers and went to my French lecture. Returned to find my children and brought them home to lunch with me.”

Now that Eleanor was faced with the fulfillment of her dream—an intimate normal life of her own with the man she loved—she was frightened. In her grandmother's house she had never had a chance to learn what went into a serene, well-run household. The hotel apartment was a godsend, because Franklin would not discover how little she knew about managing a household right away. All she had to do was “a little mending.”

Despite her inner anxieties, on the surface she was busy cheerfulness and left Franklin free to prepare for his examinations. She arranged for Hall to stay with them at the hotel when he came down from Groton; she went with Franklin and Sara to the wedding of Lucius Wilmerding and Helen Cutting; and there was much family visiting—the large Delano clan, the Oyster Bay and Hudson River Roosevelts. Helen and Teddy Robinson returned from their honeymoon trip around the world, and Sara had everyone to dinner—“Rosy, Corinne and Douglas, Bammie, F. & E.” Eleanor had many things to take care of for her own forthcoming honeymoon—purchases to be made, trunks to be packed, letters of credit arranged, tickets to be picked up. She organized it all competently—and quickly. On June 6 Sara wrote, “Franklin got all their luggage put on board the
Oceanic
& lots of friends came to say goodbye. We had Rosy, Helen & Teddy to dine.” Then, overcome with a sense of her good fortune, she added, “My dear Franklin & Eleanor.”