Eleanor and Franklin (32 page)

For Eleanor her honeymoon was a bittersweet affair. Its sweetness was recorded in the long, detailed letters she wrote to her mother-in-law at the time; its harsher side emerged only in her reminiscences three or four decades later when she had become a freer, more independent woman.

“There were certain subjects never discussed by ladies of different
ages,” she wrote thirty-five years later, “and the result was frequently very bewildered young people when they found themselves faced with some of life's normal situations!” She was commenting on the scene in
Life with Father
where Father announces that he will tell his son “all about women” and then informs him promptly that there are certain subjects never discussed between gentlemen.
²

And to the extent that there was any discussion between generations of what a woman faced, it was in terms of marital duty. That was Grandma Hall's view. It was also Sara's, so one of her grandchildren, Franklin Jr., learned one day when he sat on the edge of “Granny's” bed and she pressed him to tell her about his girls. The young man parried the question. “What was life like with Grandfather?” he wanted to know. “Did you have any fun?” She was not at all unwilling to answer the charming young man. “Well, you know we were Victorians. I knew my obligations as a wife and did my duty.”
³

That was the case with Eleanor. Sex was an ordeal to be borne, she would later confide to her daughter Anna.
⁴

She began her honeymoon trip fearful that she would be seasick and become a burden to her nautical husband, who was never more at home with himself than when on the water. But after four days out Franklin reported to his mother, “Eleanor has been a
wonderful
sailor and hasn't missed a single meal or
lost
any either.” And she exulted, “Franklin has been a wonderful maid & I've never been so well looked after.” With Eleanor there to prod Franklin, for once Sara would not feel she was being neglected. Almost daily they sent her long letters full of information and affection. Eleanor's effusive avowals of love were pathetic evidence of her eagerness to be fully accepted by the older woman. “Thank you so much dear for everything you did for us,” she wrote from the
Oceanic
. “You are always just the sweetest, dearest Mama to your children and I shall look forward to our next long evening together, when I shall want to be kissed all the time!”
⁵

She shared amused observations about Franklin with the adoring Sara. “The stewardess informed me the other morning that my husband must be English, he was so handsome and had the real English profile!” she wrote archly. “Of course it was a great compliment but you can imagine how Franklin looked when I told him.” Eleanor was always observant, always learning, her heart easily stirred. They toured the ship with the captain, and “it was very interesting, but I am more sorry than ever for the Steerage passengers.” Some Japanese were on board on their way to supervise two Japanese battleships being built in
England; Franklin spent most of his time “
trying
to talk to the Japs,” Eleanor reported, “and they have proved interesting companions.”

After a stop in Liverpool to visit Eleanor's Confederate relatives, the Bullochs, and to weep a little with Aunt Ella, whose heart still ached over her “Ellie boy,” they went on to London. Wherever they went in Europe there were family connections or friends of the family to introduce them into the highest circles of society, politics, and art. Their greatest joy, however, was to poke around London, Paris, or Venice—just the two of them. For Eleanor it was a new experience to be able to do the things she had always wished to do without worrying about the cost or what “G'ma” or Cousin Susie would think. Some places had special meaning for her because she had first seen them with her father or Mlle. Souvestre, and she delighted in exploring them anew with Franklin; for his part, he could not wait to take his bride to his favorite bookseller, mountainside spot, or café.

They walked themselves weary in London while Franklin searched for rare books and prints, and ordered, he teasingly wrote his mother, “thousands of dollars worth of clothes.” They lunched at the Embassy with the Reids, Eleanor reported, and “I sat next to Mr. Reid!” They had supper at the Carlton and, she said, “were much entertained by some of the English women. It is quite out of date here to appear with your own face or hair. In fact it really looks immodest!” She visited Allenswood, “but it was dreadful without Mlle. Souvestre.” She had died a few weeks earlier.

Doing Paris with Franklin was an even greater joy. She went shopping for clothes and ordered “thousands of dollars worth of linen,” according to Franklin, while he spent “all I owned” in the first bookshop he entered. He accompanied her to the dressmaker's but insisted that he had dozed off while she ordered “a dozen or so new dresses and two more cloaks.” Eleanor scribbled a P.S.: “Don't believe
all
this letter please. I may be extravagant but——!!!” Franklin enjoyed introducing his new wife to the world of high fashion. “This A.M. we went out and Franklin got me such lovely furs,” Eleanor wrote; “I don't think he ought to give them to me but they are wonderful and of course I am delighted with them.” They dined in out-of-the-way places, ordered
spécialitiés de la maison
, and, since Franklin thought he spoke French well, they had a gay time talking with the
patrons
. Although Franklin's French was hardly as good as Eleanor's, it was good enough for some hard bargaining with booksellers. He would not let Eleanor come along on these bargaining sprees, because her sense
of fairness interfered with hard trading. Her Italian, however, was fair, while his was only poor, so in Italy he had to rely on Eleanor for such transactions. In Paris they also visited “Cousin Hortense” Howland, the French woman who had married a brother of James Roosevelt's first wife and whose salon was described in Proust as a meeting place of the Jockey Club. “You would have laughed if you could have heard Mrs. Howland flatter Franklin yesterday,” Eleanor wrote. “This isn't true,” Franklin commented in the margin; “Eleanor got buttered on both sides!”

For Eleanor, Venice was full of memories of her father and Mlle. Souvestre. Of course they hired a gondola and gondolier. Charles Stuart Forbes, an artist and kinsman, lived in Venice and was their guide. They visited the Palace of the Doges and the artistically interesting churches with him, and at the end of tiring days they all went to little Italian restaurants where they learned the pleasures of superbly cooked but simple Italian food.

They had tea at the Lido, and again Eleanor's strait-laced attitudes asserted themselves. “It is a lovely island with a splendid beach but I never saw anything like the bathing clothes the ladies wear. . . . But Franklin says I must grow accustomed to it as France is worse!” For Eleanor a decorous bathing costume consisted of a skirt, a long-sleeved, high-necked blouse, stockings, slippers, a sun-bonnet, and gloves. They left Venice reluctantly. Franklin, who had expected to be disappointed with Venice, found the reality “far more wonderful than he had imagined.” Eleanor felt that “nothing could be quite so lovely,” but then the stern voice of conscience welled up “as long as you wished to be idle!”

From Venice they proceeded to the Dolomites and to Cortina. “An old lady's Paradise,” Franklin complained, “and I feel like Satan all right.” But among the not-so-old female guests was Kitty Gandy, the attractive owner of a fashionable New York hat shop. She joined them at bridge and, according to Franklin, was “quite nice (smoked all my good cigarettes) and promised
me
a new ostrich feather hat for next winter.” When Eleanor, a poor mountain climber, declined to accompany him up the 4,000-foot Faloria, Miss Gandy gaily volunteered. To his letter describing the jaunt, a piqued Eleanor appended: “E.R. spent the morning with the Miss VanBibbers climbing up the landslide, to meet a husband who never turned up till after they got home!” Much later, in her autobiography, she confessed that she had been unspeakably jealous of Kitty Gandy and hadn't breathed easily
until they left Cortina to drive through the Alps to St. Moritz. The drive over the Stelvio was “wonderful,” and Franklin, in an exuberance of good spirits, leaped out of the coach to pick wild flowers for Eleanor—“the wild jasmine smells sweeter than anything I ever had,” she wrote. Aunt Tissie, who often stayed at St. Moritz with her family, had reserved rooms for them, and Eleanor had been a little anxious as to what they might find awaiting them, since Tissie's “ideas of the necessities of life and ours differ”; but, she reported, “we are surviving her extravagance.” She went to have her hair washed while “Franklin found a paper and devoured it.” They had tea and then went down to dinner, “since when I have been writing this and he has been mending his Kodak and occasionally telling me that I have a wonderful husband, so I suppose he is being successful!”

Fashionable St. Moritz did not respond to their young romantic mood. Eleanor always remembered—and recounted with a smile—that they were underdressed for the Palace Hotel and the management relegated them to a table—with a view of the lake, to be sure—well out of sight of the other guests. Fifty years later, when she was world famous, she returned to St. Moritz but stayed at a rival hostelry and explained to her companions why she was amused by the aggrieved message from the management of the Palace Hotel: “But why didn't Madame Roosevelt stay with us!”
⁶

Their next destination was Franklin's boyhood haunts in southern Germany, where they journeyed through the Black Forest. From St. Blasien Franklin reported: “We are full of health and bursting with food (at least I am) and the only unkind word Eleanor has ever said to me is that she would like to see me bust!” Her letter, Eleanor insisted at the beginning of a twelve-page report, was bound to be “unbearably dull”; all her letters were dull, she said deprecatingly, compared to Franklin's “amusing ones.” “We are having such a nice lazy time,” she reported from St. Blasien. She was reading Anatole France in French, but “he occasionally disgusts me so that I have to stop.” Sara had sent them a check, and she had decided to spend her share in Paris. “How I would like to kiss you and
tell
you instead of writing my thanks.”

On their return to Paris her clothes and furs were awaiting her for fittings. And awaiting Franklin were his law-school grades, which—not surprisingly for the year in which he was married—included two F's. They immediately cabled for his law books so that Franklin could study on board ship on the way home. He wanted to take make-up examinations in the autumn, Eleanor wrote. “I'm not very confident
about his passing but it won't hurt him to try and the work will be that much gained next winter.”

In Paris Franklin ran into some college friends who took Eleanor and Aunt Dora to a very “French” play, hoping to shock the ladies, Eleanor reported, a little irritated with their sense of humor. The only one shocked was Eleanor; Mrs. Forbes did not lift an eyebrow. Eleanor's primness came out again at Voisin's, where she saw, she wrote,
Mrs.
Jay Burden and
Mrs
. Harry Whitney with Mr. Bertie Goelet and Mr. Meredith Hare, “so you see it is not fashionable to go out with your husband!”

The honeymoon drew to an end with a visit to Novar, the home of the Ferguson clan, and to Mr. and Mrs. Foljambe, friends of Sara's who lived in a part of England that included Sherwood Forest and was known as the “Dukeries.” The opulent estates there eclipsed the great houses on the Hudson, and for Eleanor the visit to Osberton-in-Worksop, as the Foljambe estate was called, was “terrifying.” There was a punctilious emphasis on correct behavior, and dinner was austerely formal. Guests of such a great house, it was assumed, would all know each other and thus there were no introductions. After dinner, bridge was played for money, which was against Eleanor's principles, and so arrangements were made for her to be carried by her partner. She was the more embarrassed by this to-do because she was convinced she played badly. She described her feelings at Osberton-in-Worksop with a metaphor whose grisliness underscored her insecurity: she felt like “an animal in a trap” who did not know how to get out or how to act where it was.

Franklin took the Foljambes in his stride. They were flattered by his interest and eagerness to learn all about Osberton. After touring the farms and talking with Mr. Foljambe, he breezily informed his mother that his plans for Hyde Park “now include not only a new house, but new farm, cattle, trees, etc.”

The visit with the Fergusons, old friends of Eleanor's father and mother, was more relaxed. Bob's older brother Hector remembered her as a golden-haired three-year-old. Bob Ferguson and Isabella Selmes, who had been married in July, were visiting the family. Eleanor drove over in a two-wheeled cart to see them and wrote Sara delightedly: “It is impossible to imagine how sweet [Isabella] and Bob are together for I would not know him for the same man. He has become demonstrative if you can believe it and they play together like two children.”

While they were with the Fergusons, they received news that
Theodore Roosevelt had scored a considerable diplomatic triumph when the Japanese and Russian peace plenipotentiaries, meeting at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, reached agreement on terms of a settlement of the Russo-Japanese War. The Fergusons were part of the Foreign Office establishment, and Sir Ronald Ferguson had played a role in bringing the meeting about. “It is nice news, isn't it?” Eleanor wrote. “We had really begun to think it would not be and I think Uncle Ted must be gratified to have done so much towards it.” Franklin jauntily waved the flag. “Everyone is talking about Cousin Theodore saying that he is the most prominent figure of present-day history, and adopting towards our country in general a most respectful and almost loving tone. What a change has come over English opinion in the last five years!” Also while Franklin and Eleanor were at the Fergusons', Sidney and Beatrice Webb came to lunch. “They write books on sociology,” was Eleanor's meager description of the couple, “and Franklin discussed the methods of learning at Harvard while I discussed the servant problem with the wife!” Did her exclamation point mean that she sensed that talking with Beatrice Webb about servant problems had been an opportunity wasted? The door was open, as at Uncle Ted's, to talk of high politics, culture, and science. Therefore, when Lady Ferguson asked Eleanor to explain the difference between federal and state governments and Eleanor could not get beyond the fact that there
was
a difference, since Uncle Ted had been governor of New York and now was president of the United States, her mortification was extreme. Fortunately, Franklin came to her rescue—as he did again when she was asked to open the flower show. “She opened it very well,” Franklin insisted, “and wasn't a bit rattled and spoke very clearly and well—but I had an awful time of it and wasn't even introduced.” Eleanor's account was different. “We opened the flower show at Novar last Saturday and Franklin made a very good speech.” In this case, Eleanor was the more accurate reporter; Franklin's talk was graceful and humorous—it was, as his wife said, “a very good speech.”