Eleanor and Franklin (54 page)

Hyde Park did not want to be left out of the homecoming ceremonies that were being planned in Poughkeepsie, Sara advised her son. A rousing village welcome was being prepared, with their neighbor, Mr. Newbold, as chairman. “If and when you are elected, you will belong to the nation, now you are ‘our boy' of Hyde Park and Dutchess.” Motherly hopes were soaring: “My regards and best wishes to our future President.”
¹⁰

But Democratic national prospects were not good, as Eleanor had indicated in her letter to Sara. The country sensed that since Wilson's illness the government had been rudderless, and this was held against the Democrats. The people were tired of the heroic mode. There was a revolt against high taxes. The country was ready, as the Republican nominee Senator Harding phrased it, for a “return to normalcy.” But for Roosevelt no political campaign was a lost cause. When Cox's representative in San Francisco had awakened Charles Murphy to tell him that Roosevelt was Cox's choice for vice president, the Tammany leader said, “He is not well known in the country.” To campaign was an opportunity for Franklin to project himself onto the national stage
and to conduct himself in such a way that no matter what happened in 1920, the party would turn to him in 1924.

Eleanor's hopes for Franklin's early arrival at Campobello dimmed as he conferred with local leaders on his way East and stopped off at Columbus to meet with Cox, a meeting at which the two men announced they wanted the election to be a plebiscite on the League of Nations. Eleanor finally went to Hyde Park instead. “In order to share the day with her husband, Mrs. Roosevelt traveled all night and all day from Eastport, Maine,” the
New York Times
reported. She arrived too late for the “homecoming” at Springwood, where village neighbors with a band at their head met Franklin at the gate and escorted him to the house, but she did catch up with him for the ceremonies in Poughkeepsie.
¹¹

Sara wrote her son after the homecoming ceremony, “I will say nothing of my feelings on Tuesday last and in fact always for you know. I know you and I will never forget Tuesday the 13th of July, 1920! I kept wishing for your Father but I believe he knew and was with us. . . . ” Happy mother, unhappy wife. Eleanor could not identify with Franklin's triumphs in that instinctive and impulsive way. “Whatever Franklin achieves must be largely due to you,” she had written Sara.
¹²
That was conviction, not courtesy.

Their closest friends saw it differently. Eleanor is “your real ‘running mate,'” Aunt Kassie wrote. Isabella was thrilled because if Franklin was elected, Eleanor would also be in a position to do much to benefit the country, and she marveled at the steady progress Eleanor had made. The thought of Eleanor as the wife of the vice president caused Pauline Emmet to glow: “How splendid you will be dearest Eleanor (we must win!) graceful and gracious and charming!”

Eleanor was happy for Franklin, happy that he had attained something he wanted, but her feeling was also one of detachment and objectivity, as if she were looking at someone else's life from the outside. There were married couples who could say, as Beatrice Webb did of her marriage, “apart we each of us live only half a life, together we each of us have a double life.” Eleanor had wanted that sort of relationship with Franklin, but the Lucy Mercer affair had killed her feeling that she really shared in his life or that she had abilities of her own. This was his career, not hers, his potentialities that were being realized, while hers continued to be circumscribed by family and friends.

She was ready for something more—how much so is suggested in an interview she gave at Hyde Park during the homecoming ceremonies.
Mrs. Roosevelt, the reporter wrote, “is first of all a domestic woman, but she has one outside interest, she admitted on Wednesday to a reporter of the (Poughkeepsie)
Eagle News
, in the only interview she granted. That is politics.”

“Yes, I am interested in politics, intensely so, but in that I think I am no different from the majority of women, only that, of course, I have followed my husband's career with an interest that is intense because it is personal. But I have never,” and she emphasized her words, “campaigned for him. I haven't been active in politics in any way, and so you see there isn't much of a story to be found in me.

“My politics? Oh yes, I am a Democrat, but,” and here she paused, “I was brought up a staunch Republican,—and turned Democrat. I believe that the best interests of the country are in the hands of the Democratic Party, for I believe they are the most progressive. The Republicans are,—well, they are more conservative, you know, and we can't be too conservative and accomplish things.

“I am particularly interested in the League of Nations issue and I am firmly in favor of it, though I think we should adopt it with the reservation that Congress shall vote on whether or not we shall enter a war. But the League of Nations is, I believe, the only way that we can prevent war. We fought for it, and we should adopt it. If we don't adopt, it will be useless. The U.S. must be part of the alliance.”
¹³

These were the careful comments of a woman who was thinking for herself. The reporter was charmed by this “womanly” woman, as he described her. “Her hair is blond and fluffy, and her eyes of a deep shade of blue, make her look far younger than one would have imagined the mother of half-grown children to be. She is constantly smiling,—not the set, vapid smile of one who assents pleasantly rather than discuss a problem, but rather the smile that portrays a personality intensely interested in the questions under discussion and with a personal viewpoint on each of them.” The reporter was interested that “as Mrs. Roosevelt sat and chatted . . . the Democratic nominee for Vice President frequently entered the library to ask her advice on questions that had come up. . . . ”

Back in Campobello Eleanor followed Franklin's progress through the papers. He and Cox were going to see the president, he wrote her, but he still planned to get to Campobello: “I can hardly wait, I miss
you so much. It is very strange not to have you with me in all these doings.”
¹⁴
“I like all your interviews,” she replied, “and am dying to hear about your talk with the President. Oh! how I wish I could be in two places at once!”
¹⁵

Franklin made the journey to Campobello on the destroyer
Hatfield
, piloting the vessel through the treacherous Lubec Narrows himself. While he was on the Island, he told the press, he intended to do some shooting, take cliff walks, begin work on another toy sailboat for the children, and teach James how to handle the
Vireo
, the boat that he had brought up, lashed to the deck of the
Hatfield
, to replace the
Half Moon
.
¹⁶
At the end of the week he, Eleanor, and Anna left for Washington, after which they would go to Dayton to attend the ceremony at which Governor Cox would be officially notified of his nomination. In Washington Eleanor arranged to give up their house—another indication of how little they expected to win—and Franklin said his good-by to the Navy by means of a formal letter of resignation to the president and an affectionate longhand note to Daniels. “You have taught me so wisely and kept my feet on the ground when I was about to skyrocket—and in all there has never been a real dispute or antagonism or distrust.” In his diary, Daniels wrote, “He left in afternoon, but before leaving wrote me a letter most friendly and almost loving which makes me glad I had never acted upon my impulse when he seemed to take sides with my critics.”
¹⁷

While Eleanor and Anna went to Dayton to Franklin, Sara returned to Hyde Park with James and Elliott to prepare for Franklin's notification. Young Henry Morgenthau, Jr., managed the ceremonies at Springwood. Sara later grumbled to her children about what the crowds of politicians had done to her immaculate lawns,
¹⁸
but in her diary she wrote, “Very fine and impressive. About 500 came in the house. About 8,000 in all outside.” Party notables, including Daniels, McAdoo, and Governor Smith were on Sara's porch, which one reporter called a “wonderful front porch—a long, broad stone veranda” that, he implied, put into the shadow the front porch from which Harding had said arrogantly he would conduct his campaign. The reporters wrote approvingly of the vine-covered stucco house and the old, wide-spreading trees, and described James and Elliott and their cousin Cyril Martineau as youngsters whose yellow hair stood on end like bristles, while Anna's tow hair fell down her back nearly to her waist. Eleanor Roosevelt wore a plain blue and white dress without ornaments, the press reported, and listened to her husband intently,
perched on the balustrade that ran around the veranda with her feet resting on the edge of a camp stool.

When Franklin went West for his first campaign trip, Sara, Eleanor, and the three children returned to Campobello. “Keep some kind of diary
please
,” he wrote her from St. Paul, “as I know I will miss some of the things that happen!”
¹⁹
That was his last letter. From then on if the family heard from him at all it was by telegram. “Splendid receptions Minnesota, South and North Dakota,” he telegraphed on August 16. “So sorry miss Franklin's birthday give him my special love. All well. Telegraph Wednesday noon care Station Master Northern Pacific Railroad, Spokane, Washington.”

Franklin's campaign office was still after her for photographs. “Bachrach in Washington has a good one with F. Jr. when a baby,” she replied to Charles McCarthy on August 25, but those taken of her alone were rather poor. “I take such bad photographs.” She went on to talk about the campaign:

I am glad you feel Franklin's chances are good for I would be sorry to have him beaten after so much work & I really think & hope “Cox & Roosevelt” can do better for the country the next four, very hard years than “Harding & Coolidge.” Personally, I had wanted Franklin out of government service for a few years at least, so in spite of the honor I really feel rather unselfish when I wish for his success!

Would it be possible for you to send me some copies of Franklin's acceptance & some campaign buttons both Cox & Roosevelt? Several people are asking & writing for them & I would be most grateful if you can let me have them.

“Dearest, dear Honey,” she wrote him on August 27, “I am positively hungry for news of you and it seems a long time since your last telegram and they are meagre enough.” Her letter was full of family and political news. “So far the Republican papers having nothing very bad against you have simply been trying to treat you like an amiable, young boy, belittlement is the worst they can do.” The Republican side of the family was lining up for Harding, a later letter reported. “Did you see that Alice is to go on the stump for Harding and that Auntie Corinne is to speak for him in Portland, Maine, on September 8th, starting his campaign there. Ted also speaks in Maine.” Mrs. Selmes, Isabella's mother, had been at Henderson House when Franklin was nominated and reported that everyone there was “so nice” about
Franklin. But Franklin's success in the West worried the Republican high command. “Do you know,” said the engineer on the Roosevelt train, “that lad's got a ‘million vote smile'—and mine's going to be one of them.” Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was dispatched by the Republicans to trail Franklin. “He is a maverick,” young Theodore said in Sheridan, Wyoming. “He does not have the brand of our family.” This personal attack galled Franklin, and it was the beginning of bad feeling between the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park clans. Franklin thrust back shrewdly, although not personally, by recalling that “in 1912 Senator Harding called Theodore Roosevelt, first a Benedict Arnold and then an Aaron Burr. This is one thing, at least some members of the Roosevelt family will not forget.”

Eleanor was restless at Campobello. When Franklin agreed to go to Brooklyn on Labor Day, she wrote to Sara a little irascibly, “Of course it is hard to refuse but I do think he should have cut Monday out and come here directly, however, there is no use in saying anything.”
²⁰
A reminder to Franklin to write to Aunt Dora revealed her own feelings: “I hate to add these personal things when you are under such a strain and wish I could do them but I can't and they are the kind of things which do mean so much to other people who don't happen to have all the interesting things you have to fill their minds.”
²¹
He was in the privileged position; he had interesting things to do, and she was no longer content to sit on an island off the northeast coast of Maine while he had all the fun.

On September 20 Louis Howe wrote her that the staff was struggling with the Roosevelt pictures and packing as well as they could, and then he added, “I do not think Franklin has told you, but I am resigning for a month in order to avoid the civil service rules and going off with Franklin on the next western trip.” And Franklin had not told Louis that he had also asked Eleanor to join the campaign train.

How this came about is not clear. She had written her husband at the beginning of September, “I would love to go down but as I know you must go on campaigning I would just be in the way.” If she thought of herself as a burden, her friends saw her as a political asset. When Grace C. Root sent congratulations on Franklin's nomination, she added, “and not at all the least to you whose comprehension of things political might well be envied by the suffrage sisters!” Alice Wadsworth, relieved that “so far as
our
men are concerned the victory of one does not necessitate the defeat of the other,” took it for granted that “both of us will probably be busy with
politics
—thanks to this dratted Suffrage!”

The 1920 election was the first national election in which women voted. “The woman's hour was striking,” Mrs. Catt proclaimed at the victory convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. A candidate's wife could have an important effect upon his fortunes, and Franklin wanted Eleanor at his side. Before joining him, however, she took James to Groton, the first of four trips to deliver a son to the rector's Spartan disciplines. James was only twelve and it was difficult to leave him at boarding school, but it was family tradition, so she unpacked his trunk, arranged his cubicle, and finally said good-by to the Peabodys and to James. She would go through the same melancholy experience with each of the boys, increasingly dubious that separating youngsters from parents at so early an age was good for either; but it was Franklin's wish and she yielded, just as she did a few days later when James came down with a digestive upset and Franklin, on the basis of a reassuring message from the rector, urged her to stay with the train and let Sara go to Groton instead. It was the first time she had not been with an ill child and it was hard not to hasten back to her son's bedside, but as she wrote Sara, “I am going gaily on.”