The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (10 page)

In Paris we dined in strange places, ordering the specialties of any particular restaurant, whatever they might be. We wandered along the Seine and looked in all the secondhand stands. I bought clothes and some prints, but Franklin bought books, books, everywhere he went.

His French was good, so in Paris he did the bargaining, but when we reached Italy I spoke better Italian than he did. However, after a few days he gave up taking me when he was going to bargain, becuase he said he did better without me, that I accepted whatever the man said and believed it to be the gospel truth. He got along with his poor Italian, made up largely from the Latin which he had learned in school.

We went to Milan, and then to Venice in July. We spent the Fourth of July there. We had a delightful gondolier who looked like a benevolent bandit and kept us out on the canals a good part of the nights. He and I could understand each other moderately well. Occasionally, when we went on long trips he had a friend to help him, and then the Venetian dialect would fly back and forth, and he had to translate what his friend was saying.

We saw churches until my husband would look at no more, but he was never tired of sitting in the sun at one of the little tables around the piazza and recalling the history of Venice.

We went by gondola out to Murano and saw the glass blown, and ordered a set of glasses with the Roosevelt crest, and some Venetian glass dolphins for table decorations, both of which I still have.

From Venice we went north through the Dolomites and then we took a large, lumbering victoria drawn by two horses. It was a beautiful trip to Cortina, where we spent several days. My husband climbed the mountains with a charming lady, Miss Kitty Gandy. She was a few years his senior and he did not know her well at that time, but she could climb and I could not, and though I never said a word I was jealous beyond description and perfectly delighted when we started off again and drove out of the mountains. Perhaps I should add that Miss Gandy later became one of my good friends!

We stopped at Augsburg and Ulm, two quaint German cities, where we managed to find more interesting prints. Then we drove through the Alps to Saint-Moritz, where Auntie Tissie and her family were staying.

The fact that we drove meant that our luggage had to be light and I had one simple evening dress with me, which by this time was not in its first freshness. We arrived at the Palace Hotel to find a suite reserved for us, and the price appalled us both. We decided that as it was only for a few days our pocketbook would stand the strain. We forgot how much dressing went on in such hotels as this, and we soon found that our clothes were suitable only for one particular dining place, a balcony overlooking the lake, and the food seemed to be even more expensive here than it was elsewhere. We were much relieved when we started off again and drove out of Switzerland by way of Strasbourg and Nancy.

Franklin took pictures of this whole trip, some of them at the tops of passes where we were surrounded only by white peaks covered with snow. When we got home he never had a moment’s hesitation as to exactly where they were taken. That extraordinarily photographic mind of his never forgot anything he had once seen.

Back in Paris, I collected my clothes, and we had some gay times, as some of Franklin’s cousins were there also, and his Aunt Dora (Mrs. Forbes). She took us to see many places, and her apartment, which was always the center for the entire family when they went to Paris, was a most hospitable home to us.

In England we paid what was to me a terrifying visit to Mr. and Mrs. Foljambe, who had a beautiful place called “Osberion in Workshop.” It is in a part of England known as “the Dukeries,” because of its many fine estates belonging to great titled families.

The most marvelous oak tree I have ever seen stood near this place, and we visited a castle which had a little railroad track running from the kitchen to the butler’s pantry through endless corridors. We were shown the special rooms in which the plate was kept, more like the vault of a silversmith than a safe in a private house. The library had real charm. You entered it through a doorway from which a divided staircase led down several steps into a long room. A fireplace at the end held some blazing logs. On either side stacks came out into the room, and between them were arranged tables and chairs and maps, everything to make reading or study easy and delightful.

In this tremendous household there was only one bathroom. We had comfortable rooms with open fireplaces, and our tin tubs were placed before the fires in the morning, our cans of hot water beside them. The food was excellent but typically English. Dinner was formal and to my horror there were no introductions. We were guests in the house and that was considered sufficient.

I suffered tortures, and when after dinner I had to play bridge, which I played badly, my horror was increased by the fact that we were to play for money. My principles would not allow me to do this, so I was carried by my partner, but this scarcely eased my conscience. I felt like an animal in a trap, which could not get out and did not know how to act.

Soon after we left the United States, Isabelle Selmes’s mother had cabled us that Isabelle was going to marry Bob Ferguson. They came over on their honeymoon to visit his family in Scotland. We were invited to his mother’s house, in order that we might have a chance to see them. They were staying at a little watering place not far from Novar, the old family home in the north of Scotland. Up there the head of the house is known to the people as “the Novar,” and for many years the present Lord Novar would take no title because he considered that “the Novar” was higher than anything the Crown could give him.

The dower house, where old Mrs. Ferguson lived, was a revelation to me, with its glorious view and the lovely gardens covering the side of the hill. I knew the Ferguson family well and they had been friends of our family for a long time.

Franklin tramped the moors with Hector, and one night, after a long day of exercise and many visits to crofters’ cottages, I was awakened by wild shrieks from the neighboring bed. Mrs. Ferguson was delicate and I woke with a “Hush!” on my lips, for I did not want to have her disturbed. I had already discovered that my husband suffered from nightmares. On the steamer coming over he had started to walk out of the cabin in his sleep. He was docile, however, when asleep, and at my suggestion returned quietly to bed.

This time he pointed straight to the ceiling and remarked most irritably to me, “Don’t you see that revolving beam?” I assured him that no such thing was there and had great difficulty in persuading him not to get out of bed and awaken the household.

When our early-morning tea with thin slices of bread and butter was brought in, I inquired if he remembered his dream. He said he did, and that he remembered being annoyed with me because I insisted on remaining in the path of the beam which threatened to fall off.

I was asked to open a bazaar while I was there. Any young English girl would have been able to do it easily, but I was quite certain I could never utter a word aloud in a public place. Finally, Franklin was induced to make a speech to the tenantry, and for years we teased him because he told the Scottish crofters that vegetables should be cooked in milk—an extravagance hardly within their means!

From there we went down to stay with the older brother, who was head of the house, Sir Ronald Ferguson, and his wife, Lady Helen, at their other house, Raith, on the Firth of Forth, just across from Edinburgh. This was a beautiful place, with wonderful woods and rhododendrons. My husband was tremendously interested because of the scientific forestry work which made these woods financially valuable and brought in revenue year by year.

I was fascinated by the prints which hung everywhere, even on the walls along the little back stairs which led to our rooms. My final thrill came when we went to dinner and I found the walls hung with Raeburn portraits of all the Ferguson ancestors. The first one I saw, “The Boy with the Open Shirt,” I had known in reproductions since childhood but had never expected to see the original hanging in a friend’s home.

This was also my first sight of a Scotsman in his dress kilts at dinner. Hector had worn them out on the moor, but I had really not had a chance to take them in, in all their glory, until this occasion.

One afternoon at tea I was alone with Lady Helen, when she suddenly asked me a devastating question: “Do tell me, my dear, how do you explain the difference between your national and state governments? It seems to us so confusing.”

I had never realized that there were any differences to explain. I knew that we had state governments, because Uncle Ted had been governor of New York State. Luckily, Sir Ronald and my husband appeared at that moment for tea and I could ask Franklin to answer her question. He was adequate, and I registered a vow that once safely back in the United States I would find out something about my own government.

We had to be home for the opening of Columbia Law School, so our holiday, or second honeymoon, had come to an end. My mother-in-law had taken a house for us within three blocks of her own home, at 125 East 36th Street. She had furnished it and engaged our servants. We were to spend the first few days with her on landing until we could put the finishing touches on our house.

I
was beginning to be an entirely dependent person—no tickets to buy, no plans to make, someone always to decide everything for me. A pleasant contrast to my former life, and I slipped into it with the greatest of ease.

The edge of my shyness was gradually wearing off through enforced contact with many people. I still suffered but not so acutely.

Either Maude or Pussie once told me that if I were stuck for conversation I should take the alphabet and start right through it. “A—Apple. Do you like apples, Mr. Smith? B—Bears. Are you afraid of bears, Mr. Jones? C—Cats. Do you have the usual feeling, Mrs. Jellyfish, about cats? Do they give you the creeps even when you do not see them?” And so forth all the way down the line, but some time had passed since anything as desperate as this had had to be done for conversational purposes. As young women go, I suppose I was fitting pretty well into the pattern of a conventional, quiet young society matron.

Five
    

A Woman

THE TRIP HOME
was not pleasant, and I landed in New York feeling miserable. I soon found that there was a good reason, and it was quite a relief—for, little idiot that I was, I had been seriously troubled for fear I would never have any children and my husband would be much disappointed.

I had always been a particularly healthy person, and I think it was a good thing for me to be perfectly miserable for three months before every one of my six babies arrived, as it made me a little more understanding and sympathetic of the general illnesses human beings are subject to. Otherwise, I am afraid I would have been more insufferable than I am—for I always think we can do something to conquer our physical ailments.

Little by little I learned to make even these months bearable. In any case, I never let anything physical prevent my doing whatever had to be done. This is hard discipline, and I do not recommend it either as training for those around one or as a means of building character in oneself. What it really does is to kill a certain amount of the power of enjoyment. It makes one a stoic, but too much of a thing is as bad as too little, and I think it tends to make you draw away from other people and into yourself.

For the first year of my married life I was completely taken care of. My mother-in-law did everything for me. Like many other young women waiting for a first baby, I was sometimes nervous. A girlhood friend of mine said, “When I am a little afraid of the future I look around and see all the people there are and think they had to be born, and so nothing very extraordinary is happening to me.”

Some emergencies of this period I remember vividly. We had invited some friends for dinner, and the cook departed the day before. It seemed impossible to get another one. I was simply petrified, because I knew nothing about preparing a meal, and I spent the day going from employment office to employment office until finally I corralled someone to cook the dinner, and worried all the way through for fear the results would be disgraceful.

One would think that this might have suggested to me the wisdom of learning to cook, and though I remember I did take myself all the way up to Columbia University for some cooking lessons one winter I got little good out of it, for the school used gas ranges, and I learned to make special, fancy dishes only. What I needed to know was how to manage an old-fashioned coal range and how to cook a whole meal.

That winter my cousin Alice Roosevelt was married to Nicholas Longworth. Franklin had to go alone to the wedding because I was expecting my first child. On May 3, 1906, a girl whom we named Anna Eleanor after my mother and myself was born. Our trained nurse, a lovely person, Blanche Spring, played an important part in my life for many years. I had never had any interest in dolls or little children, and I knew absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby. I acquired a young and inexperienced baby’s nurse from the Babies’ Hospital, who knew about babies’ diseases, but her inexperience made this knowledge almost a menace, for she was constantly looking for obscure illnesses and never expected that a well-fed and well-cared-for baby would move along in a normal manner.

During the next few years we observed much the same summer routine. We visited my mother-in-law at Hyde Park for a time and then went up to stay with her at Campobello. My mother-in-law was abroad for a part of that summer of 1906, and we had her house at Campobello. Ordinarily my husband sailed up or down the coast in the little schooner
Half Moon
, taking some friends with him, and took perhaps one or two short cruises during the summer across to Nova Scotia or to various places along the coast. He was a good sailor and pilot, and nearly always calculated his time so well that rarely do I remember his causing us any anxiety by being delayed. As a rule, he sailed into the harbor ahead of his schedule.