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The Summers of Their Discontent

By from the July/August 2011 issue

FDR and Eleanor — “an extraordinary marriage”?

Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage
By Hazel Rowley
(Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 331 pages, $27)

The outlines of FDR’s turbulent marriage with Eleanor have been recalled many times, maybe at one time most definitively in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 1995 No Ordinary Time, supplemented by PBS documentaries and a few television biopics. The narrative is fairly well known. A dashing and ambitious young FDR married a not-beautiful but intelligent woman who came from his social class and who was niece to his hero, President Teddy Roosevelt. FDR was extroverted and fun. Eleanor was more serious, sometimes awkward, but loyal. During World War I, while assistant secretary of the navy, FDR romanced his wife’s fetching young social secretary. Eleanor discovered their love letters, was distraught, and offered a divorce. For reasons personal and political, the marriage holds, but both tend afterward to live independently, even despite FDR’s crippling polio, and while maintaining a remarkable political partnership. FDR flirts with various women without necessarily having affairs. Eleanor has male friends, and lesbian friends, also likely not committing physical adultery. At FDR’s death, he is in the presence of his former mistress, along with other friends, betraying his promise of more than 25 years before not to see Eleanor’s former social secretary again. Eleanor grieves the failures of their marriage while also joining the nation in mourning her historically majestic husband, who dies at the height of his glory.

Is there more information to be learned? Apparently so. Since Goodwin’s book, the extensive correspondence between Eleanor and her intimate lesbian friend Lorena Hickok has been more thoroughly reviewed. And new letters have surfaced from Lucy Mercer Rutherford, FDR’s inamorata whose acquaintance he supposedly renewed only at his life’s end. But we now know that he sustained some contact with her throughout his 12-year presidency. Hazel Rowley’s Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage tries to collate all of this drama, somewhat entertainingly, though she leaves questions unanswered. The Roosevelt marriage was ostensibly conventional and ultimately blessed with five surviving children until FDR’s service in the Woodrow Wilson administration. Eleanor hired 23-year-old Lucy Mercer to work as her social secretary at the house three days a week. The Roosevelts initially lived on N Street, near the current Tabard Inn, in the former home of Eleanor’s aunt, who was sister to Teddy Roosevelt. Lucy’s once socially prominent parents had lived down the street until her father, a former Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt, lost the family fortune and took to drink. Lucy’s mother divorced him, leaving Lucy with upscale manners but no money. She became a virtual part of FDR and Eleanor’s family. Everyone loved Lucy, including even FDR’s difficult mother, who called her “so sweet and attractive.”

Lucy years later recalled that from the first, FDR and she were “inexorably drawn to each other.” Their affair probably began in the summer of 1916, when Eleanor, as usual, was with the children at the Roosevelt Canadian retreat at Campobello. FDR toiled away in steamy Washington, D.C., enmeshed in World War I preparations and the 1916 presidential campaign. Lucy joined FDR and other friends for boat trips on the Potomac and drives into the Virginia countryside, trying to escape the heat. One jaunt, with President Wilson’s physician Cary Grayson and Mrs. Grayson, took them to Harpers Ferry, then a three-hour drive one way. Washington tongues began to wag. Eleanor’s cousin, the mischievous Alice Roosevelt Longworth, told FDR: “I saw you twenty miles out in the country. You didn’t see me. Your hands were on the wheel, but your eyes were on that perfectly lovely lady.” Even acerbic Alice loved Lucy, and hosted her and FDR at her own home, later explaining: “He deserved a good time. He was married to Eleanor.” Lucy left Eleanor’s employ in 1917 to work directly for FDR at the Navy Department.

AFTER THE U.S. entered World War I, FDR did a European tour, catching double pneumonia, and returning to New York a convalescent. While unpacking his luggage, Eleanor found Lucy’s love letters. Reputedly she offered FDR his freedom, FDR’s mother threatened to disinherit him if he divorced, Lucy was told Eleanor would not grant a divorce, Lucy’s Catholicism probably ruled out marriage to a divorced man anyway, and devoted FDR aide Louie Howe mediated, desperately wanting to preserve FDR’s political career. FDR foreswore seeing Lucy again. Rowley suggests the affair was never consummated. Lucy, a devout Catholic, lived with her mother. FDR’s house was full of servants. FDR was too well known to check in to hotels. Upper-class society then tolerated affairs with married women (Alice Roosevelt Longworth romanced and probably bore a child by Senator William Borah), but despoiling a respectable young lady was taboo.

His reputation still intact, FDR was the 1920 vice presidential nominee at age 38. The Democrats were crushed, but FDR’s magnetic star still shone. Of course, he was felled by polio in 1921, losing control over his legs and never really walking again. Eleanor faithfully nursed him. FDR strove to function as a crippled man but struggled with depression. His doting young secretary Missy LeHand, who affectionately called FDR “Effdee,” regularly provoked bursts of laughter from her boss. FDR took her for extended stays on a houseboat in Florida, where they were joined by other friends. Missy later recalled that sometimes a dispirited FDR, realizing he would never fully recover, remained in bed on the boat until noon. Eleanor always liked Missy and fully approved of her months away with her husband, which also came to include respites at his new retreat at Warm Springs, Georgia.

Rowley declares Missy’s involvement with FDR “romantic.” Whether it was physical is unclear. One married couple lived with the Roosevelts at the New York governor’s mansion and closely observed Missy and FDR for clues but could not answer the question. Despite his paralysis, FDR retained his sexual capacity. Another FDR biographer, Hugh Gregory Gallagher, whom Rowley quotes, is himself a polio victim who speculated that the paraplegic and prideful FDR remained chaste for a wide range of emotional and physical reasons. A very devoted Missy, who never married (though she did have a two-year romance with Ambassador to the Soviet Union William Bullitt), understood FDR’s limitations yet remained completely dedicated to him until her death in 1944. She was mourned as much by Eleanor as by FDR.

Eleanor herself rebounded from FDR’s earlier infidelity and struggle with illness by plunging into a busy world of social and political activism. She created a new set of radical female friends, some of whom were not very disguised lesbians. FDR’s Victorian and authoritarian mother, whose Hyde Park mansion also remained FDR and Eleanor’s home, naturally disapproved of this provocative new crowd. Perhaps himself somewhat amused, FDR went along, eventually building Eleanor her own separate home on the estate called Val-Kill, to spare Eleanor and Mother from butting heads. FDR probably also enjoyed the degree of separation. A female couple resided at Val-Kill with Eleanor until a falling out, prompting a passive-aggressive Eleanor, rather than expelling them, instead to renovate a nearby structure to become her own still separate cottage. All of this construction likely inspired FDR, still stuck with his mother at the big house, to build his own Top Cottage, while promising his mom that he’d still spend nights with her.

WAS ELEANOR HERSELF LESBIAN? Rowley doesn’t fully answer. Eleanor was extremely close to reporter Lorena Hickok, who clearly was in love with her, and with whom Eleanor shared tender embraces and kisses. “And so you think they gossip about us,” Eleanor wrote Hickok after FDR’s election to the presidency. “I am always so much more optimistic than you are. I suppose because I care so little about what ‘they’ say!” Time magazine described Hickok as a “rotund lady with a husky voice, a preemptory manner, baggy clothes” who is “fast friends with Mrs. Roosevelt.” No longer able to be a reporter while publicly so close to Eleanor, Hickok worked in the FDR administration, sometimes living in the White House and dining with the Roosevelts. But the passionate association with Eleanor couldn’t last. Eleanor was too busy, with her family, her causes, and her husband’s presidency. “I’m afraid you and I are always going to have times when we ache for each other and yet we are not always going to be happy when we are together,” Eleanor explained to her in 1934. Hickok died in 1968, and her 2,300-plus sometimes ardent letters from Eleanor became public 10 years later.

Eleanor also had a romantic friendship with her New York state trooper chauffeur Earl Miller, a rugged, uncultured man 13 years her junior. He regularly stayed at Eleanor’s Val-Kill home and frolicked with her and other friends at the swimming pool. One Roosevelt son speculated that Miller may have been his mother’s “one real romance” outside of marriage. Their correspondence was later destroyed. Rowley doubts they had a physical affair, noting that Miller’s marriages and romances were always with younger, pretty women. Eleanor’s other likely platonic romance was with a leftist student activist, Joe Lash, a frequent White House visitor. “I’ve grown to love you so much,” Eleanor once wrote him, while also befriending his girlfriend, and gifting him a Pontiac convertible. The FBI naturally monitored Lash and later taped an intimate hotel encounter between him and his girlfriend, whom the FBI mistook for Eleanor. FDR likely chuckled when J. Edgar Hoover shared the discovery. But seemingly FDR never discouraged Hoover from monitoring his wife’s radical friends.

FDR, despite his paralysis and grueling White House workload, still enjoyed the flirtatious company of doting women with whom he could playfully banter. Eleanor, in contrast, tended to badger him with urgent political requests. One FDR companion was the very attractive exiled Norwegian princess Martha, who called the president “Godfather,” and who called her “Godchild.” Norway’s crown prince remained in London to wage war and gratefully accepted FDR’s offer of refuge for his wife and children. Eleanor exasperatingly explained to a friend that “there always was a Martha for relaxation and for the none-ending pleasure of having an admiring audience for every breath.” Perhaps typical of FDR’s relations with his woman admirers was his flirtation with eventual New York Post owner Dorothy Schiff. Calling him a “sun god,” she later gushed, “If he had said let’s go to bed, I probably would have.” Instead, he had her spend the night at Eleanor’s cottage, and took her for casual drives in the woods. She found the routine bizarre.

MEANWHILE, Lucy Mercer years before had married a much older and extremely rich New Jersey squire. During the 1930s, she occasionally wrote FDR asking for favors on behalf of her family. In 1941, still attractive at age 50, she began to visit the White House (while Eleanor was away) for quiet dinners or afternoon teas, after which she returned to her sister’s house in Georgetown. Later, the visits included FDR’s daughter, who knew of the earlier affair. After Lucy’s elderly husband died in1944, FDR’s presidential train delivered him to the Rutherfords’ New Jersey estate, where he spent a few hours with Lucy and her extended family.

Famously, FDR dropped dead in 1945 at his Georgia cottage. With him were two female cousins, Lucy, and Lucy’s friend, Russian female portraitist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who was painting FDR. Lucy and the painter hastily departed well before Eleanor’s arrival to retrieve the body. One of the gossipy female cousins spilled the beans to Eleanor, who had to endure a long, awkward overnight train ride with the cousins and her husband’s corpse back to Washington, D.C., also knowing that her daughter was privy to the renewed contact with Lucy. While packing at the White House, Eleanor made a point of sending an earlier FDR watercolor by Shoumatoff to Lucy, who thanked her with a classy note: “You—whom I have always felt to be the most blessed and privileged of women—must now feel immeasurable grief and pain and they must be almost unbearable.”

In her widowhood, Eleanor would become infatuated with her doctor, David Gurewitsch, 18 years her junior. He eventually married his younger girlfriend, with Eleanor hosting the wedding in her own apartment to assuage her private hurt. Eleanor later insisted they all share a Manhattan townhouse together, with Eleanor serving as a sort of mother-in-law, and where she died in 1962.

It was a somewhat strange but not surprising end for Eleanor, who seemed never to find full satisfaction in love. But her frustrations contributed to an unparalleled partnership with her irrepressible husband, who may have been more emotionally distant than physically unfaithful to her. Hazel Rowley’s account of their unusual marriage offers some new haphazard pieces but does not complete a complex puzzle. 

About the Author

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.


Letter to the Editor View all comments (33) |

Alan Brooks| 8.9.11 @ 10:17AM

Someone said FDR would have thrown his wife off a bridge if it advanced his political aims.

Alan Brooks| 8.9.11 @ 5:37PM

(but then, Nixon wouldn't even give Haldeman and Erlichman pardons after they rolled over in the clover for him)

Alan Brooks| 8.9.11 @ 10:20AM

... no, I don't remember who said it; it was in a book about WWII; a chapter on the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship.
Churchill considered Roosevelt a great man, but dishonest (no one ever accused Roosevelt of being honest);
Roosevelt considered Churchill "bibulous".

Occam's Tool| 8.9.11 @ 1:27PM

Churchill was by far the greater man. Nuff said.

Bill| 8.9.11 @ 2:23PM

Churchill was pretty dishonest in his own right.

Alan Brooks| 8.9.11 @ 3:12PM

Churchill was a conservative; who says conservatives can't be dishonest too? no law against it, otherwise we would have to build prisons on every block in every community.

Bill| 8.9.11 @ 4:55PM

You raised the dishonesty issue; you would know.

Alan Brooks| 8.9.11 @ 5:30PM

Makes two of us, Bill. Remember thar time you lied to a friend? yes, I know all about it, Bill.

Alan Brooks| 8.9.11 @ 5:33PM

Bill doesn't quite have wings on his back yet. But give him time- they'll start growing out.

Bill| 8.10.11 @ 2:35PM

The stubs have just begun to protrude; want to hear me play the trumpet? Well, maybe not yet.

Bill| 8.10.11 @ 2:46PM

Oh my God; I lied to a friend?

Well, you can be certain, then, that it didn't do YOU any harm.

Clint| 8.9.11 @ 10:40AM

Let's see...

A politically convenient marriage between a skirt-chasing, power hungry man and a smart, unattractive, kind-of-lesbian that results in the Presidency and huge growth of the Federal Government and the public sector, with ever-encroaching socialism.

I think I saw this movie in the 90's...

sinanju| 8.9.11 @ 11:01AM

The difference between the two couples would be that the first were far more controlled in their affections and took care to stay just on the right side of the rules of their day--throwing their energies and drowning their frustrations in their work.

The more contemporary example allowed their "fleshly appetites" to completely overpower them (the male member, at least) and would have derailed their career several times over were it not for the fact that ruling class social mores had loosened considerably and their political establishment and the media of their day was bound and determined to sacrifice all credibility to protect them from their indiscretions.

Scrapette Jones | 8.9.11 @ 9:20PM

And both of you would happily take the latter couple back right this second over the present occupant, even though you would bibulously and dishonestly never admit it...

Elgordo| 8.9.11 @ 10:56AM

To COUNTER the UNFAIR DEMONIZATION of the TEA PARTY

The Dems are trying to demonize the Teaparty with generalized, nebulous attacks on them as terrorists

A Teaparty SpokesPerson(s) should clearly list the 4 or 5 itms the Teaparty wants in a discussion of the Debt Negotiations to upgrade our S&P Rating back to AAA

Then demand to know what's terrorist about these demands.

Also, the Teaparty should point out that it was the underlying policies of Obama not the contentiousness of the Debt Ceiling debate that got us to the brink of insolvency.

Corrine DuRoque| 8.9.11 @ 11:01AM

I will have to find a copy of this book to see if the author has anything to say about Mrs. Nesbitt, who should get a biography someday, to straighten out all the stories about her as to whether she was the White House old witch of a house keeper, or was misunderstood by all the people who had to eat her food and walk in and out of the already collapsing edifice. Opinions of her range from the bad by Fdophiles to the less bad by Eleanorophiles. And her own memoirs give her own views of life with the R family. There may or not be a recording of Mrs. Nesbitt being interviewed by Mary Margaret McBride. I am interested in Mrs. N because I had to do a history class term paper on her years ago.

Dan Hirsch| 8.9.11 @ 11:05AM

Mr. Tooley,

What, perchance, does this have to do with anything? I was better off not knowing any of that. Drat you!

DH

C Smith| 8.9.11 @ 11:24AM

As my mother climbed the wooden stairway to start her evening shift on that cool spring day in 1945, she opened the door to see every light on every switchboard aglow. Every panicked operator was struggling to connect the corded jack to another plug, connect, and connect again. A friend saw the question in her face and quipped. "Roosevelt is dead."

A New York Times editorial would later assert: "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House". But after the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl Days, Pearl Harbor, and Buna, two brothers were forever convinced that this man, as he had betrayed his wife, had likewise betrayed them and their country:

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2007
For God and Country

That’s my father on the right with a string on his finger. On the left his younger brother David on leave from the Navy. Together again with their sister on that all so familiar Missouri farm late in November. The “Dust Bowl Days” were past and “Great Depression” over. It had been a wonderful time, that Thanksgiving of 1941. And it was after 2 AM as my father gently triggered the camera shutter. A few hours later, David was gone.

The U.S.S. Oglala, bucking the waves under full power, urgently propelled toward its Pacific destination. It had to arrive at the appointed time. However, fatigue eventually had its toll on the minelayer, a WW1 converted passenger steamer. Silently adrift, it summoned assistance. After a tow cable was attached and the feverish pace resumed, David commented to his superior: “If we go any faster that cable is ‘gona’ snap.” And “snap” it did!

The U.S.S. Oglala entered Pearl Harbor during the early morning hours of December 7, the last to arrive. It moored “side by side” with the U.S.S. Helena, completing the formation of "Battleship Row."

And as the sun rose on “December 7, 1941,” most of the Oglala crew, including her commanding officer, was still “out on the town.” However, the men in the boiler room, the cook, the second in command, and a few others including David were at their stations. When the sound of revving planes and whistling bombs punctuated the morning tranquility, General Quarters was sounded. The second in command screamed, “Man the Guns”! David screamed back: “What guns”! Someone found the keys, unlocked the magazine, and after some fumbling a 3"/50 cal. A.A. gun and three .30 cal. machine guns were manned and returning fire.

Then as several enemy planes strafed the deck, David remembered one flying low and amidships. Then a torpedo and its contrail as it converged on the Oglala. It would soon be over! The Oglala lifted out of the water, but he was still alive! The submerged munition had gone under the Oglala and struck the Helena on the other side.

They continued firing, reporting some “definite hits.” However, the Oglala’s hull had ruptured and was flooding rapidly. For an hour and a half the meager crew was uninterrupted in returning fire as the Oglala continued to list to her port side. 5°, 10°, 15°, 20°. Then as the commanding officer finally returned, the Oglala listed to its side, and those who could swam away.

Back on a farm in Missouri, a family had but one thought: “Was he alive.” The phone was never unattended. A speaker in the kitchen was connected remotely to the wireless in the library. And as hours turned to days, a mother listened and waited. And during the days before Christmas, sleep was haunted by the thought of “tapping” sailors trapped in the hulls of sunken ships….

Today I learned that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (San Francisco) is entertaining arguments to remove from our corporate psyche and soul the words: "In God We Trust."

http://popularapostasy.blogspo.....untry.html

ManassasGrandma| 8.9.11 @ 11:37AM

Merciful heavens, these people sound awful.

loulou| 8.9.11 @ 11:48AM

Think of all the damage these two creeps have caused to our country.

David in MA| 8.9.11 @ 12:13PM

Just another political convience.
I always thought she was gay and he was still diddeling the secretary.
A charade for political power end wealth.....
The ruleing class somehow always becomes a disappointment. Acting like dogs in heat and thinking they are above the law and citizen scrutiny. What they seem to forget is, they to, bleed, cry, hope and die, just like the unwashed masses.

florin| 8.9.11 @ 2:37PM

Were FDR and Eleanor related..??? From this article, it seems they were...

SUBVET| 8.9.11 @ 12:41PM

The Bible says "we all are bent" even the ruling class.

gene| 8.9.11 @ 1:56PM

It might have been easier for all in this family if Eleanor had not decided during the marriage that she had given her husband enough children; then proceeded to physically separate from him and also have a sperate bedroom.
The fact that she complained later when she realized he was not living as a monk ref: Lucy, I find absurd. Yes he was wrong, but she betrayed her wedding vows first by not being a wife to him.
At the end of his life, he was sick and dying and all around him knew it. His daughter brought Lucy to him in Warm Springs, so he had some company during his last lonely days. Eleanor saw this as a betrayal by FDR and her daughter. This was not physical adultery. This was an old lonely dying man. Eleanor SHOULD have been with him during these last days. However, she was BUSY in her own little world.

She reaped what she sowed.

YeloStalyn| 8.9.11 @ 4:49PM

That's why you don't take a liberal for a wife... they try to be a husband.

And why you don't take a liberal to be a husband... they're liars.

Bill| 8.9.11 @ 2:25PM

It's spelled "peremptory," not "preemptory."

Scrapette Jones | 8.9.11 @ 9:26PM

All this tripe is but a sidewhow to FDR's real crimes, for which I have always felt he should have been convicted of treason posthumously if possible: having the audacity and gall to even run for a 4th turn, knowing full well he was at death's door, and for keeping Truman in the dark on everything, knowing as well he would probably need to know as the succeeding POTUS upon FDR's death. FDR was a charming JERK and TRAITOR.

POST American| 8.9.11 @ 11:18PM

---AHHH the Roosevelts!

NOW it emerges 'Republican' Teddy was
a Freemason Progressive at heart. The Cuba
fiasco was set up, and he later BALKED any
real address of the Rockefeller monopoly
even during the height of their bloodbaths
(SEE 'Ludlow Massacres' online).

On top of that there were the secret
'understandings' with Japan that sent
Korea into 'EUGENICS very friendly'
enslavement which continues to this day.

And then also, of course, the little matter
of steering the dialectic with the up and coming
Imperial Japanese. Something we became
more awakened to later ----on Dec 7, 1941.

And what more can we say about the Delanos,
beiog players in the drug trade that destroyed
Chinese civilization and paved the way for
'EUGENICS most friendly', neo-sudra RED
China.

Again, another move we're just begining to
appreciate the implications of.

AS EVER ---Keep followin' them Masons
and them EUGENISTS ( virtually interchangable).

JUST KEEP A GOIN'-----------------

COPY GIRL| 8.10.11 @ 1:14AM

I was 18, working as a copy girl at The Dallas Morning News - in the AP room, taping stock market reports when the words came across ticker - - Roosevelt dead in Warm Springs, one time after another. I ran to door of City Room to tell them President Roosevelt was dead, To a man, they shouted back, "Who shot him?" I suppose, however ill, no one thought FDR would ever die of natural causes.

The age of communication, in my lifetime is nothing short of miraculous. Sitting alone, in the Associated Press room, taping quotes in stock books to take to the composing rom - (AP staff did not come on until afternoon) - I knew FDR died before the city editor did. Now computer screens are on everyone's desk. Even mine.

Why a copy girl? All the copy boys had gone to war.

Tiddly| 8.10.11 @ 3:46AM

Lots of dirt is coming out on the headline names of that time, and few people really care, now. Who could have imagined that the stiffly moral and moralizing Charles Lindbergh (who had Roosevelt as an enemy because of his association with the isolationist group America First) would cheat on Ann and have a secret wife (and children!) in Germany? Charles Lindbergh, America's greatest hero, role-model to all American boys, a bigamist! It would have shocked America and the world, had it been known while he was alive. Now, it's a yawn.

POST American| 8.10.11 @ 5:39AM

----------------BOTTOMLESS LINE--------------------

---'FEW really care now'? --largely because
consciousness has been cunningly steered away
from any revelation of the FACT that the
'agendas' --and the 'benny violence', to say
nothing of the bloodlines, have remained
---THE SAME.

----TAKE HEED, as the RED China TREASON OP
is now UTTERLY undeniable, the record will show
the 20th, 30th, 40-th, 50th and NOW 60th
Anniversaries of the EUGENICS and RED China
'unfriendly' KOREAN WAR were --'overlooked'.

--A parting thought as BOTH London and
Fukishima now burn in good 'agenda advancing'
fashion:

"That's the trouble with the past,
it isn't even past."
-WILLIAM FAULKNER
Nobel Prize Novelist ---when it mattered

--------------------TAKE HEED AMERICA

---------'Glow--BALL--ism' IS 'benny violence',
and you're NOT included in the bennies.

----------------------------TAKE HEED

jesse| 8.10.11 @ 11:10PM

Churchill was pretty dishonest in his own right.
http://www.summer-products.com
http://www.jerseys-hats-store.com

jesse| 8.10.11 @ 11:10PM

I suppose, however ill, no one thought FDR would ever die of natural causes.
http://www.honey-gifts.com
http://www.ainibag.com

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