Eleanor and Franklin (57 page)

Even though she was developing her own interests, her first choice still was to enter into her husband's work. Now the summer began that was to leave him crippled, with his survival as a public man dependent on her resolution, her encouragement, her readiness to serve as his proxy in politics. He had always needed her, more than she was ever able to recognize or than he usually could bring himself to say. After the summer, there no longer was need for words.

26.
THE TEMPERING—POLIO

F
RANKLIN WAS IMPATIENT TO GET BACK TO
C
AMPOBELLO IN
1921. For the first time since he began to campaign for public office, he planned to spend most of the summer on his beloved island. He needed its peace and he looked forward to being with his family. Public office had a disciplining effect on him, and when he was out of office he was restless, reckless, irrepressible. “Found Franklin in bed after a wild 1904 dinner and party,” Eleanor noted May 24. Harriet, the maid, “frightened” her with the announcement that Mr. Roosevelt was in bed, but then when she learned why, she was “very indignant with him!”
¹
Just before they went to Campobello, young Sheffield Cowles was married to Margaret “Bobbie” Krech, and Franklin's “uproarious” behavior at the wedding festivities surprised the Oyster Bay contingent, who had always thought of him as a little lacking in earthiness. “It was the Roosevelt spirits,” they said, a claim that irritated Sara, who was sure her son was a Delano.

Orders went to Captain Calder at Campobello to get the
Vireo
and the motor launch in readiness, also the tennis court. Louis Howe, who had left the Navy Department, was planning to come to Campobello with his wife and his son, Hartley, which would give Franklin and Louis plenty of time to blueprint Franklin's bid for the governorship in 1922.

Sara was not in her house. Although sixty-seven, she returned to her pre-war practice of a yearly voyage to Europe to see her sister Dora and other Delano relatives. In London the spirit of adventure overcame caution, and she and Muriel Martineau took a twin-engine aeroplane from London to Paris.

It was five hours from London to Paris. I had been told four hours, but I would not have missed it and if I do it again I shall take an open plane as one sees more and it is more like flying. Poor Muriel
soon began to feel ill and had to lie on the floor all the way and had a horrid time.

“Don't do it again,” her son hastily cabled her, and she agreed. “In thinking it over I believe you really mean it, so I shall try not to fly back.” After settling his family at Campobello, Franklin had to rush to Washington to deal with a Republican effort to “smear” his and Daniels' record. The specific charge was that they had sanctioned the use of entrapment procedures at Newport Training Station in a drive against homosexuality there. Louis brought Eleanor a copy of the report signed by two Republican senators. She was anxious to hear what Franklin intended to do. “Of course,” he wrote back, “as I expected I found all the cards stacked, only even worse than I thought.”
²
The Republican majority reneged on a promise to give him an opportunity to be heard. A Roosevelt press release denounced the committee's methods, denied any knowledge of the entrapment procedures and certainly of any supervision of them, and protested Republican use of the Navy as a political football.

“It must be dreadfully disagreeable for you and I know it worries you though you wouldn't own it,” she wrote back, “but it has always seemed to me that the chance of just such attacks as this was a risk one had to take with our form of government and if one felt clear oneself, the rest did not really matter.”
³
When she saw the newspapers the next day she was indignant, “but one should not be ruffled by such things. Bless you dear and love always.” She added a postscript: “I liked your answer. You will be starting a week from today.”

The presence of the Howes and other guests, including the Bibescos, enlivened the summer for her while Franklin was away. It was a sign of her growing fondness for Louis that she relaxed her puritan scruples about liquor. “Mlle.,” the governess, had fallen into the water while cleaning the
Vireo
, “and I've just had to give her a little gin in hot lemonade,” Eleanor informed her husband, “as she has never warmed up since!”
⁴
This was quite a concession from Eleanor, who was a strict teetotaler and a supporter of the newly ratified Prohibition amendment. Sara's attitude was more relaxed. She wrote from Paris,

I rather enjoy being where one had red and white wine on the table, very little said on the subject and no drinking of spirits, and I feel, as I always have, that we should have made our fight against
the
spirits
and the saloon, and encouraged the French habit of wine and water, but Americans really like their whiskey best now, just as the English do.
⁵

For the visit of Elizabeth Bibesco, the daughter of Herbert Asquith, leader of the British Liberal party for over a quarter of a century, Eleanor even permitted a cocktail to be made. “I had to break the lock of your drawer to get at the whiskey!” she informed Franklin, who no doubt was slightly startled and amused. It turned out to be a “very bad cocktail” made by Jefferson Newbold, but Elizabeth “was sweet and I like her better than ever.”
⁶

Louis was an ideal guest. A do-it-yourself carpenter, he had acquired Roosevelt's passion for model boats and had begun working with Captain Calder to build a workbench for Franklin in the boathouse. He was also an irrepressible writer of doggerel and a water colorist, and his place cards were a continuous delight. He had been a mainstay in the Drama League Players in Washington both as director and actor and was always ready at Campobello to entertain the children and play with them. He was a “godsend” when it came to keeping track of the island workmen who came to repair the pump. “Mr. Howe has endless patience in batting the ball to Elliott and Hartley,” Eleanor wrote Sara, “and he thinks Elliott will be good though I can see no signs as yet.”
⁷
But sometimes Eleanor's energy and enterprise were too much even for the willing Louis. She read aloud to them in the evenings, “but Grace and sometimes Louis snore before I get far and Russell [James' tutor] goes to bed before I begin and Mlle. won't go to bed but props her eyelids up with her fingers!”
⁸

On July 30 Eleanor wrote Sara that she had expected Franklin that day but instead he was coming on Van Lear Black's yacht, the
Sabalo
. She was glad, she said, because the heat was awful and a trip by train would further tax his vitality. “I thought he looked tired when he left,” Miss LeHand advised her. Thus began the harsh events that Eleanor later called “trial by fire,” that left her husband unable to walk.

The cruise of the
Sabalo
proved strenuous. The weather in the Bay of Fundy was foul and the visibility low; Franklin was obliged to take the wheel for hours. Dropping anchor in Welchpool Harbor, he plunged into entertaining his guests. They went fishing for cod and he baited the hooks; at one point he slipped overboard and “never felt anything so cold as that water.” His pace was too much for his New York
visitors, who discovered that imperative business required their presence in New York.
⁹

The tempo of the household slackened only slightly. Roosevelt took his babies sailing on the
Vireo
; he and Louis worked on model boats; he played tennis with the older children; after supper they all turned out for baseball. Some friends sailed in on a yawl “and they spent a late evening with us ending up with a midnight supper!”
¹⁰
Though Franklin complained of feeling dull and tired, the vigorous life continued. On August 10, when the family was out on the
Vireo
, they spotted a forest fire and went ashore to flail at the flames with pine boughs. After the fire was under control, they dog-trotted, eyes smarting and smoke besmudged, for a dip in the relatively warm waters of Lake Glen Severn, then jogged back. Perhaps because he could not shake his loginess, Franklin took a quick dip in the Bay's icy waters but did not get “the glow I expected.” When they returned to the house he sat around in his wet bathing suit looking through the mail, too tired to dress, and at supper complained of chills and aches and soon went to bed.

The next morning he felt worse. As he got out of bed his left leg dragged; soon it refused to move at all, and by afternoon his right leg was also powerless. His temperature was 102. Though he managed a smile and a joke for Anna when she brought him his tray, Eleanor was worried and sent for the family physician, old Dr. Bennett in Lubec, who thought it was a cold. But by Friday, August 12, paralysis had set in from the chest down. Eleanor, apprehensive, had sent the rest of the household on a previously planned three-day camping trip. A letter to Franklin's half brother, James Roosevelt Roosevelt, described the inception of the crisis. Harried and apprehensive as she was, the letter was composed, clear, and poignant.

Campobello

August 14, 1921

Sunday

Dear Rosy,

We have had a very anxious few days as on Wed. evening Franklin was taken ill. It seemed a chill but Thursday he had so much pain in his back and legs that I sent for the doctor, by Friday evening he lost his ability to walk or move his legs but though they felt numb he can still feel in them. Yesterday a.m. Dr. Bennett and I decided we wanted the best opinion we could get quickly so Louis Howe
(who, thank heavens, is here, for he has been the greatest help) went with Dr. Bennett to Lubec and they canvassed the nearby resorts and decided that the best available diagnostician was the famous old Dr. W. W. Keen of Philadelphia and he agreed to motor up and spend the night. He arrived about 7:30 and made a most careful, thorough examination and the same this morning and he thinks a clot of blood from a sudden congestion has settled in the lower spinal cord temporarily removing the power to move though not to feel. I have wired to New York for a masseuse as he said that was vital and the nursing I could do, and in the meantime Louis and I are rubbing him as well as we can. The doctor feels sure he will get well but it may take some months. I have only told Franklin he said he could surely go down the 15th of Sept. He did say to leave then but not before on account of heat and to go to New York but it may have to be done on a wheel chair. The doctor thinks absorption has already begun as he can move his toes on one foot a little more which is encouraging. He has told the Dr. here just what medicines to give and what treatment to follow and we should know in the next ten days or two weeks how things are going.

Do you think you can meet Mama when she lands? She has asked us to cable just before she sails and I have decided to say nothing. No letter can reach her now and it would simply mean worry all the way home and she will have enough once here but at least then she can do things. I will write her a letter to quarantine saying he is ill but leave explaining to you or if you can't meet her to Uncle Fred or whoever does meet her. I hope you will think I am doing right and have done all I could. Of course write me if you think of anything else. I do not want particulars to get into the papers so I am writing the family that he is ill from the effects of a chill and I hope will soon be better, but I shall write Uncle Fred what I have told you and Langdon Marvin as Franklin cannot be at the office to relieve him.

Affly always,

Eleanor

For two weeks, until a trained nurse could come up from New York, Eleanor slept on a couch in Franklin's room and took care of her husband day and night. All the tenderness, solicitude, and devotion that so often were dammed up by his jaunty flirtatiousness now poured forth as she bathed him, rubbed him, attended to his every
need. Looking at his collapsed legs brought to mind Michelangelo's
Pietà
, that universal symbol of woman, the mother, grieving over the broken body of man, the son, the piece of sculpture that in her girlhood, reminding her of the wasted body of her father, had moved her to tears. She took her cue from Franklin's courage. Her vitality was equal to his darkest moments. Sometimes with Louis, often unaided, she raised and moved her husband's large, heavy frame. Dr. William W. Keen, who was witness to her twenty-four-hour ministrations, was worried.
¹¹

You have been a rare wife and have borne your heavy burden most bravely. You will surely break down if you too do not have immediate relief. Even then when the catheter has to be used your sleep must be broken at least once in the night.

In later years the old doctor never ceased to praise Eleanor's tireless consecration. “She is one of my heroines,” he wrote Roosevelt in 1926; “don't fail to tell her so.” He was equally impressed with Franklin's courage and cheerfulness; indeed, he confided to Eleanor, he had “rarely met two such brave, cheerful and delightful patients. You see I count you as one although you are not going to take my medicine!”
¹²