The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (13 page)

My husband was still miserable the next morning, so I got a strange doctor, as our regular doctor was out of town. He could not explain the fever. No one could understand what was the matter with him. I was taking complete care of him. We had a caretaker in the house who did what cooking was necessary, and I ran up and down stairs with trays, made his bed, gave him his medicine, and all went well except for the fact that at certain times of the day I felt peculiar. My husband had to take a nap after lunch every day, and I was glad enough to do the same, for the back of my head ached and I was hardly able to drag myself around. It never occurred to me that I, too, might be ill.

After this had gone on for about ten days my mother-in-law came to town one evening, having grown anxious about her son, and I told her that, as she was there, I would have my hair curled and go to bed, because I felt miserable. She kissed me and exclaimed, “You must have a fever!” She insisted that I take my temperature and we found that it was 102. The doctor came and I went to bed, and the next day tests were taken and it was discovered that I had typhoid fever. Franklin had had it when he was a little boy, so he was running only a low temperature, but they now thought he had it also. I proceeded to have a perfectly normal case, and with my usual ability to come back quickly I was up and on my feet while Franklin was still in bed and feeling miserable and looking like Robert Louis Stevenson at Vailima.

In the meantime the campaign was on, and now Louis Howe, the quiet, even then rather gnomelike little newspaper man from Albany, came to the rescue. He had grown interested in my husband at the time of the senatorial fight, and when Franklin asked him to run the campaign he accepted. Going to Dutchess County, he laid his plans and carried the district for a man who was flat on his back at the time.

Louis was an astute politician, a wise reader of newspapers and of human beings, but he was somewhat impractical, in spots. A checkbook was one of the things Louis did not understand. My husband gave him a checkbook and a certain amount of money in the bank. Each time Louis came to see my husband he still insisted that he had money in the bank. Finally, my husband was notified that the account was overdrawn. Louis still insisted he had money on hand, and when Franklin looked over the checkbook he found that Louis always added the amount of the check to the balance instead of deducting it, so of course the amount went up instead of down.

I was not favorably impressed with Louis at this time because he smoked a great many cigarettes! Remember, I was still a Puritan. I felt that his smoking spoiled the fresh air that my husband should have in his bedroom, and I was very disapproving whenever he came down to report on the campaign. I lost sight entirely of the fact that he was winning the campaign and that without him my husband would have worried himself to more of a wreck than he was and probably lost the election. I simply made a nuisance of myself over those visits and his cigarettes. I often wonder now how they bore with me in those days. I had no sense of values whatever and was still rigid in my standard of conduct.

My husband was re-elected, thanks to Louis Howe. I put the New York house in order and moved the children there, as it was too late to rent it and we had decided not to take a house in Albany for the winter, but to live in two rooms at the Ten Eyck Hotel. We commuted between New York and Albany. I went to Albany every Monday afternoon and returned to New York every Thursday morning to be with the children.

During the winter there was some talk of the possibility of my husband’s being invited to join the administration in Washington but I was too much taken up with the family to give it much thought.

Seven
    

Washington

IN APRIL
, Franklin was sent for by the President, and I stayed in New York waiting to hear what would be our fate. In a short time we got word that my husband had been appointed assistant secretary of the navy. He resigned from the state Senate and took up the work in Washington. There was an epidemic of smallpox at the time, so we were both vaccinated.

My husband had taken rooms at the Powhatan Hotel in Washington, and wanted me to come down for a time that spring. I dashed to Auntie Bye, who was in Farmington, Connecticut, to ask her what were the duties of an assistant secretary’s wife. My heart sank as she gave me careful instructions on my calls. This enormous burden is no longer carried by the wives of government officials. It became impracticable during the war.

One thing Auntie Bye impressed on me was that as the wife of the assistant secretary of the navy my duty was first, last and all the time to the Navy itself. She said, “you will find that many of the young officers’ wives have a hard time because they must keep up their position on very small pay. You can do a great deal to make life pleasant for them when they are in Washington, and that is what you should do.”

I had come a long way since I moved up to Albany, for then I never could have paid those first calls and repeated that formula, “I am Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. My husband has just come as assistant secretary of the navy.” House after house I visited and explained myself in this way. My shyness was wearing off rapidly.

The autumn of 1913 we took Auntie Bye’s house at 1733 N Street. It was a comfortable old-fashioned house, and the two old colored servants, Millie and Francis, who had taken care of Uncle Will when Auntie Bye was away, agreed to take care of it in summer and look after Franklin when he was there alone.

There was a little garden at the back with a lovely rose arbor on the side where one could have breakfast in the late spring or summer days, and even dine on summer evenings. This little garden was kept in order by a delightful man, William Reeves, whom I got to know well. His reticence was really remarkable. We lived in that house four years, and though I talked with him often it was not until I came to the White House in 1933 that I discovered that Mr. Reeves was the head gardener there and that it had been because of his position there that he had gone to Auntie Bye during Uncle Ted’s administration. He had kept it up because of his affection for her and his interest in her garden.

When we moved down to Washington my mother-in-law, as usual, helped us to get settled. We had bought a car and brought a young chauffeur with us from Hyde Park, and I had to begin in earnest to pay my calls.

My husband had asked Louis Howe to come down as his assistant in the Navy Department; Louis moved his wife and two children, one of them a fairly well-grown girl and the other a baby boy, into an apartment not far from us.

Anna was going to school with the Misses Eastman, and James began his schooling that autumn in the little Potomac School. I remember that winter primarily as one in which I spent every afternoon paying calls. We lived a kind of social life I had never known before, dining out night after night and having people dine with us about once a week.

We discovered early that unless we made some attempt to see a few people at regular intervals we would never see anyone informally, and so once every two weeks or thereabouts a few of us dined together regularly. This group consisted of Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane and Mrs. Lane, a charming couple who appealed to young and old; Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Miller, old friends of the Lanes; Mr. and Mrs. William Phillips, and ourselves. William Phillips was in the State Department, and he and Caroline were old friends of ours. We put formality behind us for these evenings, and did not even seat the secretary of the interior according to rank. Franklin and I still stayed home on Sunday evenings and continued the informal Sunday evening suppers which we had always had since our marriage. I cooked eggs on the table in a chafing dish, served cold meat and salad, a cold dessert and cocoa.

I tried at first to do without a secretary, but found that it took me such endless hours to arrange my calling list, and answer and send invitations, that I finally engaged one for three mornings a week.

When I was first married I discovered that my husband was a collector. In every other respect he was both careful and economical. I never knew him in those early days to take a cab when he could take a streetcar. I have often seen him carry his bag down the street and board a car at the corner. He took great care of his clothes, never spent a great deal on himself, and there were many things that we felt we could not afford. After our first little car, we went without one for some time; and when we moved to Washington the first two cars that we had were second-hand, until I finally persuaded my husband that we spent more on repairs and had less use out of them than we would have out of a new car. The new car that we finally bought lasted until we left Washington, when he again decided that we did not need a car and sold it.

As a collector he was careful, too, and much of his collection was acquired at reasonable prices, because not many people were interested, at that time, in his field. He really knew about everything he bid for at auctions or acquired after spending hours in old bookstores or print shops.

His interest was in the American Navy and he collected books and letters and prints and models of ships. The collection was fairly sizable and interesting when he went to Washington as assistant secretary of the navy, but those years in the Navy Department gave him great opportunity to add to it. He was offered and acquired an entire trunkful of letters which included the love letters of one of our early naval officers. He also acquired a letter written by a captain to his wife describing receipt of the news of George Washington’s death and his subsequent action on passing Mount Vernon. He is said to have instituted a custom which every navy ship has followed from that day to this, and which varies only according to the personnel carried by the ship. All the ships lower the flag to half mast, man the rail, toll the bell and, if a bugler is on board, blow taps.

Franklin also acquired a good model of the old
Constitution
, and his collection grew apace. At different times he collected other things. For instance, there was a period when he was fond of small chapbooks, children’s books and classics published in diminutive editions, and first editions of every kind always attracted him, though he never followed any one line. Stamps were also an interest of long standing.

I have often wondered why he never handed down this love of collecting to any of our children. My only explanation is that living in the house with a collector may give everyone else the feeling that only one person in a household can indulge this taste, and even then it is a question of whether the family will have to move out in order to keep the collection intact and properly housed!

With the autumn of 1913 my life in Washington as the wife of a minor official really began. I could have learned much about politics and government, for I had plenty of opportunity to meet and talk with interesting men and women. As I look back upon it, however, I think the whole of my life remained centered in the family. The children were still small, two more were to be born during this period, and outside of the exclusively personal life there was the social aspect, which then seemed to me most important.

Nearly all the women at that time were the slaves of the Washington social system. There were two women who broke loose. One was Martha Peters, wife of Congressman Andrew J. Peters, of Massachusetts, and a sister of William Phillips. She did not care for large social functions and did not think it was her duty to her husband’s career to spend every afternoon of her life paying calls on the wives of other public men.

The other woman was Alice Longworth, quite frankly too much interested in the political questions of the day to waste her time calling on women who were, after all, not important to her scheme of life. She liked the social side, but she liked her own particular kind of social life. She wanted to know the interesting people but did not want to be bored doing uninteresting things. Her house was a center of gaiety and of interesting gatherings. Everyone who came to Washington coveted an introduction to her and an invitation to her house.

I was appalled by the independence and courage displayed by these two ladies. I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing.

My calls began the winter of 1914 under poor auspices, for I was feeling miserable again, as another baby was coming along the following August. Somehow or other I made my rounds every afternoon, and from ten to thirty calls were checked off my list day after day. Mondays the wives of the justices of the Supreme Court; Tuesdays the members of Congress. How many times I have wondered why my New York congressmen moved from place to place so frequently! They rarely had houses, their wives seldom came down, and to leave cards on them I had to climb up stairs in rooming houses and search every large and small hotel! Wednesdays the Cabinet, and here was a problem to be met. If Mrs. Daniels invited me to be with her on that afternoon I could not be calling on the other members of the Cabinet. Thursdays the wives of senators, and Fridays the diplomats. Miscellaneous people were wedged in on whatever days were printed on their cards or, if they had no days, on any days you happened to be near their homes. Saturdays and Sundays were free for the children.

Just as Mr. Daniels was a kind and understanding chief, Mrs. Daniels was a kind and understanding wife, and did not expect me to be with her every Wednesday. Later in the winter I tried to stay at home on Wednesdays and receive anyone who came to call on me. I had my first experience then of entertaining ladies who spoke in three different languages and of being the only person able to interpret what was being said by one to the other!

My husband frequently came home for luncheon and brought some men with him, more often after the war began than in the first years, when he had more time for the Metropolitan Club and games of golf. This was the game he enjoyed above all others. However, when he did come home he wanted a short lunch and no time wasted. They must be able to talk freely, so I developed a habit which I have always retained. I have a little silver bell put beside my place at every meal. It belonged to my mother and is part of the recollection of my earliest days—Old Mother Hubbard with her dog under her arm. It is never far from my hand at meals. When I ring, the servants come in and take the plates away, pass the next course, and then withdraw to the pantry and stay there until I ring again. This was made the rule in Washington and has been continued wherever I am, for conversation can flow more freely. It was necessary during World War I, when conversations were frequently held which must not go beyond the people seated at the table; and I have found it always relieves a certain restraint at the table not to have someone standing behind a chair or hovering in the room.