The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (18 page)

We landed in Boston and went through the streets in a long procession. We could see the President and Mrs. Wilson ahead of us, the President standing up and waving his hat at intervals to the crowds that lined the streets. Everyone was wildly enthusiastic and he never sat down until we reached the Copley Plaza Hotel.

At the hotel word was brought that Governor and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge would be glad to have us lunch with them and Mayor and Mrs. Andrew Peters. The President was to make a speech after luncheon and he and Mrs. Wilson did not feel that they could attend a social gathering beforehand.

Thus it fell to my lot to meet a future president of the United States and to know perhaps before the rest of the country how silent the gentleman could be! I regarded his silence on that occasion as a sign of the disappointment he felt at not having Mrs. Wilson to talk to, but I have since decided that even Mrs. Wilson could not have brought forth a flow of conversation!

Immediately after lunch we went to Mechanics Hall and the mayor in greeting the President came out for the League. We were all very much stirred by the President’s speech, which was one of the best I ever heard him make. Strange as it may seem, the governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Calvin Coolidge, committed himself to “feeling sure the people would back the President.”

We went on to Washington. At every station cheering crowds greeted the President until long after dusk. This was my first experience of the kind and very moving, because the people seemed to have grasped his ideals and to want to back them.

We had been gone not quite two months but it was a great relief to be back with the children.

My household soon functioned as smoothly as ever and my life was not so filled with war work, though much of the hospital work continued unabated and the pathetic funerals in Arlington were frequent in the spring. The government brought back the bodies of many of our men from the battlefields or hospitals in Europe. Sometimes men died on the transports. The funerals were held in Arlington Cemetery if the family desired, and some members of the family usually attended. The Red Cross would detail some of its members to attend and take flowers, and I can never go to a military funeral today without the vision of those scenes and the pictures of certain faces rising before me.

That spring of 1919, on the side of my official duties, I had my first personal contact with the cause of woman suffrage. Back in the Albany days my husband had been for it. Through the years courageous women carried on a constant fight for ratification of woman suffrage by the different states. It looked as though their fight was nearing a successful end and therefore the opposition rallied its forces.

Coming down on the train one day to Washington from New York, I happened to meet Alice Wadsworth, wife of Senator James Wadsworth, who, with her husband, had always been much opposed to woman suffrage. We lunched together and she spent the time trying to persuade me to come out against the ratification. I was noncommittal, for I considered any stand at that time was outside my field of work. I think she had hopes that she might make a convert of me. Before she could succeed, the amendment was ratified, and soon after I undertook work which proved to me the value of a vote. I became a much more ardent citizen and feminist than anyone about me in the intermediate years would have dreamed possible. I had learned that if you wanted to institute any kind of reform you could get far more attention if you had a vote than if you lacked one.

The Navy Department was, of course, busy liquidating the war setup as rapidly as possible. Secretary and Mrs. Daniels went abroad in March, which left my husband in charge during their short trip. Any absence on the part of the secretary made the assistant secretary acting head and gave him opportunity for closer contact with the President.

The President, after presenting his plan to Congress, was having a very hard fight. Senator Lodge felt that Congress should have been consulted sooner; in fact, should have had representatives on the European delegation. He became the leader of the criticism of the President’s plan. The fight went on all through the spring.

President Wilson went back to Europe on March 6, 1919, to sign the Treaty of Versailles, feeling sure that the people were with him. The tension between the President and Congress during this period was great, and thoughtful people both here and abroad were wondering about a situation in which the Executive, charged with the duty of dealing with foreign nations, might come to an agreement and the agreement be turned down by the Senate, as had been done before.

Perhaps the answer is that these agreements should be worked out in conjunction with the leaders of Congress instead of by the Executive alone, but one cannot always be sure that even the leaders of Congress can carry all their followers with them. It is interesting, however, to find out how often Congress has not agreed with the Executive and has refused to ratify treaties negotiated by the President and the secretary of state; it leads one to wonder if some more satisfactory means should not be found.

President Wilson returned July 8, 1918, and on September 3 started out on a campaign to take the cause of the League of Nations to the American people. The President was taken ill on this trip, but recovered enough to walk off the train and into his car and into the White House when he returned on September 28.

This same year many of us realized that my grandmother Hall was failing, and on August 14 word came that she had died at her home in Tivoli, where she would have wished to be. I was in Washington, and Franklin and I went on to Tivoli to help my aunts with the last few things that could be done.

I wondered then and I wonder now whether, if her life had been less centered in her family group, that family group might not have been a great deal better off. If she had had some kind of life of her own, what would have been the result? When she was young she painted rather well. Could she have developed that talent? I know that when she was young she might have had friends of her own, might even have married again. Would she have been happier, and would her children have been better off? She was not the kind of person who would have made a career independently; she was the kind of woman who needed a man’s protection. Her willingness to be subservient to her children isolated her, and it might have been far better, for her boys at least, had she insisted on bringing more discipline into their lives simply by having a life of her own.

My grandmother’s life had a considerable effect on me, for even when I was young I determined that I would never be dependent on my children by allowing all my interests to center in them. This conviction has grown through the years, and in watching the lives of those around her I have felt that it might have been well in their youth if they had not been able to count on her devotion and her presence whenever they needed her.

Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior.

It is hard sometimes to realize what factors in our experience have influenced our development, but I am sure that my grandmother’s life has been a great factor in determining some of my reactions to life.

On October 28 I went to the House of Representatives when the King and Queen of the Belgians and the crown prince were received there. It was an interesting occasion, and I was impressed by the soldierly bearing of the King and by the Queen’s graciousness.

My husband arrived back from a hunting trip in time to take the usual trip down the Potomac with the royal party. Franklin had visited them at the front and again on his trip in 1919 and felt great admiration for them. He had been much drawn to their daughter, the Princess Marie José, who reminded him of his own daughter, Anna.

I could not help feeling a little sorry for Crown Prince Leopold. He was so carefully watched and his constant companion was an army officer many years older than himself. If he was out of his parents’ sight for a few minutes, they were sure to inquire where he was. There were no “off the record” trips or entertainments for this young prince, and we had glimpses of what it meant to be trained to be a king.

In October, also, I had my first contact with women’s organizations interested in working conditions for women. The International Congress for Women Workers, with representatives from nineteen nations, met in Washington. Because of the number of foreign delegates to be present, they tried to find wives of government officials who could speak foreign languages to attend various social functions, and so Lily Polk and I went to tea one afternoon. I liked all the women very much indeed, but I had no idea how much more I was going to see of them in the future.

On November 10, 1919, the prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, arrived in this country and there was again the usual wreath-laying at Mount Vernon, and we met the young prince at several formal dinners. I marveled at the ease with which he conversed with older people. His usual neighbors at dinner were the vice-president’s wife, Mrs. Marshall, and Mrs. Lansing, wife of the secretary of state. He did, however, manage to break away and go to some dances with younger people when formal official affairs were over.

Sir Edward Grey had come over that autumn to take up the work at the British embassy for a short time. He was almost blind and was being treated by Dr. Wilmer, our great eye doctor. Sir Edward had insisted that he could not take over the responsibility of this office unless his old friend and colleague, Sir William Tyrrell, came with him, and so this delightful pair spent a few months in this country. Because of Sir Edward Grey’s affection for Uncle Ted, the name of Roosevelt was a key to his affections and we saw a great deal of him.

We invited Sir Edward and Sir William to have their Christmas dinner with us and attend our Christmas tree, our only other guests being my husband’s mother and, as usual, Louis Howe and his family. They accepted, much to our joy.

Alice Longworth, Mrs. Leavitt, my grandmother Roosevelt’s old friend, and Miss Spring, who was now with her most of the time, came over to join our Christmas party.

Eleven
    

The 1920 Campaign and Back to New York

IN JUNE
, 1920, my husband went out to the San Francisco National Convention of the Democratic party and I took the children to Campobello, where I received a telegram from Secretary Daniels, saying that my husband had been nominated as candidate for vice-president to run with Mr. James M. Cox, who was the Democratic nominee for president. The message read:

IT WOULD HAVE DONE YOUR HEART GOOD TO HAVE SEEN THE SPONTANEOUS AND ENTHUSIASTIC TRIBUTE PAID WHEN FRANKLIN WAS NOMINATED UNANIMOUSLY FOR VICE
-
PRESIDENT TODAY STOP ACCEPT MY CONGRATULATIONS AND GREETINGS STOP WILL YOU BE GOOD ENOUGH TO SEND MY CONGRATULATIONS AND GREETINGS ALSO TO HIS MOTHER AS I DO NOT KNOW HER ADDRESS
.

JOSEPHUS DANIELS

I was glad for my husband, but it never occurred to me to be much excited. I had come to accept the fact that public service was my husband’s great interest and I always tried to make the necessary family adjustments easy. I carried on the children’s lives and my own as calmly as could be, and while I was always a part of the public aspect of our lives, still I felt detached and objective, as though I were looking at someone else’s life.

My husband stopped to see Mr. Cox on the way home. Both of them later visited President Woodrow Wilson, preparatory to laying plans for the issues that would be fought out in the campaign. It was decided that the League of Nations should be the main issue.

My husband sent me word that his notification would take place at Hyde Park and to bring Anna and James back from Campobello for the occasion, and to arrange to go back to Washington for a few days and then start west to attend Mr. Cox’s notification at Dayton, Ohio. I was to take Anna on this trip and send James back to Campobello with his grandmother.

This notification meeting was the first really mammoth meeting to be held at Hyde Park. The gathering was the predecessor of many others, but I sympathized with my mother-in-law when I saw her lawn being trampled by hordes of people. My admiration for her grew through the years as I realized how many political guests she had to entertain in her house, where for so many years only family and friends had been received. The friends were chosen with great discrimination and invitations were never lightly given by my husband’s father and mother. Mrs. Roosevelt was quite remarkable about this plunge into the national political picture and made the necessary adjustments in her life in a remarkable way.

Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and the committee of Hyde Park and Poughkeepsie friends arranged the details of Franklin’s homecoming and his notification. Anna and I went with Franklin to Washington for a few days of terrible heat. While there I made the arrangements for giving up the house and Franklin resigned as assistant secretary of the navy, and that period of our life in Washington was over.

Franklin returned with us to Campobello for a brief rest and then started a strenuous campaign. I stayed with the children, got James ready for school and took him to Groton in late September. He seemed to me very young and lonely when I left him, but it was a tradition in the family that boys must go to boarding school when they reached the age of twelve, and James would be thirteen the following December, so of course we had to send him. I never thought to rebel then, but now it seems ludicrous to have been bound by so many conventions. I unpacked his trunk, saw his cubicle was in order, met some of the masters, said good-by to Mr. and Mrs. Endicott Peabody, the heads of the school, and went back to Hyde Park.

I did not stay there, however, but started immediately on the last campaign trip with my husband, a four-week trip which took us as far as Colorado. I was the only woman on the car. Franklin had a private car attached to different trains and on it were his secretary, Mr. Camellier; a young man who did general secretarial work, James Sullivan; Louis Howe; Marvin McIntyre, who was in charge of the train, the working out of itineraries, and so on; Tom Lynch, our old friend from Poughkeepsie, who acted as disbursing officer, paying all bills, and so on; and Stanley Prenosil, who was the only newspaperman assigned continuously to covering the vice-presidential candidate.