The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (4 page)

My grandmother decided that we children should not go to the funeral, and so I had no tangible thing to make death real to me. From that time on I knew in my mind that my father was dead, and yet I lived with him more closely, probably, than I had when he was alive.

My father and mother both liked us to see a great deal of Aunt Gracie. She was beloved by all her great-nephews and -nieces. As I remember her now, she was of medium height, slender, with clear-cut features, but always looked fragile and dainty. Ladies wore long dresses in those days, which trailed in the dust unless they were held up, and I seem to remember her generally in the rather tight-fitting bodices of the day, high in the back, square-cut in front and always with an immaculate frill of white lace or plaited linen around the neck.

Often her hands would lie folded in her lap as she told us a story and I, who loved to look at hands even as a child, remember watching them with pleasure. My Saturdays were frequently spent with this sweet and gracious great-aunt. Alice Roosevelt, Teddy Robinson, and I were the three who enjoyed those days the most.

After my father died, these Saturdays with Aunt Gracie were not allowed. My grandmother felt we should be at home as much as possible, and perhaps she feared we might slip away from her control if we were too much with our dynamic Roosevelt relatives.

The next few years were uneventful for me. New York City in winter, with classes and private lessons, and for entertainment occasionally, on a Saturday afternoon, a child or two for supper and play. My grandmother believed in keeping me young and my aunts believed in dressing me in a way which was appropriate to my age but not to my size. I was very tall, very thin and very shy. They dressed me for dancing class and for parties in dresses that were above my knees, when most of the girls my size had them halfway down their legs. All my clothes seem to me now to have been incredibly uncomfortable.

I wore flannels from the 1st of November until the 1st of April, regardless of the temperature, and the flannels went from my neck to my ankles. Of course, the attire included a flannel petticoat and long black stockings. How hot they were! And the high-button or high-laced shoes that went with them and were supposed to keep your ankles slim.

We children stayed at Tivoli in summer now with a nurse and governess, even if the others were away, and there were hot, breathless days when my fingers stuck to the keys as I practiced on the piano but I never left off any garments and, even in summer, we children wore a good many. I would roll my stockings down and then be told that ladies did not show their legs and promptly have to fasten them up again!

The house at Tivoli was big, with high ceilings and a good many rooms, most of them large. My grandfather had furnished it downstairs in a rather formal way. There were some lovely marble mantelpieces and chandeliers for candles. We had neither gas nor electricity. We had lamps, but often went to bed by candlelight. There were some vitrines with lovely little carved ivory pieces, one tiny set of tables and chairs I loved to look at, and also silver ornaments and little china and enameled pieces collected from various parts of the world.

The library was filled with standard sets of books, besides my grandfather’s religious books. A good deal of fiction came into the house by way of my young aunts and uncles. It is astonishing how much Dickens, Scott and Thackeray were read and reread, particularly by Eddie.

On the second and third floors there were nine master bedrooms and four double servants’ rooms and one single one. These servants’ rooms were much better than those in the town house, but no one thought it odd that there was no servants’ bathroom.

There were just two bathrooms in this large house, but it never occurred to us that it was an inconvenience or that it really made much work to have to use basins and pitchers in our own rooms.

We children had to take two hot baths a week, though I think my grandmother could still remember the era of the Saturday night baths. I was expected to have a cold sponge every morning.

My grandmother let me follow her about in the early mornings when she was housekeeping, and I carried to the cook the supplies of flour, sugar and coffee that she so carefully weighed out in the storeroom.

Today few servants would be content to cook in the semidarkness which reigned in that big, old-fashioned kitchen, with a large stone areaway all around it, over which was the piazza, which left only a small space for the light to filter in. The room where the servants ate had one door leading into the areaway. The laundry was a little better, because there were two doors leading out onto the terrace, and here I spent many hours.

Our wash—and what a wash it was—was done by one woman, Mrs. Overhalse, without the aid of any electric washing machine or irons. She had a washboard and three tubs and a wringer and a little stove on which were all weights of irons. The stove was fed with wood or coal.

Mrs. Overhalse was a cheerful, healthy soul, apparently able to direct her own household, come and wash all day for us, and then go back at night and finish up on her farm. She had a number of children. She taught me to wash and iron, and though I was not allowed to do the finer things, the handkerchiefs, napkins and towels often fell to my lot, and I loved the hours spent with this cheerful woman.

Pussie had an artistic temperament, and there would be days when I would go to Maude for comfort, for Pussie would not speak to anyone. Gradually I came to accept it as part of her character and to be grateful for all the lovely things she did, and wait patiently for the storms to pass.

She took me one summer with my governess to Nantucket Island for a few days—an exciting trip for a child who never went anywhere except up and down the Hudson River. After a few days I think she was bored with us; in any case, she left. The governess did not have enough money to get us home. Pussie was to return, but she forgot all about us. Finally my grandmother was appealed to and sent enough money to pay our bill and get us home.

When my young aunts and uncles were away, I was much alone. This solitude encouraged my habit of taking a book out into the fields or the woods and sitting in a tree or lying under it, completely forgetting the passage of time. No one tried to censor my reading, though occasionally when I happened on a book that I could not understand and asked difficult question before people, the book would disappear. I remember this happened to Dickens’
Bleak House.
I spent days hunting for it.

Certain things my grandmother insisted on. On Sundays I might not read the books that I read on weekdays. I had to teach Sunday school to the coachman’s little daughter, giving her verses to learn, hearing her recite them, and then seeing that she learned some hymns and collects and the catechism. In turn, I must do all these things myself and recite to my grandmother.

Every Sunday the big victoria came to the door and we went to church, and my seat usually was the little one facing my grandmother. Unfortunately, the four miles were long, and I was nearly always nauseated before we reached the church, and equally so before we reached home.

I could not play games on Sunday, and we still had a cold supper in the evenings, though we did not live up to the cold meal in the middle of the day that had been my grandfather’s rule.

Madeleine did succeed in teaching me to sew. I hemmed endless dish towels and darned endless stockings. Madeleine caused me many tears, for I was desperately afraid of her. I used to enjoy sliding down the moss-grown roof of our icehouse, and got my white drawers completely covered with green. I went to my grandmother before I went to Madeleine, knowing that my grandmother would scold less severely.

I was not supposed to read in bed before breakfast, but as I woke at five practically every morning in summer and was, I am afraid, a self-willed child I used to hide a book under the mattress. Woe to me when Madeleine caught me reading!

I have no recollection now of why she frightened me. As I look back it seems perfectly ludicrous, but I did not even tell my grandmother how much afraid I was until I was nearly fourteen years old, and then I confessed, between sobs, as we were walking in the woods. How silly it all seems today.

A few things I wanted desperately to do in those days. I remember that when I was about twelve Mr. Henry Sloane asked me to go west with his daughter, Jessie. I do not think I ever wanted to do anything so much in all my life, for I was fond of her and longed to travel. My grandmother was adamant and would not allow me to go. She gave me no reasons. It was sufficient that she did not think it wise. She so often said “no” that I built up a defense of saying I did not want to do things in order to forestall her refusals and keep down my disappointments.

She felt I should learn to dance, and I joined a dancing class at Mr. Dodsworth’s. These classes were an institution for many years, and many little boys and girls learned the polka and the waltz standing carefully on the diamond squares of the polished hardwood floor.

My grandmother decided that because of my being tall and probably awkward I should have ballet lessons besides, so I went once a week to a regular ballet teacher on Broadway and learned toe dancing with four or five other girls who were going on the stage and looked forward to the chance of being in the chorus and talked of little else, making me very envious.

I loved it and practiced assiduously, and can still appreciate how much work lies behind some of the dances which look so easy as they are done on the stage.

Two
    

Adolescence

I HAD GROWN
fond of the theater and Pussie took me to see Duse, the great Italian actress, when she first came to this country. Then she took me to meet her, a thrill which I have never forgotten. Her charm and beauty were all that I had imagined! I was also allowed to see some of Shakespeare’s plays and occasionally to go to the opera, but my young aunts and their friends talked all the time of plays which I never went to see. As a result, one winter I committed a crime which weighed heavily on my conscience for a long time.

My grandmother told me to go to a charity bazaar with a friend. To escape my maid, I told her my friend would have her maid with her and that she would bring me home. Instead of going to the bazaar we went to see a play,
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
, which was being discussed by my elders and which I, at least, did not understand at all. We sat in the peanut gallery and were miserable for fear of seeing someone we knew. We left before the end because we knew we would be late in reaching home. I had to lie and could never confess, which I would gladly have done because of my sense of guilt, but I would have involved the other girl in my trouble.

My grandmother, after my father’s death, allowed me less and less contact with his family, the Roosevelts of Oyster Bay, so I saw little of those cousins. I did, however, pay one or two short visits to Aunt Edith and Uncle Ted in summer.

Alice Roosevelt, who was nearest my age, was so much more sophisticated and grown-up that I was in great awe of her. She was better at sports, and my having so few companions of my own age put me at a great disadvantage with other young people.

I remember the first time we went swimming at Oyster Bay. I couldn’t swim, and Uncle Ted told me to jump off the dock and try. I was a good deal of a physical coward then, but I did it and came up spluttering and was good-naturedly ducked and became very frightened. Never again would I go out of my depth.

A favorite Sunday afternoon occupation was to go to Cooper’s Bluff, a high sandy bluff with a beach below. At high tide the water came almost to its base. Uncle Ted would line us up and take the lead and we would go down holding on to each other until someone fell or the speed became so great that the line broke. In some way we reached the bottom, rolling or running.

I was desperately afraid the first time we did it, but found it was not so bad as I thought, and then we clambered up again, taking a long time to get there as we slid back one foot for every two we went up.

In some ways I remember these visits as a great joy, for I loved chasing through the haystacks in the barn with Uncle Ted after us, and going up to the gunroom on the top floor of the Sagamore House where he would read aloud, chiefly poetry.

Occasionally he took us on a picnic or a camping trip and taught us many valuable lessons. The chief one was to remember that camping was a good way to find out people’s characters. Those who were selfish showed it very soon, in that they wanted the best bed or the best food and did not want to do their share of the work.

My brother did more of this than I did, for he was just Quentin Roosevelt’s age, and after I went abroad my grandmother let him visit Uncle Ted and Aunt Edith more frequently. My only other contact with my Roosevelt family was during an annual Christmas holiday visit, when my grandmother permitted me to spend a few days with Auntie Corinne.

This was the only time in the year when I ever saw any boys of my own age. To me these parties were more pain than pleasure. The others all knew each other and saw each other often. They were all much better at winter sports. I rarely coasted and never skated, for my ankles were so weak that when I did get out on the pond my skating was chiefly on those ankles.

I was a poor dancer, and the climax of the party was a dance. What inappropriate dresses I wore—and, worst of all, they were above my knees. I knew, of course, that I was different from all the other girls and if I had not known they were frank in telling me so! I still remember my gratitude at one of these parties to my cousin Franklin Roosevelt when he came and asked me to dance with him.

I must have been a great trial and responsibility to Auntie Corinne, who tried so hard to give every one of us a good time. But what could she do with a niece who was never allowed to see boys in the intervals between these parties and who was dressed like a little girl when she looked like a very grown-up one?

Suddenly life was going to change for me. My grandmother decided that the household had too much gaiety for a girl of fifteen. She remembered that my mother had wanted to send me to Europe for a part of my education. Thus the second period of my life began.