The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (45 page)

Franklin wanted to be buried in the rose garden at Hyde Park and left exact directions in writing, but he had neglected to make the arrangements necessary for using private property, so we had to make those at the last minute.

After the funeral service in Washington we traveled to Hyde Park. Again no one could sleep, so we watched out of the windows of the train the crowds of people who stood in respect and sorrow all along the way. I was deeply touched by the number of our friends who had left their homes very early to drive to Hyde Park for the funeral, and especially by the kind thoughtfulness of Prime Minister Mackenzie King. My niece (Mrs. Edward P. Elliott) was living in Ottawa at the time and he had invited her to go to Hyde Park in his special train. After the burial I stayed in the house long enough to greet old personal friends and the officials who had come up from Washington, and then went back to Washington on the same train as President and Mrs. Truman.

They were both more than kind in urging me to take my time about moving out of the White House, but I felt I wanted to leave it as soon as possible. I had already started to prepare directions so that the accumulation of twelve years could be quickly packed and shipped. As always happens in life, something was coming to an end and something new was beginning. I went over many things in my mind as we traveled the familiar road back to Washington.

I am sure that Franklin accepted the thought of death as he accepted life. He had a strong religious feeling and his religion was a very personal one. I think he actually felt he could ask God for guidance and receive it. That was why he loved the 23rd Psalm, the Beatitudes, and the 13th chapter of First Corinthians. He never talked about his religion or his beliefs and never seemed to have any intellectual difficulties about what he believed. Once, in talking to him about some spiritualist conversations which had been sent in to me (people were always sending me their conversations with the dead), I expressed a somewhat cynical disbelief in them. He said simply: “I think it is unwise to say you do not believe in anything when you can’t prove that it is either true or untrue. There is so much in the world which is always new in the way of discoveries that it is wiser to say that there may be spiritual things which we are simply unable to fathom. Therefore, I am interested and have respect for whatever people believe, even if I cannot understand their beliefs or share their experiences.”

That seemed to me a natural attitude for him to take. He was always open-minded about anything that came to his attention, ready to look into it and study it, but his own beliefs were the beliefs of a child grown to manhood under certain simple influences. He still held to a fundamental feeling that religion was an anchor and a source of strength and guidance, so I am sure that he died looking into the future as calmly as he had looked at all the events of his life.

At a time of shock and sorrow the lesser emotions fade away. Any man in public life is bound to have had some close relationships that were later broken for one reason or another, and some relationships that were never close and which simply slipped away; but when Franklin died, many men who had felt bitterly toward him and who without question would feel so again, at that moment forgot and merged with the great mass of people in the country who felt that they had lost someone whom they needed. Harry Hopkins looked, the day of the funeral, as though he were just about to die. After his return from Marrakech, he had been practically confined to the house, and since both men were ill, it had been impossible for them to see much of each other. I do not think that they cared less for each other or that there was any break. I think the circumstances and their own health made it difficult for them to meet and consult more often.

As I look back now I realize that unwittingly Franklin’s parents had prepared him well, through contact with themselves, travel abroad, and familiarity with the customs and peoples of many countries, to meet the various situations that he faced during his public life. They certainly never intended him to be in politics, but the training they gave him made him better able to accomplish his tasks.

The so-called New Deal was, of course, nothing more than an effort to preserve our economic system. Viewing the world today I wonder whether some of the other peoples might not have stood up better in World War II had something like the New Deal taken place in their countries long enough before to give them a sense of security and confidence in themselves. It was the rebuilding of those two qualities in the people of the United States as a whole that made it possible for us to produce as we did in the early days of the war and to go into the most terrible war in our history and win it. So the two crises that my husband faced were really closely tied together. If he had not successfully handled the one he could never have handled the other, because no leader can do anything unless the people are willing to follow him.

What brought this more clearly before me were the letters that came in such numbers after Franklin’s death and which are now in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Touchingly people told their stories and cited the plans and policies undertaken by my husband that had brought about improvement in their lives. In many cases he had saved them from complete despair.

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another’s failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one can say, “This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task,” then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets.

Before we went to Washington in 1933 I had frankly faced my own personal situation. In my early married years the pattern of my life had been largely my mother-in-law’s pattern. Later it was the children and Franklin who made the pattern. When the last child went to boarding school, I began to want to do things on my own, to use my own mind and abilities for my own aims. When I went to Washington I felt sure that I would be able to use the opportunities which came to me to help Franklin gain the objectives he cared about—but the work would be his work and the pattern his pattern. He might have been happier with a wife who was completely uncritical. That I was never able to be, and he had to find it in other people. Nevertheless, I think I sometimes acted as a spur, even though the spurring was not always wanted or welcome. I was one of those who served his purposes.

One cannot live the life Franklin led in Washington and keep up many personal friendships. A man in high public office is neither husband nor father nor friend in the commonly accepted sense of the words; but I have come to believe that Franklin stands in the memory of people as a man who lived with a great sense of history and with a sense of his obligation to fulfill his part as he saw it.

On the whole, I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the President’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

One cannot say good-by to people with whom one has lived and who have served one well without deep emotion, but at last even that was over. I was now on my own.

Photo Section

Eleanor adored her father, who battled addiction and died at thirty-four. His devotion to her offset her mother’s aloofness.

Eleanor blossomed at Allenswood Academy, where the demanding, affectionate headmistress, Marie Souvestre, challenged her intellect, inspired confidence, and encouraged independence.

Eleanor married FDR on March 17, 1905. Her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, FDR’s hero, walked her down the aisle.

Both Roosevelts loved the informality their Campobello retreat offered, but that changed when polio struck FDR during their 1921 vacation.

Eleanor, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook were partners in Democratic politics, reform movements, and business, and co-owners of Val-Kill Cottage.

The Roosevelt family posed for this family portrait at Hyde Park in 1931 as FDR planned his first campaign for the presidency.