Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (10 page)

Eleanor found Sara’s sabotage attempts irksome, yet she held her tongue and pen. She wished Franklin would assert himself more forcefully on her behalf, but when he didn’t she declined to be provoked. Precisely what she communicated to him is impossible to reconstruct; she later burned their courtship correspondence. But clearly she didn’t deliver any ultimatums or throw any tantrums. She was too much in love.

Why
she loved Franklin so, she probably couldn’t have said. Obviously there was chemistry between the twenty-one-year-old man and the nineteen-year-old woman. But beyond the physical attraction, Franklin doubtless signified to Eleanor things she had lost or never experienced. The Delanos were daunting as individuals, yet they stuck together in a way that Eleanor’s own family never had. “They were a clan,” Eleanor wrote. “And if misfortune befell one of them, the others rallied at once…. The Delanos might disapprove of one another, and if so, they were not slow to express their disapproval, but let someone outside as much as hint at criticism, and the clan was ready to tear him limb from limb.” The thought of having the clan at her back doubtless appealed to Eleanor.

At one level or another, Franklin must have seemed a replacement for her lost father. A certain physical resemblance existed, and it was complemented by Franklin’s charm and easy social grace, which matched Eleanor’s memories of her father. But whatever the likeness, Eleanor had been searching for a strong male figure since her father died—in fact, since before that, if she was being honest with herself. Just how strong Franklin truly was, she couldn’t say. But she was willing to take a chance on him.

Franklin had his own reasons for loving Eleanor. In the first place, she was better-looking than she let on. Alice Roosevelt, who rarely had a kind word for anyone, remarked of Eleanor, “She was always making herself out to be an ugly duckling, but she was really rather attractive. Tall, rather coltish-looking, with masses of pale, gold hair rippling to below her waist, and really lovely blue eyes.” Of course Alice, being Alice, couldn’t stop there. She felt compelled to add, “It’s true that her chin went in a bit, which wouldn’t have been so noticeable if only her hateful grandmother had fixed her teeth.”

Beyond her appearance, Eleanor was intelligent and more thoughtful than most of the girls Franklin encountered at parties and mixers. She spoke French better than he did, she had lived abroad, and she had experienced aspects of life that made his own sheltered existence seem mundane. That her uncle was the president of the United States didn’t diminish her appeal. Franklin remained far from knowing what his future held, but it was difficult to imagine that having in-laws in the White House would hurt his prospects, no matter what he attempted.

Y
ET THOSE
W
HITE
H
OUSE
in-laws—in particular Theodore Roosevelt—made the wedding itself problematic. In the autumn of 1904 Sara acknowledged defeat in her effort to prevent the marriage of Franklin and Eleanor, and she permitted the engagement to be announced. A date was set for the wedding, then reset and reset again. The problem now wasn’t Sara but Theodore, who would stand in for Eleanor’s deceased father. The president, after winning election in November 1904, had to be reinaugurated, and he had to accommodate all the other demands on the time of the nation’s head of state and head of government. Finally an opening came into view: March 17, when Theodore could stroke the pride of New York’s Irish Americans in the morning by reviewing the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade and tend to the family matters in the afternoon.

The ceremony was held at the brownstone of Eleanor’s cousin Susie Parish on East Seventy-sixth Street. From the bride’s perspective it was a fiasco. After McKinley’s assassination the Secret Service took no chances on losing another president, and it threw a cordon around the entire neighborhood. Wedding guests were stopped and interrogated; all were delayed by the tangles the president’s presence created in the traffic of the Upper East Side. Many fumingly reached their destination only after the ceremony ended.

Endicott Peabody, officiating at the request of Franklin and Sara, asked who gave the bride away. Theodore answered loudly, “
I
do.” Eleanor and Franklin exchanged vows, rings, and kisses. Theodore congratulated the groom with a joke that soon made the rounds: “Well, Franklin, there’s nothing like keeping the name in the family!”

At this point a door that connected Susie Parish’s house to the matching house of her mother next door was thrown open, and the wedding party was introduced to the larger crowd at the reception. Theodore, who could never resist an audience, strode forward and hypnotized the guests in his usual fashion. Years later, Eleanor recalled the moment distinctly: “Those closest to us did take time to wish us well, but the great majority of the guests were far more interested in the thought of being able to see and listen to the President; and in a very short time this young married couple were standing alone.” Eleanor of course said nothing, although she surely hoped that her new husband would speak up. But he was as smitten as the rest. “I cannot remember that even Franklin seemed to mind.”

How she felt beyond that, she didn’t say. But the experience couldn’t have eased her lifelong insecurities, and if she thought she saw her future in the sight of her husband drawn irresistibly toward politics, in preference to her, she could have been forgiven.

3.

F
RANKLIN
R
OOSEVELT PROBABLY COULDN’T HAVE IDENTIFIED PRECISELY
when he began to model himself on Cousin Ted—or Uncle Ted, as the president became upon Franklin’s marriage to Eleanor. Perhaps it was during one of Franklin’s visits to the Roosevelt White House, as the younger man looked around and imagined himself living there. Perhaps it was at the wedding, when Franklin experienced the magnetic attraction of political power. Doubtless Sara suggested, likely often, that if one Roosevelt could reach the pinnacle of American politics, another Roosevelt could, too.

Whatever its origin, Franklin’s emulation of Theodore shaped his personal and professional life for decades, and it manifested itself soon after his wedding. Theodore had gone from Harvard to Columbia Law School. Franklin did the same. Theodore had found law school dull and dropped out before finishing. So did Franklin—although in his case he took and passed the New York bar exam, something Theodore never accomplished. Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler later chided Franklin Roosevelt for not completing his degree. “You will never be able to call yourself an intellectual until you come back to Columbia and pass your law exams,” Butler said. Roosevelt answered with a laugh: “That just shows how unimportant the law really is.”

His job search began in the obvious places: the clubs, dining rooms, and salons of those he knew socially. Lewis Ledyard was commodore of the New York Yacht Club, besides being a leading partner in one of the most powerful law firms on Wall Street. Edmund Baylies was a partner in the same firm, in addition to being a member of the Yacht Club and the Knickerbocker Club and president of the Seamen’s Church Institute, a charitable organization. Franklin knew both men from the Yacht Club, of which he was a member, and he knew Baylies from the Knickerbocker, to which he also belonged, and the Seamen’s Institute, on whose board of directors he served. Baylies and Ledyard thought Roosevelt promising, and they offered him the equivalent of an apprenticeship. For a year he would work without pay. If he did well he would be placed on a small salary and on the track that led to partnership.

Roosevelt commenced his legal career with a conspicuous lack of gravity. He printed cards for the occasion:

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

C
OUNSELOR AT
L
AW

54 W
ALL
S
TREET

N
EW
Y
ORK

I beg to call your attention to my unexcelled facilities for carrying on every description of legal business. Unpaid bills a specialty. Briefs on the liquor question furnished free to ladies. Race suicides cheerfully prosecuted. Small dogs chloroformed without charge. Babies raised under advice of expert grandmother etc., etc.

The principals of the firm, by contrast, took their calling quite seriously. When Roosevelt arrived, Carter, Ledyard & Milburn was up to its cufflinks and cravats in the signature antitrust suit of the era, with John Milburn personally serving as counsel to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, then under indictment by Theodore Roosevelt’s Justice Department. Lewis Ledyard represented J. P. Morgan and the United States Steel Corporation, the giant trust Morgan had created in 1901, which continued to swallow its competitors under Ledyard’s legal guidance. Three decades later Franklin Roosevelt would consider big business, and the lawyers who defended the great firms, to be his mortal enemies, but at the outset of his career he entertained no such prejudices. On the contrary, Carter, Ledyard & Milburn seemed everything a young man in his position could ask for.

An apprenticeship was appropriate, for academic legal education in those days strongly favored theory over practice. Roosevelt discovered that Columbia had prepared him hardly at all for the day-to-day work of a lawyer. He had never been inside a courtroom and didn’t know the first thing about trying a case. “I went to a big law office in New York,” he explained afterward, regarding his hiring by Carter Ledyard. “And somebody the day after I got there said, ‘Go up and answer the calendar call in the supreme court”—the New York supreme court—“tomorrow morning. We have such and such a case on.’” Roosevelt had to confess that he had no idea how to do what was being asked. “Then the next day somebody gave me a deed of transfer of some land. He said, ‘Take it up to the county clerk’s office.’ I had never been in a county clerk’s office. And there I was, theoretically a full-fledged lawyer.”

Those just ahead of Roosevelt in the firm’s hierarchy gradually filled him in on what Columbia had failed to teach him. They introduced him to the procedures and personnel of the New York courts. He caught on sufficiently that the firm appointed him managing clerk in charge of municipal litigation. He mainly pushed paper but in the process gained an appreciation for how the law affected the lives of those caught in its coils. He was assigned some minor cases of his own and learned to bargain with opposing counsel in order to settle cases before they reached trial. His heart wasn’t always on the side of his clients, typically big corporations being sued by plaintiffs and lawyers with far inferior resources. One story remembered of Roosevelt had him haggling with a plaintiff’s lawyer over a claim for damages. The lawyer asked for $300; Roosevelt refused. The lawyer asked for $150; Roosevelt again refused. Roosevelt finally visited the lawyer’s apartment. The lawyer was not at home, but his mother was, and she explained that the family was in dire straits. The condition of the apartment confirmed her remarks. Roosevelt wrote a note to the lawyer: “I would be glad to settle this case for thirty-five dollars. I cannot get myself to honestly believe that it is worth a cent more, probably less. Enclosed is a small personal check which I am sure you will not return until you are well out of these temporary difficulties.” The check was for $150. “I wept,” the lawyer said. “Six months later I paid him back.”

Away from work Roosevelt mingled with the people an up-and-coming member of the New York elite should know. He sailed at the Yacht Club and lunched at the Knickerbocker. He golfed in Westchester County when staying in the city, and on Dutchess County courses when at Hyde Park. By all appearances he was making a successful start on a life of respectable ease and moderate good service to the institutions upholding the status quo of capitalist America.