Lash Joseph P. - Eleanor and Franklin: the story of their relationship, based on Eleanor Roosevelts private papers

PRAISE FOR ELEANOR AND FRANKLIN

The intimate chronicle of a woman and a marriage. The woman was Eleanor Roosevelt, and her marriage to Franklin D. Rooseveltwith its painful secrets and public triumphsplayed a vital role not only in the lives of these two extraordinary human beings but in the lives of all humanity. Here is one of the great and moving stories of our timea masterpiece of vivid evocation and sympathetic understanding. Monumental.

New York Times

WHOLLY ABSORBING AND RICHLY DOCUMENTED.... Eleanor Roosevelts major burdens as a woman were two: the first was Sara Delano Roosevelt, her mother-in-law, oppressor, tyrant, self-appointed possessor of her son Franklin and every thing and person close to him. The other was Eleanors burden of anguish born through Franklins love affair with Lucy Mercer, whom Eleanor had employed as a social secretary.

Marya Mannes, The Atlantic

AN EXCEPTIONALLY CANDID, EXHAUSTIVE... HEARTRENDING BOOK.... The highest praise one can pay Mr. Lash is that he has proved worthy in every particular of an immense and chancy undertaking.

Brendan Gill, The New Yorker

A STUNNING, MAGNIFICENT ACHIEVEMENTthat combination of scholarship and narrative drive which is so rare. I had thought I understood Eleanor Roosevelt. Now I know how little I knew.

William Manchester

EXTRAORDINARY... a unique American drama!

William Hogan, San Francisco Chronicle

A MARVELOUS BOOK.

Donald Meyer, The New Republic

ELEANOR
AND
FRANKLIN

The Story of Their Relationship,
Based on Eleanor Roosevelts Private Papers

JOSEPH P. LASH

FOREWORD BY

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

INTRODUCTION BY

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

THE FIRST ROOSEVELT, CLAES MARTENSZEN VAN ROSENVELT, arrived from Holland in the 1640s when New Amsterdam was a tiny settlement of 800 huddled in some eighty houses at the foot of Manhattan. Who Claes Martenszen was, whether solid Dutch burgher in search of larger opportunities or solemn rogue two leaps ahead of the bailiff, as his witty descendant Alice Roosevelt Longworth has suggested, is not known. In either case, by the eve of the American Revolution when New York had become a bustling port of 25,000, there were fifty Roosevelt families, and Claess descendants were already showing an uncanny knack of associating themselves with the forces of boom and expansion in American economic life.

In the Roosevelt third generation two of the brothers, Johannes and Jacobus, took the family into real estate with the purchase of the Beekman Swamp, a venture that was to have a lasting effect on the city and their own family fortunes. It was these two brothers, also, who started the branches that led ultimately to Oyster Bay (Johannes) and to Hyde Park (Jacobus). The pre-Revolutionary Roosevelts were prosperous burghers but not of the highest gentry, and in civic affairs they were aligned with the popular faction against the aristocrats.

The first Roosevelt to achieve gentility and distinction was Isaac, the great-great-great-grandfather of Franklin, who for his services to the American cause was called Isaac the Patriot. Isaac was a trader in sugar and rum but ended his business career as president of New Yorks first bank. At his death Philip Hone, the diarist, spoke of him as proud and aristocratical, part of the only nobility the country had ever had.

It took the JohannesOyster Bay branch of the Roosevelts a little longer to advance from trader to merchant prince. Isaacs cousin James, after service with the Revolutionary army, founded Roosevelt & Son, a hardware business on Maiden Lane that swiftly expanded into building supplies. When Jamess grandson, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, was head of the firm, it imported most of the plate glass that was used in the new homes being built in the prospering nation. Cornelius chief distinction was his wealth; he was listed among the five richest men in New York. His son, on the other hand, the first Theodore, retired from business early in order to devote himself to civic activity and was one of the most esteemed men in the city.

By the beginning of the twentieth century the Roosevelt family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in the United States. Its men had married wella Philadelphia Barnhill, one of whose ancestors arrived with William Penn; a Yankee Howland, whose family had arrived on the Mayflower; a Hoffman of Swedish-Finnish descent, one of the richest heiresses in Dutchess County; and one of the Bullochs of Georgia. The Hudson River Roosevelts led the leisurely life of country squires and Johannes clan was building its country houses, stables, and tennis courts along the north shore of Long Island.

Conscious of having played their part in the transformation of New York from a frail Dutch outpost into a cosmopolitan city and of the country from a handful of seaboard colonies into a continent-spanning imperial republic, the Roosevelts had a firm sense of their roots. While most of them had changed their church affiliation from Dutch Reform to Protestant Episcopal, they remained faithful churchgoers and believers in the Protestant ethic, which sanctified a ruthless competitive individualism on the one hand and, on the other, the love and charity that were the basis of the familys strong sense of social obligation. Standards of honor, conduct, and mannersthe caste marks of the old-stock upper classwere further bred into the Roosevelt sons at Groton and Harvard. They went on to become bankers, sportsmen, financiers, and, in two cases, president of the United States. The Roosevelt women, however, were essentially private individuals concerned with supervising large households and launching their daughters into fashionable society. With a few notable exceptions, they led lives of genteel conformity and escaped public noticeuntil the advent of a girl who was to become known as First Lady of the World.

Copyright 1971 by Joseph P. Lash.

Foreword copyright 1971 by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Introduction copyright 1971 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes by Harold L. Ickes; copyright 1953 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.; copyright renewed 1981 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.; all rights reserved. Eleanor Roosevelts article I Remember Hyde Park, McCalls Magazine, February 1963, by permission of Nancy Roosevelt Ireland. Twenty-seven quotations totaling 517 words from This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt; copyright 1949 by Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, renewed 1977 by John A. Roosevelt and Franklin A. Roosevelt, Jr.; reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Nancy Roosevelt Ireland. Twelve quotations totaling 307 words from This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt; copyright 1937 by Anne Eleanor Roosevelt; copyright renewed 1965 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., and John Roosevelt; reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Nancy Roosevelt Ireland.