On 17 March 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. In the eyes of the public, they were the ideal spouses, parents of five children and a model presidential couple who had spent the last 12 years of their lives together in the White House. In an era without mass media and with the strict discretion of their closest friends, people could not have guessed how unconventional their marriage was. Those whose lives were most closely intertwined with theirs held their tongues even afterwards, destroying letters that revealed the depth of their feelings, so that historians today still cannot quite agree on what really happened in their marriage, deeply steeped in politics.
But there is no doubt that they came from completely different backgrounds, even if, as fifth cousins, they both belonged to the Roosevelt clan. Eleanor was indeed the niece of US President Theodore Roosevelt, who at 42 became the youngest President in American history and lived in the White House from 1901 to 1909, but her father Elliot was a drunkard. He died in an accident before her 10th birthday. She had lost her mother to tuberculosis a few years earlier, so her maternal grandmother took her and her younger brother under her roof.
Eleanor grew up with the painful realisation that she was not beautiful. She was rejected for her looks by her beautiful mother and told to her face by one of the two teenage aunts she grew up with that she was too ugly to marry. The happiest period of her youth was the three years she spent at Allenswood boarding school in England. There, she went from a shy 15-year-old girl dressed in her aunts’ worn clothes to the most popular girl at school. She was particularly fond of the headmistress, Marie Souvestre, a friend of the writers Henry James and Marcel Proust.
Raised in an extremely conservative environment, Eleanor was shocked to learn that the headmistress was an atheist. Used to having to buy love, she adopted Christian self-sacrifice for others as almost her mission in life. It is not known how much she was surprised to learn that Marie Souvestre was homosexual, but she certainly soaked up her teachings like a sponge. Souvestre taught girls from wealthy families to take responsibility for their own lives and to participate in society, teaching them about social inequality, the atrocities of the British Empire, the injustices suffered by black people in America and the importance of the trade union movement.
Souvestre, 70, was completely smitten by her favourite student, and she adored her mentor, but there is no evidence that she fell in love with her, even though they travelled around Europe together. That was the first time Eleanor realised that it was possible to enjoy life: she tasted local wines, met her mentor’s bohemian friends and indulged in spontaneity under her tutelage. “I shall never again be the rigid girl I was”, she wrote after her trip, but when she returned home in July 1902 at the age of 18, she had become just that again.
A few months later, she met Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not yet 21, on a train. After not having seen him for two and a half years, there he was, standing in front of her, tall, attractive, confident and smiling. Life was much more kind to him than to her.
In the Hudson Valley, where the wealthiest Americans lived, he enjoyed complete material prosperity as the centre of his mother’s world, which he became when his father suffered a stroke when he was nine years old. He never resisted his mother, and so he also kept silent about his attraction to the unselfconscious Eleanor. She was not beautiful, but she was the niece of the US President.
Franklin was attracted to politics from a young age, but the more he got to know Eleanor, the more he liked her, even though he met her only rarely and never alone. After a year and a half of manoeuvring to see her without his mother suspecting anything, he proposed. Eleanor said yes, but Mum said no. For the first time in his life, he insisted. He reached a compromise: he could announce the engagement in a year’s time if he still wanted to.
But he was in a hurry. Until he married Eleanor, he wasn’t allowed to speak alone, let alone think about sex, but he didn’t dare resent his mother. From a trust fund set up for him by his father, he received $5,000 a year then, or just over $130,000 today. For this lover of travel, yachts, fine clothes, rare books and all kinds of antiques, an income of around $11,000 a month was already too little for him to live on, let alone support a family.
He was only able to maintain his lifestyle with his mother’s financial help. She wrote cheques without hesitation, but he had to ask her for money again and again, even when he was the most powerful man in the country as US President. That was how she kept control of him. If she had increased his trust fund, she would have lost it.
Franklin, a student at Harvard, finds himself trapped between two women. They were both pressing him, each with their own agenda. On the first of December 1904, he announced his engagement. President Theodore Roosevelt told him, “No success in life – not the presidency or anything else – can compare with the joy and happiness that come from the love of a real man and a real woman.” He gave away his bride on 17 March 1905, “justifying his reputation for being the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral”, as his daughter Alice put it. He gave the newlyweds his full attention.
Franklin chose his mother Sarah’s house in Hyde Park for their first wedding night, but she was fooled enough to back out. The newlyweds honeymooned in Europe, writing to Sarah twice a week, each time signing off with “Your devoted child”.
During those three months, Eleanor realised that her husband was quite flirtatious. “She went hillwalking, I didn’t, and even though I didn’t say a word, I was jealous beyond words,” she confessed much later about how she felt when her husband went hillwalking with another woman.
He realised that when his wife was hurt or angry, she would stubbornly remain silent. Nothing could get on your nerves like her nagging, her friend later lamented.
Sara
But Eleanor was getting on my mother-in-law’s nerves. She made her feel like Franklin’s second wife. Although they each had their own trust fund and together received about 325,000 today’s dollars a year, or 27,000 dollars a month, they were not able to live on that. So they lived in houses that Sara built or bought for them, but she did not give them any. Her home was always connected to theirs or in close proximity. She came and went as she pleased. She took full control of her son’s wife, who was still studying law at the time.
Relations only deteriorated with the birth of their daughter Anne in 1906. Mum had a major say in her upbringing, but it is true that Eleanor felt no desire to be a mother. In the early years of her marriage, she was constantly pregnant only because there was no protection. She never awakened a maternal sense: she was caring, as duty dictated, but not warm and loving. None of her five surviving children – one died not long after birth – could later say that she was a good mother. She was described as a cold and distant woman who only found fault with them and complained incessantly.
She was unhappy with the law, Franklin with his law firm. He wanted to go into politics. An opportunity presented itself in the summer of 1910, when the Democrats offered him the chance to run for a Senate seat. In November of that year, at the age of 28, he surprisingly won the seat. Eleanor would not have objected, even if she had dared to contradict her husband: for the first time in five years of marriage, she was able to live away from her mother-in-law.
But she soon grew to like the role of a politician’s wife. In the next election campaign, she replaced her husband, who was laid up with typhoid fever, and did as Louis McHenry Howe instructed. This dishevelled man with a face dishevelled by smallpox befriended Franklin when he interviewed him in January 1911. At that time he predicted that Franklin would one day be President, and now, as a former political journalist and a great expert on political events, he made sure that Franklin became a Senator once more.
This opened the door to Washington. In March 1913, aged just 31, he was offered the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He knew the field because he not only enjoyed sailing, but also delved into it, as he did with all his hobbies. Theodore Roosevelt rose from that post to the Presidency. Will he succeed?
Louis Howe, of course, went with him. The youthful, boisterous and arrogant Franklin made public appearances, Howe weaved a web of important acquaintances for him behind the scenes, answering letters on his behalf, checking on port developments, befriending labour leaders and driving them to see Franklin so that he could get to know the real life.
He didn’t have to before, but now he has to because of Howe’s insistence. He was beginning to change, and Eleanor was changing too. She asked Aunt Bye, who had once stood by Theodore Roosevelt, for guidance on how to behave as a model politician’s wife. So for the first year, she made about 60 calls a month, took more, went to official receptions and almost every night to an official dinner, and then hosted friends at home or went with her husband to theirs.
She has learned how to chat and relax guests. “I realised something liberating: if you forget about yourself, whether you’re going to make a good impression on people or a bad one, what they think of you, and think about them instead, you won’t be shy.” Now, for the first time in her life, people were turning to her, and for the first time she had a real influence on what was happening when she intervened on their behalf with her husband.
Lucy
She was happy, but by spring 1914 she could no longer keep up the pace. Pregnant again, she decided to hire a secretary. Lucy Mercer came to her three times a week. Franklin immediately renamed her the lovely Lucy, but everyone, even Sara, loved the smiling 23-year-old. Lucy was grateful for a decent and fairly well-paid job. She was attractive and had aristocratic manners, but she was also Catholic, without wealth and without respectable parents.
Eleanor, who gave birth to her last son in March, spent the summer of 1916 as usual on the idyllic island of Campobello. It had no electricity or running water and could only be reached by boat. Franklin was detained in Washington in the middle of the First World War. Lucy came to see them regularly and handled Eleanor’s mail.
Franklin and Lucy felt an “irresistible attraction” from the first time they met, as Lucy later confided to her cousin, and now they have finally crossed the line they had artificially maintained for two years. Franklin, who was described by the media as a film star because of his athletic looks, confident manner, piercing blue eyes and easy laugh, was 34 years old. Lucy was 25.
While he spent his free time with her, he wrote his wife affectionate letters. In them, he assured his Beloved that “single life is not what it used to be” and that he longed to be with her. When Eleanor returned home, she heard nothing. Some of this was because she was back in one of her heyday periods and mostly occupied with herself, some because Franklin regularly invited a young man, Nigel Lawy, to stay with him and hinted to his wife that something was going on between him and Lucy.
She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t have time to form an opinion. Lucy suddenly resigned. On 6 April 1917, America entered the First World War, and in June, women began to be accepted into the army. Lucy immediately signed up. It is not clear whether she was persuaded to do so by Franklin or whether she found it unbearable to spend her days with her lover’s wife and family, but in any case, whether by accident or not, she was assigned to the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. She came to see Franklin.
Eleanor sensed that something was happening. The otherwise very sociable Franklin retreated into himself. He became clingy towards her and the children. She did not want to go to Campobello that summer, but Franklin told her she had to go for the children. She sent the older ones ahead on their own, but he only managed to persuade her to follow them in mid-July.
Letters again passed between them, beginning with Dearest Babs and Dearest Sweetheart, but Franklin did not announce his arrival in any of the letters. He did not report to her anything extraordinary in his daily life, and Washington was abuzz with gossip. Wherever he went, Lucy accompanied him. He made no effort to conceal their relationship, not even from his relatives.
Alice, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, once told him that she had seen him 36 kilometres from the city: ‘You didn’t see me. Your hands were on the steering wheel, but your eyes were on that absolutely charming lady.” She did not judge him, she even encouraged his relationship. She thought he deserved a break, after all, he was married to Eleanor. She often invited the couple to dinner.
When Eleanor returned home, Alice tried to give her “mysterious news” about her husband as quickly as possible. Eleanor cut her off before she could start. She didn’t want to know. As long as she had an inkling of the truth, she didn’t have to face it. Still, she was worried. Franklin had pulled away from her. She turned to work. She became indispensable to the Red Cross.
At the beginning of 1918, she was alone again. Franklin had long wanted to go to Europe, but he was not allowed. Now, at last, he was sent there. The war had filled him with such adrenaline that he was determined to fight alone. He had not been allowed to do that either. “It gets on my nerves that I can’t be with you and see all this. Isn’t that awful of me?” Eleanor wrote to him on the battlefield. Letters passed between them as usual.
But Franklin was not fit to fight. He returned home with pneumonia in both lung wings. Eleanor put him to bed with a high fever and unpacked his luggage. Inside she found a roll of letters. They were not hers. They were Lucy’s letters. That was when, she later told a friend, the ground gave way beneath her feet. It is not known what she read in them, because the letters were destroyed.
“Lucy and Franklin were very much in love with each other,” Lucy’s cousin explained much later. Franklin and Eleanor were talking about divorce that day. They stayed together because “Eleanor didn’t want to go away”, as Lucy explained to her cousin. This may have been true, but perhaps Franklin had made a pragmatic decision against his heart.
His mother threatened to disinherit him. Louis Howe pressured him that divorce would ruin his political career. He could not argue with the argument that Eleanor’s pedigree made her the ideal wife for a politician. After weeks of illness, he retired to his library. For a few days he refused to speak to anyone.
From a young age, he dreamt of a political career. When he broke his silence, he promised his wife that he would only see Lucy once more, just long enough to say goodbye. After two months of uncertainty, Eleanor finally breathed a sigh of relief. Life had gone back to the way it was, but researchers of their lives say that their marriage was never the same again.
Whenever Franklin came home late or was absent, Eleanor would burst into jealousy and then blame herself. In the summer of 1919, she did not want to go to Campobello. She preferred to suffer her mother-in-law in nearby Hyde Park, then explode on her and rush to apologise to her immediately afterwards, as she always did.
At 35 years old, it was completely lost. She became painfully aware of her unenviable position at the International Congress of Working Women. The activists she met there were completely different from her. She was fascinated by them. Some of them became her best friends. She began to model herself on them.
Life settled down nicely when, on Valentine’s Day 1920, she read in the newspaper that Wintie Rutherfurd, a wealthy widower aged 58 and father of five sons, had married 29-year-old Lucy Mercer. She was delighted, convinced that the news would come as a surprise to her husband, who had just run for the post of Vice-President of the United States. His campaign was, of course, managed by Loius Howe and organised in New York by his very capable secretary, 24-year-old Marguerite LeHand.
The Democrats lost comfortably. Franklin returned to law and entered the world of finance, retaining Louis Howe as his private secretary. He paid him out of his own pocket to continue paving the way for his political career. Eleanor, meanwhile, was invited to join the New York Board of Electors. She soon became one of the leaders and her circle of friends expanded again. Among them were Elizabeth Read and Esther Lape. They were a same-sex couple, just one of the many she met at the time.
Virus
The Roosevelt family finally spent the summer of 1921 together at Campobello. On July twenty-eighth, Franklin hopped over to visit the Boy Scouts’ summer camp. Soon he was back home, sailing with friends, swimming and roaming around. On Wednesday, August 10, he went on a field trip with the older children. They were so active all day that he could hardly get out of his chair in the evening. He struggled up the stairs to his bedroom.
But he didn’t rest in bed either. He started to shake. At night, the condition worsened. In the morning he had to force himself to get up. His legs were kicking. He tried to walk to free them, but soon they would no longer hold him. He went back to bed. His temperature had risen. They sent for a doctor. He diagnosed influenza.
On Friday, Franklin could no longer stand on his feet. On Saturday, he was paralysed from the chest down. His skin was so sensitive that he could hardly bear the touch of a sheet or the wind blowing through the window. He could not see a doctor. Campobello could only be reached by boat.
They sent for another doctor. He advised massage. He charged for the visit what Louis Howe’s six-month salary was. He and his family spent their holidays with the Roosevelts. He and Eleanor set to work. They literally tortured Franklin with the massage, but only found out later that they had increased the chance of further damage to his muscles.
Franklin was driven to despair by the unbearable pain, and his condition was only getting worse. His bladder was paralysed and he could no longer control his bowels. The doctor taught Eleanor how to insert a catheter and perform an enema. He told her again that she must not stop the massages.
Now Louis Howe has taken the reins again. He quietly suspected that Franklin was suffering from polio. He confided his fears only to Eleanor. They sent a detailed description of the symptoms to Franklin’s Uncle Fred in New York, asking him to consult a polio specialist and, of course, to keep his mouth shut.
My uncle read the letter only three days later. The leading expert in the field, Dr Lovett, was not present, but a young specialist, Samuel Levine, confirmed that it was “without a doubt polio”. He ordered that the massage be stopped immediately.
Franklin had been in desperate pain for 14 days when Dr Lovett finally arrived on the island. There was barely any response in the patient’s legs. The muscles of his upper torso had almost completely atrophied. He could still move his arms, but he had no strength in his fingers. His face was also partially paralysed.
Polio, Dr Lovett confirmed. He predicted three possible outcomes for Franklin: he might make a full recovery, he might make a partial recovery, and he might remain completely paralysed. Franklin’s face remained expressionless.
He could not go to hospital. If the polio virus was contracted, the patient had to be quarantined for three to four weeks. He had to stay on the island for two more days, and his condition worsened. Muscular atrophy was increasing and he had almost no strength left. The realisation that they could do nothing was frustrating for everyone, but Louis Howe quickly recovered from the shock. He put all his energies into boosting morale in the house, replacing Franklin in his job and keeping his political options open.
He arranged things with his colleagues, spoke to his secretary Marguerite LeHand, arranged transport from the island, consulted doctors … Everyone he spoke to heard the same thing: the public must not know that Franklin was ill, and especially not what was wrong with him. He was not quite sure which word would bury his political hopes more quickly, cripple, as invalids were then called, or polio, but he knew for sure that if he wanted to save Franklin’s spirit, he had to ensure an active future.
To preserve his dignity and give him back a sense of control over his own life, he discussed everything directly with him, even though Eleanor had taken over the family reins and excluded her husband from decision-making. Marguarite LeHand did her best to help. She wrote letters to Franklin about her adventures and made him laugh.
Not only his mother knew about her son’s tragedy. After returning from abroad, she immediately went to Campobello. She was outraged by what she saw there. Laughter erupted from her son’s room. She was convinced that the patient should be at peace, and everyone else was trying to make him feel better. She left in a bad mood and Franklin was finally allowed to go to hospital. Strapped to a stretcher, he was put through a window into a train sent especially for him by his uncle.
But they could not hide his condition from the public. Louis Howe has now persuaded his doctor to assure the press that Franklin will make a full recovery. This was an outright lie, but so that Franklin could not be blamed for it later, he made a press statement himself, mentioning that everyone was sparing him the truth.
If he had, it would have been only natural. At the age of 39, he transformed overnight from an independent and vital athlete who loved swimming, tennis, golf, sailing and travelling, to a paraplegic completely dependent on the help of others. Yesterday he was talked about as a movie star, today he is one of the “cripples” who aroused pity, disgust or fear in people and were generally kept out of the public eye.
While polio patients usually took two years to accept their new reality, Franklin, as always, remained calm in moments of extreme stress. He never complained of pain, not even at night when he was awake and could not move a finger, let alone his body. The Roosevelts suffered in silence.
He tried to be in a good mood all the time. Not so much for his own sake as for the sake of all those who worked with him. It was the only way he could give something back to them, even if no one expected or demanded it of him. People helped him because they wanted to and it meant something to them.
Friends started coming to visit. He knew that the first encounter with him would be unpleasant for them, so he always cracked a joke to break the initial tension. His relations with people soon returned to normal and the house began to boil.
Louis Howe, Franklin’s orderly, and his nurse were now living there. The children complained that they no longer had a room of their own. Eleanor and her mother-in-law were constantly on the verge of conflict. When the physiotherapist and the nurse got involved, the battle for the main say in Franklin’s recovery began.
Sara wanted her son to be transported to Hyde Park, where he has been living in seclusion without anyone disturbing him ever since. Eleanor pressured him to return to active life as soon as possible. Louis Howe wanted him to start thinking about politics. Franklin wanted to walk.
After spending seven months in bed, his upper body strengthened enough for him to be transferred to Hyde Park in March 1922. Nothing was as his mother had imagined. Louis Howe came regularly for consultations. He handled all Franklin’s legal and financial affairs on his behalf, as if Franklin had gone to work alone. Franklin’s secretary, Marguerite LeHand, also stayed in Hyde Park for several days together.
In the meantime, he worked hard, determined to get back on his feet. He tried steel braces. They dug into the muscles of his legs, cutting them, and he kept moving his hips and dragging them behind him, hoping to strengthen them. He swam a lot. Doctors warned him that he could harm himself by overdoing it.
Missy
Missy, as his children called his 24-year-old secretary Marguerite LeHand, became increasingly indispensable to him. Whenever she was in his bedroom, she would burst out laughing. Eleanor did not feel threatened this time. She welcomed Missy into her family in the same way as she had Louis Howe.
For the next six years, Franklin spent his life more with Missy than with his family. She was with him everywhere. He often went sailing, hoping that swimming in sea water would do him good. Eleanor was afraid of the sea, Missy enjoyed it as much as she could. She was the only one who saw Franklin’s inner struggles those days. Sometimes he was so despondent that he couldn’t get out of bed until midday, other times he was full of hope. After two and a half years, doctors told him his recovery was complete. There will be no more changes. For the first time, tears appeared in his eyes.
Missy was with him at the time. Eleanor was angry with Louis Howe for wasting his life. Was he going to sail, go karting, mix cocktails and drink them endlessly? But what else could he do? For a political career, the only thing that really meant anything to him, he needed good legs. Everyone was sure of that, except Louis Howe. He believed that Franklin could compensate for his deficiency with his charismatic personality. There were only two conditions: not a single photograph of him in a wheelchair could appear in public and people must never see him being carried.
In fact, the American public never found out that Franklin could not walk at all. Before her, he had always struggled with a brace, leaning on a cane and the elbow of his son James, who was 16 when he first asked for help. Howe also ordered that Franklin should never stumble in public. So every time he slowly walked to the podium, he was under severe pressure.
But at that moment he really wasn’t interested in politics. He tried the “cures” people suggested and went to Warm Springs with Missy because someone told him that the thermal water there was healing. When they arrived at their destination, the place was almost deserted. Franklin was not bothered by this, but his relationship with Missy disturbed his mother, so Eleanor kept it quiet.
Missy was Franklin’s personal secretary, so it was not controversial that she was always with him. Were they lovers? Apart from not being able to walk, Franklin was a young, healthy and physically strong man. His erectile capacity remained intact. The chances that he and Missy were not lovers are slim to none, researchers into his life agree.
Eleanor either couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to know it, or his relationship came in handy because she was able to make a new life for herself while he was recovering. Nevertheless, she was still devotedly by his side in public. She continued to weave among the audience even when he returned to the political arena three years after his illness.
Howe was right. During his first public appearance, Franklin’s magical appeal so captivated audiences that his handicap suddenly became his advantage. No one could fail to notice the enormous effort it took for him to stand up, let alone to step with his braces, almost drag himself to the lectern and stand on his own feet on it, while speaking as enthusiastically as ever. Suddenly, the media began to present him as a hero, strengthened and empowered by the accident.
Eleanor had been involved in politics for two years. Louis Howe was very pleased with her: she kept the Roosevelt surname in the public eye and the Franklin family interested in politics. Eleanor was happy too. Politics became her true passion and, at the age of 39, she was completely reborn. As a member of the women’s wing of the Democratic Party, she began to travel the country and meet new people, such as the lesbian couple Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman.
She fell in love with Nancy. Whether her love was purely platonic or not is not clear, but she was certainly very careful not to make Marion jealous. Members of the Roosevelt clan were horrified by her new development. She did not look at them. She had a solid backing – her husband. He did not tie her to himself, he even encouraged her new life.
When she complained that she had nothing of her own in her life because everything belonged to her mother-in-law, he bought her a plot of land in Hyde Park, drew the plans for her new house and built it so that she, Nancy and Marion had it all to themselves. They moved into Val-Kill, as it was called, on New Year’s Eve 1926.
Now the Roosevelts had their own lives. He spent his with Missy, who had him all to herself in Warm Springs, although he was always extremely careful not to depend on just one person and not to tie anyone to him. He wanted his new “home” for himself, without any objections. Since Warm Springs was a slum, he decided to turn it into a modern convalescent home for polio patients. He wanted to invest two thirds of his fortune in it. Eleanor resisted, saying she had children to think of.
It rarely exploded, but then it did. Eleanor withdrew. “Missy is excited about everything, of course!” she remarked caustically in a letter. She was not jealous, although Franklin was away from home for 116 weeks between 1925 and 1928, or just under two and a half years. During that time Eleanor spent four weeks with him, and Mum two. Missy was with him for a hundred and ten weeks, or over two years.
From 1922 she lived with him as his second wife. Eleanor protected her rather than pressured her, yet in the summer of 1927, the always smiling and good-natured Missy suddenly became defiant. She burst out more and more often in public. She raged at Franklin and at her life. The outbursts were followed by a period of severe depression in which she talked of suicide. She then became delirious.
Despite medical attention, her condition continued to deteriorate. She began to cling to Franklin. She turned into a child. She no longer recognised people. She lost her memory, her words were meaningless. When Franklin had to leave, he sent her a telegram, but it only upset her more. On his return, he brought her the baby pillow Eleanor had bought for her. When he had to leave again, her condition deteriorated to the point where she had to be hospitalised. Franklin was asked not to visit, call or write to her. He made her feel even worse.
It took Missy nine months to recover from a nervous breakdown. It is not clear what pushed her over the edge. After five years, had the role of second wife become too much for her and the future too uncertain? When she recovered, she was able to play it again without any problems. Could it be that, like Eleanor almost a decade earlier, she too had been let down by Lucy Mercer’s letter?
Eleanor firmly believed that Lucy was part of Franklin’s past. Missy, who must have known about her, thought the same, but now realised that she was also part of his present. Because he dictated letters to her, she thought she knew all his correspondence, but Lucy wrote to him alone. While most of their letters have been destroyed, the few surviving ones exchanged between 1926 and 1928 show that they kept each other informed of where each other was so that they could see each other and exchanged telephone numbers so that they could hear each other.
Missy was completely devoted to Franklin. She was not threatened by his relationship with Eleanor, Lucy was a different story, although she had her own life, just like Eleanor. She was now a newspaper editor alongside her political work, writing a monthly column and teaching history without a degree at the prestigious Todhunter Girls’ School. Marion taught there at first, but then bought it with Eleanor and Nancy. Earlier, the women had jointly built an even larger workshop next to their stone house in Hyde Park for Nancy and the locals to make their handicrafts in.
Earl
Meanwhile, Louis Howe was preparing the ground for Franklin’s return to politics. The plan was for him to run for the US presidency in 1936, even though the electorate had never in history chosen a man in a wheelchair as its leader. But Franklin was a special man, so special that the voters of New York State chose him as their Governor in 1928, even though not even Louis Howe believed he would win.
Eleanor was very happy for her husband, but she did not want to be just a politician’s wife anymore. She wanted to keep her teaching job, the only problem was that she would have to live in New York, not Albany. Franklin quickly solved the problem: for the three days a week she would be away, Missy would be the housekeeper, and then the roles would be reversed. All three will, of course, live under the same roof. Louis Howe will also have a room with them.
The new arrangements suited everyone, but Eleanor was walking on thin ice: in public, she had to maintain the image of a devoted wife, interested in politics only for her husband’s sake, and at home, she had to make sure that Franklin did not detect her interference in his work. “These are suggestions I’m passing on, not my opinion, because I don’t want to interfere!” she would write to him, dictating who he should admit to his office and who he had to get rid of. During the years when he was in health care, she got to know the political life of New York to the core. For example, she made the head of the Labour Department a woman. Eleanor admired Frances Perkins. Coincidentally, she was also homosexual.
She and the overworked Missy continued to have a good relationship. Eleanor gave her one of her secretaries, 28-year-old Grace Tully, but Missy was still at Franklin’s service 24 hours a day. In 1933, Missy had a more serious falling out with Bill Bullitt in the White House, but Franklin was not worried – he sent him to the Soviet Union to be the first US ambassador there. After about two years of a long-distance relationship, rumours of marriage began to circulate, but there was no bread. Missy chose Franklin.
Eleanor remained in the marriage, although she was constantly falling in love with other men and women. She had her first big crush, and very possibly her first real extramarital affair, at the age of 44 with her new bodyguard, 31-year-old Earl Miller. Since Franklin could not walk, she travelled around New York in his place. Earl was with her everywhere.
They walked hand in hand. Eleanor looked at him with a glow in her eyes. When he wasn’t with her, she wrote to him. Her lover, 13 years her junior, made her blossom again, but her friends didn’t like him. They found him too familiar with her and his touches too spontaneous.
She found support again in her husband. He liked Earl. Like Missy, he became part of the family. He ate with the family, even when they had official guests. As the Roosevelts welcomed their two lovers into their home, they so successfully had each other’s backs that even their colleagues were puzzled by their relationship.
Despite her crush, Eleanor remained a model politician’s wife. She organised domestic life and kept a close eye on social events. In October 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashed. Then US President Herbert Hoover assured people that the market would regulate itself. It didn’t. The Great Depression followed, with a quarter, or more likely a third, of Americans officially unemployed.
The timing was perfect for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He advocated a minimum wage, 8-hour workdays 5 days a week, a pension system, subsidies for farmers, cheaper electricity in rural areas and public works for the unemployed. He was now able to communicate his ideas to millions of people without having to criss-cross the country, because radio had just entered American homes. Sitting in his wheelchair, Franklin “chatted” to the Americans in front of the microphone as if they were standing in front of him.
In November 1930, he was re-elected Governor of New York, this time with the largest majority in American history. This also made him the leading presidential candidate for the 1932 elections, but he publicly denied any such plans. Louis Howe was, of course, already setting up his campaign headquarters.
He was indispensable to Franklin. True, Roosevelt had a sixth sense for choosing his colleagues and could trust everyone, but only Howe was allowed to call him by his first name. He was also the only one who dared to call him a “bloody idiot” when they had an argument, for example, or to shout at him, as when Franklin ended a telephone argument by announcing that he was going swimming: “What? What? You’re going swimming? Right. Go, damn it! By God, I hope you drown!”
No one dared to interfere in their relationship, just as no one dared to interfere in the relationship of Franklin and Missy, or Eleanor and Earl. Rumours circulated, but no one had proof. In the end, Missy and Earl ended up together. The Roosevelts were also understanding. Their romance ended less than two years later when Earl, aged 35, became engaged to a 17-year-old. Missy was a few days early, and he later explained that he had become involved with her to quell rumours about him and Eleanor, and that he had married her for the same reason. Eleanor gave him a plot of land in Hyde Park as a wedding present.
But now the presidential election was upon us. Franklin was not worried about his Republican rival, he was worried about whether the Democrats would choose him as their candidate. The race was close. Howe was outmatched in the end. He was gasping for air. His secretaries panicked that he was going to die. “But you know he’s not going to die until he makes sure Roosevelt is nominated,” one of his colleagues scolded them. Of course he succeeded. Franklin officially became a presidential candidate at a time when America was in the midst of a tremendous economic crisis.
Lorena
Eleanor was actively involved in the election campaign. As a wife and a member of the Democratic Party’s Women’s Division, she canvassed the women’s vote for her husband. In October 1932, she joined Roosevelt’s special convoy to Arizona. Among the journalists accompanying them was 39-year-old Lorena Hickok, a small and slightly round political reporter for the Associated Press. Eleanor, 48, sometimes invited her to breakfast or tea.
When Missy’s mother died towards the end of the campaign, Eleanor accompanied her to the funeral. She invited Lorena to go with her. After the funeral they went for lunch and a drive in the countryside. They became close friends. And soon lovers. For Eleanor, this was a bold step: if the public knew that she had committed to a same-sex relationship, she could jeopardise her husband’s election.
On 8 November 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the 32nd President of the United States. Shortly afterwards, on 30 January 1933, he celebrated his 51st birthday. He was chosen three more times by the American people, but Eleanor was determined to remain independent and make her mark in a man’s world from the moment she won the first election.
Lorena Hickok’s influence has not been negligible. The woman was completely taken over by passion. They saw each other almost every day. They travelled together, went to concerts and the theatre. After a performance, Eleanor would sometimes go to Lorena’s one-room apartment. When her husband was away, she spent most nights at her place.
On the evening before the inauguration on 4 March 1933, everyone ate together, but Eleanor and Lorena alone. It was pleasant, but Lorena was frozen: she was a journalist, she had witnessed the most important event in America, but she had not reported it for her agency. It became clear to her that her love was jeopardising her career.
Everyone in the press knew she was homosexual. By now, they were also convinced that she was in love with the First Lady. It was also more than obvious that she was returning those feelings. Eleanor did not care about the rumours, Lorena did. “From my point of view, it was the end of my life as I knew it,” she wrote later. In the spring of 1933, she resigned from the Associated Press. Eleanor found her a new job in the civil service, but it was not the same – she gave up what she loved to do for love.
But their relationship was doomed from the start. When they met, Lorena was living in one city and Eleanor in another. Lorena was single and lesbian, Eleanor was married and also fell in love with men. Lorena wanted a committed relationship, Eleanor was a politician. Jealous outbursts were an inevitable constant.
The first summer in the First Lady’s shoes, Eleanor and Lorena set off on a three-week trip across America. Despite objections from the security services, her husband allowed them to go alone. They enjoyed it. On their return, Lorena changed jobs. She travelled around the country collecting data on the impact of the economic depression on people’s lives. When she was not travelling, she lived in the White House. She ate with official guests and formally slept on a sofa in Eleanor’s private living room, separated from her bedroom only by a door. The PR department made sure that Lorena was not in any official photographs.
She was becoming more and more despondent. She felt like a ghost in the White House. Eleanor was always in a hurry to go somewhere, she was alone and aimless in the empty corridors. She fell even deeper when she read in the newspaper an account of a visit she had accompanied Eleanor on. They wrote that she had once been “one of the finest female eagles in journalism”, but was now only “a close friend of Mrs Roosevelt”.
To reassure her, Eleanor promised in April 1934 that they would go on holiday together in the summer. Now, because of the publicity, they could no longer afford to go, but they could go to California. Lorena imagined that they would be alone and casual, Eleanor chose camping for them, and then riding and hiking alone in the surrounding hills, as Lorena was not in the condition for that. On top of that, crowds of people and journalists followed them everywhere.
Lorena lost her nerve. She shouted at Eleanor in public and called people dog names. Three weeks of holidays successfully destroyed their passion. They remained connected throughout their lives, but each with their own private lives.
Meanwhile, Franklin was running the country and spending his rare free moments with Missy. If she wanted to talk to him, Eleanor had to get in line. He was most receptive to her requests and suggestions in bed at night.
On the surface, the couple seemed to be living harmoniously, but some researchers of their lives believe that Eleanor took passive-aggressive revenge on her husband. For example, by hiring an acquaintance who could hardly cook as a housekeeper and ordering that only what was on the tables of Americans suffering from deprivation was allowed to be eaten in the White House. She herself had never been a food addict, but Franklin would have liked to have had something choice at least once in a while. Eleanor refused to forgive the housekeeper, even though the White House was famous for the most disgusting food and everyone complained about it.
Louis Howe soon could complain no more. After fulfilling his dream and becoming President, Franklin’s health betrayed him. He was still struggling to breathe. Franklin visited him in hospital throughout the year until he said goodbye in April 1936, when Howe was 65. They spent 25 years together.
He now attached himself to a single distant cousin, Margaret Suckley, whom everyone called Daisy, and built his own house at the top of a hill in Hyde Park. In retirement, he planned to retire there with Daisy, write his autobiography and read.
Eleanor had not planned that far ahead. She travelled the country, gave speeches, wrote books and a daily column to tell readers about her life. Her sons mocked her for reinventing herself in her columns, presenting herself as a calm and contented woman, genuinely concerned about the world and her family. They knew her as a distant wife who never had time for anyone.
Not that Eleanor outright lied, she was too clever for that, but both she and her husband knew exactly what they had to keep from the public. But it was impossible for her to conceal the political defeats Franklin had recorded in his second term. In 1938, his popularity had fallen to an all-time low. Eleanor was rising. In 1937, she was voted the most outstanding woman of the year by NBC Radio listeners. Two years later, she had surpassed her husband in popularity. The New York Times wrote that “next to the President, she is likely to be the best-informed person on the American scene”. There were even rumours that she would run for President herself after her husband’s second term.
No. Franklin becomes US President for a third time, before he blows the whistle on the attractive 33-year-old Dorothy Schiff. Almost 20 years her senior and in failing health, she was not charmed, but when she bought the New York Post in 1939, the paper was completely on his side.
Joe
Meanwhile, in Europe, everything was gearing up for war. Franklin wanted to prepare America for war, but the Americans were against it. They refused to take in refugees, let alone children. He disagreed with them, but he was a politician, not an activist like his wife. He was always looking for a compromise with Congress and, as a result, he often did nothing.
In February 1940, he suffered a minor stroke. Although a swimming pool had been built for him where the gardens used to be, his lifestyle was too sedentary and his circulation too poor. During the third presidential campaign, the truth about his state of health was suppressed. He won a third time, which has never happened before.
Eleanor had four more years of the White House ahead of her. In the past eight, she enjoyed it because she was always in the thick of things, but now all the conversations were behind closed doors. Cut off from information for the first time, she felt marginalised. It was a good thing that in November 1939 she fell in love again, this time platonically with Joseph Lash, an activist 25 years her junior, who was accused of collaborating with the Communists.
She invited him to the White House and gave him her house in Hyde Park so he could rest. For the next two years, she consoled him for his love troubles with Trude Pratt, a married mother of three. She helped him where she could and showered him with gifts. For his 32nd birthday, she gave him a Pontiac convertible.
Her letters were full of emotion. She told him how much she loved him, how she could cry, how she missed him … Sometimes she crossed the line so much that he had to put distance between himself and her. Then he started calling her Auntie and she complained about what had happened to E.R., who sounded so very nice. She tried to force him to “treat her like one of his girls”, as he put it. She failed, but it didn’t stop her either.
When he had to go to war, she wrote seven letters and numbered the envelopes so that the first week, when it was hardest, he would read one letter at a time. “It seems that a piece of my heart is always with you, Joe. Carry it with you wherever you go”, she wrote to him, aged 58.
In August 1943, during her tour of the South Pacific – her husband had sent her to the battlefields as a goodwill ambassador – she forced a visit to the dangerous island of Guadalcanal, because he was there too. She did not know that the FBI was watching them. The FBI file on her ended up containing more than 3 000 pages.
Her husband also saw himself anew. He offered refuge to Princess Märthe of Norway and her three children in America. When she arrived in August 1940, he began to seduce her so blatantly that she looked up and others looked away in disgust as he looked for a house to rent and drove around with her. Eleanor replied to a friend who made a fuss on her behalf only that Franklin needed women to relax after a hard day.
Missy said nothing either, but at the beginning of June 1941 she mentioned to her assistant that she was feeling unwell. She took notes. The doctor diagnosed a mild heart attack. Three weeks later, Missy, aged 44, suffered a stroke. The right side of her body was paralysed and she could not speak.
Just a few days earlier, Wintie Rutherfurd, the 79-year-old husband of Lucy Mercer, had also suffered a stroke. Franklin made sure he received the best care. In Washington. Now he and Lucy, 50 years old, were finally living in the same city. On 5 June 1941, she visited him for the first time at the White House.
Eleanor knew about all his crushes and thus maintained control over him, but the visit of Lucy, whom everyone still called the lovely Lucy, was kept from her. In the visitors’ book, she changed into Mrs Johnson. Eleanor was not at home, Missy was. The day before the visit she became unconscious, three weeks after it she suffered a stroke. Fourteen years earlier, her nervous breakdown had coincided with the discovery that Lucy was still living in Franklin.
Missy was completely helpless. Franklin paid for her medical expenses and visited her in hospital. For twenty years she was by his side. After three months, he suggested that she go to Warm Springs, which he had successfully turned into an excellent convalescent home. She was not impressed, but she went.
But he was worried. She was 13 years younger than him. What will happen to her when he is gone? She didn’t have enough savings to afford medical care. He changed his will. In it, he left her half of his estate, or about 25 million today’s dollars. He told his son to make sure his will was respected: “If this makes your mother uncomfortable, I am very sorry. She shouldn’t be, but it can happen.”
Missy has not recovered. She returned to the White House but felt like a burden, so in June 1942 she moved in with her sister in Boston. Franklin wrote her letters and called her even when she could not speak. She wanted to hear his voice at Christmas 1942, but the phone did not ring. Her sister told him that she had missed all the holidays. She kept saying, “F.D., come. Please come. Oh, F.D.” But America was already at war. Missy died in July 1944, aged 47. She was holding a picture of her and Franklin in Warm Springs.
He had been back with Lucy or Mrs Johnson for three years by then. Her visits were a closely guarded secret, but only for Eleanor. The intelligence service and everyone close to Franklin knew about her. No one spoke, even if they were there, as they reminisced in code and laughed happily.
He is now planning to grow old together with Lucy. She wrote to him: ‘I know that one should be proud – very very proud – of your Greatness, instead of just wanting a soft life, happy and… away from the world.’ Daisy, the same age as Lucy, immediately withdrew. When the lady she was looking after for her salary died, Franklin employed her as one of the archivists at his newly founded Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park.
The sedentary lifestyle and the stress of the war were increasingly eating away at his body. At Christmas 1944, he asked his daughter Anna, who had left her second husband, if she would give up her career as a journalist and become his assistant. She said yes. For the next 13 months she looked after him. Her often absent mother was now jealous of her, even though she was on much better terms with her than with her sons. Ana found herself between an anvil and an anvil: her father exhausted, her mother full of missionary enthusiasm. She often had to protect her father from her.
Even though an unwritten rule dictated that serious matters could not be discussed during pre-dinner drinks and during dinner, Eleanor once tried to talk to her husband about her political problems. Everyone at the table could feel the pressure rising on Franklin. Before he could explode, Anna interjected.
Another time, she was too late. Eleanor pushed a pile of papers in front of her husband and wanted a solution to her problem. He grabbed them and threw them in the air. He turned to his daughter and hissed, “Fix it tomorrow.” Anna later recalled, “She got up. She was the most controlled person in the world. She stood there for about half a second and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she took her glass, walked over to someone else and started chatting.”
Everyone knew that Eleanor could be completely insensitive to her family members, which is why everyone kept quiet when, in March 1944, Franklin went with Lucy to Hyde Park to show her the house of his mother’s where he grew up and the one where they would spend their old age. Eleanor was abroad and Lucy’s husband had died six days earlier.
But now Franklin was also on the brink of a heart attack. This was again kept from the public, and because he wanted to see the end of the war as President, he won the election for a fourth time. He was sworn in in January 1945 at the age of 63. That was the last time he stood on his own two feet.
The painful truth
Shortly afterwards, he had to go to Yalta to meet Stalin and Churchill. Eleanor wanted to go with him. He took Anna with him. The journey was too tiring for him. He returned home completely drained of strength. He addressed Congress for the first time seated. Eleanor noticed nothing. During dinner she again opened a heated debate. Her husband was visibly tense. After dinner, an old friend pulled her aside and told her never to indulge in that again. She was absolutely stunned.
Franklin was advised by his doctors to rest completely. He went to Warm Springs. He took Daisy and his cousin Polly with him. Those close to him were relieved to have a break from his wife, with whom he celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on 17 March. It was not the first time they had conspired against her. Apart from Louis Howe, who found Eleanor invaluable to Franklin’s political career, none of Franklin’s friends really liked Eleanor. In their view, she pushed him too hard, put too much pressure on him and was too insensitive.
She also harassed him with her pleas on the phone while he was recovering in Warm Springs. He was visibly upset after each conversation. His companions competed to see who could be more comforting, but only until Lucy Mercer appeared. Then he was hers.
On Thursday, 12 April 1945, Franklin woke up with a headache and a stiff neck. In the morning he felt a little better, but at a little after one he mentioned that he felt a terrible pain in the back of his neck. He became unconscious. At 15.35 he was gone. He had suffered a brain haemorrhage.
Eleanor was informed. She called her daughter and sent a telegram to her four sons. He did his job to the end and I want you to do yours too. God bless you. With all my love, Mother.” At the White House, she waited for the outgoing Vice-President to be sworn in and set off for Warm Springs.
There she comforted Franklin’s companions until Polly spoke. Now she no longer had to protect her cousin, Eleanor explained that Lucy had been with him when he became unconscious and that she had spent the last three days of his life with him. Eleanor sat in silence. She turned to Grace Tully, her secretary of many years, “Have you been here, Grace?”
She tried to understand what they were telling her: Lucy was not the past, her face was the last Franklin saw before he died, everyone knew about her but her. She stood up and retreated to his room. When she came back five minutes later, her eyes were dry and she was completely in control, Tully recalled. She sent the women to bed, and started to prepare for the funeral herself.
Half a million people gathered along the road where the funeral procession passed. All America wept. Eleanor did not shed a tear. She spoke to her daughter that day. She had told Anna about Lucy when Anna was 17. Now she has learned that her daughter protected her father and withheld the truth from her.
After the funeral, Eleanor talked politics with the gathering. She and Franklin had known each other since childhood and had been married for 40 years, but she skipped the mourning phase completely. She moved out of the White House within a week of his death. As she packed her things, she was kindly informed that the portrait of Franklin that hung on the wall had been commissioned by Lucy Mercer two years earlier. She had packed it up and sent it to her through Daisy. A few days later she received a letter.
In it, Lucy offered her condolences and spoke of her love for Franklin in the only way she could under the circumstances – by attributing her feelings to her. “I cannot tell you how deeply I sympathise with you and how constantly I think of your sorrow. You, who have always been to me a woman blessed with the greatest happiness, must now be feeling indescribable sorrow and pain. Without doubt, they are almost unbearable. The whole universe is struggling with how to adapt to a world without Franklin. For you and his family, the void must be incomprehensible.”
In her letter, Lucy neither apologised nor defended herself. She was Eleanor’s equal. She did not feel anything of what she read about, either then or later. Although she was alone for the first time in her adult life, she was not lost. She threw herself into the creation of the United Nations and in 1947 became America’s representative there. The years that followed were more successful for her than any before.
Three years after her husband’s death, at the age of 63, she fell in love one last time, this time with a doctor 18 years her junior, 45-year-old David Gurewitsch. She met him shortly before Franklin’s death, but they did not cross paths again until several years later. The story of Ealro and Joe repeated itself. David was also overwhelmed with emotion and completely desperate when he announced his engagement in 1958. Two years later, at the age of 76, she moved into a house with him and his wife. This time she tried not to be too intrusive because he was “claustrophobic”, as she put it.
By then, Lucy had been long gone from her life, at least not physically. She died of leukaemia in 1948, aged 57. Before her death, she destroyed all Franklin’s letters, but she could not silence the rumours. So Eleanor read that Franklin had once been in love and wanted a divorce, but his love was a Catholic, so she did not want to marry a divorced man. Eleanor died in 1962, aged 78.
