Anna Livingston Ludlow Hall, 1890. “My mother was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.”

Elliott Roosevelt. Father was “charming, good-looking, loved by all. With him I was perfectly happy.”

But as a child, “I never smiled.” Left: Eleanor Roosevelt, 1888.

ER with her father, April 1889.

ER with brothers Elliott, Jr., and Gracie Hall, and Father, 1891.

After her parents died, Eleanor lived at Tivoli with her grandmother, uncles, and aunts, who taught her to ride and jump, to play tennis and bicycle.

Aunt Tissie (Elizabeth Livingston Hall Mortimer), 1910. Of the four sisters, she was closest to ER’s mother. Eleanor traveled with her in Europe and England, where Aunt Tissie lived for many years: She was “one of the people that the word ‘exquisite’ describes best.”

Eleanor at Oak Terrace, in Tivoli, with her horse, 1894.

Grandmother Hall, ER’s daughter Anna Eleanor, ER (standing), and Aunt Tissie, c. 1912.

At Allenswood, Marie Souvestre’s school in South Fields, near Wimbledon Common, in England, ER spent “the happiest years” of her life. Shown here during the summer of 1900, she is standing to the right of the doorway, wearing a hat and large black howtie.

Marie Souvestre. Eleanor was devoted to her teacher. “Her head was beautiful…. Her eyes looked through you, and she always knew more than she was told.” After leaving Allenswood, ER requested Marie Souvestre’s portrait—which ER kept with her always.

During her years at Allenswood, ER was encouraged by Marie Souvestre and Aunt Tissie to spend her money on fashionable clothes, which she did. When ER returned to New York, Aunt Tissie sent her costumes made by Europe’s most stylish couturiers.

ER in New York, c. summer 1899.

ER in a new suit during a visit with Aunt Tissie and Uncle Stanley Mortimer, in Saint-Moritz, Switzerland, summer 1900.

ER in hat.

Although she agonized that she was not the belle her mother had been, in most company ER was self-assured and happy the year that she came out. And then she became secretly engaged to FDR, her fifth cousin once removed. Here she is with other cousins, Muriel Robbins and Helen Astor Roosevelt Roosevelt, at Hyde Park, in June 1903.

In the company of Sara Delano Roosevelt, shown here during ER’s first visit to Campobello, her confidence withered. ER hoped that she might win a corner of her future mother-in-law’s heart: “I do so want you to learn to love me a little.”

ER’s wedding portrait was taken in a studio on 20 January 1905. There are no pictures of ER’s wedding, and evidently no photographer was hired for the occasion.

Theodore Roosevelt’s family, Alice in the center, August 1905.

Uncle Theodore gave the bride away. The President had offered the first White House wedding to Eleanor, but she preferred to be married in the home of her godmother, Cousin Susie Parish. Although Edith Roosevelt had discouraged any friendship between Eleanor and Alice while they were children, Alice was delighted to be a bridesmaid at Eleanor’s wedding.

ER particularly cherished Ellen (“Bay”) Emmet’s wedding present, this portrait of Eleanor’s Aunt Bye, Anna Roosevelt Cowles. During the years between Allenswood and her marriage, ER preferred the time she spent at Bay Emmet’s Greenwich Village studio, with her bohemian friends, to any society event she felt she had to endure.

During the first years of their courtship and marriage, ER and FDR were supremely happy. They traveled widely, shared many interests, and had fun together. Relaxing at Hyde Park, she holds his drink; he holds her knitting.

On their honeymoon in Scotland, August 1905, ER is seen smoking a cigarette. She smoked occasionally over the years, although never habitually.

From 1906 until 1916, ER felt forever with child. For ten years, she wrote, she was either pregnant or recovering from pregnancy: “My family filled my life.” This family portrait was taken in Washington, c. June 1918, before “the bottom dropped out” of ER’s world. Seated, left to right: Franklin, Jr., FDR, Eleanor, John, and Elliott; standing: Anna and James.

While raising her family, ER had few friends, except her baby nurse, Blanche Spring, shown here at Campobello with Elliott in 1911.

Her other companions were Bob Ferguson, a former Rough Rider, and Isabella Selmes, ER’s young friend, whom he married in 1905. This photo of Bob Ferguson, ER, Martha Flandreau Selmes (Isabella’s mother, partially hidden by log), and Isabella Selmes Ferguson was taken during the visit ER and FDR made to Cat Canyon, near Silver City, New Mexico, May 1912.

In December 1918, the Roosevelts reviewed the United States fleet on its return from Europe aboard the SS Aztec.

After ER read Lucy Mercer’s letters to her husband in September 1918, she offered him a divorce. FDR refused, and they made every effort to rebuild their partnership. But for months ER could not eat, looked emaciated, averted her face from the camera.

During the summer of 1919, even Campobello failed to heal ER’s heart. She was frequently comforted by her mother-in-law during this period, and several pictures of the family show SDR’s hand around ER’s shoulder, or, as here, upon her knee.

ER found solace, however, during the many hours she spent within the holly grove at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, contemplating Saint-Gaudens’s statue erected in memory of Henry Adams’s wife, Clover, who committed suicide. ER called the monument Grief.

Not until ER actively engaged in politics were her spirits reconstituted. Louis Howe, the man most responsible for ER’s involvement in FDR’s political activities after 1920, was unique among their friends. He earned and maintained the trust and devotion of both ER and FDR.

FDR and his mother, after he was nominated Democratic vice-presidential candidate, July 1920, at Hyde Park

After 1921, Esther Everett Lape and Elizabeth Fisher Read became ER’s political mentors and the first intimate women friends of her adult years. She considered that “Providence was particularly wise and farseeing when it threw these two women together, for their gifts complement each other in a most extraordinary way.”

Esther Lape’s portrait, c. 1925.

Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, c. 1930. This picture, taken at Saltmeadow in Westbrook, Connecticut, always hung on ER’s wall.

ER and Esther Lape appear for the Senate hearings.

In January 1924, the Senate Special Committee on Propaganda investigated the Bok Peace Award, over which Esther Lape presided with Eleanor Roosevelt and Narcissa Vanderlip. Charged with conspiracy to manipulate America’s “foreign policy,” creating thereby a “moral menace” during the height of the Red Scare, ER was the subject of a vast FBI file, whose first entry (dated 15 February 1924) refers to these events.

 

In 1924, ER became prominent in national and state Democratic Party circles for her own activities.

For the national convention, she was named chair of the women’s platform committee. But in the end, the male politicians refused to consider the platform, which nevertheless became the liberal agenda for the next decade. Iced out of all proceedings, ER spent tedious convention hours knitting, and in anguish.

She was far more successful at the state level, where her steaming “teapot” campaign car clogged her cousin Teddy Roosevelt’s efforts against Al Smith. At a victory meeting in her 49 East 65th Street home, ER and Howe celebrate with their team (including Belle Moskowitz on the left and Josephine Sykes Morgenthau on the right), and the “singing teapot” posters at the rear.

In addition to Democratic Party politics, ER was active in the League of Women Voters, the Women’s City Club, and the Women’s Trade Union League, where she met Hilda Smith. Dean Hilda Smith directed the Summer School for Working Women in Industry established at Bryn Mawr College in 1921, which ER made every effort to visit over the years.

Hilda Smith sent this photo of herself and ER, taken c. 1930, to Dagmar Schultz of Berlin in 1972.

For several years after 1925, ER was closest to Nancy Cook. With her, Marion Dickerman, and Caroline O’Day, ER built the “honeymoon cottage” on the Val-Kill, bought the Todhunter School and the Val-Kill furniture reproduction factory, and edited the Women’s Democratic News. According to Marion Dickerman, ER “loved Nan much more than she did me.” Right: Nancy Cook at the furniture factory.

Marion Dickerman on the stone-and-wood bridge over the Val-Kill.

ER shocked her family, including Aunt Bye, by appearing with her friends in knickerbockers—as well as matching brown tweeds, very dapper and quite British, which she had ordered made for herself and Nancy. This photo was taken during a July 1926 camping trip with Marion Dickerman, ER, Nancy Cook, and Marion’s sister Peggy Levenson, who taught French at Todhunter.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, Elinor Morgenthau was also part of ER’s personal and political circle. During the White House years, they rode together in Rock Creek Park virtually every morning before breakfast. This photo was taken on 21 March 1933.

Between 1925 and 1932, (left to right) ER, Nancy Cook, Caroline O’Day, and Marion Dickerman worked most closely on the Women’s Democratic News, and at New York Democratic State Headquarters, pictured here in 1929.

With Todhunter students, principal Marion Dickerman and associate principal ER, third and forth from left, c. 1929.

Dockside with the boys, c. 1925.

Wrestling with Anna at Val-Kill, Caroline O’Day on the left, Anna’s dog to the right, c. 1925.

During the 1920s, ER, now in control of her own life, also took charge of family matters. She felt particularly liberated in relationship to her children, with whom she felt closer.

ER was happy to see FDR, Jr., off to a tour of Europe with his Groton class, July 1932.

The boss of women’s political activities during the 1920s, ER worked vigorously in behalf of every major reform issue.

Elinor Morgenthau (left) and ER visit Dr. Mary Belle Harris, Warden of Alderson women’s prison in West Virginia.

ER, Mary Garrett Hay, and Carrie Chapman Catt at a peace conference in Hyde Park to establish a women’s movement to support the Kellogg-Briand pact to outlaw war, October 1927.

Unlike Louis Howe, who served as a bridge between ER and FDR, after 1928 Earl exclusively championed Eleanor. Earl Miller and FDR, c. 1925, at the swimming pool in Warm Springs, Georgia.

During FDR’s years as governor, Earl Miller was assigned to be ER’s bodyguard. They traveled together for four years, and remained devoted to each other. According to his close friend Miriam Abelow, Miller was “large, handsome, athletic and brazen.”

Earl Miller and ER at Chazy Lake, New York. Their intimate friendship annoyed some of ER’s friends, who claimed he “manhandled” her, put his hand on her knee, draped his arm around her shoulders, and in other ways was too demonstrative in public. Here, however, her hand is on his knee.

Lorena Hickok, the Associated Press’s highest-paid woman reporter, in 1932. When Hick first met ER in 1928, she wanted very much to know Mrs. Roosevelt. “But she always held me at arm’s length—and her arms were very long.” After 1932, Lorena Hickok became ER’s special friend, and for almost a decade eclipsed the First Lady’s affections for Earl Miller.

ER liked this 1933 portrait, and inscribed it to Hick, bottom right.

Because Lorena Hickok destroyed most of ER’s private correspondence between 1932 and 1933, and all of Earl Miller’s correspondence has vanished, we have no details about this candid snapshot of Hick and Earl, evidently taken by ER, which reads on the back, “Trip to New York-Canada with ER. July 1933.”

FDR’s first inaugural: ER, FDR, son James, 4 March 1933.

Unlike FDR and Herbert Hoover, who rode to the ceremony together in frosty silence, ER and Lou Henry Hoover, one of America’s most underrated First Ladies, remained cordial.

ER was radiant at the inaugural balls, 4 March 1933.