Weddings are by definition important ceremonies of commitment, and never was that more true than in the case of Franklin Roosevelt, who on March 17, 1905 would marry his distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. He was twenty-three years old and a student at Columbia Law School. She was twenty and of the Oyster Bay branch of the family. The fact that the bride and groom shared a surname was only one indication of how deeply entwined were the family ties involved. The bride, Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite niece, was the daughter of the late Elliott B. Roosevelt, who was not only the brother of Theodore but the godfather of Franklin as well.
Within the cloistered walls of the two adjoining private houses at 6 and 8 East 76th Street, New York, the sliding doors had been opened to accommodate the two hundred or so guests. A small string orchestra was entertaining the assemblage with appropriate selections, and its music mixed somewhat awkwardly with the more robust brass and timpani strains of “The Wearing of the Green” seeping in through the windows from nearby Fifth Avenue, where the city’s Irish were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with their annual parade.
The wedding date had been selected to fit into the busy schedule of the bride’s uncle, who was in New York that day to deliver two speeches, and who would give the bride away. The drawing room where the marriage was to take place was crowded with palms, lilies, and of course a profusion of roses, the family flower. At the request of the groom, the Reverend Endicott Peabody had come down from Groton to officiate, and, as the time for the ceremony approached, he and others glanced nervously at their pocket watches as they awaited the final member of the wedding party. Eventually sounds from the front door below indicated he had at last arrived, and moments later he came energetically pounding up the stairs and expressing profuse apologies—Theodore Roosevelt himself, President of the United States.
This particular marriage was of great significance to the president, who was always conscious of his patrician heritage and took family matters seriously. On first learning of the engagement, he had written to the prospective groom from the White House:
Dear Franklin,
We are greatly rejoiced over the good news. I am as fond of Eleanor as if she were my daughter, and I like you, and trust you, and believe in you. No other success in life—not the Presidency, or anything else—begins to compare with the joy and happiness that come in and from the love of the true man and the true woman, the love which never sinks lover and sweetheart in man and wife. You and Eleanor are true and brave, and I believe you love each other truly and unselfishly; and golden years open before you. May all good fortune attend you both, ever.
Give my love to your dear mother.
Your aff. Cousin,
Theodore Roosevelt
Sara had been distressed when Franklin first told her of his plans to marry Eleanor. He was too young, she insisted, and left unstated the fact that she was not yet ready to share Franklin with anyone else. She persuaded the couple to put off the announcement of their engagement for a year, during which time she did what she could to distract her darling boy, but to no avail, and when the year was up they were still determined to wed.
Many had been surprised by the news of the engagement, and more than a few—those who knew the couple best—had been frankly puzzled. Who would have dreamed of such a union? The two seemed so entirely dissimilar—the glib, handsome, outgoing Franklin, who reveled in society, and the plain, withdrawn, thoughtful Eleanor, intensely shy and quiet.
They had first met—neither remembered the occasion and had to be told about it years later—when Franklin was four and Eleanor just two years old. Her father, Franklin’s godfather, had brought her up to Hyde Park, and the boy had entertained the little visitor by getting down on hands and knees on the nursery floor and carrying her about on his shoulders.
The two had experienced vastly different childhoods. Franklin’s had been sunny and protected, suffused with the love of two doting parents. Eleanor’s childhood, in comparison, had been little short of a nightmare. Her mother, a well known society beauty, had despaired of Eleanor’s prominent teeth and receding chin, and never tired of commiserating with her daughter over her lack of beauty. She made fun of her daughter’s somber manner, calling her “Granny,” and saved her love for her sons, Eleanor’s two younger brothers.
Eleanor’s father was a drunk, constantly in and out of treatments or sent off to distant parts where his escapades would not embarrass the family. He genuinely loved Eleanor and was always sweet and openly affectionate with her. She returned his love in full measure, but his repeated absences from home, often for many months at a time, did little to brighten the misery of her days.
When Eleanor’s mother died at a young age, her father reappeared in her life, but always fitfully and only on occasion. While his presence was always welcomed by his love-starved daughter, his drinking brought a new level of anxiety and unpredictability into her life. One time, when Eleanor and her father were out for a walk with the three hunting dogs he kept, he stopped in front of the Knickerbocker Club and, handing the leashes to Eleanor, asked her to mind the dogs while he stepped inside for a moment. Poor Eleanor was still standing outside the Knickerbocker several hours later when the doorman hoisted her comatose father into a cab, and then helped Eleanor and the dogs into another and sent them home.
Elliott Roosevelt did not last much longer than his wife, dying of delirium tremens when Eleanor was nine years old. She and her younger brother Hall (her other brother, Elliott, Jr., had succumbed to diphtheria) were put in the care of relatives and more or less left on their own, free to deal as best they could with a world that had done little to merit their confidence.
What attraction had brought Eleanor and Franklin together? The sad, gawky wallflower and the hearty—perhaps overly hearty— debonair swain? At the time of the wedding, there were those who wondered. Thirty years later, the couple’s children still wondered. There is no question of their affection. Franklin and Eleanor were in love. Their hundreds of letters over the years—often dealing with the most ordinary and commonplace considerations: the illness of a child, the need to pay a bill—show a depth of commitment on both their parts that is unquestionable. Yet the wide disparity in their tastes and personalities never changed.
It is easy enough to understand the relationship from her point of view. It could indeed be flattering for someone weighed down by her awareness of her own awkwardness to have such an accomplished young man constantly in attendance. But she was so serious and he was so frivolous. What possible common ground could they have found? Or had she reason to believe that beneath the banter and the chat there lay something of far deeper substance, some quality that she might help draw out, a seriousness of purpose that would make their partnership a far more homogenous meeting of the minds than others might suspect?
And what of Franklin? What, if anything, did he discern in her serious demeanor and quiet acceptance? Did he sense someone who could help give direction to his ambition, who could help him to grow up? Could she help him deal with his complicated relationship with his mother?
And so this unsure waif and her optimistic groom stood on the threshold of their future, ready to move into a challenging new world, one that they could only hope was as bright as he predicted it would be.
Eleanor’s cousin Alice, Theodore’s eldest daughter, served as her maid of honor. She and the bridesmaids were all wearing headdresses displaying the three silver feathers of the Roosevelt crest. Franklin’s best man, Lathrop Brown, and the ushers wore diamond-studded stickpins with the same motif.
The bridal gown, as a society reporter described it, “was a white satin princess robe, flounced and draped with old point lace, and with a white satin court train. The bride’s point lace veil was caught with orange blossoms and a diamond crescent. She wore a pearl collar, the gift of the bridegroom’s mother, and a diamond bowknot, the gift of Mrs. Warren Delano, Jr. Her bouquet was of lilies of the valley.”
At the close of the ceremony, the president congratulated the couple and reflected, with a toothy grin, “There’s nothing like keeping the name in the family.”
At the reception following the service, the president dominated the scene, and the bride and groom were largely ignored. But Franklin was not concerned. By their marriage he and Eleanor had not only strengthened the family by bringing together the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park branches, but on a more personal level Franklin had strengthened the bonds between himself and the one man he admired most in all the world—he who had been a somewhat distant Cousin Ted was now a far more familial Uncle Ted.