HAVING BEEN RAISED TO BELIEVE that beauty was a virtue rather than either an accident or a trifle, Anna could not rid herself of the shame of her daughter’s appearance. It was not just the long nose Anna had imagined the moment she first saw her child, nor the wrinkles that were really there, as they are in most newborns. As Eleanor grew older, she grew disproportionately taller, always the tallest girl of her age or, later, in her class at school. Eventually she would reach a height of six feet, uncommon for a female even now, and virtually unheard of a century ago.
Perhaps, Anna thought, if Eleanor had been more coordinated, her height would not have made her appear freakish but rather would have given her a powerful yet elegant demeanor. Instead, it did just the opposite. She could not manage to appear graceful even when standing still. In motion, thought some who watched her, it appeared that various parts of her body were headed in different directions at the same time. As pointed out previously, the proud set of the head on the shoulders was a notable feature of the Halls, but Eleanor’s head was not set proudly; it was simply attached to the neck, and sometimes jiggled as if the attachment were a loose one.
It did not jiggle too much, though, for it was a head that functioned superbly. She was not only the tallest of her peers, she was the smartest, and the most intellectual in temperament. Then as now, the smartest girl in the class is seldom the most popular girl, especially if she is burdened with other peculiarities. So it was with big Little Nell.
Topping her head, and adding to the impression it gave of jiggling, was a mass of hair, wild and unmanageable. She piled it atop herself as best she could; it nonetheless insisted on curling down the sides of her cheeks and over her shoulders and who knew where it would stop. Her parents could have taken her to what we would today call a styling salon, so that her mane appeared managed, if not precisely chic. For some reason, they did not. Elliott, perhaps, because he loved her without concern of her appearance; her mother, perhaps, for lack of interest.
BY CONSENSUS, ELEANOR’S LEAST BECOMING feature was her overbite. Even her aunt Edith, Uncle Theodore’s second wife, who was fond of the girl, could not withhold comment. “Her mouth and teeth,” she said, “seem to have no future.” Some people thought that the overbite made Eleanor sound peculiar, that there was a slight whistling quality to her voice at times. About this, Edith did not comment; it does not seem to have been true. But Edith did concede that all was not lost, not yet—that “the ugly duckling may turn out to be a swan.” She gave no reason, however, for her optimism.
Anna’s “gawky daughter who seldom smiled” would have had more reason for smiling, and less to dwell on her overbite, if—once again—her family had only cooperated. But, whatever their reason for not having their daughter’s hair more fashionably shaped, they had an even stronger reason for not having her overbite repaired. As far as they were concerned, the latter would have been a violation of high society’s tenets; “at the time, upper-class New York felt that orthodontia was only for showgirls.”
The result, according to the son who Eleanor would name after her father, was that “Mother grew up convinced . . . she was physically ugly, with a mouthful of teeth so prominent that they gave a look of weakness to her chin.” It was an opinion that Eleanor had no choice but to share, on more than one occasion referring to herself as “an ugly little thing.” It is a chilling opinion for a child to have of herself, a powerful obstacle to overcome.
And then there was the back brace she had to wear for a time, producing small but unsightly lumps in her dresses and making a comfortable stride all the more difficult. She even struggled to find a relaxing posture while sitting.
There would be no mistaking Dickens’s lovely Little Nell for Elliott’s.
AS AN ADOLESCENT, ELEANOR DREADED the social events that were obligatory for offshoots of the Swells. But one could plead illness only so many times.
The entrances Eleanor made—to the ballroom, the banquet hall, the theater lobby, the salons of her parents’ friends—usually followed a pattern. She would keep her head down, trying to deny others a good view of her. Sometimes she would walk slowly to seem more poised than she felt. Other times she would walk quickly to reach a corner where she could stash herself away like an artificial plant, unable to see the eyes she believed were upon her, or hear the insults that she had made up her mind were directed her way. If others bothered to talk about her, Eleanor had convinced herself, they did so derisively. That there was no proof of this occurring didn’t matter; a child like Eleanor does not need evidence to justify her feelings.
Often, she was forced to attend events for which orchestras had been hired. “I was a poor dancer,” she said of these debutante days, “and the climax of the party was a dance. I still remember the inappropriate dresses I wore—and, worst of all, they were above my knees. I knew, of course, I was different from all the other girls and if I had not known, they were frank in telling me so! I still remember my gratitude at one of these parties to Franklin Roosevelt [her fifth cousin, once removed] when he came and asked me to dance with him!” She accepted, and prayed, with successful results, that she would not trip over his feet or hers.
But, as she had done so often in the past and would continue to do even as the best-known woman in America, Eleanor underestimated herself. She was a good, or at least average dancer, not a poor one. In fact, years later, the “Eleanor Roosevelt Reel” would be named after her, although one suspects that the name commemorates achievements that were political in nature as much as terpsichorean. But in any case, she did catch the eye of the young Franklin.
SHE AND FRANKLIN HAD KNOWN each other for a long time, although, as befit their branches on the family tree, distantly. The first time they met, Franklin was four years old and Eleanor two. “A gentle and overprotected boy with a large imagination, he watched her for a moment” before deciding to act. “Then he asked if she wanted to play ‘horsey’ and then took her to the nursery and began a game that required her to ride on his back.”
Once they both reached dancing age, Eleanor began to hear rumors that handsome young Franklin might want to marry her. She did not believe them at first, fearing, as had been the case once or twice in the past, that she was being made the butt of jokes. Still, just to be certain, she decided to send Franklin a note. “I am plain,” she wrote him. “I have little to bring you.”
Anna, of course, agreed with her daughter, “and from the time Eleanor Roosevelt was a little girl, she was constantly reminded by her mother that she was plain.”
It was for this reason that Anna so assiduously instructed her daughter on the rules of etiquette, and Eleanor knew it, knew that it was not parental love behind her mother’s concern, knew it “as a child senses those things.” Anna had decided that, since beauty could not be taught, she would teach manners. What Eleanor lacked in appearance, then, she would atone for by knowing what fork to use for salad, which for dessert. She would embarrass no one, least of all herself, at the dinner table.
But her mother’s diligence was torment for her pupil, who found that “[My mother’s] efforts only made me more keenly conscious of my shortcomings.” And, in fact, Anna admitted as much, looking at her daughter more than once in utter frustration. “Eleanor, I hardly know what’s going to happen to you,” she said. “You’re so plain that you really have nothing to do but be good.”
That word again. Plain. It was better, at least, than ugly. Better than bringing her mother more “disgrace.” It could almost be construed as neutral. Almost.
ELEANOR WAS MATURE FOR HER years even when her years were few. She came to accept her appearance and to reach a truce not only with the way she looked but also with the opinions of others. She realized there was a human being inside her exterior—someone special: sentient, bright, caring, and capable. Her emphasis, then, should be on developing that human being to her fullest, not on denying her because of something so irrelevant as the shell that encased her. She took a deep breath of determination. She would indeed develop that human being.
But she was just a child. She could not always keep up her resolve. There were occasions when she lapsed again into thinking the worst of herself, yielding to “those who mock the person, focus on her teeth and voice and other cartoon characteristics.” In her book This Is My Story, she wrote, “I knew I was the first girl in my mother’s family who was not a belle, and though I never acknowledged it to any [potential suitors] at that time, I was deeply ashamed.”
As a result, Eleanor became withdrawn at times, her connections with family and friends often tenuous. A young relative recalled that she “took everything—most of all herself—so tremendously seriously.” It is not a surprising observation. A little girl who has so many times been dismissed as ugly is unlikely to be light-spirited in her manner.
FEW PEOPLE SPOKE UP FOR Eleanor at the time. There was the dowager, her name unrecorded, who, observing the girl at a ball, found that she was “most attractive” and “very much sought after.” Whether Eleanor learned of the comment is not known. Whether she would have believed it can easily be inferred.
No one took Eleanor’s side more adamantly than Uncle Theodore’s daughter by his first wife. But Alice Roosevelt did not make her feelings known until both women had reached adulthood. Alice “usually had a tongue that could take paint off a barn wall”; in this case, however, she did not feel such treatment was warranted. As she wrote after both she and Eleanor were adults, too late to influence her formative years:
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. 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. I think that Eleanor today would have been considered a beauty, not in the classical sense but as an attractive, rather unusual person in her own right.
Alice was right. In some ways, and from some angles, Eleanor was an attractive girl. After all, Franklin was a handsome young man, and he was drawn to her, and in his social circles the appearance of a potential mate could not have been more important.
Yet this is not to say that Alice was either friendly or consoling to Eleanor during their early years. To the contrary, Alice was as cruel in her way as others were in theirs. According to historians Peter Collier and David Horowitz,
Alice was strong and supple while Eleanor, with her protruding teeth and recessive chin, gave off a downtrodden air. Her behavior was calculated to win sympathy, yet there was something in Eleanor—a combination of smugness, vulnerability, obtuseness, not to speak of an ability to absorb emotional pain—that made an individual like Alice want to punish her. She was a gifted mimic and could “do” her buck-toothed cousin exactly. But for the most part, her assault was more subtle. Knowing that Eleanor was shy about sex, for instance, Alice once got her so upset by talking about the “begats” in the Bible while they were staying at Bamie’s house that Eleanor tried to sit on her head with a pillow to stop the prurient talk.
Whether Eleanor was in reality smug and obtuse is open to debate. It is more likely that others attributed these qualities to her than that she actually possessed them. And more likely still that these qualities were attributed to her because she was usually so ill at ease with others.
THE MOST SUPPORTIVE PRESENCE IN Eleanor’s life, despite his being so consistently absent from home, was her father. To Elliott, his daughter was not just his Little Nell; she was his “little golden hair.” He whispered the three words to her as she lay in bed at night, and more heartily spoke them when he saw her in the morning, rubbing her eyes for wakefulness. “Little golden hair.” Anna might have been baffled “over her little girl’s precocious sense of right and wrong and the sadness in her appraising eyes. But these same traits amused and charmed her father.” Further, he admired them; they drew him ever closer to her, and she to him. He would never talk to her about those who denigrated her; instead, he treated such people as if they didn’t exist, were unworthy of the effort it would take to return the denigration. And he would not allow her to speak of them in his company, believing that their time together was too precious to let others intrude on it.
Elliott’s behavior toward his daughter, his belief in the irrelevance of her appearance and how others perceived it, is apparent even in an interview that Eleanor gave more than sixty years later. In the August 1958 issue of Datebook magazine, she answered questions from a man named Art Unger.
“What advice do you have for a girl who is physically unattractive?” Unger wanted to know.
“Bear it!” she said, in her best approximation of a drill sergeant’s tone. She had nothing more to offer on the subject.