Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One 1884

288 “an impossible mode”: Autobiography of ER, p. 112.

289 Narcissa Cox Vanderlip: ER supported Vanderlip in the League of Women Voters’ first factional struggle. When she prevailed, ER wrote: “Dear Mrs. Vanderlip, I’ve been meaning to write and congratulate you on your wonderful work and the persistence which finally let you succeed…. I wish I could tell you how much warm admiration and respect and affection I have for you.” (ER to NCV, May [1921], Narcissa Cox Vanderlip Papers, Box 8, Frank Vanderlip Collection, Columbia University.)

289 a “useful adjunct”: Lape to Vanderlip, Mon., n.d., ibid.

289 Attractive and athletic: Hilda R. Watrous, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip (Foundation for Citizenship Education, 1982); Hilda R. Watrous, In League with Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt and the League of Women Voters, 1921–1962 (Foundation for Citizenship Education, 1984). I am grateful to Hilda Watrous, historian of the New York State League of Women Voters, for the thoroughly researched biographical pamphlet on Vanderlip, and other references.

290 “Vanderlip is a Bolshevist”: Doheny on Frank Vanderlip quoted in Schlesinger, Crisis of the Old Order, p. 49.

290–91 annual convention: On the New York League’s Jan. 1921 Albany convention, see Lemons, Woman Citizen, pp. 98–99.

291 “The people in this room”: Catt quoted in Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt, p. 164.

291–92 “very interesting day”: ER to FDR, 11 April 1921, FDRL.

292 A scholar and an attorney: In 1923, Elizabeth Read wrote Narcissa Vanderlip, then vacationing on her 16,000-acre ranch in Palos Verdes: “California sounds lovely. I should have been born out there. My father went west over the plains in 1850, and had a ranch …in the Sacramento valley—and a mine…; he went back east in 1870, and married there, expecting to go back at once; but they were induced to wait, on account of my grandmother’s health, until—he died before grandmother did! And we were all born in the effete east.” (24 Feb. 1923, Vanderlip Papers.)

292–93 “felt humble and inadequate”: TIMS, pp. 324–25. (“My mother-in-law was distressed” because of all the time ER gave to her new friends, “and felt that I was not always available, as I had been when I lived in New York before.”)

293–96 the “New Women”: See Estelle Freedman, “The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s,” Journal of American History, Sept. 1974; BWC, “Feminism, Socialism, and Sexual Freedom: The Work and Legacy of Crystal Eastman and Alexandra Kollontai,” in Women in Culture and Politics: A Century of Change, ed. Judith Friedlander et al. (University of Indiana Press, 1986); Christine Fauré, “The Utopia of the ‘New Woman’ in the Work of Alexandra Kollontai,” ibid; Esther Newton, “The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman,” in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Duberman et al. (New American Library, Meridian, 1990) and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The New Woman as Androgyne: Social Disorder and Gender Crisis, 1870–1936,” in Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct. On the women of Greenwich Village, see also Susan Ware, Partner and I: Molly Dewson, Feminism, and New Deal Politics (Yale University Press, 1987); Caroline F. Ware, Greenwich Village, 1920–1930 (Harper Colophon, 1965 [1935]); and Judith Schwarz, Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy: Greenwich Village, 1912–1940 (New Victoria, 1986).

296–97 Lape and …Read lived together: I am grateful to Esther Lape’s friends Margaret (Peggy) Bok Kiskadden, Olga Bendix, Harold Clarke, Bert Drucker, Michael Sonino, and Patricia Spain Ward for their descriptions of the Lape-Read homes in Saltmeadow and New York, and a vivid sense of their style. I am particularly grateful to Peggy Kiskadden, who gave me a sense of their political enthusiasm, personal integrity, and warm hospitality, and showed me several costumes made for Lape by her designer and tailor—whom ER also used for formal wear.

Esther Lape’s unpublished memoir, “Saltmeadow: From the Perspective of a Half Century,” and copies of the weekly bulletin City, State and Nation are in the Lape Collection, FDRL; copies of Weekly News, the publication of the League of Women Voters of New York State, are in the Vanderlip Collection.

Lape wrote that “the financial support of [City, State and Nation] was assumed by Helen Reid [former treasurer of the New York State Suffragist Party; later owner and publisher of the New York Herald Tribune], Narcissa Vanderlip and Eleanor Roosevelt.” (Lape, “Saltmeadow,” p. 22.)

298 balance in life: Elizabeth Read to Narcissa Vanderlip, 24 Feb. 1923, Vanderlip Papers.

298 “’toujours gai’”: Esther Lape asked Maureen Corr, ER’s last secretary and Esther Lape’s friend, to repaint the doormat. She told me the story during our tour of Saltmeadow.

298 “Providence was …wise”: TIMS, p. 325.

299–300 “She made me go there”: Asbell, Mother and Daughter, pp. 33–34. See also Anna to ER, 12 Aug. 1924, FDRL.

300 “College for me”: Asbell, Mother and Daughter, p. 39.

302–3 he encouraged her work: FDR coached ER and her friends on political gamesmanship “con amore.” (Lape, “Saltmeadow,” pp. 20–22.)

303 Coolidge’s attack against women’s colleges: ER’s resolution defended Vassar College Professor Winifred Smith, who had been named a dangerous heretic after she spoke against the United States’ stifling climate of intellectual “narrowness.” ER insisted that Professor Smith was a “public-spirited and devoted citizen,” and condemned “all thoughtless aspersions” in times of “public excitement.” (See Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 263–64.)

303 Most startling: ER, “Common Sense Versus Party Regularity,” [League] News Bulletin, 16 Sept. 1921, Vanderlip Papers.

304–5 He drank more: On FDR’s “uproarious” behavior at Margaret Krech-Sheffield Cowles’s wedding, and on ER mixing cocktails at Campobello (for Elizabeth Bibesco, Herbert Asquith’s daughter), see Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 265–66.

w305 “LIBELLOUS REPORT“: New York Times, 23 July 1921.

306 “I know it worries you”: ER to FDR, 22 July 1921, FDRL.

306 “no papers have taken it up”: FDR to ER, 21 July 1921, in Letters, vol. 2, pp. 516–18.

307 “None of this worries me”: Ibid., pp. 519–22.

307 “he looked tired”: Missy to ER, 5 Aug. 1921, quoted in Morgan, FDR, p. 247.

307–8 FDR arrived: For the events preceding polio, see TIMS, pp. 328–30.

308–9 “very anxious few days”: ER to Rosy Roosevelt, 14 Aug. 1921, in Letters, vol. 2, pp. 523–25.

309 “skilled nursing”: TIMS, pp. 328–33; See also Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 268–69. The fullest description of this period is Ward, First-Class Temperament, which was published after this book was written. In any case, he interprets ER meanly, and credits her with very little. He opines that for Franklin “this unavoidable business must have been especially disagreeable” since they were no longer “intimate,” and Eleanor was always “too humorless, too admonitory, too easily aggrieved, too unwilling to relax,” for her husband to abide her (pp. 587, 678). Ward’s theme is “the bottomless solicitude of [FDR’s] mother and the incessant prodding of his wife.” (P. 668.)

310 “Franklin has been quite ill”: ER to SDR, 27 Aug. 1921 in, Letters, vol. 2, p. 527.

310 “their glorious example”: SDR to her brother, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 270–71.

310 “Your letters have amused him”: ER to Missy LeHand, ibid.

310 “really very remarkable”: TIMS, p. 334.

311 “beloved invalid” husband: Quoted in K. Davis, Beckoning of Destiny, pp. 668–69.

312 “too busy to need a room”: TIMS, p. 337.

312 “the most trying winter”: For ER on Anna and SDR’s manipulations, see TIMS, pp. 334–38.

312 Miss Chapin’s: Asbell, Mother and Daughter, pp. 30–31.

312–13 ER broke down: Autobiography of ER, pp. 119–20.

313 “gossipy old Cousin Susie”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 274; Asbell, Mother and Daughter, p. 40.

313–14 “a blessing in disguise”: TIMS, p. 342.

315 “somewhat negligee existence”: FDR to SDR from his houseboat, 5 March 1923, in Letters, vol. 2, pp. 535–36. (And see editor’s note, p. 534, stating that neither ER nor the children saved FDR’s letters from the 1920s.)

Frances Appleton Dana de Rham, who accompanied FDR several times during these years, was unhappily married. Beautiful, stylish, and sporty (she shopped at Brooks Brothers and “started the fashion for wearing men’s shirts”), she married Henry Casimir de Rham, one of FDR’s most social classmates, on 25 Jan. 1905. Given to parties and frolics, they were never particularly happy. Seven months after their marriage, their first child was born, weighing over eleven pounds. Henry never found work he enjoyed, and refused to allow Frances; to do work she wanted to do. He was remembered as both “stuffy and fierce,” with a violent, brutish temper. She felt trapped, wanted a divorce, sought diversions elsewhere, traveled frequently across Europe. Although her grandchildren remembered her as their delightful “dancing grandmother,” she committed suicide on 6 Oct. 1933. (Rosamond Wild Dana, “Privileged Radicals: The Rebellious Times of Six Dana Siblings in Cambridge and New York,” unpublished master’s thesis, City University of New York, 1991, pp. 56–61. I am grateful to Rosamond Dana for this source, and our many conversations.)

315 “eerie and menacing”: TIMS, pp. 345–46. See also logbook of the Larooco, excerpts by FDR in Letters, vol. 2, pp. 537–60, 570–77. Unfortunately, for the period between 24 Feb. and 24 Match 1925, including the period of ER’s tenth-anniversary visit, the log was kept by others and not therefore printed. See Weona and Larooco logbooks, FDRL.

315 “utterly splendid person”: Esther Lape to Narcissa Vanderlip, 1 March 1923, Vanderlip Papers.

315 “most attentive and thoughtful”: TIMS, p. 334.

315–16 sturdy valet: Whatever difficulties FDR’s black valet, LeRoy Jones, may have faced as FDR cruised the Florida keys, the New York yacht broker who rented the Weona accepted him aboard with the four-man crew after he ascertained that he was “not impregnated with the present so-called ‘rights,’ and is of the willing kind.” (Ward, First-Class Temperament, p. 660.)

316 “I haven’t told Mama”: ER to FDR, 24 Feb. 1924, FDRL.

317 “Nan spent the night”: ER to FDR, 1 March 1924, FDRL.

317–18 major source of tension: For FDR’s expenses and investments, see especially Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, passim; and K. Davis, Beckoning of Destiny, pp. 697–710.

In 1922, FDR became head of the American Construction Council, a bipartisan organization promoted by Herbert Hoover to promote cooperation between business and government, an unsalaried post. United European Investors was more immediately lucrative: In Aug. 1924, when it was liquidated, investors had “an announced profit of 200 percent.” (K. Davis, Beckoning of Destiny, p. 706.)

318 “almost matriarchal style”: On ER’s fiscal independence, see Autobiography of ER, p. 135.

318 “No form of love”: Margaret Kennedy, The Constant Nymph (Virago Classic, 1984 [1924]), p. 130.

318–19 “I was always on the go”: ER to FDR, 27 Feb. 1925, FDRL. ER’s resumed activities are described in the same letter.

319 “a touch of that sadness”: ER to FDR, 26 March 1925, FDRL.

319–20 Nancy Cook: See Marion Dickerman Oral History, Columbia University; Kenneth Davis, Invincible Summer: An Intimate Portrait of the Roosevelts Based on the Recollections of Marion Dickerman (Atheneum, 1974), p. 13.

The exchange of violets between women intensified in the popular culture during the 1920s in part because of an internationally acclaimed play, Edouard Bourdet’s La Prisonnière, which took Europe by storm after it first opened in Paris. Translated into The Captive, it opened on Broadway in 1926. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson called it a “loathsome” play of “warped infatuation” and lamented its “vastly popular” existence. The play’s theme was a simple triangle, unusually resolved. The “captive” left her male lover for a mysterious, captivating woman (who never appeared on stage). The captivator plyed her with gifts—notably violets—and stole her heart. Although the play ends tragically, the moralists were so incensed by it, and others like it which appeared during the 1920s, that they successfully lobbied the New York legislature to outlaw the treatment of “sexual perversion” on the New York stage for several decades.

The theatre censorship law remained on the books until 1967, supplemented by other censorship decrees which annually banned dozens of works for “indecency.” Booksellers and librarians were arrested throughout 1924 and 1925 for selling or lending the greatest variety of books, ranging from serious works of literature to simple-minded trash. Librarians and publishers fought back against the “Society for the Suppression of Vice” by suing for false arrest. Occasionally the libertarians won. A salesclerk won a $2,000 judgment for false arrest, for example, when Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin was judged decent. (New York Times, 26 Feb. 1925.)

ER and her friends stood solidly behind the freedom to read, deplored censorship in the theatre, and editorialized against the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

320 “an attractive woman”: ER, This I Remember, p. 32.

321 Endell Street Hospital: For a fictionalized account of women volunteers in England during the Great War, with a provocative afterword by Jane Marcus, see Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet (The Feminist Press, 1989, [1930]).

321 Women’s Joint Legislative Conference: Papers are in Marion Dickerman Papers, Boxes 2 and 6, FDRL.

321–22 Marion Dickerman …could defeat him: On her campaign for New York State Assembly, see Dickerman Oral History, Columbia.

322 She “loved Nan much more”: Ibid., p. 351; quoted in Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 96.

Kenneth Davis referred to “the intimate correspondence” he saw between Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook, and with ER (Invincible Summer, p. viii). He also wrote: “Of Eleanor Roosevelt’s feminism, her embittered revolt against masculine domination, her letters to Marion and Nancy during these years give abundant evidence.” (“Symbolic Journey,” Antioch Review, Summer 1979, p. 275.)

But in the FDRL, one finds only scattered letters, and scattered typed copies of letters. It is particularly odd, given what we now know of ER’s letter-writing habits, that the sampling of ER’s letters that have survived are addressed to Dickerman, and there is virtually no correspondence with Nancy Cook.

323 “forget the …world existed”: ER to Marion Dickerman, 27 Aug. 1925, Dickerman Papers, Box 4, FDRL.

323 “I wish you were here”: ER to Dickerman, 5 Feb. 1926 (from Florida), 18 May 1926 (from Massachusetts), ibid.

323–24 Caroline O’Day: See her biography (written by Marion Dickerman) in Notable American Women: The Modern Period, ed. Sicherman et al.

324 “secret of The Cottage”: Caroline O’Day, Women’s Democratic News, Nov. 1925.

325 “build a shack”: FDR to Elliott Brown, 5 Aug. 1924, in K. Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 35.

325–26 “The Honeymoon Cottage”: Dickerman Oral History, Columbia; K. Davis, Invincible Summer, pp. 35ff, and ch. 5.

326 “So what is it all about”: FDR to Dickerman, in K. Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 59.

326–27‘If you build it that way”: FDR to “Dear Nan—also Marion,” 6 March 1925, with P.S. from Missy LeHand, Dickerman Papers, Box 5, FDRL.

327–28 “Mother burst into tears”: TIMS, p. 348; see also Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 275. SDR took Anna to Europe several times (see Asbell, Mother and Daughter, pp. 34–38).

328 “Where are your husbands”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 298.

328 “still serene”: TIMS, p. 350.

328 “Father the ‘Cascaret’”: quoted in K. Davis, Invincible Summer, pp. 45–47.

328 “I won’t be slandered”: ER to FDR, 25 July 1925, Box 15, FDRL.

329 “Elliott tells me”: ER to FDR, 22 Sept. 1926, FDRL.

329 “feeling quite impotent”: ER to Marion Dickerman, typed from original by “MBS,” Dickerman Papers, Box 4, FDRL.

330 “further than she meant”: ER to FDR on Anna’s engagement, 29 July 1924; 12 Aug. 1924, FDRL; and Asbell, Mother and Daughter, pp. 32–41.

330 “three nights drunk”: ER to FDR, 25 Oct. 1927, FDRL.

330 to cancel it: ER to FDR, 28 March 1927, FDRL. Mindful of her own desire to create her own home, ER had decided not to interfere or try to supervise Anna’s plans. But: “Mama says I’m cruel to leave the poor child alone! …[She] has done nothing but get in little side slaps today.” ER was relieved to return to Val-Kill “for a quiet evening with Nan. I’ve written two editorials and three letters and we have had supper and the peace of it is divine….”

330–31 “a run in with Mama”: ER to FDR, 31 March 1927, FDRL; SDR’s letter of apology is quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 301.

331 “send me money”: ER to FDR, n.d. [Sept. 1927], FDRL.

331 “you hate to be bothered”: ER to FDR, 25 Oct. 1927, FDRL.

331 “real business proposition”: ER to FDR, 10 April 1926, FDRL.

332 “Please send Nan a check”: ER to FDR, 8 Feb. 1928, Box 16, FDRL.

332 “I am glad”: ER to FDR, 18 April 1928, FDRL.

333 “I have ‘moods’”: ER to Marion Dickerman, 18 May 1926, Dickerman Papers, Box 4, FDRL.

333 “happy …and plump”: SDR to FDR, quoted in Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 200.

334 “She is afraid of everything”: ER to FDR, ibid.

335 “discouragement” and “bitterness”: TIMS, p. 335.

If ER considered the irony of FDR’s purchase of a healing center in a place called Bullochville, there is no record of it. She did, however, write of the disparity between the plantation stories she had been told by her Great-Aunt Annie (Mrs. James King Gracie), and the current situation in Georgia: “She had made me feel that life in the South must be gracious and easy and charming…. It was a disappointment to me to find out for many, many people life in the South was hard and poor and ugly, just as it is in parts of the North.” (ER, This I Remember, p. 27.)

FDR signed the agreement to purchase the resort, “its thermal springs and pools, its ramshackle hotel, its cottages, and some 1,200 acres of land,” on 29 April 1926 (K. Davis, Beckoning of Destiny, p. 798. See also Hugh Gregory Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception (Dodd, Mead, 1985); and Theo Lippman, Jr., The Squire of Warm Springs: FDR in Georgia, 1924–1945 (Playboy Press, 1977).

336 “Don’t worry about being selfish”: ER to FDR, 4 May 1926, FDRL.

336 “a big thing”: ER to Marion Dickerman, 24 April 1926, in K. Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 61.

336 “Don’t be discouraged”: ER to FDR, 29 June 1926, FDRL.

336–37 “should devote themselves”: Marion Dickerman quoted in K. Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 17.

337 “Back of tranquility”: ER quoting David Grayson, ibid., p. 42.

338 mimeograph machine: Weekly News, 22 Oct. 1922. Published by the New York League of Women Voters, in 1922 Weekly News was edited by Eveline Brainerd, and co-owned by Caroline Slade, Florence Canfield Whitney (Mrs. Caspar Whitney), Eleanor Roosevelt, and Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight. It provides a running record of ER’s activities between 1922 and 1924. In 1923, ER was elected vice-chair of the League.

339 many and labyrinthine connections: On ER and the Women’s City Club, see Elisabeth Israels Perry, “Training for Public Life: ER and Women’s Political Networks in the 1920s”; on the larger network, see Susan Ware, “ER and Democratic Politics: Women in the Postsuffrage Era,” both in Without Precedent, ed. Hoff-Wilson and Lightman, pp. 28–45, 46–60. See also Schwarz, Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy: Greenwich Village, 1912–1940. Although many of ER’s colleagues attended Heterodoxy meetings, she never did, nor did Lape and Read or Cook and Dickerman. It serves, therefore, as a signpost to indicate the political and social boundaries of their network.

339–40 “Trooping for Democracy”: This became a regular column in the Women’s Democratic News, reporting their activities monthly.

340 Never appear nervous: ER, This I Remember, p. 32.

340 “hopeless moral blindness”: ER in New York Times, 7 Aug. 1922.

341 “Private Interlude [1921–1927]”: ER, This I Remember.

341 temporary stand-in: ER to FDR, 6 Feb. 1924, FDRL.

342 Bok Peace Award: Edward Bok wanted the contest to raise abiding questions:

“Is there a part America must play in the prevention of future wars?…

“Can we have a fundamentally changing Europe without a changing America?…”

(Minutes of Meeting of Policy Committee of the American Peace Award, 27 June 1923 in Lape Papers, FDRL; Lape, “Saltmeadow,” pp. 52–62.)

342–44 “Mutt and Jeff”: Lape to Vanderlip, 8 Aug. 1923, Vanderlip Papers.

All papers relating to the Bok prize are in the Lape Papers, FDRL; there is also significant correspondence in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, the Vanderlip Papers, and the Helen Rogers Reid Papers, Library of Congress.

See Charles DeBenedetti, “The $100,000 American Peace Award of 1924,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, April 1974, pp. 224–49.

344–46 Senate Special Committee on Propaganda: Press coverage of ER, Lape, and the hearings on “foreign relations” was extensive and daily. See especially New York Times, 21, 22, 24, 25 Jan. 1924. At the end of Jan., however, the pace of the hearings subsided when all Washington’s attention turned to another issue. On 31 Jan. The New York Times headlined: “Committee Slowness Irks Bok Witnesses / Inquiry Is Being Held Up by Teapot Dome Flurry.” “Peace plans, Bolshevism and all other things which concern Senators” were submerged by Teapot Dome and the Elk Hill scandals.

See ER, “The American Peace Award,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1923, p. 54.

346 “an endless job”: Cordell Hull asked ER to chair the Women’s Platform Committee (ER to FDR, 6 Feb. 1924, FDRL).

347 “politically wrong”: ER to FDR, 9 April 1924, FDRL.

347 “I imagine”: Ibid.

348 “Women Are in Revolt”: New York Times, 15 April 1924.

348 “disagreeable to take stands”: ER quoted in “Democratic Women Win,” ibid., 16 April 1924.

349–50 Democratic National Committee …announced: Ibid., 31 March 1924.

To seek women’s views, ER also organized an advisory committee and invited Carrie Chapman Catt, a Republican, to serve on it: “Besides the Democratic women …I am having an advisory committee on each of the following subjects which is entirely nonpartisan in character. Women in Industry, Public Health and Child Welfare, Foreign Relations, Law Enforcement, Education, Removal of Civil Disabilities, Prison Reform and Public Control of Natural Resources.” (ER to Catt, 14 April 1924, Catt Papers, Box 1, New York Public Library.)

Catt was unable to serve, but wrote ER to “congratulate you upon the brave stand you took in the Democratic Convention…. I do not think the politicians were made happy by the conduct of the women, but the old suffragists were and I want to pat you on the back for it.” (Catt to ER, 22 April 1924, Box 1, Catt Papers.)

350 rudely rebuffed: On ER’s committee and June efforts, TIMS, pp. 354–55. See “Women Democrats Offer a Platform,” New York Times, 11 June 1924; and Anne O’Hagan Shinn, “Politics Still Masculine Convention Women Discover,” New York Times, 23 June 1924.

351 “burst of sunlight”: Marion Dickerman quoted in K. Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 30.

351 The crowd cheered: On the reaction to FDR’s “Happy Warrior” speech, see Letters, vol. 2, p. 562.

352 “prove our strength”: ER quoted in New York Times, 14 April 1924.

352 “leave me my business and politics”: Interview with ER by Rose Feld, “Women Are Slow to Employ Power of the Ballot,” New York Times, 20 April 1924.

ER emphasized the difference beteween U.S. and British women: In England “the work of government [is] alive and vital to them…. It is not because English women are superior to American women…. It’s because Englishmen haven’t shielded them from the ‘rough, dirty game of politics.’ It’s because Englishmen in social intercourse haven’t felt that they must talk down to the intelligence of their wives….”

352 “bidding of his friends”: ER in New York Times, 27 Sept. 1924.

352 “dishonest public servants”: ER in ibid., 6 Oct., 10 Oct., 2 Nov. 1924.

353 “Teapot Dome”: See Miller, Roosevelt Chronicles, pp. 296–300.

Kenneth Davis notes that several members of Wilson’s administration, including FDR, were involved with Doheny: “ex-Secretary of Interior Lane, who died in June 1921; ex-Secretary of War Lindley M. Garrison; Ex-Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory” were all employed by Doheny. War propagandist George Creel was briefly employed as his publicist; and William Gibbs McAdoo was Doheny’s “principal attorney.”

On 13 April 1922, FDR wrote McAdoo on behalf of Fidelity and Deposit’s West Coast branch: Doheny “is a good friend of mine and I feel sure he will be very glad to have you place the [surety bonding] business our way.” (K. Davis, Beckoning of Destiny, pp. 696–97.)

354 “rough stunt”: ER, This I Remember, pp. 31–32. (“In the thick of political fights one always feels all methods of campaigning that are honest are fair, but I do think now that this was a rough stunt and I never blamed my cousin when he retaliated in later campaigns against my husband.”)

354 “Alas and lackaday”: Anna Roosevelt Cowles to Corinne Alsop, Alsop Family Papers, Houghton; quoted in Ward, First-Class Temperament, p. 701n.

354–57 Equal Rights Amendment: The controversy over ERA has resulted in a great historical confusion: a misunderstanding that labeled protectionists antifeminist, and equal-rights feminists callous and unconcerned about workingwomen. During the 1920s, before the right to bargain collectively in labor unions was achieved, there was profound disagreement over tactics and priorities, and all suffragist unity was destroyed in the battle between the feminists who insisted on protection for women first, because that was politically feasible; and the feminists who insisted on protection for women and men alike—because protection for women alone classed them with children and suggested that they were biologically inferior and socially dependent.

In the beginning, ER’s circle of Lape-Read-Vanderlip was closer to the National Woman’s Party than has ever been appreciated. In Feb. 1923, when Esther Lape was with ER in Florida, Elizabeth Read decided to answer a letter Vanderlip had sent Lape which concerned Read’s efforts with the League of Women Voters’ “Equal Laws Committee.” The committee had worked for months to achieve compromise legislation in Albany that both the League and the Woman’s Party could agree upon, and sponsor jointly. They agreed to ten principles, and four pieces of social-welfare legislation.

But League factionalism ended their efforts. Caroline Slade accused Read of trying “to sneak in” four Woman’s Party bills, which were actually League bills. ER served as a mediator between Slade and Read, and called legislators directly to discover the source of very complex machinations. “Mrs. Roosevelt learned an awful lot that day!” Read’s committee “agreed to make another attempt to combine with the Woman’s Party, and all of us except the industrial groups were willing to back the WP bills on our accepted principles.” Belle Moskowitz was consulted, and she “was for them.” And so Read was sure a congenial state senator could be found who would introduce “bills backed by working women and rich women, Catholics and Jews, …etc.” But additional internal bickering occurred, and it was agreed to “drop the whole thing for this year …which is what Hay and Slade and Moskowitz want.”

Elizabeth Read felt bitter about League leadership: “As a matter of fact, I do not see any working group a decent woman could belong to, in NY, except the Woman’s Party at present.

“I worked as long as there was any use, and longer, in trying to carry out the Conference Committee and Equal Laws Committee mandates,—but when your side decides to quit fighting, you certainly are discharged. Hay et al. would rather see nothing good be accomplished…. As I wrote [Esther Lape] the other day, the cause of women in NY is at a dead stand-still till some one slugs Mary Garrett Hay over the head…. It might be possible to start a compact chosen little band of scrappers who really want to get something done….”

(Read to Narcissa Vanderlip, 24 Feb. 1923, Vanderlip Papers.)

After the ERA became the Woman’s Party’s exclusive issue, all efforts at compromise failed.

On 12 Nov. 1924, Crystal Eastman, whose work as an attorney had pioneered worker-compensation laws, and health and safety legislation for the protection of all workers, and who was one of the four authors of the ERA, wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation, called “Feminists Must Fight,” to challenge ER’s position.

She agreed with ER’s idea “that the battle for ‘recognition,’ political and official, will have to be fought inside party lines. If women want to be in politics they must be politicians, …choose their party and play the political game from the ground up. But it seems to me most emphatically not true that the battle for ‘equal rights’ must be fought within party lines. It can never be won there. It must be fought and it will be fought by a free-handed, nonpartisan minority of energetic femininsts to whom politics in general …will continue to be a matter of indifference so long as women are classed with children …so long as even in our most advanced States a woman can be penalized with the loss of her job when she marries….

“The principle of the Equal Rights Amendment is supremely important. The very passion with which it is opposed suggests that it is vital. To blot out of every law book in the land …that centuries old precedent as to woman’s inferiority and dependence and need for protection, to substitute for it at one blow that simple new precedent of equality.

“That is a fight worth making if it takes ten years.”

The differences between feminist activists were not about reactionary vision, or style—as some have insisted. Joseph Lash, for instance, claimed that “the embattled females of the Woman’s Party …were too masculine for Eleanor’s taste.” (Eleanor and Franklin, p. 290.)

357–58 Dr. Alice Hamilton: Alice Hamilton to Edith Houghton Hooker, 16 Jan. 1922, in Barbara Sicherman, Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters (Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 254–56.

On 22 May 1952, Dr. Alice Hamilton also publicly withdrew her opposition to the ERA in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune. After thirty years of opposition, it now “seems best for our country to join in the effort of the United Nations to adopt such a principle internationally.”

359–60 “sounded so well”: ER, It’s Up to the Women (Frederick A. Stokes, 1933), pp. 201–2. On the ERA, see Mary Frances Berry, Why ERA Failed (Indiana University Press, 1986); and Joan Hoff-Wilson, ed., Rights of Passage: The Past and Future of the ERA (Indiana University Press, 1986).

360 forty-eight-hour workweek: ER and Doris Stevens in debate, New York Times, 26 Feb. 1925.

361 power of voting women: ER’s letter of support to Grace Davis Vanamee, chair of the State Affairs Committee of the Women’s National Republican Club: “I cannot tell you how pleased we all are at your announcement at the Consumers’ League” that, by a vote of four to one, Republican women “would not accept the rebuff given the women on the 48-hour week.”

While ER celebrated the unity of women, she condemned male politicians for their “open, cynical and reckless defiance of definite platform and campaign promises.” (New York Times, 22 March 1926.)

361 “rooms with baths”: Rose Schneiderman to ER, 21 May 1936, FDRL.

361–62 five-day week: ER’s WTUL-sponsored debate covered in New York Times, 9 April 1929.

362 “hogs from cholera”: Vanderlip on Sheppard-Towner, quoted in Watrous, Narcissa Vanderlip, p. 31.

362 Women’s City Club: New York Times, 7 April 1925.

362–63 dance halls: ER, in ibid. For the controversy, see Elisabeth Israels Perry, Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics & the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 42–57.

363 equal political education: New York Times, 26, 27 May 1927.

363 “disorderly conduct”: Ibid., 9 Dec. 1926.

363–64 She herself wanted to fly: As First Lady of New York State, ER would christen a plane only if she were taken aloft: “No flight, no christening.” (Ibid., 1 June, 6 June 1929.)

364 “menace to civilization”: Catt called for conferences in every community, and announced: “War will disappear from the earth when women decide the time has come.” (Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt, p. 207.)

364 “pilgrimages of women”: ER, Women’s Democratic News, July 1926.

364–65 “Our Foreign Policy—What Is It?”: Women’s Democratic News, Jan. 1927.

365 ER featured a front-page article: The March 1927 issue’s banner headline, “Do We Deserve the Hatred of the World? Under Wilson We Were Regarded as the Unselfish Idealists of the World—Under Coolidge They Call Us ‘Money Grabbers’—Why?,” was followed by a long two-full-page article, “Banks and Bayonets in Nicaragua.”

365 “to prepare for world peace”: ER quoted in New York Times, 15 Oct. 1927; 8 Dec. 1927; 2 Nov. 1929.

366 same floor space: Ibid., 19 July 1928; 4 Aug. 1928.

Achieving equal space with John J. Raskob of General Motors, Al Smith’s great friend, was no small item. Vice-president of DuPont, Raskob was one of the Democratic Party’s richest contributors. In 1929, he and Pierre S. DuPont announced a new corporation to erect a 102-story office building on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria, where for so many years society’s Assembly Balls had been held. The Empire State Building would be 200 feet higher than the Chrysler Building. (Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The New York Years, 1928–1933 [Random House, 1985], p. 139.)

366 elected Caroline O’Day: ER’s speech in New York Times, 28 Sept. 1926.

366–70 feminist article: “Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do,” in Redbook, April 1928, pp. 71–72ff.

ER wrote as a realist: “Personally, I do not believe in a Woman’s Party. A woman’s ticket could never possibly succeed. And to crystallize the issues on the basis of sex-opposition would only further antagonize men, congeal their age-old prejudices, and widen the chasm of existing differences.” (P. 141.)

370–71 S. J. Woolf: In New York Times Magazine, 8 April 1928.

371 attacked religious bigotry: New York Times, 25 Jan. 1928.

371–72 “We crave a man with …human heart”: Ibid., 19 April 1928.

372 “like children”: ER to FDR, 27 April 1928, FDRL.

372 “I am quite unreasonably depressed”: ER to FDR, 22 June 1928, FDRL.

372–73 “I had no desire”: ER, This I Remember, p. 38.

373 “how forlorn”: Marion Dickerman on ER, and on FDR’s walk without crutches, in K. Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 81.

373 She put together a staff: ER, This I Remember, p. 41.

On 26 Oct. 1948, June Hamilton Rhodes wrote ER: “Time magazine said ‘you are the greatest woman in the world’ I knew that in 1928.” (ER Papers, Box 4566, FDRL.)

374 On the campaign trail: New York Times, 19 July 1928, 4 Aug. 1928.

374 “The life of a consistent Republican: Ibid., 22 Sept. 1928.

374 “without intense prejudice”: ER, This I Remember, p. 39.

374–75 her own position on Prohibition: New York Times, 30 Jan. 1928 (also on Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments).

375 “National Woman’s Dry Enforcement League”: ER to Jesse Nicholson, 28 Jan. 1928, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 313.

375 “I have never attacked the South”: ER’s unpublished 1928 notes on race are in James Kearney, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: The Evolution of a Reformer (Houghton Mifflin, 1968), p. 61.

375 “We do not feel quite willing”: New York Times, 10 July 1928.

375 Mrs. Clem Shaver: ER, in ibid., 7 July 1928.

375–76 “When Greek Meets Greek”: Ibid., 9 July 1928.

ER was personally ambivalent about Prohibition. In her own family, alcoholism continued to ravage lives. ER wrote Elinor Morgenthau that she went to Tivoli because “the woman who lives with my uncle [Vallie] wrote me he’d been drinking for a month and something must be done…. I’m wondering how I can get the place raided as not only Vallie but some young boys on the farm under 20 whom he influenced are getting drunk constantly and their mother has tuberculosis and is at her wit’s end! Isn’t it too annoying! Tonight I want the Volstead law enforced unmodified and I want to get rid of all the state police who connive with bootleggers!” (29 April 1927, Elinor Morgenthau Papers, FDRL.)

376–77 “with evident glee”: ER, This I Remember, p. 45.

377 “the most wonderful thing”: Esther Lape quote in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 318.

377 Nobody was pleased: Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, p. 235.

377 “no use …getting sick”: SDR, My Boy Franklin, p. 110; Burns, Lion and Fox, p. 101.

378 “what follows is really private”: SDR to FDR, 2 Oct. 1928, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 317.

378 “an obligation to return”: ER, This I Remember, pp. 46–47.

378 “plenty to do”: ER, in New York Times, 3 Oct. 1928.

378 “throw away my cane”: FDR to mother, My Boy Franklin, p. 110.

378–79 Only Franklin’s mother: Frances Perkins was one of the few witnesses to Sara Delano Roosevelt’s lonely vigil (Perkins Oral History, Columbia). On the vote tallies, see Letters, vol. 2, p. 649.

379 “If the rest of the ticket”: ER to press Quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 320;

379 In retrospect: ER, This I Remember, p. 46.

There was evidently considerable tension between ER and FDR during the two campaigns. ER wrote Elinor Morgenthau that she was “neither very tired, nor especially happy or depressed.” “I felt Gov. Smith’s election meant something but whether Franklin spends two years in Albany or not matters as you know comparatively little….” (13 Nov. 1928, Elinor Morgenthau Papers, FDRL.)

ER had inspired the women she worked with during the presidential campaign, and she received countless letters of praise, gratitude, and hope. Dorothy Kirchey Brown, who headed the Massachusetts campaign, wrote: “You must know without being told that working with you was a very great pleasure and satisfaction…. I never cease to marvel at your capacity for work and your serenity and poise through it all….” (27 Nov. 1928, FDRL.)

381 “What I Want Most Out of Life”: Success Magazine, May 1927. Quoted in Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 104.

382 “Filling Many Jobs”: New York Times, 10 Nov. 1928.

382–83 “being most discreet”: ER to FDR, 16 Nov. 1928, 1 Dec. 1928, FDRL. See also Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, ch. 32.

383 “In this difficult undertaking”: Women’s Democratic News editorial to ER, Nov. 1928, p. 6.

383–84 criticized Nancy Cook: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 13 Nov. 1928, Elinor Morgenthau Papers, FDRL (transcribed by Maureen Corr).

Although ER was devoted to Elinor Morgenthau, she also considered her unreasonably sensitive: “To say that your letter amazed me would be mild somehow I always forget how tragic things seem to you…. As to your saying you had a ‘rotten deal’ I don’t know what you mean. You and Nan have not worked well together this autumn why, heaven knows, but those things happen and if you want to resign, that is your choice but no one has forced you to do it…. Caroline is a fine person to work with or for and I think you must realize it when you think it over.”

384–85 “write me an article”: ER to Frances Perkins, 6 March 1929, Frances Perkins Papers, Reel 4, Columbia.

385–86 “a woman’s woman”: Perkins Oral History, Columbia, vol. 3, pp. 266, 290, 531.

386 “an almost austere streak”: Helen Huntington Smith, “Profiles: Noblesse Oblige,” New Yorker, 5 April 1930.

386–87 “black straw pancake”: Lorena A. Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady (Dodd, Mead, 1980 [1962]), pp. 10–11, 58.

387 “If I were you”: ER to FDR, 16 Nov. 1928, Box 16, FDRL.

388–89 “Belle and Bob Moses mean to cling”: ER to FDR, 13 Nov. 1928, FDRL.

The most powerful political woman of the era, Belle Moskowitz was widowed and left to support three children when Charles Israels, her architect husband, died in 1911. She married social-reform leader Henry Moskowitz in 1914. According to Elisabeth Israels Perry, her biographer and granddaughter, the entire field of public relations, commercial and political propaganda, was largely created by Belle Moskowitz. From the very beginning, she worked with Edward Bernays, in a variety of projects that sought with “conscious and intelligent manipulation” to change the “habits and opinions” of people. (Perry, Belle Moskowitz, pp. 140–41.)

389 “’to a bunch of women’”: Perry, Belle Moskowitz, p. 119; Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 94–96.

390 “The Jew party”: ER to Sara Delano Roosevelt, 16 Jan. 1918, FDRL.

391 Moses publicly announced: Caro, Power Broker, pp. 287–98.

By 1928, however, both ER and FDR publicly deplored religious bigotry. Sam Rosenman, who wrote many of FDR’s speeches in the campaign against Ottinger, noted that FDR himself wrote the passage blasting religious bigots in politics: “May God have mercy on your miserable souls.” (Morgan, FDR, p. 293.)

391–92 “’ very fine woman’”: Perkins Oral History, Columbia, vol. 3, pp. 13–14, 21–22.

392 “I hope you will consider”: ER to FDR, 22 Nov. 1928, Box 16, FDRL.

392–93 “I wouldn’t know”: Perkins Oral History, Columbia, vol. 2, p. 720; see also pp. 169–70.

393 “It is my firm belief”: FDR, “Women’s Field in Politics,” Women’s City Club Quarterly, 1928, quoted in Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 109.

394 “go with the Executive Mansion”: ER to FDR, 1–2 Dec. 1928, Box 16, FDRL.

394–95 According to Frances Perkins: ER’s story in Perkins Oral History, Columbia, vol. 3, pp. 530–39.

395–96 “a week of shooting”: ER to FDR, 1–2 Dec. 1928, FDRL.

396 “a good influence”: ER to FDR, 22 Nov. 1928, FDRL.

397–98 “less high sounding”: ER to Marion Dickerman, 7 Feb. 1926, Marion Dickerman Papers, Box 4, FDRL.

ER wrote this letter aboard the Larooco, and noted: “Franklin has just heard that the [Oswald] Mosleys [subsequently the leader of England’s fascist party] are coming in so we are going to be quite crowded …& I may try to leave Thursday night, the day Missy arrives as I don’t know where she will sleep if I don’t. I’m sleeping on deck.”

398 “O God, give us clean hands”: Materials relating to Todhunter, descriptive brochures, school publicity, and exams, are in ER Papers, Box 7, and in Marion Dickerman Papers, Box 4, FDRL.

399 “belongs to me”: Smith, “Noblesse Oblige,” New Yorker, 5 April 1930.

399 “better than anything”: ER to Eunice Fuller Barnard, “Mrs. Roosevelt in the Classroom,” New York Times Magazine, 4 Dec. 1932.

399 students adored her: I am grateful to Annis Fuller Young and Patricia Vaill for their memories of Todhunter.

400 “others were none too good”: ER to FDR, 2 Feb. 1928, FDRL.

400 “basking in contentment”: ER on Lady Helen, Autobiography of ER, pp. 54–55. “Wives of Great Men,” Liberty, 1 Oct. 1932.

400–1 final exams: Class tests are in ER Papers, Box 7, FDRL; these questions are from a history exam, April 1931, and a current-events final, May 1931.

401 “what the book says”: Smith, “Noblesse Oblige,” New Yorker, 5 April 1930.

ER expected “full cooperation in every phase of school work, from Latin grammar to tennis.” And “every girl …is held to strict accountability with reports and marks.”

402 “Vision means”: “What Kind of Education Do We Want for Our Girls?,” Woman’s Journal, Oct. 1930.

403 “The outstanding issue”: ER, “Jeffersonian Principles: The Issue in 1928,” Current History, June 1928.

403 “training the great mass”: From address to Women’s Division of Federations for Support of Jewish Philanthropies, quoted in New York Times, 20 Feb. 1929.

404–5 “closely confined amongst the little groups”: “Ideal Education,” Woman’s Journal, Oct. 1930.

405 “the most civilized”: Todhunter: Its History and Philosophy, n.d., ER Papers, Box 7, FDRL.

406 “old time tenement”: ER to Jane Hoey, 9 April 1930, ER Papers, Box 12, FDRL.

406 “nothing …closed to women”: New York Times, 10 Oct. 1929.

406–7 “a great, tall woman like herself”: Perkins Oral History, Columbia, vol. 3, p. 389.

407 “Everything is done for me”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 326.

407 “Pa seems to want you there”: Anna to ER, n.d. [1931], in Asbell, Mother and Daughter, pp. 50–51.

410 spectacular strategist: On Molly Dewson and the Women’s Division, see Ware, Partner and I.

411 ER and Howe had …divided: see Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, p. 287.

412 called her “Muddie”: Patricia Vaill to author. The boys called her Muddie, so Dickerman imitated them. Little things; but noticeable, and snide.

412–13 agony of misunderstanding: ER had “cold feet” about leaving all spring. “It seems such a fearful effort,” she wrote FDR on 19 May (FDRL). Marion Dickerman, however, attributed “her reluctance” to her new friendship with Earl Miller. (See Kenneth S. Davis, “Symbolic Journey,” Antioch Review, Summer 1979, p. 265. The article recounts the trip from Dickerman’s point of view.)

The voyage over was, nevertheless, something of a personal triumph for ER: She did not get sea sick; and she and FDR, Jr., were “the only two to make breakfast…. The food service is excellent…. I walk three miles daily….” (ER to FDR, 27–29 July 1929, FDRL.)

413 “the food was excellent”: ER to FDR, 14 Aug. 1929, FDRL.

414–15 “Tears & desperate sorrow”: On pickpockets and fights, see ER to FDR, 25 Aug. 1929, Box 16, FDRL. See also K. Davis, “Symbolic Journey.”

415–16 gubernatorial inaugural address: FDR quoted in Burns, Lion and Fox, p. 105.

416 “private audience” with Mussolini: Asbell, Mother and Daughter, p. 35.

416–17 “We had a letter of introduction”: Anna to parents, 24 March 1929, in ibid., pp. 48–49.

417–18 the “Negro question”: Caro, Power Broker, pp. 317–19.

Moses specifically prohibited the Long Island Railroad’s proposal to create a shuttle to Jones Beach, and he barred buses from creating routes to the park. He went so far as to build bridges too low for buses to pass beneath. Charter buses had to obtain “permits.” According to Caro, “buses chartered by Negro groups” rarely received permits.

418 recent little Flurry”: FDR to Howe, 1 Dec. 1929, in Letters, vol. 3, pp. 92–93.

On the crash, Thomas Lamont, and Richard Whitney, see K. Davis, New York Years, pp. 144–48; Nathan Miller, FDR: An Intimate History (Doubleday, 1983), pp. 235–39.

418–19 to retire the WTUL mortgage: In Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 328–29; Rose Schneiderman with Lucy Goldthwaite, All for One (Paul Erickson, 1967), pp. 150–63, 175–76.

419–20 Exposition of Women’s Arts: ER’s keynote in New York Times, 10 Oct. 1929.

420 “Woman-Run Factory”: New York Times Magazine, 16 Nov. 1930.

ER looked “forward to an industrial world as familiar to women as it now is to men…. The woman studying mass production, with original ideas, drive, force, vision, capable of heading hundreds of workmen is bound to come….”

421–22 As depression conditions worsened: “What the Country Expects from the Junior League,” Nov. 1930; article and letter, Edith G. Lindley to ER, 20 Nov. 1930, Box 12, FDRL.

422 “factory girls” and “business girls”: Schneiderman to ER, 8 July 1930, Box 16, FDRL.

422 “divided into strata”: ER to Rose Schneiderman, 9 June 1930, Box 16, FDRL.

422–23 supported strike efforts: New York Times, 18 Nov., 19 Nov. 1930.

423 “cannot get work”: New York Times, 4 March 1930.

423 “can’t go on drifting”: Ibid., 13 Jan. 1932.

423 “We are not only”: Ibid., 15 Jan. 1932. See also 14 Dec. 1932.

424 “a faithful watchdog”: Sam Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (DaCapo Reprint, 1972 [1952]), p. 25.

424 “greater efficiency”: Rosenman on Missy LeHand, Oral History, Columbia, p. 108.

424–26 “should never nag”: ER, “Wives of Great Men,” Liberty, 1932.

426 “get the jump on [Herbert] Hoover”: ER to FDR, 2 Oct. 1930, FDRL.

426–28 “Her Forty-fifth Birthday!”: Vogue, ms. in Box 10, sent 23 Dec. 1930.

428 “the word ‘passionate’”: Smith, “Noblesse Oblige,” New Yorker, 5 April 1930.

This is the only chapter of ER’s life for which there are no letters by her to document the facts, or establish the texture of the reality. All the letters by Earl Miller available to date were written to his friends the Abelows during the 1960s and 1970s. There are, however, photographs and films. Their times together are referred to most frequently in ER’s letters to her daughter, and to Lorena Hickok. Esther Lape, Marion Dickerman, Joseph Lash, and ER’s children present different versions of their friendship.

429 Middleweight Boxing Championship: Earl Miller’s naval boxing matches were conducted by Walter Camp, who originated Ail-American football and was “the Daddy of Physical Fitness” during World War I (Miller to Miriam Abelow, 6 Dec. 1962). Concerning his activities, Miller to “dear folks,” 4 Sept. 1972, Abelow Collection, FDRL.

430 “old crab” …“the Lady”: On Miller’s attentiveness and his barracks reputation, see Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 117.

431 “used to play the piano”: ER, This I Remember, p. 28.

431 “I’d rather have Earl’s”: ER to John Golden, 1943, quoted in Lash, A World of Love: Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Friends, 1943–1962 (Doubleday, 1984), p. 68.

432 “Corporal Miller took charge”: ER to Maude Hall Gray, 12 July 1930, ER Papers, Box 2, FDRL.

432–33 inspection tours: ER, This I Remember, p. 56.

433 “check the gasoline”: Quoted in Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 120; and letters to the Abelows, FDRL.

433–44 The Pirate and the Lady: Evidently filmed by Nancy Cook, in FDRL.

434 “manhandled” her: Marion Dickerman Oral History, Columbia.

434 “I was expecting Earl”: I am grateful to Peggy Kiskadden and Maureen Corr for their memories of Esther Lape’s conversations regarding ER and Earl Miller.

435 “one real romance”: J. Roosevelt with Libby, My Parents, pp. 110–11.

436 “Eleanor wrote him faithfully”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 481. On the disappearance of letters, Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 116.

Lash noted: “Some of her friends were puzzled by her attachment to this ‘cop,’ but if Franklin could make Missy a part of his household, she could do the same with Earl.” (Eleanor and Franklin, p. 481.)

436 sealed by the court: Lash, A World of Love, p. 297. See Volume Two of this biography.

436 “will rock the country”: Ed Sullivan, New York Daily News, 13 Jan. 1947.

436 his marital troubles: Lash, Love, Eleanor, pp. 118–19. See these same pages for Miller on Missy LeHand.

436–37 “to run interference”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 117–19.

437 “I squired Missy”: Miller to the Abelows, 7 Jan. 1972, FDRL.

437–38 “sometimes thought backstairs”: Lillian Rogers Parks, with Frances Spatz Leighton, The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil (Prentice Hall, 1981), p. 185.

438 Miller loved to cook: Earl Miller to ER, Oct. 1951, in Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, FDRL.

438–39 “I had him atop a horse”: Miller to Miriam Abelow, 12 June 1965, FDRL.

439 “would have made a better president”: On ER as president, see Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 121.

439 “pink or radical”: Miller to the Abelows, 12 June 65, FDRL.

439–40 Lucy Mercer “copied” ER: Miller to the Abelows, 22 Aug. 1966, FDRL.

440 “White Trash Guard”: Ibid.

440 “leaned a little too much to the right”: Miller to Miriam Abelow, 12 June 1965, FDRL.

440 “Joe didn’t get anything from me”: Miller to Abelow, 19 Oct. 1971, 7 Jan. 1972.

441 mother-and-son terms: Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 123.

441 “unable to let herself go”: Lash, A World of Love, pp. 340, 347–48.

442–45 ER wrote an article: “Ten Rules for Success in Marriage,” Pictorial Review, Dec. 1931.

446 marry Earl Miller: On ER’s shredded letter to Nancy Cook, see K. Davis, The New York Years, pp. 329–30.

446 “down in the depths”: Quoted in Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 119.

446–47 “The night before”: ER, This I Remember, p. 70.

449 cultivating her support: Lorena A. Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady (Dodd, Mead, 1980 [1962]), pp. 29–30.

450 “It was most unusual”: Ibid., pp. 13–15.

451 “her arms were very long”: Ibid., pp. 17, 21.

452 “That woman is unhappy about something’”: Ibid., pp. 31–33.

452–53 FDR called Hearst: On this deal, see Morgan, FDR, pp. 351–53.

453–54 “Happy Days Are Here Again”: Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, p. 342. 454 the first flying candidate: Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, p. 74.

455–56 “a party of liberal thought”: Quoted in ibid., pp. 67–79.

456 “Raymond Moley”: ER, This I Remember, pp. 69–71.

456–57 the man most responsible: On Howe’s eclipse, see Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, pp. 338–48.

457–58 “a shabby statement”: Agnes Brown Leach to FDR, and ER to Leach, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 347.

458 “I did not want my husband to be president”: ER, This I Remember, pp. 65, 69.

459 ER’s friend: Isabella Selmes Ferguson Greenway was elected to Congress in 1932.

During ER’s years of grief in Washington, she wrote Isabella frequently that her courage was a guide:

“You mean more to me each year, and your life and the way you have faced it and all you do and are doing has meant so much to me in example and inspiration.

“Someday when much lies behind us both and we have time to be together …there is going to be real joy for both of us I hope.”

(ER to Isabella, 16 Sept. 1919, Tucson.)

459–60 “more approachable”: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 37–39.

460 “I recall puffing”: Ibid.

461 World Series: Ibid., pp. 41–42.

461 “She’s all yours”: Ibid., pp. 43–44.

462 publicity hound: On this and other press attacks, see ibid., p. 62.

462–63 “‘I took the knife away’”: Ibid., p. 68.

463 “Unless she is taking”: Ibid., pp. 66–67.

464 Like all Republicans: ER. in New York Times, 29 Oct. 1932.

464–65 “Things have come to a head”: On Miller’s divorce, see ER to Nancy Cook, quoted in Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 170.

465–66 ER’s five-day journey: AP wires, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

467 The very first note: ER to Miss Hickok, 26 Oct. 1932, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

467–69 “There was only one drawing room”: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 48–49. See also AP interview, published 10 Nov. 1932, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

469–70 a major scoop: On Edith Roosevelt’s speech, see Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 50–51.

470–71 “’That girl is furious’”: Ibid., pp. 53–54.

471 ER hosted a buffet supper: Ibid., pp. 57–59.

472 “We think it’s grand”: AP wire, 8 Nov. 1932, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

472 “I’m not important enough”: ER never wanted to be a president’s wife, AP wire, 9 Nov. 1932, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

473 ER’s new press image: AP wire, 17 Dec. 1932.

473–74 Some newspapers: New York Times, 17 Dec. 1932.

474 “likes to do things for herself”: AP wire, 12 Nov. 1932, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

474–75 “curtail …activities”: AP wire, 4 Feb. 1933, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

475–76 “and very much annoyed”: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 64–65.

476 “seen my Aunt Kassie”: Ibid., p. 67.

477 insulting stereotypes: See Doris Faber, The Life of Lorena Hickok: ER’s Friend (William Morrow, 1980). The first researcher to see Hickok’s correspondence, Faber wrote that she was so horrified by what she read, she urged William Emerson, then director of the FDR Library, to close the collection until at least the year 2000. That being impossible, she decided to beat out that “summer’s tide of assistant professors” and scholars who were certain to discover the significance of the material. But Faber was so distraught that she decided to ignore all “political or social issues,” lest she give “an unjustifiable pretension of importance to Lorena Hickok and her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt.” (Pp. 332, 335.)

477–78 “no vamp”: Lash, Love, Eleanor, p. 126. For fuller descriptions of Hick, I am grateful to Hick’s friend Howard Haycraft and to Doris Dana, Bill Dana’s daughter, who knew Hick during the years she lived in the “little house” on her father’s Long Island estate in Mastic. Bill Dana was one of Hick’s great friends. I am also grateful to Doris Dana and Anne Farr for a tour of Hick’s favorite home.

479 “take you in my arms”: ER to Hick, quoted in Faber, Life of Lorena Hickok, p. 176. We are further informed by Faber that “there can be little doubt” that ER’s wish “could not mean what it appears to mean.”

479 “north-east of the corner”: Quoted in Faber, Life of Lorena Hickok, p. 152.

479 not …a schoolgirl “smash”: See Nancy Sahli, “Smashing: Women’s Relations Before the Fall,” Chrysalis, no. 8, 1979, pp. 17–22.

480–85 daugher of a butter-maker: All quotations and biographical information in this section are from Hickok’s letters, memorabilia, and her chs. for an autobiography, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

485–86 “did admire prima donnas”: In Abe Altrowitz, “Memories of Her Abound: Lorena Hickok’s Newspaper Career Was Colorful, Vital,” Minneapolis Star, 16 May 1968. I am grateful to Anne Farr for this reference.

486 Ernestine Schumann-Heink: Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers from the Dawn of Opera (Simon & Schuster, 1981), pp. 279–83.

Neither her thrilling voice nor her theatrical genius protected Ernestine Schumann-Heink from the misogyny that enables history to empasize her appearance: “Homely.” “Unattractive.” “Fat.” One of opera’s major “ugly ducklings.” Some of us might consider her large and handsome, but, as in the case of Hick, that is not how she has been portrayed. Her own defense was her great wit. Once, upon leaving the stage, she had trouble getting through the orchestra. The first violinist suggested she go sideways. She stared at him for a moment and snapped: “Young man, don’t you see? I have no sideways!” (I am grateful to Sadonia Ecker Wiesen and Lili Engler for their memories of Schumann-Heink.)

488 warmed up a room: I am grateful to Doris Dana and Howard Haycraft for their memories of Lorena Hickok’s laugh and personality from the 1930s to the 1950s; and to her last editor, Allen Klots, who had similar memories of Hick even at the end, when she was near death.

488 “Every woman wants to be first”: ER to Lash, quoted in A World of Love, p. 116.

488–89 “Your ring is a great comfort”: ER to Hick, 7 March 1933, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

489 “a bit rough and tumble”: Peggy Kiskadden to author.

489 disapproved of Hick: For example, ER’s daughter, Anna, was particularly close to Hick. But any evidence that she was knowledgeable about the nature of their relationship, or—conversely—that there was anything to be knowledgeable about, has been dismissed, with rhetorical flourish: “Both Anna and John [Boettiger] would have considered lesbianism not nice, a form of morbidity.” (Lash, Love, Eleanor, pp. 175–76.)

Nevertheless, both ER and Hick saved most of their thirty-year-long correspondence.

After ER died, Hick destroyed some of ER’s letters and many of her own. One weekend at Esther Lape’s in Westbrook, she sat before the fire for hours and burned letter after letter. And she sanitized others. The first year of their relationship, the period from Election Day to the inauguration and for months beyond, was simply revised by Hick. She typed each letter to preserve ER’s public and political record, deleted all personal references and endearments, and donated the transcriptions to the FDRL.

Subsequently, Hick wrote to Anna that she burned entirely only fifteen of ER’s letters. But it is clear that she burned many more of her own. Presumably, the letters that her sister Ruby Claff burned after Hick’s death were the original versions of the typed letters that chronicled that first year. After she read them, Ruby Claff threw them into Hick’s fireplace and told Anne Farr, “This is nobody’s business.” (Farr to author.)

490 “Oh, yes, I can”: On this visit to the White House, see ER, This I Remember, pp. 75–76; Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 71–77.

491 “I have a weapon”: Hickok, ibid.

492–93 Grief … before the inauguration: Ibid., pp. 80–92.

493–95 The national income: On this, and also on FDR and Hoover, see especially Frank Freidel, FDR: Launching the New Deal (Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 1–45; and Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933–1937 (Random House, 1986), pp. 1–42.

495–96 “My suffering”: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 94–96. For ER on the interview, see ER, This I Remember, p. 78. For Hick on the interview and on Howe, see Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, p. 104.

496 “became obvious to some servants”: Parks with Leighton, The Roosevelts, p. 5.

497–98 “All my love”: ER to Hick, 5 March 1933, Hickok Papers, FDRL.

499–500 “She ain’t dressed up”: Rita S. Halle, “That First Lady of Ours,” Good Housekeeping, Dec. 1933, pp. 20–21, 193–94.