Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of President Franklin Roosevelt, whose death at the age of 78, is announced on another page, was perhaps the most distinguished of all the First Ladies who have graced the White House. It is true that Mrs. Wilson, the second wife of President Woodrow Wilson, exerted more direct political power for a short period, but Mrs. Roosevelt was more of an influential personality in her own right. To the men and women of America she became a figure of legendary earnestness, simplicity and devotion to the public good.
Her prominence derived in the first place, of course, from her husband. She had done more than most wives to help him in his political development, and her services to him were not curtailed when he achieved the Presidency. She was a charming and gifted hostess, interesting and interested in the many and varied guests whom it was her duty to entertain. But she was much more than that. She became the eyes and ears of a crippled man who could not move about as much as he would have wished. To him she presented the information and the views she acquired during her wide travels. As time went on she became herself a public commentator on the news in print and speech - and it must be confessed that on occasion her outspokenness proved a political embarrassment for her husband.
Her independent standing, however, was proved when she did not lapse into an honoured twilight of oblivion after Franklin Roosevelt's death. Indeed, her personal political influence became enhanced with the passage of years. In a country where politics is so often regarded as a race for the spoils she stood out for her sense of noblesse oblige. Among a people where political manipulation is often considered one of the higher arts she was remarkable for her undeviating devotion to principle. She became the conscience of the Democratic Party.
Inevitably, she had the failings of her virtues. She may sometimes have been earnest to the point of the didactic. So uncompromising were her ideals that she lacked her husband's political skill. So unquestioned was her own righteousness that on occasion she did not notice her own prejudices. But overall she made a noble and healthy contribution to the public life of more than one American generation.
SHELTERED YOUTH
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884, the daughter of Elliot Roosevelt, a younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt, by his marriage with Anna Hull. In 1892 her mother died and she went to live with her maternal grandmother. Two years later her father, to whom she was devoted, died also. Both her parents had belonged to affluent families of high social standing in New York and she had a sheltered and very careful upbringing. Her earlier youth was spent at her grandmother's homes in New York and the country. On occasion she stayed with her uncle Theodore at Oyster Bay. Lacking playmates of her own age she learned to amuse herself and became an omnivorous reader. Her mother had wished her to acquire part of her education in Europe, and in 1899 she went with an aunt to England, where she was placed at Mlle. Souvestre's School at "Allinswood", near Wimbledon Common, frequently spending her holidays on the Continent.
Returning to New York, where she found herself somewhat out of touch with the younger generation, she was launched by her relations as a debutante. Soon, however, she met her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was still at college. In 1903 he proposed to her and on St. Patrick's Day, 1905, they were married. After a tour in Europe Mrs. Roosevelt and her young husband returned to a New York house and, in due course, to the care of a growing family. (Their first child, a daughter, was born in 1906, and they also had five sons.) Then, however, with her husband's entry into politics, there came a new home in Albany and the dual existence of a politician's wife which was to continue through many active and crowded years. From girlhood she had had high ideals and one of them was that a wife should share her husband's interests.
In 1913 the future President became Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and the inevitable move to Washington ensued. It meant many social activities, into which she threw herself with characteristic energy. Then came the war and work for the Red Cross and in the Navy Hospital. After the armistice she was able to go with her husband to Europe. By that time his political future seemed assured, and in 1920 he was nominated for the Vice-Presidency.
A TURNING POINT
The election was lost and the following year he suffered the attack of infantile paralysis that was to be a turning-point in his life. This was a period of stern trial for a devoted wife. She responded with superb courage and calm. One of the greatest services she ever rendered to him was in encouraging his determination some day to resume his political career in the active world. His mother would have had him lead the existence of an elegant invalid: his wife would have none of it. During his long convalescence she began to take an increasing interest in affairs, and after his election to the Governorship of New York a new field of public life opened for her.
In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States and Mrs. Roosevelt became first lady in the land. She had immense energy and both enthusiasm and ability. The hesitancy of her earlier years had vanished and she threw herself into her new duties with vigour. She travelled immense distances, and was here, there and everywhere. Everything interested her. She talked with everybody she met, asked questions, examined everything. There was a cartoon of miners in the bowels of the earth looking with astonishment over their shoulders and exclaiming "Here comes Mrs. Roosevelt". By this time she was a practised speaker and lecturer, and made speeches and broadcast. She also wrote books and in 1935 started her column, "My Day" which before long was reaching millions of readers. In it she was informal, chatty and friendly and the women in small homes absorbed her observations easily and felt they knew her. The profits she derived from her activities amounted to a large annual sum and she distributed it among her favourite charities.
Even if Mrs. Roosevelt had played a less ambitious role her work would have been immense. Sacks of correspondence and endless gifts came as a matter of course to the President's wife. There was also the White House - she was soon to renovate its offices - and all its entertaining to look after. She seemed, however, to take her normal duties in her stride and to be always moving on to wider interests. In such spare moments as she had, however, she reverted to the kindly matriarch and knitted for grandchildren. Naturally she was a contentious figure and the political opponents of her husband did not spare her - "Nor Eleanor either" was a hostile slogan in one of his Presidential campaigns. But criticism she accepted as the natural lot of public life, and in spite of it she became and remained a great national figure.
In the war, kindly always in her recollections of her early days here, she proved herself a sympathetic friend towards Britain. She sent encouraging messages and adopted an East End boy for the duration of hostilities. In October, 1942, she flew across the Atlantic and stayed at Buckingham Palace. Her visit was full of incident. She saw the bombed areas and went to Dover, she visited American troops, the R.A.F., and the women's services and paid special attention to the work of women in the war. She also crossed to Ulster to see the American troops there and travelled to Scotland. Everywhere she went she radiated encouragement and created an admirable impression. From England, moreover, she broadcast to her own country. In the summer of 1943 she went to New Zealand and Australia to be again a welcome and honoured guest. The next year she was in the West Indies.
ROLE IN POLITICS
At the President's death, in April, 1945, she was 60 but a whole new life and career and even more travel lay ahead of her. She continued her daily column of comment, "My Day", published several more books, was for years a delegate to the United Nations, visited half the countries of the world, and played an important role in American party politics.
Eight months after her husband's death President Truman asked her to be a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in 1945. The following year she was chairman of the Commission on Human Rights in Unesco. Thereafter she was constantly a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly meetings until the Democratic Administration gave way to the Republicans after the defeat of 1952. Even then she continued to be active in the American Association for the United Nations.
In 1948 she came to London at the invitation of the King and Queen to unveil the statue of her husband in Grosvenor Square. She had visited Germany immediately after the 1945 meeting of the General Assembly in London and thereafter she crossed the ocean so many times she described herself as a harassed commuter across the Atlantic. In addition to Britain, France and Germany her travels included Russia (as far as Samarkand and Tashkent), Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, India, Pakistan, Burma, Siam, Indonesia, Hongkong and Japan. On these travels she continued writing her daily column for various American newspapers and interviewed, as a newspaperwoman, important people around the world, including an interview with Mr. Khrushchev at Yalta.
WORK IN U.N.
At home she remained pretty well aloof from domestic politics while she was representing her country at the United Nations although she did support Mr. Adlai Stevenson for President in the 1952 campaign. He inspired her, as he did so many other people of deep liberal convictions, with the belief that he would have made a President of outstanding calibre. She remained his devoted supporter. In 1956 she campaigned for him in his fight for the Democratic nomination and in his contest for the Presidency itself. Nothing would have pleased her better than for him to be the Democratic standard-bearer once again in 1960. Her doubts were occasioned not only by disappointment over the rejection of Mr. Stevenson: she was disturbed by Mr. Kennedy's ambiguous record on Macarthyism and questioned whether he had the basic conviction and faithfulness to principle necessary for the highest responsibility. Eventually she did declare herself for him and campaign on his behalf, but there was always the suspicion that she was moved less by confidence in him than by concern at the thought of Mr. Nixon in the White House.
Throughout these years, however, she was not preoccupied by national politics. Some of her most valuable work at this time was at the level of New York state affairs. In company with Mr. Herbert Lehman and others she played a major part in freeing Democratic politics in the state from the control of Tammany Hall. It was on such an issue as this, where moral principles were closely involved, that she was at her best.
Her popularity with the American people transcended parties and politics. Many times during her widowhood she was voted, in annual polls by the Gallup organization, the most popular woman in America.
In addition to her political labours, her travel and her daily journalism and her work for many charities, she found time to write a number of books of reminiscence. They included This is My Story, My Days, If You Ask Me, This I Remember, India and the Awakening East, and On My Own, this last the story of her life and activities following her departure from the White House in 1945. In the early thirties she had also published books for children and women, including, When You Grow up to Vote, and It's Up to the Women. She also edited various books including The Moral Basis of Democracy.
