Fig. 4.1
figure a

Photo portrait of Anna Roosevelt Cowles (date unknown), TR Center, Dickinson State University

Full size image

Not long after the death of Theodore Roosevelt, an ugly division emerged between the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park Roosevelts. In 1920, Franklin Roosevelt ran for vice president as a Democrat, and TR’s eldest children Alice and Ted attacked Franklin as duplicitous, claiming he used the popularity of his name to attain high office. A two decade-long feud ensued. When Ted ran for governor of New York in 1926, Eleanor and Franklin returned the animosity. They viciously campaigned against their cousin, who lost. It seemed as if the divide among TR’s progeny would continue, but when the United States joined the Allies in World War II, Ted and Franklin pulled together. By 1945 when the Axis waved the white flag, both men had died giving their all to the struggle. Ted perished on the beaches of Normandy; Franklin shortly after, spent himself in the prolonged negotiations for a new global order.

Historians have made much of the rivalry, but most members of the Roosevelt family shared goodwill and mutual respect.1 “Devotion” is a term that appears in many testimonials. More often than not, family members shared a common commitment to those bearing the same name. TR’s sisters Corinne and Anna had an abiding reverence for their Hyde Park cousins, including Franklin’s mother Sara and half brother Rosy. TR’s nieces and nephews—the next generation of Roosevelts—also maintained a close relationship. Corinne Robinson Alsop, TR’s niece, frequently visited the White House during Franklin’s administration and acted as a conduit between “hissing cousins” Alice Roosevelt Longworth and First Lady Eleanor.2 The testimony of William Sheffield Cowles (“Shef”) and Margaret Krech Cowles (“Bobbie”), provides a discerning account of the various Roosevelt rivalries, love affairs, illegitimate children, alcoholism, repression, and bereavement. Their stories include vivid impressions of the big personalities, the gatherings and vacations, and the legendary tales all families tell, but with a distinctly Rooseveltian flavor. Of course, the politics of the Democratic and Republican parties make their memories of national significance. What prevails through these trials is a “devotion” for the family, even when individual Roosevelts failed to see eye-to-eye.

Shef was Theodore Roosevelt’s nephew and the only child of William Sheffield Cowles (the Admiral) and Anna Roosevelt Cowles (Bye), TR’s older sister. His accounts provide an excellent insight into the interconnected branches of the family. Shef served as Franklin’s personal aide during World War I when Franklin was assistant secretary of the Navy. They returned home from Paris together, after the Treaty of Versailles negotiations, and Shef recalls the trip as one in which Franklin convinced him of the virtues of the League of Nations. Subsequently, his cousin Alice Roosevelt Longworth—a staunch opponent of the League—convinced him otherwise. After the war ended, Shef attended Yale University, took a job in banking, and married Margaret Alwyn Krech, better known to friends as Bobbie (Shef called her Mags). The couple moved into a small cottage at his mother’s Oldgate estate in Connecticut, and had two children.

Anna Roosevelt Cowles died in 1931, before Franklin became president, but time enough for her to revel in his success as governor of New York. Bobbie took over as matriarch of Oldgate and managed the Cowleses’ busy social life. Shef joined the Navy when the U.S. declared war on the Axis Powers and rose to the rank of captain. He returned to banking after the war, then turned his attention to public service in 1949, winning election to the Connecticut State Assembly. He would serve in the state legislature until 1956, including a term as speaker of the house.3 In retirement, Shef signed on to a number of corporate and charitable boards, and even served one term as mayor of Farmington. Bobbie died in 1982 and Shef in 1986.

Corinne Robinson Alsop, her mother’s namesake and niece of Theodore Roosevelt, joined Shef and Bobbie for part of their interviews with the Hagedorns. Although Mrs. Alsop grew up in Orange, New Jersey, she remained close with the Cowles throughout her life. That intimacy derived, in part, from proximity. In 1909, Corinne married Joseph Alsop, the sire of a prominent Connecticut family. She moved within ten miles of the Cowles and would live nearby for the remainder of her life. Joe and Corinne Alsop—even more than Shef and Bobbie—became a powerful couple in Connecticut politics. They each took to public office: Joe served in the State Assembly and Senate, and ran in 1912 as a Progressive Party candidate for Congress while Corinne won election to the Connecticut State Assembly, serving two non-consecutive terms from 1924 to 1927 and 1931 to 1933. She also led the state Republican Party and had considerable influence at the national level. Her reminiscences offer vibrant portraits of Franklin and Eleanor. In her youth, Mrs. Alsop attended Allenswood Academy in London, the same boarding school as her cousin Eleanor and had overlapping social networks. She also provides an insight into the personalities at Oyster Bay, including her grandmother, Edith Roosevelt, and the curious death of her brother Stewart at Harvard University.

So much emerges from these recollections, but again, some of the most fascinating discussion revolves around the Roosevelt women. TR’s sisters Anna and Corinne, and FDR’s mother Sara had vast influence, as did the women of the next generation, Corinne, Bobbie, and Eleanor. Each played a vital part in leading their family, and in national, state, and local politics. It should come as no surprise that their children—the following generation—had an equal measure of influence, and that contemporary Roosevelts do as well. The family operates as a network, dedicated to the clan as well as the American public through civic-minded service.

The desire to serve did not compel all Roosevelts, however. The Cowleses and Mrs. Alsop talk about the family’s black sheep, specifically TR’s prodigal brother Elliott and James “Tadd” Roosevelt, “Rosy’s” son. Elliott had a severe alcohol and drug addiction and Tadd’s marriage led to his father disowning him. These reminiscences contextualize Tadd’s peculiarities and Elliott’s dependency, explaining how alcoholism gripped many of the Roosevelt men and how wealth allowed for eccentricities. Their stories tell of a troubled and sick Elliott, more complex in spirit than often credited, and a portrait of Tadd, who visited the family more frequently than originally thought.

Some of these yarns give the Cowleses and Mrs. Alsop pause for further consideration. Particularly Corinne Alsop expresses a feeling that her comments will come across as unkind, believing that fellow family members would not appreciate her frankness. At one point she asks the Hagedorns to “seal” the transcripts, although makes no mention of how long she expected them to remain private. Delicate matters such as Alice Longworth’s affair with Senator Borah, and the likelihood that Paulina Longworth was Borah’s daughter, were edited out of the Hagedorn’s transcripts. The recordings retain the original testimony, and where possible this chapter utilizes the original comments made by the participants.

Bobbie and Shef Cowles met Mary and Hermann Hagedorn twice in 1954, and spent at least three hours reminiscing. For some of that time, Corinne Alsop joined them, but she also recorded two interviews without them. Because this collection includes three subjects, the transcription includes designations for speakers, using names they conversed with (Shef, Bobbie, and Corinne). The five hours of testimony makes this the lengthiest of all the collections in the oral history project. Where audio was available, the chapter uses that dialogue rather than the Hagedorn’s edits.

Not surprisingly, overlap exists in the retelling of old stories. For the sake of brevity, several pages of testimony have been omitted. In some cases, the trio tells stories about hired help or offer exhaustive descriptions of medical conditions that seem peripheral to the broader impressions about the family.

22 November 1954

What I was going to ask, first of all, was if you could give us the basic framework of Mrs. Cowles’ life. She was born in 1854—or ‘55?

Shef::

She was seventy-seven years old when she died in 1931, so that would make it 1854 when she was born [she was actually born in January 1855]. The later part of her life I think I can give you better information about.

Bobbie::

What age was she when she was dropped and got her back injury?

Shef::

I think she was very small when she was dropped.4 A certain injury to her spine resulted from it, and it was that that motivated her father, Theodore Roosevelt [Sr.] to start the Orthopedic Hospital. I inherited that interest, vicariously, by being taken on the Board in 1931. I became the president of the Board of Trustees in 1938 and remained so until it became merged with the Presbyterian Hospital, and am still chairman of the board of the Orthopedic Committee of the Presbyterian Hospital today. That continuing family interest was aroused through my grandfather starting the Orthopedic Hospital on account of the injury to Mother’s back when she was small.

Bobbie::

I remember her telling how he used to walk the floor with her for hours at night when she was in great pain. All her life she always wore a pad of lamb’s wool on that part of her back.

Shef::

It’s the reason why the Orthopedic Hospital has one of the three pictures of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, my mother’s father. One of them hangs in our dining room, one belongs to Mrs. Douglas Robinson who has inherited that picture from Aunt Corinne’s family … And the third is hanging in the Orthopedic Hospital and was moved up to the Presbyterian Hospital when the Orthopedic merged with the Presbyterian and is hanging up on the fifth floor of the Presbyterian Hospital. It is due to the fact that he originally founded the Hospital…

Bobbie::

Well, then, that injury of Mother-in-law’s forced her, all through her early youth, to have long periods of lying down. When she went to school in Paris, until Mlle. Souvestre, who was apparently the most marvelous teacher, Mother-in-law always claims that her facility with words is due to the hour and a half to two hours she was supposed to lie down every day. Mlle. Souvestre would give her a basic thought and, as she was lying there, she’d have to express it in as many ways in French as she could think of, and then at the end of the time come to Mlle. Souvestre and tell her what she thought was the perfect way of describing it. She said it made her word conscious, to try to use economy and the correct word. She always said, like Corinne, that she never had any education, you know; but Mlle. Souvestre gave her the one really stimulating thing that she had.

Of course, it was too early for any of them to go to college—the women of that generation.

Bobbie::

They didn’t very much, did they? There were colleges, of course, but it was considered a very strange thing for a woman to do, wasn’t it?

I marvel that neither Alice nor Ethel ever considered going to college, apparently. As far as I can see, there was never any thought of it.

Shef::

No, never a thought of it even in that generation … In my mother’s and Aunt Corinne’s day and age, I suppose, it was absolutely unheard of…

Since your mother was so frail, how was she able to take command of the family as she did.

Shef::

I feel that she overcame that. I feel that she became a very strong woman, at the age of about twenty-five, or so.

Bobbie::

I think it was just that weakness in the back and they gradually overcame it…

Sheffield::

Well, I know that before she got arthritis—I was twelve years old when she got it—she was the most active woman imaginable through my youth. I was always perfectly amazed at the amount of activity that she managed to pack into a day. I was always greatly impressed as a child, because we never could go anywhere—no matter what, train or boat, or where you were—that people didn’t flock up recognizing her, and surround her. It happened everywhere. She had the most enormous circle of acquaintances! Now part of that must have come through her brother’s having been in the White House by that time. I was always amazed at her memory. She had a remarkable memory and she always remembered them and all about them; very often she’d remark that she’d known them too early, she’d known them before they became famous, and it embarrassed them to know that she knew them at that time … She was very cool on the suffrage question.

Bobbie::

She thought you’d just double the unintelligent vote. I think that was her feeling on that … I think she felt that that was what a woman was for, that she should be working behind the scenes and let the other fellow do it. I think she had that very strongly … I’ve always rather believed that Mother-in-law’s judgment was very sound and that Uncle Theodore counted a good deal on her reactions to things.

Shef::

Yes. I think he consulted her a good deal … Of course, Alice, I imagine, is really a very good source of information about Mother because Mother had a great deal to do with Alice. Alice was with Mother a good deal. And Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt was with Mother a good deal at the time. My mother was a spinster then and was a natural depository for odd children who had lost their parents, so she had a good deal to do with both of those, both Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt—and Helen Robinson, Helen Robinson perhaps even more so … And when Mother was sharing a house with Cousin Rosy Roosevelt, [his daughter] Helen Roosevelt Robinson, was directly under Mother’s care for a number of years. I don’t know what happened to the camp they had in the Adirondacks; I imagine that was also a joint proposition between Cousin Rosy and my mother, but I know that Helen Roosevelt got engaged to Teddy Robinson up at that camp … it was at that camp that Helen Robinson’s brother became of age, James [“Tadd”] Roosevelt. James Roosevelt became of age at that camp and told Mother and his father that he had to go down to New York to settle certain matters of business. He left for New York and on his trip to New York married a girl named Dutch Zadie [also known as Sadie Messinger who was reportedly a prostitute]. My cousin James Roosevelt Roosevelt, cousin Rosy, then told James his son that he never wanted to see him again and James was no longer ever to come back into the family household.

 It was not for years after that that Mother saw James. At the time, very little was known of James. Mother talked to a Mr. Brown who was of the same real estate office that my uncle Douglas Robinson was in. It was Brown , Wheelock & Co. Mother saw Mr. Brown and Mr. Brown told Mother that he thought that Mother ought to get in touch with James Roosevelt. He thought that James Roosevelt was very lonely and knew nothing about his family—that she ought to get in contact with him. So, she wrote him a letter and asked him to come up here. This was about 1922, shortly after my wife and I were married. [By this time Tadd and Sadie were no longer living together, but remained married]. James Roosevelt came up to the Hartford station. I was sent to meet him and was to hold an envelope with a black edging so he would recognize me. I failed to meet him and came back, saying that I didn’t think he’d caught the train. But James Roosevelt appeared in three quarters of an hour, just in time for lunch, looking very dusty. He’d walked most of the way out. He said he didn’t expect to be met so had started walking when somebody picked him up and gave him a ride out. Mother had a talk with him in the front room. At that time the family thought that he probably was a drunkard, they thought that he probably was still married to this Dutch Zadie, they thought that he was everything that he shouldn’t be. Actually, none of that was the case. He parted with Dutch Zadie after a very short marriage of less than a year’s duration [1901 or 1902 by this account], he stopped drinking, he was most careful of himself—he never drank or smoked or spent any money at all, but spent the life of a hermit. He lived on the second floor of a house in Kew Gardens [Queens, NY] … His only method of transportation was a bicycle. He complained a good deal over the fact that it was most difficult for him to get into New York City because the bridges were becoming so dangerous for bicycles. The idea of buying an automobile probably didn’t occur to him.

Bobbie::

Oh, he had a car. He used to go to Florida and he had a trailer all fixed up on it and he adored working on it. He would have been happy as a garage mechanic. That was what he enjoyed more than anything.

Shef::

He not only would have been happy as a garage mechanic, but when he was in Florida, he was a garage mechanic. That’s exactly what he did in Florida. He had a small boat down there but he also worked in a garage, but complained to Mother that he had to give up working in a garage because lying on the cement floors gave him arthritis.

Bobbie::

And he was living on the income of his income.

Shef::

By that time, having not spent any of this same Astor money that Helen got, he became extraordinarily well off … He’s still alive … Helen sees him very occasionally … Mother corresponded with Helen about him and said, “Helen, you must see your brother, James.”

 So, Helen asked James to come to 750 Park Avenue, which was where Helen and Teddy [Douglas Robinson] were living at that time. And then James came and asked Helen if he could take her to lunch. Helen said she would be delighted. He said that he ordinarily lunched in New York at a place called Boston’s Beanery, if that suited Helen, and Helen said, “Yes, it would be fine.” Helen said, “I’ve got a car outside.”

 And he said, “Well, that’s fine because I’ve got a bicycle and I’ll just leave my bicycle here—it’s easier than walking. And tell me about both your children!”

 She said, “I’ve got four!”

 He said, “Oh, I’ve followed the newspapers very carefully and noticed that you had two, but I didn’t know about the two others.”

 He knew about Douglas and he knew about Alida, but he didn’t know about the two intervening daughters. He was rather shocked with Helen. He thought she was too modern and too fast and not the sort of person, really, to have as a sister.

What happened to him before he went off this way? What was behind it psychologically?

Shef::

He was probably more or less all right until he married this girl, and then being cut off by his father gave him this queer twist. Mother said he was quite a charming boy up to the age of twenty-one, perfectly capable of a normal life.

Bobbie::

She said he was perfectly terrified that people were going to marry him for his money. He had that very much on his mind—that people were going to “do him in” for his money. Even when he was a small boy, he had that fear.

Tell me about his father “Rosy” Roosevelt. He’s just a name and a shadow to me. I don’t know anything about him … How could he have done that to his son?

Shef::

I can’t imagine. My mother never understood it. She was completely charmed with Cousin Rosy. He was a great influence on her.

Bobbie::

Corinne and I have the theory that she was very much in love with him, but we may be wrong.

Shef::

That’s a theory that Bobbie has, and I don’t believe there’s any weight in it at all, but perhaps it’s so … I’ll tell you a certain amount about him which to me was always fascinating. He married Helen Astor, then Helen Astor died when their daughter Helen was fourteen, and my mother went over. Mother was over there in London for a certain time and then became engaged to Father in 1895. As a matter of fact, Cousin Rosy rather resented Mother’s engagement to Father. He felt that it was somewhat an imposition. They were very happily set up in one establishment, and why should it be broken up? But about that time, or possibly prior to that, Cousin Rosy met Betty [Elizabeth Riley], whose last name I don’t know. Betty was the daughter of a country minister in England and was a salesgirl in Harrod’s. She was very good looking, and Cousin Rosy and Betty set up some sort of an establishment. In fact, after Cousin Rosy finished with the Embassy in London, he moved Betty to this country … They were not married, but they were everything else.

But he was furious when his son married!

Shef::

Yes, yes. Isn’t it queer? Well, as a matter of actual fact, I believe that after he got back to this country my mother told me that he tried to persuade Betty to marry him then. But Betty said, “Oh, no, it wouldn’t do … This is very comfortable, this is fine, but we shouldn’t get married.” Then Cousin Rosy had to have an operation. He was in Poughkeepsie at the time. Cousin Rosy was always a little apprehensive of operations and felt that he was going to die. It was not a very severe operation—I can’t remember the nature of it. He telephoned Mother and asked her if she would come over the day before the operation. Mother got over there and Cousin Rosy said, “I have to have this operation and I know I’m going to die. I’m going to marry Betty first.” That is how he happened to marry Betty. Then the next day he had the operation and two days after he was perfectly well again … And, of course, Betty became a very intimate friend of Sara Delano Roosevelt, Cousin Sally, Franklin’s mother. Cousin Sally was living in the large house at Hyde Park. Then Cousin Betty, Mrs. James [Rosy] Roosevelt, was living in the red house at Hyde Park, the one that Helen now owns. They were only a few hundred yards apart and the two women were more or less of an age…

What did he do for a living?

Shef::

He fiddled around in the diplomatic service; he loved to fish; he used to have a place up in the Upselquitch River and fished salmon up there. He used to fish in Norway. In fact, he used to take Betty over to Norway fishing with him, which is one of the places they were able to set up a little camp and entertain people, and all that sort of thing—Cousin Rosy’s men friends. He loved to shoot. He was a very good shot. He gave me a shotgun at a very early age, which endeared me to him.

Bobbie::

He didn’t ever really do anything except be a gentleman of leisure and have a very pleasant time.

Sheffield::

Cousin Rosy was Franklin’s half-brother. And their father was Dr. James Roosevelt, who lived at Hyde Park. I think he was a doctor but didn’t practice. I could be mistaken [James was, in fact, a lawyer and a businessman]. But in any case, the family decided that my mother should marry him. He was I think, about twenty-five years older than Mother. Mother was taken up to Hyde Park frequently; it was hoped that she would get engaged to Mr. James Roosevelt [Franklin and Rosy’s father]. She couldn’t make up her mind to it and often spoke of how different her life would have been had she acceded to the family’s efforts to get herself engaged to Mr. James Roosevelt in Hyde Park…

Bobbie::

This was when she was quite a young woman, before he married Cousin Sally. Cousin Rosy was about two years older than Mother-in-law.

Shef::

Yes. It’s awfully complicated, that relationship. It’s a very scrambled relationship. That, I believe, to be a correct statement … Mother stated that unequivocally. She always mentioned it as a fact. They never got engaged, but the effort was made.

Who made the effort?

Shef::

I always gathered from Mother that Mr. James Roosevelt, among others, made the effort. And I think my mother’s father was sympathetic to the idea. But I think the original suggestion came from Mr. James Roosevelt. Later on, the family intermarried several times, of course, Franklin and Eleanor; Teddy Robinson and Helen Roosevelt, “Rosy’s” daughter.

But Rosy Roosevelt is still a shadowy figure to me. What did he look like?

Shef::

He looked like King Edward … Charming, a man of the world, very elegant, great fun, a sense of humor. He had a very well-dressed beard.

Bobbie::

A terrible snob! … If you were a friend he’d be as snobbish for you as he was for himself, you know. And if he were selfish, he’d be selfish for you.

Shef::

Mother always said that about him. She said, “Cousin Rosy’s a very selfish man, but if he’s on your side, he’ll be just as selfish for you as he is for himself” … I don’t think that Cousin Rosy had more than a very reasonable amount for those days. I think he must have had something because he never showed the slightest sign of doing any work. Cousin Rosy was always keenly interested in investments. He was one of the Astor trustees, and due to the fact that he was interested in investments he was one of Mother’s trustees for a number of years. I can remember that when I was a very small boy he came up and explained something to Mother which I subsequently understood, but which, at the time, didn’t mean anything to me at all. He had invested in some railroad bonds for her and they had defaulted. He explained that it was really his fault because he hadn’t looked into them enough. He bought them back himself at the price that he had invested in them as a trustee … A very descent, nice thing for him to have done. I imagine he was quite intelligent about investments. I imagine he followed that closely and perhaps did more work than we credit him with. I think perhaps he worked down at the Astor office to a certain extent, but he must have taken it, as they all did in those days, quite lightly. It never interfered with his various sporting activities.

Was his fury at his son because he felt his son had married so terribly, terribly beneath him?

Shef::

It was because he had besmirched the Roosevelt name. He had besmirched Cousin Rosy’s name. I think that’s what he felt and why he turned against his son.

His relationship with the fair Betty was perfectly all right…

Shef::

Oh, that was quite different because that was his own.

Your mother must have given [James “Tadd” Roosevelt] a feeling of family for the first time in many, many years.

Shef::

Oh, yes! It was the first time that he’d seen any member of the family for fully eighteen or twenty years. I think I was about two or three when he became of age, and I was twenty-four or twenty-five when [he] came up to Farmington. It must have been twenty-three years that elapsed between his seeing any members of the family. And it was quite pathetic because [Tadd] told Mother at the time that he himself had a very strong feeling about the family and every year bicycled up to Hyde Park and laid some flowers on his mother’s grave, going past his father’s door to do it! And never stopping in. It’s a fascinating story.

Bobbie::

It was really like Rip Van Winkle. He was astounded at the things we were doing. He was so conservative that smoking was shocking to him. He was shocked that his sister Helen took a glass of sherry before lunch. He had the Victorian ideas of what women did!

Shef::

It was a matter of some discussion whether we ought to ask him whether he would have a cocktail or something of that sort. Mother said, “No, we always have sherry and we’ll ask him to have a glass of sherry with us.” But no, absolutely not—he hadn’t touched it for twenty years! Anyhow, the most peculiar thing in life is the hermit!

Did this gal that he married have any particular job?

Shef::

I think she was a nightclub girl of some sort, or of the theatre. I know that Helen at one time felt that it might be worth exploring the question of what [Tadd] was going to do with his estate. And he said that he had thought that over at great length and had decided to leave the whole thing to the Salvation Army—and that’s the way his will is written. That was when I last heard from him, but that was a little while ago.

** Corinne Robinson Alsop enters **.

Bobbie (to Corinne)::

We were trying to recreate Mother-in-law’s early life. Certainly, she was the one who ran the house—managed it.

Corinne::

When she was fourteen she took over. I don’t think Auntie Bye liked Grandmother [Martha Bulloch] Roosevelt…

Bobbie::

She was slightly jealous of her, maybe, because she adored her father so, or else they were temperamentally unsuited to each other.

Corinne::

They were completely temperamentally unsuited to each other, in every way, from what Mother said. Mother, on the other hand, adored my grandmother in a totally different way from the way she adored my grandfather. Grandfather gave her all the things that he gave your mother—enjoyment, pleasure, fun, excitement, riding, dancing—all of those things. But my grandmother gave Mother instead a great love of beauty. According to Mother, my grandmother had an innate taste of real beauty, whether it was linen, whether it was china, whether it was paintings, whether it was anything that was beautiful. My grandmother who had been brought up an untutored, uneducated—in one sense—a Georgian girl in Savannah at the plantation, she nevertheless, according to Mother, had an innate appreciation and taste. To my mind, from my point of view and all the letters I have, and all my mother told me, she and Aunt Annie Gracie were the people who gave whatever humor we have.

Bobbie::

And the looks.

Corinne::

Well, of course, we never inherited looks, any of us, but whatever looks there were, were there. She was very lovely looking … My grandmother, according to Mother—of course, I never saw her—was really lovely looking. She had a skin as Mother described it always, not like peaches and cream but like coral. It had that coral color of pink. She had black hair that had no grease in it whatsoever, but real black hair, and blue eyes and a wonderful mouth, a perfectly charming smile. I think you can see that in the pictures. She really was an enchanting person. She never was on time for anything. Mother described to me one time when she was in Austria with my grandfather [Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.] and had been invited to go to a great dinner of the Emperor. She had a beautiful dress all ready for this, but she never got dressed in time. She never got there. Then she ordered the coachman, Dan, every afternoon at 3. He would pace up and down—you know how cold it was to sit out on the box—and at 5 they would tell him to go away because she never would get dressed in time to get down. Then she had an absolute passion for cleanliness. Well, it was a phobia. She really must have been just a little crazy, to be perfectly frank, in the last five years. I think she must have been. But my mother never felt that, except in her actions—not in her conversation. Mother always enjoyed Grandmother’s conversation. Mother would, with peals of laughter, tell me the things she would do, and it would sound to me exactly as though she were talking about a crazy person. Not to be able ever to be on time…

Shef::

Grandmother’s management probably drove her nuts.

Corinne::

Nuts! Oh, yes, there was no question about that. But my mother was young and enjoyed her. My mother’s real love, of course, was Mrs. [Anna Louisa Bulloch] Gracie [her maternal aunt]. She was like her mother as far as the relationship went…

Sheffield::

Uncle Jimmy Gracie [James King Gracie] used to appear and bring us lovely toys for Christmas and birthdays.

Corinne::

He was the great angel of the world—and he had money. I don’t know what his business was. He had a place in Oyster Bay and we always went down and spent three weeks with them in the summer right next to Sagamore. But my grandmother, as I say, was the person that my mother enjoyed hugely because of her humor. Her letters show that, much more than anybody else’s in the family. When my mother was coming out my grandmother couldn’t bear the thought of her in late at night and not being sure that it was she. She locked her door at night and then her instructions were that when Mother came home from a dance she’d stand outside the door and say, “How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour.”

Bobbie::

The code signal!

Corinne::

Of course, my grandmother was very calm. Nothing affected, troubled, or bothered her. She never was on time for anything, she never did any of the things that your mother did for her, she just sat and was clean! She had a white chenille net that she wore on her hair to keep the dust out. She always took two baths—one for the soap, and then she got out and it was run again by the maid and she then got in again so as to wash the soap off … Then when anybody came to see her if she was in a bed a large sheet was put down, particularly if the doctor came. And when she said her prayers a sheet was put down so that she wouldn’t touch the floor.

Shef::

She was crazy!

Corinne::

Oh, yes, of course, she was; but crazy, according to my mother, in a perfectly delightful, charming and very companionable way. She told stories better than anybody. According to Mother, her ability to describe something was inimitable. And so it was with Auntie Gracie. Both of them had this humor. Now if you look at the letters, the thing that to my mind is interesting is that my grandfather’s were fine, good and sound; but my grandmother’s letters were terribly funny.

How true was it that your grandmother once hung out the Confederate flag from the 20th Street house after a Southern victory?

Corinne::

I should think it was probably very true, but I don’t know. From what I can gather about my grandmother, I think it might have been very true. I always felt, you know, that Uncle Ted [TR] was belligerent because my grandfather didn’t go to war. He was ready to volunteer for anything and everything … I think it was always a real—not exactly a shame—but he felt he had to explain … about the father he admired so hugely…

Did your mother ever tell you anything about those Civil War years? They must have been very difficult.

Corinne::

Well, of course Mother was no age at all during those years. She was born in 1861 … Life in the Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. family when the children were young is not so gay at all. Everybody is always very sick. Uncle Ted [TR] is always very sick, everybody is sick, the whole time. Someone is always just getting over something that’s perfectly awful…

The relations of your mother [Corinne] to her sister Anna were very close, weren’t they?

Corinne::

Oh, she adored Auntie Bye. There was 7 years’ difference between them. They were totally different types, to my mind, completely different types … Mother was much more of a dreamy character than your mother (to Shef)…

Bobbie::

Mother-in-law was intensely practical and intensely “on the ball,” so to speak, about everything. And rather impatient about people who weren’t equally so.

Shef::

She didn’t suffer fools gladly…

Corinne::

But she suffered fools gladly very sweetly in front of their faces. In front of them she suffered them beautifully.

Shef::

I never knew anybody who could demolish a character for you in about two sentences as quickly as Mother did. She did it completely. She didn’t do it to everybody; it wasn’t back-biting at all. But if she decided that somebody really needed the knife, she could give it to them in a couple of sentences. She could change my feeling forever about that person by saying two sentences, and quite often did. Am I correct in that, Corinne…

Corinne::

I had quite a time with your mother. The thing with me was that you never would have been able to tell anything except just that she was perfectly devoted to me. I think she was devoted to me.

Bobbie::

I know she was.

Corinne::

But on the other hand, when I first came up here, on account of her devotion to Joe [Corinne’s deceased husband Joseph Alsop IV] she thought I was young—which I was—and not up to the job, really, in one sense, and she also thought I liked New York—which I did. And I heard these things that she was saying. And my aunt, Mrs. Cowles, was a person who could frighten you, don’t you think so, Shef? She was such a tremendous personality that you wanted to be in her favor, you know.

Shef::

Well, she could so tremendously influence people if you weren’t in her favor. She could do it indelibly. She couldn’t undo it afterwards. She had done it. She had done it in a couple of sentences, very quickly.

Bobbie::

And you could never think of that person any other way than in those two sentences. It was a most devastating quality that she had.

Shef::

And it was always done with a lot of humor … It would make you laugh at the time, but you’d never forget it … Among Mother’s nephews and nieces of your generation, Corinne, she had some very distinct favorites. Teddy Robinson was one … Kermit Roosevelt was very much one. Alice was very much one. F.D.R., curiously enough.

Bobbie::

That was through Eleanor.

Shef::

Not entirely. It was on his own. She always thought he was charming and debonair…

Corinne::

One of the most fascinating evenings I’ve ever spent in my life was here with Franklin, your mother, and Mr. [William Amory Gardner the co-founder of Groton School for Boys]. Mrs. Cowles was, of course, in her wheelchair, Franklin was in his wheelchair, and Mr. [A]mory Gardner was going backwards up these stairs reading Trollope because he had a heart condition. He could go up only very slowly so he took Trollope with him. The three were the gayest, most delicious things you’ve ever known in your life. Franklin hurled himself from his wheelchair into a little tiny wheelchair—I don’t know how he did it—and Auntie Bye had this [hearing aid, a] huge box, you know, because she was always so very, very deaf, and they were so gay and so delightful and so enchanting that evening that it will always be a red-letter evening in my life. You felt such gallantry in all of them, you know, such humor, such complete elimination of any problem about bodies.

I’ve heard this extraordinary story of her death. Is it true? That she came down to serve tea?

Bobbie::

Oh, she did. The day before her death.

Corinne::

We were out playing golf, do you remember? Well, we three and Helen Scarth [Mrs. Cowles’s personal secretary] had just been taking turns all the time with Auntie Bye because she was dying, and we all knew that she was dying.

Shef::

So, did she.

Corinne::

Oh, she knew she was dying, too. We had all been with her a very great deal and therefore had been housed also. It was a perfectly beautiful afternoon and Shef and Bobbie and I decided to go out for a half an hour and play a few holes of golf. Helen Scarth was going to remain here. We’d gotten to the second hole when suddenly we saw this car come right near that pond. Helen Scarth got out of the car, came over to us and said that we must return immediately, because Mrs. Cowles had made up her mind that she was coming down and going to be at tea. She always had tea at that time in the front room, so the service was always brightly shining—and it was a rite. So, Bobbie and Shef and I got into the car with Helen and dashed back. We got here to the door—it’s as vivid to me as though it were yesterday. We got here to the door and Hopkinson [Mrs. Cowles’s butler] was pushing her down the hallway and into the other room. There was this woman who you knew was dying! She was taken in and put in front of the tea-tray. We went in—at least only I went in for one moment, because of course it was absolutely impossible for her to do anything—and in a few minutes she was taken back again. But it was just a definite compulsion to go through the thing that she had gone through every day. And that night, or…

Shef and Bobbie (together)::

Early the next morning…

Corinne::

She died. Is that right? Is that what you would have said?

Bobbie::

Absolutely…

Corinne::

I’m so glad to have you and Bobbie to corroborate that, because it was so terrific that I have felt all these years as though I might have been making it up.

Shef::

No, it happened. It happened. I remember it.

Bobbie::

I’ll never, never forget that.

Corinne::

It was the most dramatic thing that I had ever seen.

Bobbie::

You had to go through with your part of it, you see. We had to be there as though we were having tea and as though nothing were going on. We had to play our part with her in it, which was the thing that was so terrific! You knew the pain that she was in, you knew that she was dying and yet you must ignore it, because she was ignoring it. It was perfectly magnificent!

9 December 1954

I’d like very much to hear about the trip you took with Mrs. Robinson to the Republican National Convention in 1920.

Corinne::

I went out with my mother and with my brother and sister-in-law, Theodore and Helen Robinson, and a number of gay other people who were going out. You know, conventions were not completely serious at that period!

 We got out to the Blackstone [Hotel] and were assigned our rooms, then came one of the most exciting weeks that I’ve ever been through, because of course we were all working very hard for Leonard Wood. There was Leonard Wood, who had an enormous headquarters; there was [California Senator Hiram] Johnson, who had an enormous headquarters; and there was [Illinois Governor] Frank Lowden who also had a headquarters—so there were three of them who were attempting to be nominated for the presidency. We went to all kinds of thrilling and exciting things, and there was a great deal of those at headquarters, but I’m afraid I was not too much help to Mother because Mother said at the end of the week that the only thing she could really remember about me was a very small, very wet little pile of underclothes in the middle of the floor when she woke up in the morning because … it was so unbelievably hot. It was one of those terrible Chicago heat waves.

 I think that Mother took the place, really, by storm when she did the seconding of the nomination of Leonard Wood. It was extraordinary! But by that time it was recognized that the probability was that neither Johnson nor Leonard Wood would be satisfactory to the organization … So, we went through all the agonies and all the excitement; but at the end, of course, Warren Harding was nominated.

 One incident that fascinated me was a call that we made. Mrs. Parsons, who was Mother’s most intimate friend, was out there and tremendously enthusiastic about Leonard Wood. She, my mother, and I … decided we would go and see [Warren Harding]. He had no real headquarters, only a tiny room. He had the most pale-faced, tragic looking little character who was the only person in charge. She happened to go up in the elevator with us, otherwise we would never have been able to find his room. We went down a long corridor with the pale-faced creature and found Mr. Harding, who at that time was Senator [of Ohio]. He who was a candidate whom nobody wanted, nobody in the whole place wanted, whom nobody really thought of at all. We paid a call on him … We went into this little room and there he was with his large white shirt-front-bland, patronizing in a certain way, you know. He was a curious, strange character. Then, of course, came the great convention … and during the convention the decision was made to shift every one of the votes to Warren Harding. We then went back to our rooms perfectly desperate and depressed. My last sight of Chicago was … as we were getting on the train, this frock-coated character, Warren Harding, walking down the platform, looking like the cat that had swallowed the canary. He came up to my mother and said, “You made a very remarkable speech. I wish that it had been for me.”

 Mother looked up and said, “But it couldn’t have been for you!”

 He couldn’t have been taken aback by anything. You know, he had that kind of bland, white-shirted front, both mentally and physically. That was in July of 1920. Warren Gamaliel Harding. I think his name alone was just impossible!

Please tell me something more about your mother. She must have meant a lot to the people who knew her.

Corinne::

It was extraordinary, that feeling in all the letters that came after her death—that feeling that she was the important person in their lives due to some instant in which she had been able to give them help or understanding or sympathy. And she was a person you wanted not just merely for sympathy in any sorrow … Mother you wanted for the fun of life! She was so gay, she had such zest, such a wonderful sense of humor and such a delight in companionship.

 I remember when my oldest boy, Joe [Alsop V], who hated anything like a dancing-class or anything of that kind; he was a fat, little, completely uncoordinated little boy who had the most tremendous interest in all kinds of beautiful things with the greatest observation of any child I’ve ever seen. I made up my mind that I would have him in dancing lessons because I felt it was so important for him to learn to move better and to have greater coordination. It meant my taking him over the mountain and home again once a week … It was a ball-room where there were red chairs, great chandeliers, red damask curtains … that part rather fascinated Joe. But to see him dance was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

 Mother was in New York, and I just couldn’t bear to see this thing myself. I longed to share it with Mother, so I telegraphed her and asked her whether by any chance she could come up … So, she did, and Joe never knew that … we were absolutely in hysterics. I don’t think I have ever laughed so in my life, Mother and I together. Joe never realized it. Then she came home and spent the night. We have the most wonderful time! That’s just merely an example—not any craving or longing to have her with me because I was sad, but I just wanted to share something with her that was so funny…

 She always had people at the house. It was just a Mecca for every kind of person. One of the entries in her engagement book was on, let’s say, the 16 December. There were things that she was doing, she was speaking, there were entertainments of all kinds, people at dinner, etc. She always wrote out everything that she was thinking, even in her engagement book. So, she put down on top of December 16 page for the evening, “Want to be alone.”

 That night, after it she wrote, “Couldn’t be alone,” and then she described all the people who had come for dinner. The humor of it!

 And then she and I had the most heavenly time when I was down there for just one day. I wasn’t very apt to go down often. On her pin-cushion there was a piece of paper. On it said, “Remember Mary.” She always was writing notes to herself, in every direction. I came down about three days later and below “Remember Mary” was “Who is Mary?”

 I lay down on the bed absolutely in hysterics. Josephine [her maid] was helping her to get dressed, the telephone was ringing and everything was happening of every variety. We sat down and I said, “Now, darling, we’ve just got to sit down and try to remember who Mary is. I don’t want to come down another week and find, “Can’t remember Mary.”

 We did a lot of work as to who Mary was, but we never found out. Oh, how I laughed! I would no more think of putting down in writing, “Who is Mary?” than the man in the moon! I don’t know anybody who would write out those words.

28 December 1954

Tell us more of the relationship of Mrs. Cowles and Mrs. Robinson with Mrs. TR. That’s fascinating to me. I recognize that in the early years they felt they had to move very gingerly.

Bobbie::

Oh, very! Because, they said, that if in any way they jeopardized that relationship they’d lose it with Uncle Theodore.

What did they feel about the marriage in the first place?

Bobbie::

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Mother-in-law discuss that very much. Of course, she loved Alice, the first wife. She said she was an enchanting creature, but I think Mother-in-law, by and large, felt his marriage with Aunt Edith had been a great thing in his life. I don’t think I ever heard her critical along that line … I think they felt not only that they had to go gingerly with Aunt Edith, but they had to go very gingerly with the children. That Aunt Edith didn’t want any other influence on the children [and] that they had to be very careful how they acted with them or advised them—no interference…

 The children were here a great deal … Mother-in-law was very, very fond of Kermit. I don’t think she was ever fond of Archie. She was always rather critical about Archie, and she didn’t like Gracie [Hall , Eleanor’s brother] very much. She loved Ethel, was devoted to Ethel … Archie and Gracie were here very rarely. Kermit and Belle [his wife] were here a good deal. Ethel was always here a good deal. And Ted and [his wife] Eleanor less often, but then Ted in those years was being very active and was everywhere else but this country … And Eleanor [Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt] would always make every effort to come up here, quite frequently. And I think she discussed things a great deal with Mother-in-law. I think that all the nephews and nieces felt what I feel—her great wisdom. And I think they often, when they had problems, wanted to talk them out with her. Mother-in-law had brought Eleanor up, to a certain extent, after her father [Elliott] died, so she always had a very, very warm place in her heart for Eleanor.

One could get that from Mrs. [Eleanor ] Roosevelt’s autobiography…

Bobbie::

You know Uncle Elliott died in a strange way … Didn’t he fall off a coach, going up Broadway? I think so. And he was taken first to his mistress’s apartment on Riverside Drive; and when they went to move him from there, there was a large portrait of his wife on the mistress’s bureau, which was rather a fascinating combination of things! But that’s the way the accident happened. Mother-in-law was told the story…

I got the picture of his having been ill for quite a long time and moving out to Long Island somewhere…

Bobbie::

I gathered from Mother-in-law that the accident was the cause of his death, and prior to his death there was the difficulty of removing him from his mistress’s place … He was in Paris for quite a while. They all were living in Paris. There is a big batch of letters about that. That was a very difficult time, when Anna [Mrs. Cowles] was living in Paris with the children [Eleanor and Gracie] and Elliott was behaving so badly … There were gals everywhere, always. I know Mother-in-law used to say that it was kind of like a continued story, and she always thought she should call it “La Nounou et le Caporal,” which was apparently a continued story which came out when she was at school in Paris as a young girl; and she used to say that the latest instalments would come in these letters from Paris.

I think that when TR was Police Commissioner there was a crisis and he had to go over to do something about it.

Bobbie::

I think there was. Mother-in-law was always very reserved about all those times. She kept all the letters. At her death I sent them all on to Eleanor.5 She felt that Eleanor ought to know the whole story … Elliott had evidently been very charming, apart from the unfortunate thing with the drink.

Mrs. Alsop found a diary of his, with two entries, one at the time of his father’s death; apparently Elliott was the only one of the family who stayed the whole of the 13 hours with his father when he was in his death agony … And then, at the end of it, he suddenly realized that he had promised Theodore to let him know if there was any danger. In the throes of everything he had not done it, and hoped that Theodore would forgive him … What is it in the Roosevelts that alcohol so often gets them?

Bobbie::

Corinne and I have often, often discussed that with the thought that our children might fall heir to it. The women never seem to crack up. They go on triumphantly. But the men are the ones who, if they can’t get the goals that they set themselves, go to pieces. They all have such strong vitality and with it goes a strong ambition, I think. And if that ambition in some sense or other is not fulfilled, they seem to crack up.

I suspect that TR recognized the danger in himself, that’s why he practically never touched alcohol.

Bobbie::

I think that may be. I think it often is, when you have the example … [Kermit Roosevelt] was the most tragic of all. Kermit I really loved. He was the one of all the boys that Shef and I were the closest to.

I think that in his case he was frustrated with his career.

Bobbie::

I think that had something to do with it, and also the malaria that he had, had a good deal to do with it. You know he never lost those bouts with malaria that I suppose he got in Africa or in India or in South America. He might have gotten it in any of those trips. I have seen him at dinner—he would never go to bed no matter what fever he had—and I have seen him with the perspiration literally spouting like a fountain out of his forehead, and you knew he had a raging fever, but he would not give in to it for a minute. I’m not sure that that didn’t undermine his system to the extent that the alcohol took hold more easily … Kermit really should have been in the army. He was the type of fearless person. He was at the height of his life when he could brave everything that was coming his way … He was absolutely in the wrong groove. And he had so much to offer, too! Again, he had a great capacity for friendship…

In your mind, how does Alice Longworth fit into this whole family picture?

Bobbie::

Of course, she’s a most engaging and fascinating character to me … I simply adore her. I think everybody, everyone in the family adores her [and] is a little bit frightened of her. She can be very crisp when she feels like it … very caustic, indeed. She never will write … It’s one of her “isms.” You very much wonder whether she’ll open the letter if you write it, so you don’t usually write her. If I have occasion to write her, I usually write on the outside: “Maybe you’ll be interested in the inside; but, if not, throw it away.” And that usually makes her at least go that far and take it out of the envelope … On the other hand, the moment anything happens, nice or otherwise, she’s on the telephone; and you know that she is devoted to you and you know that the moment you see her you’ll have the most glorious time with her … Alice is just a law unto herself and letters are just one of the things she won’t cope with. But she will go to any amount of pains for you. There’s nothing she won’t do for you. Oh, Shef and I love her!

I’d love to know some of the constructive things that have been effected through her in Washington.

Bobbie::

That would be much harder for me to give you any help on. It would be through her friendships with, of course, [President of the United Mine Workers] John L. Lewis, with [Idaho Senator William] Borah, with [Ohio Senator] Bob Taft—those were all intimate friends of hers.

And yet she speaks awfully snootily of Bob Taft.

Bobbie::

She turned against Bob Taft toward the last year or two of his life. Up to that point she adored him … I don’t know what happened there … Because even when we were still in Washington at the end of the war, he was very intimate. You never dined with Alice that Bob and Martha [Taft] weren’t there. I don’t know what issue they split on, because she was isolationist, of course, and so was Bob. It might possibly—this is just guesswork—have something to do with the Taft-Hartley [Act that restricted labor union activity].

You mean that John L. Lewis might have influenced her?

Bobbie::

On that basis … Alice has never been a very constructive person. She has always been destructive, has always been agin something. I’ve never really heard her for something … The one purpose that came into her life was Paulina. That made all the difference to Alice, I think, having that child. She had always been very scornful about children or talking about children. I think she’d always wanted children very, very much. And then, when she had Paulina it brought purpose to her life. When Paulina married a man that she didn’t care for in the beginning—it was a great blow to her—then she forced herself into taking him and making a friendship there, which she did … Alice is rather more a cat that walks by herself, though, than any other member of the family. Alice can be away from people for months on end and it doesn’t bother her … Do you know, she told us once in Washington that her father had never spoken of her mother to her … That’s the most extraordinary thing, I think…

Can you say anything about Eleanor —Mrs. FDR—and her part in this whole picture?

Bobbie::

I think probably Corinne has already told you that that generation all felt terribly badly when she got engaged to Franklin. They all had been a good deal together and they felt that Franklin wasn’t up to her … Corinne had written in her diary, I think, she’ll tell you this, that she went for a drive with Franklin. They were all down at Orange [NJ] … Eleanor, Franklin, Helen [Roosevelt Robinson] and a whole group of young ones, and that she’d gone for a drive with Franklin and in her diary, she wrote, “He was very charming, but the truth is not in him.” Which I think is very amusing. That was her reaction to him at that young age, I suppose they were seventeen or eighteen around then. And I know that Corinne was devoted to Eleanor and I know that was her feeling at the time.

In what way would she feel that? I’m just curious.

Bobbie::

I don’t know. But he was thoroughly un-liked by his own college contemporaries. He told Shef something that interested me: When they came back from the war—the First World War—Shef was detached from the Marine Corps to be Franklin’s aide just to get him back to college. Strings were pulled to have that happen, and on the boat coming back, Franklin told him the greatest disappointment of his life was not making the Porcellian [an all-male student club at Harvard University]. Franklin was Assistant Secretary of the Navy at that point; he was a man of thirty-five, and that still rankled…

As I gather from Mrs. Alsop’s autobiography … she felt that Eleanor was quite indifferent to Franklin for a long time.

Bobbie::

I think that may have been. I think it did take him quite a while to persuade her. I think I remember her telling us that. But, of course, all that era I only heard from hearsay. I think that with Eleanor, I don’t think the relationship could have been quite satisfactory or she wouldn’t have gone so hard for causes. And I know that Mr. [Endicott] Peabody [Founder and Headmaster of Groton School for Boys], [found Eleanor difficult]. My boy [William Sheffield Cowles III] went [to Groton] and I was up one weekend when Eleanor was there with one of her lady friends. When I went in to see Mr. Peabody, I said, “What’s the latest success story?”

 And Mr. Peabody replied, “Thank heaven you take that attitude because Eleanor always comes and asks me what’s been going wrong with her children!”

 I know that Mr. Peabody felt very strongly that she took the attitude that all her children were going to turn out badly instead of they are going to turn out well.

Wasn’t it because Sara Delano took over?

Bobbie::

That was a terribly difficult relationship for poor Eleanor to grapple with. They have a door-through between their two houses and Cousin Sally could come in any moment. That must have been very hard. She gave them their house and she had the house next door and on one floor you could go from one house to the other. And then of course their summer was always spent at Hyde Park where they were in the house with Cousin Sally.

** William Sheffield Cowles enters **

What was the relationship between the Franklin Roosevelts and Mrs. Cowles in later years?

Shef::

Oh, I think they were always very close. And, mother, of course, had the highest regard for Franklin. She always considered him a very charming, debonair person and was very fond of him … She was all for him when he was Governor of New York. And enthusiastic about him, and very fond of Eleanor. And Eleanor was very fond of her.

Bobbie::

Mr. Hagedorn asked me: Eleanor never lived formally with your mother?

Shef::

She was with her a great deal, but I don’t think she ever lived formally with Mother. To tell you the truth, I can’t remember. When I was in the Marine Corps in the First World War, after the armistice, I became Franklin’s aide in Paris. And after a few months in Paris, we came back on the boat together, and I saw a great deal of Eleanor on the boat coming back. And Eleanor always told me that she patterned her reading a great deal after my mother’s reading. And mother always had a great influence on her from the point of view of certain types of reading.

Bobbie::

Mother-in-law always kept a pile of books she called her “mental maneure”—ones you couldn’t read right through, but were there to sort of fertilize your mind to go on to other reading. I always loved that expression and I always have a pile on my own right table of the same variety. She read as widely as all the rest of the family. Always piles of books on the chair in the front room. She read a great deal.

Did she read as rapidly as her brother?

Shef::

I don’t think she had quite the memory her brother had, but she was an omniferous reader.

Bobbie::

She always complained that she hadn’t had any education, but was the most cultivated person imaginable.

 I’m just going to say of all the reading that is done, Alice is the most extraordinary, probably in our generation. I think maybe some of Ted’s boys have that same quality—for instance she’s very knowledgeable about Gypsy law and language. When we were in Washington, a big group of gypsies appeared at the hospital. One of them was ill and they all camped in the hospital and all around it. And the only person who could keep them calm and quiet was Alice, to go down and tell them everything was all right. She knew how to talk to them and what to do and in Greek. She has the most extraordinary knowledge because she reads till four and five and six every day, every night. She’s never up in the mornings, never before eleven and even that’s a little early for her. But she’ll come up here and you’ll see by the number of cigarettes she smoked, what hour she probably has read. And out will come the queerest things out of the bookshelves that Alice decided to read that night. She really has an extraordinary knowledge … You’ll find every kind of queer sideline she’s gone down. She’s done great reading in Hindu philosophy, for instance. The facets of what she’s been interested in is just extraordinary. You can hardly find a subject that you won’t find Alice hasn’t—at some moment—given a real reading to. And she, of course, also has a wonderful memory.

Now look here—you’re opening up something entirely new! We’ve only seen Alice from the outside, so far…

Bobbie::

Well, you’ll find that if you bring up almost any subject that Alice will have gone rapidly through it at some point in her career. It’s great fun to talk to her about. And she also has miles and miles of poetry by heart, the way that all that family have…

Tell me about her friendship with John L. Lewis . Was there anything constructive there in their relationship at all?

Bobbie::

I wouldn’t really know that well enough. We were only there [in Washington] for two years watching Alice operate in Washington, otherwise I’ve just seen her when she’s come through. But a thing of going to her house: they were the ones you almost always met there. Alice is a great one for having a few people for lunch and at the club and always one or the other would be—she’d always have people without their husbands or wives—they’re just much easier that way. You bump into one or the other inevitably.

Can you tell us about Nick Longworth, her husband?

Bobbie::

Well, of course, Nick was very interesting. He must have been an extraordinary person. I never knew him. He died before I had known Alice. I think it was a pretty dim [marriage], in one sense. Nick was always very keen about other ladies. He was, according to Shef, a most extraordinary person. He got no sleep. He always drank very heavily, but not to the point he was obnoxious. But he would be up all night and would be up early to the House [of Representatives], dapper as could be. He always looked, even after the latest kind of night, as if he’d just stepped out of a long happy night’s sleep. And, of course, he was very musical, which Alice isn’t. He played the violin beautifully. And he loved to gamble. At one-point, Alice rather enjoyed that but I think she got tired of that. She still likes Bridge, but they used to play poker till all hours. I remember a story Shef always told of being down there when he was in the First World War when he had come up from Quantico or Parris Island or something in the Marines Corps and he went on a picnic with them … Nick was lying, chatting with a lady, I think perhaps they were even holding hands or something. And Alice, walking by and [the lady with Nick] looking up and saying, “Oh, hello Mrs. Longworth,” in this kind of formal fashion, as Nick was being very intimate with her on the ground, amused Shef as a young man intensely. I think probably Alice’s real relationship was with [U.S. Senator William] Borah. I think the family have always felt that probably Paulina [Longworth] was Borah’s daughter rather than Nick’s.

She played a decisive part in the debate over the League of Nations.

Shef::

She was very against that … I was extremely surprised, in coming back to this country at the end of the First World War, over Alice’s attitude on the League of Nations. As I said before, I had been an aide to Franklin Roosevelt. We had been over there and we came back on the same boat as President Wilson and Mrs. Wilson. We heard nothing but the League of Nations—and the great advantages of the League of Nations. I went straight down to Washington and stayed with Alice [upon returning home] and reported everything I heard about the League of Nations and she immediately broke down my arguments in favor of the League of Nations. In fact, she completely changed me on it in no time at all. My mind was not at all fond of it. But I was extremely surprised from being in one media in which the League of Nations was the ultimate and desirable thing to attain to Alice’s house where I found it was the absolute worst thing in their opinion that we could do for this country.

Did she feel it was getting involved in foreign entanglements?

Shef::

I think no. I think it was more because she was violently anti-Wilson. I think her politics were somewhat on a personal basis. She was dead against Wilson and Wilson was for the League and she was against the League. And, I think, that lined her up with [Senator Henry] Cabot Lodge who was a natural friend of hers anyway through family friendship. And I think she worked very hard for and with Senator Lodge in trying to defeat the League. I think that [her anti-League work] was the strongest, single political point that Alice was keen about…

Bobbie::

I haven’t heard her get very excited about any political issue. Of course, she was deadly against Franklin.

Shef::

She was dead against Franklin.

Bobbie::

You know, she’s a wonderful mimic and she does Eleanor to the Queen’s taste. And it got around Washington that she was doing it, so Eleanor asked her to [do it] for her, which she did … She’d do Bob Taft for you…

It’s too bad her political influences have all been on the negative side.

Shef::

And she was quite a friend of various people like [Michigan Senator] Homer Ferguson, who we met at her house, occasionally. John L. Lewis we met at her house. Speaker [Joseph W.] Martin was in her house occasionally. She saw a great deal of the Republican top political group in Washington and had them around to the house a lot.

Bobbie::

My, she had a queer life in those days. She had nobody in the house. [Nick died in 1931, Paulina went to boarding school in 1938, and then college before getting married shortly thereafter]. Everything came in the evening. A butler came in in the evening. A cook came in. All the queerest. If she’s lonely it’s of her own choice. I mean, I think people are very devoted to her.

Shef::

She always led very queer hours. She believed the time for reading was from 11 o’clock or 11:30 pm on. And she would read until 6 in the morning and got up very late. I can remember one-time she was staying up here and she arrived that afternoon, had dinner with us, and we chatted at dinner until about 11 o’clock and she went up. The next day when she appeared, which I would say was for a very late lunch, she had by that time read one book that was in the room she was in, which is my mother’s room … and had gone through the good part of another [book]. In other words, she read until about 6 in the morning.

 And in Washington she led very curious hours. She wouldn’t get up until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Tea in the afternoon was her first appearance. It’s very hard to get her in the mornings. She has curious idiosyncrasies. She never answers a letter. She hardly ever answers a telegram. A telegram is the only hope if you wish to get an answer out of Alice. She’s perfect on the telephone…

I was asking [Bobbie] in the afternoon about your mother’s relationship with Mrs. [Edith] Roosevelt—[if] Mrs. Robinson and Anna [Mrs. Cowles] were scared of Mrs. Roosevelt.

Shef::

I had a feeling she was always on a slightly cautious basis with Aunt Edith, but on the other hand, I think so much had gone by that time that it mellowed somewhat. Wouldn’t you think Mags?

Bobbie::

Well, they had a great admiration for each other … I think with Aunt Corinne, she was devoted to [her sister] but very impatient. I think [Mrs. Cowles] thought that Aunt Corinne was too sentimental. And I think somehow—she always a little implied that if you could be that spilling over that the emotion in back of it wasn’t very deep. That was a little bit her implication about Corinne. “Darling Corinne, she’s putting it on—she’s acting out, but I don’t think it really means that much to her, as she makes out it does.” I don’t think that was true in Aunt Corinne’s case. I think Aunt Corinne was far, far more accepting of Mother-in-law in her affection as Mother-in-law was about Corinne.

Shef::

I think that’s true. Yes, Mother, I think, was distinctly reserved in her feeling about Aunt Corinne. Slightly critical, perhaps that’s a better way. I never thought Aunt Corinne was critical about Mother, but I always felt that Mother had a slightly critical feeling about Aunt Corinne…

Bobbie::

Mr. Hagedorn was asking me about the reaction of the family when Eleanor married Franklin. Can you remember anything about that?

Shef::

I can remember the wedding. Just slightly … I had a feeling that it was one of those marriages that was more or less arranged by both branches of the family … I think Corinne was rather anti-FDR at that time. She didn’t like him much. They rather felt that he wasn’t one of them, somehow or another. That sort of feeling they never entertained about Helen Roosevelt [who was] thoroughly accepted. But FDR not. Mother was always a great friend of Cousin Sally [FDR’s mother] and always got on very well with her. Oh, very well. They were very chummy, very close. Mother used to go up for rather long visits to Cousin Sally at Campobello in the summer.

** Corinne Robinson Alsop enters **

Can you give me a picture of the house where Eleanor Roosevelt was brought up by her grandmother and aunts?

Corinne::

It was a house on 37th Street with one gas jet in the hall and a staircase that went up straight—you know. They went to Tivoli, New York, in the summers. The Hudson River was beautiful, so that part was very good for them when Eleanor and [her brother Gracie] Hall were growing up.

 I’m a little bit concerned about saying these things, on account of Eleanor. Now these are things that I heard, not things that I know.

Bobbie::

All of this, Corinne, is confidential, nothing that will be appearing to hurt Eleanor, and much that explains her! That she was called “Granny” by her aunts would condition a child to a role that none should ever be made to play, don’t you think?

Corinne::

Her mother died when she was 8 and her father a year and a half later. After her mother’s death she and her two brothers lived with their grandmother in that 37th Street house.

Bobbie::

Eleanor didn’t go into the really horrible aspects of her childhood in her book. She knew she’d had a ghastly childhood but she really didn’t realize how ghastly it was.

Corinne::

I told her perfectly frankly after she gave her book [This is My Story] to me, “I have never imagined anything as stark and as grim as the description you give of your childhood.” I think it was a perfectly extraordinary book.

 She went abroad to school, to the same school I went to [Allenswood Boarding Academy]. That was her salvation.

Bobbie::

That gave her the chance to be on her own for the first time.

Corinne::

That wasn’t the important thing, really. It was the question of Mlle. [Marie] Souvestre, who loved her, understood her, made much of her and gave her tremendous responsibilities. She was really the head pupil, the person Mlle. Souvestre counted on and made the favorite…

What kind of woman was Mlle . Souvestre.

Corinne::

She was one of the most curious people … My aunt, Mrs. Cowles, was at her school near Paris. Then in the 1870s after the 1870 [Franco-Prussian] War she moved over to England. I went to that school in 1901. She had already been established for 25 years over in England.

 [Souvestre] was an enchanting person. She was not as tall as she should have been for her remarkable head. It was a beautiful face but it was a big face, a face for a person of real stature, a sculpted face, and her body was not tall enough for the beauty of the face. She had never married. She’d had delightful friendships with many intellectually prominent people of that period. The library was one of the most remarkable rooms that I’ve ever remembered, and there were [Pierre] Puvis de Chavanne pictures and books of all kinds. Her father had been Emile Souvestre who wrote a French book called “Le Philosophe sous les Toits.” She was intimate with Charles Wagner and with the Stracheys; I went to lunch with her with [British novelist] Mrs. [Mary Augusta] Ward and I met many of the Stracheys. She had a real—well, not a salon; I don’t mean that—but she was recognized at that period as being a very remarkable person.

 She was an unusual person, in one sense, for a headmistress, because she always had favorites. Eleanor happened to be a very great favorite, and because I was Eleanor’s first cousin, I then became a favorite. Every evening she and I would read aloud. Oh, she was the most stimulating, exciting person that you could ever imagine. It gave Eleanor love and it gave her tremendous interests…

Then you must have been with her quite a lot during your own childhood?

Corinne::

She came to and fro. She was a person somewhat apart. She didn’t seem to have any sense of humor, you know. Do you have to put that down?

Why didn’t anybody ever do anything about her teeth?

Corinne::

Her grandmother was old. I always used to laugh and tease Mother about it.

I suppose there was not too much money at that time in the Hall family.

Bobbie::

Well, I’m fifty-four, Corinne, and I’m passionately interested in my grandchildren’s teeth and various portions of their anatomy.

Corinne::

Well, you probably haven’t had two drunken sons and four very beautiful, fatiguing daughters, and you are not having your grandchildren right there with you every moment.

Shef::

Eleanor and Hall [her brother] always had a certain amount of money.

I was wondering why Mrs. Robinson or Mrs. Cowles didn’t do something about it—or Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt?

Corinne::

I always told Mother that I thought she had been completely derelict in her duty, so I don’t know. I think it was terrible.

Bobbie::

I don’t know what you could do except pull them out.

Corinne::

Oh, no. She could have had them all straightened. Oh, it was terrible, Shef, that she didn’t have it done!…

Shef::

Well, she’s had them out now and they look much better.

Bobbie::

Mr. Hagedorn was also asking me about the feeling in the family when Eleanor got engaged to Franklin. I said you all had been very depressed about it. Is that right? That was the impression I got from you all—that you didn’t like Franklin.

Corinne::

Oh, no, I don’t think you can say that.

Bobbie::

You told me of that part in your diary about Franklin…

Corinne::

I know, but I wasn’t depressed about it; because I loved Franklin in one way. I was awfully fond of him, but I just thought he was a hypocrite.

Bobbie::

I thought you hadn’t approved of it when Eleanor got engaged to him. Was I wrong on that?

Corinne::

Oh, no, I never did not approve of that.

Shef::

I thought you felt that Franklin wasn’t one of the boys, so to speak.

Corinne::

He certainly wasn’t one of the boys. But it wasn’t the question of my disapproving of Eleanor marrying Franklin, as far as he not being one of the boys…

Shef::

Why wasn’t he accepted at that time?

Corinne::

I never can describe Franklin to anybody. He was just—well, as I told you before, he was called Feather Duster. He was so completely superficial then. He did no athletics at all. I mean if he got on a tennis court, he couldn’t do anything. He had such peculiar friends, Shef. He was the type of person who just didn’t make attractive friends. He was just not in the group of attractive friends. You can look at [his roommate at Harvard] Lathrop Brown, you can look at any of those men that he saw at that time … It’s awfully difficult to say exactly what I’m trying to say; but he didn’t have the fundamental reality about him. He had very, very narrow eyes, you know, very, very sloping shoulders. He was handsome … this is perfectly awful to put on a recorder!

This can be sealed.

Corinne::

Well, let’s for heaven’s sake seal it!

 There used to be satin handkerchief boxes—did you ever know those satin handkerchief boxes? … And on the top of them there were painted figures with a gentleman dancing a minuet with a handkerchief in his hand, you know, just doing this way [illustrating]. In our family we called a certain type of “handkerchief box-y,” which meant a kind of dainty quality…

You mean effeminate?

Corinne::

No, Franklin wasn’t effeminate. I don’t think you can say that. But he wasn’t rugged. There was nothing that was—well, as Shef said, “one of the boys.” He really didn’t have that quality … I told you all that I was terribly surprised by my own diary because I hadn’t remembered much about Eleanor’s engagement as to when and how and what. I also had rather visualized the feeling that Franklin was handsome and Eleanor was plain and that Eleanor had loved and Franklin hadn’t particularly. I had remembered that he had always been fascinated by a pretty girl called Dorothy Quincy [Roosevelt ] who was very attractive, from Dark Harbor.

 But in my own diary I have items that completely fascinate me! I hadn’t come out by then. I was up in Dark Harbor and Eleanor was staying with me. I had had a very, very bad accident with my leg so that I was completely housebound and not able to do very much. Caroline Drayton [Phillips ] was there and we all read Browning together. Franklin appeared on his yacht called the Half Moon and gave parties. He tried to see Eleanor and [I wrote,] “I feel very badly for Franklin, that she really doesn’t love him! He loves her and I really am very sad about it.” It always surprised me until I found my ridiculous, very dull little diary with all those notations in it. Then, in that same little diary, they come to stay for a house party in September. And at that time, I take a drive with Franklin. That was the time where I said, “I have always called him a hypocrite; but he’s not only a hypocrite, he’s a liar!” But all the way through I’m very fond of him. I’m not anti-Franklin in the diary but I don’t think he’s particularly attractive. However, I’m very fond of him.

 On the 30 November Eleanor tells me that she’s engaged. I think that Eleanor may have been charmed by older people rather than of that age. But how Franklin did it I really don’t know. If his mother had wanted him to do it then I would have seen the reason for it because her influence on him was as great as any mother’s influence on a man that I’ve ever known.

Shef::

Well, do you think that was not the cause? Perhaps it was.

Corinne::

I don’t think it was.

Did [Sara Delano Roosevelt ] approve of Eleanor?

Corinne::

Well, I think that she didn’t want him to marry at that moment.

Shef::

She was perfectly horrible to Eleanor for most of the rest of his life.

Corinne::

Simply terrible.

Shef::

Yes, really nasty to her. I mean, visibly so to us who were staying at Hyde Park … Saying “Why can’t you dress decently”—you know, before us!

Was that just her natural possessive motherhood? Would she have been that way with any other woman who might have married Franklin ? Or was it just that she disliked Eleanor?

Corinne::

I would say that she would have been that way anyway … I’ve never seen such possession in my life…

Bobbie::

Mr. Hagedorn asked me whether there were other people in the Roosevelt family who had taken too much alcohol, and asked about Uncle Robert [Barnhill Roosevelt, TR’s uncle]. I said I thought he drank a certain amount but that it wasn’t a problem that way—he was just a completely unconventional character and didn’t care what he did or said…

Corinne::

I thought that tendency came from the Bulloch family [TR’s mother’s family]. The drinking didn’t come from the Roosevelt family.

Bobbie::

Were the Bullochs alcoholics?

Corinne::

Not Jimmy [James Dunwoody Bulloch] and Irvine, but I thought that there were Elliotts—your mother-in-law felt that it was my grandmother’s blood that wasn’t so “hot” in that direction.

Bobbie::

I remember she always referred to the two miniatures that we have—one was a Bulloch or an Irvine and one was a Cowles—and she’d say, “See the difference between the ones who spent most of their time under the table from alcohol and the ones who sat very rigidly above it.”

Shef::

I must say, the Bulloch looked more attractive!

Bobbie::

Far more attractive.

Corinne::

I don’t think that Irvine or Jimmy Bulloch drank, but I had a feeling that it was the Stewarts or Elliotts [Martha Roosevelt’s maternal line], I think they come in.6 I think that there were characters in that part of the family … and I have the feeling that there were all kinds of stories about one of those…7

When did [Mrs. Robinson] have time to write her poetry with all of her social engagements?

Corinne::

Well, the tremendously active period of her poetry was the years after Stewart died. That was the very active period of her writing. That put her in a position of being a great deal with contemporary poets … Really, nothing was ever published before then.

Shef::

Aunt Corinne cried the whole of that summer.

Corinne::

Yes. I was telling Hermann that she was a very mercurial person, you know. She could cry and then she could laugh, like sunshine coming after rain. That used to bother your mother.

Bobbie::

It scared me to death. I can remember when I went up there when we were engaged, to see Aunt Corinne, that she cried on my shoulder because Shef reminded her of Stewart. Our family were so self-contained in showing emotion that I didn’t know what to do. I was absolutely lost and terrified if somebody was crying. After I patted her on the back, I didn’t know how to go about helping her. To me it was bewildering … You learned it was just her way of showing what she felt and it wasn’t bothering her. But in our family if anybody cried it was really a crisis. To cry over somebody who died—it must have been 10 years before—that was upsetting to a person who wasn’t used to showing emotion that way.

Shef::

For a year or two after Stewart’s death, Aunt Corinne used to burst into tears at meals and things like that, then it would sort of pass over…

Corinne::

Well of course, Stewart’s death, Mother never got over—never. Her whole life was affected tremendously by Stewart’s death…

Bobbie::

Well, I think she was gay, in a sense, throughout her life, too. The two strains were side by side.

Corinne::

Well, she had that tremendous capacity which I think Auntie Bye had, too—but I think Mother had it perhaps almost more—and that was such a consuming interest about other people that if they were gay, she could be gay, too. If they were sad, she was sad, too. But, as I say, of her own life, Stewart’s death had the most tremendous effect upon her—of all her life.

Bobbie::

Do you think she felt in any way responsible, Corinne? That he hadn’t been handled properly or anything like that? Was that part of it?

Corinne::

Stewart ? Oh, no. Stewart’s death was by complete entire accident. She and he had the most wonderful relationship. He was the gayest, most enchanting boy! Of course, he was my most companionable person of my whole life. I had never known anybody with such humor…

Shef::

Was he rather like Monroe [Douglas Robinson] or like Ted [Douglas Robinson]?

Corinne::

You mean drinking? Oh, no. He wasn’t like Monroe. Not like Ted, not like Monroe. Not like any of them. He was tremendously loveable, gay, humorous, absent-minded, didn’t concentrate properly on his lessons, but it was the most delicious companionship. He was just fun to be with!

How did the accident happen?

Corinne::

There had been some sort of a game at the party, during which he had hit his head on the newel post and was knocked out—and cut himself. They did take him back to his room.

He was knocked unconscious?

Corinne::

Probably, evidently. The thing could perfectly well happen. In any event, they took him back to his room. The window, when he opened it, was very low. It was one of these low windows. His friends thought that either Stewart, who used to crawl from one window to another on the outside ledge and frighten the boy in the room next to his—he’d often done it—had done it again and lost his balance, or else he had just gotten dizzy opening the window and fallen out. What happened nobody knows. But he fell out of the window. There had been no problem, no difficulties, no anything except that he was very much in love with Elizabeth [Parrish ] Starr … they were engaged. There wasn’t any question of [suicide]. Oh, he was a very sunny character with blue eyes and kind of thatched yellow hair—and just great fun. When Johnny, [Corinne’s youngest son John deKoven Alsop] is at his most relaxed, he reminds me of Stewart. You know, at that period in our lives there weren’t sudden deaths because there were no automobiles. Sudden death for a very young person was a shattering experience for those left behind!

Do tell us more about the Franklin Roosevelts.

Shef::

Well, it was at the time that I mentioned to you before. I was a Lieutenant in the Marine Corps and an aide to Franklin after the Armistice at the end of the First World War. We came back from the Peace Conference on the same ship. We were walking up and down deck and Franklin was talking a little bit about his life. He said he’d had one great disappointment, by far the greatest disappointment in his life, and that was that he was not taken into the Porcellian Club at Harvard—which to me was an extremely interesting and significant fact. At the time, he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he was an important man, and, from the eyes of my generation, he was a much older man. To hear him say that that was the greatest disappointment in his life struck me as extremely odd. And he wouldn’t have said it if it hadn’t been true.

Corinne::

That had the most terrific effect upon him … for him it was his most important goal.

Bobbie::

Sheffield always felt later that the attack on Wall Street, or on the bankers, was largely because of the Porcellian fellows. He was getting back at his own!

Shef::

[J. P. Morgan Partner and CEO] George Whitney, I feel, was one of the reasons why he attacked J. P. Morgan and the banking fraternity. George Whitney was about his time in Porcellian…

My, that’s a rather grim aspect of his life.

Shef::

I think it’s a very true one and a very significant one. I’m convinced of it.

… I never was convinced that he was very profound in his social ideas or his economic ideas, but I’ve come reluctantly to the conviction that he was right on a lot of the New Deal, that it was something that was long overdue in this country. It has given us a balance…

Shef::

And a greater stability…

Bobbie::

I agree with you there, but I’m not at all sure that that isn’t in a strange way due to Eleanor … It was a combination. I think he used Eleanor as a yardstick. I think it was an extraordinary lucky political combination because she was so eager to do good, and she was in such touch with the needs—so agonized over the needs—that I think he could pick out highlights.

Corinne::

I don’t think either of them were the basis. I think Louis Howe was the basis.

Bobbie::

All of it?

He was the source of it? Was he really a social philosopher?

Corinne::

Well, he was politically—he knew very definitely where he thought Franklin should go, and I think Louis Howe had the most extraordinary effect on both of them. He was just like a little Svengali. I shall never forget it … Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say Svengali. I meant more that he had his hands on what was going on. It wasn’t that he did abracadabra on him…

Bobbie::

He was the one who said Franklin was going to be president, right from the beginning.

Corinne::

I was there just after Franklin had had his paralysis. I had never met Louis Howe before. I came home and said to Mother, “Who is the little man who controls the whole of the Roosevelt family?” It was like complete control. I went into, first, one room where Eleanor was having tea—and Louis Howe was there. Then Louis Howe took me into Franklin’s room—Franklin was paralyzed and in the front room. Louis Howe came with me and we had this little man with us; he completely controlled what we talked about and what we said. It was the most fascinating picture of control!

Bobbie::

And, of course, after Franklin was President, Louis Howe was always there until he died. And Eleanor always took him for a drive every afternoon, in that early part when he was so ill.

Corinne::

And I had a long talk with Eleanor in which she analyzed the difference between Louis Howe and [FDR advisor] Harry Hopkins. It was very interesting.

Bobbie::

That would have been very interesting, Corinne. Can you remember the details of that?

Corinne::

Yes, very well. She didn’t like Harry Hopkins. She didn’t tell me that but I just knew that. She said that Franklin had to have someone on whom he relied on completely. The difference between Harry Hopkins and Louis was that Louis could analyze and tell Franklin what not to do and what he’d done that was wrong, or what he would do that might be wrong; and that Harry Hopkins just merely was a yes-man, giving Franklin the praise and adulation that he needed.

Shef::

It’s extraordinary how some of the conversations that you have with Franklin stick in your mind. I also remember, coming back on that same ship, we fueled two destroyers at sea. Franklin said, “If I’d followed what was best for me, I’d have resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and enlisted in the Navy and been an officer in that destroyer. It would have been much better for my future.”

 Then again, I was terribly impressed one time when Bobbie and I were staying at the White House in 1935. We’d had tea with Eleanor and we were to see Franklin at 6. We were led to Franklin’s study and had about an hour with him. That hour, I may say, was interrupted several times by Eleanor coming in and asking Franklin, “if that bill could go through,” and Franklin saying, “No, it cannot go through.”

 Then she came in again and said, “Can’t that bill go through?” and he said, “No, it is not going through!”

 What the bill was we never knew. It was evidently some piece of social legislation that Eleanor was interested in at the time. But Franklin spent most of the hour talking to us about Japan and Japan’s Asiatic ambitions and the fact that Japan wished to make the whole western Pacific their ocean; how they intended to expand down toward Australia and expected to get control of a strip of the Chinese mainland and Korea, and one thing and another. He was extremely conscious of Japan at that time and during one of Eleanor’s entrances and interruptions Eleanor said, “Oh, you shouldn’t talk about this, Franklin,” and Franklin said, “It’s on my mind and I’m going to talk about it.” He went right on and talked for pretty nearly a full hour about the threat of Japan.

Corinne::

…what I thought was so fascinating was that I didn’t think he was a success originally, socially, but that I think he became a very real success in his power over men, utterly charming! That’s what I meant.

Shef::

Oh! He upset the standards for success for a generation.

Bobbie::

You went in feeling allergic to him, as I did, politically, and at the end of an hour you were completely charmed. You felt: here was somebody who really was thinking about the problems. When he talked to you about them, they sounded quite sensible for the moment. Then you got away from that honeyed voice, you began to analyze the things he’d said, and they didn’t really make sense. But for the time being, you felt it was really the most exciting thing you’d ever heard! At least, I did. I probably was gullible.

Shef::

He could make it awfully interesting … Something happened there—the combination of his running for the vice-presidency in 1920 and his illness immediately afterward made him a much more important personality.

Corinne::

Yes. I think there are some people who are destroyed by power, as far as their personalities go, because they become arrogant, something unattractive. But Franklin had a great sense of humor, and, I think, achieving confidence was essential to the development of his charm.