FDR - Jean Edward Smith [101]
“When the boat docked and we went on board,” Eleanor recalled years later, “I remember visiting several of the men who were still in bed. My husband did not seem to me so seriously ill as the doctors implied.”97 The fact is that Franklin’s condition was still grave: he was so weak he had to be carried off the ship to an ambulance and borne up the stairs of Sara’s house on East Sixty-fifth Street by four muscular orderlies. While it is possible that Eleanor’s recollection may reflect her feelings at the time, it is more likely to have been colored by the bitterness that set in shortly afterward.98
In the course of unpacking Franklin’s luggage, Eleanor discovered a neatly bound packet of love letters from Lucy Mercer. “The bottom dropped out of my world,” Eleanor remembered. “I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time.”99
Family recollections differ as to what happened next. The two versions are not mutually exclusive. The Roosevelts believe that Eleanor offered to step aside so that Franklin might be with the woman he loved but that Lucy, being Catholic, could not bring herself to marry a divorced man with five children.100 Lucy’s relatives contend that she was perfectly prepared to marry Franklin but that “Eleanor was not willing to step aside.”101
What is generally accepted is that Eleanor did indeed offer “to give Franklin his freedom.” Her Aunt Maude had recently divorced, and divorce was certainly preferable to remaining where she was not wanted.102 It is also likely that Franklin was prepared to leave. But what neither he nor Eleanor reckoned with were Sara’s reaction and the counsel of Louis Howe. Both intervened decisively to hold the marriage together.
For Sara, divorce was unthinkable. If FDR really wished to leave his wife and five children for another woman and bring scandal upon the family, she said, she could not stop him. But if he did so she “would not give him another dollar,” nor could he expect to inherit his beloved Hyde Park. And for Eleanor, well, it was perfectly all right for her to talk about giving Franklin his freedom, but what about the children? Who would take care of them?103
For Howe, it was a question of Franklin’s career. Daniels would certainly have fired him, and the electorate would be unforgiving. Any hope of future elective office was out of the question. If FDR had presidential ambitions (and certainly Howe did on Franklin’s behalf), he would have to choose between his career and Lucy Mercer.
Howe evidently played mediator. Sara had pulled Franklin and Eleanor back from the brink, but it was Howe, speaking separately with each, who brokered the settlement. He persuaded Eleanor that FDR could not go on successfully without her; and he convinced Franklin that to continue in politics he needed his wife.104 FDR agreed never to see Lucy again—that was Eleanor’s price for reconciliation—and with Louis Howe’s help the two stitched together one of the most remarkable partnerships the world has ever known.
Franklin broke the news to Lucy but could not bear to tell her the truth. Instead, he put the blame on Eleanor: she would not agree to a divorce. Lucy said it did not matter. As a Catholic she could not have married a divorced man. Both were white lies, told by lovers to spare each other’s feelings. Lucy’s mother, an equally devout Catholic, had divorced and remarried, and there is little reason to believe that Lucy would not have married the man who had risked everything for her.
“She and Franklin were very much in love with each