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By Root 1796 0

and a contagious obsession with beauty.37 Aside from Sara, few recognized it. Warren Delano despised White, called him “the red-headed trial,” and found nothing that would recommend him as a son-in-law. When Sara persisted, Warren urged her to go abroad and reconsider. Ever dutiful, Sara agreed to visit her sister Dora in Hong Kong, where Dora’s husband was now the senior representative of Russell and Company. Sara was away nine months. When she returned to Algonac in September 1877, she had come around. White called once more, but whether he was received by Mr. Delano or saw Sara is unclear. The romance was over. But as one member of the Delano family later recorded, “Sara loved only one man in her life, and that man was Stanford White.”*

It was three years after Stanford White that Sara met James. For James it was love at first sight, and he set out on a resolute courtship. Sara’s motives are less clear. James was fifty-two, she was twenty-six—the same age as James’s son, Rosy. She was also two inches taller. Her father had objected to Stanford White, but James satisfied basic Delano requirements: sufficient wealth so as not to be suspected of fortune hunting, demonstrated maturity, and impeccable lineage. He was also kind, considerate, handsome in an elderly way, and, unlike White, very much a gentleman. That settled it for Sara. The age difference would take care of itself. So too the height. Above all, at twenty-six—old by Victorian standards—she might never have another opportunity. It required someone as bold as Stanford White, or as secure as James, not to be intimidated by Sara. Writing to her son on the eve of his first run for the presidency, she acknowledged as much. If not for James, Sara wrote, “I should now be the ‘old Miss Delano’ after a rather sad life.”38

Having made her decision (Warren reluctantly approved), Sara was steadfast in her devotion. The couple were married in an understated ceremony at Algonac on October 7, 1880. After vows were exchanged and a brief reception, the bride and groom departed in the Delano carriage for Hyde Park. At Milton, roughly halfway, the Roosevelt coach awaited. The wedding couple took their seats, and James grasped the reins and drove the remaining distance to Springwood.

The Roosevelts spent the next month together at Hyde Park before embarking on an extended honeymoon in Europe. Twice when James went to New York on business, Sara returned to Algonac, and twice the Delanos visited Springwood. Throughout their married life, James and Sara always journeyed to Algonac for family celebrations: Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, and anniversaries. In that respect, the Delano tie prevailed.

On November 7, 1880, the Roosevelts sailed for Europe aboard the White Star liner Germanic, the newest ship on the Atlantic run. They spent the next ten months abroad, visiting friends and relatives, enjoying the leisure of first-class travel as they slowly toured Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, and the British Isles. On Sunday morning, August 21, 1881, the Roosevelts attended services at Saint Peter’s Cathedral in York. Sara reported in her diary that she nearly fainted, “giving James a little fright.” She was already four months pregnant, and it was time to return to Springwood. On September 1 they boarded the Germanic again, and ten days later they were back in the United States. It had been a perfect honeymoon. “James was wonderful in the way he did it all and we have had such happy days,” wrote Sara. “He has been untiring and thoughtful of everything.”39

* TR’s daughter Alice often joked that the difference between the Oyster Bay Roosevelts and those from Hyde Park was that her family traveled in a borrowed railroad car while the Hyde Park clan owned one. Linda Donn, The Roosevelt Cousins 88 (New York: Knopf, 2001).

* Throughout his life, FDR used “Algonac” as a code word to mean that everything was all right, “superfine, splendid et pas cher.” See FDR to SDR, June 7, 1905, 2 The Roosevelt Letters 21, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap,