FDR - Jean Edward Smith [16]
Initially, FDR was schooled at home by Sara. At six he attended an impromptu kindergarten on a neighboring estate. Then began a series of governesses and tutors at home. FDR was drilled in Latin, French, German, penmanship, arithmetic, and history. Sara organized the study plan, and a tutor either deferred to her wishes or departed. One of the most gifted tutors was a young Swiss woman named Jeanne Rosat-Sandoz, who, in addition to drilling Franklin in modern languages, attempted to instill a sense of social responsibility. Mlle. Sandoz believed in economic reform and the Social Gospel; she did her utmost to arouse in FDR a concern for those less fortunate. Years later Roosevelt wrote her from the White House, “I have often thought that it was you, more than anyone else, who laid the foundation for my education.”15
Learning at home deprived FDR of the rough-and-tumble of public school, but it saved him from inept or mediocre teaching. His mind was continually challenged. While public school children his age were learning their ABCs in English, he was mastering them simultaneously in French and German. At the age of six his German was such that he could write his mother auf Deutsch:
[TRANSLATION]
Dear Mama!
I will show you, that I can already write in German. But I shall try always to improve it, so that you will be really pleased. Now I want to ask you to write me in German script and language.
Your loving son Franklin D.R.16
Sara was determined to keep her son from being spoiled by too much attention yet at the same time wanted to show her affection. “We never subjected the boy to a lot of don’ts,” she wrote. “While certain rules established for his well being had to be rigidly observed, we were never strict merely for the sake of being strict. In fact, we took a secret pride in the fact that Franklin instinctively never seemed to require that kind of handling.”17
James, already in his mid-fifties when FDR was born, was content to leave the disciplining to his wife. Little Franklin was his partner, his inseparable companion with whom he rode, hunted, and sailed. Looking back at her own childhood, Sara noted that “Franklin never knew what it meant to have the kind of respect for his father that is composed of equal parts of awe and fear. The regard in which he held him, amounting to worship, grew out of a companionship that was based on his ability to see things eye to eye, and his father’s never-failing understanding of the little problems that seem so grave to a child.”18
Like many an only child, FDR spent most of his time in the company of adults, and it was assumed he would act like an adult. Sara believed that children “had pretty much the same thoughts as adults” but lacked the vocabulary to express them. To remedy that she read aloud to Franklin daily. Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Little Lord Fauntleroy were favorites. The downside of being captivated by Little Lord Fauntleroy was that Sara kept Franklin in dresses and long curls until he was five. Then he graduated to kilts and full Scottish regalia. Not until he was nearly eight did he wear pants in the form of miniature sailor suits Sara purchased in London. Staying at Algonac one weekend, he proudly wrote his father, “Mama left this morning, and I am to have my bath alone.” He was then almost nine and evidently had never taken a bath by himself before.19
Another consequence of living on a rural estate under the close supervision of his parents was that FDR had few playmates. Occasionally small visitors