FDR - Jean Edward Smith [28]
The Long Island Roosevelts were delighted. Anna, they hoped, would provide Elliott with the motivation to make something of himself. And for two years the couple prospered. Elliott went to work for the Ludlow real estate firm on Lower Broadway, Anna ordered her dresses from Palmer in London and Worth in Paris, and the couple maintained a well-staffed brownstone in New York’s fashionable Thirties. Repeatedly Anna was singled out in the city’s society pages for her classic, captivating beauty.22
Elliott, like FDR’s half brother, Rosy, was a mainstay of the hard-drinking horsey set: polo at Meadowbrook, riding with the hounds in cross-country steeplechase, the annual hunt ball, tennis and sailing at Bar Harbor and Newport. A keen observer of the New York scene called Elliott “the most loveable Roosevelt I ever knew,” adding that “if personal popularity could have bestowed public honors on any man there was nothing beyond the reach of Elliott Roosevelt.”23
On October 11, 1884, a daughter was born, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, named after both mother and father. For Elliott, his daughter was “a miracle from heaven.” In 1889 she was joined by a brother, Elliott, Jr., and two years later by a second brother, Hall, named for his maternal ancestors.24
By then the marriage had all but collapsed. Always prone to excess, Elliott’s drinking was out of control, compounded by frequent recourse to laudanum and morphine—painkillers to thwart whatever demons stalked him. Unable to handle even the most routine assignments, he resigned from his uncle’s firm. An extended sojourn in Europe ended with Elliott confined to a Paris sanitarium to dry out. His mental deterioration was so great that TR and Bamie, with Anna’s reluctant approval, brought suit in New York court to have him adjudged insane and place his remaining property, estimated at $170,000, in trust for his wife and children. “It is all horrible beyond belief,” said TR.25
News of the Roosevelt family squabble splashed across the front pages of New York’s press. ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT INSANE, bannered the Sun. demented by excesses, said the Herald.26 Elliott fought back with a letter to the editor of the European edition of the Herald, asserting he was in Paris merely for the “cure at an establishment hydrotherapeutique.”27 In January 1892 Theodore traveled to Paris to confront Elliott. He and Bamie would drop the suit, he said, if Elliott would place most of his assets in trust, submit to additional treatment for alcoholism in the United States, return to work, and spend two years on probation apart from his family. It was a Spartan regimen for someone as undisciplined as Elliott, yet TR was relentless. After a week of browbeating and intimidation, Elliott yielded. “Thank heaven I came over,” Theodore wrote Bamie. Elliott, he said, was “utterly broken, submissive, and repentant. He signed the deed for two-thirds of all his property, and agreed to the probation.… He was in a mood that was terribly touching. How long it will last of course no one can say.”28
Elliott’s philandering did little to improve matters. Three months after he left New York for Europe, Katy Mann, a young servant girl employed by Anna at their Long Island estate, informed the family she was pregnant with Elliott’s child. When Elliott denied the accusation, Katy threatened legal action and public scandal. The Roosevelts initially sided with Elliott. “Of course she is lying,” said TR. But when they met with Katy and saw the baby, they gave up the fight.29 The Roosevelt lawyers initially offered $4,000; Katy demanded $10,000; and eventually that sum was placed in trust for her son, defiantly named Elliott Roosevelt