FDR - Jean Edward Smith [31]
Marie Souvestre’s goal was to make her students “cultivated women of the world,” and Eleanor blossomed under her tutelage. If ER had a fault, it was her seriousness. “Totty [as Eleanor was known] is so intelligent, so charming, so good,” said Mlle. Souvestre. “Mais pas gaie, pas gaie.”48 For her part, Eleanor was despondent when at eighteen it was time to return to New York to make her social debut. “Mlle Souvestre had become one of the people I cared for most in the world and … I would have given a great deal to have spent another year on my education.”49 Later Eleanor said, “Whatever I have become had its seed in those three years of contact with a liberal mind and a strong personality.”50 Throughout the remainder of her life, ER kept a framed portrait of Marie Souvestre on her desk. And when the headmistress died in 1905, Eleanor and Bamie served on her memorial committee.
Allenwood ranked as the most emancipated women’s school of the era. Yet it was totally deficient in preparing young ladies to deal with a world of men. Marie Souvestre and Aunt Tissie taught Eleanor the finer points of cosmopolitan behavior, how to present herself, how to dress. Yet her three years at Allenwood were as cloistered as the previous five with Grandmother Hall at Tivoli. At the age of eighteen, Eleanor had never dated, had rarely talked to a young man alone, and as a practical matter had seldom been in mixed company. Her mind had been finely honed, she brimmed with self-esteem, but she was naive beyond despair.
Eleanor’s lack of worldly experience appealed to Franklin. “A more sophisticated woman would have scared the daylights out of him,” said his son Elliott.51 It is not surprising Franklin was drawn to Eleanor. Aside from being young, attractive, and smartly dressed (ER’s wardrobe was meticulously put together by Aunt Tissie), Eleanor had an air of serious intelligence about her: a genuine interest in what took place around her. Her years at Allenwood imparted a maturity that FDR adored.52 She was also a Roosevelt and the favorite niece of Cousin Theodore, who was not only president of the United States but Eleanor’s godfather. By marrying Eleanor, FDR would acquire even greater access to the man he most admired. Her financial endowment was taken for granted. Eleanor was not rich like the Astors, but her trust fund provided an annual income of about $8,000 ($160,000 today), which was considerably more than Franklin’s, the principal of which was still administered by Sara.
The Roosevelt children, Anna and Elliott, believed that Eleanor “set out to win Father more than he tried to woo her.… She was stunned by the thought that here was a handsome man who would not only look at her but seek her companionship. She poured her heart out to him, undoubtedly the best listener she had ever met.”53 Eleanor wrote Franklin every evening to ensure that he did not forget her. “Oh! Darling I miss you so and I long for the happy hours which we have together. I am so happy. So very happy in your love dearest, that all the world has changed for me.”54 Eleanor often signed herself “Little Nell,” the nickname her father had bestowed, and she addressed Franklin as “Boy Darling,” “Dearest Boy,” and occasionally, “Franklin Dearest.” For the most part, Eleanor’s nightly letters during their secret engagement were reports on the day’s happenings, but, as one biographer notes, they “were as full of love as any letters she would ever write.”55
In September 1904 Franklin entered Columbia Law School. He lived with Sara in an imposing town house his mother rented at 200 Madison Avenue, directly across from the marble mansion of J. P. Morgan. “I am anxious to hear about the first day [at Columbia],” Eleanor wrote from Tivoli, “and whether you found any old acquaintances or had only Jew Gentlemen to work with!” Ethnic identity was delineated more sharply at the time, and Eleanor shared the traditional prejudices of Knickerbocker society. Her friend and biographer Joseph Lash reports that