LETTERS: Six ALS to Grace Tully and Missy LeHand.
Eleanor Roosevelt to Missy and Grace
1934-1962
Roosevelt, Eleanor. Letters to Missy LeHand and Grace Tully. 1934-1962. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Six letters from Eleanor Roosevelt illustrating the warmth of feeling that existed between her and her husband’s assistants. Marguerite LeHand—“Missy”—was FDR’s personal secretary and close companion from the early 1920s until her death in 1944, and even acted as hostess at White House dinners and teas in Eleanor’s absence. LeHand accompanied the Roosevelts to Hyde Park on more than one occasion, and was indispensable to the couple both professionally and personally. According to Cook, “Eleanor Roosevelt always treated Missy LeHand with warmth and protective affection, and seemed to favor her as an elder daughter or, in the manner of the Asian matriarchs, as a junior wife” (Cook, p. 285). Grace Tully had been with Roosevelt since 1928, when he was campaigning for New York Governor, and stayed with him until his death in 1945, at which time she became executive secretary of the F.D.R. Foundation. In 1949 she published her memoir F.D.R.: My Boss, and worked for the Senate Democratic Policy Committee from 1955 to 1965.
This archive begins with an enthusiastic letter to LeHand likely dating to FDR’s first Presidential term, during which she and Tully took a trip to Europe together. In the next letter, from 1939, ER dictates to LeHand arrangements to secure household help for the weekend at Hyde Park. In the third, on White House letterhead, she thanks Tully for the sympathy she expressed upon the death of her brother, Hall Roosevelt, in 1941. In 1945 she writes to Tully of her struggle to adjust to the world after her husband’s death, of the “strange” feeling she had visiting the White House as a guest, rather than a resident. ER’s growing fame and popularity in the postwar years did not protect her from the depredations of New York landlords, and in the August 1958 letter she laments her need to take a more affordable apartment in the city, while nevertheless enclosing a birthday check. In the final letter, written in 1962, two months before her death, she writes again from Hyde Park of travel plans and mutual friends, and includes another check for Tully.
Inventory:
1. ALS, “ER,” to “Missy dear,” August 9, no year but ca. 1934, one blank leaf, 6 ¼ x 9 ¼”, recto and verso covered. In full:
Cottage / Aug 9
Missy dear,
I am glad you are better & do hope it won’t be too hot these next few weeks before you come up here. I would have come home of course had I known you were ill or wanted me but going to the Rosenmans was a grand thing to do & I’m glad you all had such a happy time.
Give Grace my love & tell her I’m glad she is fine.
I’ll be telephoning Franklin to-morrow night so perhaps I’ll get [2] a chance to speak to you. I hope you think he looks as well as I do, as far as I can see he had a perfect trip. I had a good trip too & I’m only sorry you [ ] children didn’t pull it off so well. Another time you must let me help plan & perhaps we can do better.
Do rest & keep [ ]! A hug & kiss for you & I will be very glad to see you on the 26th when I get down here from [ ]. Don’t let Franklin forget that is [ ]’s birthday & we are all dining here to celebrate! Affly E.R.
2. TLS, “ER,” to “Missy,” July 16, 1939, one leaf of Val-Kill Cottages / Hyde Park, Dutchess County / New York letterhead, 6 x 7”, recto only.
Three paragraphs in blue type discussing arrangements for household help to be secured for the weekend.
3. TLS, “Eleanor Roosevelt,” to “Grace,” October 4, 1941, one leaf of The White House / Washington letterhead, folded to make four pages of 5 x 7 ¾”, recto only. With matching envelope address in type, “Miss Grace Tully / The White House,” without postmark.
ER thanks Grace for the sympathy note she sent after the death of her brother, Hall Roosevelt, and asks her to “convey to the other girls … ap
Print Inquire