FDR: His Personal Letters
Inscribed by Eleanor to Her Granddaughter
[Roosevelt, Eleanor]. Roosevelt, Franklin D. F. D. R. His Personal Letters. Volume I: The Early Years. Volume II: 1905-1928. Foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt. Edited by Elliott Roosevelt. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce (1947, 1948).
2 vols., 8vo.; illustrated; blue cloth, stamped in gilt; dust-jackets; edgeworn. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of this revealing collection of letters which document FDR’s political and personal admirations and antipathies, as well as familial attachments. An intimate presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper of volume one to her grand-daughter, Sara—Elliott’s daughter, and signed by Eliott (on the half-title): To Sara with love from Grandmother Roosevelt Xmas 1947.
The first volume is dedicated to the most important person in FDR’s early life, his mother. The second is dedicated to his indispensable political manager Louis Howe, as well as Josephus Daniels. It’s an odd pairing, since FDR’s relationships with Howe and Daniels were completely different. Howe was Roosevelt’s political alter-ego, a man he relied on utterly. By contrast, FDR held his Navy Department chief in low esteem and schemed none too subtly behind his back to get him removed. Daniels had an exceedingly patient and forgiving disposition, and did not retaliate against his subordinate. He remained fond of FDR and stuck by him politically as well as personally through Roosevelt’s dark years of illness in the twenties as well as during the triumphs of the thirties. In her Foreword, Eleanor Roosevelt writes that her husband slowly came to appreciate Daniels’s political skills, especially his smooth relations with members of Congress. “He learned as time went on,” Mrs. Roosevelt writes, “to have a deep admiration for the qualities of character and to value the high ability of Mr. Daniels.”
FDR’s struggle with polio is documented in the second volume. “As he came gradually to realize that he was not going to get any better,” ER writes, “he faced great bitterness, I am sure, though he never mentioned it.” Mrs. Roosevelt reveals much about the emotional gulf between herself and her husband (and perhaps about her own obtuseness as well) when she writes, “The only thing that stands out in my mind as evidence of how he suffered when he finally knew that he would never walk again, was that I never heard him mention golf from the day he was taken ill until the end of his life.” FDR was a master at concealing his inner thoughts and feelings from other, even (perhaps especially) from his family, and he covered his tragedy with an impregnable layer of bonhomie. “He regained his joy in living,” Mrs. Roosevelt continues, “his hearty laughter, his ability to be happy over little things; and though I think I was too young to realize fully at the time what a remarkable fight he was making and what a victory he had won, still everyone around him sensed a little of the struggle and helped when he could.” Only later did she “come to realize and to appreciate that a strength of character was built up during these years which made him able to give complete confidence to the people of the nation when they needed it, so that when he said: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,’ they knew he held that conviction. He had lived through fear and come out successfully.”
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