Transcript: Chapter 04

Narrator: Franklin began using a secret code in his diary. He wrote, "E is an angel." Franklin had fallen in love with a distant cousin. "E" was Eleanor Roosevelt. From the first, Eleanor Roosevelt saw that there was a serious man beneath the easygoing charm. For the rest of their life together, even through the most difficult years of their marriage, she would be drawn to the serious side of his nature.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Franklin and Eleanor come, from the same social class. There are certain mores, customs, rituals that link their childhoods. Everything else is so totally different they might have come from the other ends of the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt (archival): I was a very ugly little girl. My mother was very beautiful. I think she always wondered why her daughter had to be so ugly. I adored my mother, but rather like a distant and beautiful thing that I couldn't possibly get close to.

Oh, my father meant a tremendous amount. I adored him all the days of my childhood. He called me "Little Nell" after the Little Nell in Dickens' story, and I always liked that.

Narrator: Eleanor's childhood was a series of losses. Her parents' marriage was troubled. Elliott Roosevelt was an alcoholic. Erratic and self-destructive, he left home when she was six. Less than two years later, her mother died of diphtheria. The year after, her younger brother died, and the following year her beloved drunken father died. Eleanor and her brother were left with dutiful, reserved relatives. She grew afraid of other children, mice, the dark, practically everything.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: From the melancholy lives of both of her parents, Eleanor took away the feeling that love never lasts, that the world is a dark and forbidding place and that you never can count on anything.

Narrator: Then when she was 15, she was sent to an English boarding school called Allenswood where she was encouraged to think for herself, be independent, overcome her fears.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: Allenswood was definitely a turning point. It was the first time that she was really allowed to shine, and her own specialness was recognized. That is really where she got her sense of security and also her sense of her own power.

Narrator: The years she spent at Allenswood, Eleanor said, were the happiest of her life. She was 18 when Franklin began to pursue her.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: He was a gay and outgoing and charming young man. There was something very sympathetic about him and romantic, and they had a very sweet and romantic relationship according to their early letters.

Narrator: "We have had two happy days together," she wrote him, "and you know how grateful I am for every moment which I have with you. Your devoted Little Nell."

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Eleanor's relatives and friends thought of Franklin as a feather duster, which meant somebody who just skimmed along the surface of life and never got very deep into anything at all, so I'm not sure they thought that he was such a wonderful catch for her, because even then Eleanor had a certain vitality, a certain seriousness of purpose that made people feel that she was something special.

Edna Gurewitsch: Can you imagine how different she must have been from the average run of debutantes of the time? She must have been very interesting, besides being tall with a beautiful figure, fine light hair and lovely skin and great warmth. There was something else, too, and this is not to be underestimated. It didn't hurt his courtship that her uncle was president of the United States.

Narrator: Theodore Roosevelt was a hugely popular president -- tireless, voluble, inspiring. T.R., someone said, was a steam engine in trousers. As a boy, Franklin had watched with pride his distant cousin's spectacular rise to power: assistant secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, president of the United States. "Theodore Roosevelt," Franklin would later say, "was the greatest man I ever knew." Now Franklin was courting the president's favorite niece. The president was "dee-lighted" that Franklin had proposed marriage to Eleanor. Franklin's mother was not. Franklin had in fact concealed from Sarah the entire courtship.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: The fact that she didn't even know that he was in love with this girl, she didn't know the most important thing that was happening in her son's life, and she thought she knew every waking thought in this child from the time he was born.

Narrator: "Dearest Mama, I know what pain I must have caused you and you know I wouldn't do it if I really could have helped it, but I know my mind and I'm the happiest man just now in the world."

Doris Kearns Goodwin: And finally she had to accept that this was going to happen and decided that she would control Eleanor and then somehow she wouldn't lose Franklin.

Curtis Roosevelt: I think FDR was very much attracted to my grandmother because they were two lonely people, two people who were not totally satisfied with the standards and ideals of their upper-class group. And I think the two of them looked at each other and knew that they could draw strength from each other.

Narrator: On March 17, 1905 -- St. Patrick's Day -- Franklin and Eleanor were married. He was 23, she was 20. The president of the United States was there to give away the bride. "Well, Franklin," TR told the groom," there's nothing like keeping the name in the family." The honeymoon was a three-month grand tour of Europe.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: On the surface, everything seemed fine -- they're seeing Venice, they're seeing Rome -- but at nights, Roosevelt, Eleanor reported, would be tormented by nightmares, and he was sleepwalking. And then he broke out in hives, all of which suggested that something wasn't right.

Narrator: They climbed the Alps, motored through the French countryside. Few would have sensed that they were ill at ease.

Geoffrey Ward: He loved to have a good time. All his life, he loved to do that. She wanted someone she could confide in. She'd been alone really all her life and she wanted an intimate partner. She did not get one in Franklin. He didn't like sharing intimacies with anyone, even his wife.

Narrator: Back in America, Sarah was waiting. "I am so glad," Sarah had written them, "that although you've had such a perfect time, you are now anxious to see home and Mother again." That winter, as a Christmas gift, Sarah gave them a drawing with the note scrawled on the bottom: "To Franklin and Eleanor from Mama, number and street not yet quite decided."

Doris Kearns Goodwin: When Franklin and Eleanor arrive home from their honeymoon, Sarah tells them, "I've got a present for you, it's great, a new home." Not only that, but it's furnished by her, it's structured by her, it's decorated by her, it's her.

Narrator: Sarah built them a brownstone and then moved into its twin next door.

Blanche Wiesen Cook:The house is five stories and on each floor there are sliding doors where she can walk from her side of the house into their side. And Eleanor Roosevelt writes there was never any privacy day or night. Sarah Delano Roosevelt was just part of the scene.

Curtis Roosevelt: In a way, great-grandmother made her dependent. She wanted both her son and her daughter-in-law to be dependent upon her. His mother controlled FDR's purse strings until the day she died in 1941 when he was into his third term as president, and -- but, you know, the president of the United States didn't control his own income. His mother did.

Eleanor Seagraves, Granddaughter: The first 10 years of her married life were spent having children -- six children in about 10 years. She loved the children, but she didn't really know how to run that infant stage.

Edna Gurewitsch: I think she was totally inept when it came to dealing with children. She relied on her mother-in-law and on the various governesses and was so unsure of herself not only because she was an unsure person at the time, but she had never experienced mother love.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: And because she felt insecure about not knowing how to mother her own children, she once again turned to Sarah. Sarah knew. Sarah had confidence. Sarah had an opinion about everything. So it wasn't only that they brought in nurses and grannies to help the children, Sarah was the overseer of the house entirely and of the kids.

Blanche Wiesen Cook: His mother's ever-looming presence was never challenged. FDR never wanted to move out of his mother's home, and so they lived in Sarah Delano Roosevelt's homes. At Hyde Park, it's her home, so she sits at the head of the table, Franklin sits at the other end of the table, and Eleanor sits somewhere in the middle with the children.

Curtis Roosevelt: I see her as an upper-class grande dame who knew her place. She was just doing what came naturally. She, in a way, knew who she was, and my grandmother, in the early years of her marriage, didn't know who she was. That took a long time for her to find out.

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