Upstairs at the Roosevelts': Growing Up with Franklin and Eleanor
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Upstairs at the Roosevelts': Growing Up with Franklin and Eleanor
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Overview
Curtis Roosevelt offers anecdotes and revelations about the lives of the president and First Lady and the many colorful personalities in this presidential family. From Eleanor’s shocking role in the remarriage of Curtis’s mother to visits from naughty cousins and trips to the “Home Farm,” Upstairs at the Roosevelts’ provides an intimate perspective on the dynamics of one of America’s most famous families and those who visited, were friends, and sometimes even enemies.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612349404 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Potomac Books |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 264 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Curtis Roosevelt (1930–2016) is the grandson of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. He worked for eighteen years in the Secretariat of the United Nations. He is the author of Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor and consulted on numerous television productions, including the History Channel’s FDR: A Presidency Revealedand the documentary miniseries The Churchills.
Read an Excerpt
Upstairs at the Roosevelts'
Growing Up with Franklin and Eleanor
By Curtis Roosevelt
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 Estate of Curtis RooseveltAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61234-940-4
CHAPTER 1
My Twelve Years in the White House
The question most frequently asked of me is, "What was life like in the White House?" A response saying that it was "wonderful, fantastic, unforgettable and yet a disaster" only provokes a host of other questions. Until I wrote my book Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor, I hadn't thought too closely about this extraordinary experience of mine. But then I had to buckle down and think it through. I did, and a lot of illusions went out the window.
Twelve years is a long time in the life of a child.
In 1933 I was a toddler, three years old, when we went to live in the White House. By 1945, when my grandfather, President Roosevelt, died, I was just fifteen. The White House had proved a steady series of events, punctuated by an equally steady stream of visitors. During those twelve years, circulating within that hothouse of bustling politics, I met a lot of people. By the age of fifteen, I had met everybody from Winston Churchill to Mary Martin!
I listened and absorbed, especially when I was old enough, at age nine, to be included with the adults at mealtimes. It was my education — far more important than any formal one I have had. By fifteen I was quite sophisticated politically. I could converse easily with the many guests at the dining table. But usually I was "seen and not heard," as was considered courteous and proper for my age. Knowing your place was a dictum drummed into me from early childhood.
When doing the research for my book — which included a lot of dredging through my exciting and often difficult memories — I realized the extent to which I had been shaped by my years in the White House and by being President and Mrs. Roosevelt's eldest grandson, and it is a "shaping" that has continued throughout my life. It is in fact a distortion compared to a more normal upbringing. It is difficult to explain except in broad terms.
Power is very attractive. Everyone is to some degree drawn to it, but when you live within the walls of a place like the White House, it matters hugely, especially if you are a youngster. And, as I have noted, when everyone singles you out as an exception because of being the president and first lady's grandson, it is or becomes your identity, a part of who you are. When I first went to a public school and was introduced to my second-grade classmates, my teacher announced, "This is Buzzie. He has been living with his grandparents, the president and Mrs. Roosevelt, in the White House." The relationship with my future classmates was thus marked.
Buzzie (either with a y or an ie) was my nickname. Eleanor, my older sister, was known as Sistie. In 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, the press picked up on these two little darlings living in the White House and had a grand time with us. Sistie-and-Buzzie became one word. We were featured in newspapers, magazines, and newsreels all over the country. Complicating that exposure for me was my grandmother and mother's dictum that we "do not like" having our picture taken; we do not like publicity! My sister echoed them and a barb could be thrust at me, "Buzzie likes having his picture taken!" I ducked my head and tried to adjust to this contradictory party line. But of course I enjoyed the fuss; and most young boys might feel the same. Nonetheless, it brought conflict for me.
I liked the attention given me by the White House butlers and maids, as well as the Secret Service men guarding my grandfather. I was a kind of mascot. I enjoyed being included in pictures with my grandfather or grandmother. I loved being a part of their entourage. Living in the White House as we did, many opportunities daily presented themselves for being recognized. Even when Sis and I traveled on the train to New York, on our way from Washington to Hyde Park, we would be pointed at, "There's Sistie-and-Buzzie!" As if we were a single entity. My sister would duck her head; I'd look up and smile, enjoying the recognition. Our nurse then would hurry us on to the waiting Secret Service car.
But all this, and especially the conflict presented by my mother and grandmother, was not the best way for a child to grow up and mature. Indeed, life in the White House gave me a very complicated sense of identity, one that took years to work out of. "Watch your step!" was my byword.
My memories of those early days in the White House are filled with many activities, mainly with me as an observer. I liked parades, especially of soldiers and sailors. The marines had the best uniforms, I would pronounce, but quickly shut up when I saw that my keen interest was not conforming to the expected modesty at which my sister excelled. Still, my enthusiasm could not always be contained. I liked living in the White House, even though, as my mother frequently declared, "It's not good for Buzzie!"
As a small child, I found our daily routine to be marvelous. Every morning my sister and I would be brought to our grandfather's bedroom. We would burst in, completely unaware that we were interrupting his morning staff meeting. Papa, as we called our grandfather, would be propped up on pillows in his bed and was very welcoming. Up we would jump and roughhouse for a bit. "What are you going to do today?" would be the usual question. FDR was a wonderful grandfather, but soon, within five minutes, the work of the president of the United States had to continue. So we then would be whisked out by our waiting nurse.
A visit to our grandmother was much more subdued, more regulated, with my sister answering most questions. When with our mother, her attention was focused on our nurse who was instructed about where we should be, and at what time, what we should wear, and any other practical details that seemed necessary. Each day usually had an event that requiring Sis and me to be prepared. But my sister would opt out of standing in receiving lines where my grandmother would be shaking hands with several hundred people. I liked the recognition — "This is Buzzie," I'd be introduced — then correctly extending my hand to be shook. Even at age five I considered this as part of the game, one at which I was soon adept.
When I was seven, we moved from the White House to a new home in Seattle. Leaving it was painful, and I mourned not being daily in that atmosphere I'd so thrilled to. Life in the White House had been a mixture of the wonderful and the disastrous. However, I wouldn't fully grasp the latter until I reached midlife.
My memories are richly filled with those days in the White House. It was marvelous, a lark, brimming with unique experiences, ones I will never forget.
CHAPTER 2Hyde Park, Our Family Home
When I grew up on my family's estate at Hyde Park in the 1930s, I had no idea how passé, how archaic, such a lifestyle was. It was practically out of a Victorian or Edwardian play or film. But it was all that I knew, and it was my world. The nursery on the third floor of the Big House formed my earliest memories. Throughout my childhood and youth, I did not really comprehend that life under my great-grandmother's tutelage was totally out of date. It was the end of an era and had been on its way out since before the First World War. Sara Delano Roosevelt's death in 1941 was one of the events marking its demise as a way of life that had defined the landscape of the private lives of America's wealthy upper class.
In 1935–36 when the Vanderbilt estate, a mile up the Hudson River from our more modest place, came on the block, probably to be broken up into smaller plots, my grandfather, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, asked the Interior Department to purchase it as a national historic site. Behind his request was his notion that the American people should visit and see for themselves how a wealthy few of our countrymen had lived in the Gilded Age, before federal income tax existed. The Vanderbilt estate now is managed by the U.S. National Park Service, the other two in the immediate area being my family's estate, Springwood, and my grandmother's house, Val-Kill.
Although the Park Service guides do not mention my grandfather's rationale for preserving the Vanderbilt estate as a public site when interpreting to visitors the house where I grew up — Springwood — Franklin Roosevelt might also have been commenting on his own home. Just like the Vanderbilt estate, the Big House, with its large stables and carriage house — later the garage — laundry house, icehouses, extensive "greenhouse," superintendent's cottage and numerous servants' quarters, would be impossible to maintain privately after World War II. Not only was it hugely expensive but, practically speaking, there was no more of the cheap labor that once had made it all possible. With very few exceptions, such big estates are now only useful for conversion into schools, clinics, old-age homes, and historic sites. Yet thank God we have them. It is through visiting them that a part of our history, our heritage, can come alive.
So I begin with my memories, ones located, of course, in the same nursery my grandfather occupied, as had my mother and all my uncles, and my sister, too, I expect. It is a large room, with a crib in one corner and another bed opposite for the nurse. Windows on three sides give great light as well as provide breezes on the hot sultry nights of summer. Double doors lead to the large area over the big library on the first floor.
When it became light I awoke. Through the slats of my crib I could see Beebee's bed. It was comforting to have her close by; I could hear her gentle snoring during the night.
But the bed was empty. I wasn't disturbed; I knew the routine. Beebee had left to dress herself in one of the white starched uniforms she always wore. She would return. And when she did I was lifted out of my crib, taken into the bathroom, cleaned up, and then dressed in a shirt and pinafore — my own regular uniform.
Back in the nursery I was placed in a small chair that matched the small round table in front of me to await my breakfast. It arrived on a tray, brought by the number-two butler from the kitchen on the first floor. It remained warm due to the hot water underneath the three receptacles for food on my plate — obviously designed for a long journey such as the one from kitchen to nursery. There might be a piece of fresh fruit, and always there was the silver cup with my milk. My godmother had given me that cup upon my christening ceremony and I still have it, quite dented from those earlier days.
After breakfast it was out of the house to the stables, running and shouting all the way. We were on schedule, roughly 9:30, and Sgt. George Carnahan and Corporal "Slim" had the horses ready. Sis had the spunkier one, Natoma, my mother's Arabian. I had my grandmother's quieter mare, Dot, which her friend Earl Miller had given her and on which Grandmère, my grandmother Eleanor, had won several blue ribbons at horse shows. I was proud of riding Dot. I was no longer on a lead rope, but Slim kept a close eye on me. Though even Dot had run away with me the previous summer and once I had fallen off — I can't say "thrown" as I just rolled off, due to not gripping sufficiently with my knees. I was lazy and never bothered to ride properly in an English saddle. But I did love to look around — I was content to walk and didn't mind if Sis and Sgt. George trotted or cantered ahead. Slim was easy about this except to remind me that we did have to trot now and then to catch up with Sis if we were going to see which path they next took. I loved old Dot. Grandmère, who would only occasionally ride Dot, wrote to my mother that I now considered Dot "my horse."
Sis didn't like waiting for me at the next turn. Which path to take, which route to go, was dictated by my sister — she was in the lead — and she delighted in choosing a direction challenging for me. I didn't mind, I liked riding through the woods and on the sides of the fields, letting Dot take her own sweet time. That we might return to the stable ten minutes behind Sis and George didn't bother me. We usually were out for about an hour and a half. If time permitted we might feed the horses a carrot or a bit of grain from the palm of our hand. Keep the palm of your hand flat, we were instructed, for horses have big teeth.
But before noon we were due in the house to wash off the smell of horse and stable before eating. If we were to lunch with my great-grandmother, Sara, washing meant having a quick bath.
In the summer afternoons, after my nap, Sis and I would return to the stables where George and Slim had hitched up Natoma to one of the remaining family carriages. It was a buggy, with two persons in front and two squeezed into a smaller back seat. As Beebee had done, Duffie (Elizabeth McDuffie, one of our maids and the wife of my grandfather's valet) liked to accompany us on our buggy ride. She and I sat in back. Sis was in front with Sgt. Carnahan, who firmly held the reins and moved Natoma into a trot as long as the road was gravel. On dirt paths with their many ruts and potholes from the rain, Natoma walked peacefully under the trees. Occasionally Sis was allowed to hold the reins. A drive in a horse-drawn carriage — your family's carriage — is an experience long gone. (The Central Park buggies for the New York tourists aren't the same thing.)
As usual we passed the Newbolds' next door, meandered past the Rogers' home, and then on to the Vanderbilt estate. The huge trees on their property were, and remain, exceptional. They had been planted in the eighteenth century by the Bard family. The Bards' classic colonial mansion wasn't quite big enough — or grand enough — for the Vanderbilts, so they tore it down and erected a blown-up version of the Petit Trianon at the Versailles Palace, just outside Paris. The result is a bloated building that has lost its original lovely proportions. (For me it resembles a typical public library, in the style of those donated by Andrew Carnegie around the country.) But the Vanderbilts did not alter the landscaping with its carefully selected trees brought from different parts of the world.
With George holding the reins we might carefully cross the busy Albany Post Road to explore the fantastic complex of buildings the Vanderbilts had erected for their horses and carriages and to store their hay. It was in disrepair even when I saw it as a young child in the late thirties, but, still, its block-square cobblestone courtyard, symmetrically arranged buildings on three sides, the huge barn at the end, and the grand well in the center of the courtyard made for an enviable scene. Then heading back across Route 9, we would return the few miles to the Big House by a different route, all at our same leisurely pace. Going home to her stall and a bag of oats, Natoma trotted easily the last half-mile.
Sometimes during our carriage rides a thunderstorm would appear in the sky and George would whip up Natoma to get home, before the rain came pouring down and the thunder cracked. There was always the possibility that this might have sent Natoma rearing and perhaps bolting. I saw it as much fun and excitement — if only the conjuring up of potential danger. But most often we trotted rapidly home without mishap, leaving Natoma barely sweating.
The organization within the Big House, as well as its atmosphere, was very Anglophilic, much like the other estates along the Hudson River. Even before Sara had married the widowed James Roosevelt, he had been nicknamed "the Squire" because of his "pork-chop" beard, then very stylish in England. The Roosevelts journeyed once a year to Europe, spending time in Britain, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, and Italy. Both my great-grandfather (whom I never knew) and my great-grandmother, "Granny," were reasonably fluent in other languages, particularly French and German. But it was through their British friends that they took their cues for the lifestyle at their own estate in America.
But in no way did I feel England to be "the mother country." I understood it simply to be the one where household standards were set. The butler, the cook, and the succession of nannies and tutors we had often were hired through London agencies. Granny normally had six or eight "inside" servants and six "outside" servants, supplemented by more when guests would arrive to stay or family would come to spend vacations.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Upstairs at the Roosevelts' by Curtis Roosevelt. Copyright © 2017 Estate of Curtis Roosevelt. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Introduction,
1. My Twelve Years in the White House,
2. Hyde Park, Our Family Home,
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt,
4. White House Pleasures of the Table,
5. FDR's Cocktail Hour, the High Point of the Day,
6. Eleanor Roosevelt's Book on Etiquette,
7. Security in and out of the White House,
8. Religion in Our Family,
9. Hostility of Eleanor Roosevelt toward Her Mother-in-Law,
10. Others in the White House Entourage,
11. The Chaste Eleanor Roosevelt,
12. "Hick," My Grandmother's Close Friend,
13. To Europe with My Grandmother,
14. Roosevelt as Commander in Chief,
15. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill,
16. The Effect of FDR's Death on the Roosevelt Family,
17. My Mother, the President's Daughter,
Notes,