Free Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H. W. Brands Page B

Franklin still felt the responsibility for his mother’s happiness he had inherited upon his father’s death—a responsibility Sara did nothing to diminish. Now Eleanor, partly from a desire to become one of the Delano clan, and partly, no doubt, from considerations of self-defense, committed herself to being the daughter her mother-in-law had never had. “Dearest Mama…,” she wrote Sara, who had arranged the details of the journey, “Thank you so much, dear, for everything you did for us. You are always just the sweetest, dearest Mama to your children, and I shall look forward to our next long evening together, when I shall want to be kissed all the time.”
    Not a week passed that Sara didn’t receive multiple letters from the newlyweds—long letters relating all but the most intimate details of the honeymoon. From London to Paris to Venice to St. Moritz and down the Rhine the travelers proceeded, informing Sara of their progress—and being informed, in turn, of Sara’s progress preparing the house they would live in upon their return. It was on East Thirty-sixth Street, just three blocks from Sara’s own house. Franklin gave not the slightest hint of wanting to provide for Eleanor himself; on the contrary he wrote his mother, “We are so glad that it is really through you that we get the house…. It is so good that you take all the trouble for us.” He closed this letter with words that may have revealed more than he intended: “Ever your loving infants.”
    Besides tending to Sara back home, Franklin and Eleanor visited many cousins, uncles, aunts, and family friends and acquaintances scattered about Britain and France. They saw the Whitelaw Reids in London, where Reid was now the American ambassador. They had lunch with Sidney and Beatrice Webb (“They write books on sociology,” Franklin said of the Fabian couple) and tea with Beatrice Chamberlain. They stayed with some Delanos in Paris and traveled for a time with Bob Ferguson, a British Rough Rider comrade of Theodore Roosevelt’s. Eleanor caught up with old teachers at Allenswood, unfortunately not including Marie Souvestre, who had recently died.
    Especially in England they were treated like aristocracy on account of their last name. “We were ushered into the royal suite, one flight up, front, price $1,000 a day—a sitting room 40 ft. by 30 ft., a double bedroom, another ditto and a bath,” Franklin wrote from London. “Our breath was so taken away that we couldn’t even protest and are now saying, ‘Damn the expense, wot’s the odds’!”
    The final weeks of the honeymoon coincided with Theodore Roosevelt’s successful mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, for which he would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. “Everyone is talking about Cousin Theodore, saying that he is the most prominent figure of present-day history,” Franklin wrote, with vicarious pride. He told Sara they would be home soon. “You know how we long to see our Mummy again.”
    Eleanor found the voyage home difficult. She wasn’t the sailor her husband was, and she sorely feared disappointing him. The outbound journey had been suspiciously easy, with fair weather and calm seas the entire way. But the return was a trial, despite conditions hardly more severe. On landing she learned the reason: she was pregnant. “It was quite a relief,” she wrote. She had worried not simply about being unable to keep up with Franklin as a traveler. “Little idiot that I was, I had been seriously troubled for fear that I would never have any children and my husband would therefore be much disappointed.”
    Aside from the morning sickness, the pregnancy went smoothly. She suffered the ordinary first-baby jitters, magnified in her case by not previously having spent time with infants. “I had never had any interest in dolls or little children, and I knew absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby.” The nurse she hired to assist her turned out to be no help. The woman was