FDR’s cheatin’ heart
FRANKLIN AND LUCY:
President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life
By Joseph Persico
464 pp. Random House $28
Reviewed by Gilion Dumas
In this age of kiss-and-tattle, when a politician’s every peccadillo is the stuff of instant CNN montage coverage and YouTube parodies, the idea that FDR could carry on a series of extramarital affairs and intimate relationships without a peep from the press seems not just nostalgically quaint but astounding. But Joseph Persico avoids the temptation of writing a retroactive tell-all, aiming for a broader examination of this incredible president’s personal life.
Through newly-released letters, interviews, and analysis of secondary sources, Joseph Persico builds a persuasive case that women dominated the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life, Persico presents an intimate look into the personal life of FDR and the women close to him. He examines the roles played by Roosevelt’s mother Sara, wife Eleanor, dearest lover Lucy Mercer, closest companion Missy LeHand, distant cousin Margaret Suckley, daughter Anna, and a cadre of others. The tone is personal rather than prurient, but Persico thoroughly evaluates the intimate details.
Persico’s focus is on Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who became Franklin’s lover while working as Eleanor’s personal secretary during World War I. Earlier biographies supposed that the affair ended in 1918, when Eleanor discovered a cache of love letters, only to be revived much later. Using recently discovered letters and White House visitor logs, Perciso establishes that Franklin maintained an intimate relationship with Lucy throughout the years and zealously revived their love affair after her husband died. It was Lucy, not Eleanor, who was with Franklin at his country house when he died.
The title of the book is somewhat misleading in that Persico devotes most of his attention to women other than Lucy. It is this broad scope that distinguishes Persico’s work from that of earlier biographers - in particular from Resa Willis’s narrow and somewhat dull FDR and Lucy: Lovers and Friends (Routledge, 2004).
One of the women Persico features is Missy LeHand, Franklin’s long-time secretary and best friend. Missy lived with Franklin for decades after he was stricken with polio, first on a houseboat in Florida, then at the Warm Springs resort he purchased and converted to a retreat for polio victims, and finally in the White House. When health problems forced her early retirement, Franklin changed his will to leave half of his enormous estate to Missy, a gesture mooted when she died before he did.
That Persico gives Lucy top billing reflects his thesis that Lucy was the love of Franklin’s life. However, an equally strong argument could be made about Missy. Franklin’s original affair with Lucy was intense, but brief. She then played only a peripheral role in his life until late in his third term as president. Meanwhile, Missy was his constant companion, even showing up in her nightclothes in his White House bedroom. Had Franklin not discarded Missy after she suffered a series of mental and physical breakdowns—clearing the field for him to take up again with Lucy—an alternate case could be made that she, not Lucy, was Franklin’s true love.
Persico also highlights Franklin’s domineering mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, showing her prodding and manipulating her son from childhood, controlling him with motherly love and monetary manipulation. When Franklin and Eleanor married, Sara’s gift was a New York townhouse—one abutting her own, with connecting doors on every floor. When their marriage foundered on the rocks of his early infidelity with Lucy Mercer, it was Sara who kept them together by threatening to disinherit the wandering Franklin if he abandoned his family. While Franklin early on honed his skills at jollying Sara along, he was never able to break away from her influence.
Eleanor bore the brunt of Sara’s meddling and chafed under her mother-in-law’s interference except when she needed Sara as an ally in her own battles with Franklin. When courting, Eleanor’s serious demeanor brought out the best in Franklin. However, her earnest and intense nature wore on him as their marriage continued. After the birth of their fifth child, and certainly after she discovered Franklin and Lucy’s love letters in 1918, Eleanor insisted on separate bedrooms as their marriage became “an armed truce that endured until the day he died.”
Persico’s exploration of the complex relationship between Franklin and Eleanor, who concurrently inspired and aggravated her husband, leads Persico into detailed discussions of Eleanor’s own personal intrigues as she developed a parallel life as an international do-gooder. While Franklin sought attention, even adoration, from female companions, Eleanor filled the husband-shaped hole in her life with a series of intense, perhaps sexual, friendships, each of which further developed her independent character.
Persico examines Eleanor’s long-term relationships with state trooper Earl Miller, often rumored to be her lover; journalist Lorena “Hick” Hickok, who lived in the White House with the Roosevelts and whose letters to Eleanor were decidedly erotic; a lesbian couple with whom she built a cabin and started a furniture company, and others. While the distinction between whether Eleanor was a lesbian or a woman who engaged in lesbian activities may be a hair too fine to split, Persico’s efforts to do so demonstrate his sensitive and thorough approach to these personal issues.
Without condoning Franklin’s infidelities (which Persico plausibly concludes continued after Franklin’s legs were paralyzed), Persico builds up Eleanor’s separate life as a probable explanation for Franklin’s behavior. Certainly the notion that she declared a permanent sex strike when the pre-polio Franklin was a hale 34-year old casts him in a more sympathetic light.
Further, the two created each other—for good and bad. Eleanor goaded Franklin into great accomplishments; his support and position gave her what she needed to pursue her myriad causes. But Persico convincingly argues that their personalities grated and their marriage failed to satisfy either’s emotional desires. While Persico occasionally makes assumptions based on no more than reasonable speculation, most of his conclusions are well-supported and persuasive. It is this analysis of the Roosevelts’ cold but symbiotic marriage that distinguishes Persico’s book from earlier personal biographies by other authors.
Franklin and Lucy is a book with absorbing appeal. Although the book is designed to fit a niche in the collection of FDR biographies, it offers enough context to provide FDR neophytes with a good introduction to the man’s life. Persico may not plow new ground with many of the underlying facts, but his engaging prose, comprehensive view, and, more substantively, his analysis of the interplay between Franklin’s infidelities and the development of Eleanor’s independent character, make the book worthwhile and thoroughly entertaining.
Gilion Dumas is an attorney practicing in Portland, Oregon. She is a “compulsive list reader” with currently 786 books on her groaning TBR shelves. Her book notes, reviews, and reading lists can be found at her blog.
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