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

doing better. His preparation paid off on his return, when he was indeed elevated to the top post.
    The editor of the Crimson wasn’t, by virtue of his office, as prominent on campus as the football captain or the stroke oar of the crew team, but he was a big man nonetheless. He certainly had a voice no other student possessed. In that era the editor wrote all the editorials (later he would share the job with an editorial board). Roosevelt took advantage of his forum to pass judgment on Harvard football, chiding the student body for insufficient support and the team for uninspired play. His latter comments provoked an angry reaction from team members. “I am glad to say the effect has been just what was wanted; it has stirred up the team by making them angry, and they are playing all the harder for it,” he congratulated himself. He weighed in on politics, urging his fellow students to join the Political Club, and the Political Club to get practical. “With such a large city as Boston close at hand, it would be easy to send in parties, under the guidance of some experienced man, which in one day could learn more than through the means of lectures.” He publicized a series of political talks, explaining that “the committee in New York which has selected the speakers hope that by arousing sufficient interest men may be induced to enter New York politics upon leaving college.”
    The paper almost monopolized his time, but not quite. He played golf during the week and on Saturday afternoons shouted for the football team. “I was one of three cheer leaders in the Brown game, and felt like a d——f——, waving my arms and legs before several thousand amused spectators,” he told his mother, with poorly disguised delight. “It is a dirty job; one gets chiefly ridicule. But some poor devil has to suffer, and one can’t refuse.” He attended the Bachelors’ Ball in Boston—“which was very exclusive, very animated, and rather tipsy,” he remarked. “I got back at 6.” He went to the wedding of a fraternity brother and took upon himself the task of introducing his classmates to the mother of the bride. “Mrs. Kay was much impressed by his savoir faire, ” the grateful groom recalled. “His charm and ease of manner were apparent in those early days.”
     

     
    E LEANOR R OOSEVELT WAS a Roosevelt before she married Franklin Roosevelt. Her father was Elliott Roosevelt, Theodore’s brother. Alice Roosevelt was a cousin. Her mother was Anna Hall Roosevelt—“one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen,” Eleanor wrote, many years after her mother died. Coming from another child of another mother, such a comment might have required discount for the bias of the excessively close. In Eleanor’s case, any discount must have been in the opposite direction, for she was not close to her mother and never identified with her in any way. Her mother was beautiful; she herself was not—certainly not by her own reckoning. And her mother inhabited a world that never warmed to Eleanor, nor Eleanor to it. “My mother belonged to that New York City society which thought itself all-important,” Eleanor said. “In that society you were kind to the poor; you did not neglect your philanthropic duties in whatever community you lived; you assisted the hospitals and did something for the needy. You accepted invitations to dine and to dance with the right people only; you lived where you would be in their midst. You thought seriously about your children’s education; you read the books that everybody read; you were familiar with good literature. In short, you conformed to the conventional pattern.”
    Eleanor’s father inhabited Anna’s society but was not really of it, which may have been why Eleanor identified much more strongly with him. Or it may have been the flaws in Elliott Roosevelt’s character. Elliott was the more attractive and engaging of the two Roosevelt boys, with blond hair, handsome features, and a