Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H. W. Brands Page A
Authors: H. W. Brands
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winning personality. But there was a crack in his character, and in the repeated poundings of sibling competition with the older and more ambitious Theodore, it opened wider and wider. Their parents sent Elliott off to Texas in his teens to recuperate from a nervous breakdown; when the boys’ father died soon after, Elliott employed his inheritance to fund a round-the-world tour. He hunted tigers in India and other beasts elsewhere, finally gaining an edge on his brother, who had yet to bag anything larger than a bear. He brought home heads, hides, and an exotic reputation, which helped sweep Anna Hall, in full bloom at nineteen, off her feet and to the altar. He loved her madly but badly, being already addicted to alcohol and becoming addicted to the opiates he ingested for pain following a riding accident that shattered his leg. He squandered what remained of his fortune and got a servant girl pregnant; she threatened a public scandal and had to be bought off by Theodore and the family.
The sordid details were kept from Eleanor, who knew only that her father loved her with a strange desperation. He needed Eleanor, for Eleanor loved him as Anna never could. Eleanor made no demands, held him to no standards. Eleanor forgave his absences—in sanatoriums and hospitals, often, drying out—and greeted him more ardently the longer he was gone. “Though he was so little with us, my father dominated all this period of my life,” she remembered. “Subconsciously I must have been waiting always for his visits. They were irregular, and he rarely sent word before he arrived, but never was I in the house, even in my room two long flights of stairs above the entrance door, that I did not hear his voice the minute he entered the front door. Walking down stairs was far too slow. I slid down the banisters and usually catapulted into his arms before his hat was hung up.” There was no other man for Eleanor—not when she was a girl, and not when she was a young woman. “He dominated my life as long as he lived, and was the love of my life for many years after he died.”
His importance to her grew even as his presence diminished. When Eleanor was eight, Anna died of diphtheria. Elliott came home for his wife’s final days, and he broke the news to Eleanor. “He was dressed all in black, looking very sad,” she remembered. “He held out his arms and gathered me to him. In a little while he began to talk, to explain to me that my mother was gone, that she had been all the world to him, and now he had only my brothers and myself, that my brothers were very young, and that he and I must keep close together.” He said that he had to leave and that the children would stay with their mother’s parents. But he would return. “Some day I would make a home for him again. We would travel together and do many things which he painted as interesting and pleasant…. Somehow it was always he and I. I did not understand whether my brothers were to be our children or whether he felt that they would be at school…. There started a feeling that day which never left me—that he and I were very close together, and some day would have a life of our own together.”
The promised day never came. Elliott spiraled downward after Anna’s death. He drank more heavily than ever and consorted with women of ill repute. Even Theodore, who had hardened his heart against his brother’s sins, pitied him, more or less. “Poor fellow!” he declared after learning that Elliott had crashed a carriage into a lamp post and injured his head. “If only he could have died instead of Anna!”
Elliott’s end came soon enough. Seized by a fit of delirium tremens, he thrashed about uncontrollably, tried to leap out a window, sweated and foamed, and finally collapsed in a fatal heart attack.
Eleanor refused to credit the news when she heard it. Since moving in with her grandparents, who had exhausted their tenderness on their own children and had none left for
The sordid details were kept from Eleanor, who knew only that her father loved her with a strange desperation. He needed Eleanor, for Eleanor loved him as Anna never could. Eleanor made no demands, held him to no standards. Eleanor forgave his absences—in sanatoriums and hospitals, often, drying out—and greeted him more ardently the longer he was gone. “Though he was so little with us, my father dominated all this period of my life,” she remembered. “Subconsciously I must have been waiting always for his visits. They were irregular, and he rarely sent word before he arrived, but never was I in the house, even in my room two long flights of stairs above the entrance door, that I did not hear his voice the minute he entered the front door. Walking down stairs was far too slow. I slid down the banisters and usually catapulted into his arms before his hat was hung up.” There was no other man for Eleanor—not when she was a girl, and not when she was a young woman. “He dominated my life as long as he lived, and was the love of my life for many years after he died.”
His importance to her grew even as his presence diminished. When Eleanor was eight, Anna died of diphtheria. Elliott came home for his wife’s final days, and he broke the news to Eleanor. “He was dressed all in black, looking very sad,” she remembered. “He held out his arms and gathered me to him. In a little while he began to talk, to explain to me that my mother was gone, that she had been all the world to him, and now he had only my brothers and myself, that my brothers were very young, and that he and I must keep close together.” He said that he had to leave and that the children would stay with their mother’s parents. But he would return. “Some day I would make a home for him again. We would travel together and do many things which he painted as interesting and pleasant…. Somehow it was always he and I. I did not understand whether my brothers were to be our children or whether he felt that they would be at school…. There started a feeling that day which never left me—that he and I were very close together, and some day would have a life of our own together.”
The promised day never came. Elliott spiraled downward after Anna’s death. He drank more heavily than ever and consorted with women of ill repute. Even Theodore, who had hardened his heart against his brother’s sins, pitied him, more or less. “Poor fellow!” he declared after learning that Elliott had crashed a carriage into a lamp post and injured his head. “If only he could have died instead of Anna!”
Elliott’s end came soon enough. Seized by a fit of delirium tremens, he thrashed about uncontrollably, tried to leap out a window, sweated and foamed, and finally collapsed in a fatal heart attack.
Eleanor refused to credit the news when she heard it. Since moving in with her grandparents, who had exhausted their tenderness on their own children and had none left for
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