Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash Read Free Book Online

set,” Elliott called them. Almost everyone to whom Elliott doffed his hat was connected in some way to either the Roosevelts or the Halls.
    Anna and Elliott’s courtship was ritually decorous.
    â€œMy dear Mr. Roosevelt,” wrote Anna in her strong, precise handwriting,
    Thank you many times for your very pretty philopena present. I think it was wicked of you to send me anything, yet I must tell you how much pleasure it gave me. I would try and thank you for your note, but feel it would be useless. Let me only say that I fully appreciate your kindness.
    Hoping soon to see you, Believe me
    Monday, March 12th.
    Yours very sincerely,
    ANNA R. HALL
    11 West 37th St.
    And a note from Elliott, impatient to shorten the hours away from her, greeted his “dear Miss Hall” at breakfast.
    It will be, I hope, so delightful an afternoon that I will be at the hospital at half after four instead of five, it being so much more pleasant an hour for driving than the later.
    I trust that you can get through your work there by that time. Accept these few flowers and wear them for the little children to see. They say that the “lovely lady” always has some with her. Even the flowers are happier at being your servants I am sure.
    With regard I am
    6 West 57 St.
    Friday
    Faithfully Yours
    ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT
    According to Fanny Parsons, Anna and Elliott decided to become engaged at a Memorial Day house party given in the hope of encouraging just this event by lovely Laura Delano, the youngest sister of Mrs. James (Sallie) Roosevelt. The party was at Algonac, the stately Delano mansion overlooking the Hudson at Newburgh. The Roosevelt clan immediately welcomed the nineteen-year-old Anna with an outpouring of affection mingled with relief that as a family man with “something to work for in life,” Elliott might perhaps settle down.
    â€œHe is such a tender, sympathetic, manly man,” Bamie wrote to Anna, that she, though older, had “ever turned toward him in many sad moments for help and strength.” Corinne, suffering from a “quincy sore throat,” scratched out a note in pencil to express her delight that Anna had made Elliott “so grateful and happy a man. He loves you with so tender and respectful a devotion, that I who love my darling brother so dearly, cannot but feel that you as well as he, have much to be thankful for.” Theodore wrote his “dearest Old Brother” that “it is no light thing to take the irrevocable step you have just taken, but I feel sure that you have done wisely and well, and we are all more than thankful to have so lovely a member added to our household circle.”
    Felicitations poured in, as did invitations to call. From Hyde Park, Elliott’s cousin James Roosevelt sent his “warmest congratulations,” adding, “Your Godson [F.D.R.] thrives and grows. I have just beenteaching him now to climb a ladder in a cherry tree. Your Aunt [Sara] says—‘she will send you a line to express her congratulations.’”
    Elliott spent most of the summer in town, but on week ends he was at Tivoli and the whole “Tivoli crowd” along the Woods Road came to congratulate the couple. There were tennis and “jolly drives,” reading out loud and an evening of fireworks at the R. E. Livingstons’. Moving serenely through it all, reported Elliott to his mother, was his willowy Anna, wearing the magnificent “tiger claw necklace” that Elliott had made after his return from India.
    Weekdays in town were not all work. There were “all night talks” with Theodore and frequent dashes out to Hempstead to ride, hunt, and play polo. “The ‘Meet’ at Jamaica yesterday afternoon was a very pretty one and we had a glorious run,” Elliott wrote Anna. “Mohawk [his hunter] did grandly and gave me a good place in the first flight from start to kill.” Afterward they “dined quietly at