The Wars of the Roosevelts by William J. Mann

Author:William J. Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

WARM SPRINGS, GEORGIA

“Dearest E.,” Franklin wrote that October from his little cottage surrounded by pine trees. “Life is just the same day after day and there is no variety to give landmarks. The mornings, as you know, are wholly taken up by the pool and four of the afternoons we have sat on the lawn.”

For a man used to luxury, Warm Springs was exceedingly primitive. Squirrels ran across the roof of Franklin’s small whitewashed cottage; wind and sunlight slipped in between the slats in the walls. The concrete that surrounded the adjacent pool was cracked and stained bright orange from the sulfur in the water. The mineral waters, however, were warm, soothing, and buoyant, allowing Franklin, for the first time in three years, to stand upright on his own without the aid of braces. The joy that this gave him more than made up for the pervasive odor of rotten eggs.

He’d been lured to Warm Springs by a sympathetic newspaper columnist named Tom Loyless, who hoped not only that Franklin would benefit from the healing waters, but that his support might turn around the once-thriving resort. Accompanied by Eleanor and Missy Le Hand, Franklin was less than impressed upon his first arrival earlier that fall, but after a few days in the mineral pool, he was convinced that this was the way to get back on his feet—and back on the path to the White House. “The legs are really improving a great deal,” he reported to Eleanor after she returned to New York. “The walking and general exercises in the water is fine [sic]—and I have worked out some special exercises also. This is really a discovery of a place, and there is no doubt that I’ve got to do it some more.”

As Eleanor motored around New York campaigning for the Democrats, and the Singing Teapot spouted its steam across the state in an effort to bring down Ted, Franklin concentrated on strengthening his spindly, wasted legs. Day in and day out, he worked his legs in the pool. In the afternoons, dried off and tired, he would join Tom Loyless and his wife for a drive through the peach orchards and pine trees of the Georgia countryside. Missy Le Hand would accompany them. “I like him ever so much,” Franklin wrote to Eleanor about Loyless, “and she is nice but not broad in her interests. She chatters away to Missy in the back seat and I hear an occasional yes or no from Missy to prove she is not sleeping.” To any local, they would have appeared to be two married couples out for an afternoon drive.

What struck Franklin more than the beauty of the countryside, however, was “the great deal of poverty and neglect” that lay just beyond the resort, as he wrote to his mother. Once, perhaps, the spoiled scion of Hyde Park wouldn’t have taken much notice of ramshackle houses and barefoot children, but Eleanor had taught him to see the world as it really was and had made him want to do something about it.

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