Cousin Daisy

Manuscript Type
In troubled 1930s America, Daisy's family was severely affected by the Great Depression. As a spinster cousin to FDR, she became his mistress and personal secretary, fighting to keep her family's dwindling economy afloat, while dodging Eleanor's wrath, and liaising with his other women.

PART ONE - HUDSON RIVER VALLEY

CHAPTER ONE - RELATIONS

He was in a wheelchair when we became secret lovers, but my married cousin was a beautiful man; let no-one tell you otherwise - and it wasn’t because he was the 32nd President of the United States.

To be accurate, Franklin was my sixth cousin, and we were part of the Hudson River Valley families, related through our common ancestor, John Beekman. Sailing up river in search of fertile shores near New York, I like to imagine Beekman was overcome with the beauty of this land, resembling the European woodlands and wetlands left behind, and made mooring in a natural cove on the banks of the river. A generation later and we were intermarried with English, Dutch and Scottish immigrants. They called us kissing cousins; the titles of Cousin or Aunt or Uncle were used regardless of how close or distant the connections.

Altogether, we were composed of Delanos, Lynchs, Livingstons, Montgomerys, Suckleys and Roosevelts. Most of those surnames will mean little to you, but there was a time when we were all considered important and our names featured in The Top Ten Families of New York. European in customs, our kinsfolk owed more to Pride and Prejudice than Huckleberry Finn. We partied in Manhattan in winter, exchanging a life of horse and carriage for the latest automobiles. And in summer, we sailed, racing one another from Poughkeepsie to Albany in stylish small boats, pausing to picnic in the purple shadow of the Catskill Mountains.

Our family affiliations altered when Uncle Teddy became President. Afterwards no one ever said: ‘Roosevelt who?’ for they joined the ranks of the Astors, the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers. Lacking in prestigious accomplishments, the rest of us faded into a mellow obscurity.

Miss Stuck-ley? Miss Sock-ley? Hoteliers peered at reservations.

Miss Daisy Suckley, I would say, it’s pronounced Book-ley with an S. It’s Dutch.

As a child, our fathers attended gentlemen’s clubs, our mothers dressed in finery, and someone else did the cooking. Money was a vulgar topic; you never spoke about it. You either had it or you didn’t. The Roosevelts had plenty; not so, the Suckleys. Papa’s passport listed him as a gentleman, but he was no financier, and it was a blessing he died before the Great Depression ate our funds.

Like all my female cousins, I was brought up to expect a husband and children, and prevented from completing college lest I seemed overly academic. No one anticipated The Great War or Spanish influenza. But then, Franklin didn’t anticipate contracting polio as an adult. The nineteen twenties were cruel for both of us.

Our affair started after his first inauguration, when I was a forty-two-year-old spinster and never a beauty. What? I hear you say. Then why you? And him, the most powerful man in America! Believe me, I had similar thoughts when we dined with the Duke of Windsor and Wallace Simpson. You left a kingdom - for her? At least no one ever said Franklin was in dereliction of his duties. From a young age, he was determined to be President. Well, if Uncle Teddy could do it…

We didn’t predict our first kiss either, born of the magic of opportunity; his Fedora flung on the back seat of the car, the Camel cigarette smouldering in the leaves, my hand pressed to his heart, the distillation of desire.

And you will think he seduced me, a forty year old spinster who would blush at the mention of sex. But you'd be wrong.

Despite the blood connections, we were dissimilar. Franklin was an only child - if you didn’t count his half brother - and his mother never did. Whereas I was one of seven. The Roosevelts were organisers; the Suckleys were dreamers. You only had to look at Wilderstein, our Queen Anne styled mansion, to know that. When our grandfather died, Papa set about decorating every wing in indiscriminate style. Louis XIV clashed with Victorian velvets. And then he built a water tower; and then a windmill - both of which fell down - whereupon, he commissioned a five storey circular tower to be added to the North side. It remained standing and for most of my life, I lived on the third floor.

While we built esoteric projects, Aunt Sara - Franklin’s mother - added a tasteful but practical extension to their summer home, Springwood, in keeping with their presidential ambitions. Franklin’s father had died when he was young and she had free rein for the designs, instructing gardeners to trim and tame the land year round. We joked: no weed dared pop a seed on Roosevelt territory. But Aunt Sara’s tour de force was arranging Franklin’s marriage to Eleanor, Teddy’s favourite niece, thus securing the dynasty.

Nobody ever tried to arrange marriages for the Suckley girls.

In part, this was due to Mama’s emotional maladies. Papa said she needed a spell in a sanitarium and to hush it up, we were all taken to Switzerland. Leaving his children to the devices of various nurses and tutors, my father went to climb the Alps, returning occasionally to teach us how to ski and sail. By the time Mama was released and deemed well, we were bilingual and active. Unfortunately for us, she returned with a mania for all things medical.

Her new found fervency sought sickness everywhere, and my middle brother Arthur suffered the most, being naturally pale and slender. Mama insisted on incarcerating him in various sanitariums, until a young doctor took pity on us all, and told her firmly, ‘Laissez-le tranquille, there is nothing wrong with your son, madame.’ The medic insisted we all go home, and so at the age of sixteen, I returned to Wilderstein and had my first glimpse of the newly married Franklin.

A multitude of family came to visit our thirty-two bedroomed house, and it was left to me, as the eldest girl, to arrange fresh sheets and clean towels and sort menus. Young though I was, I became Dependable Daisy. In the polarity of my parents’ persuasions, I developed a very different mettle to my spoilt Roosevelt cousin.

By eighteen, I had learnt robustly good health, even when running a temperature of a hundred-and-one. In short, I had learnt to lie and keep secrets. I attended a New Year’s Eve party given by Archie Crum, and I will always remember Franklin, indulged and cosseted, turning up at their large fronted mansion with a toot and a shout and a spit of stones under the wheels of a new car. I watched him in fascination as he escorted women to the checkered black and white ballroom floor, a prince, unaware of the physical challenges life was to throw at him.

And I will admit to a twinge of envy. It would have been nice to be part of his inner circle, to saunter through a room and have people light up and touch my silken sleeve, the way they touched his elbow: Hey Roosevelt, you old devil, when’re you coming round for dinner?’.

What I couldn’t work out was why Cousin Eleanor looked so miserable.

CHAPTER TWO - THE FIRST LETTER

Summer 1922

My brother Henry Eglinton Montgomery Suckley went off to serve in the Ambulance Corps in the Great War and died. Nummie, as he was called, was Papa’s favourite son, and it did not take long for our father, wretched with grief, to follow him. And so my family disbanded. My younger sister Betty married. Her twin Katty and our youngest brother Arthur, unforgiving of Mama’s earlier medical fixations, returned to Europe with the Montgomerys, leaving me to cope with Mama’s weeping, and my eldest brother’s vagaries. Before his death, Papa had taught me to how to drive and I was proud of this skill. Few women in Dutchess County drove, and I knew how to reverse as well as how to navigate forwards. When someone needed a favour, Dependable Daisy was a common port of call.

Aunt Sara, Franklin’s mother, phoned my mother. ‘Bessie dear, could you spare your daughter for a few afternoons to be a companion to my son?’

She didn't really know me, but had heard how I soothed my mother’s mournfulness and kept the house running, and this had motivated her to ask for my assistance. Eleanor and the children had left to go to their summer home on Campobello Island in Brunswick, and Aunt Sara was struggling to cope with his black moods. His brush with death and the terrible toll of polio on his body was no secret.

We arranged our visit for the equinox, June 21st, which to my mind, was an auspicious date, and although I never fussed over my appearance, seeing as it was my good looking and well-known cousin, I made an effort. Mama would not have her daughters wear make-up, but at thirty-one, my long hair was still a pleasing ash brown, and I coiled it into neat braids, wound around my head. I chose my best white dress with a blue satin band to contrast with Mama’s perennial black. She modelled herself on Queen Victoria.

Turning at the open gates of Springwood, I drove in the river's direction. The long frontage of Sara Roosevelt’s house appeared; a damsel to Wilderstein’s crumpling dowager. Mama admired the lawns, cut to velvet, and the purple wisteria clinging to the house, its vines perfectly combed across the arched pergolas. I commented on the semi-circular portico, its clean classic columns scrubbed whiter than white and thought with regret of the moss that grew on ours. Stilling the engine, I checked for eyes at the many windows, but they were uniformly empty of anything but shine and curtains.

A man in a white jacket and pressed black trousers opened the door and ushered us in to the airy hall where Aunt Sara was waiting. She was taller than we were, and cut an imposing figure in sombre long skirts. The blue circles under her eyes showed suffering, but she and Mama were of the generation taught to stand with their backs straighter than a flagpole. Grief sat deep in the contours of her face and shoulders. She ordered tea and we went to the back parlour. It had none of the tired gaudiness of our gold and white room at Wilderstein, and although the room felt familiar from a party we had attended in 1916, the thick drapes and dark woods were spotless, the heavy fringed lamps and unyielding brocade sofas clean as new. Afternoon sun slanted in, shining a stripe on the herringbone floor, and a housemaid entered with a tray, awaiting instructions. I tried not to fidget, but I was dying to see Cousin Franklin. My last memory of him was dancing the hell out of a Scott Joplin rag at Cousin Archie’s New Year’s Eve ball at Crumwood.

The girl served tea and a slice of beige cake - Springwood’s culinary skills had not caught up with the rest of Europe - and Aunt Sara set about outlining her request. She wanted a sensible companion to sit with Franklin for a couple of afternoons a week. ‘Someone,’ she said, ‘to stop him brooding’. More curious than concerned, I volunteered promptly.

With the twist of her lips, I could see there was more she wished to impart. ‘They are having problems, Franklin and Eleanor,’ and then she rang a bell with nervous vigour.

The doors opened and Cousin Franklin was wheeled in by a valet who positioned him perpendicular to the large windows overlooking the lawns. The chair was a concoction of wheels and leather wrapped round a rattan canvas seat. The servants left, closing the doors behind them. Franklin did not acknowledge us, and he ignored the cup his mother placed on the card table next to him. His mood did not surprise me. A polio epidemic had not long swept through the State where, my married sister, Betty lived, and I had seen recovering children; the horror of paralysis as evident in their faces as their limbs.

But his appearance shocked me. Face no longer clean shaven, he held his shoulders tight, with eyes two black cavities of anger. Aunt Sara glanced towards him and, after a small introduction, sighed. Then she did what any well-bred woman would have done and behaved as if he was not there.

‘I don’t wish to speak ill of Eleanor but-‘ and knowing she was about to overcome any scruples on that score, I suggested to Mama, they take a walk in the gardens and I would companion Franklin. It didn’t seem fair to discuss his wife in front of him. Better to discuss her behind his back. With relief, they agreed and left me alone for what transpired to be the best part of an hour. Afterwards, I wondered if Aunt Sara guessed he would not speak to me.

Mama and I discussed the visit at home, where she told me Sara’s animosity towards Eleanor was all too evident. She had made Mama promise not to repeat anything, so of course, Mama told me everything.

I was not equally candid with her.

On that afternoon, the first time I was alone with him, any prior thoughts of envy extinguished like a candle. I looked over his legs, thin and motionless beneath the linen trousers, feet, encased in heavy black shoes, positioned on the wheelchair plinths. I so longed to speak to him, to say: even without the use of your limbs, you are still a beautiful man, but his bridled fury was intimidating.

The valet returned, by some prior arrangement I assumed. He left a crystal tumbler at his side containing a small measure of golden liquor. No one so much as looked my way and I hid my amusement. My family had never thought Prohibition was a desirable thing and my brother Arthur maintained Calvin Coolidge had a lot to answer for; in Europe, a meal was uncivilised without a respectable wine. Still, it was rather funny to see this breach of law by Cousin Franklin, a former lawyer and aspiring Senator.

Silently, he drained the glass in one, his hand betraying a slight tremor. Then he stretched out to a small wooden casket, flipping the lid and scrabbling for a cigarette. It dropped. I saw the whiteness of his knuckles as he made a fist, jamming a tortoiseshell holder into his mouth as if to stab himself. Without words, I rose up and fetched the cigarette by the wheels of his chair and placed between his fingers.

He said nothing.

Positioning the tobacco into the holder, he stretched out his arm again to find the weighty gold lighter next to the lukewarm tea. He knocked the cup, and it clanged, spilling the liquid onto the rug.

‘Dammit, shit!’ He stopped with the smallest acknowledgement of my presence. Mouth tight, his hands formed a knot in his lap. I picked up the lighter and ground my thumb on the tiny wheel a few times before the flint took, and then leant near to him, holding the flickering orange flare to his face. He half turned, placed the tip into the fire and inhaled. Those bleak eyes flickered to mine, a moment’s further attention and then down. Gone again. When I saw the smoke, I retreated, leaving the lighter in its original place and removing the teacup to the tray. There was nothing else useful for me to do, so I sat uneasily nearby.

‘Thank you,’ His words, a reluctant gratitude, encouraged me to speak.

‘I was a volunteer assistant, helping the Red Cross nurses at Ellis Island Hospital in the Great War.’

Silence. He smoked.

‘I’ve seen some terrible things, but I’m so impressed by the resilience of the wounded men.’

Silence.

His head turned to the window, eliminating me; his anger fit to combust the cigarette holder between his fingers. Teeth clenched, he punctured the air with dragon curls of smoke. I stayed silent. Conversation was not what he desired, and I listened to the subtle sounds of servants scampering around the house until our mothers returned.

In that hour, my heart went out to him. What had he done that Eleanor had left him, when he was so low?

Later, Mama told me. He was found with another woman not long before he became ill. The woman in question was Eleanor’s personal secretary, which made the whole thing seem more scandalous. But the worst of it was, according to Mama, while Eleanor and the children were away, they’d been seen driving out and around in public, bold as brass. Aunt Sara had put her foot down, refusing their request to divorce.

‘Hudson River Valley people don’t do that sort of thing,’ she insisted to Mama. We must uphold decorum. Divorce and the Roosevelt name could not be allowed to mix.

I knew he had come close to death, racked with pain and fever for months and it seemed one piece of news had subsumed the other, for on the wider family grapevine, we had known nothing of the affair, only saying reverential prayers in church while he lingered in a Manhattan hospital. None of this explained Eleanor’s absence to me. Could she not forgive now he was crippled? I determined to find out.

Aunt Sara arranged my schedule to be two afternoons a week, and Mama warned me to avoid any topic of his family or his ailments. Only births and horses and sailing were suitable for discussion. They also gave me strict instructions to shun talk of politics. He must give up public office, Sara Roosevelt insisted. He was a cripple. Retirement and leaving New York was his only option.

At the start of that day, I had fully intended to co-operate with my elders’ requests. Yet I came home with a steely yearning to communicate, to break through, find the man beneath, the dancer at parties, the honker of horns. That night, I wrote a letter to him in my third-floor tower bedroom. I didn't know what the effect would be.

Wilderstein, Rhinebeck, Dutchess County,

June 21st 1922.

Dear Cousin,

It was a pleasure to spend time with you this afternoon. Your mother gave me instructions to keep you amused. Please don’t be annoyed with her. She feels your wife is not there and you are lonely.

I mentioned Ellis Island where I worked a few years back, nursing returning soldiers. All I wanted to tell you is that ordinary men came back from the Great War, minus limbs and with disfigurements, and they had no choice but to go to work or starve. I heard your mother wants you to give up public office and I know you ran as Vice to Al Smith’s Democratic presidential hopes just before you became ill, but everyone says you are talented and a brilliant orator and if you can help people by taking some role in public office, then don’t be afraid to try. You’ve been spared Cousin Franklin and it must be for a higher purpose.

Mama would consider this letter impertinent and it would displease your mother for me to express an opinion in opposition to hers, but I send this with the best of intentions. Women have just been given the vote and I, for one, would vote for you!

With warmest affections - et avec mes meilleurs vœux.

Your Cousin Daisy

Mr Winters, in the Rhinebeck Post Office, looked at me over his spectacles as I handed him the mail. ‘You don’t want to drive it over there, yourself?’

I shook my head, too awkward to give an explanation, and bought the stamp.

Something might come of it, I told myself, but despite quite a few visits, he made no indication he had ever received the letter. The whole summer, Eleanor and the children never showed, and on scorching afternoons, I watched as Franklin struggled to walk using newly constructed parallel bars in the garden. His arm muscles knotted as he tried to pull his inert body into action, face strained with the determination. So many times, he fell to the ground, sweating and cursing. And he continued to curse and sweat as his valet and doctors lifted him up, ignoring their suggestions to stop.

Aunt Sara absented herself, which didn’t surprise me. One afternoon, she kissed me saying his torment was her own, and I was a godsend to release her from the torture for a couple of hours.

‘I only hand him glasses of iced lemonade,’ I wanted to add, ‘I could be a ghost for all the notice he takes of me.’ But her gratitude, and his presence, was enough reward.

One day, without explanation, he left to go south. Aunt Sara said he had gone to Florida to swim in warm waters, hoping to regain the use of his legs. Both of us were unsure whether to be hopeful or sad, and his horrors stayed with me as I ploughed through the chores of my life. For the next decade, I collected clippings of news items, anything with his face on it and against all the odds, I was reading a brighter narrative.

He was rising,

1924 - Triumphant Public Appearance for Roosevelt at Madison Square Gardens

in support of Governor Al Smith.

and rising,

1928 - FDR steps into Al Smith’s shoes as Governor of New York.

and rising. And I was happy for him,

1929 Popular Roosevelt on cue to be Re-elected as Governor

even as the Suckleys were falling.

1929 - Banks go Bust due to Wall Street Meltdown.

Stocks tumble - Millions see Savings Wiped Out.

Then, he gained the ultimate prize,

November 1932 - Landslide Victory for Roosevelt and the Democrats.

And like a genii from a bottle, the letter worked its magic.

CHAPTER THREE - THE INAUGURATION

Saturday 4th March 1933

After the 1929 stock market crash and the run on the banks, Robert, the eldest male in our family, set about selling what little we retained. We released our servants, and what could not be afforded was foregone. Betty and husband, having lost everything, turned up with their children at Wilderstein and much as I loved my sister, it was hard to live with Lieutenant Hambley; he was Tweedledum to Robert’s Tweedledee and the two of them walked around with identical expressions - the shock of formerly affluent men rendered incapable by poverty.

I was the only one to find work. The widowed Sophie Langdon, a Montgomery aunt, hired me as secretary and companion. Her fortune remaining miraculously intact, she lived in her Manhattan residence, returning in May to her summer home, Mansakenning, not far from Wilderstein. Behind her back, I nicknamed her the Deaconess, for she took her self-appointed role as upholder of morals and decorum seriously. She worked me hard, but my small salary was essential, so I did not fuss. Let others bemoan their fate - I was much too busy keeping Mama and Wilderstein afloat, in-between my tasks for Aunt Sophie.

When Cousin Franklin sent us tickets to his 1933 inauguration, it was the most exciting thing to have happened to me in years.