RARE AND WONDERFUL 1930 AUTOGRAPH LETTER WRITTEN BY ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, TO HER SON FRANKLIN, JR. ABOUT LAZY DAYS IN WARM SPRINGS WITH FDR
ROOSEVELT, Eleanor. Autograph letter signed. Warm Springs, Georgia, May 9, 1930. Folio, single leaf of personal letterhead stationery (7 by 10-1/2 inches), writing on recto and verso, original autograph envelope with cancel stamp, writing on recto and verso.
Rare letter penned and signed by Eleanor Roosevelt to her son Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., a warm, familial message of warm summer days at Warm Springs with FDR.
After contracting polio in 1921, FDR visited a spa at Warm Springs, Georgia and regularly returned there every year. This letter by Eleanor Roosevelt was written in 1930 from Warm Springs, when FDR was in the midst of his term as governor of New York and beginning to think of the presidency. Writing to her son Franklin, Jr., then 16 and a student at Groton, Eleanor genially describes summer days spent horseback riding, swimming, and traveling through the countryside with her bodyguard Earl Miller, FDR and his longtime assistant Marguerite “Missy” LeHand (historians have speculated that Earl Miller was Eleanor Roosevelt’s lover at one time, and “Missy” LeHand the mistress of FDR). Others mentioned here include Arthur Carpenter, a patient at Warm Springs who became business manager of FDR’s Warm Springs Foundation, and Gus Gennerich, FDR’s personal bodyguard, along with Martha “Mitty” Bulloch and Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., parents of President Theodore Roosevelt and Eleanor’s grandparents, whose portrait hung in Eleanor and Franklin’s New York home at 49 East 65th Street.
Roosevelt’s letter, written in a lovely flowing hand, reads “May 9th, Dear Franklin, Father has had a wonderful rest this week though he does have enormous envelopes of mail to answer. I’ve had a wonderful week & hate to go tomorrow. I’ve ridden every morning at seven just on a stock saddle & the last two days on an English saddle but I confess I don’t feel very secure as yet & whether I shall dare try any of the Hyde Park horses I do not know. These horses are so quiet & have such a nice hobby horse canter on account of being ridden by the patients so much that it would be very different on anything with life. The pool has been grand & I can swim the whole length of the outdoor pool. I’m so glad you you [sic] are still on the - - [illegible] but very sorry your crew lost & I do hope you do better next time. Father, Mr. Carpenter, Missy & I were driven by Corporal Miller last Tuesday over to Roswell. We borrowed a Lincoln from a very grand Mr. Moore (who is a patient that bought a cottage), & took our lunch with us & found it a lovely drive & not so far as we thought. The old house is lovely but not well kept up & though the trees are fine the grounds have had no care. We saw the town where your great grandfather Roosevelt (whose portrait hangs over the mantelpiece in 49) was married to Mitty Bulloch. Missy & Corporal Miller & Gus all want to be remembered to you. Father sends his love with mine. Ever devotedly, Mother.” She continues a final note across the upper edge of the first page, writing vertically across the remaining open space and overlapping the imprint of her name on this leaf of personal stationery: “Granny - — [illegible] & will not be back at Hyde Park till the 21st or 22nd as she is stopping in Washington & leaving there the 19th. Father leaves the 29th. I will be in N.Y. till after the 15th then go to Monticello & Washington for 3 days but I can be reached thro’ here.” Both letter and envelope Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal stationery imprinted “Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt”; envelope with cancel stamp dated “May 10, 2 p.m. 1930” and the original two-cent stamp.
Fine condition.