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Commissioners in Lunacy
Jun. 18th, 2015 09:50 amWent to the library and took out a bunch of books on the respective childhoods of Eleanor Roosevelt and the Sagamore Hill Roosevelts.
Eleanor was the daughter of Teddy’s younger brother, Elliott. Once a year, she’d travel down from the isolated splendor of Oak Lawn to Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay to visit her rowdy cousins.
Growing up, Elliott was the one of whom great things were expected. Teddy had asthma so severe that the family’s doctors told his parents he would never survive childhood. He routinely had near-death experiences in the middle of the night in which he had visions of large, phantasmagoric animals who sat on his chest.
Teddy staved off his asthma through intense physical exercise. This had the added benefit of keeping what I imagine these days would be diagnosed as a bipolar disorder at bay.
Elliott was not particularly obsessed with exercise. Thus, in his early 20s, when the family madness began to evince itself, he could only control it with alcohol and drugs.
Elliott had married Anna Hall, a celebrated beauty and a member of Mrs. Astor’s 400. In a letter to a friend, Anna described her newborn daughter Eleanor as “a more wrinkled and less attractive baby than the average.” She continued to find Eleanor so ugly that she nicknamed the child “Granny.”
I can remember, Eleanor wrote years later, standing in the door, very often with my finger in my mouth – which was, of course, forbidden – and I can see the look in her eyes and hear the tone of her voice as she said, “Come in, Granny.” If a visitor was there, she might turn and say: “She is such a funny child, so old-fashioned, that we always call her Granny.” I wanted to sink through the floor in shame.”
Another time, during a festive tea party where other children were present, Anna – regarding her daughter with obvious distaste – remarked, “Eleanor, I hardly know what’s to happen to you. You’re so plain that you really have nothing to do except be good.”
In contrast, Eleanor was extremely close to her ne’er-do-well father, and between bouts of illness, he took her everywhere with him. Her father called her “Little Nell” after the heroine of The Old Curiosity Shop.
The family traveled to Europe in search of some spa, some treatment, that might cure Elliott’s dipsomania. Elliott kept making suicide threats and finally bolted to go off and live with a mistress in Paris. But along the way, Anna was impregnated again.
At the age of six, Eleanor was sent off to a French convent. She could not speak French. One of the other little girls staying there swallowed a coin. She was fussed over and petted. So Eleanor pretended to swallow a coin. She was yelled at and kicked out of the convent in disgrace.
By 1892, Anna had had enough. Divorce was unthinkable, but she managed to manipulate Elliott into signing over his estate to her. The New York Herald had a field day:
Elliott Roosevelt Demented By Excesses
Wrecked by Liquor and Folly, He Is Now Confined in an Asylum for the Insane Near Paris
Proceedings to Save the Estate
Commissioners in Lunacy Appointed on Petition of His Brother Theodore and His Sister Anna with His Wife’s Approval
Elliott began writing Eleanor a series of letters in which he gave her admonishments designed to help her live a wonderful, useful life and described the beautiful life they would have together when he got well. The letters only arrive sporadically, of course.
Anna died of diphtheria in 1892 when Eleanor was eight. Eleanor and her brothers were sent to live with Anna’s mother, the eccentric dowager Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall, in her vast estate in Tivoli overlooking the Hudson.
A few months after her mother died, one of Eleanor’s younger brothers died.
Eleanor found herself surprisingly unmoved by these deaths. Death meant nothing to me, she wrote half a century later, and one fact wiped out everything else – my father was back, and I would see him very soon.
Elliott did make short, periodic visits to Eleanor in Tivoli. He would take her for walks with the estate’s many dogs. Once they stopped outside a drinking establishment in Tivoli. Elliott went inside; Eleanor continued to stand outside holding the dogs. Six hours later, Eleanor watched the barmen carry out her the drunk unconscious form of her father. One of the barmen noticed Eleanor and took her back to her grandmother’s house.
In 1894, Teddy writes jovially to someone-or-other: Elliot is up and about again: and I hear is drinking heavily; if so he must break down soon.
Two days later, Teddy's prophecy came true: Under the influence of alcohol and “stimulants” (cocaine?), Elliott jumped from a second story window and died.
Eleanor’s grandmother disliked children heartily. But Eleanor had a trust fund of approximately $7,500 a year – the equivalent of $180,000 in today’s money. And Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall was using her granddaughter’s trust fund to run the vast estate.
I never wanted to go, wrote one of Eleanor’s many cousins years later – probably not one of the Sagamore Hill cousins who would have had no invitation – though it dawns on me that if I want to use Alice Roosevelt as a character, I’ll have to invent a visit. The grim atmosphere of that house. There was no place to play games, unbroken gloom everywhere. We ate our suppers in silence. The general attitude was, “don’t do this.”
###
That's the background.
So possibly the Clarion story becomes a ghost story? Eleanor in the demon thrall of her dead father? And the vain, imperious, beautiful, self-absorbed Alice is actually the heroine with a Peter Quint, you devil! moment in which she actually saves Eleanor from the ghost of her dead father? (Points for gratuitous Turn of the Screw reference!!!!)
Or perhaps a modern day child comes across Eleanor’s ghost wandering on the grounds of the estate. Jolly dialogue ensues: Hey! I read about you in my 4th grade social studies textbook! But that would be more problematic plot-wise because, you know, one needs multiple encounters. Also, you know, corny.
###
Much to ponder. But now I must go off food-shopping for the dinner party I’m hosting tonight.
Eleanor was the daughter of Teddy’s younger brother, Elliott. Once a year, she’d travel down from the isolated splendor of Oak Lawn to Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay to visit her rowdy cousins.
Growing up, Elliott was the one of whom great things were expected. Teddy had asthma so severe that the family’s doctors told his parents he would never survive childhood. He routinely had near-death experiences in the middle of the night in which he had visions of large, phantasmagoric animals who sat on his chest.
Teddy staved off his asthma through intense physical exercise. This had the added benefit of keeping what I imagine these days would be diagnosed as a bipolar disorder at bay.
Elliott was not particularly obsessed with exercise. Thus, in his early 20s, when the family madness began to evince itself, he could only control it with alcohol and drugs.
Elliott had married Anna Hall, a celebrated beauty and a member of Mrs. Astor’s 400. In a letter to a friend, Anna described her newborn daughter Eleanor as “a more wrinkled and less attractive baby than the average.” She continued to find Eleanor so ugly that she nicknamed the child “Granny.”
I can remember, Eleanor wrote years later, standing in the door, very often with my finger in my mouth – which was, of course, forbidden – and I can see the look in her eyes and hear the tone of her voice as she said, “Come in, Granny.” If a visitor was there, she might turn and say: “She is such a funny child, so old-fashioned, that we always call her Granny.” I wanted to sink through the floor in shame.”
Another time, during a festive tea party where other children were present, Anna – regarding her daughter with obvious distaste – remarked, “Eleanor, I hardly know what’s to happen to you. You’re so plain that you really have nothing to do except be good.”
In contrast, Eleanor was extremely close to her ne’er-do-well father, and between bouts of illness, he took her everywhere with him. Her father called her “Little Nell” after the heroine of The Old Curiosity Shop.
The family traveled to Europe in search of some spa, some treatment, that might cure Elliott’s dipsomania. Elliott kept making suicide threats and finally bolted to go off and live with a mistress in Paris. But along the way, Anna was impregnated again.
At the age of six, Eleanor was sent off to a French convent. She could not speak French. One of the other little girls staying there swallowed a coin. She was fussed over and petted. So Eleanor pretended to swallow a coin. She was yelled at and kicked out of the convent in disgrace.
By 1892, Anna had had enough. Divorce was unthinkable, but she managed to manipulate Elliott into signing over his estate to her. The New York Herald had a field day:
Elliott Roosevelt Demented By Excesses
Wrecked by Liquor and Folly, He Is Now Confined in an Asylum for the Insane Near Paris
Proceedings to Save the Estate
Commissioners in Lunacy Appointed on Petition of His Brother Theodore and His Sister Anna with His Wife’s Approval
Elliott began writing Eleanor a series of letters in which he gave her admonishments designed to help her live a wonderful, useful life and described the beautiful life they would have together when he got well. The letters only arrive sporadically, of course.
Anna died of diphtheria in 1892 when Eleanor was eight. Eleanor and her brothers were sent to live with Anna’s mother, the eccentric dowager Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall, in her vast estate in Tivoli overlooking the Hudson.
A few months after her mother died, one of Eleanor’s younger brothers died.
Eleanor found herself surprisingly unmoved by these deaths. Death meant nothing to me, she wrote half a century later, and one fact wiped out everything else – my father was back, and I would see him very soon.
Elliott did make short, periodic visits to Eleanor in Tivoli. He would take her for walks with the estate’s many dogs. Once they stopped outside a drinking establishment in Tivoli. Elliott went inside; Eleanor continued to stand outside holding the dogs. Six hours later, Eleanor watched the barmen carry out her the drunk unconscious form of her father. One of the barmen noticed Eleanor and took her back to her grandmother’s house.
In 1894, Teddy writes jovially to someone-or-other: Elliot is up and about again: and I hear is drinking heavily; if so he must break down soon.
Two days later, Teddy's prophecy came true: Under the influence of alcohol and “stimulants” (cocaine?), Elliott jumped from a second story window and died.
Eleanor’s grandmother disliked children heartily. But Eleanor had a trust fund of approximately $7,500 a year – the equivalent of $180,000 in today’s money. And Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall was using her granddaughter’s trust fund to run the vast estate.
I never wanted to go, wrote one of Eleanor’s many cousins years later – probably not one of the Sagamore Hill cousins who would have had no invitation – though it dawns on me that if I want to use Alice Roosevelt as a character, I’ll have to invent a visit. The grim atmosphere of that house. There was no place to play games, unbroken gloom everywhere. We ate our suppers in silence. The general attitude was, “don’t do this.”
###
That's the background.
So possibly the Clarion story becomes a ghost story? Eleanor in the demon thrall of her dead father? And the vain, imperious, beautiful, self-absorbed Alice is actually the heroine with a Peter Quint, you devil! moment in which she actually saves Eleanor from the ghost of her dead father? (Points for gratuitous Turn of the Screw reference!!!!)
Or perhaps a modern day child comes across Eleanor’s ghost wandering on the grounds of the estate. Jolly dialogue ensues: Hey! I read about you in my 4th grade social studies textbook! But that would be more problematic plot-wise because, you know, one needs multiple encounters. Also, you know, corny.
###
Much to ponder. But now I must go off food-shopping for the dinner party I’m hosting tonight.
