Mrs. Roosevelt Was a Very Sensible Woman / Her Favorite Poem

Categories: History , Rediscoveries , Nonfiction

An acquaintance^* was facing legal difficulties.  She didn't know what to do.  Finally a solution came to her: she would write to John Grisham and ask for advice and money.  I felt sorry for my acquaintance's desperation and ineptitude.  But apparently writing to a public figure when in bad straits, or just for the heck of it, is not uncommon.

I was surprised to learn just how much time Eleanor Roosevelt spent corresponding with non-famous Americans.  The book I have before me, If You Ask Me (1946), is a collection of letters from regular people along with Mrs. Roosevelt's responses.  Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962, and other editors have compiled collections of her letters since then, including Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from Children of the Great Depression (1998) and Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters to Eleanor Roosevelt Through Depression and War (2004).

Many of the letters came from desperate people asking for money.  Mrs. Roosevelt forwarded these to appropriate social agencies and had deputized people in many states to check into the correspondents' stories and help them cut through red tape.  A typical letter (from Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters to Eleanor Roosevelt through Depression and War) reads:

I shall not tell no one I have written to you as the people around hear would only laugh at me. But I do not feel like you will so that is why I am writing to you if you send me any money please do not send check if you can help it just put the money in a letter and send it.

In If you Ask Me, Mrs. Roosevelt answers questions from readers who seem bewildered that she has African American friends.  She says that workers will not get ahead unless they organize.  It is her opinion that if a family's religious beliefs prohibit going to doctors, then parents should not be forced to take their children to a doctor.  She does not think women should be forbidden from dyeing their hair. 

She believes that a person should stand up while the United States's national anthem is being played, except that if for some reason it is being played over and over in a loop, it is all right to sit down after the first run-through.  She thinks it is all right for a young woman to speak to a soldier or sailor to whom she has not been properly introduced.  The women she admires most are Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.  If you're talking to someone, and they say "tomayto," and you're used to saying "tomahto," you don't have to say "tomayto" also (in order to be polite).

Eleanor Roosevelt's advice is patient and liberal.  Her advice differs from the advice I'd expect from a contemporary advice columnist only in her belief that there was no particular reason for a couple to marry if they didn't desire children, and that Americans should be encouraged to have large families.  She also believes that except in extraordinary situations (war, for example), women should remain at home with their children rather than taking a job. 

As far as the Soviet Union is concerned, her response is, "Though Mr. Stalin is a dictator, his efforts have been to help the people to prepare themselves for greater power." 

Her favorite color was blue; her favorite novel was Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop; and here is one of her favorite poems:

"On His Blindness,"

When I consider how my light is spent
     Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
     And that one talent which is death to hide
     Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
     My true account, lest he returning chide,
     "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
     I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
    Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
    Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
    And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
    They also serve who only stand and wait."

-- John Milton