Washington was a lethal town for wives, with an odious history for women.'' ''The record was grim, and every one of her predecessors sickened To understand her new role and decide just what she might do from within the confines of the President's house,'' Cook writes. ''Before she entered the White House, E.R. Crim was still aghast.''Įleanor Roosevelt was 48 when she became First Lady and came to the cap- ital, labeled ''that small ungenerous town'' by her ferociously feminist biographer. ''Eight years later,'' one of his subordinates wrote, ''Mr. Crim, the chief White House usher, by showing up in a yellow bathing suit to give him letters to mail. She acted with breezy informality, once shocking Howell Roosevelt, who had taken flying lessons, handle the controls until the Condor did a serpentine turn. The aviatrix in white evening gloves let Mrs. One night, after a black-tie dinner, she and Amelia Earhart went skylarking in their long dresses, flying from Washington She refused to play the wallflower, transforming herself into a party-loving First Lady, elegant in silver lame and black satin gowns. In Volume 2 of her biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, covering the years 1933 to 1938, Blanche Wiesen Cook continues her diligent pentimento, getting at the tender, sprightly creature behind the starchy, strident image, chronicling how the timid housewifeĪnd mother of five shed her chrysalis and turned into the New Deal's relentless ''Eleanor Everywhere.'' She is a figure of such poignancy and inspiration, rejected by her mother, betrayed by her husband, oppressed by her mother-in-law, holding her shyness and lonelinessĪt bay with Sisyphean efforts for those in need, I liked to think she had moments when she just felt swell. Memorial in Washington could have no jaunty fox fur. police dictated that her statue at the Roosevelt She was proud to be F.D.R.'s ''hair shirt,'' she liked pretty clothes. Or many years I had, hanging in my kitchen, a wonderful picture of Eleanor Roosevelt, smiling saucily in a cream satin Jean Harlow-style gown. Audio Special: Blanche Wiesen Cook Interviewed by Bill Goldstein.

Washington was 'a lethal town for wives,' but Eleanor Roosevelt conquered it anyway.

Eleanor roosevelt volume 2