I think that Hick was in love with Eleanor, and Eleanor was in love with Hick. I think it’s very important to look at the letters that are in my book, because unlike some of the recent published letters.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOKHe loved to sing. He loved to have fun. And he wrote beautiful letters, just as her father did, which – alas and alack – Eleanor Roosevelt destroyed. But she refers to his beautiful letters. And she was charmed by him.
More Blanche Wiesen Cook Quotes
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And I think Eleanor Roosevelt always responded to pain by doing more, by doing something, by being active. And I think she just couldn’t bear to look at her childhood grief. And she didn’t.
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She writes that the happiest day, the happiest single day of her life was the day that she made the first team at field hockey. And I have to say, as a biographer, that’s the most important fact.
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Eleanor Roosevelt started off almost every early article she wrote, starting with, “My mother was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.” And I think her life was a constant and continual and lifelong contrast with her mother.
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Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt’s talents and encouraged her talents.
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They’re partners in a big house where there are two separate courts, and they both know they have two separate courts. But these are courts that are allied in purpose, united in vision.
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Eleanor Roosevelt doesn’t ever do anything that is going to hurt her husband. She tries things out on him. She gets permission to do things.
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Also, she spoke perfect French. She grew up speaking French. She’s now at a french-speaking school where, you know, girls are coming from all over the world. Not everybody speaks French.
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One, she’s really talented, an organizational woman. She knows how to do things. She begins to compare her life to her grandmother’s life. And it’s very clear to her that being a devoted wife and a devoted mother is not enough.
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Well, the reality of her father was that he was a very diseased alcoholic, who died at the age of 34. And one always has to pause to wonder how much you have to drink to die at 34. And he was a really tragic father.
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I have both the personal and the political. And their relationship is about ardor. It’s about fun. And it’s also about politics.
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He loved to sing. He loved to have fun. And he wrote beautiful letters, just as her father did, which – alas and alack – Eleanor Roosevelt destroyed. But she refers to his beautiful letters. And she was charmed by him.
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A lot of people say that Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t a good mother. And there are two pieces to that story. One is, when they were very young, she was not a good mother. She was an unhappy mother.
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One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt.
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There was a surprising amount of freedom. Eleanor Roosevelt talks about how the happiest moments of her days were when she would take a book out of the library, which wasn’t censored.
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Like traditional upper class families, there are nannies and servants, and the children, you know, come in to say good-night before they go to bed.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK