"My Dear Franklin"

"A thousand thanks and kisses," Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to her mother-in-law from Germany. "I feel as though we would have such a long arrears of kisses and cuddly times to make up when we get home."

The year was 1905. Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt were on their honeymoon, trotting around Europe, buying dresses, furs, linens, rare books and antiques. They were hobnobbing with the great and near-great, but they never forgot to write to Mama. Sara Delano Roosevelt had tried to break up her son's romance with Eleanor; nevertheless, she was an indulgent mother and a friend in time of need. The "thousand thanks" were for an unexpected $500 windfall from her.

Both Eleanor's and Franklin's letters, which they wrote as diaries of their trips, together with Mama's answers and letters to and from other members of the Roosevelt clan, are collected in Vol. II of F.D.R., His Personal Letters (edited by son Elliott* and published by Duell, Sloan & Pearce; $5). Vol. I (TIME, Oct. 13, 1947) took F.D.R. from boyhood to young manhood; Vol. II carries him from his honeymoon up to 1928.

"To My Sorrow." Franklin and Eleanor were a gay and carefree couple. Franklin went to law school, Eleanor started having babies. The family spent many joyful summers at Campobello, New Brunswick. There Franklin once walked in his sleep, an incident which Eleanor described to Mama: "He suddenly leaped up, turned over a chair and started to open the shutters. I grabbed his pyjama tails and asked what he wanted and received this surprising answer: 'I must get it, it is very rare, the only one and a most precious book.' After some persuasion he returned to bed, very angry with me and the next morning he knew nothing about it!"

But Mama always seemed to have something to worry about. "To my sorrow," she wrote from Paris in 1907, "I find . . . that my dear boy's bills are not paid, though two years old. I have today been to the bankers and the bills are paid.

I will say nothing, as it will do no good, only it is a surprise as I am not accustomed to this way of doing business, my dear Franklin."

Shirt-Sleeves Trend. What bothered Sara Roosevelt more was that Franklin seemed to be slipping away from her. She and "dear Franklin" argued over the role he should play in life. In a long, grande dame letter to "Dearest Franklin and Dearest Eleanor" she wrote: "The foolish old saying 'noblesse oblige' is good and 'honneur oblige' possibly expresses it better for most of us. One can be as democratic as one likes, but... we owe a great example." She sorrowed over "the trend to 'shirt sleeves.' "

F.D.R. left Sara Roosevelt's world, where genteel people set good examples, to begin making another world for himself.

He had been a state senator, then he went to Washington. His letters now were mostly to "Dearest Babs," his wife.

"Sweet But Very Sad." He was an impatient, young (32) Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He wrote Babs: "These dear good people like W.J.B. [Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan] and J.D. [Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels] have about as much conception of what a general European war means as Elliott has of higher mathematics." Later: ' I am running the real work, although Josephus is here. He is bewildered by it all, very sweet but very sad."

The year 1916 drew to a close. "Dearest Babs . . . J.D. is too damned slow for words ... holds me up all down the line."

Babs took the children to Campobello for the summers. From Washington, Franklin wrote her hurried notes. From a July 1917 letter: "Last night I thought I heard a burglar and sat at the head of the stairs with the gun for half an hour, but it turned out to be the cat . . ." He visited the fleet and found "things not right . . . due to old lady officers and lack of decision in Department."

But three years later, when he resigned from the Navy Department to accept his party's nomination (and go down to defeat) as running mate to presidential candidate James M. Cox, it was a mellower F.D.R. who wrote old Josephus Daniels: "You have taught me so wisely and kept my feet on the ground when I was about to skyrocket . . ."

"Yet If You Run." It was a year later that Eleanor had occasion to write Sara Roosevelt, who was arriving home from Europe: "Dearest Mama, Franklin has been quite ill and so can't go down to meet you on Tuesday." Later Mama learned that Franklin had been struck down by infantile paralysis.

During the slow, hard years that followed, F.D.R. began, among other things, a history of the U.S., but abandoned it after 14 dull pages. He began to make history instead. The last letter in Volume II is one he wrote to Mama from Warm Springs during the 1928 presidential campaign for Alfred E. Smith: "I spoke in Atlanta twice last Wednesday and there is an appalling amount of vile propaganda in circulation ... I have had a difficult time turning down the Governorship [of New York], letters and telegrams by the dozen begging me to save the situation by running, but I have been perfectly firm."

Mama had scarcely had time to read the letter before the news was out. The Democrats had nominated her son for governor by acclamation. Mama wrote Franklin: "Eleanor telephoned me before I got my papers that you have to 'run' for the Governorship. Well, I am sorry if you do not feel that you can do it without too much self sacrifice, and yet if you run I do not want you to be defeated!"

Mama did not have to worry about that. He was not defeated then or ever again.

*For other news of Elliott, see PEOPLE.

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