Roosevelt Sequel

By JOSEPH LASH, M.D.

ELEANOR: THE YEARS ALONE 368 pages. Norton. $9.95.

Eleanor and Franklin, the first part of this two-volume biography of Mrs. Roosevelt, was last year's literary success. Not only did it win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, but it defeated sex (Any Woman Can) and the Mafia (Honor Thy Father) to become the year's top bestseller.

Like its subject, it was a doughty, intelligent, enormously likable book. The new volume is in some ways even better since Lash has been much more selective in his use of detail. But in a crucial way. The Years Alone is less interesting. It features the same sturdy central character, but how one misses that old supporting cast! Gone is the gallery of flamboyant Roosevelt drunks to predictably early graves. The martinet mother-in-law is dead too, and even Cousin Alice Longworth's acid tongue is inexplicably silent, though she is still alive. Most sorely missed of all is F.D.R. himself, whose death marked the end of the first book. Only traces of his wit remain, such as this prayer for deliverance: "O Lord, make Eleanor tired!"

The Almighty did not comply.

Months after her husband's death Mrs. Roosevelt was in London drafting the Human Rights Declaration for the U.N. Later she was its first U.S. ambassador. A reluctant but realistic cold warrior, she began by making excuses for the Russians, saying that they had "an inferiority complex," but moved on to blunt confrontations with Andrei Vishinsky, head of the Soviet delegation, over forced repatriation of refugees.

With each passing year she became more the beloved public figure she deserved to be. There were still a few catcalls. Westbrook Pegler never stopped calling her "la boca grande," but fewer listened. In 1949 Cardinal Spellman threw an alarming tantrum over a "My Day" column opposing federal aid to parochial schools. He declared her conduct "unworthy of an American mother" but journeyed to Hyde Park personally to make peace when he realized that his fulminations were helping opposition to Catholic political candidates. Mrs. Roosevelt recorded the scene in a typical, ineffable column: "Miss Thompson came and said: 'Cardinal Spellman is on the porch!' We had a pleasant chat and I hope the country proved as much of a tonic for him as it always is for me."

In any controversy she had the knack of simultaneously joining the battle and remaining above it. She needed to, if only to survive her sons' destructive political forays. In 1948 Elliott's tenacious effort to draft Eisenhower for the Democrats discomfited his mother as well as President Truman and the general. Lash sums up the situation in 1952 with one terse sentence: "Not only was James for Kefauver and Franklin Jr. Harriman's campaign manager, but Elliott and John had come out for Eisenhower" (who was by then the Republican candidate).

Her own spiritual son was Adlai Stevenson. His idealism and wit rejuvenated her and, as Lash points out, she was flattered by his dependence on her. Yet she came to regard her dramatic pro-Stevenson stand at the 1960 convention as a mistake since it hurt his chance to be Secretary of State. It also dissipated her own power and as Lash notes: "She cared about her influence."

If her sons and her candidate disappointed her, nothing ever defeated her. "A tall, smiling lady in a gay flowered hat," she spoke for innumerable causes, and never asked ahead about the size of the crowd. Until a year before her death at 78 she was writing prolifically, lecturing, appearing on television and escorting flocks of great-grandchildren around Europe. "I am a tough old bird," she boasted to a friend. Norman Mailer described her in old age more gracefully: "Fine, precise, hard-worked like ivory."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.