HISTORICAL NOTES: Dearest Mama

On Dec. 4, 1903, on stationery of the Harvard Crimson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote to his mother: “I know what pain I must have caused you and you know I wouldn’t do it if I really could have helped it—mais tu sais, me voilà! That’s all that could be said. I know my mind, have known it for a long time, and know that I would never think otherwise. Result: I am the happiest man just now in the world; likewise the luckiest. And for you, dear Mummy, you know that nothing can ever change what we have always been & always will be to each other —only now you have two children to love & to love you—and Eleanor as you know will always be a daughter to you in every true way. …”

This and almost every other letter which her only child ever wrote her was carefully preserved by Sara Delano Roosevelt. Last week a doting mother’s souvenirs became a historian’s treasure. LIFE published a selection of F.D.R.’s letters as a boy and young man.†

“I Am in a Great Hurry.” At six, left at home in Hyde Park, young Franklin laboriously wrote: “I am in a great hurry. I found two birds nests. I took one egg.” At seven: “I went to the Borland’s I won one game by 2 she the other by 3. Send Papa 100 kisses and Aunt Laura and Uncle Frank both 75.” At nine, on a trip to Bad Nauheim, Germany, in a round, bold hand he wrote to his cousins: “I go to the public school with a lot of little mickies and we have German reading, German dictation, the history of Siegfried, and arithmetic, in which I am to 14 x 11.”

At ten, home in bed with a cold, to “My darling Mumkin and Pap: Good morning I hope you have used Pear’s Soap and are flourishing now . . . you will be horrified to hear that my temperature is 150°—But really I have got a ‘petit rhume’ only.”

“My Tail Is Better.” At 14, at prep school: “Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah. Groton 46—St. Marks 0. I am hoarse, deaf, and ready to stand on my cocoanut. Our team played a wonderful game.” Sara Delano Roosevelt sent him stamped, self-addressed envelopes to make sure that he would write often. He did.

“The Biddle boy [Moncure Biddle of Philadelphia] is quite crazy, fresh and stupid, he has been boot-boxed once and threatened to be pumped* several times. . . . My tail is better but the hard benches hurt it a little. I rub it with Arnica but it is not easy. . . . The only ball I received I nobly missed, and it landed biff! on my stomach, to the great annoyance of that intricate organ, and to the great delight of all present. … I should very much like a red turtle neck sweater.”

“I Said, ‘Howdy.’ ” At 21, summer-vacationing in Switzerland, he reported on a party: “I walked up to the best-looking dame in the bunch & said ‘howdy?’ Things at once went like oil & I was soon having flirtations with three of the nobility at the same time … I inspected the gardens with another ‘chawmer’ & ended up by jollying the hostess herself all by her lonesome for ten minutes while a uniformed Lord stood by & never got in anything except an occasional ‘aw’ or an ‘I sy.'”

But the future President of the U.S. also had his mind on serious matters. In a firm, angular hand he commented on Theodore Roosevelt’s intervention in a 1902 coal strike: “In spite of his success in settling the trouble, I think that the President make a serious mistake in interfering—politically at least. His tendency to make the executive power stronger than the Houses of Congress is bound to be a bad thing, especially when a man of weaker personality succeeds him in office.”

†Excerpts herewith published by permission of Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc., who will release in November Volume I (Early Years; $5) of a three-volume F.D.R.: His Personal Letters.

* Boys who broke the school code were “pumped”: held upside down under a water faucet and “forcibly drowned for eight or ten seconds,” according to old Groton-boy Artist George Biddle.