American Realities with Bill Youngs
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    • Gods Messengers: Religious Leadership in Colonial New England, 1700-1750 >
      • Table of Contents
      • Preface
      • Chapter 1: The Ministers and Their Times
      • Chapter 2: The Minister's Calling
      • Epilogue
      • Appendix: Length of Ministerial Settlement
      • Abbreviations
    • The Congregationalists >
      • Timeline
      • Bibliographic Dictionary of Leaders
    • Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life >
      • Prologue: The South Pacific, 1943 >
        • Eleanor Roosevelt South Pacific
      • A Victorian Family
      • The Legacy
      • Growing Up
      • Eleanor and Franklin
      • A Politician's Wife
      • Grief
      • Public Service
      • First Lady
      • The Democratic Crusade
      • On Her Own
    • American Realities (Book) >
      • History as a Story
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      • Volume One >
        • The Native Americans
        • The English Background
        • The British American
        • Reform in Colonial America
        • Divided Loyalties
        • The American Revolution
        • Testing the Constitution
        • Republican Nationalism
        • The Limits of Jacksonian Democracy
        • Abolitionists and Anti-abolitionists
        • Texas Revolution
        • Reform in the Early Republic
        • Manifest Destiny
        • A Slave's Story
        • The Civil War >
          • Two Soldiers
      • Volume Two >
        • The “Taming” of the West
        • Beyond Emancipation
        • The New Industrial Era
        • The Birth of Environmentalism
        • New Immigrants
        • Expanding American Democracy
        • World War I
        • Modernity versus Tradition
        • The New Deal
        • Total War
        • The Cold War
        • The Civil Rights Movement
        • Turmoil on the Campuses
        • The New Computer Age
        • America, the Cold War, and Beyond
      • Additional Essays >
        • Norsemen in the New World
    • The Fair and the Falls >
      • Part I: Possessing the Falls >
        • Chapter One: James Glover: Purchasing the Falls
        • Chapter Two: Waiting for the Indians
        • Chapter Three: Harnessing the Falls
        • Chapter Four: "The World's Fair of the Northwest"
        • Chapter Five: The City Beside the Falls
      • Part II: Rediscovering the Falls >
        • Chapter Six: The Twilight of Old Spokane
        • Chapter Seven: Urban Blight and Urban Renewal
        • Chapter Eight: King Cole and The Heart of a City
        • Chapter Nine: Visualizing a World's Fair
      • Part III Redesigning the Falls >
        • Chapter Ten: From Spokane to Paris >
          • Tom Foley's Turn
        • Chapter Eleven: Wooing the Foreign Exhibitors
        • Chapter Twelve: Wooing the Domestic Exhibitors
        • Chapter Thirteen: The Environmental Debate
        • Chapter Fourteen: Building the Fair
        • Chapter Fifteen: Marketing, Money, and Management
      • Part IV: The Fair by the Falls >
        • Chapter Sixteen: Opening Day
        • Chapter Seventeen: A Mingling of Peoples
        • Chapter Eighteen: Days at the Fair
        • Chapter Nineteen: The Press of New Ideas
        • Chapter Twenty: The Final Tally
      • Part V: An American Environment >
        • Chapter Twenty-One: Spokane Falls, An American Environment
      • The Fair and the Falls Map
J. William T. "Bill" Youngs, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life, Chapter Six 
                                                           "Lucy Mercer Letters" courtesy of the NYTimes

The bottom dropped out of my own particular world, and I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, Letter to Joseph Lash

Chapter 6: Grief

Picture
"Franklin Roosevelt's Mistress, Lucy Mercer" courtesy of the the Wiki Commons

Summary

Against the backdrop of World War One, Eleanor Roosevelt's life begins to unravel.  She discovers her husband had been unfaithful over a long period of time.  Her relationship with him dissolves,  and Polio takes his legs from him.

Eleanor takes solace by becoming more active in politics.  She finds that by helping others, she is able to once again allow love into her life.   

Author reads from the Text

One day as Franklin slept, Eleanor came across a packet of letters addressed to him in a familiar hand.  They were from Lucy Mercer, Eleanor's friend and personal secretary.  During the past few years Lucy had become almost a member of the family, sitting casually on the floor beside Eleanor sorting out invitations, helping her plan her schedule.  She often ate with the Roosevelts and sometimes was Franklin's dinner companion when Eleanor was away.  Lucy was bright and vivacious, a perfect counterpart to Eleanor. ...

Eleanor began to look furtively through Lucy's letters, perhaps hoping they were simply the formal notes of a family friend.  But the words before her eyes were not formal: Lucy was writing to someone she loved, and who, evidently, loved her in return.  Eleanor was stunned.  Franklin had loved her and promised to always love her.  Then he had done this: he the father of their children.  How could he make love to Lucy, to her own secretary?  How could he betray his wife?

Links
  • Web-sources
  • Study Questions
  • Quizlet
  • Outline

Chapter 5: A Politician's Wife
Eleanor Roosevelt Main Page
Chapter 7: Public Service