THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 17, 1995 TAG: 9505180052
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY RUTH WALKER
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
THOSE WHO HAVE dipped into the vast Franklin D. Roosevelt literature may remember occasional references to distant cousin Margaret Suckley, the retiring, unobtrusive ``Daisy,'' who sometimes seemed almost a shadowy figure.
Now in ``Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship betwee Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley'' (Houghton Mifflin, $24.95), Geoffrey C. Ward, a well-known Roosevelt biographer, has elevated her. In his judgment, she was nothing less than the president's closest companion during his last years. Roosevelt and Suckley, who was 10 years his junior, had an ``extraordinary friendship,'' Ward contends. He also offers his belief that the relationship was ``an old-fashioned love story.''
The nature of the relationship between Roosevelt and his cousin may be subject to debate, but there can be no doubt about Suckley's devotion to him.
This book includes correspondence between Roosevelt and Suckley and entries from her diaries, which were found after her death in her 100th year. She tells us of travels with the president, of life in the White House, of her presence at the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, N.Y., on election night, of lunch with Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, of automobile rides with the president at the wheel.
At times her propensities for underlining words and using exclamation marks become annoying, but certainly Roosevelt liked her letter-writing skills. In a letter from the White House, he wrote: ``I had hoped for it and this morning it came & don't ever leave out the dots & dashes & exclamation points - I love them.'' In another communication, he advised her: ``Your letters tell me so much I want to know - and I love them and all the details - don't even dare to leave any out.''
Ward has effectively annotated this material.
In one letter, Suckley expressed concern that there might be talk about the automobile rides that she and Roosevelt shared. She wouldn't want to give the gossips a ``handle'' to use against Roosevelt and his wife. Actually Suckley had numerous complimentary things to say about Eleanor Roosevelt.
In a typical comment about the president, she wrote that he ``has the most wonderful disposition and is unfailingly thoughtful of others.'' Another time, she exulted, ``What a friend he is, to so many people.'' She was ever aware of her privileged position, once commenting: ``I am trying to realize that I am actually staying here, in the White House!''
Suckley frequently exhorted Roosevelt about his health, once advising him to remember that he would be needed ``more & more with every passing month.'' She championed a healer-psychic named Lenny, who went to the White House to give massages to the president, and apparently believed that the treatments were helpful.
During part of the time covered by this book, Suckley was employed as a companion to her aunt. Later, she joined the staff of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park.
She was with the president when he died at Warm Springs, Ga., as was Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, with whom Roosevelt had an affair many years earlier. Suckley, typically, speaks well of Rutherfurd in a number of references. MEMO: Ruth Walker is a retired book editor of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star.
by CNB