The Women the President Loved

The more beautiful Lucy appears, the more Eleanor wilts, in this telling. In the months after she discovered the affair, Eleanor had trouble keeping food down. "The acids brought up by the vomiting," writes Persico, "began to damage her gums, causing her teeth to loosen, spread apart, and protrude even further."

It is hard not to feel indignant on Eleanor's behalf as you trawl through the evidence of her husband's infidelity and need for the admiration of other women—not simply because she is described as physically inferior, but because she is so often cast as a rejected, loveless figure. The Eleanor who strode confidently onto the world stage and overcame her shyness to fight for those who were unable to fight for themselves, to speak against racial bigotry, economic exploitation, discrimination and dispossession is not here. At times, rather, it seems that her transformation is held against her. The book almost reads like a morality tale about politically active women who let the home fires languish. "Franklin Roosevelt's dilemma," writes Persico, "was essentially that he was married not simply to a wife, but to a stateswoman … She might be a scold, and a nag, but he could never shut her out completely because he knew she brought him back to his true bearings. [But] a woman so furiously rushing about to right the world's wrongs, who would shout a warning, an opinion, a criticism over her shoulder while rushing from the White House to storm the next barricade, could not provide the solace for which FDR hungered."

But what is most interesting about this tale is what these two giants of American history managed to achieve together, despite their shortcomings—and that they somehow negotiated a marriage where they sought succor and sustenance from others, but still believed in each other. They both grew because of that belief, all while navigating the country through depression and war.

So perhaps there are reasons to be thankful for the devoted Lucy Mercer. She never sought to humiliate her lover's dignified wife. She comforted an extraordinary president when he was lonely and ill. And perhaps the affair allowed Eleanor her independence. As historian Doris Goodwin says, "I have often thought, 'Thank God for Lucy Mercer because it freed Eleanor and allowed her to find who she was'." Which must have been truly pleasing to the eye.

© 2008