For more than a decade, ER wrote a monthly question and answer column for McCall's. Three months after her death, the magazine ran this article as a posthumous tribute to her, the magazine's most famous columnist.

I remember Hyde Park on so many, many occasions, covering forty-odd years. I remember going to the big house when I was a timid young girl not yet engaged to Franklin Delano Roosevelt; he had brought me there to meet mother's relatives. . . . A year later, I remember our honeymoon there--ten days alone in the house, still closed for the winter, except for the Scotch laundress-maid, Elsie, who cooked our meals for us. . . . I remember going back every spring and autumn, with our growing family of energetic children. . . . I particularly recall being there for part of the year when Franklin, at thirty-nine, was stricken with polio. . . . Later, I remember going to Hyde Park when he was Governor of New York State, and the for all the years in the 1930s and early 1940s, when the old mansion was know as the Summer White House. How filled were the guest rooms with the famous statesmen of this country and of the World! . . . And I remember returning on April 15, 1945, on the funeral train from Washington, D.C., when my husband was laid to rest in the rose garden, close to the house in which he had been born and which he had loved so well for all his sixty-three years.

Some of the events I remember in connection with the house are emotional ones, all but invisible at the time – such as my own gradual change from an awkwardly uncertain young woman, completely under the domination of others, into an independent personality. For it was against the background of Hyde Park that I slowly did what every human being must eventually do: I learned the lesson of adaptability and adjustment, then of self reliance--and finally, although it took me a very long time to grow up, I became an individual in my own right.

But here I must confess that, despite all my memories of life at Hyde Park, in one sense I think this memoir could well be titled "I Remember My Mother-in-Law's Hyde Park." It was indeed her home, and she made every decision concerning it. For over forty years, I was only a visitor there, which is the reason I never had a feeling of personal ownership toward the house. Naturally, Franklin felt more of a sense of possession than I did, although he actually owned Hyde Park for only the four years between his mother's death and his own. But, of course, he always knew that, by the terms of his father's will, his mother could not sell the Hyde Park property without his consent and that someday it would belong to him.

My mother-in-law did all the housekeeping there. She directed the activities of the seven indoor servants and her five outdoor men, and when we brought extra servants to help with the children and the enormous collection of guests--as we did when Franklin was first Governor and then President--she always told our servants what to do. With the exception of the first television set ever manufactured, which had been presented to Franklin, every piece of furniture throughout the thirty-six-room house had been bought by her husband and herself, most of it when she came as a bride in 1880. Because she never threw anything away (what was once good was always good), visitors could always see her great mahogany bed, where Franklin was born. They could also see the brass bed he used as a growing boy, later occupied by our son James and then by Elliot. My mother-in-law allowed household participation by anyone else only in one way: Once the telephone bills had become really terrific, she permitted Franklin to pay them.

Furthermore, she had a great idea that a home should be run for the man. Her husband, some twenty-five years older than she, had trained her to run the house to suit him and then to suit their only child, Franklin, since the time he had been a little boy. For example, she was always very careful to have the kind of food she knew Franklin would like. We often had thin corn bread at her house, and she served kedgeree for breakfast or lunch a great deal. Franklin had loved minute pudding since childhood, so we were given this dessert every few days; it was almost like baby mush, soft and smooth and looking like cornmeal – you put hot molasses or hot maple syrup on it. All the vegetables came from her garden – I particularly remember the earliest possible peas, picked when very young – and from her nearby farm came the chickens, eggs, butter, cream, and milk.

Her house, like the other big establishments on the Hudson River, was run like an English manor house. There were great breakfasts, which you served yourself from the sideboard: chafing dishes filled with oatmeal, scrambled eggs, an assortment of sausage, ham, bacon, and a variety of hot breads. Then there was a big formal lunch, starting with soup and ending with dessert, and always tea in the late afternoon, to which she expected everyone to come. Cambric tea was provided for the children. My mother-in-law's writing room was called The Snuggery; in the summertime, tea was served on a screened porch overlooking the Hudson River. I remember that my husband liked to call the porch "Mama's Buggery." In the Buggery hung the old Mayflower wheel that had been on the Presidential yacht and Franklin had bought.

An hour before dinner, a big Chinese gong beside the hall staircase was rung, as a reminder to wash and dress, and five minutes ahead of time, it rang again. Franklin used to invite everyone into his study half an hour before dinner, for cocktails – an invitation that was invariably turned down by his mother, who thoroughly disapproved of drinking. I sometimes took a cocktail, but not often – never during Prohibition days, because I did not think one should. (However, I was for Repeal, because I thought Prohibition was making us into a nation of lawbreakers.) Once we went into the dining room, we all had set places. When the children were young, that sat together at a table in the alcove. At the main table, my husband sat at one end, Mama at the other, and I sat at the side.

After dinner, we usually went into the enormous library-living room with its two fireplaces, one at either end. This giant room was the first floor of a wing that had been built onto the original 1826 house by Franklin and his mother in 1915, ten years after our marriage. Here, too, we had our special seats. After my husband's two terms as Governor, he had been given the two high-backed brown leather chairs he had used in office, as is the custom. These chairs were on either side of one fireplace. Franklin always sat in the 1929-1930 chair, usually working on his stamps in the evening, and his mother occupied the 1931-1932 chair, either reading or knitting. I sat anywhere, also knitting or reading, and sometimes I read aloud to them. Because of my custom of reading to the children after lunch and after tea each day, I had learned to read very dramatically, as you must hold the attention of small children. Apparently, my dramatics when I was reading aloud were also appreciated by the not-so-small.

Life at Hyde Park, however, was not always as serene as I may have been painting it. After Franklin had polio, several changes were made in household arrangements. For instance, until then, he and I had shared a bedroom in the new wing, directly over the big library-living room; after his illness, I took the small neighboring room, and his mother made the sitting room of our suite into a bedroom for herself. A ramp for his wheelchair was built over part of the stairs leading into the living room, and the large dumbwaiter in the kitchen wing of the house, originally used for hauling trunks to the second floor, became a lift for Franklin's use. (Above the kitchens were eight servant's bedrooms – just one fewer than were in the remainder of the house for use of the family and friends.) My husband appropriated for his study the small ground-floor room originally built for the children's schoolroom, and after he became President, he made the big coatroom across the hallway into a second office – this was used by his two secretaries, Miss Le Hand and Miss Tully. I think the most original innovation was Franklin's own invention: He converted several kitchen chairs into wheelchairs. Being armless and light of weight, they were extremely easy for my husband to manipulate.

But these changes were soon a smooth part of the household pattern. There were other matters that continually threatened the serenity. As I suppose must always be the case when there are two women under one roof, my ideas and those of my mother-in-law often differed sharply. This was particularly true in problems concerning the children. She had been opposed, in the beginning, to Franklin's marrying me, both because she felt he was too young to marry and because she thought he could have made a more worldly and social match. Then, when she knew it was going to happen anyway, she determined to bend the marriage the way she wanted it to be. What she wanted was to hold onto Franklin and his children; she wanted them to grow up as she wished. As it turned out, Franklin's children were more my mother-in-law's children than they were mine.

Undoubtedly, this was partly my fault, since for a great, great many years, she completely dominated me, and I permitted her to keep me under her thumb. More or less, this was true even to the time we went to Washington. I never dreamed that my mother-in-law could be wrong about anything at all. Let me go back for a minute and explain how this could be possible.

After Franklin and I married, we lived in a hotel apartment while he finished law school, so that I had no chance to learn housekeeping at all. Then we went on a second honeymoon to Europe. When we came back, ready to settle in New York City while he practiced law, his mother had a fully furnished house waiting for us at 125 East Thirty-Sixth Street. Here were born my daughter, Anna, and my son James--and my mother-in-law engaged the nurses for them. I was not allowed to take care of the children, nor had I any sense of how to do it. Actually, as I was terribly inexperienced about taking responsibility of any kind whatever, I was frightened to death of the nurses, and I always obeyed every rule they made.

Two years later, Mama decided the house was too small for us. She built two houses side by side on East Sixty-Fifth Street--one for herself, the other for us. There were three connecting doors between the two houses, joining the dining-room floor, the living-room floor, and the fourth floor, at the boys' room. You were never quite sure when she would appear, day or night. In this house was born the first Franklin, Jr., who died at the age of nine months and is buried in the little churchyard at Hyde Park. Here Elliot was born, as well.

Even when we moved to Albany the first time, for the four years Franklin was a state senator, my mother-in-law came with us to engineer our getting settled and to give our first reception before she returned to her own home. I would say that it was not until the last two children arrived – Franklin, Jr. (in our summer place at Campobello) and Johnny (in Washington, D.C., while my husband was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, in World War I) – that I developed enough initiative to start trying to handle my children's lives myself. And I cannot help but think that the two youngest had far better childhoods than the first three children, whose worlds were run almost entirely by their nurses. How old was I when I began asserting myself about my children? Franklin, Jr. was born when I was thirty years old, and Johnny arrived two years later.

But asserting myself was one thing, and being effective was another. My mother-in-law and I argued, politely, about many things. We had opposite views on a number of moral issues; to her, black was black, and white was white. She would sometimes ask me, "Eleanor, why don't you tell the children what's right and what's wrong?"

Then I would reply, "Because I don't know myself." This was true; quite young, I had learned that I couldn't tell the difference between what was right and what was wrong. Take the case of my father, a handsome and charming man, whom I adored, but who had developed a weakness--he drank. When I was six years old, he took me to the Knickerbocker Club one afternoon and left me sitting in the dog room just, he said, for a minute, while he ran an errand. I sat there, a six-year-old, for six hours, until the doorman sent me home in a cab. My father had been drinking in the bar of the club and had forgotten all about me. Yet he hadn't meant to hurt me, and I still adored him.

My mother died when I was eight, and after my father died a year later (breaking my heart), I went to live with Grandmother Hall and her four children, all of them much older than my brother Hall and I. This brings me to Uncle Vallie, one of her sons. He was a sweet man, who taught me to ride as a child and who read a great deal. But he had the same weakness as my father, and he made life miserable for us. Sometimes he struck people, and there were days when we couldn't go across my grandmother's front lawn, because he'd be at the window with his rifle, shooting at anyone he saw. Yet he was by nature a sweet person. . . . So, really, how do you know things are all black, or all white?

But this kind of reasoning my mother-in-law could not understand. She judged people almost solely by their social position, and she continually tried to teach my children to do the same. She found it extremely difficult to get on with Al Smith and many other politicians of the New York City type, and while only people who knew her well could tell when she was being really rude, my children were among those who knew her well. She had the most carrying whisper I have ever heard, and occasionally, during a luncheon at which Franklin was entertaining an important politician, we would all hear her piercing whisper: "Who is that dreadful person sitting next to my son?" Every time there was a big Democratic meeting, her lawn was ruined, and she was miserable about it for days. She was far happier when she could look out her window and see, resting on the lawn beneath a tree, a guest such as Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (then a Princess).

I think it was one of her stands on the importance of knowing "nice people" that precipitated our most family-famed disagreement – coupled with the fact that she continually spoiled the children, overriding my belief in a certain amount of discipline for character building.

This particular conflict concerned Franklin, Jr., who, when he was in his late teens, had been arrested for speeding and had had his license taken away. There was a particularly social party, some distance away, the coming weekend, and he wanted to attend; when I told him that now he could not go, because I wouldn't permit him to drive one of the family cars, he turned at once to his grandmother with his problem. Her answer was to buy him a brand-new sports car. I shall never forget how I felt when I saw him swing it into our driveway. I demanded where it had come from, and when he said Mama had given it to him so he would be able to go to his party, I told him, "You will speak to your father at once about this."

Then I talked to Franklin, explaining that I thoroughly disapproved of rewarding our son for being arrested by giving him a new car; then I left the boy and his father together. But, as was always the case in problems with the children, my husband just could not be disagreeable. He was unable to bring himself to give Franklin, Jr., any disappointment. When I returned to Franklin's study, it was to find him patting his son on the shoulder while he said, "I really think the boy should have his car and his party." I was so upset that I barely spoke to my husband or my mother-in-law for the next three days.

For I was well aware of the importance of discipline in my own life. Thanks to my childhood, I was very disciplined by the time I grew up. I remember the method by which a nurse taught me to sew, when I was only six. After I had darned a sock, she would take the scissors and cut out all I had done, telling me to try again. This was very discouraging, but it was good training. Also, I have my girlhood training to thank for my ability to concentrate intently on whatever I am doing. At school in France, my teacher would read aloud old French sonnets, requiring that I recite them after one reading. When people have asked how I was able to get through some of the very bad periods in my later life, I have been able to tell them honestly that, because of all this early disciple I had, I inevitably grew into a really tough person.

However, it is not my intention to tell only the differences of opinion in our life at Hyde Park. There were also many, many occasions of family unity and pleasure, even in the period directly after Franklin got polio. Before his illness, I had never bothered to learn to swim, counting on him to teach the children. But afterward, in order than the children might learn, I went to the Y.W.C.A. in New York City for instruction on swimming and practiced my strokes at Hyde Park. This resulted in the whole family's swimming together for the first time. How Franklin and the children used to roar with laughter when, attempting to dive, I would hold my nose – although of course I wasn't supposed to – and do a belly flop into the water!

Also, after two or three mishaps, I'd given up attempting to drive a car. But after Franklin's illness, I just had to learn, and soon I was organizing large picnics, to which I drove all of us. One time, I will admit, by error I backed a station wagon containing the entire family right down an embankment. Nevertheless, we had cheerful family gatherings all the time. Our only wedding at Hyde Park was a lovely one. It was when our daughter, Anna, married Curtis Dall, about three years after my husband's illness. The ceremony took place in the Hyde Park church, and then a big luncheon-reception was held at home in a tent spread over the lawn. To this event came all the dozens of Roosevelts on both sides, and friends from everywhere. On many other occasions, we entertained almost as expansively for a succession of prominent guests. Winston Churchill occupied the star guest room one weekend, and we had a series of royal visitors, among them the Crown Princes and Princesses of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Our most publicized social event was the 1939 visit of the King and Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth's parents. They were going to stay for only twenty-four hours in the month of June. As it turned out, their visit was studded with a series of the most comically embarrassing accidents – after all of us had taken the most careful and arduous precautions against any possible accidents at all!

Their Majesties, together with a large party, were to arrive by train in time for dinner Saturday night. Most of the royal retinue would remain overnight on the train, parked on a siding; but we were to put up the King and Queen, giving them the big guest room across the hall from Franklin's small boyhood room. In a side bedroom, we were putting Mackenzie King, then Prime Minister of Canada. We had also to prepare beds for four others – the Queen's maid and a lady-in-waiting, and the King's valet and his private secretary.

We could seat exactly twenty-four at the dining-room table. In preparation for the many-course dinner, we had collected all our most valuable china and had even borrowed some dishes from Franklin's stepbrother, "Rosie" Roosevelt, and his wife, who lived next door. Further, we had brought from the White House some of the Colored butlers to serve dinner – a fact that had so outraged Mama's English butler, Robert, that he had left unexpectedly for a vacation at home in England.

As it turned out, the train with our royal guests was very late in arriving. While we waited, Mama and Franklin sparred on the familiar subject of cocktail drinking. He said, "I shall ask what kind of cocktails they will like." My mother-in-law said firmly, "I'm sure, being English, they will prefer tea." Seated in the library in his Governor's chair, with the cocktail tray ready in front of him, Franklin could hardly wait to say to His Majesty, "My mother thinks you would rather have a cup of tea after your tiring trip, but I wonder if you'd like a cocktail." His Majesty smiled at them both before answering, "My mother would say exactly the same thing. I'd frankly prefer a cocktail." He was thereupon presented a Martini, which he drank as if he really enjoyed it. (If truth be known, Franklin used to make the most terrible Martinis. I don't drink Martinis, but everyone always said they were perfectly awful. However, people drank them with zest because he had made them.)

The first embarrassing accident occurred about an hour later, in the middle of dinner. Behind a screen hiding the kitchen door, extra china for upcoming courses had been piled on an old-fashioned table with a middle pedestal and leaves. Suddenly, as we were all dining and chatting, there was a horrible crash. The table, off balance, had fallen to the floor with its burden of dishes. We all paused, stunned, and then my stepsister-in-law from next door said to Mama in a clearly heard aside, "I do hope that wasn't my china that was broken." The rest of the family tried desperately to cover with conversation this embarrassing remark, so the King's and Queen's thoughts would not linger on it. But, after all, did it really matter?

Directly after dinner came another comic disaster. Usually, Franklin was wheeled from the dining room to the library-living room; but that night, he chose to walk beside the King, leaning on Jimmy's arm and using his cane. They were almost at the door of the living room, with the rest of us behind them, when we received our second shock of the evening. The head butler from the White House had forgotten to send glasses and liqueurs ahead of us into the main room. Now, carrying a gigantic tray loaded with some twenty-odd glasses, bowls of ice, and liqueur bottles, he hurried past us – to stumble on the steps beside Franklin's ramp and fall full length on the living-room floor. A second horrible crash! And this time, a large lake of water and ice cubes and liqueurs was added to the hundreds of bits of broken glass scattered everywhere. For the remainder of her life, my mother-in-law was to remark, with complete conviction, "If my butler had been used instead of those White House people, none of these things would have happened."

Now that two embarrassments had occurred thus far during the King and Queen's visit, a third one was bound to happen. And so it did, at teatime the following afternoon. We had spent the day with Their Majesties, accompanying them to church in the morning and at noon giving a large picnic in their honor at Top Cottage, the little house Franklin built on our property for eventual retirement. Here it was that the King and Queen ate such American outdoor food as hot dogs and were entertained by two Indians, whom I asked to put on a show. Then, after the King and Franklin had had a swim, I was expected to serve tea on the lawn outside still another cottage on the grounds. This was a problem, since all the good china, together with the servants, was still at Top Cottage because the lunch had been served there. However, my secretary, "Tommy" Thompson, and I brought tea and cookies, together with the necessary china and silver, on a tea wagon.

Finally, it was all in place ready to serve. At this point, Franklin, who was seated in his wheelchair talking vigorously to the Queen, pulled himself by error into the tea wagon, and once again we heard that familiar crash of breaking dishes!

I am sure Their Majesties were relieved when, after a quite dinner, they were finally back on their train that evening. But they must have felt the same pang I did when their special cars pulled out. People stood thickly on both banks of the Hudson River, and suddenly the air was filled with thousands of voices singing "Auld Lang Syne." We all knew the King and Queen were returning home to face a war, and I still think the sound of those singing voices is the most moving thing I ever heard.

Those are some of the events, actual and emotional, that took place at Hyde Park during the forty-odd years we came and went. In that time, many changes had been made in all of us. My husband had suffered the most demoralizing blow that can strike a vigorous man – and had four times been paid the highest honor an American can receive from his countrymen. My children had been born, grown, married, and by this time had lives of their own. I had slowly learned self-reliance and had proved to myself that, besides being a wife and mother, I could teach (as I had for three years at the Todhunter School, in New York City) and that I could make speeches to all kinds of groups in every medium – in theaters, by radio, on television. I had also shown myself that I could write newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books. Best of all, perhaps, I had learned to my own satisfaction that I could meet with warm understanding every kind of human being, from native African tribesmen to kings of great nations. At last I had found myself.

But at first, after Franklin's death, I had no time to think of any of these things. Only seven months later, in November of 1945, the Secretary of the Interior accepted full title to Hyde Park and its surrounding grounds, and it was planned to open the estate to the public in 1946 as a National Historical Site. For this reason, during the months directly after Franklin's funeral, we had the Herculean task of clearing out the house and dividing personal belongings. My husband had said in his will that we should go by age and choose what we wanted, and that the children must not take more than their share in value and must be able to use in their homes whatever they took.

Since Mama had never in her life thrown anything away, the division was a monumental effort. We found in the attic such things as seventy-year-old bolts of silk bought in China and a suit purchased in London by Franklin's grandfather. At the time of the division, Elliot and Franklin, Jr., were still away in the Armed Forces, so that I tried to divide things fairly with the help of their wives. I myself took only a few things, and the linen and silver were evenly divided among all five children. Elliot now has the desk my husband used in the White House, and although each child has a portrait of my husband, Jimmy took most of the family portraits. In the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library building, close to the old house, are my husband's papers, books, and other historical objects. Finally, the enormous job of disposing of everything was finished.

In many ways, it has been a strange experience to write of my memories of Hyde Park. Partly this is because I live today in a house only five minutes by automobile from the old mansion. Although I share a brownstone in New York, my real home is Val-Kill Cottage, built during the 1930s on part of the Roosevelt property, and here I spend every possible weekend.

So I am able to stroll through the rooms of Hyde Park whenever I have guests who would like to see it, some of them for the first time. Others know it almost as well as I do myself. It looks much as it did when we lived there: I see the same furniture, china, bric-a-brac, and paintings, and I look at such intimate reminders of our life as Fala's leash and blanket, and my husband's glasses lying on his study desk. But now there are additions: the crowds of people moving quietly along the hallways, the uniformed guards standing among them, and the gated fences blocking the doorways into all the rooms that had become so familiar during the years. And of course there are subtractions, all of them people: my husband, my five children, Mama, and our assorted friends. It is of them that I really think when I remember Hyde Park.