Mrs Roosevelt’s Regime At White House

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7067, 28 January 1933, Page 11

Mrs Roosevelt’s Regime At White House

For those who still believe that u wife's interests should be submerged in those of her husband, Mrs Franklin Roosevelt will be a disappointment. Even as the ‘First Lady in the Land’ she is going to be, not only the President’s wife, but part owner and occasional teacher at a very successful school in New York, editor of a paper called

“Babies, Just Babies,” and a frequent visitor to the furniture shop sho started in Poughkeepsie as a rural industry, all the articles being made by hand, states a writer in the London “Daily Telegraph.” From the time sho was ten years old and her parents died, sho was brought up by her Aunt, Mrs Douglas Robinson, sister of the lato Theodore Roosevelt, who also took a hand in her education, and from whom she learned to take an interest in .people and conditions of life. The fact that she married, her fifth

cousin, Franklin Dolano Roosevelt, and has three tall sons and a tall daughter, that her husband’s political career has taken her from place to placo, that sho had always had two permament homes to manage, the New York house and the country house at Hyde Park, near Poughkeepsie, with its enchanting garden on which she keeps a watchful eye, has never curbed her outside interests. She says, “Governmental homes run themselves. The servants havo been there for ages. Everything is routine.” Sho feels the AVhite House will be tne same way, and if she cannot coma to

New York every week to teach, she can at least visit the school and shop every now and then, edit the paper and still manage State functions, and those everlasting receptions for the wives of Cabinet Ministers, Senators and Representatives. When you first meet the Presidentelect’s wife and encounter the heavy Roosevelt mouth you think she is very plain, but when she talks to you you are charmed by tho radiance of her expression, her fine eyes, her clear skin. She can be. very regal and elegantly dressed when she wishes, but generally she

drapes her tall form in clothes out of tho mode and hats of ancient vintage.

The subjects she teaches are history and current events, and she has probably persuaded more New York flappers that they have a mission in life other than to bo attractive than any guide or instructor. While her husband has been Governor of New York State she has taken her classes to political meetings in New York, to Police Headquarters, and so on. Her husband is interested in all her schemes. Her children adore her. She is Eleanor Roosevelt to half the aristocracy of New York. Governor and Airs Roosevelt, both having for ancestors' the real aristocrats of the United States, having both had money all their lives, and been brought up in luxurious homes, have no trace of snobbery or even official dignity. The White House is going to be a simple homo again, .with friendly parties, and a simple, friendly host and hostess.