The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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PROVIDENCE, R.I., Sunday—Saturday morning early I left Hyde Park. I was going to visit Mrs. Theodore Ely, who is Jean Dixon on the stage, somewhere near Gloucester, Massachusetts, and she wanted us to get there for lunch. I have learned that if you want to cover a great many miles, the thing to do is to get up early in the morning, but somehow I never want to go to bed at night! I like to listen to the eleven p.m. news on the radio; I like to read for a while after I get into bed. It's really a question of self-discipline to go to bed early enough to start off really early the next morning!

We didn't quite make it for lunch, but we weren't so very late in arriving in the afternoon. It is a long while since I have been to Gloucester, but it has a picturesqueness and a flavor all its own, which extends to the neighborhood around it.

New England is a delightful part of the country. I sometimes think it is rather trying to like as many different parts of your own country as I do! When I am in the Southwest, I think Texas is enchanting with its wide open spaces, and I know that I think Sante Fe is one of the most fascinating cities in the world. When I am on the west coast, from San Diego to Seattle, I am fascinated by the life and the climate and the people and the variety of scenery and the ways of living.

There is no part of my country that I do not enjoy visiting but I know best my own state of New York to which I always return with the feeling that I think one should have about one's home. It always seems to me a state, lacking perhaps in certain things which may be found in other places, but having great variety of scenery and of interest. When all is said and done, "This is my home and I love it." I know New England almost as well and there is a sense of age and a feeling that people have had time and leisure to beautify their own particular spot which you get nowhere else in the country. You can pick out many individual houses and corners of gardens which you would like to paint if the good Lord had given you the ability to be an artist. I wish over and over again as I live my daily life at home, and as I wander through the world, that I had been given a few more talents! There is so much all about you, you would like to paint well enough so that other people would see it and enjoy it too. All I can do is to enjoy it myself and talk about it afterwards.

It is pleasant to be with congenial friends, and I was sorry to say goodbye this morning and take my way, this time alone, down to Newport, to see my cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Parish. Early tomorrow morning I will leave them and start on another but very beautiful drive home.

One of the envoys from a foreign country, a short time ago, told me that while he thought Newport was very beautiful and while he was interested in going there because he had heard so much about it in Europe, still he did not wish to spend his summer there. The life was too much like the life he lived in winter. I feel a little the same way, but for many reasons I think perhaps it is as well that I do not pine to spend long periods of time in this gay summer capitol!

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Providence (RI, United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 26, 1937

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated July 25, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 25 July 1937, AERP, FDRL