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

      

BOSTON—One never wants to be too sure of one's plans! I was sitting in my secretary's living room at Hyde Park yesterday noon when the telephone rang and my mother-in-law told me in some excitement that she had just received a message for me and that Franklin, Jr. had some kind of sinus trouble and had gone to the hospital. Luckily she did know the name of the hospital, so I called up Phillips House in Boston and talked first to my son, and then to the Doctor, and decided that I had better emerge from the tables of mail which surrounded me and take a flying trip to Boston. Having just settled down to three days in one place, and having decided that I had ample time to do all the work before me on this first day and enjoy a family reunion on Thanksgiving Day, I had to do a certain amount of re-arranging. I went over immediately after lunch to my sister-in-law's Mrs. J. R. Roosevelt's house, where my mother-in-law was lunching and spent three quarters of an hour with them, and arranged for Mrs. James Roosevelt to speak on the radio this morning in my place.

Then back to the cottage and sat at my desk until quarter past five, when a rather bewildered gentleman knocked at the door. He is a poet and writer by profession, but not finding those professions always lucrative, he has done a number of other things. So when I got his letter saying he was now my near neighbor in Rhinebeck and wished to come and talk to me, I invited him to come and bring his wife to tea at 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon. He came alone, however, and got lost which cannot be blamed entirely on his artistic temperament, for it was getting dark, and our road is hard to find. He was cold and apologetic, but we had tea and when he thawed out I discovered that his present ambition was to find out how a gentleman who was a poet could learn to run a farm and make it pay!

After he departed I put in another hour at my desk. All the mail to be read and marked was finished, but a big pile still lay there to be read and signed. Supper was as brief as possible. Then I dressed and packed and sat down to sign until I had to leave for the train at 9:45 and finished just in time! I got into the New York Central Station at midnight and took the 12:30 train for Boston. Inquiring from the porter mildly what time we got in, he answered "6:15, but you have to get off at 8:30. How long does it take you to dress?" with such emphasis that I remarked that I would be up at 7. I felt in incumbent upon me this morning to keep my word. After a bath and breakfast at the Hotel Statler, I went over to see both my son and the doctor and was glad to find that everything was progressing so favorably there seemed little cause for worry. My young nephew is in the same hospital, and it has given me an opportunity to see him also, so we had a small family reunion, but not the one which I expected to have today!

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

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Geographic
  • Boston (Mass., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 27, 1936

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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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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 November 26, 1936, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 26 November 1936, AERP, FDRL