Love Affairs: FDR & Lucy Mercer

By Carrie Lofty

"The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty...of dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people long attached to each other, is terrible."

Colonel Brandon in SENSE & SENSIBILITY

Despite objections by his mother, Franklin Delano Roosevelt united the two opposing Roosevelt clans in 1905 by marrying his distant relation, Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor in turn bore six children over the subsequent ten years, with one dying at seven months. A shy woman, Eleanor contented herself with raising the children, while FDR was handsome, socially active, and politically ambitious.

He began an affair with Eleanor's secretary, Lucy Mercer, in 1914. Lucy was the product of two prominent Maryland and Virginia families, although her parents had fallen on hard times. Although he would go on to have many other private affairs throughout his marriage, FDR maintained a special closeness with Lucy.

Eleanor found letters from Lucy in his luggage when, sick with the 1918 flu, he returned home from WWI. Historians differ as to whether Eleanor then offered the chance to divorce and be with the woman he loved, or if she actually threatened divorce. No matter; Lucy refused to marry a divorced man with five children because she was devout Catholic. (Apparently her level of devotion did not preclude having a lifelong affair with that same man.) His mother also weighed in, insisting that his inheritance would be forfeit. FDR vowed never to see Lucy again.

With the possibility of divorce behind them, FDR and Eleanor reconciled after a fashion. She had never enjoyed sex--and many of her biographers have since speculated as to whether she was a lesbian--but sexual relations between the two never resumed. Eleanor soon established a separate household, and although she officially lived at the White House upon his election, she never stayed there for long. She had been a socially awkward girl, but the Depression and the war gave her myriad social causes. Her husband's power and their shared political goals became the bedrock of what remained of their marriage.

In the meantime, Lucy married a New York socialite named Winthrop Rutherford in 1920 and eventually bore one child. Somewhere during the years that followed, FDR broke his promise. He continued to correspond with Lucy throughout his trying presidency and began to see her again. He arranged for her to have a special, secret place from which to view his 1933 inauguration. The Secret Service even referred to her as "Mrs. Johnson," which indicates the level of intimacy she maintained within the White House. The split between him and Eleanor was so profound by this point that, in 1942, when he asked her to return to him in light of his failing health, she refused.

FDR's daughter Anna had arranged for him to meet Lucy at his retreat home in Georgia in April, 1945, where he suffered his fatal cerebral hemorrhage. As the Secret Service ineffectually rushed to the president's aid, Lucy retreated to another cottage on the same property to hide. She eventually died in 1947 of leukemia at the age of 57.

Families & Children: Complicated Personal Lives of Vikings

By Michelle Styles

Vikings had complex and complicated personal lives. This fact becomes immediately obvious if you read any of the Icelandic sagas. The sagas like the Laxdoela saga or Njals saga show bitter feuds and families torn with strife. They both examines the conflict that exists within individuals due to bounds of blood, loyalty and family. Divorce appears to have been common. In Njals, one of the women divorces her husband at crucial time because he dared make a disparaging remark about her hair. Adultery, particularly on the woman's part, was harshly punished.

But what of the children from a divorce? And how does that affect the inheritance laws? Could a woman inherit a man's property if they were divorced? What happens if she is a widow? Did a woman in Viking times have any power?

It is something that fascinated me when I started writing Viking Warrior, Unwilling Wife. And the short answer is yes, a woman could inherit property from her divorced husband through their mutual child--if the child was acknowledged by the father.

Women brought a dowry and received a morning gift at the start of a formal marriage. If they divorced, they were allowed to take the dowry and the morning gift with them, but any child from the marriage belonged to the father. However, if the man died, and his child inherited and then died, the mother of that child stood to inherit.

Even if they were still married, spouses did not inherit directly from each other but had a claim on the estate. So the woman would have to inherit through her child, but her second husband would not necessarily have full claim on the estate. Sometimes through marrying successive times, women actually became very wealthy indeed. The largest find of Viking goods hails from the Osburg ship grave, the grave of a early Viking queen.

The Hillersjo Stone from Sweden tells of one complicated inheritance or how Geirlaug inherited quite a bit of wealth and was able to put a stone presumably to explain everything and why she had the farm--

Geirmund married Geirlaug when she was girl. Then they had a son before he drowned and the son died later. The she married Gudrik. Then they had children, but only one girl survived. She was called Inga. She was married to Ragnfast of Snottsta, who also died, and then the son later. The mother inherited from her son. Then she [Inga] was married to Eirik. She died there, and there Geirlaug inherited from her daughter Inga.

I found it fascinating that things could get so complicated, so quickly. It helped the Vikings seem far more real to me. Oh, and I really recommend the Laxdoela saga, a wonderful tale of revenge and powerful women.