She wrote to one friend: 'I love you dearly. If she expressed romantic feelings in extravagant terms, it may have been out of hope they would respond in kind. In exchange for their regard she gave infinite solicitude and unending attention to their well-being. Is it any wonder, then, that the love-starved woman needed outlets for her bountiful capacity for affection? She found them in friends, women and men, who valued her independence, her vitality, her idealism and generosity of spirit. The Roosevelt's remained a family but 'renounced certain marriage claims on each other,' as Lash puts it, and the time came, after the birth of a son in 1916, when they no longer shared a bed. That would have been enough reason to end the marriage, but her sense of responsibility for five young children led her to stick it out. She soldiered on throughout her marriage, despite the interference of a domineering mother-in-law, despite the blow to her ego that came with the revelation of her husband's affair with Lucy Mercer. But life had already taught Eleanor Roosevelt persistence. Instead of encouraging her, Franklin Roosevelt, who must surely have been aware of his wife's lifelong insecurities, tended to reinforce her sense of ineptitude. R came up red in the face, with a really grim expression, said nothing, walked out on the board again and did a perfect dive.' I thought the President would explode laughing. walked out on the board, got all set in the proper form, and went in - flat as she could be. 'She was anxious to perform for the President as he had said he didn't believe she could do it,' she wrote her sister in July 1939.When FDR came down to the pool to see for himself, 'Mrs.

In Eleanor Roosevelt, An Eager Spirit we find Dorothy Dow, a secretary at the White House who had once taught physical education, writing about what happened when she taught the first lady to dive. She didn't think she could ever learn to drive or to type or to accomplish anything worthwhile. Lack of confidence extended to other areas. Self-doubt began early in Eleanor Roosevelt with the knowledge, painfully reinforced by her mother's habit of calling her 'Granny,' that her looks were plain.

On the other hand, it is hard not to feel a kind of exasperated pity over the frustrations of this woman's private life. Lash's handsomely illustrated centenary portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt as 'First Lady of the World.' That career is succinctly outlined in 'Life was Meant To Be Lived,' Joseph P.

On the one hand, there is admiration for the career achievements that led Harry Truman to describe Mrs. THE IMAGE of Eleanor Roosevelt as it emerges from these three books evokes contradictory reactions.

Joe lash and eleanor roosevelt