Mourning The Loss Of An Extraordinary Writer

Three weeks before she was due to appear at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre to discuss her new biography of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, New York-based Hazel Rowley suffered a massive stroke. A few days later, on March 1, Rowley died. She was 59.

Her death rocked the local publishing world. Rowley, who migrated with her parents to Australia from Britain when she was eight, had spent most of her life in Adelaide and Melbourne before settling in New York.

Friends say she was looking forward to returning home to promote her new book, while Melbourne University Publishing keenly anticipated the publicity its star author was likely to generate. Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage had already started a buzz since its US release late last year; now it was Australia’s turn to learn more about one of the 20th century’s great political partnerships, and Rowley’s investigation of it.

Rowley’s death was also a tragedy because of its timing. Franklin & Eleanor suggests a writer at the height of her literary and research powers. “Rowley is a biographer of the very first order and this rosy account of the Roosevelts shows no diminution of her skills,’’ wrote Carmen Callil in her review in The Monthly.

It is not uncommon for political biographers to be bewitched by the cataclysmic events that might surround their subjects’ professional lives. Landslide victories, war declarations, sackings and stuff-ups, strategic alliances and other political cuts-and-thrusts grab their attention, often at the expense of the human story.

Sometimes, readers are left pondering: who was this man or woman? How did their upbringing, education, romantic liaisons, marriages, children or illnesses contribute to their leadership skills? Would he or she have been an engaging dinner companion? There have been plenty of straight-shooting bios about Franklin D. Roosevelt, four times US president, and his wife, Eleanor (including an intriguing 2003 version by controversial Canadian publisher Conrad Black).

With so many accounts of Roosevelt’s life – including Eleanor’s own autobiographical writings – Rowley was challenged to present fresh evidence and original?conclusions. She succeeds. The Roosevelt narrative is well-known: the fifth cousins once removed, both born in the 1880s into established families, were married in New York City (Eleanor’s uncle and US president Theodore Roosevelt gave the orphaned bride away).

Early in their married life Franklin had an affair with the family’s secretary, Lucy Mercer, which ended only after Eleanor threatened divorce and FDR’s wealthy mother Sara threatened to stop his private income. It is also known that during the White House years the Roosevelts maintained close relationships with several men and women in their inner circle, and it has long been suggested that Eleanor had an affair with at least one lesbian friend.

FDR’s paralysis – the result of contracting polio in 1921 – and the subsequent care he required, his rise to the top of the political spire, and the unprecedented four terms he served as president from 1933 until his death in 1945 provide Rowley with a fascinating script. But her fascination is the relationship between Franklin and Eleanor, and the private deals they struck in order to achieve shared and individual goals. Rowley also reveals the couple’s magnetism, which went went much deeper than the titles of president and first lady.

With characteristic energy, they welcomed outsiders into their fold. Their affection for these acolytes was sincere, but their “more the merrier’’ approach to even the most intimate at-home dinner provided a buffer between one another, and the outside world.

Rowley’s book skips along beautifully, and her protagonists – brilliant, energetic, passionate, at times misguided – come to life like characters in a sharply written novel.

Readers will treasure this bio, and Rowley’s contribution to their greater understanding of the human condition. How sad that she is not around to hear our praise.