Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

More than a century later, Eleanor is a heroine and Alice has mostly been forgotten. No one could have envisioned that in the early 20th Century, when Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the sparkling, sharp-tongued star of Washington society and her cousin Eleanor Roosevelt was the slightly cowed wife of an ambitious politician who was himself considered a bit of a dilettante.  Their shockingly different personalities came from a surprisingly similar background.  Not only were they cousins born a few months apart, but they also lost parents young and were partially (and most affectionately and effectively) raised by their Aunt Bambie, Theodore and Elliot Roosevelt's older sister.

Hissing Cousins only spends a few chapters on the cousins' upbringing, but it explains how the two girls grew into very different women.  The Alice we know is a whirlwind brimming with confidence and her father's famous swagger, but here we see her as a baby abandoned by her grieving father (TR lost his mother and wife on Valentine's Day, 1884, the day after Alice was born).  After a few years with Aunt Bambie, Alice returned to her father and step-mother. Edith Roosevelt was a rather stern and forbidding character who insisted that Alice live with the family because it was proper.  My impression is that she meant well, but Alice never felt welcome and in modern parlance "acted out."  That led to occasional trips back to Aunt Bambie, who was also Eleanor's occasional guardian.

Eleanor's story is even sadder.  Her alcoholic father half-abandoned, was half-removed from his family and eventually died from his addiction.  Shortly afterwards, her mother also died, but instead of being permanently left with Aunt Bambie, Eleanor and her brothers were left in the care of her maternal grandmother.  Mary Hall's household was backwards and repressive, far from the ideal situation for a bright, sensitive girl, and visits to Aunt Bambie (plus a year in finishing school at Babmie's insistence) still left her shy and insecure.

As adults, they continued to live parallel lives.  Both married unfaithful men (although they dealt with that in different ways), were indifferent and ineffective mothers but loving grandmothers, and became standard bearers for their respective parties.  That is where their stories separate and why we now revere one and barely know the other.  Alice was a grand campaigner, and the doyenne of Republican Washington, but her high profile position was essentially inconsequential.  Eleanor, as befits her more earnest personality, got into the weeds of policy discussions.  Political differences exacerbated the personality differences, and they spent much of their adult lives estranged.  But even someone like Alice can mellow with age and tragedy, and by the time of Eleanor's death, they were at least cordial.  I thoroughly enjoyed this dual biography of two strong women who were joined by blood and separated by the blood sport of politics.  It made me want to read more about them, and about the sprawling Roosevelt family.