The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt by Eleanor Roosevelt Page A

learning to cook, and though I remember I did take myself all the way up to Columbia University for some cooking lessons one winter I got little good out of it, for the school used gas ranges, and I learned to make special, fancy dishes only. What I needed to know was how to manage an old-fashioned coal range and how to cook a whole meal.
    That winter my cousin Alice Roosevelt was married to Nicholas Longworth. Franklin had to go alone to the wedding because I was expecting my first child. On May 3, 1906, a girl whom we named Anna Eleanor after my mother and myself was born. Our trained nurse, a lovely person, Blanche Spring, played an important part in my life for many years. I had never had any interest in dolls or little children, and I knew absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby. I acquired a young and inexperienced baby’s nurse from the Babies’ Hospital, who knew about babies’ diseases, but her inexperience made this knowledge almost a menace, for she was constantly looking for obscure illnesses and never expected that a well-fed and well-cared-for baby would move along in a normal manner.
    During the next few years we observed much the same summer routine. We visited my mother-in-law at Hyde Park for a time and then went up to stay with her at Campobello. My mother-in-law was abroad for a part of that summer of 1906, and we had her house at Campobello. Ordinarily my husband sailed up or down the coast in the little schooner Half Moon , taking some friends with him, and took perhaps one or two short cruises during the summer across to Nova Scotia or to various places along the coast. He was a good sailor and pilot, and nearly always calculated his time so well that rarely do I remember his causing us any anxiety by being delayed. As a rule, he sailed into the harbor ahead of his schedule.
    If they were going on a cruise from Campobello, I had to stock the boat up with food for the first few days, and after their return they always told me what delicious things they had had to eat on the boat. Apparently their idea of perfection was a combination of sausages, syrup and pancakes for every meal, varied occasionally by lobsters or scrambled eggs. My husband was the cook as well as the captain and was proud of his prowess.
    One evening the next winter, we were having some people in to dinner, the nurse was out, and about six-thirty, after having her bottle and being put to bed, instead of placidly going to sleep, Anna began to howl, and she howled without stopping while I dressed for dinner. Our guests began to arrive. I called the doctor. He asked me if I thought she might have a little wind, and was I sure I had gotten up all the bubbles after her last bottle? I did not dare tell him I had completely forgotten to put her over my shoulder and had no idea whether the bubbles had come up or not. He suggested that I turn her on her tummy and rub her back, so, with my guests arriving downstairs, I told Franklin he would have to start dinner without me. I picked up my howling baby, put her over my knee on her tummy, and in a few minutes she smiled and gurgled. After I had rubbed her back for some time she got rid of her troubles and, when put back to bed, went to sleep like a lamb. I went down to dinner, but was so wrought up by this time that I felt I had to go and look at her several times during the evening, and finally succeeded in waking her up before the nurse came home. I was obliged to leave my guests again before they departed. After this experience I registered a vow that never again would I have a dinner on the nurse’s day out.
    I know now that what we should have done was to have no servants those first few years; so I could have acquired knowledge and self-confidence and other people could not fool me about either the housework or the children. However, my bringing up had been such that this never occurred to me, nor did it occur to any of the older people who were closest to me. Had I done this,