Daisy Chain: Winner of the Page Turner Award and longlisted for the Historical Fiction Company Best Book 2022

By Justine Gilbert

WINNER PAGETURNER AWARD BEST BOOK TO SCREENPLAY

LONGLISTED BEST BOOK HISTORICAL FICTION COMPANY

'Daisy Chain was well researched and informative and I could hear the voice of Daisy as I was reading i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claret Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781910461631

Justine Gilbert

Born in Manhattan, Justine moved to London with her parents when she was six. She returned to the USA for regular visits, some of which involved seeing her grandmother's Cousin Daisy, who lived in Wilderstein on the Hudson River. Daisy Chain is the culmination of her research into her family.

Book preview

PART ONE

Hudson River Valley

CHAPTER ONE

Nothing was as it seemed. Not just for my family but for all of us along the Hudson River valley. This was an accepted part of life.

As the eldest daughter, I was the designated wallflower: virginal, and useful. Any attempt to step outside that role was curtailed. To a lesser degree, social strictures bound the men. Although appearance was everything, on the whole; if a man crossed a line, most pretended not to see. Certainly, my cousin Franklin was marvellous at getting around the inconvenience of convention. He was in a wheelchair and disability of any sort had to be hidden from the light of day. But he had a wonderful knack for public speaking and a personal charisma that entranced, so we developed ruses to make the contraption invisible. Similarly, I was a confirmed old maid, yet I too developed a knack for ruses. In fact, all the women around him paid little more than lip service to various rules of decorum.

Eleanor included.

What united us was how much we loved him.

Eleanor excluded.

As to who had the most influence on him, well, everybody knew you caught more flies with honey.

To be accurate, my cousin Franklin was the 32nd president of the United States and we were sixth cousins. Our families were part of the Hudson River Valley set, related through our common ancestor, John Beekman. Sailing up river in search of fertile shores near New York, I liked to imagine Beekman was overcome with the beauty of this land, resembling the European woodlands and wetlands left behind. He moored in a natural cove on the banks of the river and within a few generations we’d built large houses and intermarried, all English, Dutch and Scottish immigrants.

Our clan became known as kissing cousins, closely knitted in blood, interlinking commercial interests and status. We partied in Manhattan in winter, exchanging horse and carriage for the latest automobiles. In summer, we raced skiffs from Poughkeepsie to Albany, pausing to picnic in the purple shadow of the Catskill Mountains.

Altogether, we filled the lands of upstate New York: the Delanos, the Lynchs, the Livingstons, the Montgomerys, the Suckleys and the Roosevelts. Most of those surnames mean little now, but there was a time we all featured in the rolls of Top Ten Families. When Uncle Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th president, no one ever again said: ‘Roosevelt who?’ for they had joined the ranks of the Astors, the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers. Lacking in prestigious accomplishments, the rest of us faded into a mellow obscurity.

Miss Stuck-ley? Miss Sock-ley? Hoteliers peered at reservations.

Miss Daisy Lynch Suckley, I would say. Pronounced Book-ley but with an S. It’s Dutch.

As a child, our fathers attended gentlemen’s clubs, our mothers dressed in finery and someone else did the cooking. Money was a vulgar topic never spoken of. One either had it or one didn’t. The Roosevelts had plenty; not so the Suckleys. Papa’s passport listed him as a gentleman, but he was no financier, and it was a blessing he died before the Great Depression ate our funds.

Like all my female cousins, I was brought up to expect a husband and children, prevented from completing college lest I seemed overly academic. No one anticipated The Great War or Spanish influenza. But then Franklin didn’t anticipate contracting polio. The 1920s were cruel for both of us.

Our affair started after his first inauguration, when I, never a beauty, was a forty-two-year-old spinster. What? I hear you say. You? And him, the most powerful man in America! Believe me, I had similar thoughts when we dined with the Duke of Windsor and Wallace Simpson. You left a kingdom—for her?

We didn’t predict our first kiss either, born of the magic of opportunity; his Fedora flung on the back seat of the car, the Camel cigarette smouldering in the leaves, my hand pressed to his heart, the distillation of desire.

And after the kiss, we didn’t know what to do about it. Or what it really meant. Or what would happen next. Or at least, I didn’t.

Despite the blood connections, we were dissimilar. Franklin was an only child—if you didn’t count his half brother, James—and his mother never did. In comparison, I was one of seven. The Roosevelts were organisers; the Suckleys were dreamers. You only had to look at Wilderstein, our Queen-Anne-styled mansion, to know that. When Grandpapa died, Papa set about decorating every wing in indiscriminate style. Louis XIV clashed with Victorian velvets. And then he built a water tower. And then a windmill—both of which fell down. Whereupon he commissioned a five-storey circular tower to be added to the north side. It remained standing and for most of my life I lived on the third floor.

While we built esoteric projects, Aunt Sara—Franklin’s mother—added a tasteful but practical extension to their summer home, Springwood, in keeping with her presidential ambitions for her son. Franklin’s father had died when he was young and she had free rein. We joked: No weed dare pop a seed on Roosevelt territory. Franklin’s marriage to his fifth cousin, Eleanor, Teddy’s favourite niece, secured the dynasty.

Nobody ever tried to arrange marriages for the Suckley girls.

In part, this was due to Mama’s emotional maladies. Papa said she needed a spell in a sanitarium and to hush it up we were all taken to the Swiss Alps. Leaving his children to the devices of various nurses and tutors, my father went climbing, returning occasionally to teach us how to ski and sail. By the time Mama was deemed well and released, we were bilingual and active. Unfortunately for us, she had developed a mania for all things medical.

Her fervency sought sickness everywhere, and my middle brother Arthur suffered the most, being naturally pale and slender. Mama insisted on incarcerating him in various sanitariums until a young doctor took pity on us all and told her firmly, ‘Laissez-le tranquille, there is nothing wrong with your son, Madame.’ So at the age of sixteen, we returned home to Wilderstein and I had my first glimpse of the newly married Franklin.

A multitude of family came to visit our thirty-two bedroomed house, and it was left to me, as the eldest girl with an emotionally unstable mother, to arrange fresh sheets and clean towels and sort menus. Young though I was, I became Dependable Daisy. By eighteen I had learnt to display robust good health, even when running a temperature of a hundred and one. In short, I had learnt how to lie.

I attended a New Year’s Eve party given by Archie Crum, and I will always remember Franklin, indulged and cosseted, turning up at their mansion with a toot and a shout and a spit of stones from under the wheels of his new car. I watched as he escorted women to the checkered black and white ballroom floor: a prince.

And I will admit to envy. It would have been nice to be part of his inner circle, or even more, to saunter through a room and have people light up and touch my sleeve the way they touched his elbow: Hey Roosevelt, you old devil, when’re you coming round for dinner? I used to imagine that I was the girl on his arm when they plucked at him.

What I couldn’t understand was why Cousin Eleanor always looked so miserable.

1933

The Wall Street crash left us one step short of destitution. Wilderstein remained, but everything else was sold. My eldest brother, Henry, had died in the Great War and with him our hopes that one of us might earn sufficiently to restore our funds. Robert, my middle brother, was Robert. He could not change the hallmarks of his nature. Arthur had escaped from Mama’s side as soon as possible, taking one sister with him to Europe. Betty, my other sister, married and moved away. This left me, Dependable Daisy, to plug Wilderstein’s financial hole.

I secured the only wage to keep the family home afloat: as social secretary to a relative, Sophie Langdon. But when Cousin Franklin made it to the White House, my heart soared with hope. A Democratic president promised a better future.

Invited to the Inauguration in January, all of us distant relatives failed to catch his eye during the swearing of oaths and the public processions. I was consumed with curiosity about how he could walk. I had distinct memories of his illness in ’22 and his attempts to use his legs. But eleven years later, I was none the wiser. The charming ‘President in the Fedora’ didn’t show up at his Inaugural Ball, staying firmly sheltered behind imposing doors. He was meeting with bankers, someone said. I had visions of him sitting in a medieval European church, a Michelangelo statue, fenced off from the eager fingers of people desperate to touch the marble foot of Christ. How far the Suckley fortunes had fallen; how strong our faith that with one glimpse, we believed he could mend our broken lives.

Not that his actions had earned him the admiration of everyone: Aunt Sophie, a lifelong Republican and my employer, was one of the few who had sallied through the Wall Street Crash. Her face on his electoral win was almost humorous. Rich and widowed, I dubbed her The Deaconess.

The letter arrived in March. The distinctive insignia and thickness of Roosevelt vellum held promise.

Having looked it over, I placed a silver salver full of Aunt Sophie’s correspondence on the table at her side, ensuring the gold embossed invitation was on the top.

‘Sara Roosevelt has invited us to tea at Springwood. I believe the President will be there as well,’ I murmured.

Her brow furrowed. I knew what she was thinking: should a staunch Republican be seen in a Democratic stronghold? She’d refused to attend his inauguration, feeling a need to maintain standards.

She brushed cake crumbs from her jewelled wrist. ‘Both of us?’

‘Yes, Aunt Sophie. Perhaps they have invited all the relatives.’

She looked to the window and the New York skyline. This would be a very large gathering, and she uttered a few reminisces of parties held by our extended family. For a moment, I allowed myself to recall the music, the lavish gowns, the splendour of an earlier decade. But the Suckley and the Roosevelt’s connections had diminished with our withering funds, and it didn’t do to look back.

‘Shall I send them your acceptance?’ I kept my voice neutral and waited.

‘Well, they are the niece and nephew of Teddy, God rest his soul,’ she said finally. ‘I can’t imagine why they didn’t follow in the Republican family tradition.’

This was a sentiment she had too often expressed in recent years, coupled with frequent rumours amongst her Republican friends, that the President’s ill health would render him unable to see out a term of office. My Aunt Sara, the Deaconess surmised, had insisted Franklin come home for the weekend for a complete rest as she feared for his health.

Family ties and open curiosity won. With her customary decisiveness, she instructed the Irish maid, Marie, to pack and ordered me to ring the servants at her summer residence, Mansakenning, to prepare for an early return to the Hudson River Valley.

‘Daisy, tomorrow you can go home to Wildenstein and see your mother for an overnight. The driver will drop you off and collect you at the appointed time.’

I added no comment of my own. My longing to speak to Franklin was… complicated.

In a state of elation, I borrowed a dress for the occasion from my first cousin, Mary. She dropped it off with her customary humourless hello. A tiny woman, she was richer than us by virtue of her stockbroker husband, who was as astute with money as my father had been foolish.

Dawdling for tea, Mary asked questions about my absent siblings.

‘Arthur still away?’

‘Still living in Monte Carlo.’

‘And Katty?’

‘In Paris, working as a nurse.’

As my other sister, Betty, was married with children, Mary felt no need to ask about her, instead surveying the dusty library. ‘Won’t someone come home to help?’

This did not require answer. Mama’s inclinations and Robert’s vagueness had long since been accepted.

‘And how is your sister, Jeanne?’ I asked, to be polite.

‘She writes and complains. She hates her husband, she hates the fact she had to find a husband in Italy.’

‘She was never happy wherever she was.’

‘True. We Montgomery sisters have had to marry whether we wanted or no. A trial for us. At least my Frank is a good man. Separate bedrooms from the start. He doesn’t want children.’

Keen to see her gone, I waved her off. I was desperate to try on her offerings. She had given me a boucle suit in Prussian blue, the latest fashion from Paris. It was tight, but suitable. I admired the bobbles for jacket buttons and inhaled the smell of newness. Fishing out the remains of a crystal bottle with eau de parfum, I puffed some onto the inside lining. I wanted him to notice me, to remember that I was the woman who stood by his side one long, hot summer, the place-holder for his absent wife.

My only decent white blouse had seed-pearl buttons that needed a stitch, and, mission accomplished, I twisted in the mirror. Something was lacking. I wandered through a handful of our thirty-two bedrooms, the majority vacant and shrouded in sheets and dust. In a cupboard I found some forgotten blue shoes, a newer hat and a rope of jewellery.

My mother had one of her head colds and as I set a tisane at her bedside, she counselled me that Aunt Sophie and I were not going to Washington, but only to a tea at Springwood; I needed nothing too fancy. No pearls.

I wanted lipstick for greater sophistication—after all, I was forty-two—but there was none. So I set about brushing my short hair and placing pins to give a shingle style wave, and looked at the overall effect. Was it adequate to renew my acquaintance with the President of the United States? I wasn’t vain. I had the sort of even features that were instantly forgettable, as my brother Robert liked to say, but I did so want Franklin to remember me. Call it a foolish infatuation or a perfectly reasonable response to meeting the president of United States. Or maybe it was both. I’m not sure. Fiddling with the filigree clasp of an old sapphire pin on my lapel, I ignored my mother and threw the pearls around my neck.

Eleanor was there. My heart sank as we’d been told she would be absent. She had a way of looking at distant family as if we were the rats surging up from the cellars, which since the election may have been in part true. Eleanor looked equally surprised to see us. She was smartly dressed, very much the First Lady who had marched stiffly around at his inauguration, flanked by the same two suited assistants. Aunt Sara came forwards to explain that Eleanor had to leave, just as Franklin was wheeled in and put by the window. It gave me a shiver of deja vu from the summer eleven years ago.

I wanted to greet him warmly, but politeness meant I had to focus on Eleanor, who made a superficial show of apologies, her voice high as if calling from the other side of the estate. She had a pressing photographic opportunity, she said, and left without a goodbye to Franklin. Nor did he meet her eyes, sitting quietly, a cigarette in the holder between his fingers. From the hall, she beckoned a man I recognised from the papers, Louis Howe, the campaign manager. He vibrated in the doorway, energy in a grey suit.

He plunged forward in the wake left by Eleanor’s departure, shaking Franklin’s hand with enthusiasm, saying he would see him in a week. ‘Fantastic news, we’ve had the Prohibition bill stamped and approved. Shall I give the say to stock up on the liquor trolley at the White House?’

Franklin threw back his head and laughed with a ‘sure’. I saw a flash of his old ballroom spirit, the way he used to coast into a room at parties and own the room. Then Louis darted out like a dog catching up to his mistress. I looked at Aunt Sophie, wondering if she had found the exchange distasteful, but she surprised me by turning to Aunt Sara. ‘Well, I for one have missed my medicinal sherry. Marvellous initiative from young Franklin. Well done, Mr. President.’

Shoulders relaxing at Eleanor’s departure, he smiled at us all.

Much to Aunt Sara’s annoyance, another man came in. Taller than Mr Howe, he hung his head and introduced himself as Marvin McIntyre, on secretarial business, and glided to Franklin’s ear, murmuring for several minutes.

‘It never ends,’ complained Aunt Sara. ‘How is he to get some rest?’

Franklin rearranged his features upon the man’s departure from sombre to cheerful, and his mother made a show of closing the double doors firmly herself. She would shut out the world, she said, if only for an hour or two.

There were no other relatives. Just us. Aunt Sara bid us sit down and began a tart summary of Eleanor’s attributes or lack thereof as a presidential wife. I knotted my hands and stared at my lap. Aunt Sophie inclined her head, too polite to comment, a knuckled grip on her walking cane. Franklin, stuck in his wheelchair, was forced to look out of the window, cigarette holder now clamped between his teeth.

Oh dear, I thought, the intervening years had not redrawn the battle lines between Eleanor and her mother-in-law, despite Eleanor’s active campaigning on Franklin’s behalf. I poured tea for four and offered a plate of shortbread to everyone. Eleven years ago, it had been beige cakes and an illicit whiskey for Franklin.

Surrounded by women, his eyes fixed on a point towards the river, ignoring the cup I put by his side. I looked at his profile, feeling an irrational sense of pride. He’d done it. Despite paralysis, despite the pain and despair, he’d realised his ambitions. Absurdly, I held onto the notion that he’d achieved them to vindicate my faith in him. Did he remember me?

As the two aunts spoke, I had a vision of washing the nether regions of naked soldiers on Ellis Island. I’d worked for the Red Cross to assist the returning soldiers from the European battlefields, men whose limbs were stumps, whose bodies and minds were torn by shells. I wondered who did these tasks for Franklin and eyed the line of his legs, carefully positioned in his wheelchair. One leg had been placed over the other. Posed. His shoulders sloped, an elbow resting on the leather chair’s arm. Smoke ebbed and flowed from the cigarette, wafted by an intermittent breeze seeping through the window frame.

He made no effort to look our way or involve himself in the conversation.

‘He works too hard,’ Aunt Sara continued. ‘Daisy,’ she called me to attention. ‘Why don’t you and Franklin have some afternoon outings? Make him laugh.’

‘If the President wants me to.’

‘Franklin,’ she appealed to him, and to my surprise, he turned, noting her words and looking thoughtfully towards me. ‘You and Daisy could go out for a drive somewhere, take your mind off the demands of state. You have four years, you know. You must not exhaust yourself.’

Older and wiser than when I had first met my handsome cousin, I recognised my standing as far beneath that of his usual social companions, but I understood his mother’s rationale. I was an old maid and family. He could be seen with me without scandal. It had not been the same, eleven years ago, when we’d first been left alone.

June 1922

Aunt Sara had outlined her request to my mother. She wanted a sensible companion to sit with her son for a couple of afternoons a week. ‘Someone,’ she said, ‘to stop him brooding’. I was deemed suitable. No one actually said, She’s a spinster of thirty-one who knows how to care for her mother’s emotional maladies, as discretion was the better part of valour. Mama agreed I was a safe aide, and we arrived at the appointed time.

‘They’re having problems, Franklin and Eleanor,’ said Aunt Sara, sitting rigidly in the high backed chair at Springwood. She rang a bell with nervous vigour. This comment was no surprise to me. In the few events we had all attended, their mutual coldness was evident.

The doors opened and Cousin Franklin was wheeled in by a valet who positioned him perpendicular to the large windows overlooking the lawns. I tried to avoid flinching as I stared at his alteration. He sat hunched in a concoction of wheels and leather wrapped round a rattan canvas seat. Servants left tea, closing the doors behind them. Franklin did not acknowledge us, ignoring the cup his mother placed on the card table next to him.

No longer clean shaven, he held his shoulders in concave tightness. Aunt Sara did what any well-bred woman would have done and behaved as if he were not there, detailing complaints about her daughter-in-law. I suggested the ladies take a walk in the garden while I remained with Franklin. It didn’t seem fair to discuss his wife in front of him. Better to discuss her behind his back.

That afternoon was the first time I was alone with him. I looked at his limbs, thin and motionless beneath the linen trousers, feet encased in heavy black shoes positioned on the wheelchair plinths. Even in such a condition, he retained the husk of the beautiful ballroom dancer. But his fury was the most physical thing about him. Intimidating. Silencing.

The valet returned and left a crystal tumbler at his side with a measure of golden liquor. Sitting to one side, I hid my amusement. My family had never thought Prohibition was a desirable thing and my brother Arthur maintained Calvin Coolidge had a lot to answer for; we’d grown up in Switzerland where a meal was considered uncivilised without a respectable wine. Still, it was funny to see this breach of law by Cousin Franklin, an aspiring senator.

Silently he drained the glass, an observable tremor in his hand. Then he stretched out to a small wooden casket, flipping the lid and scrabbling for a cigarette. It dropped. I saw the whiteness of his knuckles as he made a fist, before jamming a tortoiseshell holder into his mouth. Wordlessly, I fetched the cigarette by the wheels of his chair, placing it between his fingers.

He said nothing.

He positioned the tobacco into the holder and stretched out his arm again to find the gold lighter beside his lukewarm tea. He knocked the cup and it clanged, spilling the liquid onto the rug.

‘Dammit, shit!’ He stopped, my presence on the margin of his awareness. Mouth tight, his hands formed a knot in his lap. I picked up the lighter and ground my thumb on the tiny wheel a few times before the flint took, and then leant near to him, holding the flare to his face. He half turned, placed the tip into the fire and inhaled. Bleak eyes flickered to mine. Gone again. I retreated, leaving the lighter in its original place and moving the teacup to the tray. There was nothing else for me to do. I sat at a distance.

‘Thank you.’ His words, a reluctant gratitude.

His head turned to the window, eliminating me; his anger fit to combust the cigarette holder between his fingers. Teeth clenched, he punctured the air with dragon curls of smoke. I stayed silent.

In that hour, my heart went out to him. Why had Eleanor left him when he was so low? He had four children. Where were they?

My schedule was to attend two afternoons a week, avoid any topic of his family or his ailments, and to shun talk of politics. He must give up public office, his mother insisted. He was a cripple. Retirement and leaving New York were his only options.

The whole summer, Eleanor and the children stayed away, and on scorching afternoons, I witnessed the comings and goings of Dr Draper, his thick black pen on the charts: No Progress Made. I watched as Franklin struggled to walk using newly constructed parallel bars in the garden, arm muscles knotted, pulling his legs forwards, face wet with sweat. Cursing.

My volunteer work at Ellis Island Hospital had given me a familiarity with pain and motivated me to write.

Wilderstein, Rhinebeck, Dutchess County,

August 1922

Dear Cousin,

I hope you find me a supportive companion. Be assured I am willing you to get better.

Not everyone came back from the Great War, but those that did were ordinary men, often in a distressed state. I helped them in Ellis Island Hospital and knew they had no choice but to go to work or starve. And so they went to work. I know your mother wants you to give up public office. But I remember you ran as Vice to Al Smith’s Democratic presidential hopes just before you became ill, and everyone spoke of you as a talented and brilliant orator. If you still desire to help people by taking a role in public office, then don’t be put off by your infirmities.

It might displease our mothers for me to express an opinion in opposition to theirs, but I send this with the best of intentions. Women have just been given the vote and I, for one, would vote for you!

With warmest affections—et avec mes meilleurs vœux.

Your Cousin Daisy

A week later, without a word to me, he left to go south. Aunt Sara said he had gone to Florida to swim in warm waters, hoping to regain the use of his legs. She clasped my hands, afraid to dream.

Life at Wilderstein continued. With the death of my dear brother, Henry, on the battlefield, my father soon died, and our mansion decayed a little, year on year. It was no one’s responsibility, or to be more accurate, it had not yet become mine. Yet Franklin’s battle stayed with me. Or to be very accurate, Franklin, the man, occupied my daydreams. For the next decade, I collected clippings of news items, anything with his face on the front page and against all the odds, I was reading a brighter narrative.

He was rising,

1924 - TRIUMPHANT PUBLIC APPEARANCE FOR ROOSEVELT AT MADISON SQUARE GARDENS IN SUPPORT OF GOVERNOR AL SMITH

and rising,

1928 - FDR STEPS INTO AL SMITH’S SHOES AS GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK

and rising. And I was happy for him,

1929 POPULAR ROOSEVELT TO BE RE-ELECTED AS GOVERNOR

even as the Suckleys were falling

1929 - BANKS GO BUST DUE TO WALL STREET MELTDOWN

STOCKS