National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Historical Overview
According to Cleveland Amory, Eleanor Roosevelt considered our Aunt Louise to be a
perfect example of the Old Order. Every day, regardless of the weather, promptly at 3
o'clock Aunt Louise went for a solitary drive with her coachman, and later with her
chauffeur. One day the President's wife asked her politely what she thought about on these
drives. "Why," replied Aunt Louise, "I do my mental exercises. First I do the kings and
queens of England, forward and backward, with their dates. Then I do the presidents of this
country, forward and backward, with their dates, and sometimes, if I take a long drive, I get
to the kings and queens of France." 216
Louise maintained a life-long interest in fashion, particularly French fashion. One of Mr.
Shears' secretaries recounted this story:
She told me the year hobble skirts were coming in fashion Mrs. Vanderbilt walked around
with her ankles tied with rope, so she could be graceful about it when she returned to Society
in New York. 217
Eleanor Worcester, who knew Louise in New York and visited Hyde Park in 1923 when Louise
was seventy-nine years old, said of her:
She . . . loved everything French. While she wasn't French, she spoke beautiful French. She
had a marvelous French personal maid, whom I remember because she was such fun. The
food . . . always had to be French. . . . After I had my first baby, I remember having lunch with
her in New York. She said, "Now you must teach this child - it was about two months old -
to speak French. . . . Instinctively she liked her clothes. French everything. She was great
fun. 218 She'd always want to show you something. Something that she'd gotten from France
or something. So you'd go in [to her bedroom] and she'd show you what it was, a dress or
something. 219
Elting Oakley, the son of second chauffeur Frederick Oakley, recalled that toward the end of her
life Louise had grown senile. She had once known the names of his many siblings, but in later
conversations with his father, she would remember only the eldest son and tell Frederick it was
a shame he hadn't had more children. She also occasionally asked Frederick where he was
going, presumably on an errand for the estate, and she would "get in and go with him." She had
apparently:
told Frederick when his son was ready to go to college have his son see her. He did so and
Mrs. V. all attired in her bed had Ray come up to her bedroom and she proceeded to show
him all her clothes not mentioning anything about college. 220
In later middle age, Louise became a devotee of The Church of Christ, Scientist. The
church was founded by Mary Baker Eddy whose chief tenets were the belief in healing through
spiritual means and that divine goodness underlies the scientific reality of existence. 221 Given
that Louise's last illness was treated surgically, she may have relaxed her adherence to the tenets
of Christian Scientism in her later years. In a diary entry for 1893, Florence Adele Sloane, one of
Louise's Vanderbilt nieces, equates Christian Scientism with hypnotism and mesmerism. 222
216
Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., 292-293; Amory, The Last Resorts, 41.
217
Dickinson.
218
Worcester, 5.
219
Worcester, 32.
220
Elting Oakley, Typescript of taped interview, June 18, 1990, unn, Oral History Collection, ROVA
Archives.
221
For more on Christian Science, see Norman Gevits, ed., Other Healers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1988).
222
Sloane, 102.
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