Description:

Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1882-1945) Presidential ANS on a card imprinted "A Merry Christmas from The President and Mrs. Roosevelt" which accompanied his 1940 Christmas gift to his mistress's assistant: "Love from FDR ... If not the right size we can change it" - the words "and Mrs. Roosevelt" have been crossed out

Thought provoking ANS "FDR" as President, two pages, 3" x 4", both sides of a printed card. [Washington], Christmas 1940. With original unaddressed 4" x 3" mint envelope with the presidential seal in gilt on the back flap. Very fine condition.

On a card depicting a rural snow scene at top center, and the centered printed words "Christmas / 1940 / a Merry Christmas / from / the President / and Mrs. Roosevelt," President Roosevelt has penned "Grace - / Love from FDR (over)." Curiously, the words "and Mrs. Roosevelt" have been crossed out, ostensibly by the President. On verso, he's added "If not the right / size we can change / it before we / have it marked."

From "The History of Christmas at the White House (1789-2009)" at the44diaries.wordpress.com: "[For Christmas 1940] FDR's secretary ordered over 200 Scottish terrier key chains from Hammacher Schlemmer. The key chains were very near and dear to the Roosevelts, as the gifts immortalized their own beloved Scottish terrier, Fala. FDR's secretary also ordered money clips and key chains from Cartier to be gifted to White House staff and associates." By what the President has written, his gift was not a money clip or a key chain.

In 1928, Grace Tully (1900-1984) began working for the Democratic Party and was assigned to Eleanor Roosevelt's secretarial staff. After Franklin D. Roosevelt's election as Governor, she moved to Albany and became assistant to FDR's personal secretary, Marguerite "Missy" Le Hand. She continued as LeHand's assistant after Roosevelt was elected President. When LeHand fell ill in 1941, Grace Tully became President Roosevelt's personal secretary.

Pulitzer Prize winning historian James MacGregor Burns, in an Op-Ed piece published in "The New York Times" on April 12, 1995, the 50th anniversary of FDR's death, wrote "He did not expect to die so soon, at 63: he talked with Eleanor about big trips and plans for after the war. But if he did have some premonition of the end, the old impresario could hardly have stage-managed his death scene more compellingly. He was in his beloved retreat, in Warm Springs, Ga., and he was with four women he loved - Laura, Margaret, Lucy and Grace." Grace was his personal secretary, Grace Tully. Laura Delano and Margaret Suckley were his cousins. Lucy was Lucy Mercer Rutherford. Burns notes that "during the last year, he was meeting with Lucy Mercer Rutherford, whom he had promised Eleanor, after his affair with Lucy during World War I, he would never see again." Eleanor did not accompany the President to Warm Springs, remaining in Washington. In her review of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize winning "No Ordinary Time: Franklin And Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front In World War II," Carolyn B. Leonard notes that "Franklin had several mistresses who lived with him in the mansion quite openly, although we are never sure how much Eleanor was aware of."

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