Paulina Longworth - Early Life

Early Life

Paulina's father was House Speaker Nicholas Longworth (Republican-Ohio) (an influential party leader and 43rd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1925-1931) who had married Alice Roosevelt almost 20 years earlier. (Longworth was popular on both sides of the aisle during his six years as Speaker, and the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill is named after him).

The marriage was shaky, with both partners having affairs, and Paulina's birth (her name was pronounced to sound as "Pole-eena") was the result of Alice's affair with Senator William Borah of Idaho, who was chairman of the (Foreign Relations Committee). Nicholas Longworth loved Paulina and doted on her, and it was not easy for her when he died when she was six years-old.

Paulina was often invited to the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt to play with her cousins, Sisty and Buzzie Dall, who were near Paulina's age. Eleanor Roosevelt often looked after Paulina at the White House when her mother, Alice was out of town and Eleanor Roosevelt also made sure to include Paulina in dinner party invitations to the White House.

Paulina was brought up by a strict nanny who did not show affection. Her mother Alice had a notoriously rocky relationship with her father Theodore and her step-mother, and once a mother herself, the nurturing instinct did not seem to materialize. Alice was competitive with her daughter and would insist on homely clothes for Paulina, as if she were a sibling rival — while at the same time desiring for Paulina to become an extroverted socialite like herself.

“Katharine Graham, who was eight years older than Paulina, recalled her “as a rather sad girl, not terribly prepossessing and sort of pale and not done up.” “Paulina’s...appearance resulted not so much from physical factors — other friends recalled her unusually beautiful green eyes: widely-spaced, slanted, and set in black lashes — as from emotional ones: a crippling lack of self confidence”. And despite Paulina's despondency, other qualities still seemed to get through. She was described as "a really very nice person", and later when she had a child, as a loving mother.

In this complex relationship with her mother, Paulina developed a stutter, which seemed to get worse around Alice, who viewed the stuttering as irritating. Paulina’s true personality sometimes surfaced when the conditions were right and she felt safe to express herself. With extended time away from her mother, Paulina had begun to open up at the Madeira Boarding School, which she attended from 1938 to 1942. In one anecdote while at Madeira (late the night before graduation in 1942), Paulina clad in pajamas, demonstrated for the other girls in their dorm hallway Theodore Roosevelt’s famous charge up San Juan Hill to everyone's amusement, except the teacher in charge of the floor.

Paulina made her social debut in Cincinnati, her late father’s hometown.

Later while attending Vassar College, Paulina retreated inward again, and her inhibitions returned. One thing that seemed to concern her is circumnavigating the world of boyfriends and marriage; which “were necessary were she to escape her mother”. Paulina left Vassar after only a year. “Paulina was miserable living at home with her mother, and her shyness and stuttering returned in full force.”

But friends who saw out of Alice’s presence said that she had an intellect to rival her mother’s — she could recite poetry ad infinitum — and, when she chose to reveal it, a marvelous dry wit...The late Horace Taft once got into a discussion with Paulina, who was his contemporary and friend, about women in various professions. Horace argued that while women did pretty well in some things, 'in sciences they’re just nowhere. I could name fifty prominent male scientists for every woman,' he assured her. 'Marie Curie. Name 50,' she replied. -Excerpt from Carol Felsenthal's Princess Alice: The Life and Times of Alice Roosevelt Longworth