Young Roosevelts start honeymoon
From The Gazette, July 12, 1937
QUEBEC – With America gradually dropping behind them, the younger Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his bride, the former Ethel Du Pont, neared the broad Atlantic tonight.
The honeymooning couple, a happy, smiling pair, sailed from here yesterday in the liner Empress of Britain.
Franklin, son of the United States’ President and his 21-year-old bride, reached this ancient capitol early yesterday after a 400-mile motor trip from Lubee, Me., near the Campobello Island, N.B. camp of the President, where the youthful couple spent the first few days of their honeymoon.
An affable couple, Franklin and his bride, Ethel, spent several minutes yesterday posing for newspaper photographers and chatting with reporters on the sports deck of the liner.
The Roosevelts hurried from the hotel to their ship just 15 minutes before sailing time. Crowds of visiting Americans and Quebecers cheered the young couple as they made their way from the shed at Wolfe’s Cove to the liner.
Cries of “Happy honeymoon” and “Good luck” rang out as the lanky American, hat nearly on the back of his head, and his smiling young bride made their way up the covered gangway to the ship.
Once on the ship, Franklin and Ethel were rushed to the sports deck of the liner where they posed for photographers. In between flashes the smiling bridegroom answered questions by a group of newspapermen.
Yes, he expected to spend some time in Europe. But where, the cautious presidential scion refused to say.
“Now, now,” he said, “if I tell you, I’ll have everybody on the other side following us.”
Franklin Jr., was sorry he couldn’t give “you fellows a better story.”
His only admission was that he expected to begin a law course at University of Virginia “about September 15.”
Where he and his bride would be in the meantime, he failed to divulge. Asked if he and his wife expected to tour England and the Continent. Roosevelt replied, “that’s the general idea.”
The younger Roosevelt, while his wife rested at their hotel here, spent the greater part of yesterday morning shopping and making last minute arrangements before their departure in the afternoon.
With a reporter, he visited several shops and, in one place where there were a number of Americans making purchases, the tall American was not recognized. He spent 50 cents in one place for films for his camera and smilingly asserted “its an expensive game.”
After ridding himself of an armful of parcels and papers, the youthful bridegroom supervised loading of his car aboard the liner, docked at Wolfe’s Cove under historic Cape Diamond where the American General Richard Montgomery was repulsed in an attack on Quebec in 1760, a short while after its capture by the British.
Both Franklin and his 21 year old wife were in good humour when they boarded the liner in the afternoon after lunch. He smilingly admitted that it was the first time they had been “interfered with” by newspapermen since their New Brunswick visit, and she found “everything is pretty nice.”
After reporters and photographers finished their work the Roosevelts spent some time with Capt. Parry of the Empress of Britain. Then they retired to their suite before appearing for dinner last evening.