By Michael F. Duggan
This past week, my girlfriend and I spent a few days in Rhinebeck. It was our first getaway alone since the beginning of the pandemic.
After taking in the town, a day trip to the Catskills, and a sighting of a celebrity writer in a local restaurant, we were up for the main event: a 1920s-theme lawn party/annual fundraiser at Wilderstein, Margaret “Daisy” Suckley’s Queen Anne-style river house a few miles south of town. Suckley was Franklin Roosevelt’s distant cousin and confidante, and the subject of the charming, if inaccurate, 2012 film Hyde Park on Hudson (Olivia Coleman, Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Samuel West).
When Daisy died at the age of 99 in 1991, they found a suitcase full of letters and diaries under her bed. It seems that Roosevelt’s cousin, dismissed by his handlers as the “little brown mud wren,” was actually the ultimate fly on the wall—a keen observer who wrote down everything. Unlike everybody else, Suckley wanted nothing from Roosevelt besides friendship, and was discreet. He trusted her and confided in her. The collection of her letters and diaries, Closest Companion (Geoffrey Ward, ed., 1995), is an invaluable contribution to the historiography of the Roosevelt administration.
Rescued from demolition and dilapidation in the 1990s, Wilderstein is now a privately-operated historical site, not state or federal. So if you are looking for a for a non-profit organization for a tax-deductible donation in historical preservation, I recommend the Wilderstein Historic Site. It is administered by a good bunch and the house is one of the best Victorians I have ever seen (originally built in a Federal or Italianate style).
More importantly, Margaret Suckely is a significant historical witness and deserves to be remembered in her own right (she also gave Fala to FDR). Anybody planning a trip to or through the Mid-Hudson Valley should stop by, take the tour, and enjoy the trails on the property and the spectacular view of the river from the lawn, it is the best I have seen and better than the one shared by Franklin and Eleanor at Hyde Park.
The address is:
Wilderstein Historic Site
330 Morton Road/PO Box 383
Rhinebeck, NY 12572