Colonel Roosevelt (131 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
Jan. 2: crosses Kafu into Unyoro kingdom; 5: arrives Butiaba, on Lake Albert; 7: embarks down White Nile; 8: stops at Wadelai; 9: arrives “Rhino Camp,” Lado Enclave; 10: begins 3-week hunt for white rhino. Feb. 1: hunts hippo; 3: sails on downriver; 4: arrives Nimule; 7: begins 10-day march past White Nile Rapids; 17: arrives
GONDOKORO
.
IGHTH
S
AFARI
(8
DAYS
)
Feb. 18: upriver to Rajaf; 19: arrives Rajaf; begins to hunt eland, bongo; 23: 5 bull eland; 26: returns Rajaf, on to
GONDOKORO
. Mar. 1: down the Nile on
Dal
for next fortnight; 14: arrives
KHARTOUM
, pays off remaining safari personnel; returns to public life.
36
his own Dutch surname
See Biographical Note above, 582.
37
After two years of drought
The Leader of British East Africa
, 29 May 1909; TR,
Works
, 5.27, 23.
38
What he really wants
TR,
Works
, 5.28, 45–46; Alexander Nemerov, “Vanishing Americans: Abbott Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Attractions of Camouflage,”
American Art
, Summer 1997.
39
Trippa, troppa
TR,
Works
, 5.41 [
sic
]; Theodore Roosevelt,
An Autobiography
(New York, 1913; Library of America, 2004), 251–52. TR quoted entirely from phonetic memory, not sure if his Dutch was correct or not (it wasn’t). A printed words-and-music version of this song in TRB begins,
Trippel trippel toontjes, / Kippen in de boontjes
. (“Wiggle, wiggle, little toes, / Snug inside their booties.”)
40
By “veldt law”
Morris,
The Rise of TR
, 202–12; TR,
Works
, 5.29. TR’s 1909 diary from this day on is filled with diagrammatic sketches that meticulously show the order and point of entry of all the bullets that brought down his specimens (TRC). See 20.
41
He follows
TR,
Works
, 5.70–71; TR in
The Leader of British East Africa
, 7 Aug. 1909.
42
Right in front
TR,
Works
, 5.72–73.
43
He tries to notate
Another of TR’s phonetic transcriptions on safari was of the following rendition, by African missionary-school students, of the U.S. national anthem:
O se ka nyu si bai di mo nseli laiti / Wati so pulauli wi eli adi twayi laiti silasi gilemi
. TR,
Works
, 5.365.
44
They cluster around
TR,
Works
, 5.76–80; Kermit Roosevelt,
The Long Trail
, 68. For connoisseurs of hunting chants, TR’s was as follows:
Whack! fal, lal, fal, lal, tal, ladeddy; / Whack! hurroo! for Lanigan’s ball
. He probably learned the song as a child in 1863, when it was popularized by Bryant’s Minstrels in New York.
45
The firelight glows
TR,
Works
, 5.80.
46
Like a python
The general procedure of TR’s safari was to travel (camping frequently en route) for a month or more, before looping back to Kapiti or Nairobi to restock, ship specimens, and communicate with the outside world. Each foray focused on a particular group of museum-desired fauna.
47
As leader
TR,
Works
, 5.459–68. After TR’s death, Charles William Beebe wrote that “he was one of the best field naturalists we have ever had in Africa.” TR,
Works
, 4.xiii.
48
But his main
TR,
Letters
, 7.8–9, TR;
Works
, 5.62.
49
He is aware
One admittedly “wrought up” description of a tropical storm pleased TR so much that he begged his editor not to delete it. TR,
Letters
, 7.33–34.
Biographical Note:
TR took with him to Africa two custom-made, watertight, antproof steel-frame writing boxes, covered with black bridle leather and sling-strapped for portage. The boxes contained 30 thick manuscript pads, enough for 1,500 pages of copy, with commensurate numbers of carbon sheets and two dozen indelible pencils.
By June 1, he had completed six “chapters” of about 7,000 to 8,000 words each, and had decided on a title for his book:
African Game Trails
(TR,
Letters
, 7.16). Robert Bridges, TR’s editor at Scribners, was amazed at the steadiness,
promptness, and copiousness of his dispatches. “I have always said that you are the best contributor we had” (Bridges to TR, 24 June 1909 [SCR]).
The Bridges/Roosevelt correspondence in SCR reveals TR’s professionalism as an author. For example, on 17 July 1909, he sends instructions as to how his text may be split or shortened for serialization (“In the book, of course, I want the chapters to appear just as I have written them”), suggests chapter titles and illustrations, indicates the probable subject matter of future installments, and urges early publication in hardcover (“I am told that no less than eight books on hunting and travelling in British East Africa have been or are now being written.… The object of course is to forestall our book.”) He requests a $20,000 contractual payment, suggests a negotiant (F. Warrington Dawson) for French serial and book rights, and repeatedly presses the value of his son’s photographs. “I regard this book as a serious thing,” he wrote in another letter. “I have put my very best into it and I cannot consent to have it appear in any but first class form.” TR to Bridges, 26 Mar. 1910 (SCR).
50
He is an honest writer
See, e.g., TR,
Works
, 5.55: “Generally each head of game cost me a goodly number of bullets; but only twice did I wound animals which I failed to get.… Some of my successful shots at Grant’s gazelle and kongoni were made at three hundred, three hundred and fifty, or four hundred yards, but at such distances my proportion of misses was very large indeed—and there were altogether too many even at short ranges.”
Biographical Note:
Asked if he considered himself a good shot, he joked, “No, but I shoot often.” Lord Cranworth, Sir Frederick Jackson, and Bartle Bull have harshly criticized TR for this profligacy. Before losing the sight of his left eye, he had been a good marksman, managing once to put five bullets through the same target hole. But lack of target practice caused him to grow rusty as President—so much so that in 1908, he called in Admiral W. S. Sims, the navy’s ranking gunnery expert, to prepare him for Africa. Sims set up “a little apparatus” on the upper floor of the White House, consisting of a clamped gun firing at a revolving needle at 60-foot range. “We put the President on the machine,” he told a dinner audience long afterward, “and from the point of view of a rhinoceros, he did not shoot for sour apples.” TR’s half-blindness caused him problems in the early stages of his safari, but he shot better with practice, getting about half of his trophies at ranges of 200+ yards. After his death, the professional hunter Stewart Edward White pointed out that target shooting and game shooting are two very different skills. “So far from being a poor shot, [TR] was an exceedingly good game-shot, a much better game-shot than the majority of riflemen.” Sims to Roosevelt Memorial Association, 1926, quoted in “The Story of the Roosevelt Medals,” ts. (TRB); Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 223; Bull,
Safari
, 173, 180–81; TR,
Works
, 2.xxiii–xxiv.
51
his indelible pencil
A holograph chapter of
African Game Trails
, still in the original pad, is preserved in TRBU, and an almost complete copy of the original (top-sheet) ms. is in TRC.
52
One copy of each
Bibliographical note by R. W. G. Vail enclosed in TRC ms. of
African Game Trails;
Lawrence F. Abbott,
Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt
(New York, 1919), 173–74; Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 364ff.; TR,
Letters
, 7.19–21. It took about a month for one of TR’s envelopes to reach New York. By early July, Scribners already had six chapters in hand. “You can’t imagine how pleased we are to have so much good material in so early,” Robert Bridges wrote him (9 July 1909 [SCR]).
53
As he falls
TR,
Works
, 5.90–91, 187–88, 132–34, 155–56, 163–67. TR’s account of his hunt after buffalo, arguably the most dangerous game in Africa, is modest. “We walked toward them, rather expecting a charge; but when we were still over two hundred yards away they started back for the swamp, and we began firing.” The African hunters with him admitted afterward to feelings of panic as the buffalo massed to charge them on the open plain. TR took command, shouting an order that kept them standing still until the buffalo swerved into the papyrus. “We lost our heads, but the Colonel kept his, and saved us all from certain death.” F. Warrington Dawson, quoting his own diary, 31 May 1909, in “Opportunity and Theodore Roosevelt,” prepublication ts., 35–36 (KRP).
54
In a sudden
TR,
Works
, 5.205–6.
55
But he is looking
Ibid., 5.280.
56
Then, curling up
Ibid., 5.450; KR diary, 15 July 1909 (KRP). KR photographed this incident.
57
zero at the bone
The phrase is Emily Dickinson’s. TR sweated out this and other attacks of chronic fever with the aid of whiskey from Dr. Mearns’s medicine chest—the only alcohol he was seen to take on safari. With quaint precision, he calculated his consumption at “just six ounces in eleven months.” Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 333; TR,
Works
, 5.450. By May 1915, this had changed in his memory to “seven tablespoons of brandy.” See 278.
58
Although he assures himself
TR,
Letters
, 7.22. Dawson, “Opportunity and TR,” 38, puts TR’s total as of 20 May 1909 at “some 60 specimens of big game, including about 20 species.” Nine days later,
The Leader of British East Africa
reported his big-game bag had risen to 86 specimens. TR and KR together shot, by mid-July 1909, 12 lion, 7 rhino, 6 giraffes, 6 topi, 5 buffalo, 4 eland, and 3 hippos, plus numerous other lesser species and an indeterminate quantity of game for food.
59
The trouble with such luck
The New York Times
commented on a report that TR had shot 18 antelope and 2 wildebeest on his first major hunt: “It really does seem to be a good deal of killing for a faunal naturalist.” William J. Long wrote in the San Francisco
Examiner
, “The worst thing about the whole bloody business … is not the killing of a few hundred wild animals … but the brutalizing influence which [such] reports have upon thousands of American boys.” Rice, “Trailing a Celebrity.”
60
scrawled trophy tally
For a sample such press release, see TR, 18 June 1909, quoted in Rice, “Trailing a Celebrity.”
61
their avid interest
In the case of local reporters, the interest was by no means friendly. Both
The Leader of British East Africa
(Nairobi) and the
East African Standard
(Nairobi) were enraged by TR’s press ban. The former felt that it “bode[d] a lack of consideration … not far short of contempt” (24 Apr. 1909).
62
The fact is
George Juergens,
News from the White House: The Presidential Press Relationship in the Progressive Era
(Chicago, 1981), 14–21 and
passim
. See also TR,
Letters
, 3.252–53, and Oswald Garrison Villard,
Fighting Years
(New York, 1939), 151.
63
American editors
TR noticed an unusual number of “vacationing” journalists aboard the SS
Hamburg
when he crossed the Atlantic eastbound in April. TR,
Letters
, 6.1403. For WHT’s unhappy relationship with the press, see Juergens,
News from the White
House, 91ff.
64
Hence the presence
Dawson had met TR at Messina with a letter of recommendation from Henry White, the American ambassador in Paris. He had volunteered his services as TR’s safari press secretary, only to be rebuffed: “You may come with me as far as the African coast, if you promise not to follow me afterward and not to ask for any interviews.” But TR raised no objections when Dawson set himself
up as a correspondent covering the safari out of Nairobi: “You see, you happen to be a gentleman.” (Dawson, “Opportunity and TR,” 11–26.) TR also developed a soft spot for W. Robert Foran of the New York
Sun
, to whom he extended similar privileges. (TR to Foran, 17 July 1909 [TRP].) Although Foran never became as intimate with the Colonel as Dawson, he followed him for much longer, even chartering a “ghost” safari at the end of 1909 to report on TR’s final expedition down the White Nile. See Bull,
Safari
, 176.
65
That hippo “bull”
TR,
Works
, 5.214–16; Dawson, “Opportunity and TR,” 43. Another “joke” image that caused TR some irritation was that of
Bwana Tumbu
(“Boss with Big Belly”), his supposed nickname among the porters on safari. It appears to have been coined by reporters in the United States.
66
The lake lies almost still
TR,
Works
, 5.216–17.
67
Darkness falls
Ibid.; Dawson, “Opportunity and TR,” 45–48. Dawson describes TR as “in a state of such depression as I have never witnessed in that hardy and optimistic nature … positively haggard.” (Ibid., 48.) See also Dale B. Randall,
Joseph Conrad and Warrington Dawson: The Record of a Friendship
(Durham, N.C., 1968), 25.