Colonel Roosevelt (173 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
99
“We all of us”
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star
, 292–95.
Biographical Note:
In his final comment on the world situation, TR observed that the concert of powers envisioned by WW was so vague that Germany, Russia, Turkey, and Mexico might believe they were welcome to join it, on equal terms with the United States, Britain, and France. But equality was not a right or a reward. Governments responsible for the recent war would have to earn full membership of the League of Nations, in part by paying “the sternest reparation … for such horrors as those committed in Belgium, Northern France, Armenia, and the sinking of the
Lusitania.
” Weak or neutral nations should not expect to have a “guiding voice” in the League’s strategic decisions. That was the prerogative of the strong nations who had fought for peace. As perhaps the strongest of the strong in 1919, the United States should henceforth police only its own hemisphere. The “civilized” powers of Europe and Asia would have to control their own forces of disorder. TR was confident that if WW made these strictures clear at the peace table, Clemenceau and Lloyd George would agree. “I believe that such an effort made moderately and sanely, but sincerely and with utter scorn for words that are not made good by deeds, will be productive of real and lasting international good.” (Ibid.)
100
In a letter
TR to George H. Moses, 3 Jan. 1919 (TRP).
101
The effort of
ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP). The following narrative of the events of 4–6 Jan. 1919 is based mainly on primary accounts by EKR and James Amos. These are: EKR to ERD, 3, 4, 5 Jan. 1919 (ERDP); EKR to KR, 6 Jan. 1919 and 25 Mar. 1923 (KRP); EKR to TR.Jr., 12 Jan. 1919 (TRJP); James Amos, “The Beloved Boss,”
Collier’s Weekly
, 7 Aug. 1926; Amos,
Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet
(New York, 1927), 154–58. There are two other near-primary accounts: ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP), and George Syran to Mr. and Mrs. Osbourne, 11 Jan. 1919, privately owned. Minor conflicts of
chronology are resolved in favor of EKR’s recall. Individual sources are cited again below only for quotations. For Dr. Fuller’s report to the press, see
The New York Times
, 7 Jan. 1919.
102
Since none of their
James Amos, “The Beloved Boss”; Amos,
TR: Hero to His Valet
. Amos had left the Roosevelts amicably in the fall of 1913, after more than ten years in their service. He continued, however, to serve them off and on, since TR often hired him as a valet-cum-bodyguard on long railroad trips.
103
When Amos arrived
Amos, “The Beloved Boss.”
104
two or three letters
See, e.g., TR to Edward N. Buxton, 5 Jan. 1919 [in EKR’s handwriting] (ERDP); Cutright,
TR
, 265; TR,
Letters
, 8.1422.
105
correcting the typescript
Henry J. Whigham interviewed by Hermann Hagedorn, 12 Jan. 1949 (HH). This may have been the last manuscript TR actually touched. After his death a scribbled memo of uncertain date was found on his bedside table:
Hays—see him; he must go to Washington for 10 days; see Senate & House; prevent split on domestic policies
. (Reproduced in Lorant,
Life and Times of TR
, 624.) By publishing the memo at the end of TR,
Letters
, 8, the editors infuse it with a valedictory quality it may not deserve. It is unlikely TR wrote it any time in 1919, in view of the acute rheumatism that attacked his right hand on New Year’s Day.
106
could not help kissing him
ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP).
107
“As it got dusk”
EKR to TR.Jr., 12 Jan. 1919 (TRJP).
108
They were still together
EKR to KR, 6 Jan. 1919 (KRP); ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP).
109
Leaving the nurse
EKR to KR, 25 Mar. 1923 (KRP); ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP). The Orientalist William Sturgis Bigelow, a licensed physician, had recommended morphine to EKR after witnessing TR’s agonies with ptomaine poisoning earlier in the year. See above, 720. “I want you particularly to tell Dr. Bigelow,” she wrote Henry Cabot Lodge, “that I did not forget the talk he and I had about the use of morphine, and after he [TR] had had 2 or 3 sleepless nights in succession, we gave him morphine the night before he died so that he was able to go to sleep and forget his pain.” Murakata, “TR and William Sturgis Bigelow.”
110
Faller assented
ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP).
111
“James, don’t you”
Amos,
TR: Hero to His Valet
, 156.
112
He had to be
George Syran to Mr. and Mrs. Osbourne, 11 Jan. 1919, privately owned. This letter, written only five days after TR’s death and reflecting conversations between Syran, Amos, and “downstairs” staff at Sagamore Hill, preconfirms almost all the details that Amos published eight years later in
TR: Hero to His Valet
.
113
“James, will you”
Amos,
TR: Hero to His Valet
, 156.
114
A small lamp
Ibid., 156; EKR to KR, 6 Jan. 1919 (KRP).
115
“roughling”
The word is so spelled by Syran, quoting Amos later that morning.
116
Each time he started
Interviewed later that day, Amos said he counted five seconds between each of TR’s breaths.
New York Evening Post
, 6 Jan. 1919.
117
At four o’clock
Amos,
TR: Hero to His Valet
, 157; EKR to KR, 6 Jan. 1919 (KRP).
.
1
Theodore Roosevelt’s death certificate
Copy in TRC.
2
two consulting physicians
John H. Richards and John A. Hartwell, of the Roosevelt Hospital in New York.
3
They revealed
New York Evening Post
, 6 Jan.,
The New York Times
, 7 Jan. 1919.
4
other observers
New York Evening Post
, 6 Jan. 1919, e.g. Altogether, TR had five narrow escapes from death: his streetcar accident in Sept. 1902, the assassination attempt of Oct. 1912, the septicemia crises of Apr. 1914 and Feb. 1918, and his first embolism attack in Dec. 1918.
5
“the cause of death”
Speculative report on TR’s final illness, compiled by Drs. Paul and Andrew Marks, 19 Jan. 2010 (AC). The authors of this document are, respectively, president emeritus of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and cardiologist/professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
6
a broken heart
John H. Richards quoted in
New York Evening Post
, 6 Jan. 1919; ERD to KR, 6 Jan. 1919 (ERDP). “Mother and I felt that part of his illness was due to his grief for Quentin—It took the fight from him … must have been his heart.”
Biographical Note:
Drs. Marks and Marks comment further, in a review of the medical narrative provided them by the author, as follows: “One can speculate that in the 1870s, when [TR] was ‘advised by Harvard doctors on graduation to lead sedentary scholarly life because of heart weakness,’ that the examining physician may have heard a heart murmur. The heart murmur could have been secondary to early childhood rheumatic heart disease or a congenital heart valve abnormality.” However, “his rigorous [subsequent] life suggests that if he did have a heart murmur it did not significantly impair cardiac function.” TR’s recurrent attacks of “Cuban fever” after 1898 were consistent with malaria. “The parasite can reside in the liver for years—with bouts of septicemia recurring and causing these symptoms.” His frequent “acute joint pains” probably were attacks of gout. Given his increasing weight, after his 50th birthday, joint symptoms could also reflect degenerative osteoarthritis, particularly of the hip, knee, and ankle joints.” Returning to the question of TR’s coronary vulnerability, the doctors concede some likelihood of endocarditis. “But if he had endocarditis, possibly related to his leg infection seeding a damaged heart, his terminal course would have been marked by high fevers and evidence of infectious, embolic showers which would have been noticed by his physicians, i.e. hemorrhages, speech or motor deficiencies etc.… Further, embolism is unlikely since Faller recorded [six hours before TR’s death] ‘normal heart and pulse’—and this is very unlikely associated with a pulmonary embolus.” Allowing that the undisclosed amount of morphine administered to the patient four hours before his death may have caused the respiratory depression noticed by James Amos, the doctors nevertheless conclude that TR’s “recurrent chest pain/discomfort, obesity, and high blood pressure all make coronary artery disease likely,” leading to their speculative diagnosis of “myocardial infarction” as the prime cause of death.
For a conflicting opinion, stating that TR’s final illness was “most compatible with polyarticular gout,” but also with “reactive arthritis [and/or] rheumatic fever,” see Robert S. Pinals, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Inflammatory Rheumatism”
Journal of Clinical Rheumatology
, 14.1 (Feb. 2008).
The author has deposited a copy of his narrative of TR’s recorded medical problems in TRC.
7
it spread around the world
Arthur Krock of
The New York Times
told Henry Pringle that he had watched President Wilson receiving cabled news of TR’s death
en route to Modena, Italy. According to Krock, who was looking through a window of the presidential car, WW’s face registered “transcendent triumph.” Pringle treated this anecdote, which Krock retailed to him eleven years later, seriously in his 1931 biography of TR (602). It is true that WW received the news while traveling, but his reaction (so far as Krock could discern it through plate glass) can only be guessed at.
8
headed again for the presidency
“Among party leaders today it was conceded that if Colonel Roosevelt had lived, he undoubtedly would have had the nomination for the presidency.”
The New York Times
, 7 Jan. 1919.
9
took refuge in metaphor
Henry A. Beers,
Four Americans: Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman
(New Haven, Conn., 1919), 8; “Theodore Roosevelt in Memoriam,”
Natural History
, Jan. 1919; William Dudley Foulke,
A Hoosier Autobiography
(New York, 1922), 221;
New York Evening Post
, 6 Jan. 1919; Slayden,
Washington Wife
, 354; Garland,
My Friendly Contemporaries
, 214; Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 435.
10
Archibald Roosevelt announced
The New York Times
, 7, 8 Jan. 1919.
11
“It was my father’s”
Ibid.
12
In a further
Ibid.
13
ROOSEVELT DEAD
A large fragile scrapbook album in TRC contains a collection of these headlines.
14
Even so, he
Undated news clip in “Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB).
15
“Mother, the adamantine”
TR,
Letters
, 8.1266.
16
“Gone … gone”
George Syran to Mr. and Mrs. Osbourne, 11 Jan. 1919.
17
“You did not”
Ibid.
18
“She had a”
Ibid. [
sic
]. During the afternoon of 6 Jan., the sculptor James Earle Fraser took a plaster cast of TR’s face. The macabre result may be seen in Lorant,
Life and Times of TR
, 627. According to Hamlin Garland, some books TR had been reading were still resting on the counterpane.
Roosevelt House Memorial Bulletin
, 2.2 (Fall 1923).
19
A perpetual drone
The New York Times
, 7 Jan. 1919; Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 434; undated news clip in “Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB). The air vigil was ordered by General William L. Kenly, director of military aeronautics.
20
The aerial watch
The New York Times
, 9 Jan. 1919.
21
The snow tapered off
Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of TR’s funeral is based on ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP), and EBR to “mother,” 8 Jan. 1919 (TRJP), supplemented by reports in
The New York Times, New York Evening Post
, New York
World, Oakland Tribune, Waterloo
(Iowa)
Evening Courier
(AP),
Greenville
(Pa.)
Evening Record
(UP), 8 and 9 Jan. 1919, and clippings and photographs in the “Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB).
22
“He looked”
ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP).
23
Roosevelt’s disdain for
pompe
See 67.
24
He noticed a distraught
EBR to “mother,” 8 Jan. 1919 (TRJP).
25
When through fiery trials
Copied by John J. Leary (JJL).
26
“Theodore,” he said
Abbott,
Impressions of TR
, 313; New York
World
, 9 Jan. 1919.
27
A single pull
John J. Leary funeral notes (JJL).
28
As the engraved words
TR’s coffin was lowered into the ground by a compressed-air device at 1:47
P.M
. New York
World
, 9 Jan. 1919.
29
Lieutenant Otto Raphael
“Roosevelt Night,” Middlesex Club proceedings,
Boston, 27 Oct. 1921, 4–5 (TRB). For TR’s relationship with Raphael, see TR,
An Autobiography
, chap. 6.