The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (153 page)

7.
Ib.

8.
Ib.; Fenwick, 1907, qu. W.
Eve Star
, n.d.

9.
Eve Star
, Jan. 2, 1907.

10.
Ib., Dec. 31, 1906;
Sun
, same date;
Philadelphia Public Ledger
, Dec. 3, 1906;
Eve. Star
, Jan. 2, 1907.

11.
Message to Congress, Dec. 1906, reprinted in TR.Wks.XV. See Dun. II. 3–14 for a list of the legislative achievements in this, “the greatest year in Theodore Roosevelt’s life.”

12.
Eve. Star
, Dec. 31, 1906; James Thayer Addison to Hermann Hagedorn, Apr. 26, 1921 (TRB).

13.
See TR.Auto. 526ff.

14.
Speeches at Cuelbra and Colon, Panama, Nov. 16 and 17, 1906.

15.
Qu. Har.260.

16.
St. Louis Censor
, Dec. 27, 1906.

17.
TRB memo.

18.
Mor.6.1605; de Voto, Bernard, ed.,
Mark Twain in Eruption
, Harpers, 1940, 8.

19.
Qu. Har.303.

20.
Literary Digest
, Dec. 22, 1906; Bea.306–8.

21.
Bea, 451; Pri.298. For a full account of the Cuba incident, see Scott, James B., ed.,
Robert Bacon: Life and Letters
(NY, 1923) 113 ff.; also Bur. 105–8.

22.
Bis.I.431.

23.
Eve. Star
, Dec. 31, 1906; Mor.5. 535;
W. Her.
, Jan. 2, 1907; Har.306. See Lane, Ann J.,
The Brownsville Affair
(NY, 1971) for an exhaustive and highly critical account of TR’s role in this evident miscarriage of justice. The presidential message on the incident, quoted by Joseph Foraker in his
Notes of a Busy Life
(Stewart & Kidd, 1917) is one of TR’s most regrettable effusions. He chose not to mention Brownsville in his
Autobiography
.

24.
Speech at opening of Pan-American Exhibition, Buffalo, May 20, 1901.

25.
Jusserand, Jules,
What Me Befell
(London, 1933) 346; Pri.387.

26.
Harper’s Weekly
, July 14, 1906. “Congress has evidenced almost phonographic fidelity to the wishes of the President”
—N.Y. World
, July 2, 1906.

27.
Crook, W. H.,
Memories of the White House
(Boston, 1911) 298; Scr., TRB;
N.Y. World
, Dec. 30, 1906; Gene Tunney in
Women’s Roosevelt Association Bulletin
, 5.6;
Phil. Pub. Ledger
, Dec. 3, 1906.

28.
Gwy.1.483.

29.
Rensselaer Independent Republican
, Jan. 1, 1907; London
Times
, Dec. 5, 1906. The message, TR’s sixth and longest at 30,000 words, was written throughout in Simplified Spelling. It contained such characteristic Rooseveltisms as “It is out of the question for our people to rise by treading down any of their own number,” and the declaration that “wilful sterility,” i.e., birth control, “is the one sin for which the penalty is national death.… a sin for which there is no atonement.” There were at least two discreet suggestions that the Constitution needed amending. “The dominant note,” remarked the
Literary Digest
on Dec. 15, 1906, “is a demand for a greater centralization of power.”

30.
See Schoenberg, Philip E., “The American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903,”
American Jewish Historical Quarterly
, Mar. 1974; also Straus, Oscar S.,
Under Four Administrations
(Houghton Mifflin, 1922).

31.
Unidentified clip, dated June 27, 1907, in TRB.

32.
For TR’s telegram of acceptance, see Mor. 5.524. He separately announced, not without some pangs, that the prize money would be used to establish “a permanent Industrial Peace Committee” in Washington. “Would anybody but Theodore Roosevelt,” asked the
Brooklyn Times
, “ever think of dedicating a Christmas windfall of $40,000 for such a purpose?”
(Lit. Dig.
, Dec. 22, 1906).

33.
Eve. Star
, Jan. 1, 1907;
W. Her., W. Post, N.Y. Her.
, Jan. 2;
Florida Times
, Jan. 1, 1907.

34.
Hag.RBL.468.

35.
W. Post
, Jan. 2, 1907; Loo.208–13.

36.
W. Her.
, Jan. 2, 1907; Moore, J. Hampton,
Roosevelt and the Old Guard
(Phil., 1925) 176–7.

37.
Eve. Star
, Jan. 1, 1907; Fenwick,
passim; Rand McNally Pictorial Guide to Washington
, 1909.

38.
Ib.; Willets, Gilson,
Inside History of the White House
(Christian Herald, 1908) 49, 195–202;
Harper’s Weekly
, July 14, 1906.

39.
Storer, Maria Longworth,
Theodore Roosevelt the Child
(privately printed, 1921) 27. See Sinclair, David F., “Monarchical Manners in the White House” in
Harper’s Weekly
, June 13, 1908.

40.
Ib.; Rob.230–3; But.53, 160, 246.

41.
Lewis, William D.,
The Life of Theodore Roosevelt
(John C. Winston, 1919) 181; Hale,
A Week
, 52;
Harper’s Weekly
, Dec. 29, 1906; Edel, Leon,
Henry James: The Master
(London, 1972) 275–6.

42.
TR to William Roscoe Thayer (TRB mss.).

43.
Bea.7; TRB mss.

44.
Harper’s Weekly
, Dec. 29, 1906; “How the President is Protected from Cranks,” in
Ladies’ Home Journal
, May 1907.

45.
Eve. Star
, Jan. 1, 1907; Willets,
Inside History
, 184; TR to Kermit Roosevelt, Oct. 2, 1903.

46.
Pri.475, Wag.61; TRB memo.

47.
Mor.3.392; see also “K” in
The American Magazine
, LXV.6. Apr. 1908.

48.
Qu. Wag. 224. See also “Cleveland’s Opinions of Men” in
McLure’s
, XXXII, Apr. 1909: “… the most ambitious man and the most consummate politician I have ever seen.”

49.
Hale,
A Week
, 56; “K” (pseudonym), “The Powers of a Strenuous President,”
The American Magazine
, April 1908; James to Edith Wharton, qu. Edel,
James
, 276.

50.
W. Post
, Jan. 2, 1907; un. clip in Fenwick.

51.
Hale,
A Week
, 16, 44, 57. For an example of the sort of thing TR found funny, see the account by a White House secretary (
N.Y. Sun
, Jan. 27, 1927) of a letter sent to the President by the former heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan. Requesting leniency for an erring nephew in the U.S. military, Sullivan wrote apologetically,
The boy was always a little wild, he even took to music once
. At this, wrote the secretary, “Roosevelt let out a whoop of laughter and almost had a choking spell. He … had to leave his chair and go to the window for air. I never saw a man so convulsed with laughter.”

52.
Cha.201; Davenport in
Phil. Public Ledger
, n.d., TRB clip.

53.
Jusserand,
What Me Befell
, 330.

54.
Ib.; also in Memorial Lecture, Oct. 27, 1919, TRB mss. For other anecdotes of TR’s Rock Creek Park expeditions, see, e.g., Miles, Nelson M., “Ambassadors at the Court of Theodore Roosevelt,”
Mississippi Historical Review
, Sept. 1955; But.119–23, 229.

55.
Amos, James,
Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet
(John Day, 1927) 39–41.

56.
Egan, Maurice,
Recollections of a Happy Life
(NY, 1924) 219–220; Loo.152. Others who thought the President insane: Henry Adams (Ada.587) and Marse Henry Watterson (Pri.371).

57.
N.Y. Tribune
, Jan. 2, 1907; Gwy.1.437.

58.
Amos,
Valet
, 11; Loo.115; Wag. 173.

59.
Trib.
, Jan. 2, 1907.

60.
Bea.5, 13; NYS Legislature,
A Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt
(Feb. 21, 1919) 22; Wag.112. See also TR’s Annual Message, Dec. 5, 1906: “Good manners should be an international no
less than an individual attribute … we must act uprightly to all men.”

61.
Mrs. Harper Sibley in TRB mss. (Aug. 10, 1955, interview); Wag.116, 154; But.160.

62.
Wag.153, 4; Mor.3.392; Rii.9.

63.
Fenwick, 1907; Willets,
Inside History
, 198;
Eve. Star
, Jan. 1, 1907;
N.Y. Her.
, Jan. 2.

64.
Bis.1.338.

65.
Hale,
A Week
, 116.

66.
The only authoritative measurement of TR’s height (5′9″) is that given in his passport application, 1881 (National Archive). Six years earlier, at age seventeen, he measured himself at 5′8” (see Ch. 2).

67.
Physical description from (select list) ib.; Whi.297, also William Allen White,
Masks in a Pageant
(Macmillan, 1928), 284–5;
N.Y. World
, May 17, 1895; But. 18 and Amos,
Valet
, 101 (the former estimates TR’s shoe size as “4 or 5”); Loo.15; Mike Donovan, Phys. Ed. Director, N.Y. Athletic Club, qu. Colman,
Gossip
, 287–8; pors.

68.
Willey, Day Allen, “When You Meet the President,”
The Independent
, June 30, 1904; Brooks, Sidney, in
The Reader
, Jan. 12, 1907; Hale,
A Week
, 15–16;
N.Y. World
, May 17, 1895; Wag.8.

69.
Hale,
A Week
, 15.

70.
Pors; White,
Masks
, 285.

71.
Wis.68. The greatest photograph ever taken of TR, by Edward Steichen in 1908, captures all of these subtleties. See
A Life in Photography: Edward Steichen
(Doubleday, 1963) pl.56.

72.
White,
Masks
, 284; Julian Street in TRB mss.; Smith, Ira,
Dear Mr. President: The Story of Fifty Years in the White House Mail Room
(NY, 1949) 50.

73.
Wag.9–10; Smith,
Dear Mr. President
, 64; Hale,
A Week
, 26–41; see Chs. 4 and 6 for references to this impediment.

74.
N.Y. World
, May 17, 1895; HUN.5.

75.
But.7;
Outlook
, Dec. 21, 1895;
Chicago Times-Herald
, July 22, 1895.

76.
Loo.17; Street, Julian,
The Most Interesting American
, 10; Ada. 419.

77.
John J. Milholland, int. FRE. (TRB).

78.
Loo.21.

79.
Wells, H.G.,
Experiment in Autobiography
(Macmillan, 1934) 648–9.

80.
Wells in
Harper’s Weekly
, Oct. 6, 1906.

81.
Yet see Wag. 81 ff. for evidence that TR was on the contrary sensitive to, and not without taste in, the fine arts. Samuel Eliot Morison, in
The Oxford History of the American People
(NY, 1965), praises TR’s beautification of Washington during his administrations, his commissioning of Augustus St.-Gaudens to design a new gold coinage, and his sponsorship of the classically elegant postage stamps of 1908 (816). See also the illustrated article “Roosevelt and our Coin Designs,” in
Century
, Apr. 1920, for a full account of TR’s efforts to give the United States “one coinage at least which shall be as good as that of the Ancient Greeks.” The resultant $10 and $20 gold pieces are still regarded as the most beautiful ever produced by the American mint. A $20 coin recently sold for $3,600 at a numismatics auction
(N.Y.T.
, 7.24.77).

82.
Wells,
Autobiography
, 649.

83.
Howard of Penrith, Lord Esmé,
Theatre of Life
(London, 1936) 2.110.

84.
Wag.35; Curtis, Natalie, “Mr. Roosevelt and Indian Music,”
Outlook
, CXXI.399–400 and CXX-III.87 ff. (1919); C. Hart Merriam, qu. Sul.3.157; Cut.
passim;
Rob.232.

85.
Wag.7. For a modern assessment of TR’s mind, see Blum, John M., in
Michigan Quarterly Review
, 1959: “He was, to begin with, perhaps the most learned of all modern residents of the White House … He was an intellectual, and he was proud of it.”

86.
Wag.7.

87.
But. 87; Wag. 8; Amos,
Valet
, 62–3; Booth Tarkington at TR Medal Award ceremony, 1942, TRB mss.

88.
HUN.64; Wag.120; Washburn, Charles G.,
Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of his Career
(Houghton Mifflin, 1916) 205; Wag.119; Kipling, Rudyard,
Something of Myself
(London, 1936) 134; TR to Brander Matthews, Dec. 9, 1894.

89.
Storer,
Child
, 8; Wis.94; Booth Tarkington (see note 91).

90.
Robert E. Livingstone int. FRE. (TRB).

91.
Hale,
A Week
, 115–6; see also Wis.47.

92.
Straus qu. Wag.107.

93.
N.Y. Trib.
, Jan. 1, 1907;
W. Post
, Jan. 2; Mrs. Longworth, int. Jan. 2, 1956, TRB: “He loved cologne. He’d give us all a sniff of his handkerchief, which was practically saturated with cologne, when he met us in the hall.” Apparently TR also liked verbena leaves, “which he would crumple and smell with exquisite pleasure” whenever he found them in fingerbowls. (Ib.)

94.
Hale,
A Week
, 16; Donovan, qu. Edna M. Colman,
White House Gossip: From Johnson to Coolidge
(Doubleday, 1927), 287–8: “A plumbline could be dropped from the back of his head to his waist”;
Eve. Star
, Jan. 2, 1906; HUN.70 (“He like to have crushed my hand”) and Clark, Chester M., in
St. Nicholas
, Jan. 1908 (“a cordial vise”); un. clip, Nov. 13, 1898, in TRB.

95.
Wis.110; Hale,
A Week
, 48, 111; Thwing, Eugene,
The Life and Meaning of Theodore Roosevelt
(NY, 1919) 129, 130.

96.
Robert E. Livingstone int. FRE.; Burroughs, John, in
The Life and Letters
, ed. Clara Barrus (Russell & Russell, 1968) 2.146: “He is a sort of electric bombshell, if there can be such a thing.” Lewis, E. B.,
Edith Wharton
(Harper & Row, 1975) 113, and Mrs. Wharton qu. Wag.109.