Theodore, meantime, was appearing at City Hall before the New York Board of Apportionment to protest, in behalf of the State Board of Charities, scandalous conditions in the city’s asylums for the indigent and the insane. (TERRIBLE CHARGES, read the headline in the Herald the morning after he had spoken his piece.) He denounced the mixing of criminals with the sick and the insane, deplored the wretched food, the rampant incompetence and “graver moral deficiencies” of the people employed to work in such places. The underlying problem, he insisted, was politics, the system by which every job was political and no one person could ever be held accountable.
To friends and admirers he seemed to have reached a new plateau of maturity and influence. The stature of the Collectorship would be raised to new heights the moment he took office, his admirers knew. One friend, D. Willis James, who had been away from the city for a year, wrote after seeing him again that fall that “he seemed to me another man,” so great was the change. “I was astonished. I was amazed at the growth . . .”
At age forty-six he was, as said the Tribune, “in the prime of vigorous manhood” and stood ready to do his duty. Naturally he stood ready to do his duty. “I will take the office not to administer it for the benefit of a party,” he told the papers, “but for the benefit of the whole people.” If confirmed he would serve without pay. Editorials praised the appointment. “Mr. Roosevelt is a gentleman above reproach and would unquestionably inaugurate a new order of things at the Customhouse.” George William Curtis said in Harper’s Weekly that the President could have found no man “of higher character or greater fitness.”
But the fight over the confirmation was one in which Theodore himself could take no personal part, conspicuous as he was made by the appointment; and his frustrations and worries compounded as weeks went by and nothing happened beyond talk and speculation. Greatly as he detested Conkling he was unable to speak out. He must bide his time, maintain perfect decorum and silence, and so passive a role did not sit at all well with him.
In secret he hoped he would be turned down, he later told young Theodore. To “purify” the Customhouse would be a task of unfathomable difficulty and he dreaded it. He knew what to expect at the hands of the politicians and the press.
To the rest of the family, meantime, he seems to have said as little as possible about the job or the changes it would mean for all of them; and to judge by the very little his son said about the subject in what he wrote from Harvard, none of them was overly concerned in any event. “Tell Father I am watching the ’Controllership’ movements with the greatest interest,” the boy added to the end of a letter to Bamie, suggesting he was ignorant even of the name of the job. But he also asked that his subscription to the Tribune be renewed and observed in another letter to Bamie in November that it looked as though their father would not get the Collectorship. “I am glad on his account, but sorry for New York.” His own triumph of the moment was “The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, N. Y.,” his first published work, a pamphlet of three or four pages that he and Henry Minot had gotten up as a result of their trip the previous summer.
There was something in the papers about the Customhouse nominations nearly every day. On November 10, Senate Republicans caucused in “unusual secrecy” for five hours during which Conkling argued against any nomination made to succeed an officer dismissed without cause. On November 30, Conkling’s committee on commerce unanimously rejected the Customhouse appointments, and four days later when the Senate went into executive session to consider the full list of presidential appointments—circuit judges, Indian commissioners, postmasters—time was somehow never found to decide on any appointments to the customs service. Since the current session of Congress expired that same day, the Administration would thus be required to send those particular nominations to the Senate all over again with the start of the next session. Conkling was not merely stalling for time to line up the votes he needed, but giving the Administration opportunity to see the light and drop the matter altogether.
By now the story filled the front pages. Following a Cabinet meeting on December 4, it was reported that a compromise was in the making. Allegedly, to appease Conkling, Theodore Roosevelt would not be named again for the Collectorship. Conkling, it was understood, might accept some other nominee, but not Roosevelt under any circumstances. But on December 6, Hayes told a delegation of New York congressmen who had come to speak for Collector Arthur that his nominees were “good men” and he would make no changes. He sent his customs service list to the Senate later the same day and the Senate went into executive session at once.
Conkling challenged Hayes for not giving due cause for removing Arthur. He denounced Hayes personally, ridiculed the civil service passages in Hayes’ annual message to Congress issued the day before. Conkling was “forcible, witty, and severely sarcastic.” He also proved himself grandly inconsistent by supporting the nomination of a new customs Collector at Chicago to replace someone being removed without explanatory cause.
“I am very much afraid that Conkling has won the day,” young Theodore wrote to his father.
On December 11, the committee on commerce confirmed the appointment of Edwin A. Merritt and rejected those of Theodore Roosevelt and Le Baron Bradford Prince. The vote in the Senate came the afternoon of the twelfth, when the doors of the Senate were again swung shut for another executive—secret—session. Conkling’s speech this time was one of his major orations, reputedly one of the three most brilliant performances of his political career. He spoke last and for nearly an hour and a half. From an undisclosed source a reporter put together a vivid picture of the scene, of Conkling striding up and down the aisle as he spoke, his voice gathering strength until he was shouting “and [he] clinched every sentence with violent gestures.” He tore into the Administration, as before; he defended his dear and loyal friend Arthur. He denied “in an excited manner” that the Customhouse was in any way a political machine. But the climax came with his attack on Theodore Roosevelt. “He said Mr. Roosevelt was his bitter personal enemy, who had lost no opportunity of denouncing him, and he appealed to Senators to protect him and the four millions of people he represented.” It was because Roosevelt was his enemy that the Administration had picked Roosevelt for the job in the first place. The appointment, Conkling said, had been made solely to destroy and humiliate and dishonor Roscoe Conkling and he would not have it.
The vote came at eight that evening and of the Republicans a mere six refused to go along with Conkling. The nominations of Theodore and Le Baron Bradford Prince were rejected by a count of 31 to 25. “In the language of the press,” wrote Hayes in his diary, “’Senator Conkling has won a great victory over the Administration.’ . . . But the end is not yet. I am right, and shall not give up the contest.”
Theodore, who is not known ever to have kept a diary, wrote to his older son the following Sunday evening.
6 West 57th Street
December 16, 1877
DEAR OLD THEODORE,
As usual I sit down to my desk in my little room after the others have gone to bed. You know that it is not the want of the will that makes me a poor correspondent, but even tonight when I had passed over the newsboys to Mr. Blagdon’s care and anticipated a quiet evening we have been obliged to devote ourselves to others. People have been calling, including Mr. [Albert] Bierstadt, who came in late to ask me to dine with him and gave some very interesting descriptions of the manner in which he made his studies of the buffalo.
A great weight was taken off my shoulders when Elliott read the other morning that the Senate had decided not to confirm me, no one can imagine the relief. To purify our Customhouse was a terrible undertaking which I felt it was my duty to undertake but I realized all the difficulties I would encounter and the abuse I must expect to receive. I feel now so glad I did not refuse it. The machine politicians have shown their colors and not one person has been able to make an accusation of any kind against me. Indeed, they have all done me more
than justice. I never told your mother but it would have practically kept me in the city almost all the time in summer and that would be no joke. I feel sorry for the country, however, as it shows the power of the partisan politicians who think of nothing higher than their own interests. I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.
What he failed to mention was that in the final weeks of the battle he had been stricken with severe intestinal pains, of which he apparently wished the boy to know nothing. Bamie, however, had already sent word on and in a letter to her written from Cambridge that same Sunday he said he was “very uneasy about Father.” Did the doctor think it anything serious, he asked. “Thank fortune, my own health is excellent, and so, when I get home, I can with a clear conscience give him a rowing up for not taking better care of himself . . . The trouble is the dear old fellow never does think of himself in anything.”
3
Theodore died less than two months later. He had his good days, mornings when the pain subsided as if by miracle and he and Bamie would go for a drive. Through one long remission—the week after Christmas, with young Theodore home—he actually seemed to be recovering. But even then his confidence and cheer were a front. When the American Museum of Natural History had its grand opening on December 22, he was too ill to attend. Again President Hayes took part and Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard, was the main speaker. It was described in the papers as “one of the most brilliant daylight assemblages that New York has ever seen,” and for Theodore, by all rights, it should have been a day of days, a moment of acclaim and restitution after what he had been through since October. Of his defeat at the hands of Senator Conkling, he had been willing to say only that he remained “definitely hostile” to machine politics in any form.
The first sign that there was something seriously wrong with him had come less than forty-eight hours after he had written the long letter to young Theodore, his final letter to the boy so far as is known. The diagnosis then was acute peritonitis, which was regarded as extremely alarming. As one of young Theodore’s friends would write, “You couldn’t have your appendix out then, you didn’t know the word, you got something they called peritonitis, or inflammation of the bowels, and usually died.” But as later determined, he was, in fact, dying of cancer of the stomach—of a malignant, inoperable tumor of the bowel that was growing rapidly.
The anxiety that swept through the family may be felt even in such brief entries as to be found in a diary kept by Anna Gracie.
Tuesday, December 18
Ellie stopped on his way downtown, and his father was taken very ill about 4 o’clock this morning. Bamie’s party tonight. I saw Thee before I went into [the] drawing r[oo]m, very ill. Conie sat with him until two o’clock.
Thursday, December 20
All day at 57th St. Thee desperately ill.
Friday, December 21
First ray of hope, dear Thee will be better of this attack of peritonitis, but the disease is no better.
Sunday, December 23
Took tea at 57th St. Thee so ill but more comfortable.
Monday, December 24
Spent tonight at 57th, arranged table and stockings of children’s things. Thee more easy but very weak.
Tuesday, December 25
Saw dear Thee a short time before we went to church. Afternoon sat with him while Bamie rested. He made us all but Mittie go in to Xmas dinner . . .
“Can I do anything for you and Mrs. Roosevelt?” asked Louisa Schuyler in a note to Bamie. “I mean by way of sitting downstairs to answer messages and notes—or anything of the kind?” “Xmas. Father seems much better,” wrote young Theodore, who was keeping a “Private Diary” of his own once again and who left for Harvard after New Year’s convinced his father had passed the crisis.
They said goodbye to each other January 2, and according to later entries in the new diary, Theodore told him he was the dearest of his children and had never caused him a moment’s pain. There had been a heavy snowfall. The city was a winter scene from Harper’s Weekly and the boy and the family coachman, bundled to the ears, were not a hundred feet from the door, heading for the boat, when their sleigh tipped over and they were dragged off down the street by the horses like a snowplow—all “rather good fun,” as the boy said. He expressed no particular concern for his father in the letters that followed from Cambridge, nor in his diary, but then neither was he being told anything of the actual situation. It had been decided that he should be spared any worry. With Henry Minot, he had now joined the Nuttall Ornithological Club of Cambridge, before which, on the evening of January 28, 1878, he presented a paper on certain aspects of the English sparrow problem.
As the days passed, Theodore’s physical pain became excruciating. Mittie seldom left his side. But they all took their turns watching over him—Anna Gracie, James Alfred, who came in from next door, Bamie, Elliott, Conie, the maid Mary Ann. They sat and read aloud to him, or they just sat. “I have sat with him some seven hours,” Conie told Edith Carow. “He slept most of it but at times was in fearful agony. Oh, Edith, it is the most frightful thing to see the person you love best in the world in terrible pain . . .” He was suffering so, she said, that his hair was turning gray.
The morning of February 7 he was either sufficiently free from pain or sufficiently sedated to be taken for a sleigh ride, Bamie riding in the seat beside him; and that afternoon there was a letter from young Theodore that pleased him enormously. “I was with your dear father when your mother read your letter to him out loud,” wrote Anna Gracie. “You would have felt more than repaid for the exertion of writing such a cheery, long letter to him, if you could have seen the expression of his face. . . . His whole face lighted up with a beautiful smile when she read the figures out of the two examinations you have just passed. . . . I have not seen him look so pleased and like himself for a long time.”
The next morning, early, he and Bamie went off again, though this time, on return, he was again in agony. The doctor was sent for. Carriages came and went through the rest of the day as friends called to express their concern and to ask if there was anything they could do. Word of his condition had also reached the newspapers by now and the day following, Saturday, February 9, a crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside. It was there hour after hour as the day passed. Conie would remember it as a “huge” crowd, which perhaps it was, and most heartrending to her, as to all those who came and went, were the numbers of ragged children who stood waiting—his newsboys and orphans. The scene, as recalled, seems so very Victorian as to be not quite real, like some sentimental deathwatch from Dickens. One imagines the wind whipping the snow. (Actually it had turned warm and rain fell several times during the day.) But the children were there at the steps to the house waiting for news of the man who doubtless meant, just as Conie said, more to them than any other human being.
A telegram was sent telling young Theodore to return at once. Three doctors were rushed to the house. James Alfred and Aunt Lizzie stood by on the first floor. Cornelius and Laura arrived, as did Anna and James Gracie. Counting the servants there were at times as many as twenty people in the home.
The end did not come until nearly midnight. Of the long day itself, there is only one firsthand account. It was written by Elliott, whose devotion to his father over the past week or more had been heroic. He had hardly taken time to eat or sleep. He was ill, close to a complete collapse, his “young strength . . . poured out,” as Conie remembered, even before the day began. The account, given here with only a few minor deletions, appears to have been written soon after Theodore died, possibly the following day, the “terrible Sunday” when young Theodore arrived by the night boat from Boston.
Feb. 9, 1878
This morning at ten while I was sitting in my room smoking, Corinne ran in and said, “Ellie, Father wants to be moved, will you come upstairs?” I went immediately and found Father still under the influences of sedatives, sitting in the rocking chair in t
he morning room. As I came in he beckoned to me. I ran to him and . . . my arms about him, he got up and with my help tottered to the mantel. Here suddenly his face became distorted with pain and he called out loud for ether. I left him, got the bottle and taking him in my arms put him on the sofa and drenching the handkerchief I held it on his face. Mother, Bamie, and Mary Ann came up and we sent for the doctor. This was 10:15. From then until 11:30 all the strength I had could barely keep him on the sofa. He never said anything but “Oh! My!” but the agony in his face was awful. Ether and sedatives were of no avail. Little Mother stood by with a glass of water which I drank at intervals, being deathly sick. Pretty soon Father began to vomit after which he would be quiet a minute, then with face fearful with pain [he] would clasp me tight in his arms. . . . The power with which he would hug me was terrific and then in a second he would be lying, white, panting, and weak as a baby in my arms with sweat in huge drops rolling down his face and neck. . . . At 11:30, thank God, the doctor came. I ran up to the Ellises, found Dr. Thomas and returned to find the doctor about to give Father chloroform. On its application Father became quiet instantly but the two doctors despaired of his life and from then until 1:30 Mother sat at his head and I by him with the chlo[roform] and handkerchief. We put him from one chlo[roform] sleep into another . . . Dr. Polk relieved Mother and I at 1:30 when we tried to take a bit of lunch. The afternoon Dr. Polk, Mother, Uncle Jim, [Dr.] Thomas, and I were by his side all the time. . . . At 6:30 Mother and I went down and tried to eat dinner. I felt so sick I stayed to smoke a cigar and after felt well and more myself. I sat in the little room with Uncles Corneil and Jim and Aunts Laura and Lizzie and little Mary Ann. Going upstairs at 7:30 I found the servants in the hall waiting with scared faces in Corinne’s room, Aunt A[nna], B[amie], and C[onie] all in tears. Mother, Dr.’s Polk and Goldthwait and Uncle Jimmie by the bedside. Father seemed the same but his pulse much feebler. Dr. P[olk], Bamie, and C[onie] went to bed. Uncle Jim came up and Mother and the two uncles and Dr. G[oldthwait] and watched. Oh, my God, my father, what agonies you suffered. . . . So it went on. At eleven fifteen he opened his eyes. I motioned to the Dr. who applied the tube and brandy to his mouth. He did not make an effort to suck even. We put the glass up and dropped it [the brandy] down. He turned sharp to the left and throwing up his arms around, he gave one mighty clasp and then with a groan of pain turned over and with his right hand under his head and left out over the side of the sofa began the gurgling breathing of death. “Call the doctor.” “Bamie—Corinne.” “Mother, come here for God’s sake quick.” And then Dr. Polk sitting by his side. Mother kneeling by him, Bamie by her. The little Baby [Corinne] trembling and crying, kneeling by me on his left side and all the rest standing near. His eyelids fluttered, he gave three long breaths. It is finished. No, my God, it cannot be. “Darling, darling, darling, I am here,” cried my little widowed mother. I knelt down and prayed, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy will be done, Thy will be done.” As the last breath left his body the little clock on the table struck one—one half past eleven. Thirteen and a quarter hours of agony it took to kill a man broken down by three months’ sickness.
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