The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt

by Burt Solomon

  “You ready?” he said. He seemed nervous, too.

  “Always,” I replied.

  Alice pulled the laces tight on her father’s brushed-leather gloves, and then on mine. She gazed past my right clavicle, never meeting my eyes. When she stayed on the red and gray patterned rug, I realized with a thud: she was the referee. Princess Alice probably thrived on watching people get hurt, possibly including her father. Certainly no exception made for me.

  Theodore and I touched gloves and glared at each other in the customary way. For the moment, at least, I meant it. We stepped back into our corners. Alice’s forearm fell like a scythe. “Fight!” she declared.

  Theodore came straight at me, unleashing two, three, four jabs. I realized that the glazed look in his eyes was near-blindness. (A couple of years later, a young artillery captain mauled blood vessels in the president’s left eye.) The man was charging like a rhinoceros, and the best defense was to step out of his way. Theodore rushed past me, stopping just short of the rope on the floor. He swiveled with an agility that belied his bulk and came straight at me again. No angles, no shrewdness, no strategy. Hadn’t the man learned anything about boxing as chess, as art? I stepped aside again. The next time he barreled through, I held my ground and socked him in the jaw. He looked surprised—and newly attentive.

  He circled around me, his gloves low, almost tauntingly, staring hard at me, as if trying to peer into my soul. That was how I took it, anyway. I figured that my soul (such as it was) was my business, nobody else’s, not even his. Now the fight would begin.

  I kept my gloves by my temples and, when he circled in front of a corner, I closed in, to annul his advantage in height. I delivered a jab, then a right cross, followed by an uppercut that caught him unawares. His head snapped back.

  That enraged him, and he came at me more nimbly than I expected. I was too old, too slow, to move aside. He landed a hard right on my kisser; my upper lip scraped my teeth. I tasted blood.

  Now I became enraged. Letting myself be humiliated would only diminish his respect for me, not to mention my own. I stayed away from his injured right side but advanced toward him with a jab and sent a hard right cross to his other cheek, followed by a thump to his jaw. He stumbled back.

  I landed another jab and readied an uppercut, when I noticed something at the edge of my sight. A rumpled pile of clothes. At first I didn’t know what it was. Then I realized who it was: Quentin, doubled over.

  Theodore had told him about Big Bill Craig.

  My fist halted on its way to his father’s chin. I could not hurt another boy like I had hurt Del.

  The president showed no such restraint. Spittle flew in my face as he pummeled me with a flurry of fists. My head was knocked back three or four times, and at last I pivoted and watched my opponent dance past. I considered punching him in the temple but held back. It was all I could do not to cry.

  * * *

  The breeze was blowing in from Long Island Sound. I could not see down to the water under the paltry moon, but I smelled the salt and heard the waves whipping up. Or was it the rhythmic drone from Cortelyou’s rocking chair, out here on the wraparound porch? The man never sat still, and his pattern never lost its cadence.

  The president stood at the far edge of the porch, facing the sound. He had shed his coat and wore his white shirt from dinner. An assassin’s target, a shot through the heart. Which would make me … hmm, a suspect! Though only if he were shot in the back. And then which of us would be deemed likelier—Cortelyou or me?

  Me. I had more to gain.

  So everyone said, but I swore it wasn’t true. For one thing, I didn’t want to be president. Unlike my friend Henry, I never have. I’ve seen too much of it close up. Batting away complainants and sycophants all day long, dealing with the dolts on Capitol Hill—what I did for Lincoln would last a lifetime. I could never keep on a false smile hour after hour, and I pitied (and distrusted) anyone who could. For me, a fever unfelt, a fetish undesired.

  And for another thing, consider Bruce Cortelyou, in the neighboring rocking chair, a man of vast ambition. Frighteningly efficient, brilliant as a bureaucrat, and (best I could tell) deceptive to his core. A chameleon, for certain. Indeed, he looked like Theodore—the bristly black hair, the pince-nez, the push broom mustache, the stolid face, the broad shoulders, the deep chest. I thought of him as the Prussian, although he was Dutch. He also looked a little like McKinley, his previous master; I swear I saw a resemblance around the cheekbones. Had he been obese while in Grover Cleveland’s employ?

  “Justus Schwab’s saloon,” Cortelyou was saying. “Do you know where that is?”

  “Should I?”

  “I should hope not. It is an anarchists’ redoubt.” I had never heard anyone use redoubt in a sentence. “On East First street, number fifty, between First and Second avenues, just north of Houston.”

  “I know New York a little, if anyone can,” I said. I had spent nearly five happy years toiling a mile and a half away, writing editorials at the New York Tribune. “Who is this Schwab?”

  “Was.” Cortelyou rocked faster. “Tuberculosis, two years ago. His son runs it now. Rather a lowbrow place, and still a mecca for anarchists and nihilists and socialists and their ilk. Unkempt communists, too, you know the type.” I wondered where the kempt communists drank. “Our Miss Goldman was his closest … friend.” He held the word at a distance, like a wriggling eel. “Or so I understand.”

  “Closest in what way—or ways?”

  Cortelyou trained his gaze on an unseen point past the hollow. “With these people, who can tell?” he said. I noticed the jagged cut along his nose, but Cortelyou always sounded like he was catching a cold. “She received her mail there. And she still—what is the word?—frequents the place. I cannot say how often, but often. She will be expecting you to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock sharp.”

  “I would have guessed that anarchists aren’t usually punctual.”

  “I don’t regard this as a matter of amusement, Mr. Secretary.”

  “When you survive to my stage of life, Mr. Cortelyou, everything is.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1902

  I sat next to the coachman in the express wagon, as Theodore’s children called the two-seat, yellow-wheeled surrey. I raised the blanket from my lap to my shoulders and peered to the right. Between the tangle of trees, the sound looked indistinguishable from the sky. Gray against gray. It was that kind of day, chilly and aloof.

  Franklyn Hall sat ramrod straight. “We’ll get there soon enough, Mr. Hay,” he said. “People will be rushing every which way. But ain’t it pretty in the meantime?”

  “Indeed it is, Frank. I’m enjoying the quiet. I don’t get enough of it anymore.”

  “Oh, this modern world of ours. Always the noise.”

  “And the hurry.”

  “Oh my, yes. Used to be, the whole world ran at a horse’s pace, no faster than that. That’s all a-dyin’, sir. Everythin’, it’s speedin’ up.”

  The village of Oyster Bay still had its leisurely summertime pace. But the pastels of the shop fronts looked somber. Pedestrians sauntered across the street and scattered at an automobile’s honking. A horse reared.

  The railroad station was a gabled shelter by the tracks. Men crowded on the platform, most of them wearing derby hats or unfashionably late-in-the-season straw boaters. Mine was the only high silk hat.

  “This way, sir,” Franklyn Hall said, carrying my valise to the end of the platform. He boarded the car and lent me a hand in mounting the stairs. I didn’t need the help, but he wanted to give it. When I thanked him for the ride, he said, “I’m comin’ with you.”

  “All the way?”

  “To Long Island City, sir.”

  I was being told, not asked. “No,” I said.

  “I am under orders.”

  “Which I am countermanding. I am perfectly capable of doing this on my own. You tell the president I insisted.”

 
; Franklyn Hall stood like a donkey caught between two piles of hay.

  “Thank you,” I said, and nudged him down onto the platform.

  In the club car, I sank into the plushest chair, the one with crimson cushions and a latticed back. I was delighted to see that it both swiveled and rocked. A waiter brought me a corn muffin and a violet-and-white fluted cup with steaming coffee. On a side table I found a copy of yesterday’s Tribune. I unfolded it—I still loved the smell of paper and ink—and scanned the front page. A volcano had erupted in the Caribbean, killing two thousand people, a tragedy without meaning unless a victim was real. The president had agreed to review the Grand Army of the Republic parade, of Civil War veterans, in Washington next month. J. P. Morgan and the Pennsylvania Railroad were gobbling up another line—this time, the Reading. The strong preyed on the weak. The way of the world. Newsworthy, to be sure, but nothing new.

  I stared over the top of the newspaper at the woodlands rushing by. The anarchists had a point; I would concede that. An individual counted for nothing anymore. The forces in ascendance—in control—were beyond the scope of any one man. Blame the capitalists, if you like, for spitting on labor, and blame labor for spitting back. The industrial trusts were cornering the economy, but at least Theodore was trying to stand in the way. Not to break them up but to civilize them a little. The anarchists should at least concede that.

  Yet the president’s animus toward anarchists, his obsession with them, evidently his fear of them, was something that flummoxed me. An anarchist, for God’s sake, had put him in the White House. Maybe Theodore had some deep, dark reason to—

  No, no, no. Leave that to the quack in Vienna. Let me think about Emma Goldman. Maybe she did know something. I shouldn’t rule it out. Though I had to admit she unnerved me a little. A force of nature, I understood. Lord save me from the like. Theodore was hard enough to handle. But a woman—an obstinate woman … Despite Theodore’s blithe assurance, my confidence about winning over women had already met its match. In Lizzie.

  Ah, Lizzie. Elizabeth Sherman Cameron, a duchess of American history, one of her uncles the Union general who terrified Georgia, another uncle my predecessor plus one as secretary of state. Lizzie carried herself as royalty, and made herself unapproachable, which increased the temptation all the more.

  It was an infatuation, nothing more. She was married; I was married. I had no defensible reason to pursue her. Usually I resisted, but sometimes I gave in and tripped on her toes or, more often, on my own. We were dancing a waltz; whenever I stepped forward, she stepped back. When I stepped back, she—Well, you can guess. It was a game. Both of us knew it wasn’t serious. It couldn’t be. We couldn’t allow it to be. But a man could flirt, couldn’t he? Up to the edge and no further.

  But then why did I feel so guilty about it?

  I checked my watch. It was hours too early to order a drink. Besides, I was heading for a saloon. It wouldn’t do to arrive smelling of liquor—and certainly not at eleven o’clock!

  Through the windows, the woods gave way to scrums of buildings separated by cornfields and barns. We were entering Long Island City. The smokestacks spewed ashes that deepened the gray.

  With tremors and screeches we jerked to a halt. The splendid isolation of Sagamore Hill was gone. So, too, was the peace of the club car. I lowered myself onto the platform, into a maelstrom of fishmongers and rude commuters. The valise felt heavier than I remembered, probably because my arms and shoulders ached from yesterday’s exertions in the ring.

  I weaved my way through the waiting room and onto the ferry. It was a paddle wheel, a whiff of the past. (Everything was a whiff of the past, if you paid attention.) The seats inside were crowded with men in derby hats on their way to work in Manhattan. Pinched lips, faraway looks—the human condition, twentieth-century style. The odors of steam, rotting bananas, and male-pattern anxiety drove me onto the deck. I ignored the chill and tried to imagine the wind as my friend, with minimal success.

  The ferry landing at Thirty-fourth street was even smellier than in Long Island City. The automobiles and the motorboats by the wharf made it too noisy to think. Not that I wanted to.

  I slapped my feet along the grimy boards, into the depot. The vaulted roof had no walls, and I peered under the eaves and saw the clouds, swollen and gray. I stepped around the piles of pig manure (I could still recognize it, sorry to say) and descended into the street.

  At the curb, I noticed a brougham with brass trimmings but thought it unwise to arrive in luxury at an anarchists’ saloon. I hailed a hansom cab but let a woman with a squirming tot step in front of me—to-day’s contribution to the common good. And again for a haggard old man carrying a bulky package; that counted for to-morrow. The third hack’s nag looked ready to rear up at a human’s sneeze. I jumped into the cab.

  The driver was a dwarf with a mop of red hair and a smile that reached his oversize eyes. “Whar to, suh?”

  I recited the address.

  “Raht ’way, suh.”

  “Take your time.”

  A nudge from the whip sent the nag trotting south onto First avenue.

  Around Thirtieth street we passed the high iron gates and grimy brick of Bellevue Hospital for the insane. Was anyone more than an absurd act or two removed from an involuntary visit?

  The farther downtown the carriage ventured, the more chaotic the traffic. At Twenty-third street, the elevated railway swooped overhead, casting a shadow and pressing down on the taverns, the tailors, the barber poles, and the grocers huddled below. In the roadway, the hacks and drays and rigs and clattering automobiles all claimed their right-of-way. By rights, a collision ought to occur at every intersection, on every block. The older I get, the more I realize how precarious life is, and how dependent we are on everyone else’s judgment. That scared me.

  * * *

  Turning onto east First street ushered us into a different world, one as tranquil as a summertime pond. A couple walked arm in arm down the center of the road, the woman plucking her long skirt above the muck. Number fifty was on the left side, almost to Second avenue, across from a macaroni factory and a Chinese laundry. The brick row house had seen better days. Soot covered the windows, and the peonies in the flower boxes were dead, their stalks gray. The saloon was four steps down.

  The basement door, its green paint peeling, was heavy, but I pushed it open with ease. Until something—or someone—stopped it. I pressed my shoulder against it and a man grunted inside. My knocking brought a growl, and the door creaked. A pug-nosed giant straddled the doorway.

  “I am Hay,” I said.

  “Heard o’ ya. T’is way.”

  The saloon was smoky and smelled of last month’s ale. Men sat at tiny tables, holding tightly to mugs, squawking in languages I did not understand. Polish or Albanian, perhaps. A young man with long, straggly hair and a collarless shirt sat with his back to the bar and examined me as I passed.

  Ah, my silk hat. In an anarchists’ hideaway.

  I grinned at the young man, as if sharing a joke. It was funny. To my surprise, he grinned back.

  “In he’e,” my chaperone said, pointing to a door, ajar. I walked through and the door closed behind me with a click.

  It took me a minute or more to see much of anything in the windowless room. A bead of perspiration tickled my spine. I sensed a movement in the far corner. The scratch of a match brought a candle to life. A woman sat behind it, at a tiny round table, her face in shadow except for a pursed mouth and a determined chin.

  “Mr. Hay!” Her deep voice, accented by Europe, was used to command.

  “Miss Goldman,” I replied. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “My pleasure.” Her pince-nez reflected the flame. She half rose, to the height of a fireplug, and just as thick. She wore no corset beneath the dark, shapeless dress. She was smaller than I had expected (like the Alamo), but her handshake was strong. “What did you wish to see me about?”

  No offer of a drink, though she was nursing
a short, chipped glass that was half filled with a clear liquid. “Euclid Madden,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  I repeated the trolley motorman’s name. Her face registered nothing—my vision was adjusting to the gloom. Her thin, flat lips looked incapable of smiling. Black-rimmed spectacles magnified her eyes, which kept a stern and level gaze. Her features were too masculine to be pretty, but they had a strength, an assuredness—a magnetism—that made it hard to look away.

  “Euclid Madden, the motorman in the trolley that collided with President Roosevelt’s carriage in Pittsfield, Massachusetts—do you know him?”

  “Why should I know him?” she said.

  “There is every indication … There is some indication that Mr. Madden’s action in operating his streetcar in … an unsafe manner was … not an accident. That it was on purpose.” I had to be careful about saying too much.

  Was that a smirk? “And you want to know if this Mr. Madden of yours has been hypnotized by my irresistible oratory, perhaps, or otherwise enslaved in my brigade of anarchists, who will obey my wishes even if I never express them. Is that what you are asking?”

  “That is not how I would phrase it,” I replied, “but … yes.”

  “Oh? How would you phrase it?”

  “Just as I did. Do you know him?”

  “I do not. So far as I know, I have never met the man. Nor did I know Leon Czolgosz, to skip to your next question, although I have no reason to quibble with the government’s”—she fairly spat the word—“contention that he once attended a lecture of mine. I have become accustomed to arrests for every crime the police are unable to solve. Now you are accusing me, are you not, of trying to murder another president. Whether a crime has actually been committed or not. Or do I misunderstand you, Mr. Hay?”

  “You are most cooperative, Miss Goldman. I am much obliged. It is indeed a pleasure to interview someone who both asks the questions and answers them. It allows me to take a rest from my duties. But if I may be allowed to resume them, is there any possibility that Mr. Madden attended one of your lectures?”