by The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King- A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt
The
PERILOUS
ADVENTURES
of the
COWBOY
KING
A NOVEL OF
TEDDY ROOSEVELT
AND HIS TIMES
JEROME
CHARYN
LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING
CORPORATION
A DIVISION OF W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
Independent Publishers Since 1923
NEW YORK LONDON
FOR TING,
mistress eternal
and majestic cat
CONTENTS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
PART ONE
1. BRAVE HEART 1862–1878
2. THE CYCLONE ASSEMBLYMAN 1881–1883
3. LEEHOLM 1884
4. BLACK ICE 1884–1885
PART TWO
5. HER LITTLE LADYSHIP 1885
6. MAYHEM AT SAGAMORE HILL 1887–1888
7. ELLIE 1891–1894
8. POLICEMAN’S PARADISE 1896
9. POLICEMAN’S PARADISE, PART TWO 1897
10. POLICEMAN’S PARADISE, PART THREE 1897
PART THREE
11. SINBAD 1898
12. KETTLE HILL 1898
13. MONTAUK POINT 1898
PART FOUR
14. JOSEPHINE 1899
PART FIVE
15. THE COWBOY CANDIDATE 1900
16. THE GHOSTS OF SAN JUAN HILL 1901
17. THE COWBOY KING 1901
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
PRIMARY CHARACTERSM
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, also known as Teddy, TR, and the Cowboy King. Rancher, writer, raconteur, naturalist, political reformer, New York City Police Commissioner, Rough Rider, Governor of New York, Vice President, and future President of the United States.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT SENIOR, also known as Brave Heart. TR’s father was a wealthy philanthropist and an Allotment Commissioner during the Civil War. He was the strongest influence in TR’s life.
EDITH CAROW ROOSEVELT, also known as Edie, TR’s second wife. Devoted to TR, she was much more reclusive than he was. The mistress of Sagamore Hill, she managed almost all of TR’s financial affairs and would give him a daily allowance.
ANNA ROOSEVELT, also known as Bamie, Auntie Bye, and Bysie. TR’s older sister, she remained his shrewdest political advisor. Born with a crooked spine, Bamie was written off as an old maid until she married naval officer William Sheffield Cowles when she was forty.
ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT, also known as Ellie. TR’s younger brother was a gifted athlete and hunter, but he lacked TR’s iron will. He would die at the age of thirty-four, an utterly broken man.
NANCY FOWLER, also known as Nan, a bunco artist who would become a crime reporter for Joseph Pulitzer and remain one of TR’s devoted friends.
WILLIAM WINTERS-WHITE, a war correspondent who would accompany TR to Cuba and fight alongside the Rough Riders.
THOMAS COLLIER PLATT, also known as the Easy Boss and Senator Tom. Chief of New York’s Republican Party, he had mixed feelings about TR and his maverick brand of politics. Yet TR couldn’t have survived if the Easy Boss hadn’t meddled on his behalf.
ALICE HATHAWAY LEE ROOSEVELT, TR’s first wife. Blond, vibrant, and beautiful, she would die at the age of twenty-two, after giving birth to a daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt.
ALICE LEE ROOSEVELT, also known as Baby Lee, Little Alice, and Sissy. TR’s oldest and most problematic child. She was as much of a maverick as he was and would wound him and delight him in her own spectacular way.
TAGGART, a Pinkerton detective who would later serve in the Rough Riders and transform himself from TR’s fiercest enemy into one of his most loyal friends.
SERGEANT RADDISON, leader of the bicycle squad when TR was Police Commissioner. He would also serve in the Rough Riders.
JOSEPHINE, a cougar cub.
SECONDARY CHARACTERS
MARTHA BULLOCH ROOSEVELT, TR’s mother, also known as Mittie. A Southerner who felt trapped in Manhattan, she would soon become a childlike waif.
ANNA BULLOCH, also known as Auntie Anna, was Mittie’s eldest sister.
GRANDMAMMA BULLOCH, Mittie’s mother.
CORINNE ROOSEVELT, also known as Connie. TR’s younger sister.
HYNES, one of Brave Heart’s servants. He stole from the Roosevelts’ cashbox and was caught by Bamie.
QUENTIN MOSS, night watchman at the Newsboys’ Lodging-House, one of the charitable institutions founded by Brave Heart.
ARTHUR HAMILTON CUTLER, TR’s tutor.
MRS. VALENTINA MORRIS, Elliott Roosevelt’s mistress, who would remain utterly devoted to him.
VELVET BILL HOWE and LITTLE ABE HUMMEL, two mythical nineteenth century lawyers who were the sultans of criminal court; they rarely ever lost a case.
MISS KATIE MANN, Elliott’s Bavarian chambermaid who had a love child with him, and was represented by Howe & Hummel. The two sultans realized that TR couldn’t afford to have the little boy’s presence revealed.
ANNA HALL ROOSEVELT, Elliott’s hypnotically beautiful wife, who died of diphtheria at the age of twenty-nine.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, also known as Granny. TR’s niece was the eldest child of Elliott and Anna Hall Roosevelt. This gawky girl, who dressed in Baby Lee’s hand-me-downs, was Elliott’s favorite and the future wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She would become one of the most revered women of the twentieth century.
HUMBLE JAKE HESS, leader of Morton Hall, Manhattan’s Twenty-first Republican District headquarters, and an early supporter of TR.
HENRY GEORGE, prominent nineteenth century socialist who ran for Mayor of New York in 1886 on the United Labor ticket.
DON RUEBEN, leader of the Vaqueros, a band of Cuban mercenaries, during the Spanish-American War.
BUFFALO BILL CODY, frontiersman and scout, who would later become head of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
NANNIE CABOT LODGE, wife of Henry Cabot Lodge, United States Senator from Massachusetts. She had an incredible charisma.
CABOT, i.e., HENRY CABOT LODGE, a fellow Harvard graduate, who was one of TR’s closest political allies.
MARK HANNA, also known as Fat Marcus. Affluent United States Senator from Ohio who served as President McKinley’s chief political strategist.
MINNIE G. KELLY, TR’s private secretary at Police Headquarters.
DR. FERDINAND JESSUP, Manhattan’s chief coroner.
ASHBEL GRIEF, chairman of the Social Reform Club in Manhattan while TR was Police Commissioner.
SERGEANT FLEISCHER, the telephone dispatcher at Police Headquarters during TR’s reign.
KING CALLAHAN, owner of the King’s Table, a bar on Third Avenue. He fought against Police Commissioner Roosevelt’s blue laws.
WHITEY WHITMAN, a crooked deputy inspector chased off the police force by TR.
ARCHIBALD TOWNE, New York County Sheriff, a despot and a thief.
SAMUEL BRATT, a shyster lawyer who defended Sheriff Towne in front of TR’s Corruption Committee.
BRYSON CARTERETT, prosecutor of a small town in Indian Territory.
LONG JOHN McMANUS, a thug for the Republican Party who nearly ruined TR’s career.
TED, KERMIT, ETHEL, ARCHIBALD, and QUENTIN ROOSEVELT, also known as the bunnies; they were the five children that TR had with Edith.
CAPTAIN LEONARD WOOD, President’s McKinley’s personal physician, TR’s trusted friend, and the first commander of the Rough Riders.
RUSSELL ALGER, Secretary of War in the McKinley Administration.
FIGHTIN’
JOE WHEELER, a United States Army general who fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War.
GENERAL WILLIAM RUFUS SHAFTER, head of the Fifth Army Corps.
PETER ALBRIGHT, leader of the Stranglers, a group of vigilantes in the Badlands.
RED FINNEGAN, a Badlands gunslinger who would later join TR’s Rough Riders.
BLACK JACK McGRAW, a cardsharp in the Badlands who hid among the Sioux.
CORPORAL ANTONIA/ANTON LITTLE FEATHER, a female Rough Rider who disguised herself as a male and carried the regimental flag into battle.
BARDSHAR, TR’s orderly in Cuba.
SERGEANT BELLOWS, TR’s body-servant while both were with the Rough Riders.
LITTLE HAYNES, a cloakroom attendant at the Capitol in Albany.
DR. MARTIN FARADAY, head of the Bronx Zoo.
DR. LIONEL TRELL, chief surgeon at the Bronx Zoo.
ABEL MARTINSON, a sharpshooter among the Rough Riders who worked for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West after the war.
YOUNG-MAN-AFRAID-OF-THE-SOUND-OF-HIS-OWN-VOICE, a Pawnee scout among the Rough Riders who later worked for Buffalo Bill.
GEORGE B. CORTELYOU, President McKinley’s private secretary.
JOHN HAY, President McKinley’s Secretary of State, who had mythical status, since he’d once been President Lincoln’s private secretary.
IDA McKINLEY, President McKinley’s half-deranged wife.
THE PERILOUS ADVENTURES
OF THE COWBOY KING
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
BRAVE HEART
1862–1878
FIRST THERE WAS A METALLIC AROMA, THE TASTE OF TIN in my mouth. Then the monster would appear with rusty fingernails, his yellow eyes swaying like twin lanterns in the dark, his fierce red whiskers clotted with human blood. He crouched at the foot of my bed, prepared to gobble.
“Fingers first,” the werewolf muttered. I could feel the walls of my chest collapse as I began to wheeze. It was always worse at night, when I would have great, rumbling gasps, with the wolf-man’s yellow eyes riveted to mine, gaze upon gaze, like some diabolic vigil. As a boy with a scientific bent, I didn’t believe in monsters of any kind. Yet it was hard to reconcile rusty fingernails and red whiskers. And the wheezing wouldn’t stop.
We couldn’t have a doctor constantly at my call, waiting with a candle. But I did have Brave Heart. My Auntie Anna had given Father that name and it clung to him for life. She said that Father reminded her of Mr. Brave Heart, whom she confused with another character, the gallant guardian who slays wicked giants and protects women and children from lions in Bunyan’s classic about Christian souls.
Our Brave Heart was a bearded man with broad shoulders. He didn’t wear a helmet and a sword. He was a merchant prince who might have stepped out of Christian allegory. The unfortunate mattered as much to him as the family fortune. Father possessed a leonine look. I could have imagined him slaying giants and werewolves in another world. He gave me my breath, willed it to me. He would carry me from room to room in the middle of the night, push air into my lungs with the forceful rhythm of his gait. I drank cups of black coffee delivered from his hand and was smoking cigars before the age of five. Each puff, Father said, would replenish me. And when nothing else worked, Father would carry me in a blanket down to the stable and have the night watchman rig up the Roosevelt high phaeton with its pair of long-tailed horses and we rode into the wind. I’ve never had as fine an adventure in all my years. It was like sitting in the clouds, way above the horses’ heads, racing along in that sloped carriage.
We careened around other carriages and delivery cars. Father was an excellent whip. His long-tails never stumbled in their traces, never went awry. He drove us to the shanties and scorched plains of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It was so far from civilization that we called it the Badlands. Our Little Dakota was stuffed with scrap heaps and desolate shacks where the impoverished lived near river rats hiding from the law. Nothing bothered Brave Heart. We passed the campfires of one robbers’ roost after another. Such desperate men learned not to tinker with our carriage. If the untutored attacked us with a pipe, a rock, or any other missile, Father would lash at these river rats with his horsewhip until they landed on their rumps and sat there in one great tangle.
“Teedie, has your breath come back?”
All that excitement among the campfires had made my lungs whistle with clean air. I did not dream of a wolf-man on that ride.
“Sir, I’m fit as a combustion machine.”
Father wasn’t being reckless. He hadn’t dealt with the river rats to entertain me and my lungs. He had to declare his right-of-way, or we would have had to stick to a prescribed path. And on we went into the Badlands, with its shantytowns, orphanages, and insane asylum. He liked to wear his linen duster on these long treks. It had very wide pockets, and he’d always stop in his traces whenever he found an abandoned kitten on the road. He’d hop down from the carriage, scoop up the kitten, and stuff it into his pocket. Tomorrow we’d bring this stray to a pet shop on Third Avenue run by a pair of spinsters. It was an orphan, most likely, chased out of some litter. Father had a fondness for the ragged, the lonely, and the lame.
We had a little patch of bad luck on this particular early morning ride. One of our wheels fell off, and the carriage would have spun out of control if Brave Heart hadn’t leaned over the long-tails and pulled on the rigging with all his might. We sat there at a terrible tilt. Father hadn’t forgotten his toolbox, but first he had to chase down the missing wheel. And now every damn robbers’ roost in Little Dakota had us at a disadvantage. Several lubbers arrived. They were dressed in motley gear. One had a cape and an eye patch; another had torn pajamas out of the lunatic asylum; a third had a military tunic. They were all carrying lanterns, lead pipes, and long sticks.
“Lookee here,” said their leader, wrapped in his cape. “Don’t make a fuss, or we’ll harm the boy.”
I had Brave Heart with me and shouldn’t have panicked, but I did. My combustion machine went out of whack. My lungs couldn’t catch a lick of air. Father cradled me in his arms.
“Are you deef?” asked the river rat. “Pay attention, or that boy will strangle on his own snot. Give us your fancy carriage and we’ll be gone.”
Father pushed air into my lungs with his powerful hands and waited until the wheezing stopped. Then his touch turned delicate, as if I were a boy out of a doll hospital. The phaeton remained at a wicked angle without one wheel, and Father had to prop me against his seat, while the river rats poked him with their wanton pipes and sticks.
“This is your last chance, bub.”
Father didn’t say a word, and the rats smiled, thinking he was silent out of fear.
These louts hadn’t taken the least measure of such a man. The roots of his beard went crimson in the lantern light. He’d left his whip on the footrest of the carriage, and he had to pounce on the river rats with his bare hands, sending them all a-scatter with a series of quick blows. Afterward I watched him suck the blood from his raw knuckles. He was still shivering with rage. He had to steady the horses, whisper to them, rub their noses.
He fixed the wheel, sullying his frock coat and lingering in the same long silence. The sun began to rise over the Bloomingdale Asylum and its somber row of black chimneys, creating a fan of light that looked like very fat fingers. I was glad, glad, that I had been born, despite the frozen fist in my lungs, despite the wolf-man at the foot of my bed, and the sudden bouts of diarrhea that we called the Roosevelt colic. I belonged to Brave Heart’s company of orphans, even if I wasn’t an orphan at all.
THE ROOSEVELT RESIDENCE HAD a line of black rails that swept across our little balcony like a runaway musical score. Perhaps that runaway score was a premonition, because there was pandemonium on East Twentieth Street when war broke out. Mittie, as we called Mama, was a genuine Southern belle with black hair and skin as fine and pale as porcelain. She grew up at Bulloch Hall, a plantation in old Cherokee country near the Chattahooch
ee River.
Mama’s eldest sister, Auntie Anna, lived with us, too, together with Grandmamma Bulloch. They’d fallen on hard times after Pappy Bulloch died and couldn’t make ends meet. Grandmamma wore a lace cap, and when Papa had to entertain Union generals, Grandmamma would vanish into some secret corner of the house.
Once, while the Union generals sniffed brandy and puffed on their Havanas in the parlor, Papa excused himself for a moment and went on a mission to find Grandmamma. He looked everywhere. Finally he discovered her in a closet on the fifth floor, where the servants lived. Grandmamma sat in the dark by her lonesome, wrapped in a shawl, with a cat’s blazing eyes. She wasn’t caught in a dream. She was as coherent as a lightning bolt.
“I’m a burden to ya, Brave Heart,” she said.
“You are not. You’ve been kind to the children.”
“Kindness isn’t the occasion here,” she said. “I’ve insulted you in front of your Yankee generals. We’re kin now, and I should have served the hors d’oeuvres and made pleasant chatter. But I can’t. It jars upon my feelings, sir.”
Papa didn’t say another word. He gathered Grandmamma Bulloch in his arms and carried her downstairs to the room she shared with Auntie Anna. He pretended not to notice the Rebel flag in her room.
Father wanted to join the Union Army, but two of Mama’s brothers were already with the Rebels. So how could he volunteer and compromise Mama’s own people? He had to hire a substitute, an Irish lad, to fight in his place. And it cut right into his soul. He couldn’t run away to war and he had to tolerate the Stars and Bars in his own house. I felt his shame, and it was my shame, too. His shoulders slumped and at times he looked like a sullen black bear. I worried that he might go on a rampage. But there were no river rats around, just Roosevelts and Bullochs, and he loved us all.
My sister Bamie—a contraction of bambina—must have been dropped from her cradle, because she had to wear a harness for her curved spine. Father was determined to fix her humped back. But she never did outgrow that ailment, even with the harness. My brother Elliott, or Ellie, was long and limber, like Brave Heart, while Corinne was the war baby, with blond curls. Mother marched around in white muslin like a somnambule the longer the fighting lasted. She plotted with her own sister and Grandmamma Bulloch to send contraband—handkerchiefs and sweaters—across the lines. So it was Bamie who began to look after us, curved spine and all. We loved Mama, we all did. But she suffered from palpitations and melancholy fits. Papa was passionate about her from the moment they met. He bought her trinkets and babied her; he’d laugh and call Mama his fifth child, whereas Bamie was more of a mother to us by the time she was ten. Grandmamma Bulloch died one afternoon in the middle of a sentence about Yankee pilferers and pirates; Mama and Auntie Anna both fell into a profound despair.