The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  Although Theodore Roosevelt stands three inches short of six feet, he seems palpably massive.66 Two hundred pounds of muscle—those who think it fat have not yet been bruised by contact with it—thicken his small-boned frame. (The only indications of the latter are tapered hands and absurdly small shoes.) A walrus-like belt of muscle strains against his stiff collar. Muscles push through the sleeves of his gray frock coat and the thighs of his striped trousers. Most muscular of all, however, is the famous chest, which small boys, on less formal occasions, are invited to pummel. Members of the White House Gang admit to “queer sensations” at the sight of this great barrel bearing down upon them, and half expect it to burst out of the Presidential shirt. Roosevelt has spent many thousands of hours punishing a variety of steel springs and gymnastic equipment, yet his is not the decorative brawn of a mere bodybuilder. Professional boxers testify that the President is a born fighter who repays their more ferocious blows with interest. “Theodore Roosevelt,” says his heavyweight sparring partner, “is a strong, tough man; hard to hurt and harder to stop.”67

  The nerves that link all this mass of muscle are abnormally active. Roosevelt is not a twitcher—in moments of repose he is almost cataleptically still—but when talking his entire body mimes the rapidity of his thoughts. The right hand shoots out, bunches into a fist, and smacks into the left palm; the heels click together, the neck bulls forward, then, in a spasm of amusement, his face contorts, his head tosses back, spectacle-ribbons flying, and he shakes from head to foot with laughter. A moment later, he is listening with passionate concentration, crouching forward and massaging the speaker’s shoulder as if to wring more information out of him. Should he hear something not to his liking, he recoils as if stung, and the blood rushes to his face.68

  Were it not for his high brow, and the distracting brilliance of his smile, Roosevelt would unquestionably be an ugly man. His head is too big and square (one learned commentator calls it brachycephalous),69 his ears too small, his jowls too heavy. The stiff brown hair is parted high and clipped unflatteringly short. Rimless pince-nez squeeze the thick nose, etching a tiny, perpetual frown between his eyebrows. The eyes themselves are large, wide-spaced, and very pale blue. Although Roosevelt’s gaze is steady, the constant movement of his head keeps slicing the pince-nez across it, in a series of twinkling eclipses that make his true expression very hard to gauge. Only those who know him well are quick enough to catch the subtler messages Roosevelt sends forth. William Allen White occasionally sees “the shadow of some inner femininity deeply suppressed.”70 Owen Wister has detected (and Adolfo Muller-Ury painted) a sort of blurry wistfulness, a mixture of “perplexity and pain … the sign of frequent conflict between what he knew, and his wish not to know it, his determination to grasp his optimism tight, lest it escape him.”71

  His ample mustache does not entirely conceal a large, pouting underlip, on the rare occasions when that lip is still. Mostly, however, the mustache gyrates about Roosevelt’s most celebrated feature—his dazzling teeth. Virtually every published description of the President, including those of provincial reporters who can catch only a quick glimpse of him through the window of a campaign train, celebrates his dental display. Cartoonists across the land have sketched them into American folk-consciousness, so much so that envelopes ornamented only with teeth and spectacles are routinely delivered to the White House.72

  At first sight the famous incisors are, perhaps, disappointing, being neither so big nor so prominent as the cartoonists would make out. But to watch Roosevelt talking is to be hypnotized by them. White and even, they chop every word into neat syllables, sending them forth perfectly formed but separate, in a jerky staccatissimo that has no relation to the normal rhythms of speech. The President’s diction is indeed so syncopated, and accompanied by such surprise thrusts of the head, that there are rumors of a youthful impediment, successfully conquered.73 His very voice seems to rasp out of the tips of his teeth. “I always think of a man biting tenpenny nails when I think of Roosevelt making a speech,” says an old colleague.74 Others are reminded of engines and light artillery. Sibilants hiss out like escaping steam; plosives drive the lips apart with an audible pfft.75

  Hearing him close up, one can understand his constant use of “dee-lighted.” Phonetically, the word is made for him, with its grinning vowels and snapped-off consonants. So, too, is that other staple of the Rooseveltian vocabulary, “I.” He pronounces it “Aieeeee,” allowing the final e’s to rise to a self-satisfied pitch which never fails to irritate Henry Adams.76

  The force of Roosevelt’s utterance has the effect of burying his remarks, like shrapnel, in the memory of the listener. Years after meeting him, an Ohio farmer will lovingly recall every inflection of some such banality as “Are you German? Congratulations—I’m German too!” (His ability to find common strains of ancestry with voters has earned him the nickname of “Old Fifty-seven Varieties.”)77 Children are struck by the tenderness with which he enunciates his wife’s name—“Edith.”78 H. G. Wells preserves, as if filmed and recorded, an interview with the President in the White House garden last summer. “I can see him now, and hear his unmusical voice saying, ‘the effort’s worth it, the effort’s worth it,’ and see the … how can I describe it? The friendly peering snarl of his face, like a man with sun in his eyes.”79

  The British author declares, in a Harper’s Weekly article, that Roosevelt is as impressive mentally as physically. “His range of reading is amazing. He seems to be echoing with all the thought of the time, he has receptivity to the pitch of genius.”80 Opinions are divided as to whether the President possesses the other aspect of genius, originality. His habit of inviting every eminent man within reach to his table, then plunging into the depths of that man’s specialty (for Roosevelt has no small talk), exposes but one facet of his mind at a time, to the distress of some finely tuned intellects. The medievalist Adams finds his lectures on history childlike and superficial; painters and musicians sense that his artistic judgment is coarse.81

  Yet the vast majority of his interlocutors would agree with Wells that Theodore Roosevelt has “the most vigorous brain in a conspicuously responsible position in all the world.”82 Its variety is protean. A few weeks ago, when the British Embassy’s new councillor, Sir Esmé Howard, mentioned a spell of diplomatic duty in Crete, Roosevelt immediately and learnedly began to discuss the archeological digs at Knossos. He then asked if Howard was by any chance descended from “Belted Will” of Border fame—quoting Scott on the subject, to the councillor’s mystification.83 The President is also capable of declaiming German poetry to Lutheran preachers, and comparing recently resuscitated Gaelic letters with Hopi Indian lyrics. He is recognized as the world authority on big American game mammals, and is an ornithologist of some note. Stooping to pick a speck of brown fluff off the White House lawn, he will murmur, “Very early for a fox sparrow!”84 Roosevelt is equally at home with experts in naval strategy, forestry, Greek drama, cowpunching, metaphysics, protective coloration, and football techniques. His good friend Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge cherishes the following Presidential document, dated 11 March 1906:

  Dear Nannie Can you have me to dinner either Wednesday or Friday? Would you be willing to have Bay and Bessie also? Then we could discuss the Hittite empire, the Pithecanthropus, and Magyar love songs, and the exact relations of the Atli of the Volsunga Saga to the Etzel of the Nibelungenlied, and of both to Attila—with interludes by Cabot about the rate bill, Beveridge, and other matters of more vivid contemporary interest. Ever yours,

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT85

  There is self-mockery in this letter, but nobody doubts that Roosevelt could (and probably did) hold forth on such subjects in a single evening. He delights like a schoolboy in parading his knowledge, and does so so loudly, and at such length, that less vigorous talkers lapse into weary silence. John Hay once calculated that in a two-hour dinner at the White House, Roosevelt’s guests were responsible for only four and a half minutes of conversation; th
e rest was supplied by the President himself.86

  He is, fortunately, a superb talker, with a gift for le mot juste that stings and sizzles. Although he hardly ever swears—his intolerance of bad language verges on the prissy—he can pack such venom into a word like “swine” that it has the force of an obscenity, making his victim feel more swinish than a styful of hogs.87 Roosevelt has a particular gift for humorous invective. Old-timers still talk about the New York Supreme Court Justice he pilloried as “an amiable old fuzzy-wuzzy with sweetbread brains.” Critics of the Administration’s Panama policy are “a small bunch of shrill eunuchs”; demonstrators against bloodsports are “logical vegetarians of the flabbiest Hindoo type.” President Castro of Venezuela is “an unspeakably villainous little monkey,” President Marroquín of Colombia is a “pithecanthropoid,” and Senator William Alfred Peffer is immortalized as “a well-meaning, pin-headed, anarchistic crank, of hirsute and slabsided aspect.”88 When delivering himself of such insults, the President grimaces with glee. Booth Tarkington detects “an undertone of Homeric chuckling.”89

  Theodore Roosevelt is now only one handshake away. His famous “presence” charges the air about him. It is, in the opinion of one veteran politician, “unquestionably the greatest gift of personal magnetism ever possessed by an American.”90 Other writers grope for metaphors ranging from effervescence to electricity. “One despairs,” says William Bayard Hale, “of giving a conception of the constancy and force of the stream of corpuscular personality given off by the President … It begins to play on the visitor’s mind, his body, to accelerate his blood-current, and set his nerves tingling and his skin aglow.”91

  The word “tingle” appears again and again in descriptions of encounters with Roosevelt. He has, as Secretary Straus observes, “the quality of vitalizing things,”92 and some people take an almost sensual pleasure in his proximity. Today, the President radiates even more health and vigor than usual—he has spent the last five days pounding through wet Virginia forests in search of turkey. His stiff hair shines, his complexion is a ruddy brown, his body exudes a clean scent of cologne.93

  He stands with tiny feet spraddled, shoulders thrown back, chest and stomach crescent as a peacock, his left thumb comfortably hooked into a vest pocket. For what must be the three thousandth time, his right arm shoots out. “Dee-lighted!” Unlike his predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt does not limply allow himself to be shaken. He seizes on the fingers of every guest, and wrings them with surprising power. “It’s a very full and very firm grip,” warns one newspaper, “that might bring a woman to her knees if she wore her rings on her right hand.”94 The grip is accompanied by a discreet, but irresistible sideways pull, for the President, when he lets go, wishes to have his guest already well out of the way.95 Yet this lightning moment of contact is enough for him to transmit the full voltage of his charm.

  Insofar as charm can be analyzed, Roosevelt’s owes its potency to a combination of genuine warmth and the self-confidence of a man who, in all his forty-eight years, has never encountered a character stronger than his own—with the exception of one revered person, with the same name as himself.

  Women find the President enchanting. “I do delight in him,” says Edith Wharton. The memory of every Rooseveltian encounter glows within her “like a tiny morsel of radium.”96 Another woman writes of meeting him at a reception: “The world seemed blotted out. I seemed to be enveloped in an atmosphere of warmth and kindly consideration. I felt that, for the time being, I was the sole object of his interest and concern.”97 If he senses any sexual interest in him, Theodore Roosevelt shows no sign: in matters of morality he is as prudish as a dowager. That small hard hand has caressed only two women. One of them stands beside him now, and the other, long dead, is never mentioned.

  Men, too, feel the power of his charm. Even the bitterest of his political enemies will allow that he is “as sweet a man as ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat.”98 Senator John Spooner stormed into his office the other day “angry as a hornet” over Brownsville, and emerged “liking him again in spite of myself.” Henry James, who privately considers Roosevelt to be “a dangerous and ominous jingo,” is forced to recognize “his amusing likeability.”99

  His friends are frank in their adoration. “Theodore is one of the most lovable as well as one of the cleverest and most daring men I have ever known,” says Henry Cabot Lodge, not normally given to hyperbole. Crusty John Muir “fairly fell in love” with the President when he visited Yosemite, and Jacob Riis claims the years he spent with Roosevelt were the happiest of his life.100

  Yet, for all the warmth of the handshake, and the squeaking sincerity of the “Dee-lighted!” there is something automatic about that gray-blue gaze. One almost hears the whir of a shutter. “While talking,” notes the Philadelphia Independent, “the camera of his mind is busy taking photographs.”101 If Roosevelt senses the presence of somebody who is likely to be of use to him, either politically or socially, he will instantly file the photograph, and with half a dozen sentences ensure that his guest, in turn, never forgets him. Ten years later is not too long a time for Roosevelt to call upon that man, in the sure knowledge that he has a friend.102

  Theodore Roosevelt’s memory can, in the opinion of the historian George Otto Trevelyan, be compared with the legendary mechanism of Thomas Babington Macaulay.103 Authors are embarrassed, during Presidential audiences, to hear long quotes from their works which they themselves have forgotten. Congressmen know that it is useless to contest him on facts and figures. He astonishes the diplomat Count Albert Apponyi by reciting, almost verbatim, a long piece of Hungarian historical literature: when the Count expresses surprise, Roosevelt says he has neither seen nor thought of the document in twenty years. Asked to explain a similar performance before a delegation of Chinese, Roosevelt explains mildly: “I remembered a book that I had read some time ago, and as I talked the pages of the book came before my eyes.”104 The pages of his speeches similarly swim before him, although he seems to be speaking impromptu. When confronted with a face he does not instantly recall, he will put a hand over his eyes until it appears before him in its previous context.105

  The small hard hand relaxes its grip, and the line moves on. Guests barely have time to greet the First Lady, who stands aloof and smiling in brown brocaded satin at her husband’s elbow. She holds a bouquet of white roses, effectively discouraging handshakes. The White House’s most brilliant entertainer since Dolley Madison, Edith Kermit Roosevelt is also its most puzzlingly private. Nobody knows what power she wields over the President, but rumor says it is considerable, particularly in the field of appointments. For all his political cunning, Roosevelt is not an infallible judge of men.106

  “More lively please!” an usher calls at the door of the Green Room. The velvet ropes lead on through the East Room, down a curving stairway, then out into the sunshine.107 The crowd disperses with the dazed expressions of a theater audience. There are some perfunctory remarks about the diplomatic display, but mostly the talk is about the man in the Blue Room. “You go to the White House,” writes Richard Washburn Child, “you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk—and then you go home to wring the personality out of your clothes.”108

  THE PRESIDENT CONTINUES to pump hands with such vigor that his last caller passes through the Blue Room shortly after two o’clock. Mrs. Roosevelt, and most of the receiving party, have long since excused themselves for lunch. Considering the exercise to which he has been put, Roosevelt is doubtless hungry too; yet even now he cannot rest. Wheeling in search of more victims, he grabs the hands of Agriculture Secretary James Wilson, who has stayed behind to keep him company. “Mr. Secretary,” croaks Roosevelt, “to you I wish a very, very happy New Year!”109 The fact that he has done so once already does not seem to occur to him. Still unsatisfied, the President proceeds to shake the hands of every aide, usher, and policeman in sight. Only then does he retire upstairs and scrub himself clean.110

  Events which he cannot foresee
will reduce the total of his callers next year. Never again will Theodore Roosevelt, or any other President, enjoy such homage. The journalists may add another superlative to their praises. On this first day of January 1907, the President has shaken 8,150 hands, more than any other man in history. As a world record, it will remain unbroken almost a century hence.111

  LATER IN THE AFTERNOON, the President, his wife, and five of his six children are seen cantering off for a ride in the country. Although reporters cannot follow him through the rest of the day, enough is known of Roosevelt’s domestic habits to predict its events with some accuracy.112 Returning for tea, which he will swig from an outsize cup, Roosevelt will take advantage of the holiday quietness of his dark-green office to do some writing. Besides being President of the United States, he is also a professional author. The Elkhorn Edition of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, just published, comprises twenty-three volumes of history, natural history, biography, political philosophy, and essays. At least two of his books, The Naval War of 1812 and the four-volume Winning of the West, are considered definitive by serious historians.113 He is also the author of many scientific articles and literary reviews, not to mention an estimated total of fifty thousand letters—the latest twenty-five of which he dashed off this morning.114

  In the early evening the President will escort his family to No. 1733 N Street, where his elder sister Bamie will serve chocolate and whipped cream and champagne. After returning to the White House, the younger Roosevelts will be forcibly romped into bed, and the elder given permission to roller-skate for an hour in the basement. As quietness settles down over the Presidential apartments, Roosevelt and his wife will sit by the fire in the Prince of Wales Room and read to each other. At about ten o’clock the First Lady will rise and kiss her husband good night. He will continue to read in the light of a student lamp, peering through his one good eye (the other is almost blind) at the book held inches from his nose, flicking over the pages at a rate of two or three a minute.115