He compensated for time lost to ill health by asking Fräulein Anna to speed up his lessons. “Of course I could not be left behind,” Elliott reported, “so we are working harder than ever in our lives.” Teedie was already showing the determination, and inspirational qualities, of a born leader. The Minkwitzes, who had gotten over their misgivings about him, openly admired his ability to concentrate on his books and his specimens to the exclusion of physical suffering. “I wonder what will become of my Teedie,” pondered Mittie, as she prepared to depart again for England. “You need not be anxious about him,” replied Fräulein Anna. “He will surely one day be a great professor, or who knows, he may become even President of the United States.”50
Mittie was scornfully amused and unbelieving, but Fräulein Anna prided herself, in her old age, on being the first to predict Teedie’s future glory.
RECROSSING THE ATLANTIC in late October, Teedie turned fifteen. He was now, if not yet a man, then at least a youth of more than ordinary experience of the world. He had traveled exhaustively in Britain, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, visiting their great cities time and again and actually living in some for long periods. He had plumbed the Catacombs and climbed the Great Pyramid, slept in a monastery and toured a harem. He had hunted jackals on horseback, kissed the Pope’s hand, stared into a volcano, traced an ancient civilization to its source, and followed the wanderings of Jesus. He had been exposed to much of the world’s greatest art and architecture, become conversant in two foreign languages, and felt as much at home in Arab bazaars as at a German kaffeeklatsch, or on the shaven lawns of an English estate.
As is frequently the case with globetrotting children, the very variety of Teedie’s knowledge put him at something of a disadvantage when it came to the requirements of formal education. His ambition was to enter Harvard in the fall of 1876, which meant he would have to be ready, by the summer of 1875, to take a series of stiff entrance examinations. Strong as he might be in science, history, geography, and modern languages, he was weak in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. For the next one and a half years he would have to apply himself to these uncongenial subjects. Also he would have to complete the building of his body. He was still too frail to think of going to boarding school;51 to go to Harvard he must be able to compete, physically and mentally, with the finest young men in America. Theodore Senior was confident, on the record of Teedie’s past accomplishments, that this challenge would be met and overcome. He had already retained an eminent tutor, Arthur Hamilton Cutler, to take charge of the boy’s education.52
Nothing is known of the Roosevelts’ reunion on the docks of Lower Manhattan, save that it took place on 5 November 1873. We may assume that it was joyous, and that Teedie’s mood, as their carriage clattered up Broadway, was expectant.
INSTEAD OF TURNING EAST toward the familiar row of brown-stones on Twentieth Street, the horses continued north to the distant green of Central Park. Theodore Senior had spent the last five months supervising the construction of a mansion at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street, on the outer fringes of New York City. Now in the prime of life—he was forty-two, a millionaire twice over, a founder of the Metropolitan and Natural History museums, a patron of the New York Orthopedic Hospital and many charities—he wished to establish himself in appropriately grand surroundings. “It seems like another landmark reached on my life’s journey,” he wrote Mittie after his first night in the new house. “We have now probably one abiding-place for the rest of our days.”53
The mansion was designed by Russell Sturgis, New York’s most fashionable architect. Although its blocky facade conformed with the town-house style of the period, its interior furnishings were unusually rich, with heavy Persian rugs in every hall, sumptuous furniture, and much ornamental woodwork, including a hand-carved staircase. Knowing his wife’s intolerance of anything artificial, Theodore Senior had even gone to the length of ripping out a “beautifully finished” plaster ceiling and replacing it with real oak beams. There was a large museum in the garret for Teedie, and a fully equipped gymnasium on the top floor for all the children.54
Teedie lost no time in plunging into his new studies. He took an instant liking to Mr. Cutler, who in turn registered approval of “the alert, vigorous character of young Roosevelt’s mind.” At first Elliott and West Roosevelt, a cousin, joined in the lessons, but Teedie, working from six to eight hours a day, soon left them behind, and they dropped out the following summer. From then on he studied entirely alone. “The young man never seemed to know what idleness was,” wrote Cutler, long after his pupil had become President. “Every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic, or some abstruse book on Natural History in his hand.” Although Teedie showed predictable excellence in science, history, German, and French, “he did not neglect mathematics or the dry ancient languages.”55 None of these, however, ever came easily to him. Throughout life he was to mourn his inability to read Virgil and Homer in the original.
He continued to study with such passion that Theodore Senior worried about the effect on his health.56 Yet Teedie could not be restrained. Harvard, with its age-old aura of masculinity, intellectualism, and social success, floated ever nearer. He seemed to sense that, if the grail eluded his reach, he might not have the strength to grasp it again.
IN THE SPRING OF 1874 the Roosevelts moved, as was their custom, into the country. Theodore Senior’s growing desire to put down roots, symbolized by the town house on West Fifty-seventh Street, led him this time in the direction of Oyster Bay, Long Island, where his father and brothers had long since established a family colony by the sea. Here he rented a gracious, plantation-style residence whose white columns and wide veranda no doubt appealed to Mittie’s Southern taste.57 The house, which was to become their permanent summer home, was called Tranquillity.
This name caused considerable amusement among friends and neighbors, for the Roosevelt way of life was anything but tranquil. From dawn to dusk both house and garden resounded with activity. At any hour of the day, including breakfast-time, Theodore Senior might call upon his children for off-the-cuff speeches or recitations, whereupon they would roaringly oblige. Amateur theatricals were always being rehearsed or performed, practical jokes plotted, and violent obstacle races improvised, at great danger to life and limb. Teedie and Elliott took delight in blackening each other’s eyes in boxing matches, and collapsing, at unpredictable moments, into wrestling bouts which would continue until they were too exhausted to disentangle themselves. Invariably, these explosions of energy were followed by a general dash into the waters of Oyster Bay. “We were all absolutely amphibious,” recalled Bamie, “and one of the old fishermen used to say he was pretty sure dem Roosevelts were web-footed, as no one ever knew when we were in or out of the water.” In the evening they would read aloud from classics of history or literature, prompting discussions which would last far into the night. An extraordinary intimacy seemed to bind them together: they unashamedly hugged and kissed one another in spasms of mutual affection which Mittie called “melts.”58
Since the children were all growing up rapidly, their individual personalities became more and more defined in this first summer at Tranquillity. Bamie was kindly, capable, and domineering, already at nineteen a poised hostess and socialite. Teedie, not yet sixteen, was still something of a scholarly recluse, yet, when not bent over his books and birds, high-spirited and unaffected. Fourteen-year-old Elliott was “the most lovable of the Roosevelts,”59 a budding Apollo with an eye for the girls, and twelve-year-old Corinne, mercurial and gushy, had already begun her lifelong career as a composer of sentimental poetry.
Understandably, some of the more staid members of New York society considered the Roosevelts eccentric. Others, such as the teenage Fanny Smith, an early admirer of Teedie, found them a family “so rarely gifted that it seemed touched with the flame of ‘divine fire.’ ”60 With Edith Carow—ripening now into attractive adolescence—she became one of the many “regulars” who stayed at Oy
ster Bay every summer, and attended a weekly dance class at Dodsworth’s Ballroom during the New York social season.
Although it may be presumed that Teedie was not insensitive to the appeal of the opposite sex in 1874 and 1875 (he makes approving references to girls in his letters, and admits that he enjoys dancing) his main interests continued to be study and exercise.61 Not even his triumph in the preliminary Harvard entrance examinations of July 1875 (“Is it not splendid! … I passed in all the eight subjects I tried”) was allowed to affect the inflexible program he had devised for himself. Four times a year he took a recess of a week to ten days, but even these breaks were doggedly purposeful: he would head for the lakes of the Adirondacks, or the woods of Long Island and New Jersey, collecting specimens and data and loping for miles, gun in hand, after wild game.62 He described one such excursion to Edith’s summer place at Sea Bright as being full of “ornithological enjoyment and reptilian rapture.”63
His battle for health would appear to have been mostly won by the end of 1875. A sporting calendar has been preserved which records that from 21 August through 11 December he engaged his brother and several male cousins in a series of fifteen athletic contests—running, jumping, vaulting, wrestling, and boxing—and won fourteen of them, drawing the other one. On 1 November he noted his physical measurements:
Chest 34 in
Waist 26½ ″
Thigh 20 ″
Calf 12½ ″
Neck 14½ ″
Shoulders 41 ″
Arms up 10½ ″
″ straight 9¾ ″
Fore arm 10 ″
Weight 124 lbs
Height 5 ft 8 in64
From this, and from the descriptions of others, we can conjure up the picture of a skinny, sunburned boy, just seventeen years old, with wiry muscles and a clean glow of health about him. Occasional attacks of asthma still came and went, but did not bother him unduly. He affected a pair of side-whiskers, which emphasized the hard thrust of his jaw; his mouth, during moments of thoughtfulness, clamped “like a band of blued steel.”65 At other times, when he allowed his natural humor to bubble over, it seemed to consist of nothing but perfectly white teeth.
Although he was not handsome, he was an attractive youngster, and Fanny Smith, for one, adored him unashamedly. She was convinced that he would become President, and said as much to her sister; but the prophecy seems to have been as skeptically received as Fräulein Anna’s, two years before. In particular Fanny worshiped his courage and “high-mindedness.” Some of her friends found him priggish, but she felt only a sunny charm, which still warmed her when she was an old woman of eighty-nine:
As I look back to those early days perhaps the characteristic that made at the time the strongest appeal was the unquenchable gaiety which seemed to emanate from his whole personality. This quality was a noticeable family trait, but in Theodore it seemed to reach its height and to invigorate the atmosphere about him to an unusual degree. As a young girl I remember dreading to sit next to him at any formal dinner lest I become so convulsed with laughter at his whispered sallies as to disgrace myself and be forced to leave the room.66
That Fanny herself was something of a rival to Edith Carow is implied in another passage from her memoirs. She describes a winter afternoon when Elliott, always more forthcoming than Teedie, paid her and her sisters a courtly visit. While chatting in a window seat she suddenly noticed Teedie, “looking blue with cold,” walking rapidly up and down outside.
“Why, Elliott, do you see Theodore out there? Why doesn’t he come in!” I exclaimed.
Elliott replied—and to this day the incident remains a mystery—that Theodore also had planned a visit but that suddenly he had been overcome by bashfulness and had decided to remain outside. We brought him in, where he became—as always—“the life and soul of the party.” But the incident reminds me of the unexpected strain of self-depreciation which surprised one through the years.67
MUCH LESS IS KNOWN of the relationship between Edith and Teedie, except that it deepened steadily into intimacy during the summer of 1876, his last before entering college. Having completed the equivalent of three years of college preparation in less than two,68 he could finally relax and allow his social personality to develop. He would gallantly row her across Oyster Bay, “in the hottest sun, over the roughest water, in the smallest boat,”69 and Edith tolerated it with her usual inscrutable sweetness. They would read and recite endlessly to each other, Edith showing a decided preference for belles-lettres, Teedie for rhythmic poetry and warlike, heroic prose.
Years after, family tradition would hold that these two “had an understanding”70 by the time he went up to Harvard in the fall, but if so, there is no formal record of it. Nevertheless, seeds had been sown, and some sort of future flowering seemed assured.
CHAPTER 3
The Man with the Morning in His Face
Trained for either camp or court,
Skilful in each manly sport,
Young and beautiful and tall;
Art of warfare, craft of chases,
Swimming, skating, snow-shoe races
Excellent alike in all.
ON THE NIGHT OF 26 October 1876, the normally quiet streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, were disturbed by the roars of a student demonstration. Freshman supporters of the Republican candidate for President stamped on the cobblestones and echoed a shout that could be heard in electoral districts across the nation: “Hurrah for Hayes and Honest Ways!!” Torchlight flickered redly on their optimistic faces and waving banners. After eight years of governmental scandals under the Grant Administration, it seemed at last that Civil Service Reform, so dear to the hearts of young progressives, was on the way. The United States, just one century old, stood thrillingly poised, like themselves, at the threshold of maturity. There was a crackle of excitement in the fall air, a promise of power and future glory. The demonstrators were in great good humor, and not altogether in earnest: one lopsided banner called for FREE TRADE, FREE PRESS, AND FREE BEER.1
“Iron self-discipline had become a habit with him.”
Theodore Roosevelt the Harvard freshman, 1877. (Illustration 3.1)
All at once, from a second-story window, came the jeering voice of a Democratic senior: “Hush up, you blooming freshmen!” Albert Bushnell Hart, who was in the crowd, noted the effect of this insult upon his classmates, and upon one of them in particular:
Every student there was profoundly indignant. I noticed one little man, small but firmly knit. He had slammed his torch to the street. His fists quivered like steel springs and swished through the air as if plunging a hole through a mattress: I had never seen a man so angry before. “It’s Roosevelt from New York,” some one said. I made an effort to know Roosevelt better from that moment.2
According to other accounts, a potato came whizzing in the little man’s direction, and his language in reply was unprintable.3 A trifling incident, perhaps, but the Hayes demonstration was the first sign of any political interest in young Theodore. It happened to occur on the eve of his eighteenth birthday. He had been at Harvard for only one month.
CAMBRIDGE IN 1876 was essentially the same peaceful village it had been for more than two hundred years. The occasional shriek of a horsecar’s wheels around a sharp corner, the slap of cement on bricks, the hiss of hydraulic dredges down by the marsh, warned that a noisier age was on its way, but as yet these sounds only accentuated the general sleepy calm, so soothing to academic nerves. In the center of the village stood the ivy-hung buildings of Harvard Yard, widely spaced with lawns and gravel walks, securely surrounded with iron railings, an oasis within an oasis. Through these railings could be glimpsed the intellectual elite of New England, men whose very nomenclature suggested the social exclusiveness, and inbred quality, of America’s oldest cultural institution.4
The eight hundred students of Harvard College echoed, in their dress, mannerisms, and behavior, the general parochial atmosphere. Although President Eliot’s revolutionary new
administrative policies had freed them from the hidebound conformity of former years, they still tended to wear the same soft round hats and peajackets, quote the same verses of Omar Khayyhám, smoke the same meerschaum pipes, walk with the Harvard “swing” (actually an indolent saunter), and speak with the Harvard “drawl,” with its characteristic hint of suppressed yawns. Their pose of fashionable languor was dropped only on evenings “across the river,” when they would drink huge quantities of iced shandygaff in Bowdoin Square, and make loud nuisances of themselves at variety shows in the Globe Theater.5 They cultivated a laissez-faire attitude to the outside world and its problems, elegantly summarized by George Pellew, class poet of Theodore’s senior year, in his “Ode to Indifference”:
We deem it narrow-minded to excel.
We call the man fanatic who applies
His life to one grand purpose till he dies.
Enthusiasm sees one side, one fact,
We try to see all sides, but do not act.
… We long to sit with newspapers unfurled,
Indifferent spectators of the world.6
These lines do not appear to have offended the future apostle of the Life Strenuous, when he heard them recited at the Hasty Pudding Club. He had other things on his mind at the time. Even so, it is surprising that he did not react to them as furiously as he did to the jeer, and the whizzing potato, of the Hayes demonstration. No philosophy, certainly, could be more foreign to his ardent nature than that of Indifference; as President he would wax apoplectic over much milder material.
The truth is that “Roosevelt from New York” was much more comfortable with the languid fops of Harvard than his apologists would admit. He not only relished the company of rich young men, but moved at once into the ranks of the richest and most arrogantly fashionable. Within a week of his arrival in Cambridge, he forsook the bread-slinging camaraderie of meals at Commons and joined a dining-club composed almost exclusively of Boston Brahmins.7 Showing the self-protective instinct of a born snob, he carefully researched the “antecedents” of potential friends. “On this very account,” he wrote Corinne, “I have avoided being very intimate with the New York fellows.”8
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