The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  The woman must admit that on her own plea she must have been a willing, probably inviting party. But she has chosen her time with great skill. During that week [of the alleged seduction] you were very sick, and for hours at a time were out of your head, and did not have any clear recollection of what you were doing. You wandered much about the house those nights, alone. She could get testimony that you were often wild and irresponsible, either from being out of your head or from the use of liquor or opiates. At present you are not in any condition to go on the stand and be cross-examined as to your past and your personal habits by a sharp and unscrupulous lawyer. So that however the suit went, it would create a great scandal; and much would be dragged out that we are very desirous of keeping from the public.

  This appeal to his brother’s sense of reason was rendered academic by a letter from Bamie the next day, saying that Elliott had begun to suffer from delirium tremens.53 Worse news arrived with almost every mail. Elliott no longer denied sleeping with Katy Mann; he merely said “he could not remember” doing so. He refused to be shut up against his will, and threatened to cut Anna off without a penny if she deserted him. Simultaneously he threatened to go off on a long sea voyage as soon as her baby was born.54 “He is evidently a maniac morally no less than mentally,” Theodore wrote in despair.55

  As the Commissioner pondered each fresh letter and telegram, he could detect a certain animal ruthlessness in Elliott’s behavior. What that golden sot really wanted was to have everything—to hold on to his wife and children as symbols of respectability, to drink as much as he liked, sleep with whomever he pleased, and squander his money on himself, rather than alimony and paternity suits.56 Elliott could not care less about Katy Mann’s threats. He knew that the family elders were so afraid of scandal they would silence her at all costs. If he refused to pay her the $4,000, somebody else assuredly would.

  Theodore did not doubt this, having already, in an unfortunate gaffe, told Elliott that an uncle was willing to provide the hush-money.57 He confessed to Bamie on 20 June that he was at his wits’ end as to what to advise; he could only insist, ad nauseam, that Anna must come home and not condone Elliott’s “hideous depravity” by continuing to live with him “as man and wife.”58 But there seemed little chance of that: Bamie wrote to say that Anna had called longingly for Elliott while giving birth to their son, Hall, on 28 June. “It is dreadful to think of the inheritance the poor little baby may have in him,” Theodore wrote somberly—and prophetically.59

  The thought of Elliott now being free to return to Anna’s bed saddened and sickened him. In his opinion, sex between them should cease until Elliott “by two or three years of straight life” had canceled out the sin of adultery.60 It did not occur to him that Anna, who had no sins to atone for, might be in any way inconvenienced by such an arrangement.

  ROOSEVELT’S WORRIES ABOUT Katy Mann, aggravated by nervousness over the political consequences of his Baltimore report (still pigeonholed despite frantic pleas from reformers for its release), plunged him into gloom as June gave way to July. “I am at the end of my career, such as it is,” he wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge. “… I often have a regret that I am not in with you, Reed, and others in doing the real work.” About the only people who seemed to approve of him at the moment were the mugwumps, and he needed none of their lisping praises. The “good party men” whose respect he craved seemed to cherish nothing but “bitter animosities” toward him.61

  His mood was not improved by an awkward business meeting with President Harrison on 1 July. “Throughout the interview he was as disagreeable and suspicious of manner as well might be,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge. “He is a genial little runt, isn’t he?”62 Actually the meeting had positive results. Harrison approved some new Civil Service rules governing promotions which Roosevelt had been pressing as part of his campaign to root out favoritism in government departments; but the coolness between the two men was such that even their treaties seemed like truces.

  ROOSEVELT WAS NOW FREE to leave Washington for the summer, there being little work in his hot, musty office that he could not do at Sagamore Hill. Edith and the children had long since preceded him north, and he missed them so painfully he would look over his shoulder for them on walks through Rock Creek Park. Pausing only to stuff a suitcase with fireworks, he caught the Limited to New York on Friday, 3 July,63 arriving home in time for the holiday.

  It was not a very festive weekend. On Sunday he was obliged to cross the Sound for the funeral of his cousin Alfred—killed horribly under the wheels of a train64—and he returned to news that Katy Mann had finally named her price: $10,000. This, Theodore wrote Bamie, was “so huge a sum” that the hoped-for compromise seemed unlikely. The scandal would break any day now, he feared. It was impossible to deny Elliott’s culpability: an “expert in likenesses” had seen the baby, and its features were unmistakably Rooseveltian.65

  Telegrams from Europe crossed his letter to report that Elliott had been inveigled into an inebriate asylum outside Paris. He was now safely under lock and key, and Bamie had persuaded Anna to return to the States without him.66

  About this time the figure of Katy Mann begins mysteriously to fade from history. The last specific reference to her in Theodore’s correspondence is a remark dated 21 July: “Frank Weeks [Elliott’s lawyer] advises me that I have no power whatever to compromise in the Katy Mann affair. I suppose it will all be out soon.” But the scandal never broke. Evidently the girl got her money, although how much, and when, and who paid it, is unknown.67

  A SCANDAL OF ANOTHER SORT began to loom on 4 August, when Roosevelt sent advance copies of his Baltimore report to the White House and Post Office Department. Official reaction to the document was best symbolized by Assistant Postmaster General Clarkson, who took one look at it and placed it under lock and key.68 An abridged form of the report was released for publication on 16 August, and instantly became front-page news.69 Fortunately both President Harrison and Postmaster General Wanamaker were on vacation, and would not return until early September, by which time Roosevelt planned to be two thousand miles west in the Rockies.70 The inevitable confrontation between them would thus be delayed until October at least.

  Try as he might, Roosevelt could not keep his name out of current headlines. On 17 August, the day after his Baltimore report was broadcast to the nation, the New York Sun splashed the following sensational story:

  ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT INSANE

  His Brother Theodore Applies for a Writ in Lunacy

  A Commission [has been] appointed by Justice O’Brien of the Supreme Court to enquire into the mental condition of Elliott Roosevelt, with a view to having a committee appointed to care for his person and for his estate. The application was made by his brother, United States Civil Service Commissioner and ex-Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt, with the approval of Elliott Roosevelt’s wife, Anna Hall Roosevelt.…

  Theodore Roosevelt avers in the papers in the case that the mental faculties of his brother have been failing him for nearly two years. He says he saw him frequently until Elliott went to Europe in July 1890, and he had remarked the gradual impairment of his intellect. His conversation had been rambling and he could not tell a story consecutively … During the winter of 1890 he had several bad turns. He became violent and on three occasions threatened to take his own life. He had to be placed in surveillance. Mr. Roosevelt says he is “unable to say how far the result is due to indulgence in drink or other excesses.” He alleges that the property of his brother in this State consists of real estate, bonds, stocks, and is worth $170,000.

  Substantially the same news item appeared in all the major dailies. Never before had the Roosevelts, that 250-year-old clan of unimpeachable respectability, been tarnished with such shameful revelations.71 The resentment of family elders against Theodore for having precipitated it may well be imagined, but he was convinced he had done the right thing for Anna and the children. It had been necessary to act hastily before Elliott was released from his French asylum
and returned to the United States to claim his property. Even so, the court might not decide in time. “It is all horrible beyond belief,” Theodore wrote Bamie. “The only thing to do is go resolutely forward.”72

  All in all, the summer of 1891 must have been a time of anguish for the beleaguered Commissioner. Its only discernible blessing was the birth, on 13 August, of his fourth child and second daughter, “a jolly naughty whacky baby” named Ethel.73 Even this was saddened by the almost simultaneous death of Wilmot Dow, the younger and more lovable of his Dakota partners. “I think of Wilmot all the time,” he wrote. “I can see him riding a bucker, paddling, shooting, hiking.…” Solace was to be found out West. At the end of the month he left for Medora and the Rockies.74

  “AS USUAL, I come back to rumors of my own removal,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge on 10 October. But the tone of his letter was spirited. He had killed nine elk in four weeks, and felt “in splendid trim” for a fight.75 General opinion held that he was too popular to be fired. “Mr. Harrison could be consoled if Mr. Roosevelt would resign,” The New York Times remarked, “but he will not, and the President will not dare ask him to do so.” Amazingly, even Frank Hatton hoped the rumors were not true. “Mr. Roosevelt is a sincere and genuine Civil Service reformer … There have been times in the past when [his] ideas of reform did not exactly comingle with those of the Post, but … it will be a sad day for Civil Service Reform when he steps down and out.”76

  Postmaster Johnson of Baltimore did not share this view. He publicly prayed “that lightning may strike Mr. Theodore Roosevelt.”77 John Wanamaker no doubt added a fervent Amen. It was clearly his responsibility to dismiss the twenty-five Post Office employees who had, by their own testimony, indicted themselves in Roosevelt’s report; yet his pride would not let him. Shortly after the pesky Commissioner returned to town, Wanamaker handpicked a team of Postal Department inspectors and ordered them to reinvestigate the Baltimore case “since the evidence gathered so far is inconclusive.”78

  Now it was Roosevelt’s turn to be angry. “You may tell the Postmaster-General from me,” he roared at a messenger, “that I don’t like him for two reasons. In the first place he has a very sloppy mind, and in the next place he does not tell the truth.”79

  EMBARRASSMENTS CROWDED IN thickly as the year drew to its close—so much so that Roosevelt forgot his own thirty-third birthday. The Maryland Civil Service Reform League complained about his ineffectiveness in securing the twenty-five dismissals, and said a golden opportunity to educate the rest of the country had been lost. Reformers in New York sent word that the law was being abused there just as cynically as it had been in Baltimore. And in Washington, President Harrison brushed aside a plan for new promotion methods in the classified service which Roosevelt had worked on for many months. Instead, Cabinet officers were told they could promote as they pleased, without further reference to the Civil Service Commission—leaving the agency even weaker than before.80

  Financial worry continued to plague Roosevelt. The expense of maintaining two households, and moving his family back and forth twice a year, had caused an escalation of his debts. Ethel’s arrival during the summer had made it impossible to live any longer in the little house on Jefferson Place, so the Commissioner rented a larger establishment at 1215 Nineteenth Street for the new season.

  Personal frustration always tended to increase Roosevelt’s natural belligerency, and that winter’s news of the mob killing of two American sailors in Valparaiso, Chile, made him rampant for war—as he had been in 1886, over the Mexican border incident. To his disgust, the United States merely asked Chile to apologize. An amused John Hay wrote to Henry Adams, “Teddy Roosevelt … goes about hissing through his clenched teeth that we are dishonest. For two nickels he would declare war himself, shut up the Civil Service Commission, and wage it sole.”81

  On top of everything, there was the vexatious problem of what to do about Elliott. The insanity suit was getting nowhere, owing to disagreement between the certifying doctors and bickering among various relatives. Elliott had published a denial of his madness in the Paris edition of the Herald, and lodged a formal protest with the court in New York.82 He kept sending “unspeakably terrible” letters to Theodore, some of them penitent, others vituperative. “They are so sane,” his brother marveled, “and yet so absolutely lacking in moral sense.”83

  In the last week of November, Roosevelt succumbed to an attack of severe bronchitis, and the doctor warned it might turn to pneumonia. He recovered briefly, only to collapse again in December. Edith ordered him to bed for eight days—his longest recorded confinement since childhood. Although he complained about being treated like “a corpulent valetudinarian,” it was plain that he was physically and emotionally spent.84

  CHRISTMAS WITH “the Bunny chillum” restored him to health, and by New Year’s Day his metabolism was running at top speed again. About this time he made a lightning decision to cross the Atlantic and confront his brother with an out-of-court settlement.85 Instinct told him that Elliott, too, had slipped into despair recently, and that now or never was the time to shock him back to his senses. Elliott had always worshiped him—Oh, Father will you ever think me a ‘noble boy,’ you are right about Teedie he is one and no mistake.… 86—had always craved his authority, even when protesting he could do without it. They must square off again, just as they had in the days when Theodore was “Skinny” and Elliott was “Swelly.” 1st Round. Results: Skinny, lip swelled and bleeding. Swelly, sound in every limb if nose and lip can be classed as such … 87 But this time Skinny intended to be the victor.

  President Harrison sympathetically granted his request for leave of absence, and he sailed from New York on 9 January 1892. There followed a period of anxious suspense for the family, broken by this triumphant letter from Paris, dated 21 January:

  Won! Thank Heaven I came over …

  I found Elliott absolutely changed. I was perfectly quiet, but absolutely unwavering and resolute with him: and he surrendered completely, and was utterly broken, submissive, and repentant. He signed the deed, for two-thirds of all his property (including the $60,000 trust); and agreed to the probation. I then instantly changed my whole manner, and treated him with the utmost love and tenderness. I told him we would do all we legitimately could to get him through his two years (or thereabouts) of probation; that our one object now would be to see him entirely restored to himself; and so to his wife and children. He today attempted no justification whatever; he acknowledged how grievously he had sinned, and failed in his duties; and said he would do all in his power to prove himself really reformed. He was in a mood that was terribly touching. How long it will last of course no one can say.…88

  Part of the agreement was that Elliott, in exchange for the withdrawal of the writ of insanity, would return to the United States and undergo a five-week “cure” for alcoholism at the Keeley Center in Dwight, Illinois. This, coming after his six-month drying-out period at Suresnes, should enable him to start working again and reenter society by degrees. Should he prove himself sober and responsible, he might resume family life sometime in 1894.89

  Theodore remained in Paris another full week before sailing from Le Havre on 27 January. It seems he wanted to punch every last ounce of immorality out of Elliott. Having done so, he left him to follow one day later, alone on a separate steamer.90 On 28 January, Elliott’s mistress, Mrs. Evans, made the following entry in her diary:

  This morning, with his silk hat, his overcoat, gloves and cigar, E. came to my room to say goodbye. It is all over … Now my love was swallowed up in pity—for he looks so bruised, so beaten down by the past week with his brother. How could they treat so generous and noble a man as they have. He is more noble a figure in my eyes, with all his confessed faults, than either his wife or brother.…91

  ROOSEVELT RETURNED HOME on 7 Feburary92 to find the Civil Service Commission pondering yet another case of political assessments, this time at federal offices in Owensboro, Kentucky.93 His presence was
required in that state as soon as possible, but with the social season at its height he did not feel like immediately embarking on another journey. Elliott had expressed a desire to go south with him at the end of March, after the “Keeley cure” was complete; until then the Owensboro district attorney would simply have to muddle along.

  Besides, the Kentucky case served as an exasperating reminder that nothing whatsoever had been done in Baltimore. It was now almost a year since his investigation, and the twenty-five lawbreakers were all still in office, drawing government salaries. John Wanamaker’s inspectors had filed their report the previous November, but the Postmaster General would not say whether it confirmed or denied Roosevelt’s findings. He also refused to send a copy to the Civil Service Commission, saying that it was an internal document, for his eyes only.94

  On 8 March, Roosevelt made a special trip to New York in order to shout “Damn John Wanamaker!” at an executive meeting of the City Civil Service Reform Association.95 Crimson with rage, he launched into an account of the whole case, accusing Wanamaker and Harrison of obstruction of justice. He was sure that the postal inspectors’ report would corroborate his own—but how could its findings be made public?

  The veteran reformer Carl Schurz made a simple suggestion. Roosevelt must demand a House investigation into the undeniable fact that twenty-five federal employees recommended for dismissal in July 1891 were still on the federal payroll in March 1892. It would be difficult for the House to refuse such a request. Wanamaker would then be obliged to present the inspectors’ report as grounds for his inaction; it would become part of the public record, and the Civil Service Reform League would see to it that millions of copies were distributed around the nation. If the document turned out to be a whitewash job, Wanamaker would be humiliated; if it duplicated Roosevelt’s original findings, Wanamaker would be destroyed. Either way, the cause of Civil Service Reform would benefit.96