7. TR.Wks.I.149–51; TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB); TR.Wks.I.151–2.
8. Ib., 329.
9. Ib., 153–5, 154–7, 158, TR to B, June 23, 1884.
10. TR.Wks.I.161-2.
11. Ib.
12. Put.457; TR to B, June 23, 1884.
13. This commitment raised TR’s total investment in Dakota to $40,000, or 20% of his capital. The contract was signed on June 12, 1884.
14. TR.Wks.I.164; Put.457.
15. He had arrived on the night of June 9, and ridden immediately to his ranch.
16. Put. 452; Twe.111. The hotel is still operating under the name “Rough Riders Hotel.” Medora, garishly restored and commercialized, is now a major tourist destination in North Dakota. Chateau de Morès survives intact as a state historical site, and the giant chimney of the Marquis’s packing plant still looms over town.
17. Mor.73.
18. Bad Lands Cowboy, Jan. 5, 1884; Hag.RBL.79, 120; Brown, Dee, Trail Driving Days (Scribner’s, 1952) 186; Goplen, Arnold O., “The Career of the Marquis de Morès in the Bad Lands of North Dakota,” North Dakota History, Jan.-Apr. 1946, 40; Twe.69, 71; Brown, Trail Driving, 187.
19. Twe. passim; Goplen, “de Morès”; Trail Driving, 185; Put.362.
20. Goplen, “de Morès,” 47.
21. Ferris and Merrifield had refused to allow one of the Marquis’s herds to graze on the range opposite Maltese Cross, which according to frontier law “belonged” to their ranch. The Marquis had offered them a $1,500 bribe, which they refused. Hag.RBL. 84–6; Put.451.
22. Hag.RBL.127; Put.460–1.
23. See Gar.79 ff. for Lodge’s tribulations and torment after Chicago.
24. Bad Lands Cowboy, qu. HAG.Bln.
25. The Cowboy office soon became a favorite haunt of TR when he was in town, along with those others who “liked to smell printer’s ink and feel civilized.” Arthur T. Packard in Saturday Evening Post, Mar. 4, 1904.
26. Bad Lands Cowboy, qu. HAG.Bln.
27. TR.Wks.271; Hag.RBL.188; HAG. Bn.; Lan.80.
28. Hag.RBL.149; Put.456–7; TR. Auto. 97–8; Sew.18–19. This site, returned to nature, is now the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. A diorama re-creates it at the Museum of Natural History in New York.
29. TR.Auto.96; photos by TR in TRC; TR.Wks.I.10-11.
30. Put.459; Mor.73.
31. Sew. 12.
32. Ib.
33. Ib., 13–4; Sewall in HAG.Bln.
34. Put.459.
35. Hag.RBL.147; Put.461.
36. HAG.Bln. See Hag.RBL.139–147 for an account of Granville Stuart’s vigilante movement, also Mattison, Ray H., “Roosevelt and the Stockmen’s Association” in North Dakota History, XVII.2–3 (Apr.-July 1950). This rough-and-ready form of justice sometimes had unfortunate consequences, as when the vigilantes strung up an innocent man. Their leader did his best to apologize to the widow. “Madam, the joke is on us.” Albert T. Vollweiler in Quarterly Journal of U. North Dakota 19 (Oct. 1919) 1.
37. St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 2, 1884.
38. COW.
39. The family had acquired Alice Lee’s habit of calling him by his college nickname. Although the word understandably pained him, it took them some time to relearn the word “Theodore.” See Robinson/Cowles/Alsop correspondence, passim.
40. Sew. 14–15.
41. TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB).
42. Put.463–5; COW.
43. Anna Bulloch Gracie to Archibald Bulloch Sr., May 14, 1884 (TRP).
44. Merrifield in HAG.Bln.; Hag. RF.11.
45. Nev.154.
46. Gar.79 ff; Put.464–5.
47. See N.Y. Evening Post, June 12, 1884, for text; also Put.448.
48. Elsewhere TR noted that it was “impossible to combine the functions of a guerilla chief with those of a colonel in the regular army; one has the greater independence of action, the other is able to make what action he does take vastly more effective.” Boston Herald, July 20, 1884; Put.467.
49. Mor.75. The reactions of William Roscoe Thayer may be taken as typical. See his TR, 52.
50. Wis.26. TR was blackballed for membership of the Union League Club, which his father had helped found, on June 12, 1884. Not until October 9 did Charles Evarts manage to persuade the club committee to accept him. Irwin, Will et al., A History of the Union League Club of New York (Dodd Mead, 1953) 127–8.
51. Eve. Post qu. Har.41; Mor.75. John M. Dobson, in “George W. Curtis and the Election of 1884,” New York State Historical Quarterly 52 (1968) 3, argues that the GOP’s pro-Cleveland mugwumps represented no reformist trend, only anti-Blaine hysteria. Hence TR was justified in declining their embrace.
52. Sample headlines: “A TERRIBLE TALE—DARK CHAPTER IN A PUBLIC MAN’S HISTORY—The Pitiful Story of Maria Halpin and Governor Cleveland’s Son.” Sample editorial opinion: “We do not believe that the American people will knowingly elect to the Presidency a coarse debauchee who would bring his harlots with him to Washington and hire lodgings for them convenient to the White House.” Buffalo Telegraph and Charles Dana in the Sun, qu. Tugwell, Rexford G., Grover Cleveland (NY, 1968) 91–2. For sequel to scandal, see below, n. 86 and text.
53. Trib., July 28, 1884.
54. Hag.RBL.159; Put.471; see also Sew. 17.
55. Bad Lands Cowboy, July 31, 1884; Mor.73; Hag. 159.
56. Sewall qu. Put.471; Hag.RBL.161–2; HAG.Bln.
57. Sewall in ib.; Lincoln Lang on Merrifield in ib.; Lan.67; Put.423.
58. TR to B, Aug. 12 and 17, 1884.
59. Ib.; Put.472–3; TR.Wks.I.420, III.75.
60. Sewall in HAG.Bln.; Sew.19; Put.472–3; Sew.18.
61. TRB.
62. TR to B, Aug. 17, 1884; TR.Wks.I.311.
63. TR burned and bleached quickly and flatteringly. St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 2, 1884, described him as already “browned the color of maplewood bark.” TR to B, Aug. 12; 1885 newsclip in TRB; Mor.77. According to N.Y. Her., Sep. 22, 1885, TR’s equipment included a beautifully embossed, monogrammed, 45-lb. saddle, silver-inlaid bit and spurs, real angora chaps, a braided quirt, and an “exquisite pearl-handled, silver-mounted revolver.” Among his many rifles was one inlaid with solid gold plates delicately engraved with hunting scenes.
64. Now Wibaux, Montana. Mingusville was originally so named because its founders were a woman named Minnie and her husband, Gus. TR never specified the exact date of this encounter. Hag.RBL.151–3 places it impossibly in June of 1884; TR’s documented movements during that month prove that he would not have had the time to visit Mingusville. Put.251 fn. places the incident in April 1885, while conceding that the evidence is “circumstantial.” The author considers August 1884 a far more likely date, for these reasons: TR was at a loose end then; he mentions a shortage of horses in his letter to Bamie, which might explain his search for strays; also both W. Roy Hoffman and Pierre Wibaux, who were living near Mingusville at the time, agree the incident took place “shortly after July 1884.” (Hoffman, unpublished autobiography in TRB.) This could only have been between August 1 and 17. TR’s assertion that “it was a cold night” causes some problems, but falling temperatures are not unusual in late August, in windswept prairie towns.
65. TR.Auto.124–5. At this point the reader should be reassured that TR, for all his self-esteem, was no braggart. Episodes like the Mingusville story, which seem too “fictional” to be true, occur frequently in his writings. However any scholar who makes any prolonged study of TR discovers that he was almost infallibly truthful. Edward Wagenknecht remarks: “I believe that in general he came as close to telling the truth as any man can come in talking about himself.” Elihu Root wrote: “He was incapable of deception, and thoughtless of it.” Hostile biographers investigating TR’s wilder stories have found them documented down to the last detail. He was, of course, capable of humorous exaggeration and poetic license, but so is every good story-teller. See Wag.97–103.
66. Hag.RBL.165; Sewall in HAG.Bln.
67. TR.Wk
s.I.93.
68. Hag.RBL.165–6.
69. Put.391.
70. Only known copy of In Memory is in TRC.
71. Sewall in HAG.Bln. (he misdates the year as 1885); see also Sew.47, and Sewall in Forum, May 1919. Mrs. Roberts, a Badlands neighbor, remembers TR as “sad and quiet” during these days. (McCall’s, Oct. 1919.)
72. TR to B, Sep. 20, 1884.
73. TR.Pri.Di. The list is abridged; fragments of text in quotes. (N.B. These dates are adjusted, since TR’s diary was an old one, left over from 1883.)
74. His recorded total for 1884 was 227 kills.
75. TR.Wks.I.221. TR’s own magnificent account of elk-hunting in the Big Horns is in ib., 212–27. See Put.474–89 for details of the whole expedition. This para. also based on TR.Pri.Di. passim.
76. See TR.Wks.I.483 for TR’s ecstatic reaction to this elk-music.
77. Merrifield in HAG.Bln.
78. Mor.82.
79. The word “cunning” may best be translated as “cute.”
80. For one of TR’s finest pieces of atmospheric writing, complete with eerie sound-effects, see his description of this ride in TR.Wks.I.96 or Put.488.
81. TR.Auto.106; Put.490.
82. Ib.; also 460; Hag.RBL.207–8; Sew.21. Text follows Putnam’s assumption that confrontation occurred before TR’s departure East on Oct. 7, 1884.
83. Hag.RBL.208 (based on Sewall int. in HAG.Bln.).
84. Sun, Oct. 12, 1884.
85. See Put.492–3. TR also castigated the Governor for hiring a substitute in the Civil War, conveniently forgetting that Theodore Senior had done the same. (Ib., 498.)
86. “Tell the truth” was Cleveland’s message to his friends. The facts of the scandal are these. On Sep. 14, 1874, Maria Halpin, a pretty 36-year-old Buffalo widow, charged Cleveland with the paternity of a son, whom she named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Although Cleveland could not be sure he was the father (Mrs. Halpin had simultaneous liaisons with several other men), he took full responsibility, noting that he was the only bachelor involved. He refused, however, to marry Mrs. Halpin. The widow promptly took to drink, became unstable, and had to be relieved of Oscar, who was brought up by foster-parents at Cleveland’s expense. An enquiry by a respected Buffalo clergyman in 1884 found that “After the primary offense … his [Cleveland’s] conduct was singularly honorable.” See Nev. 162 ff. for full details.
87. Put.493–504 gives a detailed account of TR’s campaign for Blaine.
88. Put.500 points out that only three of his seven speeches were for the national ticket as such. John Allen Gable, reviewing this manuscript, writes: “I have no quarrel with what you say about the Blaine campaign. But it is really time to make the point about professionalism. As of the Gilded Age, professionals came to dominate politics—pushing aside … men who ‘stood,’ rather than ‘ran’ for office—the ‘Mugwump types’ as Richard Hofstadter calls them. TR in 1884 made the choice of being a real professional by being a partisan … You will note that in his 1884 speeches he talks mainly about one party vs. the other.” See also note SI, above.
89. Bigelow, Poultney, Seventy Summers (London, 1925) 279.
90. Mor.83; see p. 268, and Put. 446–7.
91. TR to B, c. Oct. 30, 1884 (TRB mss).
92. Sto.129; Put. 501–2; Al Smith in PRI.n.
93. Sto.131–4. See also Nev.145.
94. Mor.87.
95. Ib., 88.
96. Lod.I.27.
97. TR.Wks.I.169; Put.508; TR.Wks. I.64. Following account is taken from ib., ff.
98. Ib., 67.
99. See Put.497–8.
100. TR to B, Nov. 23, 1884; TR.Pri.Di. Nov. 18.
101. TR left the Elkhorn site on Nov. 21, and stayed away for the rest of 1884. Anecdote from TR.Auto.98. Notwithstanding the “beavering,” he eventually became a skilled woodchopper, and kept the practice up all his life.
102. “I remember the morning we began to put up the walls, the temperature was sixty-five degrees below zero.” Sew.25. This sounds like an exaggeration. Still, it is undoubtedly true, as Sewall says, that “No one suffered much from the heat.” (ib.)
103. This passage is taken almost verbatim from TR.Wks.I.169.
104. Sewall in HAG.Bln.; Hag.Boy. 109; PRI.n.
105. TR.Wks.I.346. See Put.509–17 for more detail on these winter days. For TR’s organization of the LMSA, see ib., and Mattison, “Stockmen’s Association.” The first meeting was held on Dec. 19, 1884; TR was elected Chairman.
106. TR.Wks.I.341. Note that TR mentions death four times in this passage.
12: THE FOUR-EYED MAVERICK
Important sources not in Bibliography: 1. Bad Lands Cowboy 1884–1886 (microfilm of all known existing copies in TRB).
1. TR.Wks.I.35.
2. Hag.RBL.233; Put.518. TR also published in the January 1885 issue of Century his first article, “Phases of State Legislation” (reprinted in TR.Wks. XIII.47 ff.). It was an admirably detailed and occasionally very funny review of his three years as an Assemblyman, and so impressed James Bryce that he quoted it in his American Commonwealth (1888). See below, Ch. 15.
3. Mor.89.
4. See Lor.218–9.
5. Lodge, Journal, Mar. 20, 1885, qu. Put.506.
6. Hunting Trips of a Ranchman is reprinted in TR.Wks.I.1–247.
7. Put.519. “Mr. Roosevelt’s book is far too sumptuous for the general public,” remarked The Atheneum, calling it “one of the most beautiful hunting books ever printed.” (Sep. 19, 1885.)
8. New York Mail and Express, Sep. 14, 1895. There were three American editions and one British, within the first year of publication (New York Tribune, Oct. 6, 1886). London reviews were especially complimentary. The Spectator (Jan. 16, 1886) noted TR’s extraordinary identification with animals outside of the chase, and said that it was “a book to be closed with lingering regret.” (Ib.) Saturday Review (August 29, 1885) called it “a repertory of thoughtful woodcraft or prairiecraft,” whose “cultivated” style and “sumptuous” presentation would make it one of the top ten “sporting classics” of Western literature.
9. Cut.54.
10. It is amusing to note that TR’s minute description of the Elkhorn ranch interior, with its flickering firelight, antler-hung walls, and well-stocked shelves, was written at a time when Sewall and Dow had not yet put on the roof.
11. TR.Wks.I.112.
12. Ib., 119. For TR’s abnormal sensitivity to sound, see ib., pages 12, 13, 14, 35, 45, 48, 49, 57, 58, 59, 65, 66, 69, 85, 95, 96, 113, 114, 115, 127, 129, 132, 146, 148, 150, 153, 161, 167, 169.
13. The only explanation satisfactory to the author is contained in the last stanza of Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol.
14. TR.Wks.I.107.
15. See Hag.RBL.240–1 and the Book of Job, 30.27; also Put.520.
16. Hag.RBL.249–52. The next landing was more than a mile away.
17. TR to B, Apr. 29, 1885 (TRB).
18. Put.520. Sewall (HAG.Bln.) says they all moved in “at the end of April,” but since he and Dow were away after Apr. 23 the move must have occurred before that. The ranch house was essentially a huge log cabin, 60′ × 30′ × 7′. It no longer exists, but the site is preserved. See Ch. 11, n. 28.
19. TR.Wks.I.10-11.
20. Qu. Hag.RBL.240.
21. An additional purchase of 52 ponies for $3,275 is included in this total of $85,000. See Put.523 and fn. TR to B, May 17, 1885 (TRB mss.).
22. Put.523; Mor.90; TR.Wks.I.337–8.
23. Put.520; HAG.Bln.
24. TR.Auto.100.
25. Hag.RBL.285; Put.528.
26. TR.Auto.101-6.
27. Put.524–5; Lan.184.
28. TR to B, June 5, 1885; TR.Auto. 107; TR.Wks.I.320; Hag. RBL.289–90.
29. Three-Seven Bill Jones (not to be confused with Hell-Roaring Bill Jones), qu. Hag.RBL.279.
30. Lan.185; Put.524; TR to B, June 5, 1885 (TRB mss). TR gives an excellent account of a Badlands round-up in TR.Wks.I.314–340.
31.
St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 23, 1885.
32. Trib., July 8, 1885.
33. Sew.41. TR was to suffer occasional spells of “wheezing” and “bronchitis” throughout his life, but at such infrequent intervals he can be said to have effectively conquered his asthma.
34. Tha.57. See also below, n. 42.
35. This description of the new house is based on an 1885 photograph in the files of TRB.
36. Other details from Hag.RF.4, Put.532, and TRB picture files.
37. The panorama is now blocked by trees, mostly planted by TR in obedience to the family motto (see p. 299). But in 1885 the hilltop was bare.
38. TR.Auto.328.
39. Par. 63.
40. Elliott Roosevelt had married a fragile society beauty, Anna Rebecca Hall, on Dec. 1, 1882. See Las. Ch. 2 for an account of their courtship.
41. HUN.74: “Well, sir, that man planned his life from the start. He told me a good many times that he expected to get his life work done by the time he was sixty.” In the last months of his life TR told his sister Corinne that at twenty-one he had decided to live “up to the hilt” until he was sixty, and did not care how soon he died after that. Fate allowed him ten extra weeks.
42. HAG.Bln.; Put.530. “What a change!” commented a reporter who met TR en route. “Last March he was a pale, slim young man, with a thin, piping voice and a general look of dyspepsia … He is now brown as a berry and has increased 30 lbs in weight. The voice … is now hearty and strong enough to drive oxen.” (Pittsburgh Dispatch, Aug. 23, 1885, in TR.Scr.)
43. Hag.RBL.340–1; Put.536.
44. Ib.
45. HAG.Bln.; Twe.88.
46. Bad Lands Cowboy, May 27, 1885; Put.533.
47. Ib., 536. For more detail, see Twe. passim.
48. Hag.RBL.342.
49. New York Times, Aug. 22, 1885; Hag.RBL.342–4.
50. Mor.100; Put.533; other details in this and following paras. from HAG.Bln.; also see TR to B, Aug. 30, 1885 (TRB mss.).
51. TR.Wks.I.30.
52. Ib., 295–6; Hag.RBL.310–11; Sewall in Forum, May 1919.
53. Photocopy in TRB. See Put.534–5 for details of the LMSA meeting.
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