The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  The same year that Alphonso and Louise traveled abroad, without Will and their younger children, Thee and Mittie took ten-year-old Teedie and the entire family to Europe for a twelve-month journey through England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France. Although Teedie, affectionately known within the family as “a great little home-boy,” sorely missed his childhood friends, particularly eight-year-old Edith, his faithful diary entries reveal scores of invigorating adventures. He traversed fields where the Wars of the Roses were fought, inspected the tombs at Westminster Abbey, stood astride the boundary of France and Italy, ascended Mt. Vesuvius, and admired the art treasures of the Vatican.

  And always, the children were accompanied by books, allowing Teedie the occasional opportunity to withdraw into his own world. At the end of four months, before the trip was half over, he proudly announced that “we three” (the three younger children, Bamie being considered part of the “big people” world) had read fifty novels. Beyond works of popular fiction, the family carried a small library of classic history and literature, which Thee read aloud to stir discussion.

  Although the European voyage answered Thee’s hopes “that a real education for his children would be acquired more easily through travel,” he feared that Teedie, whose asthma and stomach troubles had necessitated frequent days of bed rest, was becoming too familiar with illness, timidity, and frailty, too prone to retreat into invalidism. When they returned home, he took his young son aside. “Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should,” he admonished. “You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.” Teedie responded immediately, according to Corinne, giving his father a solemn promise: “I’ll make my body.”

  The boy threw himself into a strict regimen of strength and endurance training; week after week, month after month, he lifted weights and pulled himself up on horizontal bars. Methodically, he sought to expand “his chest by regular, monotonous motion—drudgery indeed,” first at Wood’s Gymnasium and then in the home gym his father constructed on the second floor. The fierce determination that had propelled Teedie to become a serious student of nature, a voracious reader, and a sensitive observer was now directed toward expanding his physical capabilities by refashioning his body. Years would pass before the potential of these labors would be actualized in an adult capacity and physique that made him an exemplar of “the strenuous life.”

  In the meantime, his physical inferiority made him vulnerable to a humiliating experience that remained fresh in his mind forty years later. In his Autobiography, he recounted a stagecoach ride to Maine where he was set upon by two “mischievous” boys, who “proceeded to make life miserable” for him. Attempting to fight back, he discovered that either boy alone could handle him “with easy contempt.” The injury to his self-respect was such that he was determined never again to be so helpless. In addition to his regular exercise regimen, he began taking boxing lessons. “I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil,” he recalled, “and certainly worked two or three years before I made any perceptible improvement whatever.”

  Transforming his body was only one step in the psychological struggle against what Teedie shamefully considered his “timid” nature. “There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first,” he acknowledged, “but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.” As a childhood friend observed, “by constantly forcing himself to do the difficult or even dangerous thing,” he was able to cultivate courage as “a matter of habit, in the sense of repeated effort and repeated exercise of will-power.”

  When Teedie was fourteen, his family went abroad again. Rather than repeat the heady pace of their first sweep through the Continent, they spent an entire winter in Egypt, three weeks in Palestine, two weeks in Lebanon and Syria, three weeks in Athens, Smyrna, and Constantinople, and five months in Germany. None of the children benefited more from this remarkable journey than Teedie, whose romantic nature conjured visions of ancient lives entwined with his own. “We arrived in sight of Alexandria,” he wrote in his diary. “How I gazed on it! It was Egypt, the land of my dreams; Egypt the most ancient of all countries! A land that was old when Rome was bright, was old when Babylon was in its glory, was old when Troy was taken! It was a sight to awaken a thousand thoughts, and it did.”

  In addition to the cultural sites, young Theodore was thrilled by the chance to observe and catalogue exotic species he had hitherto known only in books. This was his “first real collecting as a student of natural history.” During their two-month journey along the Nile in a private vessel, staffed by a thirteen-man crew, furnished with comfortable staterooms and a dining saloon, he was able clearly to perceive the habits of these entirely new birds and animals at close range, for finally, he had been fitted with spectacles that corrected his severe nearsightedness. “I had no idea,” he later said, “how beautiful the world was until I got those spectacles.” In the mornings he and his father would go out shooting along the banks of the Nile, retrieving specimens to be skinned, dissected, preserved with chemicals, and labeled. “My first knowledge of Latin was obtained by learning the scientific names of the birds and mammals which I collected and classified.” His early dedication to such pursuits revealed “an almost ruthless single-mindedness where his interests were aroused,” one biographer, Carleton Putnam, observed, “suggestive of a purposeful, determined personality.”

  Summer found the children in Dresden, where their father had arranged for them to live with a German family. Throughout that summer of 1873 and into the early fall, the daughter of the hosts was hired to teach them the German language, literature, music, and art. Teedie was so earnestly focused upon his studies, which occupied six hours of the day, that he asked to extend the lessons further. “And of course,” his younger brother Elliott complained, “I could not be left behind so we are working harder than ever in our lives.”

  In the course of the year abroad, young Theodore had traveled by ship and by train, by stagecoach and on foot; he had stayed in hotels, inns, tents, and private homes. Armed with an innate curiosity and a discipline fostered by his remarkable father, he had obtained firsthand knowledge of the peoples and cultures in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Forty years later, Roosevelt remained appreciative of the opportunity afforded him. “This trip,” he wrote in An Autobiography, “formed a really useful part of my education.”

  The family returned to a new home at 6 West 57th Street, a stately mansion with a fully equipped gymnasium for the children and a large space set aside in the garret to house Teedie’s ever-expanding taxidermy collection. Although the fifteen-year-old’s travels abroad had given him an unusually strong foundation in natural science, history, geography, and German, he was, in his own words, “lamentably weak in Latin and Greek and mathematics.” If he wished to enter an Ivy League school, he could not compete with students like Will Taft, who had mastered the strenuous program at Woodward High that fully prepared him for Yale. To fill the gaps in Teedie’s learning and prepare him for Harvard’s rigorous entrance examinations, his father hired a recent Harvard graduate, Arthur Cutler. Under Cutler’s tutelage, Teedie worked long hours every day and completed three years of college preparation in two. “The young man never seemed to know what idleness was,” marveled Cutler, “and every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic or some abstruse book on natural history in his hands.”

  Elliott also studied under the guidance of a tutor, but lacking his brother’s inner motivation and self-confidence, he proved unable to master subjects on his own. Even at thirteen, he worried about his future. “What will I become when I am a man,” he plaintively demanded of his father. Acknowledging that Teedie was “much quicker and [a] more sure kind of boy,” he pledged that he would “try to be as good . . . if [it] is in me, but it is hard.” Desiring perhaps to separate himself from daily competition with his brother,
Elliott entreated his father to send him to St. Paul’s preparatory school. The summer before his entry, however, he suffered a series of mysterious seizures rooted, doctors believed, in a nervous disorder. Thee decided to postpone St. Paul’s, choosing instead to take his son to Europe on a business trip. In Liverpool, Elliott suffered another attack, more severe than any previous incident. “It produced congestion of the brain with all its attendant horrors of delirium,” Thee reported to Mittie. Two weeks later, Elliott remained ill. “I jump involuntarily at the smallest sound,” he confided in a letter to Teedie, “and have a perpetual headache (and nearly always in low spirits).”

  Upon returning home, Elliott resumed working with his tutor, but his hopes were still set on St. Paul’s, where, he wrote his father, he “could make more friends” than studying at home. “Oh, Father will you ever think me a ‘noble boy.’ You are right about Teedie he is one and no mistake a boy I would give a good deal to be like in many respects.” That fall, Thee agreed to let Elliott go to boarding school, but only a few weeks after arriving, he again fell ill. “During my Latin lesson, without the slightest warning,” he told his father, “I had a bad rush of blood to my head it hurt me so that I can’t remember what happened. I believe I screamed out.” The boarding school experiment ended two months later when he “fainted just after leaving the table and fell down.” Teedie was sent to St. Paul’s to bring him home. Believing that a vigorous physical regimen would help, Thee sent his son to an Army post in Texas that built up his body but did little to cure his nervous disorder.

  Meanwhile, Teedie’s systematic effort to prepare himself for Harvard paid off. “Is it not splendid about my examinations,” he triumphantly wrote Bamie. “I passed well on all the eight subjects I tried.” If he was intellectually prepared for college, however, he lacked the social skills of many of his fellow students. Years of ill health and home schooling had isolated him from regular contact with boys and girls outside his family circle. He entered Harvard at scarcely five feet eight inches tall and only 130 pounds, “a slender nervous young man with side-whiskers, eyeglasses, and bright red cheeks.” While Will Taft’s sturdy physique, genial disposition, and empathetic manner won immediate popularity at Yale, Theodore Roosevelt took longer to establish a core group of friends at Harvard. He worried initially about the “antecedents” of the people he met, maintaining distance from classmates until he could determine whether their families shared the Roosevelts’ station in life.

  One contemporary remembers him as “studious, ambitious, eccentric—not the sort to appeal at first.” He filled the shelves in his room with snakes and lizards, stuffed birds and animals; the smell of formaldehyde followed him from one class to the next. At a time when indifference toward one’s studies was in vogue, Theodore was blatantly enthusiastic. “It was not often that any student broke in upon the smoothly flowing current” of their professors’ lectures, one classmate recalled, “but Roosevelt did this again and again,” posing questions and requesting clarification until finally one professor cut him short. “Now look here, Roosevelt, let me talk. I’m running this course.” He also had a curious habit of dropping into classmates’ rooms for conversation; then, rather than joining in, he would retreat to a corner and immerse himself in a book as if seated alone on a tree stump in the middle of the forest. Furthermore, he scorned fellow students who drank or smoked.

  “No man ever came to Harvard more serious in his purpose to secure first of all an education,” recalled one classmate, Curtis Guild, Jr.; “he was forever at it, and probably no man of his time read more extensively or deeply, especially in directions that did not count on the honor-list or marking-sheet.” Whereas Taft discouraged the young Yale student from extracurricular reading, fearful it would detract from required courses, Roosevelt read widely yet managed to stand near the top of his class. The breadth of his numerous interests allowed him to draw on knowledge across various disciplines, from zoology to philosophy and religion, from poetry and drama to history and politics.

  “My library has been the greatest possible pleasure to me,” he wrote to his parents during his freshman year, “as whenever I have any spare time I can immediately take up a book. Aunt Annie’s present, the ‘History of the Civil War,’ is extremely interesting.” From early childhood, he had regarded books as “the greatest of companions.” And once encountered, they were never forgotten. Much later, greeting a Chinese delegation when he was president, he suddenly remembered a book about China read many years before. “As I talked the pages of the book came before my eyes,” he said, “and it seemed as though I were able to read the things therein contained.” Taft was continually amazed at how Roosevelt found time to read, snatching moments while waiting for lunch or his next appointment. “He always carried a book with him to the Executive Office,” Taft noted, “and although there were but few intervals during the business hours, he made the most of them in his reading.” Charles Washburn, a classmate at Harvard, considered Roosevelt’s ability to concentrate a signal ingredient to his success. “If he were reading,” observed Washburn with astonishment, “the house might fall about his head, he could not be diverted.”

  The habits of mind Roosevelt developed early in his academic career would serve him well throughout his life. As soon as he received an assignment for a paper or project, he would set to work, never leaving anything to the last minute. Preparing so far ahead “freed his mind” from worry and facilitated fresh, lucid thought. During the last months of his presidency, aware that he was committed to speak at Oxford University following his yearlong expedition to Africa, he finished a complete draft of his lengthy address. “I never knew a man who worked as far in advance of what was to be done,” marveled Taft. “Perhaps I value this virtue more highly because I lack it myself.”

  While posting honor grades each semester, Roosevelt cultivated a boggling array of social activities. He persevered in the promise to “make my body,” exercising rigorously day after day. He spent hours in the gym vaulting and lifting weights. He competed for the lightweight cup in boxing and wrestling, rowed on the Charles River, played strenuous games of lawn tennis, and ran three or four miles a day. Like his father, he pursued his chosen pastimes with the same zeal he devoted to his work. He organized a whist club and a finance club at which William Graham Sumner appeared; he wrote for The Advocate, joined the rifle club and the arts club, taught Sunday school, and took a weekly dancing class. With his explosive energy “he danced just as you’d expect him to dance if you knew him,” a contemporary recalled—“he hopped.” And despite this overcharged agenda, he maintained his passionate interest in birds, watching and shooting them in the field during the days, stuffing and labeling them in his room at night.

  “His college life broadened every interest,” Corinne observed, “and did for him what had hitherto not been done, which was to give him confidence in his relationship with young men of his own age.” If he lacked Will Taft’s immediate charisma, gradually his classmates could not resist the spell of his highly original personality. “Funnily enough, I have enjoyed quite a burst of popularity,” he told his mother after his election into several social clubs, including the Hasty Pudding Club, the D.K.E. Society, and the prestigious Porcellian Club.

  Theodore’s burgeoning self-assurance and involvement in the Harvard community came at a critical time. He would need all the resilience and support he could muster to cope with a shattering blow during his sophomore year when his forty-six-year-old father came down with a fatal illness. An intense love had continued to bind father and son while Teedie was in college. “As I saw the last of the train bearing you away the other day,” Roosevelt had written his son after seeing him off for his freshman year, “I realized what a luxury it was to have a boy in whom I would place perfect trust and confidence who was leaving me to take his first independent position in the world.” Teedie’s reply reflected his own profound respect and devotion: “I do not think there is a fellow in College who has a family that lov
e him as much as you all do me, and I am sure that there is no one who has a Father who is also his best and most intimate friend, as you are mine.” With unabashed affection, Teedie addressed his frequent letters to his “darling father” or his “dearest father,” and Thee returned the tenderness in kind.

  Two months before Roosevelt Senior was taken ill, he had been nominated by President Rutherford Hayes to replace incumbent Chester A. Arthur as Collector of Customs for the Port of New York. His nomination was seen as a triumph for civil service reformers over New York senator Roscoe Conkling, who had run the port as his special fiefdom for years. The distinguished position required the approval of the U.S. Senate, however, where a fierce battle raged for weeks between the reform element of the Republican Party, represented by Hayes and Roosevelt, and the machine politicians, represented by Conkling and Arthur. In the end, the machine politicians won. The Senate rejected Roosevelt’s nomination, insisting instead on the reappointment of Arthur. “The machine politicians have shown their color,” a disappointed Thee wrote Teedie. “I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.”

  Six days after his rejection by the Senate, Theodore Senior collapsed. Doctors diagnosed an advanced stage of bowel cancer. Over Christmas vacation, when Teedie was home, his father seemed “very much better,” sparking the false hope that he was beginning to recover. As Teedie was leaving to return to Harvard, he had a conversation with him that he would long remember: “Today he told me I had never caused him a moments pain. I should be less than human if I ever had, for he is the best, wisest and most loving of men, the type of all that is noble, brave, wise & good.”