Colonel Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  4 His Majesty turned TR, Letters, 7.402; The New York Times and New York Tribune, 17 May 1910.

  5 Edward VII’s personal throat doctor The New York Times, 17 May 1910. One of Edward’s last acts had been to summon Ambassador Reid to Buckingham Palace, and, between spasms of coughing, plan the details of Roosevelt’s visit. Royal Cortissoz, The Life of Whitelaw Reid (New York, 1921), 2.411–12.

  6 he was hard-pressed TR also found time to view, with EKR, Edward VII’s coffin lying in state at Buckingham Palace. The next day it was transferred to Westminster Hall.

  7 “Confound these kings” Abbott, Impressions of TR, 294. Abbott left the king’s name blank, but he was identified in the press as Haakon of Norway.

  8 She floated into KR diary, 16 May 1910 (KRP); Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Crowded Hours (New York, 1933), 177. ARL’s butterfly brilliance is communicated in Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth (London, 1981). The standard biography is Stacy Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, From White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (New York, 2007).

  9 “a voodoo” Teague, Mrs. L., 140.

  10 “one of the finest fellows” Henry White to Mrs. White, 18 May 1910 (HW); TR, Letters, 7.402.

  11 Emerging one morning The New York Times, 20 May 1910; Henry White to EKR, 27 Nov. 1922 (correcting the account in Robinson, My Brother TR, 261–62). TRC.

  12 inside information Wilhelm II to Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, misdated “5 May 1910,” in Edgar T. Dugdale, ed., German Diplomatic Documents 1871–1914 (London, 1930), 3.414.

  13 It did not seem to cross his mind Nor, apparently, did the Kaiser notice that Roosevelt, criticizing two out-of-power Tories, had said nothing about his interview with Grey, the key figure in British foreign relations.

  14 “I’m going to a Wake” Alice Hooper reporting to Frederick Jackson Turner in Dear Lady: The Letters of Frederick Jackson Turner and Alice Forbes Perkins Hooper, 1910–1932 (San Marino, Calif., 1970), 303. The very proper Mrs. Hooper remained “quite honestly shocked” nine years later.

  15 “I hardly know” Unless otherwise identified, the following quotations by TR are taken from his narrative letter to David Gray (“For nobody’s eyes but yours”) in TR, Letters, 7.409–12. See also below, 625.

  16 In contrast to The New York Times, 20 May 1910; Abbott, Impressions of TR, 296–97. According to Alice Hooper, Reid remained afraid until the final hour that TR would insist on wearing the uniform of an American colonel of cavalry. See above, 584, and Turner, Dear Lady, 303.

  17 denying Achduke Franz TR got this story direct from the Kaiser. Abbott, Impressions of TR, 298–99.

  18 Monarch vied with monarch TR’s stories were apparently well circulated in the royal courts of Europe. Wilhelm II’s favorite was the one of Ben Daniels, marshal of Dodge City, who got his ear “bit off” in the pursuit of frontier justice. Sullivan, Our Times, 4.435; TR, Letters, 7.367.

  19 three more kings Nevins, Henry White, 304.

  20 They knew TR, Letters, 7.366–67.

  21 “glass coaches” Unless otherwise identified, the following quotations are taken from TR, Letters, 7.412–13.

  22 Band music blared The following account of Edward VII’s funeral is based on the reporting of The Times, Pall Mall Gazette, and Manchester Guardian, supplemented by The New York Times and New York Tribune, 20, 21 May 1910. Indented quotations by TR continue to derive from his letter to David Gray, cited above.

  23 the strange reticence For TR’s similar behavior in Buffalo after the death of President McKinley, see Morris, Theodore Rex, 11.

  24 Pichon’s feelings overcame him TR told Mark Sullivan afterward that at the climax of Pichon’s rage, his hair “stood out like a head of lettuce.” Sullivan, Our Times, 4.436.

  25 “One remembers” The New York Times, 21 May 1910. Pichon complained afterward that TR “did not exchange half a dozen words within him during the journey.” The New Age, 2 June 1910.

  26 “destined to make history” New York Tribune, 21 May 1910.

  27 The Tsar whom everybody Later Nicholas II regretted not attending, and in the spring of 1911 pressingly invited TR to visit Russia. But by then TR had had his fill of star-encrusted monarchs. TR, Letters, 7.302.

  28 The midday heat Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1910.

  29 Roosevelt suffered The New York Times, 20 May 1910.

  30 The cloister of St. George’s Asquith, Autobiography, 271; Chicago Tribune and Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1910.

  31 Not until Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, 20 May 1910; TR, Letters, 7413.

  32 “Dear old Springy” For the relationship of TR and Spring Rice, see Morris, The Rise of TR, 357–59; Stephen Gwynn, ed., The Letters and Friendships of Cecil Spring Rice: A Record (Boston, 1929), passim; and Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.” On 24 May, TR and EKR visited the scene of their wedding, St. George’s Church in Hanover Square, incognito. They asked to see the register for 1886. The verger, indicating a marked page, informed them that it bore the signature of “Mr. Roosevelt, the former President of the United States, who was married here 23 years ago.” He remained unaware of the identity of his visitors until after they left. The New York Times, 25 May 1910.

  33 Winston Churchill, whom he considered Lodge, Selections, 2.385.

  Biographical Note: While in British East Africa, TR had drawn a sharp distinction between Churchill and an American novelist of the same name—“Winston Churchill the gentleman.” (Lodge, Selections, 2.349.) His strange dislike for the Englishman is easier to document than explain. Before listing some instances, their many similarities should be considered. They were both politicians of privileged background who swung leftward in mid-career, soldiers of heroic courage, men of letters celebrating the life of action. Hyperactive, garrulous, egotistical, and family-minded, they worshipped their respective early dying fathers and needed enemies to function at maximum efficiency. Power did not corrupt them.

  Their first recorded meeting took place in Dec. 1900. Churchill, just elected to Parliament at age 26, was then on a speaking tour of America, and TR, at 41, was governor of New York and vice president–elect. He had read the younger man’s memoirs of military service in India and the Sudan, and regretted that he could not attend his Manhattan lecture. “I am really sorry as I am a great admirer of Mr. Churchill’s books, and should very much like to have a chance to meet him socially.” (TR, Letters, 2.1454.) The chance materialized later in the month, when Churchill dined with the Roosevelts in Albany and “incensed his hosts by slumping in his chair, puffing on a cigar, and refusing to get up when women came into the room.” (Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 539; for another abrasive encounter, see Robinson, My Brother TR, 189.) TR thought Churchill was interesting, but “not an attractive fellow.” (TR, Letters, 3.116–17.) His disapproval deepened in 1904, when Churchill, in what looked to TR like opportunism, bolted Britain’s foundering Conservative Party and joined the new Liberal government. In 1906, TR read Churchill’s biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, found it “vulgar,” and concluded that the author had inherited “levity, lack of sobriety, lack of permanent principle, and inordinate thirst for that cheap form of admiration which is given to notoriety.” (Lodge, Selections, 2.231–32.) Exactly the same accusations would one day be leveled against TR himself. In 1908, when TR was planning his safari, he read a first-serial account by Churchill of killing a white rhinoceros in the Lado Enclave, and was overcome by competitive bloodlust. “I should consider my entire African trip a success if I could get to that country and find the game as Mr. Churchill describes it.… The white rhino is the animal I care most to get—even more than the elephant.” (TR, Letters, 6.1383.) Churchill subsequently sent him a presentation copy of My African Journey, which TR acknowledged with ill grace: “I do not like Winston Churchill but I suppose ought to write him.” (TR, Letters, 6.1465, 1467.) As recorded above (592), he went on to kill nine white rhinos to Churchill’s one.


  Churchill’s booziness and lack of consideration for other people were bound to irritate TR, who set great store by probity and good manners. Subconsciously, however, he may have been more disturbed by the many parallels between them. In 1898, for example, both men almost simultaneously participated in historic cavalry charges. Of the two engagements, that at Omdurman was much more bloody, and of their respective published accounts, Churchill’s was incomparably superior. It might be added that Churchill was capable of empathy with, even admiration for, his enemies, whereas TR always demonized them.

  34 The foreign secretary approved Grey, Twenty-five Years, 2.92. EKR and ARL worried about TR overplaying his role as an outsider. “Don’t try and talk through your nose and say ‘Amurika,’ ” they begged—in vain. Teague, Mrs. L, 137.

  35 By then, Roosevelt Lee, A Good Innings, 1.416; TR quoted in Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time: Shown in His Own Letters (New York, 1920), 2.260. Seth Bullock, asked why TR had no patience for kings, said he thought the Colonel “preferred aces.” Kenneth C. Kellar, Seth Bullock: Frontier Marshal (Aberdeen, S.D., 1972), 165.

  36 On 26 May The New York Times, 27 May 1910; Lorant, Life and Times of TR, 532–33; TR, Letters, 7.407. For TR’s improvised speech at the Cambridge Union, see TR, African and European Addresses, 143ff. It was a humorous response to a poem about his penchant for preaching, published in The Gownsman in advance of his arrival: Oh! We’re ready for you, Teddy, our sins are all reviewed, / We’ve put away our novels and our statues in the nude. / We’ve read your precious homilies, and hope to hear some more / At the coming visitation of the moral Theodore.

  37 Coincidentally, he EKR diary, 28 May 1910 (TRC); Lee, A Good Innings, 1.423–24; TR, Letters, 7.405. See also [Harold Begbie], The Mirrors of Downing Street: Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster (New York, 1921), 77–80.

  38 “All I would do” TR, Letters, 7.405. See King Henry IV, Part I, act 3, scene 1.

  39 The most distinguished of them [Begbie], Mirrors of Downing Street, 61–69; Kenneth Young, Arthur J. Balfour: The Happy Life of the Politician, Prime Minister, Statesman, and Philosopher, 1848–1930 (London, 1962).

  40 “predestined to succumb” Dugdale, German Diplomatic Documents, 2.54. In a letter written shortly before Balfour’s speech, Cecil Spring Rice cited Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Italy as being especially nervous, along with Austria. “These small states … are useful indicators, like the birds which stir and fuss when the tiger is on the move.” Gwynn, Cecil Spring Rice, 2.145.

  41 Was the Tory Shortly before leaving Germany, TR had told the German Chancellor that “The mood of the British was such that an unforeseen event might lead to war. He criticized very sharply in this connection Mr. Balfour’s famous election speech.” Bethmann-Hollweg memo, 14 May 1910, quoted in Dugdale, German Diplomatic Documents, 3.413.

  42 “So it is” TR, Letters, 6.962–63.

  43 “It would be a fitting” Young, Balfour, 283.

  44 For some reason Although the Balfour memorandum was marked “Not sent to Roosevelt,” Young surmises that the proposal itself did reach TR. There is, however, no copy in TRP, and no sign of a reply from TR in either TRP or AJB. The copy seen by Young is cited only as being in a set of “Royal papers,” which supports the supposition that it was intended for Edward VII’s eyes. Its wording and topical references further suggest that it was prepared later in 1909 than Young assumes—possibly even in early 1910. Balfour may have intended discussing his plan orally with TR, when they met at Chequers. Unfortunately neither man, nor Arthur Lee (who was responsible for sending Balfour’s book to TR in 1908), left a record of what they actually did discuss that weekend.

  45 Arthur Lee was delighted Lee, A Good Innings, 1.422; Gwynn, Cecil Spring Rice, 2.115; TR, Letters, 6.1241, 7.403. The ambassador’s other nightmares included Slavs advancing west and Huns advancing north. See Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.”

  46 “I never heard a man” J. S. Sandars to “E,” 29 May 1910 (AJB).

  47 felt it his duty TR, Letters, 7.402–3.

  48 He said he had just All quotations from TR’s Guildhall speech are taken from TR, African and European Addresses, 157ff. Extra details, including audience reaction, are from Manchester Guardian, 1 June 1910.

  49 “This will cause” Lee, A Good Innings, 1.425. At one point in TR’s address, Balfour emitted “an audible ‘Haw haw!’ ”—presumably his Etonian way of enunciating “Hear, hear!” Otherwise, he and Grey presented stiff faces during the speech—Grey so much so that an American reporter was convinced that he disapproved. The foreign minister, however, later wrote: “I listened to it with a glow of satisfaction.” The New York Times, 1, 4 June 1910; Grey, Twenty-five Years, 2.91.

  50 “I just love that man” Lee, A Good Innings, 1.425. See also Whitelaw Reid to Philander Knox, 31 May 1910 (WR): “Arthur Balfour and Lord Cromer made no secret of their delight.… Edward Grey was equally pleased (although under more necessity to conceal it).” TR was even franker to a group of Irish nationalist M.P.s, who met with him the following day and were disappointed to hear that he by no means favored Home Rule. “I think they were too lenient with you,” he genially informed Arthur Alfred Lynch, who had deserted the British army in South Africa but been forgiven by the British government. “If I had been in their place I would certainly have had you hanged.” Lee, A Good Innings, 1.426.

  51 “Well, the attitude” TR to ABR, 3 June 1910 (ABRP).

  52 Liberal newspapers The New York Times, 1, 3, 4 June 1910; Manchester Guardian, 1 June 1910. See also Literary Digest, 11 June 1910.

  53 Conservative reactions TR, African and European Addresses, vii; The Times, 1 June 1910; Abbott, Impressions of TR, 160. For John St. Loe Strachey’s White House visit in 1902, see Morris, Theodore Rex, 181, 188.

  54 George Bernard Shaw Shaw quoted in Chicago Tribune, 3 June 1910; Stead in Manchester Guardian, 2 June 1910. TR reciprocally considered Shaw to be “a blue-rumped ape.” Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 137.

  55 “I was an auditor” TR, Letters, 7.403.

  56 “I should have thought” Ibid., 7.404.

  57 lunching with a grateful King For an account of this haut-bourgeois luncheon, see ibid., 7.414–15. TR also dined with Robert Scott on the eve of the latter’s last voyage to the Antarctic.

  58 “He has enjoyed himself” Gwynn, Cecil Spring Rice, 2.151.

  59 STATEMENT INCORRECT TR, Letters, 7.87.

  60 One last public appearance The following account of TR’s honorary degree ceremony at Oxford is based on reports in The New York Times, 8 June, and The Times, 9 June 1910. See also TR, Letters, 7.406–7 and Sullivan, Our Times, 4.431. Quotations from the proceedings are taken from TR, African and European Addresses, 175–249.

  61 For once, Roosevelt was Among the scholars whom TR consulted in preparing his lecture were Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, and James Bryce, the former regius professor of modern law at Oxford, and current British ambassador to the United States. After a blue-pencil review of the draft manuscript, which contained specific comparisons of two moribund European monarchies to the megatherium and glyptodon, Osborn wrote: “I have left out certain passages that are likely to bring on war between the United States and the governments referred to.” (Pringle, TR, 519.) For the long and eventually strained relationship of TR and Bryce, see Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.”

  62 Behold, Vice-Chancellor This translation seems to have been written by Curzon himself.

  63 More than ever TR, Works, 14.66. For the complete text of TR’s Romanes Lecture, see ibid., 65–106.

  64 Roosevelt was using According to Douglas Harper’s Online Etymology Dictionary, the word ethnic acquired racial overtones only in American English, ca. 1945.

  65 “It would appear” Nicholas Murray Butler, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections (New York, 1939), 1.321. The “longitude” of TR’s text, r
unning to almost 12,000 words, was apparent even to the speaker. According to one report, his voice began to fail, and he dropped whole chunks of text toward the end. Even so, TR spoke for an hour and a quarter. The New York Times, 8 June 1910.

  66 attended by the heads Prime Minister Herbert Asquith; Chief Justice Lord Alverstone; Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury.

  67 “at the time of the singing” Grey, Twenty-five Years, 2.90.

  68 the two men took a preliminary hike This account of TR’s expedition with Grey is based on his own narrative in TR, Works, 22.364–69, and a detailed map of the expedition route in The New Forest Commemorative Walk (Nature Conservancy of Britain, 1979). See also Paul Russell Cutright, “TR Listens to the Music of British Birds,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Spring 1987. In the summer of 2006, the author retraced TR’s steps with a British ornithologist, Mr. Richard Pennington, who identified twenty-eight of the species seen and heard in 1910.