Colonel Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  Biographical Note: TR’s casual evocation of the fifteenth idyll of Theocritus in reference to a piece of contemporary American sculpture might have struck some readers of his review as “showing off.” But nobody viewing the carved figures and reading the poem—both invoking nervous, chatterboxy, overdressed women, recoiling from yet half-excited by the press of flesh in a crowded street—could dispute the brilliance of the analogy. Such aperçus were so much a feature of his private conversation and correspondence that he could have published more of them if he chose.

  TR’s memory was as comprehensive as it was photographic. It went far beyond the normal politician’s knack of remembering names and faces, although his ability in that regard was phenomenal. What he saw or heard, and in particular what he read, registered with an almost mechanistic clarity. A few days after the Armory Show, he received a letter from KR, asking if he could remember the words of a poem by Edith Thomas (1854–1925) about exile south of the border.

  “[It] runs as follows, I think,” TR replied, and wrote in his clear hand: Beside the lake whose wave is hushed to hear, / The surf beat of a sea on either hand, / Far from Castile, / Afar in Toltec land, / Fearless I died who living knew not fear. / Dark faces frowned between me and the sky; / The Gordian knife drove deep; life grew a dream / Far from Castile! / Who heard my cry extreme / That held the sum of partings? / World, goodbye! (TR to KR, 26 Mar. 1913, ts. [TRC].)

  He was not copying. His punctuation differed in several particulars from Thomas’s, although he correctly reproduced the exclamation mark that inflected her repetition of “Castile.” He erred on one image, writing “Gordian knife” instead of “Indian blade,” and divided four lines that should have been couplets. Otherwise, he got the poem as right as if he had memorized it hours before. In fact, he was remembering its first printing in 1894, in an issue of The Atlantic Monthly that had coincidentally carried an article by himself. The poem must have registered there and then, because he had quoted a phrase from it, probably without thinking, two years later in the fourth volume of his book The Winning of the West: “Dark faces frowned through the haze, the war-axes gleamed, and on the frozen ground the soldiers fell.” Edith M. Thomas, “A Good-By” and TR, “The College Graduate and Public Life,” The Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 1894; TR, The Winning of the West (New York, 1896), 4.60.

  80 What pleased Roosevelt Other American works TR singled out for especial praise were Kate T. Cory’s “Arizona Desert,” Mahonri Young’s studies for the Sea Gull Monument in Salt Lake City, Leon Dabo’s “Canadian Night,” Amos Chew’s plaster, “Pelf,” and Émile Bourdelle’s “Heracles.” TR, Works, 14.410.

  81 European moderns The Armory Show grouped artists geographically according to their current domicile. Hence Whistler was hung in the British galleries, and Kandinsky in the German.

  82 Then came the slap See Brown, Story of the Armory Show, 168ff.

  83 obviously mammalian The phraseology here is TR’s, in Works, 14.408.

  84 A phrase he TR, Letters, 7.710.

  85 Nakedness seemed Henri’s “Figure in Motion,” clearly influenced by the photography of Eadweard Muybridge, was described by William Zorach as “the “nudest nude I ever saw.” It and Pascin’s “Three Girls” may be seen on the above-cited website of Shelley Staples.

  86 As James Bryce Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of TR, 22.

  87 his subsequent review TR, Works, 14.405. The tone of TR’s review may be contrasted with that of, e.g., Kenyon Cox in Harper’s Weekly, 15 Mar. 1913: “This thing [modernism/Cubism] is not amusing: it is heartrending and sickening … nothing less than the total destruction of the art of painting … revolting and defiling … pathological.… As to Matisse … it is not madness that stares at you from his canvasses, but leering effrontery.”

  88 What disturbed him “Something is wrong with the world,” the financier James D. Stillman wrote after touring the Armory Exhibition. “These men know.” McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, 241.

  89 In this recent TR, Works, 14.407.

  Biographical Note: Joseph Masheck, “Teddy’s Taste: Theodore Roosevelt and the Armory Show,” Art Forum, 9.2. (1970), challenges the received opinion of TR’s review as unsubtle and uninformed. He points out that TR’s personal collection of art and objets d’art, much of which can still be seen at Sagamore Hill, contains some “very fine items,” including Oriental bronzes and screens, a signed drawing by the Roman Baroque master Pietro Testa, a few “sublime landscapes,” including those of Marcius-Simons, plus French porcelains, a large corpus of statues by Frederic Remington, and “a number of truly superb Indian rugs and blankets.” As for TR’s seeing eye, Masheck notes that he already had demonstrated, in his criticism of the Thayer theory of protective coloration (see above, 141, 623), “a grasp of the total visual field … quite out of Thayer’s reach,” plus an “extremely Post-Impressionistic” ability to identify with both observer and observed. Masheck agrees with several Rooseveltian assessments of individual items on display in the Armory, especially the “very remarkable works” of Chanler. He traces and authenticates all TR’s quotes of pretentious art-writing, and remarks that even a humorous reference to “colored puzzle-pictures” in the Sunday papers was well-chosen, since John Sloan had long earned money doing just that. As for the Navajo rug, “Roosevelt needs no utilitarian apology for formal beauty: in fact, what he seems to be after is pure decorative value.” As a postscript, it might be noted that when Walter Pach visited wartime France in 1914 to buy modern art for New York galleries, he went armed with a “To Whom It May Concern” letter from TR. “As a result,” Bennard B. Perlman writes, “Pach was successful in acquiring and transporting back to the United States art by Picasso, Derain, Redon, Rouault, Dufy, and Matisse.” American Artists, Authors, and Collectors: The Walter Pach Letters, 1906–1958, Bernard B. Perlman, ed. (New York, 2003), 7.

  90 A cartoon by Kemble Baltimore Evening Sun, 5 Mar. 1913. The image, preserved by Walt Kuhn in WCF, shows a gift note attached to the portrait of TR, reading: “Dear Woodrow, I leave this to your tender care. I have no use for it. Yours, William.”

  91 the “Square Deal” New York World editorial, ca. Mar. 1913 (WCF).

  92 drew a caricature Preserved in WCF.

  93 It turned out Baltimore Evening Sun, 3, 5 Mar. 1913; Atlanta Constitution, 6 Mar. 1913. WHT’s chair, if left behind at all, was presumably too large for WW.

  94 “Don’t you suppose” Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known, 274.

  95 The great government The New York Times, 5 Mar. 1913.

  96 an armed attack The Washington Post, 5 Mar. 1913. Wilson had been more or less forced to appoint Bryan, who had swung the Baltimore convention for him the year before, and who still commanded the loyalty of the Democratic Party’s populist majority. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 269.

  97 found themselves barred The New York Times, 6 Mar. 1913.

  98 On Friday, 4 April The following account of ERD’s wedding is based on newspaper reports, chiefly The New York Times, 6 Apr. 1913, and Wister, Roosevelt, 319–20.

  99 “I feel very strongly” TR, Letters, 7.718.

  100 This had been EKR to Emily Carow, 10 Feb. 1913 (TRC). A conspicuous Harvard no-show at the wedding, to ARL’s considerable anger, was Nick Longworth. He remained depressed over the loss of his Congressional seat through most of 1913. Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 394–95.

  101 He seemed near Syracuse Herald, 6 Apr. 1913.

  102 such a concourse Wister, Roosevelt, 319. For an extended survey of TR’s “familiars,” see ibid., 45ff.

  103 “I am working” TR to ERD, 1 Apr. 1913 (ERDP).

  104 heroism at San Juan An Autobiography, 512–24.

  105 write more “picturesquely” Abbott’s adverb is barely legible in a note penciled on a page of chap. 3 of TR’s manuscript in MLM. It may be “pictorially,” but phrases in the note that can be read (“I wish Mr. T. R. could and would [illegible]”) convey his editorial unhappiness. EKR, too, expressed misgivings about t
he quality of the ms., which she blamed on the pressure of having to publish serially. “I hope he will get the opportunity to polish it up.” EKR to ERD, ca. June 1913 (ERDP).

  106 Roosevelt revised some TR manuscript of An Autobiography (MLM).

  107 asking Gifford Pinchot See TR, Letters, 7.716–17. TR actually pasted Pinchot’s draft into his text, with minimal alterations. An Autobiography ms., chap. 11 (MLM).

  CHAPTER 14: A VANISHED ELDER WORLD

  1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 99. TR chose a stanza from this poem (“The Wilderness”) as an epigraph to his book of travel essays, A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open (New York, 1916).

  2 The county courthouse See Roosevelt v. Newett for the full cast of characters participating in TR’s libel suit. The following account of the proceedings is based on this source, and newspaper reports, mainly those of The New York Times, 28 May–1 June 1913. Roosevelt v. Newett, privately published by TR’s cousin Emlen Roosevelt, is marred by the exclusion of depositions for the defense. For a summary of these, see Charles A. Palmer, “Teddy Roosevelt’s Libel Trial,” Litigation, 19.3 (Spring 1993).

  3 A jury of Sheboygan Press, 27 May 1913.

  4 Newett was due Ibid.; Atlanta Constitution, 1 June 1913.

  5 “All that Roosevelt” Roosevelt v. Newett, 12.

  6 Newett was a stalwart Melvin Holli and C. David Tompkins, “Roosevelt v. Newett: The Politics of Libel,” Michigan History, 47.4 (Dec. 1963); Roosevelt v. Newett, 12. TR’s other attorneys were W. S. Hill of Marquette and William Van Benschoten of New York. Newett was represented by William Belden, a prominent local corporate lawyer, and Horace Andrews, head counsel for the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company of Ohio.

  7 I have never Roosevelt v. Newett, 13–14.

  8 “about seven tablespoons” “Brandy” sic. See above, 588.

  9 “Because of my” TR quoted by Jay G. Hayden, correspondent for the Detroit News, in an interview with Hermann Hagedorn, 10 Dec. 1948 (TRB).

  10 Doctors Lambert Roosevelt v. Newett, 45–70.

  11 “He is about” Ibid., 58–61.

  12 He sat tilted Cedar Rapids Republican, 29 May 1913.

  13 By mid-morning Roosevelt v. Newett, 109. In pretrial depositions, the defense had relied on the testimony of distant witnesses who had found TR’s behavior strange on four occasions: during campaign appearances in Ohio and Michigan on 17 May and 8–9 Oct. 1912; at an air show in St. Louis on 11 Oct. 1910; and at a dinner for Speaker Joseph Cannon in Washington on 7 May 1906. The first three of these allegations were easily rebuffed with primary evidence, and just before the trial began, a former reporter prepared to swear to the fourth skipped across the Canadian border to escape an unrelated charge of grand larceny. Palmer, “Teddy Roosevelt’s Libel Trial.”

  14 James Pound said Roosevelt v. Newett, 111–12.

  15 Pound returned triumphant Ibid., 325, 92, 178. There were no trial proceedings on Friday, Decoration Day.

  16 By Saturday morning Roosevelt v. Newett, 355–56.

  17 “a tool of the steel trust” During TR’s speech on 9 Oct. 1912, a man in the audience had objected to this characterization of Young, calling TR a “liar.” The exchange prompted Newett’s editorial. TR subsequently carried Marquette County. Holli, “Roosevelt v. Newett.”

  18 The trial was won Roosevelt v. Newett, 358.

  19 Throughout, Roosevelt had Atlanta Constitution, 1 June 1913; Roosevelt v. Newett, 358.

  20 After it was all over The jury foreman significantly forgot to use the word plaintiff in announcing, “We find for Theodore Roosevelt.” The New York Times, 1 June 1913.

  21 “Are you and Newett” The wording of this anecdote closely follows that of Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known, 125. See also ibid., 194–95.

  22 Roosevelt v. Newett was The New York Times, 2 and 3 June, Fort Wayne News, 28 May 1913.

  23 “I am very glad” TR to KR, 2 June 1913, ts. (TRC). According to Abbott, Impressions of TR, 284–85, Bowers & Sands, TR’s New York law firm, waived its fee on the ground that he had been unjustly libeled.

  24 It occurred to him EKR to ERD and Richard Derby, 11, 28 May 1913 (ERDP); TR to KR, 1 May and 2 June 1913, ts. (TRC). KR’s new employer was the Anglo-Brazilian Forging, Steel Structural & Importing Company, a start-up venture promising high future rewards. KR to ERD, 30 Apr. 1913 (ERDP).

  25 “Sometime I must” Kermit Roosevelt, The Long Trail, 65.

  26 Roosevelt had in fact TR to ERD, 1 June 1913 (ERDP); TR, Letters, 7.731; Chicago Tribune, 8 Dec. 1912.

  27 “Great risks and hazards” The Outlook, 1 Mar. 1913.

  28 For a variety of reasons EKR ascribed TR’s need for physical adventure in the spring of 1913 to political frustration. “Father needs more scope,” she wrote ERD, “and since he can’t be President must go away from home to have it.” Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 397.

  29 In Paris, on the See Ecksteins, Rites of Spring, chap. 1, for the famous premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, and the portents it held for a world about to slip into war.

  30 He found his TR to KR, 24 May 1913. ts. (TRC). TR’s current reading included Vladimir Simkhovitch’s Marxism versus Socialism. (TR, Letters, 7.742.) Although the book confirmed his prejudices about the equalization of wealth, he was hardly less approving of free-market capitalism.

  31 “It is rather” TR, Letters, 7.741.

  32 “I shall be glad” TR, Works, 6.4; TR, Letters, 7.741.

  33 The pious doctrines The New York Times, 23 Apr. 1913. The Hobson-Sheppard Resolution of 1913, calling for a prohibition amendment to the Constitution, was the seed of the Eighteenth Amendment of 1919. It passed the House in 1914, but failed to achieve a two-thirds vote in the Senate. For Bryan’s role as a prohibitionist, see Mark Edward Lerner, Dictionary of American Temperance Biography (Westport, Conn. 1984), 69–70, 442.

  34 “Thou Shalt Not” TR, Letters, 7.739.

  35 He was sufficiently alarmed EKR to ERD, 11 May 1913 (ERDP); TR, Letters, 7.729. “For the first time,” Edith wrote TR’s sister Bamie, “He begins to wish his hand was on the helm.” (12 May 1913 [TRC].) TR’s attitude to the California-Japan crisis of 1913 is spelled out in TR, Letters, 7.720–22 and 727–31. The Wilson administration was itself sufficiently concerned about the Pacific threat to devote a cabinet debate to it on 16 May. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 301.

  36 Like David Livingstone The Victorian era’s saintly missionary converted only one African, who subsequently reverted to paganism. Tim Jeal, Livingstone (New York, 1973), 80–81.

  37 “go up the Paraguay” TR, Works, 6.3; TR, Letters, 7.741.

  38 his essay on faith See above, 154–57.

  39 There was a certain TR, Letters, 7.741; See also John Augustine Zahm, Through South America’s Southland: With an Account of the Roosevelt Scientific Expedition to South America (New York, 1916), 4–9; TR, Works, 6.4.

  40 Chapman suggested Frank Chapman to Henry Fairfield Osborn, 24 June 1913 (AMNH); National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 37.387–98, 40.320.

  41 Roosevelt reviewed TR to Frank Chapman, 30 July 1913 (AMNH); TR, Works, 6.ix–x, 5–6. Cherrie had given help to opponents of the Venezuelan dictator Cipriano Castro, immortalized by TR as “that unspeakably villainous little monkey.”

  42 he was recruited TR, Works, 6.5. Miller was twenty-six. TR offered to pay the traveling expenses of both naturalists, on condition that they would publish nothing competitive with his own memoir of the expedition. The museum agreed to provide scientific equipment and take care of the transportation of specimens. TR to Henry Fairfield Osborn, 20 July 1913 (AMNH).

  43 Anthony Fiala, a Zahm, Through South America’s Southland, 11; Candice Millard, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (New York, 2005), 33–34; TR to Lauro Müller, 14 Oct. 1913 (TRP); Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 296–97; TR to KR, 30 June 1913, ts. (TRC).

  44 graduated at last TR had attended ABR’s commencement in Andover o
n 13 June 1913.

  45 Two days later The chronology of TR’s movements from 12 July–22 Aug. 1913 in TR, Letters, 8.1481 is inaccurate. The correct sequence of night stops is July 12–14: El Tovar; 15: Phantom Ranch; 16–31: Kaibab Plateau; Aug. 1: House Rock Valley; 2–3: Lees Ferry; 4: Painted Desert; 5–6: Tuba; 7: camp; 8: Marsh Pass; 9: Kayenta; 10: Bubbling Spring Valley; 11: Navajo Mountain; 12: Rainbow Bridge, Utah; 13–14: camp; 15–16: Kayenta; 17–18: camp; 19–20: Walpi; 21: Ganado; 22: Gallup, N.M.

  46 Moonlit and mysterious The following account of TR’s vacation in Arizona is based on his articles “A Cougar Hunt on the Rim of the Grand Canyon,” “Across the Navajo Desert,” and “The Hopi Snake Dance,” The Outlook, 4, 11, and 18 Oct. 1913. They are cited as reprinted in TR, Works, 4. Supplementary details and chronology from Nicholas Roosevelt, TR, 110ff.