Colonel Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  5 “the cause of death” Speculative report on TR’s final illness, compiled by Drs. Paul and Andrew Marks, 19 Jan. 2010 (AC). The authors of this document are, respectively, president emeritus of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and cardiologist/professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

  6 a broken heart John H. Richards quoted in New York Evening Post, 6 Jan. 1919; ERD to KR, 6 Jan. 1919 (ERDP). “Mother and I felt that part of his illness was due to his grief for Quentin—It took the fight from him … must have been his heart.”

  Biographical Note: Drs. Marks and Marks comment further, in a review of the medical narrative provided them by the author, as follows: “One can speculate that in the 1870s, when [TR] was ‘advised by Harvard doctors on graduation to lead sedentary scholarly life because of heart weakness,’ that the examining physician may have heard a heart murmur. The heart murmur could have been secondary to early childhood rheumatic heart disease or a congenital heart valve abnormality.” However, “his rigorous [subsequent] life suggests that if he did have a heart murmur it did not significantly impair cardiac function.” TR’s recurrent attacks of “Cuban fever” after 1898 were consistent with malaria. “The parasite can reside in the liver for years—with bouts of septicemia recurring and causing these symptoms.” His frequent “acute joint pains” probably were attacks of gout. Given his increasing weight, after his 50th birthday, joint symptoms could also reflect degenerative osteoarthritis, particularly of the hip, knee, and ankle joints.” Returning to the question of TR’s coronary vulnerability, the doctors concede some likelihood of endocarditis. “But if he had endocarditis, possibly related to his leg infection seeding a damaged heart, his terminal course would have been marked by high fevers and evidence of infectious, embolic showers which would have been noticed by his physicians, i.e. hemorrhages, speech or motor deficiencies etc.… Further, embolism is unlikely since Faller recorded [six hours before TR’s death] ‘normal heart and pulse’—and this is very unlikely associated with a pulmonary embolus.” Allowing that the undisclosed amount of morphine administered to the patient four hours before his death may have caused the respiratory depression noticed by James Amos, the doctors nevertheless conclude that TR’s “recurrent chest pain/discomfort, obesity, and high blood pressure all make coronary artery disease likely,” leading to their speculative diagnosis of “myocardial infarction” as the prime cause of death.

  For a conflicting opinion, stating that TR’s final illness was “most compatible with polyarticular gout,” but also with “reactive arthritis [and/or] rheumatic fever,” see Robert S. Pinals, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Inflammatory Rheumatism” Journal of Clinical Rheumatology, 14.1 (Feb. 2008).

  The author has deposited a copy of his narrative of TR’s recorded medical problems in TRC.

  7 it spread around the world Arthur Krock of The New York Times told Henry Pringle that he had watched President Wilson receiving cabled news of TR’s death en route to Modena, Italy. According to Krock, who was looking through a window of the presidential car, WW’s face registered “transcendent triumph.” Pringle treated this anecdote, which Krock retailed to him eleven years later, seriously in his 1931 biography of TR (602). It is true that WW received the news while traveling, but his reaction (so far as Krock could discern it through plate glass) can only be guessed at.

  8 headed again for the presidency “Among party leaders today it was conceded that if Colonel Roosevelt had lived, he undoubtedly would have had the nomination for the presidency.” The New York Times, 7 Jan. 1919.

  9 took refuge in metaphor Henry A. Beers, Four Americans: Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman (New Haven, Conn., 1919), 8; “Theodore Roosevelt in Memoriam,” Natural History, Jan. 1919; William Dudley Foulke, A Hoosier Autobiography (New York, 1922), 221; New York Evening Post, 6 Jan. 1919; Slayden, Washington Wife, 354; Garland, My Friendly Contemporaries, 214; Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 435.

  10 Archibald Roosevelt announced The New York Times, 7, 8 Jan. 1919.

  11 “It was my father’s” Ibid.

  12 In a further Ibid.

  13 ROOSEVELT DEAD A large fragile scrapbook album in TRC contains a collection of these headlines.

  14 Even so, he Undated news clip in “Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB).

  15 “Mother, the adamantine” TR, Letters, 8.1266.

  16 “Gone … gone” George Syran to Mr. and Mrs. Osbourne, 11 Jan. 1919.

  17 “You did not” Ibid.

  18 “She had a” Ibid. [sic]. During the afternoon of 6 Jan., the sculptor James Earle Fraser took a plaster cast of TR’s face. The macabre result may be seen in Lorant, Life and Times of TR, 627. According to Hamlin Garland, some books TR had been reading were still resting on the counterpane. Roosevelt House Memorial Bulletin, 2.2 (Fall 1923).

  19 A perpetual drone The New York Times, 7 Jan. 1919; Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 434; undated news clip in “Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB). The air vigil was ordered by General William L. Kenly, director of military aeronautics.

  20 The aerial watch The New York Times, 9 Jan. 1919.

  21 The snow tapered off Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of TR’s funeral is based on ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP), and EBR to “mother,” 8 Jan. 1919 (TRJP), supplemented by reports in The New York Times, New York Evening Post, New York World, Oakland Tribune, Waterloo (Iowa) Evening Courier (AP), Greenville (Pa.) Evening Record (UP), 8 and 9 Jan. 1919, and clippings and photographs in the “Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB).

  22 “He looked” ERD to Richard Derby, 8 Jan. 1919 (ERDP).

  23 Roosevelt’s disdain for pompe See 67.

  24 He noticed a distraught EBR to “mother,” 8 Jan. 1919 (TRJP).

  25 When through fiery trials Copied by John J. Leary (JJL).

  26 “Theodore,” he said Abbott, Impressions of TR, 313; New York World, 9 Jan. 1919.

  27 A single pull John J. Leary funeral notes (JJL).

  28 As the engraved words TR’s coffin was lowered into the ground by a compressed-air device at 1:47 P.M. New York World, 9 Jan. 1919.

  29 Lieutenant Otto Raphael “Roosevelt Night,” Middlesex Club proceedings, Boston, 27 Oct. 1921, 4–5 (TRB). For TR’s relationship with Raphael, see TR, An Autobiography, chap. 6.

  30 One of the last Albert Cheney interview, 1920, TRB. Youngs Cemetery still functions. TR’s grave is maintained by the town of Oyster Bay.

  31 “The man was” Carl Bode, ed., The New Mencken Letters (New York, 1997), 96.

  32 Among the superlatives Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 380; The New York Times, 7 Jan. 1919; White, Autobiography, 552.

  33 Woodrow Wilson’s sentiments The New York Times, 8 Jan. 1919.

  34 Something like a superman New York Evening Post, 6 Jan. 1919.

  35 He was hailed “Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB); The New York Times, 8 Jan. 1919; Aimaro Sato, former Japanese ambassador to the United States and delegate to the Russo-Japanese peace conference at Portsmouth, N.H., in 1905, quoted in The New York Times, 10 Jan. 1919; Jules Jusserand address at Waldorf-Astoria, New York, 27 Oct. 1919, in Journal of American History, 13.3 (Fall 1919). Edith Wharton, recalling her meetings with TR in 1933, used the same simile as Jusserand: “Each of these encounters glows in me like a tiny morsel of radium.” Wharton, A Backward Glance, 317.

  36 His survey of New York Tribune and The New York Times, 10 Feb. 1919. The quotation is from part 2 of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

  37 “Mr. Roosevelt’s great” The Nation, 109.2836 (8 Nov. 1919).

  38 Mr. Roosevelt has attained Ibid.

  39 “Teddy” the lovable When Walter Lippmann was the senior statesman of American political journalism, he looked back on the many presidents he had known, and wrote that TR was the only one who could be described as “lovable.” Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston, 1980, New Brunswick, N.J
. 1999), 64.

  40 the book of all his books Joseph Bucklin Bishop, ed., Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children (New York, 1919). Largely as a result of this book, TR’s royalties increased from $3,150 in 1919 to $31,930. A modern reissue, illustrated and edited by Joan Paterson Kerr, is A Bully Father (New York, 1995).

  41 Roosevelt’s mammoth 1911 letter Bishop, TR, 2.184–259; TR, Letters, 7.348–99. Even Stuart Sherman allowed, in a review of Bishop’s biography, that the Trevelyan letter was “a masterpiece … probably one of the longest epistles in the world.” The Nation, 112.2896 (5 Jan. 1921).

  42 “The man was” William Allen White, Masks in a Pageant (New York, 1928), 326. The luxury Memorial Edition of TR’s Works was limited to 1,500 copies, 500 “for presentation” and 1,000 for sale. Hagedorn also published, in 1926, a cheaper National Edition, differently distributed among 20 volumes. For a summary of the contents of the Memorial Edition, see Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of TR, 345.

  Personal Note: The author of this biography hereby expresses gratitude to the memory of John Gray Peatman, who in 1980 offered him a set of the Memorial Edition, “at the same price I paid for it in 1924—ten dollars a volume.”

  43 Four female trumpeters John R. Lancos, “Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace: Study in Americanism,” in Naylor et al., TR, 26ff.; Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 18. “Roosevelt House” is now Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site.

  44 In 1925, Hagedorn Nan Netherton, “Delicate Beauty and Burly Majesty: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt Island,” National Park Service draft ts., 1980, 76–77. Copy in AC. Pope’s column of spray was intended to evoke TR’s geyser-like energy. Roosevelt Memorial Association, Plan and Design for the Roosevelt Memorial in the City of Washington (New York, 1925).

  45 “fifth cousin by blood” See 416.

  46 “greatest man I ever knew” James L. Golden, “FDR’s Use of the Symbol of TR in the Formation of His Political Persona and Philosophy,” in Naylor et al., TR, 577.

  47 Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. The principal source for the following paragraphs is Charles W. Snyder, “An American Original: Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.” in Naylor et al., TR, 95–106. The most comprehensive family history of the Roosevelts after TR’s death is Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 441–516.

  48 Cousin Eleanor made things Eleanor Roosevelt’s campaign behavior sparked decades of hatred between the Oyster Bay (Republican) and Hyde Park (Democratic) branches of the Roosevelt family.

  49 It was a question TR.Jr. could never bring himself to acknowledge that TR, reelected in 1912, would have been as centralized an authoritarian as FDR.

  50 “one of the bravest” Patton quoted in Naylor et al., TR, 103. After World War II, a sentimental desire for juxtaposition led the Roosevelt family to override TR’s and EKR’s wishes (see 546) and transfer QR’s remains to the same cemetery. The bones of the two brothers now lie side by side.

  51 nothing left to stand on See 554.

  52 War in the Garden of Eden New York, 1919.

  53 His nomadic nature Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 492–507.

  54 Archie went to work See David M. Esposito, “Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt, 1894–1979,” in Naylor et al., TR, 107ff.

  55 a selection of Archibald Roosevelt, ed., Theodore Roosevelt on Race, Riots, Reds, Crime (Metairie, La., 1968).

  56 “Beatniks” Esposito in Naylor et al., TR, 115.

  57 “I’m going to” Quoted by Archibald Roosevelt, Jr., interview with author, 3 Oct. 1981.

  58 bellow the word “Americanism” Author’s personal recollection.

  59 Flora Whitney died Biddle, The Whitney Women, 45–68 and passim. Gertude Vanderbilt Whitney’s statue of Flora is reproduced in Flora, 17.

  60 “Hell, yes” Cordery, Alice, 314. For full details of this episode in ARL’s life, see ibid., chap. 15.

  61 lifelong passion for reading See New York Society Library, The President’s Wife and the Librarian: Letters at an Exhibition (New York, 2009).

  62 Perhaps the earliest Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 1–2; Stefan Lorant, “The Boy in the Window,” American Heritage, 6.4 (June 1955).

  63 filled a lacuna For other lacunae in TR, Works, see Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of TR, 345.

  64 Theodore Roosevelt Collection This archive, which the RMA began to amass in New York immediately after TR’s death, temporarily transformed his birthplace into the nation’s first presidential library. Removed to Harvard University’s Widener and Houghton libraries and endowed with a curator in 1953, it now (2010) totals 56,000 manuscript, print, and visual items.

  65 Whatever the Colonel’s Harbaugh, TR (1961), 521–22.

  66 On 22 November 1963 John Robert Greene, “Presidential Co-option of the image of TR,” in Naylor et al., TR, 601–2.

  67 Richard Nixon invoked Ibid., 603.

  68 Three decades later Notable post-centennial books about TR unmentioned in this Epilogue are George Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York, 1958); Raymond A. Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan (Seattle, 1966); Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge, La., 1970); John Allen Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, N.Y., 1978); Frederick W. Marks III, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (Lincoln, Neb., 1979); Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge, La., 1980); John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (Urbana, Ill., 1985); Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence, Kan., 1991); John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station, Tex., 1992); Natalie Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American (Interlaken, N.Y., 1992); Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York, 2001); Henry J. Hendrix, Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century (Annapolis, Md., 2009).

  69 Three recent Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York, 2002); Millard, The River of Doubt (2005); O’Toole, When Trumpets Call (2005).

  70 “He was a fulfiller” Manuscript in TRC.

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  Unless otherwise credited, all images are from the Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

  Frontispiece Theodore Roosevelt by George Moffett, 1914.

  p.1 The Roosevelt Africa Expedition, 1909–1910.

  p.2 Kermit Roosevelt in 1909.

  p.3 TR’s safari gets under way, May 1910.

  p.4 TR records his kills on 5 and 6 October 1909.

  p.5 Edith Kermit Roosevelt in 1909. Library of Congress.

  i1.1 TR arrives in Khartoum, 14 March 1910. Library of Congress.

  i2.1 Gifford Pinchot. Library of Congress.

  i2.2 Germany around the time of TR’s visit. Library of Congress.

  i2.3 Emperor Wilhelm II, ca. 1910. Library of Congress.

  i2.4 Wilhelm II and TR at Döberitz. Library of Congress.

  i3.1 Alice Roosevelt Longworth, ca. 1910. Chicago Historical Society.

  i3.2 TR marches in the funeral procession of Edward VII, 20 May 1910.

  i4.1 Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., at the time of his engagement.

  i4.2 Joseph Youngwitz presents a bouquet to TR, 18 June 1910.

  i4.3 Governor Charles Evans Hughes. Library of Congress.

  i4.4 Taft’s summer White House in Beverly, Massachusetts.

  i5.1 William Barnes, Jr. Library of Congress.

  i5.2 TR reading, fall 1910.

  i6.1 The North Room of Sagamore Hill, ca. 1911. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

  i6.2 President William Howard Taft. Library of Congress.

  i6.3 Theodore Roosevelt Dam, Arizona. Library of Congress.

  i7.1 Ethel Roosevelt, ca. 1911. Library of Congress.

  i10.1 Senator Elihu Root. Library of Cong
ress.

  i11.1 TR, third-party candidate (cartoon), 1912.

  i11.2 TR addresses the Progressive National Convention, 6 August 1912. Library of Congress.

  i12.1 TR’s perforated speech manuscript, 14 October 1914.

  i12.2 John Schrank under arrest after attempting to kill TR.

  i13.1 The manuscript of TR’s autobiography, 1913.

  i13.2 TR gives Ethel away in marriage, 4 April 1913.

  i14.1 Natalie Curtis in Indian dress. Courtesy NatalieCurtis.org.

  i15.1 Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon. Acervo do Museu do Indio/FUNAI, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

  i15.2 The Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition, 1914.

  i15.3 Expedition members at dinner.

  i15.4 TR writing, surrounded by Nhambiquaras. American Museum of Natural History.