Theodore Roosevelt Abroad

by J. Lee Thompson

  Roosevelt invited Taft and his wife Nellie to spend the night before the inauguration at the White House to “save all the bother of moving in on Inauguration Day itself.” He also did not plan, as was the custom, to drive back to the White House after the ceremony. This had always struck TR as “a peculiarly senseless performance on the part of the man who had been President and was no longer.”84Though he made his general wishes very clear, Roosevelt took care not, unless asked, to give Taft specific instructions on policy, save in one area. On his last day as president, at the behest of an almost frantic Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, who feared that Congress would allow the Japanese to do to a divided U.S. fleet what they had to Russia’s, TR wrote to Taft: “One closing legacy. Under no circumstances divide the Battle Fleet between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans prior to the opening of the Panama Canal.”85

  Taft took the presidential oath on March 4, 1909, at a ceremony moved indoors on account of blizzard conditions. But even before he took office there were rumblings of discontent among TR’s friends in Washington about the developing state of affairs. Archie Butt, who stayed on as Taft’s military aide, was concerned with new president’s “amiability and doctrine of expediency.” To him the incoming regime looked a bit like the old days of McKinley and he noted that the Ohio school of politics bred “a peculiar genius” and corruption always flourished under it. The government seemed already to be drifting into the control of Roosevelt’s enemies. The old crowd, typified by rich Senators such as Aldrich, Wetmore and Depew, were already “licking their chops and looking forward to seven fat years after seven lean years just about to close.”86 The central problem Taft faced, in Captain Butt’s estimation, was that for those seven previous years he had been “living on the steam” of Roosevelt, who had furnished the “high pressure” behind Taft’s accomplishments. With TR out of the country, the president would have find his own fuel and “like a child, will have to learn to walk alone.” He thought Taft up to the task, but also that it would be “a readjustment all the same.”87

  The former president, who had decided to style himself in private life simply “Colonel” Roosevelt for his rank in the Spanish-American War, returned to Sagamore Hill for three weeks of rest and final preparations for the African expedition. Many thousands of farewell letters poured in. Among them was a note from the naturalist John Muir, who was taking their mutual friend John Burroughs on a tour of the West. He told Roosevelt that they had had a delightful time at the Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon and he looked forward to taking Burroughs through Yosemite, “recalling our glorious campaign of 1903.” To Muir, somehow the whole country seemed “lonesome to me since you left Washington & are so soon to sail for Africa. Heaven bless you dear friend & bring you safely back home.”88 Burroughs assured TR that he was “bound to bag big game wherever you hunt” and hoped that he would be “as successful in the wilds of Africa as you have been in the wilds of American politics & make ‘em all dance to the same lively tune.”89

  While her husband and Kermit saw to vaccinations, had their teeth “overhauled” for the trip, and practiced on the rif le range, Edith busied herself with preparations as well, packing nine extra pairs of spectacles, medicines and other essential items. Quentin and Archie were due home for Easter vacation, which gave her some solace. “If it were not for the children,” Edith confessed, she would not have the “nervous strength to live through these endless months of separation from Father.”90 Having no wish to face the throng of well-wishers at the Hoboken pier of their ship, the S. S. Hamburg, Edith said her private farewells to the voyagers from the piazza of Sagamore Hill on the morning of 23 March 1909. She tried mightily to be perfectly calm and self-possessed, but Kermit felt her heart was almost broken.91

  In private life, Mrs. Roosevelt told Butt she wanted her husband “to be the simplest American alive.” The funniest thing to her was that, while he also wished to live a simple life and promised to do so, the trouble was that he had really forgotten how. She tried to think of his year in Africa and her own planned trip to her sister’s house in Italy as having “the effect the forty years wandering had on the Jews.” At the end of that time they would enter their home at Oyster Bay “as gladly and as meekly as ever the children of Israel entered the Promised Land.”92 It was an enchanting dream, but alas not to be.

  Chapter 2

  The Great Adventure Begins

  It was wise of TR’s staid and reserved wife to say her farewells at Sagamore Hill, for the scene at the Hoboken pier on the morning of March 23, 1909 was frantic. Roosevelt, however, was in his element. He dove into the rowdy crowd of three thousand and spent two hours shaking five hundred or so hands. Well-wishers knocked off his trademark black felt slouch hat and grasped at the gilt buttons of the Colonel’s overcoat for souvenirs, while he called for the Rough Riders present to show themselves. He then navigated through the throng towards as many as he could make out. To add to the raucous atmosphere, a brass band of Italian immigrants alternated enthusiastic versions of the “Star Spangled Banner” and the Italian national anthem, in repayment for the aid Roosevelt had sent to Messina for the earthquake victims he would soon see in person. President Taft had Archie Butt hand deliver a farewell letter, a photograph, and a gift (that his aide had chosen for its usefulness), a small gold-mounted ruler that would be drawn out to a foot, or a third, or two-thirds, with a pencil at one end. On it was engraved, “Theodore Roosevelt from William Howard Taft, GoodBye—Good Luck.”1This was TR’s own favorite expression on seeing anyone off. He promised Butt that he would read the letter as soon as they got under way.

  At eleven Roosevelt’s ship, the S.S. Hamburg, festooned with bunting and signal flags, sounded its final whistle and the tugs nudged it on its way down the Hudson, accompanied by a noisy flotilla of a hundred other vessels crammed to the gills with friends and sightseers. The owners of the German Hamburg-Amerika liner had offered TR free passage but he insisted on paying at least a nominal fare. The line was chosen in part because it offered lower rates than its British Cunard and White Star competitors, but it was also the only one that would carry ammunition, stowed in several of the venture’s two hundred six by four foot luggage cases below decks.

  As they departed Roosevelt, against all regulations, perched on the ship’s bridge, waving his hat in farewell, his glasses glinting in the sunshine. Passing through the narrows, the Hamburg received a twenty-one-gun salute from Fort Hamilton. TR occupied Cabin 1, the former “Emperor William Suite,” four rooms on the starboard side of the promenade deck the steamship line redecorated in red and green damask for the new occupant, with pictures of Lincoln and Washington on the walls in place of the Kaiser. Coincidentally, four years before, the Hamburg had taken Wilhelm to Tangier, where his landing began the Moroccan crisis that TR had taken a hand in settling.

  Once at sea, Roosevelt had time to read the president’s letter. After the salutation, “My Dear Theodore,” Taft confessed, “if I followed my impulse I should say “My Dear Mr. President,” as he could not overcome the habit. Further, when he was so addressed, he turned “to see whether or not you are at my elbow.” He wished his friend “as great pleasure and as much usefulness as possible in the trip you are about to undertake.”

  Turning to politics, Taft told TR that there had already been many questions he would have liked to consult him on, but he had “forborne to interrupt your well-earned quiet.” The Old Guard Republican congressional chiefs, Senator Nelson Aldrich and Speaker Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon, he reported, had promised to “stand by the party platform and follow my lead.” Roosevelt had been able to hold his own against the powerful Cannon and Aldrich, who feared him and his popularity. Unfortunately, they did not hold the more amiable, and pliable, Taft in the same regard.

  The platform had called for a “revision” of the tariff, which had been taken up by a special session of congress. At least in the eyes of the progressive wing, the Republican Party was pledged to lower tariff rates in the general in
terest. Taft warned Roosevelt that when he returned he would no doubt “find me very much under suspicion by our friends in the West” enraged by the hides and other raw materials put on the free list for the benefit of Eastern manufacturers at the expense of farmers and cattlemen. The previous December, many of these progressives had joined with Democrats in a failed attempt to limit “Uncle Joe’s” power as speaker. Taft did not support them, explaining to Roosevelt that he was “not disposed to countenance an insurrection of thirty men against 180 outside the caucus.” Since he did not have TR’s prestige or popular support, Taft did not want to make a “capital error” at the beginning of his administration by alienating the good will of Cannon and those whose votes he would need to get legislation passed—a course Roosevelt himself had advised Taft to follow.

  Also lacking the former president’s “facility for educating the public” through the press, Taft feared a large part of the populous would feel as though he had “fallen away from your ideals”; but told TR, “you know me better.” He assured his friend that he did “nothing in my work in the Executive Office without considering what you would do under similar circumstances.” Taft could never forget that the power that he now exercised was a “voluntary transfer from you to me” and that he was under obligation “to see to it that your judgment in selecting me as you r succe ssor . . . sha l l be v ind ic ated.”2 TR, who had made no serious attempt as president either to revise the tariff, or limit the powers of Cannon, replied to this plaintive cry that day with a brief cable: “Am deeply touched by your gift and even more by your letter. Greatly appreciate it. Everything will surely turn out right, old man.”3

  Roosevelt was not a good sailor and suffered from violent seasickness. Consequently, despite perfect weather and smooth seas, he spent much of the first few days aboard ship reading in his suite’s sitting room. This inactivity only made him more “homesick” for his wife. An ocean voyage, he wrote to his sister Anna, was “always irksome” but the only thing to do was enjoy it as much as possible, which was “easy enough in the present instance.” The people on the ship were mainly Americans and, once he had gained his sea legs, TR found many connections of common friends.4

  Also aboard were the three Smithsonian naturalists who would do the big game taxidermy and the trapping and shooting of the smaller fauna and flora that would make up the vast majority of the collection sent back to the National Museum. The lesser specimens were the responsibility of Professor J. Alden Loring, an expert on small animals, and Major Edgar Mearns, who was not only a retired Army Surgeon as already noted, but also a bird expert who had acquired his zoological experience on duty in the Philippines and while attached to the Mexican Boundary Commission. The other naturalist, Dr. Edmund Heller, was responsible for preserving the big game Theodore and Kermit shot. He had trained in Alaska and the Galapagos Islands and had already made two trips to Africa as a naturalist for the Field Museum in Chicago. After Heller agreed to join the venture, TR wrote him at his post at the University of California, Berkeley, that he was “delighted you can come.” There was not “a man in America” he was “more anxious to have with me.”5

  A week into the voyage they reached the Portuguese Azores, which the Colonel found “very interesting; so quaint and old-world.” Kermit went ashore at Horta for a “snoop” and souvenir shopping while the three naturalists began shooting birds and gathering plants for the collection. On a second island, Punta Delgada, they visited Sao Miguel, a picturesque town of 25,000, where the streets, sidewalks, and houses were made of solid rock, painted white or pink. Major Mearns recorded that Roosevelt was in “fine fettle’ and Kermit was “the real stuff.” Leaving the island group they sailed by a snow-capped mountain that Mearns thought as beautiful as Fujiyama.6

  At the Azores a gossip from the Hamburg spread the tale that Roosevelt had been attacked by a deranged man from steerage. This account soon made its way into the papers in New York to the horror of Edith, who for the last seven years had dreaded the assassination of her husband. A few days later, at scenic Gibraltar, Roosevelt told reporters that there had been no attack, but that a man, muttering in Italian, had approached him only to be quickly taken in charge by the crew. He had later gone down to steerage and shaken the hands of the Italian passengers to assure them there were no hard feelings. TR described Gibraltar’s British governor, general Sir Frederick ForestierWalker, as looking “as if he had walked out of Kipling.” The general’s “nice Kipling-like aides,” showed the Colonel what there was to see and a pleasant niece gave him tea at the Governor’s Palace.7This was a first example of the extraordinary courtesy Roosevelt was shown throughout the British Empire, in which he spent most of the next year.

  The expedition members changed ship for British East Africa at Naples, where TR and Kermit were greeted by Emily Carow, Edith’s maiden sister who lived in Italy, and by Lloyd Griscom, the U.S. ambassador. After a long and busy day ashore, amidst crowds of well wishers reminiscent of Hoboken, the travelers boarded the Admiral, another very comfortable German liner bound for Mombasa via the Suez Canal, the Egyptian lifeline to Britain’s Empire. TR reported to his sister Corinne that among the “polyglot crowd aboard” there were “plenty of people with whom it is really pleasant to talk in English or in those variants of volapuk which with me pass for French or German.”8 Kermit made friends with all the young people who could speak English and some older than him as well. He had brought his mandolin along and organized a ship’s musical, during the chorus of which his father drifted off to sleep.

  To Roosevelt’s delight Frederick Selous, bound for a safari of his own, was able to join him on this leg of the voyage. Along the way the two men held forth on deck chairs trading stories for the amusement of all and sundry. Selous shared the sort of hunting tales that had so impressed Roosevelt at the White House, while the Colonel spun stories of Cuba, but mainly of “his old pals in the West—John Willis, and Seth Bullock and ‘Cold Turkey’ and ‘Hell Roaring Bill Jones’ and the ‘lunatic what hadn’t his right senses’—not forgetting the Goblin Bear and the boom town reduced to desolation because ‘hell-and-twenty Flying A cowpunchers had cut the court-house up into pants’ ”9 All “two-gun” tales he would tell again to the delight of royals across Europe.

  Another traveler on the Admiral was Francis Warrington Dawson, the United Press wire service chief at Paris and its European correspondent. He appeared at Naples with a letter of introduction from TR’s friend Henry White and had other connections with Roosevelt’s family.10 Dawson made himself useful by helping the Colonel to repudiate a bogus and insulting interview published in the French press. The offending paper, Le Journal, consequently was denied serialization rights for TR’s safari articles. This incident, and the false report of the attack on the Hamburg, convinced Roosevelt that it might be useful to head off such episodes in the future by filling the news vacuum with authorized bulletins. For this he enlisted Dawson and Robert W. Foran, an ex-Captain in the East African constabulary based in Nairobi, who represented the Associated Press Syndicate.

  En route to Mombasa the Admiral made several stops, the first a sympathy call at earthquake and tidal wave ravaged Messina in Sicily, where 100,000 had died the previous December. At the time TR had immediately committed $500,000 in United States aid, and personally donated $500 to the Red Cross relief effort. He also diverted American supply ships from the Great White Fleet then at Suez to join the relief effort. Two American vessels and their crews were still on duty at Messina when Roosevelt arrived at the heart-breaking scene, which he reported to his sister Anna, was “terrible beyond description.” However, he went on that it was “enough to make one glow with pride to see how our little group of officers and men from the Navy were doing their work.” They were so “cheerful, ready and absolutely efficient” and, in his estimation, by building hundreds of wooden huts for the survivors and in other relief efforts had “literally done more than the Italians themselves, or than all the other Europeans combined.”11TR all
owed Dawson to send off a dispatch to this effect for the press.

  Back at Sagamore Hill, Edith and Ethel already missed the travelers dreadfully. Mrs. Roosevelt consoled herself with food, gaining fifteen pounds in the first two weeks of her husband’s absence. She confessed to Alice that the “prospect of not seeing Father till next March is unsupportable.” Ethel wrote to her brother that it was “horrid not having you and father with us on Easter.” Her depression had not been helped at church where the sermon dwelt on mankind’s having “gone to the bow-wows.”12 Meanwhile, at Port Said in Egypt, Roosevelt was received by the British and French canal officials, and was given a copy of Dumas’s Louves de Machecoul to add to the “Pigskin Library” by the brother of his friend Ambassador Jusserand. Specimen collecting continued. Referring to the African trip they had taken as children thirty-eight year before, TR told Corinne that bird skins from Suez were “drying in my room at the moment, just as if we were once more on the Nile.”13 Another hunt was carried out at Aden en route so that by the time they reached Mombasa they already had 102 “nicely prepared” birds of three species and many shells and plants.14