Part 1

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MY BROTHER THEODORE ROOSEVELT

MY BROTHER THEODORE ROOSEVELT

by

CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON

With Illustrations

New York Charles Scribner’s Sons 1921

Copyright, 1921, by Charles Scribner’s Sons

Published September, 1921

The Scribner Press

WITH TENDER AFFECTION I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY SISTER

ANNA ROOSEVELT COWLES

WHOSE UNSELFISH DEVOTION TO HER BROTHER THEODORE ROOSEVELT NEVER WAVERED THROUGH HIS WHOLE LIFE, AND FOR WHOM HE HAD FROM CHILDHOOD A DEEP AND UNSWERVING LOVE AND ADMIRATION

PREFACE

This Preface I write to my fellow countrymen as I give into their hands these intimate reminiscences of my brother, Theodore Roosevelt.

A year and a half ago I was invited by the City History Club of New York to make an address about my brother on Washington’s Birthday. Upon being asked what I would call my speech, I replied that as George Washington was the “Father of his country,” as Abraham Lincoln was the “Saviour of his country,” so Theodore Roosevelt was the “Brother of his country,” and that, therefore, the subject of my speech would be “The Brother of His Country.”

In the same way, I feel that in giving to the public these almost confidential personal recollections, I do so because of the attitude of that very public toward Theodore Roosevelt. There is no sacrilege in sharing such memories with the people who have loved him, and whom he loved so well.

This book is not a biography, it is not a political history of the times, although I have been most careful in the effort to record facts accurately, and carefully to search my memory before relating conversations or experiences; it is, I hope, a clear picture, drawn at close hand by one who, because of her relationship to him and her intercourse with him, knew his loyalty and tenderness of heart in a rare and satisfying way, and had unusual opportunity of comprehending the point of view, and therefore perhaps of clarifying the point of view, of one of the great Americans of the day.

As I have reread his letters to me, as I have dwelt upon our long and devoted friendship--for we were even more friends than brother and sister--his character stands out to me more strongly than ever before as that of “The Great Sharer.” He shared all that he had--his worldly goods, his strong mentality, his wide sympathy, his joyous fun, and his tender comprehension--with all those with whom he came in contact, and especially with those closest and dearest to him--the members of his own family and his sisters.

In the spirit of confidence that my frankness will not be misunderstood, I place a sister’s interpretation of a world-wide personality in the hands of my fellow Americans.

CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON.

September, 1921.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE NURSERY AND ITS DEITIES 1

II. GREEN FIELDS AND FOREIGN FARING 34

III. THE DRESDEN LITERARY AMERICAN CLUB 69

IV. COLLEGE CHUMS AND NEW-FOUND LEADERSHIP 94

V. THE YOUNG REFORMER 116

VI. THE ELKHORN RANCH AND NEAR-ROUGHING IT IN YELLOWSTONE PARK 135

VII. TWO RECREANT NEW YORK POLICEMEN 155

VIII. COWBOY AND CLUBMAN 164

IX. THE ROUGH RIDER STORMS THE CAPITOL AT ALBANY 181

X. HOW THE PATH LED TO THE WHITE HOUSE 194

XI. HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 206

XII. HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE (_Continued_) 236

XIII. WALL STREET HOPES EVERY LION WILL DO ITS DUTY 254

XIV. THE GREAT DENIAL 264

XV. WHISPERINGS OF WAR 276

XVI. “DO IT NOW” 303

XVII. WAR 323

XVIII. “THE QUIET QUITTING” 359

ILLUSTRATIONS

Theodore Roosevelt with his little granddaughter, Edith Roosevelt Derby, 1918 _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., aged thirty, 1862 8

Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, twenty-two years old, about 1856 8

Theodore Roosevelt, about eighteen months old, 1860 18

Theodore Roosevelt, about four years old, 1862 18

Elliott Roosevelt, aged five and a half years, about 1865 32

Corinne Roosevelt, about four years old, 1865 32

Theodore Roosevelt, aged seven, 1865 32

Corinne Roosevelt, 1869, at seven and a half years 46

Theodore Roosevelt at ten years of age 46

Anna Roosevelt at the age of fifteen when she spoke of herself as one of the “three older ones” 46

The Dresden Literary American Club--Motto, “W. A. N. A.” (“We Are No Asses”) 72

Theodore Roosevelt, Oyster Bay, September 21, 1875 92

Theodore Roosevelt, December, 1876, aged eighteen 92

Portrait taken in Chicago, July, 1880, on the way to the hunting trip of that season 114

We had that lovely dinner on the portico at the back of the White House looking toward the Washington Monument 230

A review of New York’s drafted men before going into training in September, 1917 332

MY BROTHER

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THE STAR

EPIPHANY, 1919

Great soul, to all brave souls akin, High bearer of the torch of truth, Have you not gone to marshal in Those eager hosts of youth?

Flung outward on the battle’s tide, They met in regions dim and far; And you, in whom youth never died, Shall lead them, as a star.

--MARION COUTHOUY SMITH.

MY BROTHER THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I

THE NURSERY AND ITS DEITIES

The first recollections of a child are dim and hazy, and so the nursery at 28 East 20th Street, in New York City, does not stand out as clearly to me as I wish it did--but the personality of my brother overshadowed the room, as his personality all through life dominated his environment.

I suppose I must have been about four, and he about seven, when my first memory takes definite form. My older sister, Anna, though only four years older than my brother Theodore, was always mysteriously classed with the “grown people,” and the “nursery” consisted of my brother Theodore, my brother Elliott, a year and a half younger than Theodore, and myself, still a year and a half younger than Elliott.

In those days we were “Teedie,” “Ellie,” and “Conie,” and we had the most lovely mother, the most manly, able, and delightful father, and the most charming aunt, Anna Bulloch, the sister of my Southern mother, with whom children were ever blessed.

Theodore Roosevelt, whose name later became the synonym of virile health and vigor, was a fragile, patient sufferer in those early days of the nursery in 20th Street. I can see him now struggling with the effort to breathe--for his enemy was that terrible trouble, asthma--but always ready to give the turbulent “little ones” the drink of water, book, or plaything which they vociferously demanded, or equally ready to weave for us long stories of animal life--stories closely resembling the jungle stories of Kipling--for Mowgli had his precursor in the brain of the little boy of seven or eight, whose knowledge of natural history even at that early age was strangely accurate, and whose imagination gave to the creatures of forest and field impersonations as vivid as those which Rudyard Kipling has made immortal for all time.

We used to sit, Elliott and I, on two little chairs, near the higher chair which was his, and drink in these tales of endless variety, and which always were “to be continued in our next”--a serial story which never flagged in interest for us, though sometimes it continued from week to week, or even from month to month.

It was in the nursery that he wrote, at the age of seven, the famous essay on “The Foregoing Ant.” He had read in Wood’s “Natural History” many descriptions of various species of ant, and in one instance on turning the page the author continued: “The foregoing ant has such and such characteristics.” The young naturalist, thinking that this particular ant was unique, and being specially interested in its forthgoing character, decided to write a thesis on “The Foregoing Ant,” to the reading of which essay he called in conclave “the grown people.” One can well imagine the tender amusement over the little author, an amusement, however, which those wise “grown people” of 28 East 20th Street never let degenerate into ridicule.

No memories of my brother could be accurate without an analysis of the personalities who formed so big a part of our environment in childhood, and I feel that my father, the first Theodore Roosevelt, has never been adequately described.

He was the son of Cornelius Van Shaack and Margaret Barnhill Roosevelt, whose old home on the corner of 14th Street and Broadway was long a landmark in New York City. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was a typical merchant of his day, fine and true and loyal, but ultraconservative in many ways; and his lovely wife, to whom he addressed, later, such exquisite poems that I have always felt that they should have been given more than private circulation, was a Pennsylvanian of Quaker blood.

The first Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest of five sons, and I remember my mother used to tell me how friends of her mother-in-law once told her that Mrs. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was always spoken of as “that lovely Mrs. Roosevelt” with those “_five horrid boys_.”

As far as I can see, the unpleasant adjective “horrid” was only adaptable to the five little boys from the usual standpoint of boyish mischief, untidiness, and general youthful irrepressibleness.

The youngest, my father, Theodore Roosevelt, often told us himself how he deplored the fate of being the “fifth wheel to the coach,” and of how many a mortification he had to endure by wearing clothes cut down from the different shapes of his older brothers, and much depleted shoes about which, once, on overhearing his mother say, “These were Robert’s, but will be a good change for Theodore,” he protested vigorously, crying out that he was “tired of changes.”

As the first Theodore grew older he developed into one of the most enchanting characters with whom I, personally, have ever come in contact; sunny, gay, dominant, unselfish, forceful, and versatile, he yet had the extraordinary power of being a focussed individual, although an “all-round” man. Nothing is as difficult as to achieve results in this world if one is filled full of great tolerance and the milk of human kindness. The person who achieves must generally be a one-ideaed individual, concentrated entirely on that one idea, and ruthless in his aspect toward other men and other ideas.

My father, in his brief life of forty-six years, achieved almost everything he undertook, and he undertook many things, but, although able to give the concentration which is necessary to achievement, he had the power of interesting himself in many things outside of his own special interests, and by the most delicate and comprehending sympathy made himself a factor in the lives of any number of other human beings.

My brother’s great love for his humankind was a direct inheritance from the man who was one of the founders in his city of nearly every patriotic, humanitarian, and educational endeavor. I think, perhaps, the combination of the stern old Dutch blood with the Irish blood, of which my brother always boasted, made my father what he was--unswerving in duty, impeccable in honesty and uprightness, and yet responsive to the joy of life to such an extent that he would dance all night, and drive his “four-in-hand” coach so fast that the old tradition was “that his grooms frequently fell out at the corners”!

I remember that he always gave up one day of every week (and he was a very busy merchant and then banker) to the personal visiting of the poor in their homes. He was not satisfied with doing active work on many organizations, although he did the most extraordinary amount of active organization work, being one of the founders of the Children’s Aid Society, of the State Aid Society, of the Sanitary Commission and Allotment Commission in the time of the Civil War, and of the Orthopædic Hospital, not to mention the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Art--but he felt that even more than this organized effort must be the effort to get close to the hearts and homes of those who were less fortunately situated than he.

My older sister suffered from spinal trouble, and my father was determined to leave no stone unturned to make her body fit for life’s joys and life’s labors, and it was because of his efforts to give his little girl health--successful efforts--that in co-operation with his friends Howard Potter and James M. Brown and several others he started the great work of the New York Orthopædic Hospital, having become imbued with belief in the methods of a young doctor, Charles Fayette Taylor. Nobody at that time believed in treating such diseases in quite the way in which modern orthopædy treats them now, but my father, like his son, had the vision of things to be, and was a leader in his way, as was my brother in his.

He could not at first influence sufficient people to start the building of a hospital, and he decided that if the New York public could only _see_ what the new instruments would do for the stricken children, that it could be aroused to assist the enterprise.

And so, one beautiful spring afternoon, my mother gave what was supposed to be a purely social reception at our second home, at 6 West 57th Street, and my father saw to it that the little sufferers in whom he was interested were brought from their poverty-stricken homes to ours and laid upon our dining-room table, with the steel appliances which could help them back to normal limbs on their backs and legs, thus ready to visualize to New York citizens how these stricken little people might be cured. He placed me by the table where the children lay, and explained to me how I could show the appliances, and what they were supposed to achieve; and I can still hear the voice of the first Mrs. John Jacob Astor, as she leaned over one fragile-looking child and, turning to my father, said: “Theodore, you are right; these children must be restored and made into active citizens again, and I for one will help you in your work.”

That very day enough money was donated to start the first Orthopædic Hospital, in East 59th Street. Many business friends of my father used to tell me that they feared his sudden visits when, with a certain expression in his eyes, he would approach them, for then before he could say anything at all they would feel obliged to take out their pocketbooks and ask: “How much this time, Theodore?”

One of his most devoted interests was the newsboys’ lodging-house in West 18th Street, and later in 35th Street, under the auspices of the Children’s Aid Society. Every Sunday evening of his life he went to that lodging-house, after our early hospitable Sunday supper, to which many a forlorn relation or stranded stranger in New York was always invited, and there he would talk to the boys, giving them just such ideas of patriotism, good citizenship, and manly morality as were the themes of his son in later years.

The foundational scheme of the Children’s Aid Society was, and is, to place little city waifs in country homes, and thus give them the chance of health and individual care, and a very dramatic incident occurred many years after my father’s death, when my brother, as governor of New York State and candidate for the vice-presidency in 1900, had gone to the Far West to make the great campaign for the second election of William McKinley. The governors of many Western States decided to meet in the city of Portland, Ore., to give a dinner and do honor to the governor of the Empire State, and as Governor Roosevelt entered the room they each in turn presented themselves to him. The last one to come forward was Governor Brady, of Alaska, and as he shook hands with Governor Roosevelt he said: “Governor Roosevelt, the other governors have greeted you with interest, simply as a fellow governor and a great American, but I greet you with infinitely more interest, as the son of your father, the first Theodore Roosevelt.”

My brother smiled and shook him warmly by the hand, and asked in what special way he had been interested in our father, and he replied: “Your father picked me up from the streets in New York, a waif and an orphan, and sent me to a Western family, paying for my transportation and early care. Years passed and I was able to repay the money which had given me my start in life, but I can never repay what he did for me, for it was through that early care and by giving me such a foster mother and father that I gradually rose in the world, until today I can greet his son as a fellow governor of a part of our great country.”

I was so thrilled when my brother told me this story on his return from that campaign, that the very next Sunday evening I begged him to go with me to the old 35th Street lodging-house to tell the newsboys that were assembled there the story of another little newsboy, now the governor of Alaska, to show that there is no bar in this great, free country of ours to what personal effort may achieve.

My father was the most intimate friend of each of his children, and in some unique way seemed to have the power of responding to the need of each, and we all craved him as our most desired companion. One of his delightful rules was that on the birthday of each child he should give himself in some special way to that child, and many were the perfect excursions which he and I took together on my birthday.

The day being toward the end of September was always spent in the country, and lover as he was of fine horses, I was always given the special treat of an all day’s adventure behind a pair of splendid trotters. We would take the books of poetry which we both loved and we would disappear for the whole day, driving many miles through leafy lanes until we found the ideal spot, where we unharnessed the horses and gave them their dinner, and having taken our own delicious picnic lunch, would read aloud to each other by the hour, until the early September twilight warned us that we must be on our way homeward.

In those earlier days in New York the amusements were perhaps simpler, but the hospitality was none the less generous, and our parents were indeed “given to hospitality.”

My lovely Southern mother, of whom I will speak more later, had inherited from her forebears a gift for hospitality, and we young children, according to Southern customs, were allowed to mingle more with our elders than was the case with many New York children. I am a great believer in such mingling, and some of the happiest friendships of our later lives were formed with the chosen companions of our parents, but many things were done for us individually as well. When we were between thirteen and sixteen I remember the delightful little Friday-evening dances which my mother and father organized for us in 57th Street, and in which they took actual part themselves.

As I said before, my father could dance all night with the same delightful vim that he could turn to his business or his philanthropy in the daytime, and he enjoyed our pleasures as he did his own. It always seems to me sad that the relationship between father and son, or father and daughter, should not have the quality of charm, a quality which it so often lacks, and which I believe is largely lacking because of the failure of the older generation to enter into the attitude of the younger generation.

I was delicate at one period and could not dance as I had always done, and I remember when I was going to a little entertainment, just as I was leaving the house I received an exquisite bunch of violets with a card from my father, asking me to wear the flowers, and think of his wish that I should not overtire myself, but also of his sympathy that I could not do quite what I had always done.

Comparatively few little girls of fourteen have had so lover-like an attention from a father, and just such thought and tender, loving comprehension made our relationship to our father one of perfect comradeship, and yet of respectful adoration. He taught us all, when very young, to ride and to swim and to climb trees. I remember the careful way in which he would show us dead limbs and warn us about watching out for them, and then, having taught us and having warned us, he gave us full liberty to try our wings and fall by the wayside should they prove inadequate for our adventures.

After graduating from our first Shetland pony, he provided us each with a riding-horse, and always rode with us himself, and a merry cavalcade went forth from our country home, either early in the morning before he started for the train or in the soft summer evenings on his return. When at one time we were living on the Hudson River, we had hoped one autumn afternoon that he would come home early from the city, and great was our disappointment when a tremendous storm came up and we realized that he would take a later train, and that our beloved ride must be foregone. We were eagerly waiting in the hall for his return and watching the rain falling in torrents and the wind blowing it in gusts, when the depot wagon drove up to the door and my father leaped out, followed by the slight figure of a somewhat younger man. As the young man tried to put up his umbrella it blew inside out and, like a dilapidated pinwheel loosened from his hand, ran round and round in a circle. The unknown guest merrily chased the umbrella pinwheel, and my mother, who had joined us children at the window, laughingly wondered who my father’s new friend was. The front door opened and the two dripping men came in, and we rushed to meet them.

I can see the laughing face of the young man become suddenly shy and a little self-conscious as my father said to my mother: “Mittie, I want to present to you a young man who in the future, I believe, will make his name well known in the United States. This is Mr. John Hay, and I wish the children to shake hands with him.”