Part 11

Half-way through that opponent’s address, I confess, on my own part, to having experienced a great feeling of discouragement; not because I agreed with what he said, but because of the effect produced upon the listeners; but suddenly I saw my brother smile the same smile which used to cross his face in later years when some heckler would try to embarrass him from the back of a great hall, and he took a pencil and wrote something on his cuff. The smile was transitory but it gave me fresh hope, and I knew quite well that the audience would hear something worth while, if not to their liking, in the last ten minutes of the evening, when, as I said before, the speaker of the evening was allowed to rebut the rebutter. The clever editor sat down amidst interested applause, and “the Young Reformer” stepped once more forward to the edge of the platform. He leaned far over from the platform, so earnest, so eager was he, and this is what he said: “I believe that I am allowed ten minutes in which to refute the arguments of my opponent. I do not need ten minutes--I do not need five minutes--I hardly need one minute--I shall ask you one question, and as you answer that question, you will decide who has won this argument--myself or the gentleman on the other side of this platform. My question is as follows: If it is true that all isms are fads, I would ask you, Fellow Citizens, what about _Patriotism_?” The audience rose to its feet; even “The 19th Century Club” could not but acknowledge that patriotism was a valuable attribute for American citizens to possess. That was the first time that Theodore Roosevelt, in public, asked of his fellow countrymen, “What about Patriotism?” but all his life long, from that time on, it was the question forever on his lips, the question which his own life most adequately answered.

In April of that same year, Theodore, an assemblyman not yet twenty-four, had already made himself so conspicuous a figure that mention of him and his attitudes was constantly in the New York press. In an envelope, put away long ago, I find an excerpt from the New York _Times_, April 5, 1882. It is yellow with age and brittle, but there was something ineffaceable and prophetic in the faded words; I quote:

“He called from the table his resolution directing an investigation by the Standing Judiciary Committee of the acts of Judge Westbrook and Ex-Attorney General Ward in connection with the gigantic stock jobbing scheme of the Manhattan Railroad Co. (Elevated). Ex-Governor Alvord _tried_ to prevent resolution, but it was carried 48-22. As Mr. Roosevelt rose to speak, the House, for almost the only time during the Session, grew silent and listened to every word that he uttered.”

In the midst of a body of men somewhat inclined to a certain kind of careless irreverence, it is of marked interest that “as Mr. Roosevelt rose to speak, the House, for almost the only time during the Session, grew silent and listened to every word that he uttered.” To how few young men of twenty-three would “the House” accord such respect! As I say, the attitude was prophetic, for the following forty years, no matter how fiercely he was criticised, no matter what fury of invective was launched against him, no matter how jealously and vindictively he was occasionally opposed, there was never a place where Theodore Roosevelt rose to speak that he was not listened to with great attention.

In the _Sun_ of the same date the account of the incident runs as follows: “Mr. Roosevelt’s speech was delivered with deliberation and measured emphasis, and his charges were made with a boldness that was almost startling.” Those first two years of his career as an assemblyman showed, indeed, again, that the youth was father to the man. The characteristics which marked his whole public life never showed more dominantly than as a young assemblyman in Albany. Uncompromising courage was combined with common sense, and the power of practical though never unworthy compromise was as evident then as later in his life. Those years have been fully dwelt upon in his own autobiography.

The great tragedy of his young wife’s death at the birth of her first child was an even greater tragedy because the death of our lovely mother occurred twenty-four hours before her son’s wife passed away. Our mother’s home at 57th Street had been the background of our young married life, as it had been the foreground of our youth, and the winter of 1884 had been spent by my husband and myself at 6 West 57th Street, and the consequence was that as Theodore also made his headquarters there, we had been much together, and that very fact made it even harder to break up the home which had been so long the centre of our family life.

The next two years were almost the saddest of our happy lives. My brother had, fortunately, already interested himself in a ranching enterprise in North Dakota, and although he returned to the assembly in February, 1884, and with his usual courage finished his year of duty there, he turned gladly to the new life of the West, and became, through his absolute comprehension of the pioneer type of the cowboy and the ranchman, not only one of them from a physical standpoint, but also one of them from the standpoint of understanding their mental outlook.

In June, 1884, however, before starting for Dakota, he was to meet one of the serious political decisions of his life. That spring, when it came time to elect delegates to the Republican National Convention, he was, with the hearty approval of the great mass of his party, chosen as the chief of the four delegates-at-large from New York State. Mr. Joseph Bucklin Bishop gives in his history of “Theodore Roosevelt and His Time” a short account of that convention, of which I quote part:

“He went to the National Convention an avowed advocate of the nomination of Senator John F. Edmunds of Vermont as Republican Candidate for the Presidency in preference to James G. Blaine. The New York _Times_ of June 4th, 1884, refers to him as the leader of the Younger Republicans, and says, ‘when he spoke, it was not the voice of a youth but the voice of a man, and a positive practical man.’”

Mr. Bishop describes Mr. Roosevelt’s efforts and the efforts of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to secure the nomination of their choice, and then continues: “By the nomination of Mr. Blaine which followed later, Roosevelt was confronted with what, in many respects, was one of the most serious crises of his career. He had to decide which of the two courses he should choose; he must separate himself completely from his party and become an absolute Independent, or stay within his party and support its regularly appointed candidate. The nomination of Mr. Blaine had been fairly won. He was unquestionably the choice of the Convention. There was no claim that the will of the majority had been subverted either through the action of a committee on contested seats or in any other way. The problem before him was thus a quite different one from that presented to him twenty-eight years later in the National Republican Convention of 1912. In opposing the nomination of Mr. Blaine, he and his Republican Associates had been acting with a considerable body of Professional Independents. These men were without allegiance to either of the great political parties. Though he had been, during his brief public career, an avowed Republican, seeking to accomplish all his reforms through Republican aid and inside party lines, his Independent associates, as soon as the Blaine nomination was made, assumed that he would leave his party and join them in seeking to accomplish Mr. Blaine’s defeat by supporting the Democratic candidate. In fact, they not merely asked but demanded that he abandon the course which he had followed since his entry into political life and upon which he had built his public career. They were sincere in their belief that he should do so. It seemed incredible to them that he could do anything else. He gave them full credit for sincerity but declared that the question was one that he must insist upon deciding for himself.

“He admitted frankly that he had worked hard for the nomination of Edmunds but he declined to say at once what course he should pursue in regard to the nomination of Mr. Blaine. Various devices were used to force him to declare his intentions, some by Republican politicians and others by leading Independents, but all in vain. He insisted upon deciding the question for himself and in his own way and time. He went direct from the Convention in Chicago to his ranch in Dakota, and several weeks later put forth a formal statement in which he defined his decision as follows: ‘I intend to vote the Republican Presidential ticket. While at Chicago, I told Mr. Lodge that such was my intention but before announcing it, I wished to have time to think the matter over. A man cannot act both without and within the party; he can do either, but he cannot possibly do both. Each course has its advantages and each has its disadvantages, and one cannot take the advantages or the disadvantages separately. I went in with my eyes open to do what I could within the party. I did my best and got beaten, and I propose to stand by the result. It is impossible to combine the functions of a guerilla chief with those of a colonel in the regular army; one has a greater independence of action, the other is able to make what action he does take vastly more effective. In certain contingencies, the one can do most good; in certain contingencies the other; but there is no use in accepting a commission and then trying to play the game out on a lone hand. I am by inheritance and by education a Republican. Whatever good I have been able to accomplish in public life has been accomplished through the Republican party. I have acted with it in the past and wish to act with it in the future. I went as a regular delegate to the Chicago Convention and intend to abide by the outcome of that Convention. I am going back in a day or two to my Western ranch as I do not intend to take any part in a campaign this Fall.’” [This determination not to take part in the campaign he recalled later, for reasons which were eminently characteristic.]

“‘When I started out to my ranch two months ago,’ he said in October, ‘I had no intention of taking any part whatever in the Presidential canvass, and the decision I have now come to is the result of revolving the matter in my mind during that time. It is altogether contrary to my character to keep a neutral position in so important and exciting a struggle, and besides any natural struggle to keep a position of some kind, I made up my mind that it was clearly my duty to support the ticket.’”

He faced the storm of disapproval and abuse calmly, and in reply to an open letter of regret and remonstrance from an Independent, he wrote: “I thank you for your good opinion of my past service. My power, if I ever had any, may or may not be as utterly gone as you think, but most certainly, it would deserve to go if I yield any more to the pressure of the Independents at present, when I consider _them_ to be wrong, than I yielded in the past to the pressure of the machine when I thought _it_ wrong.” He declined a renomination for the assembly, which he could have had without opposition, and two separate offers of nominations for Congress, on the ground that his private interests, which he had neglected during his service in the legislature, required his attention.

His courageous attitude in connection with the disapproval of the Independents was indeed characteristic. He was invariably willing to run the risk of the disapproval of any faction when he had positively made up his own mind as to the right or wrong of any question, and he set his mind and heart upon those “private interests” of which he speaks.

In a later chapter I give several of his letters of this period in connection with a trip which he arranged for the members of his family to the Elkhorn Ranch and the Yellowstone Park in 1890. All his craving for the out-of-door life, all his sympathy with pioneer enterprise, such as his heroes Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett had indulged in, were satisfied by those long days on the open prairies, and by the building of his ranch-houses with the assistance of his old friends, Bill Sewall and Will Dow, the two stanch Maine lumbermen, uncle and nephew, with whom he had made many an excursion in the Maine woods in earlier days. Theodore Roosevelt, however, was not to be allowed by his country to remain too long the rider and dreamer under cottonwood-trees, or even a potent influence for good in Western affairs, as he became. Already rumors were abroad that he would be the choice of the Republican party for the nominee for mayor of New York City, and he was recalled from the wilds of North Dakota to a stirring triangular campaign in which Henry George, representing “Single Tax” beliefs, Abraham S. Hewitt, Democratic nominee, and the young ranchman from Dakota battled lustily against each other, with the result that Mr. Hewitt was elected mayor of New York.

In the autumn of 1886 he sailed for Europe to marry his old friend Edith Carow, and for a brief period led a life of leisure and travel. Only very rarely in his busy existence had he time for just that life again, and the consequence is that some of his letters at that period have an unusual value. He humorously described some of his travels in Italy in a letter dated December, 1886, as follows: “My lack of knowledge of the language has given me some soul-harrowing moments,--a mixture of broken English with German and French proving but an indifferent substitute for Italian, so I sometimes get what I do not want, as when yesterday, an effort to state that after dinner we wished only black coffee, expressed with deprecatory waves of the hand and the idiomatic phrase, ‘c’est genuch’ produced in addition, cheese, pastry, and fruit, all brought by the waiter in a wild hope that some one of those might satisfy what he evidently supposed was my untranslatable demand.”

A little later, from Sorrento, he writes in characteristic fashion, showing that even in so romantic and enthralling a spot as Rome he was still “on duty bent” from the standpoint of writing articles for the _Century_. He says: “I finished six articles for the _Century_ on ranch life while in Rome and sent them off. I do not know whether the _Century_ will want them or not. I read them all to Edith and her corrections and help were most valuable to me. Now I am wondering why my ‘Life of Benton’ has not come out. Here, [at Sorrento] I generally take a moderate walk with Edith every morning, and then a brisk rush by myself. I had no idea that it was in me to enjoy the ‘dolce far niente’ even as long as I have. Luckily, Edith would dislike an extended stay in Europe as much as I would.”

In this letter, after speaking of ranch losses which necessitated selling his beloved hunter, Sagamore, he signs himself, “Your extravagant and irrelevant but affectionate brother, the White Knight,” the latter being a reference to the character in “Alice in Wonderland,” from which enchanting book we invariably quoted in ordinary conversation or letters.

From Venice, in February, he writes: “Venice is perfectly lovely. It is more strange than any other Italian town, and the architecture has a certain florid barbarism about it,--Byzantine,--dashed with something stronger--that appeals to some streak in my nature.” They returned to London later, and were shown many attentions, for even at that early period in his life, England recognized the statesman in Theodore Roosevelt. He speaks of Mr. Bryce the historian as a “charming man”--their friendship was to last all through my brother’s life, and he mentions many other well-known young Englishmen, who have now grown old in their country’s service. In a letter dated March 6 he says: “I have been having great fun in London, and have seen just the very nicest people, social, political, and literary. We have just come back from a lunch at the Jeunes’, which was most enjoyable. Edith sat beside Chamberlain, who impresses me very much with his keen, shrewd intellect and quiet force. I sat between Trevelyan, who was just charming, and a Lady Leamington.”

Unless I am mistaken, that was the first time my brother met Sir George Trevelyan, with whom he carried on a faithful and interesting correspondence for many years. “Mrs. Jeune has asked us to dine to meet Lord Charles Beresford and Lord Hartington, and I have been put down for the Athenæum Club, and also taken into the Reform Club. Last night, I dined at a Bohemian Club, the famous Savage Club, with Healy and one or two Parnellites, (having previously lunched with several of the Conservatives, Lord Stanhope and Seton-Carr, and others). The contrast was most amusing, but I like Healy immensely. Later on I met a brother of Stanhope’s who is a radical, and listened to a most savage discussion with a young fellow named Foster, a nephew of the late Secretary of Ireland, who has also been very polite to me. I have enjoyed going to the House of Commons under the guidance of Bryce, the historian, and a dear old Conservative member named Hoare, very greatly. It is amusing to see the Conservatives, fresh-looking, well-built, thoroughly well-dressed gentlemen, honest and plucky but absolutely unable to grapple with the eighty odd, erratic Parnellite Irishmen. The last named, by the way, I know well of old,--I have met them in the New York Legislature!”

These comments by the young man of twenty-eight are along the line of comments made much later when almost all of his reactions to the men named or suggested had come true. The travellers were more than glad to get back to their native land, and by the early summer were settled at Sagamore Hill, to begin there the beautiful family life which grew in richness up to the moment of my brother’s death.

June 8, 1887, he writes from Sagamore, describing amusingly his efforts to become a polo-player. He has often expressed his own feeling about sports--he loved them, enjoyed his hunting and other athletic exercises to the full, but they were always a relaxation, never a pursuit with him. “Frank Underhill and I ride industriously around the field and brandish our mallets so as to foster the delusion among simple folk that we likewise are playing polo. Two other would-be players also come now and then; but as they have not yet even learned to sit on horseback and strike the ball simultaneously, and, after trial, having found it impracticable to do so alternately, our games are generally duels. Yesterday, I beat Frank two out of three--and in addition, stood on my head on the sward in the enthusiasm of one mêlée where we got rather mixed. Day before yesterday, I rowed Edith to Lloyd’s Neck, portaged across--at low tide, the hardest work I ever did almost,--into Huntington Harbor, then rowed out into the Sound. We took our lunch and some volumes of Thackeray. It was an ideal day--but wasn’t I stiff and blistered next morning! Do come soon and stay as long as possible. Yours as ever, Theodore Roosevelt.”

During that same summer I took my little niece Alice, with my children, to our old home on the Mohawk Hills for a change of air, and he writes me in his usual loving way of his warm appreciation of the pleasure I was giving the child, and sends his love to the little “yellow-haired darling,” and incidentally, in the letters, says his book “Morris [”Gouverneur Morris“] goes drearily on by fits and starts, and in the intervals, I chop vigorously and have lovely rowing excursions”; and so the happy summer wore to its close and was crowned in September by the birth of his first boy, the third Theodore Roosevelt. He describes with amusement little Alice’s remark--“a truthful remark,” he says--“_My little brother_ is a howling polly parrot.” All through the letter one realizes his joy and pride in his firstborn son, and shortly after that, in December of the same year, he writes me to congratulate me on the birth of my second son, Monroe, and says: “How glad I am that Ted, Junior, has a future playmate. Just won’t they quarrel, though!”

Owing to the fact that in my brother’s own biography he describes fully his work as civil service commissioner, police commissioner, and assistant secretary of the navy, I do not purport to give a detailed account of his labors, especially as during the period that he served in the first position, I have comparatively few letters from him, and it was not until he returned to New York in the second capacity that I saw as much of him as usual. One winter, however, we had a most characteristic intercourse. I do not remember exactly the date of that winter. I had married young, my children had been born in rapid succession, and owing to the delicacy of my health just before I was grown up, I was conscious of the fact that I was not as grounded in certain studies, especially American history, as I should have been, and I found myself with a very slim knowledge of the most important facts of my nation’s birth and early growth. The consequence was that when my brother returned for a brief period to New York, I decided to consult him as to how best to study American History, thinking perhaps that I might go to Columbia College or something of that kind.

I began my effort for information by saying: “Theodore, I really know very little about American history.” I can see the flash in his eyes as he turned to me. “What do you mean?” he said; “it’s disgraceful for any woman not to know the history of her own country.” “I know it is,” I replied, “and that is just why I am consulting you about it. I know you feel I ought to know all about American history, but I also know that you preach large families, and you must remember that I have done my best in that direction in these last five years, and now I am ready to study American history!” “Do you mean really to study?” he said, looking at me sternly. “Just as really to study as whooping-cough, measles, chicken-pox, and other family pleasures will allow,” I said. “Well,” he replied, still sternly, and not laughing at my sally, “if you really mean to study, I will teach you myself. I will come at nine o’clock every week on Tuesday and Friday for one hour, if you will be ready promptly and give me all your attention.” Needless to say, I was enchanted at the thought, and, true to his word, the busy man came at nine o’clock every Tuesday and Friday for several months, and in my library at 422 Madison Avenue I was ready with note-book and blackboard, and he lectured to me for that hour twice a week as if I were a matriculating class at Harvard College. I have now many of the notes he made for me at that time, and I shall always remember the painstaking way in which he drew the battle-fields, and explained how “one commander came up in this position at just the right moment and saved the day,” or how the lack of preparedness ruined many a courageous adventure. These quiet hours come back to me with a rush of recollection as I write, and I am proud to think that he felt it was worth while to give me such instruction. Once I said to him: “How can you do this, Theodore; how can you take the time to study for these lectures?” “Oh!” he said, “I do not have to study; I could not, of course, give quite as much time as that. You see, I just happen to know my American history.” He certainly did “happen to know” his American history, as was proved in many a controversy later in his life. His American history and, indeed, the history of almost every other country of the world were all at his finger-tips.