Part 14

“The New York papers announce the death of Mr. Elliott Roosevelt. This gentleman has been a member of this community for the past two years, and although his stay was so brief, it was long enough for him to make his impress as a whole-souled, genial gentleman, courteous and kind at all times, with an ever ready cheer for the enterprising or help to the weak. His name was a byword among the needy, and his charities were always as abundant as they were unostentatious. He was public spirited and generous, this much we can truthfully say. His influence and his aid will be missed, and more frequently than is generally known among those to whom it was a boon.”

After speaking of the enclosure, my brother continues: “My thoughts keep hovering around you, my darling sister, for I know how you loved Elliott; what a gallant, generous, manly boy he was. So many memories come back to me.”

In 1895 he had been appointed police commissioner, and was already in the thick of the hard fight to reform the Police Department. He writes in August of that year: “Governor Hill and I have had two savage tilts. I have not the slightest idea of the ultimate results of our move on the excise question, but we have made a good fight against heavy odds.” Perhaps, of all the pieces of work done by my brother, none stands out more clearly than the splendid achievement of remaking the Police Department into a fine working body, for which the whole city of New York had the utmost respect, and on which it leaned for safety and protection. I have but few letters from him during that period, for, much to our delight, he was once more in our midst, and many and many a time would I go down to the old Vienna bakery on the corner of 10th Street and Broadway, and he would come from Mulberry Street, where his office was, and together we would sit over the type of lunch he loved so well: either bread and milk or a squab and _café au lait_. I can still see Senator Lodge’s expression when he joined us on one of these simple occasions, and asked in a somewhat saturnine manner whether any one _could get_ a respectable lunch at the place we loved so well! What talks we had there over all the extraordinary situations that arose in the Police Department. There he described to me the delicious humor of the parade inaugurated by the German brewer societies as a protest against his enforcement of the law. They were parading to show their disapproval of him, but at the last moment, as a wonderful piece of sarcasm, they decided to invite him to review the parade, hardly thinking that he would accept the invitation. Needless to say, he _did_ accept it, and leaning over from the platform where he had been invited to sit, he saw the mass of marching men carrying banners with “Down with Teddy,” and various other more unpleasant expletives. One company, as it passed the reviewing-stand, called out: “Wo ist Teddy?” “Hier bin ich,” called out the police commissioner, leaning over the railing and flashing his white teeth good-humoredly at the protesting crowd, who, unable to resist the sunshine of his personality, suddenly turned and, putting aside the disapproving banners, cheered him to the echo.

It was during that same time, the story ran, that two recreant policemen who left their beats at an inopportune moment were called to the realization of their misdemeanor by coming face to face, in a glass window-case, with a set of false teeth which, they explained, grinned at them with a ferocity so reminiscent of the strong molars of the police commissioner, that they almost fainted at the sight, and hastily returned to their forsaken duties. Many and many a settlement-worker told me in those days that they could go anywhere in the most dangerous parts of the city, during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, and the police were always on hand, always ready to protect those who needed their care.

At that time also I was amused one day when he told me the story about his little Irish stenographer, a young girl whose knowledge of orthography was less than her sympathetic interest in the affairs of the police commissioner! He took a warm interest in the nice young Irish girl, hard worker as she was, an important factor in the support of a large family of younger children, and could not bear to dismiss her from his service, in spite of her alarming mistakes in spelling. He said he always had to look over her manuscript and correct it in spite of his many other cares, and he laughingly remarked that it was well he did, as having dictated the following sentence in connection with a certain policeman, “I was obliged to restrain the virtuous ardor of Sergeant Murphy, who, in his efforts to bring about a state of quiet on the streets, would frequently commit some assault himself,” the young Irish stenographer, listening to the rapid dictation, spelled “some assault” “somersault,” and, as my brother remarked, one could not but laugh at the thought of Sergeant Murphy performing somersaults like a circus clown on Mulberry Street, and, fortunately, the word caught the ever-watchful eye of the police commissioner before the report was printed, and, even in spite of the inconvenience, he set himself to work to improve the young stenographer’s mistaken orthographic efforts.

In spite of his busy days and busy nights, he had time, as usual, to write to me when he thought that I needed his care or interest. I was far from well at the time, but was obstinately determined to go up to visit my boys at St. Paul’s School, and he writes me: “Won’t you let Douglas and me go up to St. Paul’s, and you stay at home? If you will do this, I shall positively go for anniversary on June 2nd. I believe you should not go on these trips whether for pleasure or duty, and should take more care of yourself. Your loving and anxious brother.”

He himself has given in his autobiography many incidents connected with his police commissionership.

The force were devoted to him, as were his Rough Riders later, largely on account of the justice with which he treated them, and the friendly attitude which he always maintained toward them. Otto Raphael, a young Jew, and a young Irishman called Burke were two of the men whom he promoted because of unusual bravery, and their loyalty and admiration followed him unswervingly. On the sad day when he was carried to the little cemetery at Oyster Bay, Burke--now Captain Burke--had been put in charge of the police arrangements for the funeral. As he stood by the grave, the captain turned to me, the tears streaming down his face but with a smile in his blue Irish eyes, and said: “Do you remember the fun of him, Mrs. Robinson? It was not only that he was a great man, but oh, there was such fun in being led by him. I remember one day when he was governor, and I was in charge of him, and I was riding by the side of his carriage down Madison Avenue, and he suddenly stuck his head out of the window and, ‘Burke’ said he, ‘we are just going to pass my sister’s house. I want to get out and say “how do you do” to my sister.’ ‘I don’t think you have time, governor’ I said, ‘I am afraid you are late now.’ ‘Oh, now, Burke, I want you to meet my sister. Get somebody to hold your horse,’ he said; ‘it won’t take a minute.’ And with that he leaped out of his carriage and was ringing the front door-bell in a flash. I followed him and I heard him call out to you, Mrs. Robinson, that he had his friend Lieut. Burke with him, and could he bring him up-stairs to shake hands, and sure enough he did, and when I went down-stairs again I heard him telling you some story, and the two of you were laughing fit to kill. When I got back that night to my wife, I said: ‘Susan, if you are ever downhearted, all you have to do is to go up to 422 Madison Avenue when the governor stops to see his sister, and hear them laugh.’”

The commissionership was a big job well done, and the city of New York could not but feel a sense of great regret when President McKinley promoted the active young commissioner to be assistant secretary of the navy in 1897. It was his pride and one of his greatest satisfactions in later years to feel that he was instrumental in preparing our navy for the war with Spain. For many years he had been convinced that the Spanish rule in Cuba should not continue; and the condition in Cuba, he felt, was too intertwined with the affairs of the United States to be differentiated from them. In the days of President Cleveland, my brother had felt that action should be taken, and in the same way he was convinced that Mr. McKinley was only putting off the evil day by not facing the situation earlier in his incumbency. As was the case in almost every crisis which arose, either national or international, during my brother’s life, he seemed to have a prescience of the future, and, therefore, he almost invariably--sometimes before other public men were awake to the contingency--sensed the need of taking steps to avert or meet difficulties which he felt sure would soon have to be faced.

The young assistant secretary of the navy was not very popular with the administration on account of the views which he felt it his duty honestly to express. On March 6, 1898, he writes to my husband: “Neither I nor anyone else, not even the President can do more than guess. We are certainly drifting towards and not away from war, but the President will not make war, and will keep out of it if he possibly can. Nevertheless, with so much loose powder around, a coal may hop into it at any moment. In a week or two, I believe, we shall get that report. If it says the explosion was due to outside work, it will be very hard to hold the country. [He refers to the blowing up of the battleship _Maine_ in Havana harbor.] But the President undoubtedly will try peaceful means even then, at least, at first.”

At the time of the writing of that letter, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt had been very ill and was still very delicate, and my brother had not only the many worries of the department in which he was working, as he himself puts it, “like a fiend, for we have serious matters ahead,” but he also had the great anxiety of her condition on his heart. On the 28th of March: “I have been working up to the handle here, and have about all I can do on hand now. I have very strong convictions on this crisis, convictions which, I fear, do not commend themselves to my official superiors.” And again on April 2, 1898, he writes in full to my husband, who was always one of his most welcome advisers:

Navy Department, April 2, 1898.

DEAR OLD MAN:

In one way I was very much pleased at receiving your letter, for it shows the thoughtfulness and affection you always feel for me. In another way your letter makes it very hard for me. All my friends have written me as you have, and yet I am convinced that you are all wrong. Do not misunderstand me. It may well be that I can’t get down with an Expeditionary force even if, as I think unlikely, an Expeditionary force is started before next fall. Indeed I think I shall probably have to stay here, and I should certainly stay here until we got a successor broken in. But if I get a fair chance to go, or could make a fair chance, I conscientiously feel that I ought to go. My usefulness in my present position is mainly a usefulness in time of peace, because in time of peace the naval officers cannot speak freely to the Secretary and I can and do, both to the Secretary and President, even at the cost of jeopardizing my place. But in time of war the naval officers will take their proper positions as military advisers, and my usefulness would be at an end. I should simply be one of a number of unimportant bureau chiefs. If I went I shouldn’t expect to win any military glory, or at the utmost to do more than feel I had respectably performed my duty; but I think I would be quite as useful in the Army as here, and it does not seem to me that it would be honorable for a man who has consistently advocated a warlike policy not to be willing himself to bear the brunt of carrying out that policy. I have a horror of the people who bark but don’t bite. If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I preach, and it does not seem to me that I would have the right in a big crisis not to act up to what I preach. At least I want you to believe that I am doing this conscientiously and not from merely selfish reasons, or from an impulse of levity.

I shall answer Corinne in a day or two. April 13th I was to have been in Boston, but if we have trouble, I, of course, can’t get away. I hope Corinne will stay over the following Sunday, so I may have a good chance to see her.

Faithfully yours.

The above is a most characteristic letter. Those who were nearest to him, like myself and my husband, and even Senator Lodge, were doubtful of his wisdom in leaving his important position (I mean important for the affairs of the country, not for himself) as assistant secretary of the navy to take active part in the war, should war come, but he himself knew quite well that being made of the fibre that he was, he must act up to what he had preached. Nothing is more absolutely Theodore Roosevelt, was ever more thoroughly Theodore Roosevelt, than that sentence. “I have a horror of the people who bark but don’t bite. If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I preach, and it does not seem to me that I would have the right in a big crisis not to act up to what I preach. At least I want you to believe that I am doing this conscientiously and not from merely selfish reasons or from an impulse of levity.” No sentence ever written by my brother more fitly expressed his attitude toward conviction and acting up to conviction.

VIII

COWBOY AND CLUBMAN

A RHYME OF THE ROUGH RIDERS

The ways of fate they had trod were as wide As the sea from the shouting sea, But when they had ranged them side by side, Strenuous, eager, and ardent-eyed, They were brothers in pluck, they were brothers in pride, As the veriest brethren be.

They heard no bugle-peal to thrill As they crouched in the tangled grass, But the sound of bullets whirring shrill From hidden hollow and shrouded hill; And they fought as only the valiant will In the glades of Guasimas.

Aye, they fought, let their blood attest!-- The blood of their comrades gone; Fought their bravest and fought their best, As when, like a wave, in their zealous zest They swept and surged o’er the sanguine crest Of the heights of San Juan.

So here’s to them all--a toast and a cheer!-- From the greatest down to the least, The heroes who fronted the deadliest fear, Leader and lad, each volunteer, The men whom the whole broad land holds dear From the western sea to the east!

--Clinton Scollard, 1898.

Those April days of 1898 in Washington were full of an underlying current of excitement. Drifting toward war we certainly were, and within a very short few weeks the drift had become a fixed headway, and Captain Dewey, on the receipt of a certain telegram from a certain acting secretary of the navy, was to enter Manila Bay, and by that entrance, and by the taking of Cavite, to change forever the policy of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt had been criticised for the amount of ammunition used in practice by the gunners of the navy during the past spring. He knew only too well that the real extravagance in either army or navy comes from lack of foresight, and the fine marksmanship of the sailors and marines was to prove a feather in the cap of the young assistant secretary.

Everything was bustle and hurry toward the end of April. Within a few days the assistant secretary was to become the lieutenant-colonel of the Rough Riders, or, as they were at first called, The First U. S. Volunteer Cavalry. Mr. McKinley offered to Mr. Roosevelt the colonelcy of the regiment, but he, with modesty and intelligence, refused the offer, knowing that he was not as well fitted by experience for the position as was his friend, Mr. McKinley’s physician, that gallant surgeon in the army, Leonard Wood, who had had as a younger man so much experience in the campaign against Geronimo. The two young men, within a year of each other in age, had been friends for some time, having many tastes in common, and the same stalwart attitude of unswerving Americanism. Their friendship had been cemented during the spring of 1898 by the fact that they felt that their views in connection with the mistakes of Spain in Cuba were very sympathetic. On the long tramps which they took together on those spring afternoons, they discussed the all-important question over and over again, and also discussed the possibility of raising a regiment of men from the fearless, hardy cowboys and backwoodsmen of the West. It was no sooner known that Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt were about to raise a regiment to go to Cuba than every sort and kind of individual flocked to their standard. The mobilization of the regiment took place in San Antonio, Texas.

My brother writes to me on May 5, 1898, from Washington:

“You could not give me a more useful present than the watch. It was exactly what I wished. Thank old Douglas too, for the watch and for his many many kindnesses. I hope to leave to-morrow, but Wood, who is now in San Antonio, may keep me here a day or two longer to hurry up the shipment of the troops, rifles, etc. I much want to get with the regiment to help get it into shape, but there will be many tedious and irritating delays, of course. I have about twenty-five ‘gentlemen rankers’ going with me from the Knickerbocker Club, and twelve clean-cut stalwart young fellows from Harvard,--such fine boys. I feel rather like a fake at going, for we may never get down to Cuba at all, and if we do, I do not think we shall see very serious campaigning, while proper care will prevent the serious risk of disease.”

And again on May 8:

“Kenneth turned up just in time. [Referring to my husband’s young Scotch cousin, Kenneth Douglas Robinson, associated with my husband in business, who was confident that he was doing the right thing to follow his hero, Theodore Roosevelt, into the Spanish War.] I enlisted him and sent him off with Bob Ferguson [another Scotch friend] and the rest....”

And again on May 12, after I had sent him a poem, he writes:

“My own darling sister:--I loved the poem and I loved your dear letter; it made me sure that you really knew just how I felt about going. I _could not_ stay; that was the sum and substance of it;--although I realize well how hard it is for Edith, and what a change for the worse it means in my after life. It will be bitter if we do not get to Cuba, but we shall have to take things as they come. Your own brother.”

I had doubted whether it was his duty to go to Cuba, feeling it might be even more his duty to remain in his important and difficult position of assistant secretary of the navy, but Theodore Roosevelt would not have been his true self unless he had practised what he had preached so vigorously.

Kenneth Robinson writes on May 17 from San Antonio:

“Theodore has been drilling us the last few days. The men always do their best when he is out. He would be amused indeed if he heard some of the adjectives and terms applied to him, meant to be most complimentary but hardly fit for publication. We certainly are a curious aggregation,--cavalry men, cowboys, college men, etc.”

And Bob Ferguson, our very dear friend who had made America his home, and was like a member of our family, writes early in June:

“You should see some of the broncho busting that has been going on daily in camp;--the most surprising horsemanship, and though it cost about a man a day at first, knocked clean out, the busted-rate is now diminishing. The men, as you can imagine, are well satisfied with their commanders; Theodore has a great hold on them, and before long he will be able to do anything he likes with them. The Army officers said they had never seen such a body of men. One of the troops from Arizona came almost entirely from one large ranch; they all know each other and will fight shoulder to shoulder. Our own troop--‘K’ was rather a gay affair at first, a little gang of Fifth Avenue ‘Dudes’ having constituted themselves as leaders before Theodore arrived, but now it has a large number of first rate cow-punchers and sheriffs drafted into it, and has been increased one-third beyond its normal strength. We are more or less intelligent, and are looked to as the possible crack troop.”

It is interesting to look back and remember that that Company “K” was indeed a “crack troop,” and the writer of the above lines became one of its most gallant officers. What a body of men they were! The romance of mediæval days was reborn in that regiment, and the strange part of it all was that they had so much of chivalry about them, in spite of the roughness of the cowboys, in spite of the madness of the bronco-busters, in spite, perhaps, of another type of madness injected into the regiment by the Fifth Avenue “Dudes”; still, that body of men, as a whole, stood out for gallantry and courage, and gentleness of spirit wherever gentleness of spirit was needed in the hard days to come. There was a poem written at that time, “The Yankee Dude’ll Do,” and I remember the little thrill with which I read it, realizing how the names that up to that time had been connected with rather gay and useless lives became bywords for hard, persistent work “to make” good in the various companies.

Theodore himself writes to me on June 7 in camp near Tampa, Florida:

“First Regiment, U. S. Volunteer Cavalry.

“We are on the point of embarking for Cuba. Yesterday I thought I was going to be left, and would have to stay on this side during the first expedition for they intended to take but four troops. Now, however, they intend to take eight, and unless the transports give out, I shall go. I need not say how rejoiced I am, for I could not help feeling very bitterly when it seemed that I would be left. This really is a fine regiment, and Count Von Goetzen and Capt. Lee, the German and English Military Attachés, watched our gun drill yesterday in camp with General Sumner, and all three expressed what seemed to be sincere astonishment and pleasure at the rapidity with which we had got the men into shape. I wish you could see how melancholy the four troops that remain behind feel; it is very hard on them. I had the last two squadrons under my care on the harassing journey on the cars and it was no slight labor. How I would like to have Douglas as an officer in this regiment with me. He would take to it just as I do.

“Well, if our hopes are realized, we sail tomorrow for Cuba, but nobody can tell how many of us will get back, and I don’t suppose there is much glory ahead, but I hope and believe we shall do our duty, and the home-coming will be very very pleasant for those who do come home.”

How my heart ached as I read those last words and realized that the chances, in all probability, were strongly against his coming home again.

On June 12:

On board U. S. Transport _Yucatan_.

DARLING CORINNE: