Part 17

One luncheon during the time that my brother was governor stands out clearly in my mind, owing to an amusing incident connected with it. My dining-room at 422 Madison Avenue was small, and fourteen people were the actual limit that it could hold. One day, he having told me that he was bringing ten people to lunch, and realizing his hospitable inclinations, I had had the table set for the limit of fourteen. We were already thirteen in the sitting-room when the door-bell rang and, looking out of the window, he turned to me with a troubled expression and said: “I think I see two people coming up the front steps, and that will make fifteen.” I suddenly decided to be unusually firm and said: “Theodore, I have not places for fifteen; you said there would only be ten. I am delighted to have fourteen, but you will have to tell one of those two people that they will have to go somewhere else for lunch.” He went out into the hall, and in a moment returned with one of his beloved Rough Riders and an air of triumph on his face. I whispered, “Were there really two, and who was the other, and what has happened to him?” and he whispered back, like a child who has had a successful result in some game, “Yes, there were two--the other was the president of the University of ----. I told them they had to toss up, and the Rough Rider won”--this with a chuckle of delight!

X

HOW THE PATH LED TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Frédéric Mistral, the Provençal poet, said of Theodore Roosevelt:

C’est lui qui donne une nouvelle espérance à l’humanité.

Toward the spring of 1900, while my brother was in his second arduous year of activity as governor of New York State, he came one afternoon to my house, as he frequently did, for he made headquarters there whenever he was in New York. I remember I was confined to my room with an attack of grippe. The door-bell rang in the rapid, incisive way which always marked his advent, and in a moment or two I heard him come bounding up the stairs to my bedroom. He seemed to bring the whole world of spring sunshine into the room with him, and before I could say anything to greet him he called out: “Pussie, haven’t _we_ had fun being governor of New York State?” I remember the grippe seemed to leave me entirely. My heart was full of that elation which he alone could give by his power of sharing everything with me. He sat down in a rocking-chair by me and began to rock violently to and fro, every now and then receding almost the whole length of the room as he talked, and then rocking toward me with equal rapidity when he wished to emphasize some special point in his conversation. When he stopped for breath, I said laughingly, but with a certain serious undertone in the midst of my laughter: “Theodore, are you not going to take a complete rest _some time_ this summer? You certainly need it. It has been year after year, one thing after another, more and more pressing all the time--civil service commissioner, police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy, lieutenant-colonel, then colonel of the Rough Riders, and all that that campaign meant, and now nearly two years of hard work as governor of New York State. Surely, you must take some rest this summer.”

He looked back at me rather as one of my little boys would look if I spoke to them somewhat harshly, and answered in a very childlike way: “Yes, of course you are right. I do mean to take a rest of _one whole_ month this summer.” I said: “That isn’t very much--one month, but still it is better than nothing. Now, do you really mean that you are going to rest for one whole month?” “Yes,” he answered, as if he were doing me the greatest possible favor, “I really mean to rest one whole month. I don’t mean to do one _single_ thing during that month--except write a life of Oliver Cromwell.” How I laughed! What an idea of complete rest--to write a life of Oliver Cromwell! And write a life of Oliver Cromwell he did during that period of complete rest, but before he was able to do it there came many another stirring event and change in the outlook of his existence.

Messrs. Platt and Odell, supposedly the arbiters of the fate of every New York State governor, agreed that two years of Theodore Roosevelt in the Executive Mansion at Albany was quite enough, and that come what might, he should not have another term, and so they bent all their subtle political acumen toward the achievement of their wish to remove him. They would, however, have been thwarted in their purpose had not the Western part of our country decided also that Theodore Roosevelt’s name was necessary on the presidential ticket, to be headed, for a second time, by William McKinley.

The young governor, deeply absorbed in the many reforms which he had inaugurated in the Empire State, was anything but willing to be, as he felt he would be, buried in Washington as vice-president, but as the time drew near for the Republican Convention of June, 1900, more and more weight was thrown in the balance to persuade him to accept the nomination.

I have frequently said in these pages that one of the most endearing characteristics of my brother was his desire to have my sister and myself share in all of his interests, in his glory, or in his disappointments, and so, when the convention at Philadelphia met, and as the contending forces struggled around him, he telegraphed to my husband and myself, who were then at our country home in New Jersey, and begged us to come on to Philadelphia, and be near him during the fray. Needless to say, we hurried to his side.

I shall always remember arriving at that hotel in Philadelphia. How hot those June days were, and how noisy and crowded the corridors of the hotel were when we arrived! Blaring bands and marching delegations seemed to render the hot air even more stifling, and I asked at once to be shown to the room where Governor Roosevelt was. A messenger was sent with me, and up in the elevator and through circuitous passages we went, to a corner room overlooking a square. We knocked, but there was no answer, and I softly opened the door, and there sat my brother Theodore at a distant window with a huge volume upon his knees. The soft air was blowing in the window, his back was turned to the door, and he was as absolutely detached as if vice-presidential nominations, political warfare, illicit and corrupt methods of all kinds in public life were things not known to his philosophy. I tiptoed up behind him and leaned over his shoulder, and saw that the great volume spread out before him was the “History of Josephus”! I could not but laugh aloud, for it seemed too quaint to think that he, the centre of all the political animosity, should be quietly apart, perfectly absorbed in the history of the Jews of a long-past day. As I laughed, he turned and jumped to his feet, and in a moment Josephus was as much a thing of the past as he actually was, and Theodore Roosevelt, the loving brother, the humorous philosopher, the acute politician, was once more in the saddle. In a moment, in a masterly manner, he had sketched the situation for me: ‘Yes, Platt and Odell did want to eject him, that was true, but it wasn’t only that. The West felt strongly, and the Middle West as strongly, that his name was needed on the presidential ticket. No, he didn’t want to give up a second term as governor of New York State; he hated the thought of a vice-presidential burial-party, but what was he to do? He didn’t really know himself.’

At that moment, without any ceremony, the door was thrown open, and in marched the delegation from Kansas. Fife and drum and bugle headed the delegation with more than discordant noises. Round and round the room they went, monotonously singing to the accompaniment of the above raucous instruments: “We want Teddy, we want Teddy, we want Teddy.” My brother held up his hand, but nothing seemed to stop them. Over and over again they filed solemnly around that sitting-room, and finally, forming in a straight line, they metaphorically presented arms, and stood for a moment silently before him. He stepped nearer to them and, with a somewhat anxious tone in his voice, said: “Gentlemen of Kansas, I know that you only want what is best for the country, and incidentally what you think is best for me; but, my friends, I wish you would withdraw your desire that I should be the candidate for the vice-presidency. I _want_ another term as governor of New York State. I have initiated a good many reforms that I think would help my native state. I have made many appointments, and the people I have appointed would feel that I have gone back on them if I can’t be there to help them with their work. I am sure I could be of more use to my country as governor of New York State than as vice-president. I wish you would change your minds and help me to do the thing which I think is the best thing to do.” The delegation from Kansas looked the pleader gently but firmly in the eye. The fife and drum and bugle struck up its monotonous sound again. The leader of the Kansas delegation turned, and, with all his followers, once more they marched slowly and steadfastly around that room, making no answer to Governor Roosevelt except the indomitable refrain of “We want Teddy, we want Teddy, we want Teddy,” which sounded for a long while down the corridor. As we listened to their retreating footsteps, he turned to me with a look of mingled amusement and despair in his eyes, and said: “What can I do with such people? But aren’t they good fellows!”

And so, as is now well known to history, the Kansas delegation and other like delegations had their way. Mr. Platt and Mr. Odell thought _they_ had _their_ way too, and at one of the most exciting conventions at which I have ever been present--dominated in masterful fashion by the unique personality of Mark Hanna--Theodore Roosevelt was made the nominee for the second place on the ticket of the Republican party of 1900. One little incident occurred the next morning which I have always felt had a certain prophetic quality about it. An article appeared in one of the Philadelphia papers, signed by that inimitable humorist, the brilliant philosopher, Peter Dunne, alias “Mr. Dooley.” I wish I could find the article--I kept it for a long while--but this is about the way it ran:

“Tiddy Rosenfeldt came to the Convintion in his Rough Rider suit and his sombrero hat and his khaki clothes, trying to look as inconspichuous as possible, and as soon as he got there Platt fill on his chist and Odell sat on his stummick and they tried to crush him and squeeze the life out of him. And they _think_ they have done it, and perhaps they have, but, Hinnessey, they needn’t be quite so sure, for Tiddy Rosenfeldt will get somewhere no matter what happens, _even though the path lies through the cimitery!_”

Whether “Mr. Dooley” simply meant that as vice-presidents had always been supposed to be dead men as far as future preferment was concerned, or whether, with prophetic touch, he visualized the horror that was to come, and the way in which Theodore Roosevelt’s path to a higher position actually did lie “through the cemetery,” I know not, but those were approximately the very words which appeared in that Philadelphia newspaper the morning after Roosevelt was nominated as candidate for vice-president on the McKinley ticket.

Later in the autumn he started on one of the most strenuous campaigns of his life, and swung around the country asking for Republican support for William McKinley’s second term. Just before Election day he was to return to New York to make his final address at Madison Square Garden. As usual, he was to spend the night before and the night of the meeting at my house. Just before he was to arrive I received a telegram saying that his voice was entirely gone from the strain of weeks of speaking, and would I please have a throat doctor at the house on his arrival to treat his throat. Of course I arranged that this should be done, and he arrived, bright and gay, although distinctly hoarse. The doctor treated him, and he was ordered to keep perfectly still during the evening. We went up to the library after dinner, and I said to him: “Now, Theodore, we must only have a few minutes’ talk, and then you must go to bed.” “But,” he said, “I must tell you a few of the very funny incidents that happened on my trip.” And with that he began--my husband and I feeling very conscience-stricken, but so fascinated that we had not the strength of mind to stop him. Suddenly, to our perfect surprise, the early morning light crept in through the windows, the milk-wagons began to rattle in the streets, and we realized that the dawn of another day had come, and that the future vice-president had outraged his doctor’s orders and had talked all night long! And such stories as they were, too; I shall never forget them. One after another, he pictured to us the various audiences, the wonderful receptions, the unique chairmen of the different meetings. There was always a “bellowing” chairman, as he expressed it, or else one whose ineffectual voice did not reach even the first circle of the huge audiences that gathered everywhere to hear him. Out in the Far West eight-horse vehicles would meet the trains on which the nominees travelled, and inadvertent bands would blow in the ears of “shotgun” teams that had never been hitched up before, with such astounding results as the complete loss of the whole team at once, which necessitated the dragging of the carriage by ardent cowboy admirers, or, worse luck, eventuated in terrifying runaways, which, however, never seemed to produce anything but casual discomfort.

Mr. Curtis Guild, of Boston, and Judge John Proctor Clarke accompanied Governor Roosevelt on this trip, and on one occasion the aforesaid “bellowing” chairman introduced my brother as “one whose name was known from shore to shore and whose life story was part of every fireside, and whose deeds were household words from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” Finding that this introduction was greeted with vociferous applause, he then made use of the same extravagant exaggeration in introducing Mr. Guild. The only trouble in the latter case was that, after stertorously repeating the aforesaid introduction, the chairman suddenly forgot the name of the second speaker, “so well known from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” and turned with solemn disapproval to the refined New England statesman, whispering hoarsely: “What in h---- is your name, anyway?”

Such were the tales with which he regaled us that too-short night in November, 1900. Any other man, having so disobeyed the doctor’s stern commands to refrain from using his voice, would have been punished the following evening by not having any voice at all; but, on the contrary, his tones were clear and strong, his personality vital and inspiring, as he leaned from the platform toward the thousands of cheering human beings in the great Madison Square Garden, to put the finishing touch on that stirring campaign for the second nomination of McKinley.

The inauguration in Washington, in March, 1901, had a peculiar charm about it. Perhaps one felt this charm especially because of the youth of the Vice-President and of his wife, and because of the contrast between those two happy young people and the more serious President, weighed down as he was with many cares, the greatest of which was his loving anxiety for his fragile little wife.

Because we were the sisters of the Vice-President, Mrs. McKinley sent for my sister, Mrs. Cowles, and me just after the inauguration, and I remember very well the touching quality of that dainty personality, in whose faded face was the remains of exquisite beauty. She received us up-stairs in her bedroom, and by her side was a table on which was a little Austrian vase in which bloomed one superb red rose. As we sat down she pointed to the rose with her delicate little hand, and said softly: “My dearest love brought me that rose. He always brings me a rose every day, Mrs. Robinson.” And then, a faint smile flitting over her face, she said: “My dearest love is very good to me. Every evening he plays eight or ten games of cribbage with me, and I think he sometimes _lets_ me win.” I remember the feeling in my heart when she spoke those words, as I thought of the man in the White House, oppressed with many cares; even, perhaps, at the time when the shadow of the war with Spain hung over his troubled head, sitting down with gentle affection and quiet self-control to play “eight or ten games of cribbage,” “one for his nob, and two for his heels,” with the pathetic little creature from whom the tender love of his early youth had never swerved.

The scenes outside of the White House connected with the young Vice-President were very different. In the home of my sister, Mrs. Cowles, where we all stayed for the inauguration, quaint happenings occurred. A certain Captain ----, a great admirer of my brother, telegraphed that he was sending from Thorley’s florist shop in New York a “floral tribute” to be erected wherever the Vice-President was staying. My sister’s house was moderate in size, but that made no difference to Captain ----. That “floral tribute” had to be erected. It cost, if I remember rightly, in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. (My brother laughingly but pathetically said it was about half of his income at the time, and he wished the tribute could have been added to the income.) It had to be erected, and erected it was. It arrived in long boxes, painfully suggestive of coffins, much to the delight of the young members of the family, who were also staying with my always hospitable sister. There, for a whole day, three men worked haggardly building the “tribute,” until the whole front room of my sister’s house (which was much in demand for large numbers of delegations who wished to pay their respects to my brother) was filled in every nook and cranny by this enormous and marvellous structure, which reached from wall to wall and up to the ceiling. The overworked and tired men who created it were so exhausted by the questions of the small members of the Roosevelt and Robinson family that toward the end of the afternoon they sent word to Mrs. Cowles that unless those children were sent out of the house, that “tribute” would never be finished. Finished it was, however, and we were almost suffocated by the sweetness of its scents, and it was all that we could do, in spite of our spontaneous gaiety, to rise above the semifunereal feeling that this mass of conventional flowers produced upon the atmosphere of the whole house.

The inaugural ball was really a charming sight, but was shadowed for the presidential party by the fact that Mrs. McKinley was not well a short while before it took place. She was able to be present, however, in her box, but the shade of sadness was heavy on the President’s face; and the people, for that very reason, turned with peculiar pleasure to the care-free younger couple, who were asked to come down from the box, and to walk in stately fashion once around the room, to the infinite admiration of the many interested observers.

After the inauguration my brother retired quietly to Oyster Bay, and it was from there on April 15, 1901, that he wrote me one of his most characteristic notes. At that time, as in the days of his governorship, he would frequently notify his friends to meet him and lunch with him at my house, much to my delight. On this particular occasion, he had invited so incongruous an assortment of people that he decided that one or two more equally incongruous would be advisable, and writes as follows: “Darling Corinne: Inasmuch as we are to have Cocky Locky, Henny Penny and Goosey Poosey at lunch, why omit Foxy Loxy? I am anxious to see Dr. R---- and I do hope you will ask him to lunch on Thursday also. Ever yours, T. R.”

That lunch-party proved to be a great success, as did various others later; and then came a moment, for me, of serious anxiety when my eldest boy was stricken with diphtheria in college. At once many loving letters came from Oyster Bay--and later, when the young freshman had recovered from his illness, and I was at my home on Orange Mountain, the newly inaugurated Vice-President acceded to my wish that he should come to my home, where my husband and I had lived all our young married life, and be the hero and excitement of the neighborhood at a reception on my lawn. It proved a hot day in July, but his pleasure in meeting all my friends was unabated, and he took special interest in my butcher and grocer and fish man and ice man, and the kindly farming people who had been devoted to my husband’s mother as well as to me for many years. At the end of the day he resuscitated with tender care an old veteran of the Civil War, who had stumbled up the hill in the blinding heat to pay his respects to the colonel of the Rough Riders, now Vice-President of the United States.

That same summer he engineered a sailing trip for his little boys and mine, and writes me in answer to a request from me to know how much I owed for the trip: “About $12 would cover completely your boys’ share of the expenses. It is just like you to want to pay it, but I would like to feel that for this trivial matter your two boys were my guests. So if you don’t mind, I am going to ask you to _sacrifice_ your feelings. As I have told you the extent of the obligation, and it is surely _not_ heavy, let me continue to stand as the munificent host!”

Once that summer during his “month’s rest,” of which I have already spoken at the beginning of this chapter, I spent a night at Sagamore Hill, and my sister-in-law, Mrs. Roosevelt, said to me that she was anxious about my brother. The “rest” did not quite agree with him, and the prospect of a more or less sedentary life in his new position weighed on the active initiative of his mind.

A little later they went to a hunting-lodge in the Adirondacks, and all the world knows what happened on September 6, 1901. Then came the great anxiety as to whether Mr. McKinley would recover from the assassin’s onslaught, and on September 14, he succumbed to the weakness engendered by his wound. While the dramatic drive from the Adirondack Mountains, where Theodore Roosevelt was found, was in process, I, the only member of the Roosevelt family near New York, was inundated in my Orange Mountain home by reporters. That evening after receiving a number of reporters and giving them what slight information I could give, I said that I could not stand the strain any longer, that I could not be interviewed any more, and with the dear cousin, John Elliott, who had been our early childhood companion, and who happened to be visiting me, I went into my writing-room, shut the door to the world outside, and a strange coincidence occurred. My sister-in-law, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, had shortly before returned to me a number of childhood letters which we had exchanged, first as little children, and then as growing girls, for we had always been very intimate friends. These letters were in a box on my writing-table, and I said to my cousin John: “Let us forget all these terrible things that are happening, and for a moment, at least, go back into our merry, care-free past. Here are these letters. I am going to pick one out at random and see how it will remind us of our childhood days.”

So speaking, I put my hand into the box and proceeded to draw out a letter. Curiously enough, as I opened the yellow envelope and the sheets fell from it, I saw that it was dated from Washington in 1877, and looking more closely I read aloud the words: