Part 18

“Dearest Corinne: Today, for the first time, I went to the White House. Oh, how much I wished for you. It seemed so wonderful to me to be in the old mansion which had been the home of President Lincoln, and which is so connected with all our country’s history. It gave me a feeling of awe and excitement. I wish you could have been here to share the feeling with me, for I don’t suppose it is likely that we shall ever be in the White House together, and it would have been so interesting to have exchanged our memories of things that had happened in that wonderful old house. But how unlikely it is that you or I shall ever come in contact with anything connected with the White House.”

As I read these words, I exclaimed with astonishment, for it did seem a curious freak of fate that almost at the very moment that I was reading the lines penned by the girl of fifteen, an unexpected turn of the wheel had made that same young girl the lady of the White House.

XI

HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Uncrowned the brow, Where truth and courage meet, The citizen alone confronts the land.

* * * * *

A man whose dreamful, valiant mind conceives High purpose, consecrated to his race.

--Margaret Ridgely Partridge.

The deed of the cowardly assassin had done its work. William McKinley was dead; the young Vice-President had made the hazardous trip from the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, had taken the solemn oath in Buffalo, had followed the body of his chief to the final resting-place, and had returned to Washington. From Washington he telegraphed to my husband and myself, with the thought which he always showed, and told us that as Mrs. Roosevelt was attending to last important matters at Sagamore, she could not be with him the day he moved into the White House, and that he was very anxious that not only my sister, Mrs. Cowles, and her husband, but that we also should dine with him the first night that he slept in the old mansion. So we went on to Washington, and were with him at that first meal in the house for which he had such romantic attachment because it had sheltered the hero of his boyhood and manhood, Abraham Lincoln. As we sat around the table he turned and said: “Do you realize that this is the birthday of our father, September 22? I have realized it as I signed various papers all day long, and I feel that it is a good omen that I begin my duties in this house on this day. I feel as if my father’s hand were on my shoulder, and as if there were a special blessing over the life I am to lead here.” Almost as he finished this sentence, the coffee was passed to us, and at that time it was the habit at the White House to pass with the coffee a little boutonnière to each gentleman. As the flowers were passed to the President, the one given to him was a yellow saffronia rose. His face flushed, and he turned again and said: “Is it not strange! This is the rose we all connect with my father.” My sister and I responded eagerly that many a time in the past we had seen our father pruning the rose-bush of saffronia roses with special care. He always picked one for his buttonhole from that bush, and whenever we gave him a rose, we gave him one of those. Again my brother said, with a very serious look on his face, “I think there is a blessing connected with this,” and surely it did seem as if there were a blessing connected with those years of Theodore Roosevelt in the White House; those merry happy years of family life, those ardent, loving years of public service, those splendid, peaceful years of international amity--a blessing there surely was over that house.

Nothing could have been harder to the temperament of Theodore Roosevelt than to have come “through the cemetery,” as Peter Dunne said in his prophetic article, to the high position of President of the United States. What he had achieved in the past was absolutely through his own merits. To him to come to any position through “dead men’s shoes” was peculiarly distasteful; but during the early years of his occupancy of the White House, feeling it his duty so to do, he strove in every possible way to fulfil the policies of his predecessor, retaining his appointees and working with conscientious loyalty as much as possible along the lines laid down by President McKinley.

That first winter of his incumbency was one of special interest. Many were the difficulties in his path. England, and, indeed, all foreign countries were watching him with deep interest. I realized that fact in a very special way as that very spring of 1902 I took my young daughter abroad to place her at a French school directed by Mademoiselle Souvestre in England. It was the spring when preparations were being made for the coronation of King Edward VII, and because of the fact that I was the sister of the President of the United States, I was received with great courtesy. Our dear friend Mr. Joseph H. Choate was then ambassador to England. Mrs. Choate presented me at court, and the King paid me the unusual compliment--out of respect to my brother--of leaving the dais on which he and the Queen stood, and came forward to greet me personally in order to ask for news of my brother. Special consideration was shown to me in so many ways that when Mr. Robinson and I were visiting Edinburgh, it seemed in no way unusual that we should be invited to Holyrood Castle to the reception given by the lord high commissioner, Lord Leven and Melville. It so happened that we were in Edinburgh during that week of festivity when the lord high commissioner of Scotland, appointed as special representative of the King of Great Britain, holds court in the old castle as though he were actually the King.

We had dined with friends before the reception, and were therefore late in reaching the castle, and were literally the last people at the end of the long queue approaching the dais on which Lord and Lady Leven and Melville stood. As King Edward had himself stepped forward to meet me in Buckingham Palace, I was not surprised when Lord Leven and Melville stepped down from the dais, and I expected him also to ask news of my brother, the President of the United States, as King Edward had done, but to my great surprise, and be it confessed intense pleasure, I heard the lord high commissioner speak as follows: “Mrs. Douglas Robinson, you have been greeted with special courtesy in our country because of your distinguished brother, the President of the United States, but I am greeting you with even greater interest because of your father, the first Theodore Roosevelt. You probably do not remember, for you were a little girl at the time, that a raw-boned young Scotchman named Ronald Leslie Melville came long ago to New York and was much at your home, having had letters of introduction to your father as one of the men best fitted to teach him the modern philanthropic methods used in America. Only to-day,” he continued, “I told the children of Edinburgh, assembled, as is the custom, to listen to the lord high commissioner, that the father of the present President of the United States was the first man who taught me to _love_ my fellow men.”

My heart was very full as I made my courtesy and answered the lord high commissioner. Before he let me pass on he said, with a charming smile: “If you and Mr. Robinson will come tomorrow to lunch with us quietly I will take you to Lord Darnley’s room, which is my dressing-room during the week of Holyrood festivities, and on my dressing-table you will see the photograph of your father, for I never go anywhere without it.” I accepted the invitation gladly, and the next day we went to Holyrood Castle, lunched informally with the delightful chatelain and chatelaine, and I was taken, as the former promised, to see Lord Damley’s room, where my father’s face smiled at me from the dressing-table. My brother loved to hear me tell this story, and I feel that it is not amiss to include it in any recollections concerning my brother, for he was truly the spirit of my father reincarnate.

In May, 1902, Mrs. Roosevelt writes that “Theodore” is just about to leave for a hunting trip, which she hopes will “rest” him. (The rest the year before, of writing a life of Oliver Cromwell, had not been made quite strenuous enough for a real rest!) Later he returned and made a famous speech in Providence, a speech epoch-making, and recognized as such by an English newspaper, _The Morning Post_ of August 27, 1902, a clipping from which I have at hand, and which runs as follows:

“Our New York correspondent announced yesterday that President Roosevelt’s great speech at Providence on the subject of ‘Trusts’ is regarded on all sides and by both parties as an absolutely epoch-making event. This is not surprising to those who have studied the conditions of American politics, and the merits of the particular economic question involved, so far as they are intelligible to us, or last but by no means least, the character and personality of President Roosevelt. It would now seem that the people of the United States are at the parting of the ways between the corrupt, old political system and a newer, manlier, honester conception of public rights and duties.”

Perhaps this sentence foreshadows more than any other contemporary expression the enormous instrument for honesty in high places in the history of his country which it was Theodore Roosevelt’s destiny to be.

Mingled with these great cares and far-reaching issues came, later, brighter moments, and it was about that time that during an interval of play at Oyster Bay, he started the custom of his famous “obstacle walks.” He would gather all the little cousins and his own children and mine, if I could bring them down for a week-end, on Sunday afternoon at Sagamore Hill (even an occasional “grown person” was considered sufficiently adventurous to be included in the party), and would start on one of the strenuous scrambles which he called an “obstacle walk.” It was more like a game than a walk, for it had rules and regulations of its own, the principal one being that each participant should follow the presidential leader “over or through” any obstacle but never “around.” There were sometimes as many as twenty little children as we stood on the top of Cooper’s Bluff, a high sand-bank overlooking the Sound, ready for the word “go,” and all of them children were agog with excitement at the probable obstacles in their path. As we stood on the brink of the big sand-bank, my brother would turn with an amused twinkle in his eye and say: “There is a little path down the side, but I always jump off the top.” This, needless to say, was in the form of a challenge, which he always accompanied by a laugh and a leap into the air, landing on whatever portion of his body happened to be the one that struck the lower part of the sand-bank first. Then there would be a shout from the children, and every one would imitate his method of progress, I myself, generally the only other grown person, bringing up the rear rather reluctantly but determined not to have to follow the other important rule of the game, which was that if you could not succeed in going “over or through” that you should put your metaphorical tail between your physical legs and return home. You were not jeered at, no disagreeable remark was directed at you, but your sense of failure was humiliation enough.

Having reached the foot of the bank in this promiscuous fashion, we would all sit on stones and take off our shoes and stockings to shake the quantities of sand therefrom, and then start on the real business of the day. With a sense of great excitement we watched our leader and the devious course he pursued while finding the most trying obstacles to test our courage. I remember one day seeing in our path an especially unpleasant-looking little bathing-house with a very steep roof like a Swiss chalet. I looked at it with sudden dismay, for I realized that only the very young and slender could chin up its slippery sides, and I hoped that the leader of the party would deflect his course. Needless to say, he did not, and I can still see the somewhat sturdy body of the then President of the United States hurling itself at the obstruction and with singular agility chinning himself to the top and sliding down on the other side. The children stormed it with whoops of delight, but I thought I had come to my Waterloo. Just as I had decided that the moment had come for that ignominious retreat of which I have already spoken, I happened to notice a large rusty nail on one side of the unfinished shanty, and I thought to myself: “If I _can_ get a footing on that nail, then perhaps I _can_ get my hands to the top of that sloping roof, and if I _can_ get my hands there, perhaps by Herculean efforts I too can chin myself over the other side.” Nothing succeeds like success, for having performed this almost impossible feat and having violently returned into the midst of my anxious group of fellow pedestrians, very much as the little boy does on his sled on the steepest snow-clad hill, I was greeted with an ovation such as I have never received in later life for the most difficult achievement, literary or philanthropic! From that moment I was regarded as one really fit to take part in the beloved “obstacle walks,” which were, I cannot help but think, strong factors in planting in the hearts and characters of the children who thus followed their leader, the indomitable pluck and determination which helped the gallant sons and nephews of Theodore Roosevelt to go undauntedly “over the top” on Flanders Field.

“Over or through, never around”--a good motto, indeed, for Young America, and one which was always exemplified by that American of Americans, my brother, Theodore Roosevelt.

At the end of October that year, his affectionate concern for me (for I was delicate at the time) takes form in a lovely letter in which, after giving me the best of advice, and acknowledging humorously that no one ever really took advice offered, he says: “Heaven bless you always whether you take my advice or not.” He never failed to show loving and tender interest in the smallest of my pleasures or anxieties, nor did he and Mrs. Roosevelt ever fail to invite, at my instigation, elderly family friends to lunch at the White House, or gladly to send me autographs for many little boys, or checks to “Dolly,” the nurse of his childhood, whose advanced years I superintended.

In April, 1903, he started on a long trip, and at that time felt that, as the years of his inherited incumbency were drawing to a close, he could forward his own gospel. A humorous reference comes in a letter just before he starts, in which he says: “I was immensely amused with Monroe’s message [my second son, then at St. Paul’s School] about boxing and confirmation, the one evidently having some occult connection with the other in his mind. Give him my love when you write.... Well, I start on a nine-weeks’ trip tomorrow, as hard a trip as I have ever undertaken, with the sole exception of the canvass in 1900. As a whole, it will be a terrific strain, but there will be an occasional day which I shall enjoy.”

Again, as he actually starts on that “hard” trip, he sends me a little line of never-failing love. “White House, April 1, 1903. [This in his own writing.] Darling Pussie: Just a last line of Good-bye. I am so glad your poor hand is better at last. Love to dear old Douglas. The house seems strange and lonely without the children. Ever yours, T. R.” Those little notes in his own dear handwriting, showing always the loving thought, are especially precious and treasured.

After that exhausting journey, replete with many thrilling experiences, he returns to Oyster Bay for a little rest, and writes with equal interest of the beautiful family life which was always led there. My boy Stewart was with him at the time, and he speaks of him affectionately in connection with his own “Ted,” who was Stewart’s intimate friend:

“Stewart, Ted and I took an hour and a half bareback ride all together. Ted is always longing that Stewart should go off on a hunting trip with him. I should be delighted to have them go off now. Although I think no doubt they would get _into_ scrapes, I have also no doubt that they would get _out of_ them. We have had a lovely summer, as lovely a summer as we have ever passed. All the children have enjoyed their various activities, and we have been a great deal with the children, and in addition to that, Edith and I have ridden on horseback much together, and have frequently gone off for a day at a time in a little row boat, not to speak of the picnics to which everybody went.

“In the intervals I have chopped industriously. I have seen a great many people who came to call upon me on political business. I have had to handle my correspondence of course, and I have had not a few wearing matters of national policy, ranging from the difficulties in Turkey to the scandals in the Post Office. But I have had three months of rest, of holiday, by comparison with what has gone before. Next Monday I go back to Washington, and for the thirteen months following, there will be mighty little let-up to the strain. But I enjoy it to the full.

“What the outcome will be as far as I am personally concerned, I do not know. It looks as if I would be renominated; whether I shall be re-elected I haven’t the slightest idea. I know there is bitter opposition to me from many sources. Whether I shall have enough support to overcome this opposition, I cannot tell. I suppose few Presidents can form the slightest idea whether their policies have met with approval or not. Certainly _I_ cannot. But as far as I can see, these policies have been right, and I hope that time will justify them. If it doesn’t why I must abide the fall of the dice, and that is all there is to it. Ever yours, T. R.”

That letter is very characteristic of his usual attitude. Strain, yes; hard work, yes; but equally “I enjoy it to the full”! Equally also was he willing to abide by the “fall of the dice,” having done what he fully believed to have been the right thing for the country.

That December, the day after Christmas, he writes again:

“Darling Sister: I so enjoyed seeing you here, but I have been so worried about you. I am now looking forward to Stewart’s coming, and to seeing Helen and Ted. But I do wish you would take a rest.

“We had a delightful Christmas yesterday, just such a Christmas as thirty or forty years ago we used to have under Father’s and Mother’s supervision in 28 East 20th Street. At seven all the children came in to open the big, bulging stockings in our bed; Kermit’s terrier, Allan, a most friendly little dog, adding to the children’s delight by occupying the middle of the bed. From Alice to Quentin, each child was absorbed in his or her stocking, and Edith certainly managed to get the most wonderful stocking toys.... Then after breakfast we all went into the library, where the bigger toys were on separate tables for the children. I wonder whether there ever can come in life a thrill of greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one, say between the ages of six and fourteen, when the library doors are thrown open and one walks in to see all the gifts, like a materialized fairyland, arrayed on one’s own special table.

“We had a most pleasant lunch at Bamie’s [our sister, Mrs. Cowles]. She had given a delightful Christmas tree to the children the afternoon before, and then I stopped in to see Cabot and Nannie [Senator and Mrs. Lodge]. It was raining so hard that we could not walk or ride with any comfort, so Roly Fortescue, Ted and I played ‘single stick’ in the study later. All of our connections and all of the Lodge connections were at dinner with us, twenty-two in all. After the dinner we danced in the ‘East Room,’ closing with the Virginia Reel,--Edith looking as young and as pretty, and dancing as well as ever.

“It is a clear, cold morning, and Edith and I and all the children (save Quentin) and also Bob Ferguson and Cabot are about to start for a ride. Your loving brother.”

Such were all Christmases at the White House; such was the spirit of the White House in those days.

During the early years of my brothers presidency, my husband and I always spent Thanksgiving at the White House, and joined in festivities very much like the Christmas ones, including the gay Virginia reel, which was also part, always, of the Thanksgiving ceremony. After they bought a little place in Virginia, they spent their Thanksgiving anniversary there.

During the following winter, I visited the White House more frequently than usual, and enjoyed the special ceremonies such as the diplomatic dinner, judicial reception, etc., and I used to station myself near the President when he was receiving the long line of eager fellow citizens, and watch his method of welcoming his guests. Almost always he would have some special word for each, and although the long line would not be held back, for he was so rapid in speech that the individual welcome would hardly take a moment, still almost every person who passed him would have had that extraordinary sense that he or she was personally recognized. It was either a reference to the splendid old veteran father of one, or some devoted sacrifice on the part of the mother of another, or a deed of valor of the person himself, or a merry reminiscence of hunting or Rough Rider warfare; but with each and every person who passed in what seemed occasionally an interminable line, there was immediately established a personal sense of relationship. Perhaps that was, of all my brother’s attributes, the most endearing, namely, that power of his of injecting himself into the life of the other person and of making that other person realize that he was not just an indifferent lump of humanity, but a living and breathing individual coming in contact with another individual even more vividly alive.

After my own visit of special festivity I apparently suggest certain people for him to ask to the White House, or at least I ask him to see them, for in a letter, also in his own handwriting, on February 21, 1904, he says: “Thank you for suggesting F. W. I am glad you told me; it was thoughtful of you. I will also try to see B----, but I don’t know whether it will do any good. He is a kind, upright, typical bourgeois of the purely mercantile type; and however much we respect each other, we live in widely different and sundered worlds.” So characteristic, this last sentence. Willing he always was to try to do what I wished or thought wise, but also he was always frank in giving me the reason why he felt my wish, in some cases, would bear but little fruit. The bourgeois, mercantile type did indeed live in a different and sundered world from that of the practical idealist, Theodore Roosevelt.

In the summer of 1904, when again I was far from well, he writes from the White House, August 14: “Darling Corinne: The news in your letter greatly worried me. I wish I could call to see you and try to amuse you. I think of you always. Let me know at once, or have Douglas let me know, how you are. Edith came back here for a week with me, and we had a real honeymoon time together. Then she went back to the children.... Every spare moment has been occupied with preparing my letter of acceptance. No one can tell how the election will turn out; but I am more than content, whatever comes, for I have been able to do much that was worth doing. With love to Douglas and very, very much love to you, I am, Your devoted Brother.” In the midst of the pressing cares of the administration and the fatigue of his letter of acceptance he still has time for the usual unfailing interest in me and mine!

On October 18, again my brother writes: