Part 20

In spite of my daughter’s experience, however, I can say with truth that there never were such luncheons as those luncheons at the White House during my brother’s life there. The secretary of state, Mr. Elihu Root, with his unusual knowledge, his pregnant wit, and quiet, brilliant sarcasm; the secretary of war, Mr. Taft, with his gay smile and ready response; Mr. Moody, the attorney-general with his charming culture and universal kindliness, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the brilliant scholar and statesman, my brother’s most intimate friend and constant companion, were frequent members of the luncheon-parties, and always, the most distinguished visitor to Washington, from whatever country or from whatever State of our own country, would be brought in with the same informal hospitality and received for the time being by President and Mrs. Roosevelt into the intimacy of family life. The whole cabinet would occasionally adjourn from one of their most important meetings to the lunch-table, and then the President and Mr. Root would cap each other’s stories of the way in which this or that question had been discussed during the cabinet meeting. I doubt also if ever there were quite such cabinet meetings as were held during those same years!

That spring Mr. Robinson and I took my daughter to Porto Rico to visit Governor and Mrs. Beekman Winthrop. My brother believed strongly in young men, and having admired the intelligence of young Beekman Winthrop (he came of a fine old New York family) as circuit judge in the Philippines, he decided to make him governor of Porto Rico. He was only twenty-nine, and his charming wife still younger, but they made a most ideal couple as administrators of the beautiful island. After having been with them in the old palace for about a week, and having enjoyed beyond measure all that was so graciously arranged for us, I was approached one day by Governor Winthrop, who told me that he was much distressed at the behavior of a certain official and that he felt sure that the President would not wish the man to remain in office, for he was actually a disgrace to the United States. “Mrs. Robinson,” he said, “will you not go to the President on your return, and tell him that I am quite sure he would not wish to retain this man in office? I know the President likes us to work with the tools which have been given us, and I dislike beyond measure to seem not to be able to do so, but I am convinced that this man should not represent the United States in this island.” “Have you your proofs, Beekman?” I asked. “I should not be willing to approach my brother with any such criticism without accurate proofs.” “I most assuredly have them,” he answered, and sure enough he _did_ have them, and I shortly afterward sailed with them back to New York. Immediately upon my arrival I telegraphed my brother as follows: “Would like to see you on Porto Rican business. When shall I come?” One of Theodore Roosevelt’s most striking characteristics was the rapidity with which he answered letters or telegrams. One literally felt that one had not posted a letter or sent the telegram rushing along the wire before the rapid answer came winging back again, and _that_ particular telegram was no exception to the rule. I had rather hoped for a week’s quiet in which to get settled after my trip to Porto Rico, but that was not to be. The rapid-fire answer read as follows: “Come tomorrow.” Of course there was nothing for me to do but go “tomorrow.” It was late in April, and as I drove up to the White House from the station, I thought how lovely a city was Washington in the springtime. The yellow forsythias gave a golden glow to the squares, and the soft hanging petals of the fringe-trees waved in the scented air. I never drove under the White House porte-cochère without a romantic feeling of excitement at the realization that it was _my_ brother, lover of Lincoln, lover of America, who lived under the roof which symbolized all that America means to her children. As I went up the White House steps, he blew out of the door, dressed for his ride on horseback. His horse and that of a companion were waiting for him. He came smilingly toward me, welcomed me, and said: “Edie has had to go to Philadelphia for the night to visit Nellie Tyler, so we are all alone, and I have ordered dinner out on the back porch, for it is so warm and lovely, and there is a full moon, and I thought we could be so quiet there. I have so much to tell you. All sorts of political things have happened during your absence, and besides that I have learned several new poems of Kipling and Swinburne, and I feel like reciting them to you in the moonlight!” “How perfectly lovely,” I replied, “and when shall I see you about Porto Rico?” A slight frown came on his brow, and he said, “Certainly not to-night,” and then rather sternly: “You have your appointment at nine o’clock to-morrow morning in the office to discuss business matters.” Then with a returning smile: “I will be back pretty soon. Good-by.” And he jumped on his horse and clattered away toward Rock Creek.

It all came true, although it almost seemed like a fairy-tale. We _had_ that dinner _à deux_ on the lovely portico at the rear of the White House looking toward the Washington Monument--that portico was beautifully reproduced by Sargent’s able brush for Mrs. Roosevelt later--and under the great, soft moon, with the scent of shrub and flower in the air, he recited Kipling and Swinburne, and then falling into more serious vein, gave me a vivid description of some difficulty he had had with Congress, which had refused to receive a certain message which he had written and during the interval between the sending of it and their final decision to receive it, he had shut himself up in his library, glad to have a moment of unexpected leisure, and had written an essay, which he had long desired to write, on the Irish sagas. The moon had waned and the stars were brighter and deeper before we left the portico. We never could go to bed when we were together, and I am so glad that we never did!

The next morning I knocked at his door at eight o’clock, to go down to the early breakfast with the children, which was one of the features also, quite as much as were the brilliant lunches, of home life in the White House. He came out of his dressing-room radiant and smiling, ready for the day’s work, looking as if he had had eight hours of sleep instead of five, and rippling all over with the laughter which he always infused into those family breakfasts. As we passed the table at the head of the staircase, at which later in the day my sister’s secretary wrote her letters, the telephone-bell on the table rang, and with spontaneous simplicity--not even thinking of ringing a bell for a “menial” to answer the telephone-call--he picked up the receiver himself as he passed by. His face assumed a listening look, and then a broad smile broke over his features. “No,” he said. “No, I am not Archie, I am Archie’s father.” A second passed and he laughed aloud, and then said: “All right, I will tell him; I won’t forget.” Hanging up the receiver, he turned to me half-sheepishly but very much amused. “That’s a good joke on any President,” he said. “You may have realized that there was a little boy on the other end of that wire, and he started the conversation by saying, ‘Is that you, Archie?’ and I replied, ‘No, it is Archie’s father.’ Whereupon he answered, with evident disgust: ‘Well, you’ll _do_. Be sure and tell Archie to come to supper. Now, don’t forget.’ ‘How the creatures order you about!’” he gaily quoted from our favorite book, “Alice in Wonderland,” and proceeded to run at full speed down to the breakfast-room. There the children greeted us vociferously, and the usual merry breakfast ensued. For that half-hour he always belonged to the children. Questions and answers about their school life, their recreation when out of school, etc., etc., followed in rapid succession, interspersed with various fascinating tales told by him for their special edification.

After they had dispersed there was still a half-hour left before he went to the office at 9 o’clock, and whenever I visited the White House (my visits were rather rare, as my husband, being a busy real-estate broker in New York, could not often break away) that half-hour was always given to me, and we invariably walked around the great circle at the back of the White House. It was his most vigorous moment of the day, that hour from 8.30 to 9. He had not yet met the puzzling defeats and compromises necessitated by the conflicting interests of the many appointments in the office, and he was fresh and vivid, interested in the problems that were to be brought to him for solution that day, and observant of everything around him. I remember that morning as we walked around the circle he was discussing a very serious problem that had to be decided immediately, and he held his forefinger straight up, and said: “You know my temperament always wants to get there”--putting his other forefinger on the apex of the first. “I naturally wish to reach the goal of my desire, but would I not be very blind and stupid if, because I couldn’t get _there_, I decided to stay here” [changing his right forefinger to the base of the left] “rather than get here”--finishing his simile by placing the right finger to the third notch of the finger on his other hand.

Just as he was finishing this simile his eye caught sight of a tiny object on the pathway, so minute a little brown spot that I should never have noticed it; but he stooped, picked it up, and held it between his forefinger and thumb, looking at it eagerly, and then muttering somewhat below his breath: “Very early for a fox-sparrow.” He threw the tiny piece of fluff again upon the path. “How do you know that that was a feather from a fox-sparrow, Theodore?” I said, in my usual astonishment at his observation and information. “I can understand how you might know it was a sparrow, but how know it belonged to the fox-sparrow rather than to any of the other innumerable little creatures of that species?” He was almost deprecatory in his manner as he said in reply: “Well, you see I have really made a great study of sparrows.” And then we were back at the entrance to the White House, and in a moment I leaned out of the dining-room window and watched him walk across the short space between that window and the office, his head thrown back, his shoulders squared to meet the difficulties of the day, and every bit of him alert, alive, and glowing with health and strength and power and mentality.

I went up-stairs, put on my “best bib and tucker,” and proceeded to go around the other way to the front door of the offices. As I rang the bell the dear old man who always opened the door greeted me warmly, and said: “Yes, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, your appointment is at 9. It is just time.” I went into the outer hall, where a number of the appointees of 9.15, 9.30, etc., were already waiting, to be surely on hand for their appointments, and in a moment or two Mr. Loeb opened the door of the private office of the President, and came out into the hall and said in a rather impersonal way, “Mrs. Douglas Robinson’s appointment,” and I was shown into the room. My brother was seated at a large table, and on it was every imaginable paper marked “Porto Rico.” As I entered he was still reading one of these papers. He looked up, and I almost felt a shock as I met what seemed to be a pair of perfectly opaque blue eyes. I could hardly believe they were the eyes of the brother with whom I had so lately parted, the eyes that had glistened as he recited the poems of Kipling and Swinburne, the eyes that had almost closed to see better the tiny breast-fluff of the fox-sparrow. These were rather cold eyes, the eyes of a just judge, eyes that were turned upon his sister as they would have been turned upon any other individual who came to him in connection with a question about which he must give his most careful and deliberate decision. He waved me to a chair, finished the paper he was reading, and then turning to me, his eyes still stern and opaque, he said: “I believe you have come to see me on business connected with Porto Rico. Kindly be as condensed as possible.” I decided to meet him on his own ground, and made my eyes as much like his as possible, and was as condensed as possible. Having listened carefully to my short story, he said: “Have you proof of this?” still rather sternly. Again I decided to answer as he asked, and I replied: “I should not be here, wasting your time and mine, did I not have adequate proof.” With that I handed him the notes made by the governor of Porto Rico, and proceeded to explain them. He became a little less severe after reading them, but no less serious, and turning to me more gently, said: “This is a very serious matter. I have got to be sure of the correctness of these statements. A man’s whole future hangs upon my decision.” For a moment I felt like an executioner, but realizing as I did the shocking and disgraceful behavior of the official in question, I knew that no sentimentality on my part should interfere with the important decision to be made, and I briefly backed up all that the governor had written. I can still hear the sound of the President’s pen as he took out the paper on which the man’s name was inscribed, and with one strong stroke effaced that name from official connection with Porto Rico forever. That was the way that Theodore Roosevelt did business with his sister.

During that same year, 1905, the old Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral sent him his volume called “Mireille,” and the acknowledgment of the book seems to me to express more than almost any other letter ever written by my brother the spirit which permeated his whole life. It shows indisputably that though he had reached the apex of his desires, that though he was a great President of a great country, perhaps the most powerful ruler at the moment of any country, that his ideals for that country, just as his ideals for himself and for his own beloved home life, were what they had always been before the sceptre of power had been clasped by his outstretched hand.

White House, Washington, December 15, 1905.

MY DEAR M. MISTRAL:

Mrs. Roosevelt and I were equally pleased with the book and the medal, and none the less because for nearly twenty years we have possessed a copy of Mireille. That copy we shall keep for old association’s sake, though this new copy with the personal inscription by you must hereafter occupy the place of honor.

All success to you and your associates! You are teaching the lesson that none need more to learn than we of the West, we of the eager, restless, wealth-seeking nation; the lesson that after a certain not very high level of material well-being has been reached, then the things that really count in life are the things of the spirit. Factories and railways are good up to a certain point, but courage and endurance, love of wife and child, love of home and country, love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in man’s work and in nature, love and emulation of daring and of lofty endeavour, the homely work-a-day virtues and the heroic virtues--these are better still, and if they are lacking, no piled-up riches, no roaring, clanging industrialism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall avail either the individual or the nation. I do not undervalue these things of a nation’s body; I only desire that they shall not make us forget that beside the nation’s body there is also the nation’s soul.

Again thanking you on behalf of both of us, believe me,

Faithfully yours, (Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

To M. Frédéric Mistral.

No wonder that Mistral turned to a friend after reading that letter and said with emotion: “It is he who is the new hope of humanity.”

XII

HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

(CONTINUED)

Men smile through falling tears, Remembering the courage of his years That stood each one for God, humanity, And covenanted world-wide Liberty!

--Edith Daley.

One of the most extraordinary things about my brother was that in the midst of his full political life, a life “pressed down and overflowing,” he still had time for the most loving interest in personal family matters. Just after the great moment of his inauguration, he sent me a number of photographs of my eldest son and his young wife, just married, who had gone around the world and were staying with General Wood in the Philippines, and adds in the letter: “It was such a pleasure to have Douglas and you down here for the inauguration, and to see the boys and Corinne.” In June of that same year, when my two younger boys had each won a boat-race at St. Paul’s School, he takes a moment from his pressing duties to write another letter: “Darling Corinne: Good for Monroe and Stewart! Give them my hearty congratulations; I have only time for this line.” Such unusual thoughtfulness could not fail to keep burning perpetually the steady fire of my love for him.

In July, 1905, he sent me one of the inauguration medals signed by Saint-Gaudens. In looking at the head upon that medal, one realized perfectly by the strong lines of temple and forehead that Theodore Roosevelt had come to the fulness of his intellectual powers.

About the same time there was a naval review at Oyster Bay, and Mrs. Roosevelt writes: “The review was a wonderful sight. I wish you could have been here. The morning was dark and stormy, with showers of driving rain, until Theodore’s flag broke out from the _Mayflower_, when the clouds suddenly dispersed and the sun shone brightly.” How often we used to feel that the sun always broke out when Theodore’s flag flew!

One other little line from his pen, December 19, 1905, shows the same constant thoughtfulness. He says: “Will you send the enclosed note to Dora? I am not sure of her address. I hate to trouble you, but I want to have poor ‘Dolly’ get it by Christmas Day.” Dora was his old, childhood nurse, one to whom we were very much devoted, and whom he never forgot.

At the beginning of the new year, 1906, he writes to my husband: “Dear Douglas,--By George! Stewart is doing well. [I think this referred to the fact that my youngest boy had been chosen as goal-keeper of the St. Paul’s School hockey team!] That is awfully nice. I was mighty glad Wadsworth was elected. I shall have difficulties this year, and I cannot expect to get along as well as I did last year, but I shall do the best I can.” Never blinded by past popularity, always ready for the difficulties to come, and yet never dwelling so strongly on these difficulties that by the very dwelling on them even greater difficulties were brought to bear upon him. It was quite true that it proved in many ways, a more difficult year than the one preceding, but a happy year all the same, a happiness which culminated in his satisfaction in the marriage of his daughter Alice to Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, Ohio, an able member of the House of Representatives. His announcement to me of the engagement was made at the dinner-table one evening before it was known to the world, and not wishing to have it disclosed _to_ the world through the table-servants, he decided to give me the news in French. His French was always fluent, but more or less of a literal translation from the English, which method he exaggerated humorously. “Je vais avoir un fils en loi,” he said, smiling gaily at me across the table, delighted at my puzzled expression. With a little more explanation I realized what he was suggesting to my befuddled brain, and he then proceeded to describe a conversation he had had with the so-called “fils en loi,” and how he had talked to him like “un oncle Hollandais,” or “Dutch uncle”!

There was much excitement at the prospect of a wedding in the White House, and, needless to say, so many were the requests to be present that the line had to be drawn very carefully, and, in consequence, the whole affair assumed an intimate and personal aspect. Alice’s Boston grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. George C. Lee, were especially welcomed by Mrs. Roosevelt, and my memory of the great morning of the wedding has a curiously “homey” quality. I much doubt if there was ever a function--for a wedding in the White House could hardly be anything but a function--so simple, so charming, and so informal as that marriage of the lovely daughter of the White House. Almost all the morning Mrs. Roosevelt knitted peacefully at the sunny window up-stairs near her secretary’s desk, chatting quietly with Mrs. Lee. All preparations seemed to have been made in, the most quiet and efficient manner, for there was no hurry, no excitement. My husband took Mr. Lee for a walk, as the dear old gentleman was very much excited at the prospect of his granddaughter’s nuptials in the “East Room.” Everything seemed to go on quite as usual until the actual moment came, and Alice Roosevelt, looking very beautiful in her long court train and graceful veil, came through the group of interested friends up to the white ribbon which formed, with flowers, a chancel at the end of the “East Room.” My brother was at his best--gay, affectionate, full of life and fun, and later took his son-in-law (no longer “to-be”) and all the ushers, members of Harvard’s Porcellian Club like himself, into the state dining-room to drink the health of the bride and groom, and recall various incidents of his and of their college days.

In March of that year I wrote him that my youngest boy was to debate at St. Paul’s School on the Santo Domingo question, and he answered at once, with that marvellous punctuality of his: “I wrote Stewart at once and sent him all the information I could on the Santo Domingo business. I wish you were down here. In great haste. Ever yours, T. R.”

In great haste, yes, but not too busy to write to a schoolboy-nephew “at once,” and give him the most accurate information that could be given on the question upon which he was to take part in school debate.

Again, when I suggested joining him in his car on his way that fall to vote at Oyster Bay, he writes: “Three cheers! Now you can join me. We will have lunch immediately after leaving. I am so anxious to see you. I shall just love the Longfellow.” [Evidently some special edition that I am about to bring to him.]

On November 20, with his usual interest in my boys, he sends me a delightful letter from his ex-cowboy superintendent, Will Merrifield, with whom they had been hunting in August and September, 1906; and I am interested to see after reading his opinion of my boys how Mr. Merrifield, although many years had passed since the old days of the Elkhorn Ranch, still turns to him for advice, still, beyond all else, wishes to justify his various ventures in the eyes of his old “boss.” Merrifield writes: “I have sold my ranch, and will be able to make good all my financial obligations, which was my great ambition, besides having something left, so that _I will not take office for the purpose of making money_. [That was one of Theodore Roosevelt’s perpetual preachings, that no one should take office for the purpose of making money.] I can be independent as far as money goes, and _above all_ will be able to make good my word to you years ago, as soon as my business is straightened out.” He sends me the letter not because of that sentence, but because, as he says, “This letter from Merrifield is so nice about Monroe and Stewart that I thought I would send it to you. How well they did.” Always the same generous joy in the achievements of any of the younger generation.