Part 24

No man in America ever received the backing of so large a personal following as did Theodore Roosevelt in the election of 1912, but owing to the fact that opinion was divided, the Democratic party, although a minority party, was put in power. It has been the habit of some to speak of my brother as having split the Republican party. This has always seemed to me an unfair criticism. It was proved by the actual vote at the polls that the larger half of what up to that time had been the Republican party was in favor of Theodore Roosevelt for President. His majority over Mr. Taft was unquestioned. A minority, not a majority, disrupts a party. Nothing is truer, however, than that a really great man cannot be defeated. He can lose official position, he can see the office which he craved because of its potential power for right doing pass into the hands of another; but in the higher sense of the word he cannot be defeated if his object has been righteousness, if his inner vision has been the true betterment of his country.

And so during the years that followed 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, although holding no official position, became more than ever the leader of a great portion of the people of America. Loyal as he was, he felt that having (as he phrased it) “led a vast army into the wilderness,” he must stand by them through thick and thin.

In 1913, having been asked to make certain addresses in South America, he decided to accept the invitation. But before sailing he went to Rochester, N. Y., to make a speech, and arranged that my husband and I should meet him and have an evening quietly with him. Immediately after that there was a great farewell dinner to him in New York, at the Hotel Astor. The crowd was suffocating. It seemed as if the enthusiasm for him and for Progressive principles was even more poignant than the year before--perhaps the realization that their leader was to leave them, even for a comparatively short time, increased the ardor of the convictions of his followers--and the spirit of that evening was so vital, so dedicated in quality, that it will never fade from my mind. The next day he and Mrs. Roosevelt sailed for the Argentine Republic, and within a few months she returned home, and he again lost himself in a new adventure. The little boy of six in the nursery at 20th Street had read with fervent interest of the adventures of the great explorer Livingston. He had achieved his ambition to follow those adventures as a mighty hunter in Africa; he had achieved many another ambition, but none was more intense with him than the desire to put a so-called “River of Doubt” on the map of the world.

Again Kermit was his companion, and the latter has given, as no one else could give, the most vivid description of that trip in his book called “The Happy Hunting Grounds.” In that book he describes his father’s desperate illness, and his heroic and unflinching courage when, with a temperature of one hundred and five, he struggled on through the mazes of the jungle, weak and weary, unselfishly begging his companions to leave him to die, for he felt that his condition endangered the possibility of their escape alive from their difficulties. As in Africa, so in South America his tireless energy, even when weakened by illness, never failed to accomplish his purpose, and not only did he put the “River of Doubt” on the map--a river which from that time forth was called Rio Teodoro, after Theodore Roosevelt, the explorer--but during those suffering, exhausting weeks he never once failed to keep his promise to his publishers, and to write, on the spot, the incidents of each day’s adventures. Robert Bridges, of Scribners, has shown me the water-soaked manuscript, written in my brother’s own handwriting, of that extraordinary expedition. In several places on the blotched sheets he makes a deprecatory note--“This is not written very clearly; my temperature is 105.” Such perseverance, such persistence are really superhuman; but perhaps it is also true that the _human_ being must eventually pay the price of what the superman achieves.

Theodore Roosevelt returned from that Brazilian trip a man in whom a secret poison still lurked, and although his wonderful vitality, his magnificent strength of character, mind, and body, seemed at times to restore him to the perfect health of former days, he was never wholly free from recurrent attacks of the terrible jungle fever, which resulted in ill health of various kinds, and finally in his death.

True to his loyal convictions, he was determined to give all the aid possible to the candidates on the Progressive ticket for the election of 1914. His wife writes, August, 1914: “Theodore seems really better, although I scarcely think he will have voice for the three speeches he has planned for the last of the month. I asked him if I could say anything from him about the War, and he simply threw up his hands in despair.” This letter was written nine days after the cataclysm of the Great War had broken upon the world. From the beginning he said to his family what he did not feel he could state publicly, owing to the fact that he did not wish to embarrass President Wilson. Having been President himself, he knew it was possible for one in high authority to have information which he could not immediately share with all the people, and he hoped this might be the reason of President Wilson’s failure to make any protest when the enemy troops invaded Belgium.

To his family, however, he spoke frankly and always with deep regret that the President enjoined a neutral attitude in the beginning. He felt, from the very first, that the Allies were fighting our battles; that the British fleet was the protector of the United States as much as it was the protector of Great Britain; that a protest should have immediately been made by the United States when the Germans marched through Belgium. All these views he stated to his family and to his friends, but for the first few months after August 1, 1914, he felt that, as an influential citizen, he might hurt the fulfilment of whatever plan the President might have in view in connection with the Allies were he openly to criticise the President’s course of action. Later in the war he told me how much he regretted that, from a high sense of duty toward the Executive, he had controlled himself during those first few months when we were asked by President Wilson to be neutral even in thought.

In my sister-in-law’s letter, quoted above, she speaks of her doubt as to whether my brother would be strong enough to make the speeches which he had agreed to make. The Philadelphia _North American_ published, about that time, an editorial called “The Amazing Roosevelt,” a few paragraphs of which run as follows:

“On April 30th, there came out of the seething jungles of Brazil to a river port 1000 miles up the Amazon, a man who was heralded by cable dispatches as broken in body and permanently impaired in mind.... On his arrival at home, there were grave dicta from former critics that never again would this man be a force in public life. The solemnity of these pronouncements scarcely concealed the gratification which they gave to some who promulgated them. Unbiassed stories of the hardships suffered in the tropical forests appeared to be cumulative evidence to support the belief that Theodore Roosevelt was ‘done for’ as a factor in public life.

“A sick man had virtually dragged himself through the most obdurate jungle still unmapped.... It had looked as if the entire party might be sacrificed and he had begged his followers to go on and leave him to take care of himself. On his return, he was warned by an eminent specialist that he must eschew speech-making if he hoped to avoid permanent injury to his throat. Another specialist warned him that impaired vital organs necessitated his withdrawing altogether from public activities. This was the Roosevelt who went to Pittsburgh to speak to the Progressives of Pennsylvania this week. What was it the Progressives gathered there to hear? Was it a swan song,--was it the plea of a broken man,--what was the character of the gathering? Was it a congregation of saddened and disheartened people, come to pay a kindly tribute to a passing leader? It was none of these things. The demonstration for Roosevelt and Progressive principles surpassed anything in the 1912 campaign, and the Roosevelt who greeted this great demonstration was the vigorous, fighting Roosevelt who so long had led the people’s battles. He was never received with more enthusiasm. The New York _Times_, not a paper in favor of Colonel Roosevelt, said: ‘The Pennsylvania Progressives gave Colonel Roosevelt a welcome tonight which must have reminded him of 1912. The demonstration was a remarkable one.’ And _The World_ said: ‘The Colonel enjoyed every minute. Malaria was forgotten and all physical weakness along with it as he stood at the vortex of the night’s enthusiasm.’

“No one can read the speech which Roosevelt made that night without being convinced that the dismal forebodings that came out of that Amazon port last April, have already been discredited, and that the man who in 1912 stood with an assassin’s bullet near his heart, and insisted upon delivering a message which might be his last, is not to be broken or even impaired in 1914 by the hardships of a South American jungle. It is but another example of the amazing Roosevelt.”

That same autumn of 1914 he came to our old home in Herkimer County once more, but this time he was the guest of my son Theodore Douglas Robinson, and stayed at his house, which adjoins the old home. From there Mrs. Parsons and he and I joined the candidate for governor on the Progressive ticket, State Senator Frederick A. Davenport, and former State Senator Newcomb, for a short speaking tour to uphold the candidacy of Senator Davenport. We knew there was very little hope of success, but my brother had recuperated apparently from the Brazilian trip, and we spent two merry days dashing through Herkimer and Otsego counties. In spite of anxiety and a deep sense of distress about Old World conditions, for a brief moment we threw off all care, and in the glorious autumn sunshine, followed by cheering crowds, we enjoyed one of the triumphal processions which were almost always a _sine qua non_ wherever he appeared. One specially merry afternoon and evening was spent at the home of James Fenimore Cooper. My brother was to speak at Cooperstown in the afternoon, and Mr. Cooper invited us to dinner, but I told him that the party must reach Oneonta for dinner, so that we could only take afternoon tea at his house. I had not confided this refusal to Theodore, simply taking it for granted that it would be impossible for us to accept the Cooper invitation and reach Oneonta in time for his evening speech. The Cooper home, full of treasures that had descended from Mr. Cooper’s grandfather, the author of “The Last of the Mohicans,” etc., and equally full of charming people, gave us so warm a welcome, and we had such an agreeable time there, that my brother was very loath to leave, but at 6.30 I insisted that we must start for Oneonta. We were already in the motors when Mr. Cooper, leaning over to say good-by, assured Colonel Roosevelt of his regret that he could not stay to dinner. “Dinner?” said my brother. “I didn’t know I was asked to dinner.” “Yes, you were, of course,” said Mr. Cooper; “but your sister, Mrs. Robinson, refused to let you stay for dinner, saying that you would have to reach Oneonta at 8 o’clock.” “May I ask,” said my brother in a high falsetto, “what business my sister, Mrs. Robinson, had to refuse a dinner invitation for me?” And, with a bound, he leaped from the automobile, shaking, laughingly, his fist at me, and said, “Dinner with the Coopers! Well, of course, I am going to stay to dinner,” and returned rapidly to the house, followed meekly by his party. The hospitable and resourceful Coopers, who naturally, after my refusal, had not expected seven extra people to dinner, turned in, assisted by Theodore himself, and proceeded to scramble eggs and broil bacon, much to the amusement and delight of the cook, who had never had an ex-President in her kitchen before, and of all the merry dinner-parties that I have ever attended, that one, forced upon the delightful Fenimore Coopers, was about the merriest.

Senator Davenport had been in poor health at the time, and my brother called him entirely “Little Eva,” after the angel child of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” both because of his rather transparent appearance and his high-minded principles (upon which the Colonel dilated in his speeches). He called himself “Uncle Tom,” and Senator Newcomb “Simon Legree,” and those cognomens and no others were used throughout the entire trip, which proved a veritable holiday.

But neither that trip nor any other trip could have changed the fate of the Progressive candidates in 1914, and New York State showed at election time, as did various other states in the country, that America was not prepared for a third party, even though that party stood, more than did any other party, for the practical common sense and high idealism of Theodore Roosevelt.

Just before Election day I accompanied him to Princeton, where Doctor John Grier Hibben, president of the university, received him with distinction, and asked him to speak to the body of students there not only on political faiths but on “Preparedness.” Unless I am very much mistaken, the first speech on that subject in the United States during the Great War was that very address made in the auditorium of Princeton in November, 1914, by my brother. His young and eager listeners among the student body applauded him to the echo. The cause of preparedness and true Americanism had no stancher upholder at that time, nor in the difficult years to come, than President Hibben of Princeton University. Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Leonard Wood, John Grier Hibben, Augustus P. Gardner, and other far-seeing patriots, stood from the beginning for the Allies against the Huns, and for “Preparedness” of a thorough kind. Had their advice been followed, Germany would very soon have sensed how formidable an influence in the war America could be. I am convinced there would have been no sinking of the _Lusitania_, and hundreds of thousands of gallant young men would not have lost their lives on Flanders Fields.

On November 12, 1914, after Election day, my brother writes me: “Darling Corinne:--That is a very dear letter of yours! I shall make no further statement. Did you see my quotation from Timothy II, Chapter 4, verses 3 and 4? It covers the whole situation. Ever yours, Theodore Roosevelt.”

The verses referred to are as follows:

(3) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

(4) And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

He was very apt to sum up a situation in some pregnant verse from the Bible.

The winter of 1915 was trying to him in certain ways, especially on account of the Barnes libel suit. He had made the statement that Mr. Barnes had, politically, a bipartisan attitude, and indeed more than attitude, and Mr. Barnes decided to bring a suit for libel against him. In spite of this annoyance, however, he writes me various letters, some merry, and all dealing with subjects where he or I could be of help to others less fortunate. In one case, in connection with a certain French pastor, to whom I could not be of assistance in the way in which he had hoped, he writes: “I understand perfectly. I felt like a swine when I wrote you, but the poor, dear pastor was such a pathetic figure that from sheer mushy weakness I yielded, and strove to do something for him.” And later, in connection with a penniless poet: “Can you give me any advice? I wish I knew some wealthy creature who was interested in poor struggling poets and could help them, and also help their poor wives and children after their deaths. Lord! how hard life is!” That time I was able to help him, and raised quite a sum for the struggling individual in question, whom I thought truly deserved help.

Just then Mrs. William Astor Chanler arranged a charming play for the benefit of a war charity, a play in which there were scenes depicting Washington at Valley Forge. My little grandson took the part of his many times great-grandfather, Captain Isaac Roosevelt, and my brother, with sympathetic pleasure, came as an honored guest to the performance, and was later photographed with the small actors. He writes from Syracuse, where he had gone to take the defense for himself in the libel suit: “Was little Captain Isaac Roosevelt one of the bewildering number of small Revolutionary leaders who had their photographs taken with me? I have felt a pang that I did not particularly seek him out, but the confusion was so great that I could not identify any one of the constantly revolving small boys and girls behind the scenes; and until we were actually in place I had supposed that they were all to have their photographs taken with me.” In this same letter he says, speaking of the fact that his wife had been ill when he left New York: “I have been so worried about Edith that this libel suit has bothered me very little. Of course I was rather tired by my nine days on the witness stand, but I felt I made my case pretty clear. How the suit will go I have no idea, but in any event I do not feel that my friends have any cause to be ashamed of me.” On May 24, at the end of the suit, in which he scored a great triumph, he writes: “Dearest Corinne and Douglas: It was fine to get your telegrams and letters. You two were among those who I knew would stand by me absolutely, win or lose; but I am awfully glad it is a case of winning and not losing. Just as soon as you get back from Virginia I must see you both and tell you everything.” He did tell us everything, and many were the things that he told!

Twice in his life Theodore Roosevelt took part in libel suits. In the first case _he_ brought the suit against a newspaper which had openly accused him of intoxication. In the second place he was the defendant, as I have already mentioned. Nothing was ever more unfounded than the strange and persistent rumor that Theodore Roosevelt indulged in intoxicating liquors. It has been my great good fortune to have been associated with men of great self-control as regards drink, but of all my intimate contemporaries, no one ever drank as little as my brother. I do not think he ever in his life tasted a cocktail, and he hated whiskey, and it rarely could be found at Sagamore Hill. He occasionally took a glass of sherry or port or champagne, but those, even, only occasionally; and how the report started that he overindulged in drink no one has ever been able to discover; but like many another sinister thing it swelled with its own volume, and after serious thought he chose an occasion when he could make a definite charge, and demanded a trial when the newspaper in question _printed_ the heretofore only whispered untruth. I do not believe that so many distinguished men ever before travelled to a remote Western town, as travelled to give testimony about the sobriety of Theodore Roosevelt. Foreign ambassadors, famous generals, scientists, literary men, artists, all journeyed in an endless trail to give, with ardent loyalty, their personal knowledge of the impeccable habits of my brother. The result was an award of damages which my brother refused to take and the most abject apologies on the part of the editor. The other suit, the Barnes suit, was entirely different, for in that transaction he was the man to make the accusation, and his opponent was a most brilliant and acute individual, and even although my brother’s followers were confident of the accuracy of the statement he had made, for his statements were consistently accurate, still we felt that some apparent lack of proof, even though only apparent, might bring about an unfortunate result. Mr. John Bowers, one of the most able of his profession, was my brother’s lawyer, and he later gave me many an amusing description of that extraordinary case. The counsel for the plaintiff were always averse to allowing my brother to testify, for the effect he produced upon the jury was immediate and startling. The opposing side would object to nearly _everything_ he said, simply because _anything_ he said induced a rapid and favorable response from the jury. In one part of the testimony Mr. Bowers told me that my brother had repeated a conversation between Mr. Barnes and himself, and had gone into accurate detail, which was listened to by the jury with intense and sympathetic excitement, whereupon the lawyer for the plaintiff objected to Mr. Roosevelt’s statement as an “irrelevant monologue.” Quick as a flash my brother turned upon the objector and said that “of course the gentleman in question might _call_ it a monologue, but as Mr. Barnes had had as much to do with the conversation as himself, he, personally, would call it a _dialogue_.” This retort brought down not only the house but the jury, and the unfortunate opposing lawyer withdrew his objection. That story and many others my brother recounted to us with humorous and sarcastic delight, shortly after the end of the trial, around a family tea-table one Sunday evening at Sagamore Hill.

In September of that year, 1915, we suffered the loss of our beloved friend Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge. Since the early days of 1884, she had shared the joys and sorrows of our lives. Beautiful, brilliant, sympathetic, exquisite in her delicate individuality, in her intellectual inspiration, in her fine humor and sense of values--her beautiful head like a rare cameo, her wonderful gray-blue eyes looking out under dark, level brows, she remains one of the pictures most treasured in the memories of the Roosevelt family. My brother was always at his best with her, and I have rarely heard him talk in a broader and more comprehensive way of politics and literature than in the homelike library at 1765 Massachusetts Avenue, the house where Senator and Mrs. Lodge were always surrounded by an intimate circle of friends. By her tea-table, in the rocking-chair bought especially for him, Theodore Roosevelt would sit and rock when he snatched a happy half-hour after his ride with the senator in those old days when he was the President of the United States. Mrs. Lodge had the power of stimulating the conversation of others, as well as the gift of leading in conversation herself, and the best “talk” that I have ever heard was around her tea-table in Washington. Her sudden death was a great blow to my brother as it was to us all.

All through that year and through the year to come, although severely censured for his criticisms of the President’s policies, my brother worked with arduous determination, shoulder to shoulder with General Leonard Wood and Augustus P. Gardner, to arouse the American people to the danger of non-preparedness, and to the shame of allowing the exhausted Allies to bear without America’s help the brunt of the battle. Those men of vision realized, fully, that in a world aflame, no nation could possibly escape the danger of conflagration. Not only from that standpoint did the apostles of preparedness press forward, but from the love of democracy also. These courageous patriots wished to have their country share spontaneously from the beginning the effort for righteousness for which France, England, and Italy were giving the lives of the flower of their youth.