Part 4

In those country days before the advent of the motor, the woods and lanes of New Jersey were safe haunts for happy childhood, and we were given much liberty, and, accompanied by our two little cousins from Savannah, John and Maud Elliott, who spent those two summers with us, having suffered greatly from the devastating war, we roamed at will, leading or riding our pony, playing endless games, or making believe we were Indians--always responsive to some story of Theodore’s which seemed to cast a glamour around our environment.

I can still feel the somewhat uncanny thrill with which I received the suggestion that a large reddish stain on a rock in the woods near by was the blood of a white girl, lately killed by the chief of the Indian tribe, to which through many mysterious rites we were supposed to belong. I remember enticing there in the twilight our very Hibernian kitchen-maid, and taking delight in her shrieks of terror at the sight of the so-called blood.

My brother always felt in later years, and carried the feeling into practice with his own children, that liberty in the summer-time, for a certain period at least, stimulated greatly the imagination of a child. To rove unhampered, to people the surroundings with one’s own creations, to watch the habits of the feathered or furry creatures, and insensibly to react to the beauty of wood and wind and water--all this leaves an indelible impression on the malleable nature of a young child, and we five happy cousins, in spite of Theodore’s constant delicacy, were allowed this wonderful freedom to assimilate what nature had to give.

I never once remember that we came to the “grown people” with that often-heard question “What shall we do next?” The days never seemed long enough, the hours flew on golden wings. Often there would be days of suffering for my brother, even in the soft summer weather, but not as acute as in the winter-time, and though my father or my aunt frequently had to take Theodore for change of air to one place or another, and rarely, even at his best, could he sleep without being propped up in bed or in a big chair, still his spirit was so strong and so recuperative that when I think of my earliest country memories, he seems always there, leading, suggesting, explaining, as all through my life when the nursery was a thing of the past and the New Jersey woodlands a faint though fair green memory, he was always beside me, leading, suggesting, explaining still.

It was in those very woodlands that his more accurate interest in natural history began. We others--normal and not particularly intelligent little children--joyed in the delights of the country, in our games and our liberty, but he was not only a leader for us in everything, but he also led a life apart from us, seriously studying the birds, their habits and their notes, so that years afterward the result of those long hours of childish concentration took form in his expert knowledge of bird life and lore--so expert a knowledge that even Mr. John Burroughs, the great nature specialist, conceded him equality of information with himself along those lines.

It was at Lowantaka, at the breakfast-table one day, after my father had taken the train to New York--this was the second year of our domicile there, and the sad war was over--that my mother received a peculiar-looking letter. I remember her face of puzzled interest as she opened it and the flush that came to her cheek as she turned to my aunt and said: “Oh, Anna, this must be from Irvine!” and read aloud what would now seem like a “personal” on a page of the New York _Herald_. It was as follows:

“If Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Miss Anna Bulloch will walk in Central Park up the Mall, at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon of this week [it was then Tuesday] and notice a young man standing under the third tree on the left with a red handkerchief tied around his throat, it will be of interest to them.”

As my mother finished reading the letter she burst into tears, for it was long since the younger brother had been heard from, as the amnesty granted to all those taking part in the Rebellion had not been extended to those who had gone to England, as had my two uncles, to assist in the building and the sailing of the _Alabama_, and letters from them were considered too dangerous to be received.

This “Irvine” had been saved when the _Alabama_ sank, after her brief career, and the two brothers had settled in Liverpool, and my mother knowing the great sorrow that his mother’s death had meant to this younger brother, had always longed during the intervening months to see him and tell him of that mother’s undying devotion, though she herself had passed away the year before.

It seemed now to the active imaginations of the Southern sisters that somehow or other Irvine had braved the authorities, and would be able to see them and hear from their lips the story of the past five years.

One can well imagine the excitement of the children around the breakfast-table at the romantic meeting suggested by the anonymous letter. And so, on the following Thursday, the two sisters went in to New York and walked up the Mall in Central Park, and there, standing under the third tree to the left, was the young man--a thin, haggard-looking young man compared to the round-faced boy with whom they had parted so long ago, but eagerly waiting to get from them the last news of the mother who had hoped she would die before any harm could befall him. He had worked his way over in the steerage of a sailing-vessel under an assumed name, for he was afraid of bringing some trouble on my father, and had taken the method of the anonymous letter to bring to him the sisters he had loved and missed so sorely.

What a meeting it must have been under that “third tree to the left” of the old Mall of Central Park, and what reminiscences of happier childhood days those three must have indulged in in the brief hour which the brother could give his sisters before sailing back across the broad ocean, for he did not dare meet them again for fear of some unpleasant results for the Northern brother-in-law, for whom he had great admiration.

Later, of course, my uncles were given the right to return to their own country, but although they often visited us, they never settled in America again, having rooted their business interests on English soil, though their hearts always turned loyally to the country of their birth.

In taking into consideration the immediate forebears of my brother, Theodore Roosevelt, I would once more repeat that to arrive at a true comprehension of his many-sided character one must realize the combination of personalities and the different strains of blood in those personalities from whom he was descended in summing up the man he was.

The stability and wisdom of the old Dutch blood, the gaiety and abandon of the Irish strain that came through the female side of his father’s people, and on his mother’s side the great loyalty of the Scotch and the fiery self-devotion of the French Huguenot martyrs, mixed as it was with the light touch which shows in French blood of whatever strain--all this combined to make of the boy born of so varied an ancestry one who was akin to all human nature.

In April, 1868, the little boy of nine and a half shows himself, indeed, as father to the man in several characteristic letters which I insert here. They were written to his mother and father and the little sister Conie when the above members of the family were paying a visit to Savannah, and are as follows:

New York April 28th, 1868.

MY DEAR MAMMA

I have just received your letter! What an excitement! How nice to read it. What long letters you do write. I don’t see how you can write them. My mouth opened wide with astonishment when I heard how many flowers were sent in to you. I could revel in the buggie ones. I jumped with delight when I found you had heard a mocking-bird. Get some of its feathers if you can. Thank Johnny for the feathers of the soldier’s cap, give him my love also. We cried when you wrote about Grand-Mamma. Give My love to the good natured (to use your own expresion) handsome lion, Conie, Johnny, Maud, and Aunt Lucy. I am sorry the trees have been cut down. Aunt Annie, Edith and Ellie send their love to you and all, I send mine to. I send this picture to Conie. In the letters you write to me tell me how many curiosities and living things you have got for me. I miss Conie very much. I wish I were with you and Johnny for I could hunt for myself. There is Conie’s letter.

MY DEAR CONIE:

As I wrote so much in Mamma’s letter I cannot write so much in yours. I have got four mice, two white skined, red eyed velvety creatures, very tame for I let them run all over me, they trie to get down the back of my neck and under my vest, and two brown skined, black eyed, soft as the others but wilder. Lordy and Rosa are the names of the white mice, which are male and female. I keep them in different cages

White mouse cage. brown mouse cage.

MY DEAR PAPA

You can all read each other’s letters. I hear you were very seasick on your voyage and that Dora and Conie were seasick before you passed Sandy-hook. Give my greatest love to Johnny. You must write too. Wont you drive Mamma to some battle field for she is going to get me some trophies? I would like to have them so very much. I will have to stop now because Aunty wants me to learn my lessons.

The chaffinch is for you. The wren for Mamma. The cat for Conie.

Yours lovingly, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

P. S. I liked your peas so much that I ate half of them.

New York, April 30th, 1868.

MY DEAR FATHER

I received your letter yesterday. Your letter was more exciting than Mother’s. I have a request to ask of you, will you do it? I hope you will, if you will it will figure greatly in my museum. You know what supple jacks are, do you not? Please get one for Ellie and two for me. Ask your friend to let you cut off the tiger-cat’s tail, and get some long moos and have it mated together. One of the supple jacks (I am talking of mine now) must be about as thick as your thumb and finger. The other must be as thick as your thumb. The one which is as thick as your finger and thumb must be four feet long and the other must be three feet long. One of my mice got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it was a common mouse. Its name was Brownie. Nothing particular has happened since you went away for I cannot go out in the country like you can. The trees and the vine on our piazza are buding and the grass is green as can be, and no one would dream that it was winter so short a time ago. All send love to all of you.

Yours lovingly, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

The “excitement” referred to in the first letter was the wonderful reception accorded to my mother on her return to the city of her girlhood days. Her rooms in the hotel in Savannah were filled by her friends with flowers--and how she loved flowers--but not the “buggie ones” in which her young naturalist son says he would “revel!”

One can see the ardent little bird-lover as he wrote “I jumped with delight when I found you had heard a mocking-bird,” and again when he says “Tell me how many curiosities and living things you have got for me.” Insatiable lover of knowledge as he was, it was difficult indeed for his parents to keep pace with his thirst for “outward and visible signs of the things that be.”

More than fifty years have passed since the painstaking penning of the childish letters, but the heart of his sister in reading them thrills hotly at the thought that the little “Conie” of those days was “very much” missed by her idolized brother, and how she treasured the letter written all for her, with the pictures of the cages in which he kept his beloved mice! It was sad that the pictures of the chaffinch, wren, and cat, evidently enclosed for each of the travellers, should have been lost. In the two letters to his father he enlists that comrade-father’s services for his adored “museum” by the plea for “trophies from some battle field,” and the urgent request for the “supple jack,” the nature of which exciting article I confess I do not understand. I do understand, however, his characteristic distress that “one of my mice got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it was a common mouse.” That last sentence brought the tears to my eyes. How true to type it was! the “common mouse” was the one he liked best of all--never the rare, exotic thing, but the every-day, the plain, the simple, and he probably liked it so much just because that little “common mouse” had shown courage and vitality and affection! All through Theodore Roosevelt’s life it was to the plain simple things and to the plain simple people that he gave his most loyal devotion.

In May, 1869, because of a great desire on the part of my mother to visit her brothers in England, as well as to see the Old World of which she had read and studied so much, she persuaded my father to take the whole family abroad.

After those early summers at Madison, which still stand out so clearly in my memory, there comes a less vivid recollection of months passed at the beautiful old place at Barrytown, on the Hudson River, which my parents rented from Mr. John Aspinwall, and where a wonderful rushing brook played a big part in the joys of our holiday months.

We “younger ones” longed for another summer at this charming spot and regretted, with a certain amount of suspicion, the decision of the “Olympians” to drag us from our leafy haunts to improve our rebellious young minds, but my parents were firm in their decision, and we started on the old paddle-wheel steamship _Scotia_, as I have said, in May, 1869.

In a letter from my mother to my aunt, who had married Mr. James King Gracie, and was therefore regretfully left behind, she described with an easy pen some incidents of the voyage across the ocean, as follows:

“Elliott is the leader of children’s sports and plays with the little Winthrop children all day. A short while ago Thee made up his mind suddenly that Teedie must play too, so hunted up the little fellow who was deeply enjoying a conversation with the only acquaintance he has made, a little man, whom we call the ‘one too many man,’ for he seems to go about with no acquaintances. His name is Mr. St. John and he is a quaint little well of knowledge,--very fond of natural history and fills Teedie’s heart with delight. Teedie brought him up and introduced him to me, his eyes dancing with delight and he constantly asks me, ‘Mamma, have you really conversed with Mr. St. John?’ I feel so tenderly to Teedie, that I actually stopped reading the ‘Heir of Redcliffe,’ and talked to the poor little man who has heart complaint so badly that his voice is even affected by it.

“The two little boys were pretty seasick on Sunday and I do not know what I should have done without Robert, the bedroom steward, and an amiable deck steward, who waits on those who remain on deck at meals. He seems a wonderfully constructed creature, having amiable knobs all over his body, upon which he supports more bowls of soup and plates of eatables than you can imagine, all of which he serves out, panting over you while you take your plate, with such wide extended nostrils that they take in the Irish coast, and the draught from them cools the soup!

“Anna,--the carpet in my stateroom is filled with organic matter which, if distilled, would make a kind of anchovy paste, only fit to be the appetizer before the famous ‘witches’ broth,’ the receipt for which Shakespeare gives in “Macbeth”,--but on the whole the _Scotia_ is well ordered and cleaner than I had expected.

“On Sunday morning Thee was sick and while in bed, little Conie came into the room. He looked down from his upper berth, looking like a straw-colored Cockatoo, but Conie stopped in the middle of what she was saying and said, ‘Oh Papa! you have such a lovely little curl on your forehead’ with a note of great admiration in her voice and meaning it all, _really_, but her position looking up, and his looking down reminded me forcibly of the picture of the flattered crow who dropped his cheese when the fox complimented him!”

This letter, perhaps, more than almost any other, gives the quaint humor and also the tenderness of my mother’s attitude toward her children and husband.

On our arrival in Liverpool we were greeted by the Bulloch uncles, and from that time on the whole European trip was one of interest and delight to the “grown people.” My older sister, though not quite fifteen, was so unusually mature and intelligent that she shared their enjoyment, but the journey was of rather mitigated pleasure to the three “little ones,” who much preferred the nursery at 28th East 20th Street, or their free summer activities in wood and field, to the picture-galleries and museums, or even to the wonderful Swiss mountains where they had to be so carefully guarded.

In the letters written faithfully to our beloved aunt, the note of homesickness is always apparent.

Our principal delight was in what we used to call “exploring” when we first arrived at a hotel, and in the occasional intercourse with children of our own age, or, as in Teedie’s case, with some expert along the line of his own interests, but the writing and receiving of home letters stand out more strongly than almost any other memory of this time, and amongst those most treasured by Teedie and myself were the little missives written by our most intimate friend, Edith Kermit Carow, a little girl who was to have, in later days, the most potent influence of all over the life of Theodore Roosevelt. How little she thought when she wrote to her friend “Conie” from Redbank, November 19, 1869, “I was much pleased at receiving your kind letter telling me all about Teedie’s birthday,” that one day that very Teedie would be President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow the mistress of the White House.

The old friendship of our parents for Mr. and Mrs. Carow, who lived with Mr. Carow’s older sister, Mrs. Robert Kermit, in a large house backing up against the 14th Street mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, was the natural factor in the relationship of the younger generation, and little Edith Carow and little Corinne Roosevelt were pledged friends from the time of their birth.

The “Teedie” of those days expressed always a homesick feeling when “Edie’s” letters came. They seemed to fill him with a strong longing for his native land!

In the little note written on yellow, very minute writing-paper, headed by a satisfied-looking cat, “Edie” expresses the wish that “Teedie” could have been with her on a late picnic, and “Teedie,” I am equally sure, wished for her presence at his eleventh-birthday festivities, which were described by my sister Anna in a letter to our aunt, Mrs. James King Grade. I quote a few lines from that letter, for again its contents show the beautiful devotion of my father and mother and sister to the delicate little boy--the devotion which always put their own wishes or arrangements aside when the terrible attacks of asthma came, for those attacks seemed to make them feel that no plan was too definite or important to change at once should “Teedie’s” health require it. My sister writes, the letter being dated from Brussels, October 30, 1869:

“Last Thursday was dear little Teedie’s birthday; he was eleven years old. We all determined to lay ourselves out on that occasion, for we all feared that he would be homesick,--for he is a great little home-boy. It passed off very nicely indeed. We had to leave Berlin suddenly the night before, for ‘Teedie’ was not very well; so we left Berlin on Wednesday night at eight o’clock and arrived at Cologne on Thursday morning about nine. You can imagine it was a very long trip for the three little children, although they really bore it better than we three older ones. [She one of the older ones at fourteen and a half!] It was a bitterly cold night and snowed almost all the time. Think of a snow storm on the night of the 27th of October! Teedie was delighted at having had a snow storm on his birthday morning, for he had never had _that_ before. When we reached Cologne we went to the same hotel, and had the same nice rooms which we had had on our former stay there, and that of course made us feel very much more at home. Teedie ordered the breakfast, and they all had ‘real tea’ as a very great treat, and then Teedie ordered the dinner, at which we were all requested to appear in full dress; so Mamma came in her beautiful white silk dinner dress, and Papa in dress coat and light kid gloves. I was very cold, so only wore silk. After Teedie’s dinner Papa brought in all his presents. They, Mamma and Papa, gave each of the three, writing desks marked with their names and filled with all the conveniences. Then Teedie received a number of smaller presents as well.”

What parents, indeed, so fully to understand the romantic feeling of the little boy about his birthday dinner, that they were more than willing to don their most beautiful habiliments, and appear as they had so lately appeared when received at the Vienna Court! Such yielding to what by many people might have been considered as too childish a whim to be countenanced shows with special clearness the quality in my father and mother which inspired in us all such undying adoration. Another letter--not written by my older sister, but in the painstaking handwriting of a little girl of seven--describes my own party the month before. We were evidently staying in Vienna at the time, for I say: “We went to Schönbrunn, a ‘shatto.’” (More frequently known as a château, but quite as thrilling to my childish mind spelled in my own unique manner!) And there in the lovely grounds my mother had arranged a charming al fresco supper for the little homesick American girl, and just as the “grown people” were in “full dress” for “Teedie’s” birthday, so they gave themselves up in the grounds of the great “shatto” to making merry for the little seven-year-old girl.