Part 5

After the great excitements of the birthdays came our interesting sojourn in Rome. In spite of my mother’s efforts to arouse a somewhat abortive interest in art in the hearts of the three little children, my principal recollections of the Rome of 1869 are from the standpoint of the splendid romps on the Pincian Hill. In those contests of running and racing and leaping my brother Elliott was always the leader, although “Teedie” did his part whenever his health permitted. One scene stands out clearly in my mind. It was a beautiful day, one of those sunny Italian days when ilex and olive shone with a special glistening quality, and when the “Eternal City” as viewed from the high hill awoke even in the hearts of the little Philistine foreigners a subconscious thrill which they themselves did not quite understand. We were playing with the Lawrence children, playing leap-frog (how inappropriate to the Pincian Hill!) over the many posts, when suddenly there came a stir--an unexpected excitement seemed everywhere. Word was passed that the Pope was coming. “Teedie” whispered to the little group of American children that he didn’t believe in popes--that no real American would; and we all felt it was due to the stars and stripes that we should share his attitude of distant disapproval. But then, as is often the case, the miracle happened, for the crowd parted, and to our excited, childish eyes something very much like a scene in a story-book took place. The Pope, who was in his sedan-chair carried by bearers in beautiful costumes, his benign face framed in white hair and the close cap which he wore, caught sight of the group of eager little children craning their necks to see him pass; and he smiled and put out one fragile, delicate hand toward us, and, lo! the late scoffer who, in spite of the ardent Americanism that burned in his eleven-year-old soul, had as much reverence as militant patriotism in his nature, fell upon his knees and kissed the delicate hand, which for a brief moment was laid upon his fair curling hair. Whenever I think of Rome this memory comes back to me, and in a way it was so true to the character of my brother. The Pope to him had always meant what later he would have called “unwarranted superstition,” but that Pope, Pio Nono, the kindly, benign old man, the moment he appeared in the flesh brought about in my brother’s heart the reaction which always came when the pure, the good, or the true crossed his path.

Amongst my mother’s efforts to interest us in art there was one morning when she decided positively that her little girl, at least, should do something more in keeping with the “Eternal City” than playing leap-frog on the Pincian Hill, and so, a reluctant captive, I was borne away to the Vatican Galleries, and was there initiated into the beauties of some of the frescos and sculpture. My mother, who I have already said was a natural connoisseur in all art, had especial admiration for that wonderful piece of sculpture from the hand of Michael Angelo known as “The Torso of the Vatican.” This work of art stood alone in a small room, so that nothing else should take away from its effect. As those who know it well need hardly be told, it lacks both arms and both legs, and to the little girl who was summarily placed by her mother in the only chair in the small room, it seemed a very strange creation. But, with the hope of arousing artistic instinct, my lovely mother said: “Now, darling, this is one of the greatest works of art in the world, and I am going to leave you here alone for five minutes, because I want you to sit very quietly and look at it, and perhaps when I come back in the five minutes you will be able to realize how beautiful it is.” And then I saw my mother’s slender figure vanish into another room. Having been always accustomed to obey my parents, I virtuously and steadily kept my eyes upon the legless, armless Torso, wondering how any one _could_ think it a beautiful work of art; and when my mother, true to her words, returning in five minutes with an expectant look on her face, said, “Now, darling, what do you think of the great ‘Torso’?” I replied sadly, “Well, mamma, it seems to me a little ‘chumpy’!” How often later in life I have heard my mother laugh immoderately as she described her effort to instil her own love of those wonderful shoulders and that massive back into her recalcitrant small daughter; and when, years after, I myself, imbued as she was with a passion for Italy and Italian art, used to wander through those same galleries, I could never go into that little room without the memory of the small girl of long ago, and her effort to think Michael Angelo’s “Torso” anything but “chumpy.”

Christmas in Rome was made for us as much like our wonderful Christmases at home as was possible in a foreign hotel. It had always been our custom to go to our parents’ room at the pleasant hour of 6 A. M., and generally my mother had induced my long-suffering father to be dressed in some special and marvellous manner at that early hour when we “undid” the bulging, mysterious-looking stockings, and none of these exciting rites were omitted because of our distance from our native land. I think, for that reason, at the end of the beautiful Christmas Day, 1869, the special joy in the hearts of the three little American children was that they had actually forgotten that they were in Rome at all! On January 2, “Teedie” himself writes to his beloved Aunt Annie (Mrs. Gracie) on a piece of note-paper which characteristically has at the top a bird on a bough--that paper being his choice for the writing-desks which had been given to the three children on his birthday: “Will you send the enclosed to Edith Carow. In it I described our ascent of Vesuvius, and so I will describe Pompeii to you.” In a rather cramped hand he enters then into an accurate description of everything connected with Pompeii, gloating with scientific delight over the seventeen skeletons found in the Street of the Tombs, but falling for one moment into a lighter vein, he tells of two little Italian boys whom my father had engaged to come and sing for us the same evening at Sorrento, and whose faces were so dirty that my father and his friend Mr. Stevens washed them with “Kissengin Water.” That extravagance seems to have been specially entertaining to the mind of the young letter-writer.

During the year abroad there were lovely times when we were not obliged to think of sculpture or painting--weeks in the great Swiss mountains when, in spite of frequent attacks of his old enemy, my father writes that “Teedie” walked many miles and showed the pluck and perseverance which were so strikingly part of his character. In another letter he is described, while suffering from a peculiarly severe attack of asthma, as being propped up all night in a big chair in the sitting-room, while his devoted mother told him stories of “when she was a little girl” at the old plantation at Roswell; and yet within two days of that very time he is following my father and brother on one of the longest walks they took in the mountains. All through the letters of that period one realizes the developing character of the suffering little boy. My mother writes in a letter to her sister: “Teedie and Ellie have walked to-day thirteen miles, and are very proud of their performance. Indeed Teedie has been further several times.”

And so the year of exile had its joyous memories, but in spite of them never were there happier children than those who arrived home in America in the spring of 1870.

Earlier in our lives my father, always thinking of the problem of the fragile health of his two older children, conceived the idea of turning the third room of the second story at 28 East 20th Street into an out-of-doors piazza, a kind of open-air gymnasium, with every imaginable swing and bar and seesaw, and my mother has often told me how he called the boy to him one day--Theodore was now about eleven years of age--and said: “Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must _make_ your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.” The little boy looked up, throwing back his head in a characteristic fashion; then with a flash of those white teeth which later in life became so well known that when he was police commissioner the story ran that any recreant policeman would faint if he suddenly came face to face with a set of _false_ teeth in a shop-window--he said, “_I’ll make my body_.”

That was his first important promise to himself and the delicate little boy began his work; and for many years one of my most vivid recollections is seeing him between horizontal bars, widening his chest by regular, monotonous motion--drudgery indeed--but a drudgery which eventuated in his being not only the apostle but the exponent of the strenuous life.

What fun we had on that piazza! The first Theodore Roosevelt, like his son, was far ahead of his times, and fresh air was his hobby, and he knew that the children who will cry if they are made to take dull walks on dreary city streets, will romp with dangerous delight ungovernessed and unmaided in an outdoor gymnasium. I use the word “dangerous” advisedly, for one day my lovely and delicate mother had an unforgetable shock on that same piazza. She happened to look out of the window opening on to the piazza and saw two boys--one of whom, needless to say, was Theodore--carefully balancing the seesaw from the high rail which protected the children from the possibility of falling into the back yard, two stories below. Having wearied of the usual play, the aforesaid two boys thought they would add a tinge of excitement to the merriment by balancing the seesaw in such a manner as to have one boy always in the thrilling position of hanging on the farther side of the top rail, with the possibility (unless the equilibrium were kept to perfection) of seesaw, boys, and all descending unexpectedly into the back yard.

One may well imagine the horror of the mother as she saw her adventurous offspring crawling out beyond the projection of the railing, and only great self-control enabled her to reach the wooden board held lightly by the fingers of an equally criminal cousin, and by an agonized clutch make it impossible for the seesaw to slide down with its two foolhardy riders.

Needless to say, no such feat was ever performed again, but the piazza became the happy meeting-ground of all the boys and girls of the neighborhood, and there not only Theodore Roosevelt but many of his friends and family put in a stock of sturdy health which was to do them good service in later years. At the same time the children of that house were leading the normal lives of other little children, except for the individual industry of the more delicate one, who put his hours of necessary quiet into voracious reading of history, and study of natural history.

Again the summers were the special delight of our lives, and the following several summers we spent on the Hudson River, at or near Riverdale, where warm friendships were formed with the children of our parents’ friends, Mr. and Mrs. William E. Dodge, Mr. and Mrs. Percy R. Pyne, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Harriman, and Mr. Robert Colgate.

Groups of joyous children invented and carried into effect every imaginable game, and, as ever, our father was the delightful collaborator in every scheme of pleasure. There began Theodore’s more active collection of birds and animals. There he advertised for families of field-mice, and the influx of the all-too-prolific little animals was terrifying to the heart of so perfect a housekeeper as my mother. The horror produced by the discovery of several of the above-named families in the refrigerator was more than trying to the nerves of one less devoted to science. My sister Anna, the most unselfish of older sisters, was the chief sufferer always, as, in spite of her extreme youth--for she was only four years older than my brother--her unusual ability and maturity made her seem more like a second mother than a sister. On one special occasion Theodore, having advertised and offered the large sum of ten cents for every field-mouse and thirty-five cents for a family, left for a trip to the Berkshire hills, and my poor sister was inundated by hundreds of active and unattractive families of field-mice, while clamoring country people demanded their ten-cent pieces or the larger sum irrelevantly offered by the absentee young naturalist. In the same unselfish manner my sister was the unwilling recipient of families of young squirrels, guinea-pigs, etc., and I can see her still bringing up one especially delicate family of squirrels on the bottle, and also begging a laundress not to forsake the household because turtles were tied to her tubs!

Those summers on the Hudson River stand out as peculiarly happy days. As I have said before, we were allowed great freedom, although never license, in the summer-time, and situated as we then were, with a group of little friends about us, the long sweet days passed like a joyous dream.

Doctor Hilborne West, the husband of my mother’s half-sister, stands prominently out as a figure in those childhood times. My mother writes of him as follows: “Dr. West has made himself greatly beloved by each child. He has made boats and sailed them with Ellie; has read poetry and acted plays with Conie; and has talked science and medicine and natural history with Teedie, who always craves knowledge.” In spite of his craving for knowledge the boy, now nearly fourteen years old, had evidently, however, the normal love of noise and racket, as evinced by the following “spread-eagle” letter to his aunt, who, in her turn, had gone abroad that summer.

Dobb’s Ferry, July 9th, 72.

DEAR AUNTIE

We had the most splendid fun on the fourth of July. At eight o’clock we commenced with a discharge of three packs of firecrackers, which awoke most of the people. But we had only begun now, and during the remainder of the day six boxes of torpedoes and thirty-six packs of firecrackers kept the house in an exceedingly lively condition. That evening it rained which made us postpone the fireworks until next evening, when they were had with great success, excepting the balloons, which were an awful swindle. We boys assisted by firing roman candles, flowerpots and bengolas. We each got his fair share of burns.

Conie had a slight attack of asthma last night but I took her riding this morning and we hope she is well now.

We are permitted now to stay in the water as long as we please. The other day I came near being drowned, for I got caught under water and was almost strangled before I could get out. I study English, French, German and Latin now. Bamie spent the fourth at Barrytown where she had Tableaux, Dances, &c. to her heart’s content. Give my love to Uncles and Cousin Jimmie. Aunt Hattie &c. Tell Aunt Hattie I will never forget the beautiful jam and the splendid times we had at her cottage.

Ever your little T. D.

Later in life, in thinking of this same uncle, whose subsequent career never squared with his natural ability, I have come to feel that sometimes people whom we call failures should not be so called,--for it is often their good fortune to leave upon the malleable minds of the next generation an inspiration of which they themselves fall sadly short. In the character of this same charming uncle there must have been some lack of fibre, for, brilliant as he was, he let his talents lie dormant. Yet, perhaps, of all those who influenced our early childhood, the effect upon us produced by his cultivation, his marvellous memory, his literary interests, and his genial good humor had more to do with the early stirring of intellectual desires in his little relatives than almost any other influence at that time. The very fact that he was not achieving a thousand worth-while things, as was my father, the very fact that he was not busied with the practical care and thought for us, as were my mother and aunt--brought about between us that delightful relationship when the older person leads rather than drives the younger into the paths of literature and learning. To have “Uncle Hill” read Shakespeare to us under the trees, and then suggest that we “dress up” and act the parts, to have “Uncle Hill” teach us parts of the famous plays of all the ages and the equally famous poems, was a delight rather than a task; and he interspersed his Shakespeare with the most remarkable, and, to our childish minds, brilliant doggerel, sometimes of his own making, that could possibly be imagined--so that Hamlet’s soliloquy one day seemed quite as palatable as “Villikins and His Dinah,” or “Horum, Chorum, Sumpti Vorum,” the next. To show the relationship between the charming physician of Philadelphia (the home of my uncle and aunt was in that city) and the young philosopher of New York, I am tempted to insert a letter from the latter to the former written in 1873 from Paris on our second trip abroad.

“From Theodore the Philosopher to Hilborne, Elder of the Church of Philadelphia. Dated from Paris, a city of Gaul, in the 16th day of the 11th month of the 4th year of the reign of Ulysses. [I imagine that General Grant was then President.] Truly, O Hilborne! this is the first time in many weeks that I have been able to write you concerning our affairs. I have just come from the city of Bonn in the land of the Teuton, where I have been communing with our fellow labourer James of Roosevelt, surnamed The Doctor [our first cousin, young James West Roosevelt], whom I left in good health. In crossing the Sea of Atlantis I suffered much of a malady called sickness of the sea, but am now in good health, as are also all our family. I would that you should speak to the sage Leidy concerning the price of his great manuscript, which I am desirous of getting. Give my regards to Susan of West, whom I hope this letter will find in health. I have procured many birds of kinds new to me here, and have preserved them. This is all I have to say for the time being, so will close this short epistle.”[A]

[A] This in a boyish hand which is beginning to show the character of the young author.

* * * * *

That summer of 1872 was very enchanting, although overshadowed by the thought of another “terrible trip to Europe,” for after much thought my father and mother had decided that the benefits of a winter on the Nile, and a summer studying German in Dresden, would outweigh the possible disadvantage of breaking into the regular school studies of the three children of the 20th Street nursery. Therefore the whole family set sail again in the autumn of 1872.

After a delightful time with the uncles and aunts who had settled in England, and many gay excursions to Hampton Court and Bushey Park, and other places of interest, we went by way of Paris and Brindisi to Alexandria, and after some weeks in Cairo set sail on a dahabeah for three months on the Nile. In a letter from my brother Elliott to my aunt he speaks of my father’s purchase of a boat. With characteristic disregard of the historic interest of the Nile he says: “Teedie and I won’t mind the Nile very much, now that we have a boat to row in, perhaps it won’t be so bad after all what with rowing, boxing, and Christmas and playing, in between lessons and the ruins.” Reaching Egypt, the same young lover of boxing and boats writes of meeting much-beloved cousins, and again the characters of “Ellie” and “Teedie” are markedly brought out in the childish letter, for he says, “We had such a cosey tea. Frank and I poured tea and cut up chicken, while Teedie and Jimmie [the young cousin referred to in ‘Teedie’s’ letter to Doctor West] talked about natural history.”

The experience of a winter on the Nile was a very wonderful one for the little American children, and “Ellie’s” anticipations were more than carried out. Before we actually set sail I write in my journal of our wonderful trip to the pyramids and our impressions, childish ones of course, of the marvellous bazaars; and then we finally leave Cairo and start on the journey up the ancient river. I have always been so glad that our trip was before the days of the railway up to Karnak, for nothing could have been more Oriental and unlike modern life than the slow progress of our dahabeah, the _Aboo Erdan_. When there was wind we tacked and slowly sailed, for the boat was old and bulky, but when there was no wind the long line of sailors would get out on the bank of the river and, tying themselves to the rope attached to the bow, would track slowly along, bending their bronzed backs with the effort, and singing curious crooning songs.

In a letter dated December 27 I write to my aunt: “I will tell you about my presents. Amongst others I got a pair of pretty vases, and Teedie says the little birds they have on them are an entirely new species. Teedie and Father go out shooting every day, and so far have been very lucky. Teedie is always talking about it whenever he comes in the room,--in fact when he does come in the room you always hear the words ‘bird’ and ‘skin.’ _It certainly is great fun for him._” In connection with these same shooting-trips my father writes: “Teedie took his gun and shot an ibis and one or two other specimens this morning while the crew were taking breakfast. Imagine seeing not only flocks of these birds, regarded as so rare by us in days gone by as to be selected as a subject for our game of ‘twenty questions,’ but also of storks, hawks, owls, pelicans, and, above all, doves innumerable. I presented Teedie with a breech-loader at Christmas, and he was perfectly delighted. It was entirely unexpected to him, although he had been shooting with it as mine. He is a most enthusiastic sportsman and has infused some of his spirit into me. Yesterday I walked through the bogs with him at the risk of sinking hopelessly and helplessly, for hours, and carried the dragoman’s gun, which is a muzzle-loader, with which I only shot several birds quietly resting upon distant limbs and fallen trees; _but I felt I must keep up with Teedie_.”

The boy of fourteen, with his indomitable energy, was already leading his equally indomitable father into different fields of action. He never rested from his studies in natural history. When not walking through quivering bogs or actually shooting bird and beast, he, surrounded by the brown-faced and curious sailors, would seat himself on the deck of the dahabeah and skin and stuff the products of his sport. I well remember the excitement, and, be it confessed, anxiety and fear inspired in the hearts of the four young college men who, on another dahabeah, accompanied us on the Nile, when the ardent young sportsman, mounted on an uncontrollable donkey, would ride unexpectedly into their midst, his gun slung across his shoulders in such a way as to render its proximity distinctly dangerous as he bumped absent-mindedly against them. When not actually hunting he was willing to take part in exploration of the marvellous old ruins.

In a letter to “Edie” I say: “The other day we arrived at Edfoo, and we all went to see the temple together. While we were there Teedie, Ellie, Iesi (one of our sailors), and I started to explore. We went into a little dark room and climbed in a hole which was in the middle of the wall. The boys had candles. It was dark, crawling along the passage doubled up. At last we came to a deep hole, into which Teedie dropped, and we found out it was a mummy pit. It didn’t go very far in, but it all seemed very exciting to us to be exploring mummy pits. Sometimes we sail head foremost and sometimes the current turns us all the way around--and I wish you could hear the cries of the sailors when anything happens.”