Colonel Roosevelt (174 page)

30
One of the last
Albert Cheney interview, 1920, TRB. Youngs Cemetery still functions. TR’s grave is maintained by the town of Oyster Bay.

31
“The man was”
Carl Bode, ed.,
The New Mencken Letters
(New York, 1997), 96.

32
Among the superlatives
Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 380;
The New York Times
, 7 Jan. 1919; White,
Autobiography
, 552.

33
Woodrow Wilson’s sentiments
The New York Times
, 8 Jan. 1919.

34
Something like a superman
New York Evening Post
, 6 Jan. 1919.

35
He was hailed
“Theodore Roosevelt” scrapbook, Pratt Collection (TRB);
The New York Times
, 8 Jan. 1919; Aimaro Sato, former Japanese ambassador to the United States and delegate to the Russo-Japanese peace conference at Portsmouth, N.H., in 1905, quoted in
The New York Times
, 10 Jan. 1919; Jules Jusserand address at Waldorf-Astoria, New York, 27 Oct. 1919, in
Journal of American History
, 13.3 (Fall 1919). Edith Wharton, recalling her meetings with TR in 1933, used the same simile as Jusserand: “Each of these encounters glows in me like a tiny morsel of radium.” Wharton,
A Backward Glance
, 317.

36
His survey of
New York
Tribune
and
The New York Times
, 10 Feb. 1919. The quotation is from part 2 of Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
.

37
“Mr. Roosevelt’s great”
The Nation
, 109.2836 (8 Nov. 1919).

38
Mr. Roosevelt has attained
Ibid.

39
“Teddy” the lovable
When Walter Lippmann was the senior statesman of American political journalism, he looked back on the many presidents he had known, and wrote that TR was the only one who could be described as “lovable.” Ronald Steel,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(Boston, 1980, New Brunswick, N.J. 1999), 64.

40
the book of all his books
Joseph Bucklin Bishop, ed.,
Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children
(New York, 1919). Largely as a result of this book, TR’s royalties increased from $3,150 in 1919 to $31,930. A modern reissue, illustrated and edited by Joan Paterson Kerr, is
A Bully Father
(New York, 1995).

41
Roosevelt’s mammoth 1911 letter
Bishop,
TR
, 2.184–259; TR,
Letters
, 7.348–99. Even Stuart Sherman allowed, in a review of Bishop’s biography, that the Trevelyan letter was “a masterpiece … probably one of the longest epistles in the world.”
The Nation
, 112.2896 (5 Jan. 1921).

42
“The man was”
William Allen White,
Masks in a Pageant
(New York, 1928), 326. The luxury Memorial Edition of TR’s
Works
was limited to 1,500 copies, 500 “for presentation” and 1,000 for sale. Hagedorn also published, in 1926, a cheaper National Edition, differently distributed among 20 volumes. For a summary of the contents of the Memorial Edition, see Wagenknecht,
The Seven Worlds of TR
, 345.

43
Four female trumpeters
John R. Lancos, “Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace: Study in Americanism,” in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 26ff.; Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 18. “Roosevelt House” is now Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site.

44
In 1925, Hagedorn
Nan Netherton, “Delicate Beauty and Burly Majesty: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt Island,” National Park Service draft ts., 1980, 76–77. Copy in AC. Pope’s column of spray was intended to evoke TR’s geyser-like energy.
Roosevelt Memorial Association,
Plan and Design for the Roosevelt Memorial in the City of Washington
(New York, 1925).

45
“fifth cousin by blood”
See 416.

46
“greatest man I ever knew”
James L. Golden, “FDR’s Use of the Symbol of TR in the Formation of His Political Persona and Philosophy,” in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 577.

47
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr
. The principal source for the following paragraphs is Charles W. Snyder, “An American Original: Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.” in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 95–106. The most comprehensive family history of the Roosevelts after TR’s death is Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 441–516.

48
Cousin Eleanor made things
Eleanor Roosevelt’s campaign behavior sparked decades of hatred between the Oyster Bay (Republican) and Hyde Park (Democratic) branches of the Roosevelt family.

49
It was a question
TR.Jr. could never bring himself to acknowledge that TR, reelected in 1912, would have been as centralized an authoritarian as FDR.

50
“one of the bravest”
Patton quoted in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 103. After World War II, a sentimental desire for juxtaposition led the Roosevelt family to override TR’s and EKR’s wishes (see 546) and transfer QR’s remains to the same cemetery. The bones of the two brothers now lie side by side.

51
nothing left to stand on
See 554.

52
War in the Garden of Eden
New York, 1919.

53
His nomadic nature
Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 492–507.

54
Archie went to work
See David M. Esposito, “Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt, 1894–1979,” in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 107ff.

55
a selection of
Archibald Roosevelt, ed.,
Theodore Roosevelt on Race, Riots, Reds, Crime
(Metairie, La., 1968).

56
“Beatniks”
Esposito in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 115.

57
“I’m going to”
Quoted by Archibald Roosevelt, Jr., interview with author, 3 Oct. 1981.

58
bellow the word “Americanism”
Author’s personal recollection.

59
Flora Whitney died
Biddle,
The Whitney Women
, 45–68 and
passim
. Gertude Vanderbilt Whitney’s statue of Flora is reproduced in
Flora
, 17.

60
“Hell, yes”
Cordery,
Alice
, 314. For full details of this episode in ARL’s life, see ibid., chap. 15.

61
lifelong passion for reading
See New York Society Library,
The President’s Wife and the Librarian: Letters at an Exhibition
(New York, 2009).

62
Perhaps the earliest
Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 1–2; Stefan Lorant, “The Boy in the Window,”
American Heritage
, 6.4 (June 1955).

63
filled a lacuna
For other lacunae in TR,
Works
, see Wagenknecht,
The Seven Worlds of TR
, 345.

64
Theodore Roosevelt Collection
This archive, which the RMA began to amass in New York immediately after TR’s death, temporarily transformed his birthplace into the nation’s first presidential library. Removed to Harvard University’s Widener and Houghton libraries and endowed with a curator in 1953, it now (2010) totals 56,000 manuscript, print, and visual items.

65
Whatever the Colonel’s
Harbaugh,
TR
(1961), 521–22.

66
On 22 November 1963
John Robert Greene, “Presidential Co-option of the image of TR,” in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 601–2.

67
Richard Nixon invoked
Ibid., 603.

68
Three decades later
Notable post-centennial books about TR unmentioned in this Epilogue are George Mowry,
The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912
(New York, 1958); Raymond A. Esthus,
Theodore Roosevelt and Japan
(Seattle, 1966); Willard B. Gatewood, Jr.,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy:
Episodes of the White House Years
(Baton Rouge, La., 1970); John Allen Gable,
The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party
(Port Washington, N.Y., 1978); Frederick W. Marks III,
Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt
(Lincoln, Neb., 1979); Thomas G. Dyer,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race
(Baton Rouge, La., 1980); John Milton Cooper,
The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt
(Cambridge, Mass., 1983); Paul Russell Cutright,
Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist
(Urbana, Ill., 1985); Lewis L. Gould,
The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
(Lawrence, Kan., 1991); John D. Weaver,
The Brownsville Raid
(College Station, Tex., 1992); Natalie Naylor et al.,
Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American
(Interlaken, N.Y., 1992); Edmund Morris,
Theodore Rex
(New York, 2001); Henry J. Hendrix,
Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century
(Annapolis, Md., 2009).

69
Three recent
Kathleen Dalton,
Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life
(New York, 2002); Millard,
The River of Doubt
(2005); O’Toole,
When Trumpets Call
(2005).

70
“He was a fulfiller”
Manuscript in TRC.

Unless otherwise credited, all images are from the Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass
.

Frontispiece
Theodore Roosevelt by George Moffett, 1914.