The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (156 page)

67.
Sew.63.

68.
Hag.Boy.60.

69.
Qu. Hag.Boy.62.

70.
See Morr.140.

71.
Put.155; TR.Pri.Di. Sep. 27, June 17, 18, 1878.

72.
Mor.25; Put.175–6 fn.

73.
Put.175; TR.Pri.Di. Oct. 4, 1878; Mor.25.

74.
TR.Pri.Di. Oct. 5, 1878; Mor.35.

75.
Put. 167.

76.
Ib., 166–7.

77.
PRI. n.

78.
TR.Pri.Di. Oct. 19, 20, 1878.

79.
Ib., Nov. 2, 1878; TR.Har.Scr. The menu of ten courses that evening included oysters, turbot, “Mongrel Goose / Young Pig,” croustade of venison, canvasback duck / larded quails, Charlotte Russe, Roquefort and olives, sherbet. (Ib.)

80.
TR.Pri.Di. Nov. 2, 1878 sic. Some of his classmates corroborate this. “Very little upset him … he had the sense to realize his limitations.” (James Giddes in PRI. n.) Drinking at Harvard generally was so heavy in the late seventies that two or three students out of every class were expected to die of alcoholism a year or so after graduation. (Ib.)

81.
TR.Pri.Di.
passim;
ib. Oct. 2, 1878. A classmate remembered him angrily reprimanding the singer of a risqué song at the Hasty Pudding Club. Edward Wagenknecht remarks: “It is impossible that there can ever have been a more clean-living man than Theodore Roosevelt.” (Hagedorn memo, TRB; Wag.87.)

82.
Ib., Nov. 28, 1878.

83.
Ib., Jan. 25, 1880.

1.
TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880 (privately owned).

2.
COW; Par; Mrs. Bacon’s statements in TRC; newspaper tributes to Alice, Feb. 1884; letters to B (1884) in TRC.

3.
TR.Pri.Di. Nov. 7, 1880.

4.
Pri.41–3; Mrs. Bacon’s statements; Put. 167–8; photographs in TRC; a sample of Alice’s hair preserved by TR in Sagamore Hill vaults; TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880.

5.
Mor.36.

6.
TR to Harry Minot, July 5, 1880, qu. Put.193–4.

7.
Rose Lee to Carleton Putnam, qu. Put.166; Pri.42–3; Rob.63.

8.
TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880.

9.
Mor.36.

10.
See Put.178.

11.
TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880; Put.173.

12.
TR.Pri.Di. Dec. 11, 1879.

13.
Ib., Dec. 21, 1878.

14.
Mor.34.

15.
Wis.12.

16.
Cut. 23–25; TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 18, 1879.

17.
Laughlin, J. Laurence, “Roosevelt at Harvard,”
Review of Reviews
, LXX (1924) 397. Robert Bacon was U.S. Secretary of State, Jan. 27-Mar. 5, 1909.

18.
Thayer, William Roscoe,
TR: An Intimate Biography
(Houghton Mifflin, 1919) 20. TR’s classmate Frederick Almy recalls TR leading a deputation of students to Harvard President Charles W. Eliot and stammering for some time in the great man’s presence. Eventually he forced it out: “Mr. Eliot, I am President Roosevelt.” PRI.n. Washburn, Charles G.,
TR: The Logic of His Career
(Houghton Mifflin, 1916) says that “at the Pudding we often incited a discussion for the
purpose of rousing ‘Teddy.’ In his excitement he would sometimes lose altogether the power of articulation, much to our delight. He then had almost a defect in his speech which made his utterance deliberate and even halting.” (p.5) References to this impediment are frequent in TR’s late teens and early twenties, non-existent thereafter.

19.
Put.177.

20.
Ib.

21.
Put.178. These two remarks, and the fact that TR abandoned his habit of taking field-notes in 1879, suggest that Alice Lee was instrumental in changing TR’s vocation to something other than natural history. While admittedly slender, the speculation is borne out by anecdotes indicating that Alice’s own interest in the world of animals was minimal. On one occasion she innocently asked Theodore “who had shaved the lions” at a zoo, “being otherwise unable to account for their manes.” (Mor.48) John Gable suggests that economic scruples may have caused TR to forego an academic career—but he was after all worth $8,000 p.a. and Alice came of an equally wealthy family.

22.
TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 11, 31, 1879; Mor.38.

23.
Pors. in TRC; Mor.38. TR’s record of expenditures for the years 1877–79 show that dress was always the major item of his budget, exceeding what he spent on board, lodging, education, travel, and sport. Whereas the average Harvard student’s total expenditures in the late 1870s was $650 to $850 (even the wealthiest rarely exceeded $1,500) Theodore spent $1,742 in his first year, $2,049 in his second, and $4,113 in his third. See King, Moses,
Harvard and its Surroundings
(Cambridge, 1878); Grant, Robert, “Harvard College in the Seventies,”
Scribner’s
, May 1897, and TR.Pri.Di. Dec. 31, 1879.

24.
The following account of TR’s vacation in Maine is drawn from Sew.5–6, Put.159–61.

25.
Mor.37.

26.
Sew.5.

27.
Hag.Boy.59; Mor.37.

28.
Sew. 6.

29.
Sewall to TR, reminding him of their conversation, June 1902, TRP.

30.
TR to Mittie, qu. Put.161.

31.
TR.Pri.Di. Mar. 15, 1879.

32.
TR to B, Mar. 23, 1879; Wis.33.

33.
Har.13; Put.144.

34.
Wis.4–5.

35.
Cut.3, 7, 8.

36.
H. E. Armstrong in
The Independent
, Sept. [?], 1902, Presidential Scrapbook, TRP; Richard Welling, “TR at Harvard,”
Outlook
clip, n.d., in TRB; Tha.23; Hag.Boy.57–8.

37.
TR.Pri.Di. Apr. 2, 1879.

38.
Mor.39.

39.
TR.Pri.Di. May 8, 1879.

40.
Put.174; TR.Pri.Di. May 13, 1879.

41.
Put.175.

42.
Mor.40.

43.
See TR.Pri.Di., Jan. 25, 1880.

44.
Ib., June 19, 1879. The following account of Class Day, 1879, owes much to Putnam’s treatment in Put. 180–2, as well as TR.Pri.Di. June 20.

45.
Memo by E in TRC.

46.
Put.183.

47.
TR.Pri.Di. July 5, 9, 1879.

48.
Ib., July 30, 1879.

49.
Las. 3–9.

50.
Fanny Parsons, note in TRB.

51.
TR.Pri.Di. Aug. 16, 1879.

52.
Ib., Aug. 18, 1879. TR, dictating his
Autobiography
in 1913, mused for several pages on the reasons behind this decision. See TR. Auto. 25–7.

53.
TR to B, Aug. 22, 1879 (TRB); TR.Pri.Di., same date. For an unforgettable photograph of Alice and TR with tennis rackets, evocative of both the bewitcher and the bewitched, see Michael Teague,
Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth
(New
York, 1981). See also Michael Teague, “Theodore Roosevelt and Alice Lee: A New Perspective,”
Harvard Library Bulletin
33 (1985) 3.

54.
Put.183; Mor.40.

55.
Put.161.

56.
The following account is based on ib., 161–3.

57.
TR to B. n.d. (Sep. 4?) TRB.

58.
TR.Pri.Di.

59.
TR to B, Sep. 14, 1879 (TRB).

60.
Put. 163.

61.
See the impressive analysis of TR’s physical feats in Maine in Put. 163. The author shows that in a total of 61 days with Sewall, TR marched, paddled, and rode over 1,000 miles through near-virgin wilderness (540 miles on foot), averaging more than 50 miles a day.

62.
Mor.41; TR.Pri.Di. May 16, 1879; Put.174, 184 fn.; McCausland, Hugh,
The English Carriage
(London, 1948)
passim;
TR to B (telegram), n.d. but probably early Sep. 1879. (TRB)

63.
Mor.41.

64.
Pri.43.

65.
Welling, Richard, “My Classmate TR,”
American Legion Monthly
, Jan. 1929.

66.
TR.Pri.Di. Sep. 26, 1879; Put. 184–6; TR.Pri.Di. Oct. 10, 23, 1879.

67.
Put. 184–5.

68.
Mor.41–2.

69.
Ib.

70.
TR.Pri.Di. Oct. 27, 1879.

71.
TR to B, n.d. (Nov. 11, 1879?) TRB.

72.
TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880.

73.
Mor.41.

74.
Qu. Put.178 fn. TR’s choice of this subject, at this time of great personal stress, is symbolic. It had been the machine in politics that destroyed his father, whose troubles with it had begun almost exactly two years before; it was the machine in politics that, almost exactly two years later, would launch his own legislative career. (Cf. 238–9).

75.
TR.Pri.Di. Nov. 22, 1879.

76.
TR to B, n.d. (Nov. 11, 1879?) TRB; TR.Pri.Di. Nov. 22, 1879; Put. 187; Thomas Lee, Alice’s cousin, to Henry F. Pringle, PRI.n.; TR.Pri.Di. Dec. 2, 1879.

77.
Pri.42; see his source, Mrs. Robert Bacon, in PRI.n.

78.
Wis.13; Pri.36. The book, which will be discussed later in the text, was prompted by certain inaccuracies in William James’s (British) history of the war, which TR found in the Porcellian Library.

79.
In 1910, TR recalled reciting “that glorious chorus from
Atalanta in Calydon”
and the despairing lines from
Dolores
beginning “Time turns the old days to derision.” “What young man has not, when suffering the pangs of despised love, given vent to his feelings in those words?” George Buchanan,
My Mission to Russia
(Boston, 1923), vol. 1, 88–89.

80.
Put.171; Pri.43–4; Corinne Roosevelt Robinson in PRI.n.

81.
Put.187; TR.Pri.Di. Dec. 24, 1879; ib., Nov. 16.

82.
Put.187.

83.
TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 1, 1880.

84.
Ib., Jan. 25, 1880. “I have not mentioned a word of it to my diary,” TR adds with satisfaction, apropos of his recent torment. “No outsider has suspected it.”

85.
Ib.; also Feb. 23, 1880.

86.
Ib., Jan. 31, 1880; Pri.43; TR.Pri.Di. Feb. 2, 1880.

87.
Alice Lee to MBR, Feb. 3, 1880 (typed copy in TRB).

88.
TR to B, Mar. 1, 1880 (TRB). The choice of date shows TR’s love for parallels and anniversaries in the family. On Oct. 27 he would turn twenty-two, the same age his father had been when
he
was married; Alice would be nineteen, the same as Mittie had been.

89.
Mor.43.

90.
TR.Pri.Di. Mar. 11, 1880.

91.
Qu. Put.189; qu. ib., 190; ib., 189.

92.
TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880.

93.
Mor.44. They had been reassured by Mittie’s offer to accommodate the young couple at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street, at least through the winter of 1880–81.

94.
Thomas Lee to Henry F. Pringle, PRI.n. See also Pri.44.

95.
Mor.44.

96.
TR.Pri.Di. Apr. 1, 1880; Cut.27; Pri.43; TR.Pri.Di. Mar. 25, 1880; Put.185; ib., fn.; Mor.43.

97.
Pri.43–4.

98.
Mor.42; Grant,
“Seventies.”

99.
Qu. Wis. 14–15.

100.
Wis.15.

101.
Ib.

102.
Ib.

103.
Mor.45 ff., with TR.Pri.Di.
passim
, form the basis of this paragraph.

104.
See also Roosevelt, Nicholas,
TR: The Man as I Knew Him
(Dodd, Mead, 1967) 99 on TR’s highly individual tennis style. TR.Pri.Di. July 29, 1880.

105.
Ib., Mar. 25, 1880.

106.
Thayer,
TR
, 20–1.

107.
Welling, “Harvard,” offers the most detailed (and negative) analysis of TR’s thesis.

108.
Qu. ib.

109.
Laughlin, “Harvard,” 394.

110.
See Wag.87–90. TR’s thesis qu. Welling, “Harvard.”

111.
Put.184;
Harvard Register
, July 1880, 143–4; TR.Pri.Di. June 30, 1880. TR’s marks in his senior year were lower than those of previous years, but high enough to win him his Phi Beta Kappa key. There had been an attrition of 20 students in his class. In later life TR made light of his academic career, saying only that he was “a reasonably good student”; but as one classmate pointed out, his overall average matched those of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. TR.Auto.25; Wilhelm, Donald,
TR as an Undergraduate
(Luce, 1910) 24. On this Commencement Day, Henry Cabot Lodge marched in the procession as a Marshal, and John D. Long gave the main address.

112.
TR.Pri.Di. June 29, 1880.

113.
Put.198, Hag.Boy.63; Woo.118. TR kept the secret for thirty-five years. Not until January 1915 did he admit to an old classmate that “when he left college the doctors warned him of weakness of the heart.”

114.
Hag.Boy.63; TR.Pri.Di. Feb. 10, 1880.

115.
Ib., July 1, 1880.

116.
Ib., July 4, 1880.

117.
Hag.RF.6; TR,
Notes on Some of the Birds of Oyster Bay;
Natural History Notes,
passim;
Mor.73.

118.
Qu. Put.200.

119.
Mor.45.

120.
She managed to take enough time off to win the Mount Desert Ladies’ Tennis Tournament.

121.
Qu. Put.199.

122.
Put.201 ff.; Rob.113; qu. Put.205.

123.
TR to MBR, Aug. 25, 1880; Mor.46.

124.
TR to B, Sep. 2, 1880 (TRB).

125.
TR.Pri.Di. Sep. 1880,
passim;
Put.205–7. E to B, Sep. 12, 1880: “I think he misses Alice poor dear old beloved brother. But I try to keep him at something else all the time.”

126.
Mor.46.

127.
Put.208.

128.
Qu. Put.209.