The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (24 page)

S
ORROWS CAME
sooner than he expected. Early in November, Alice’s resistance to his advances, hitherto always softened with a hint of future compliance, began to show signs of permanent hardening.
Theodore was immediately plunged into a state of sleepless, aching frustration. “Oh the changeableness of the female mind!” he burst out in a letter home, a remark which must have caused the Roosevelts some puzzlement, since he did not go on to explain it.
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The prospect of failure clearly terrified him. “I did not think I could win her,” he afterward confessed, “and I went nearly crazy at the mere thought of losing her.”
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As usual he kept despair at bay by burying himself in books (for his birthday he had requested “complete editions of the works of Prescott, Motley, and Carlyle”) and studying harder than ever.
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Somehow he managed to conceal his agony from his classmates. Frederick Almy, class secretary, heard Theodore read a paper at the November meeting of the O.K. Society and was impressed by his vigorous, confident manner. “Roosevelt spoke on the machine in politics, illustrating by the recent election in New York. An interesting discussion followed … I have a very high opinion of Roosevelt.”
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As Thanksgiving, the anniversary of his vow, approached, he made a desperate, last-minute effort to press his suit. Alice would “come out” a week after the festival, and become fair game for all the eligible young men in Boston. He reasoned that his best hope lay in bringing their respective families together, enmeshing Alice in such warm webs of mutual affection (for he was sure everybody would get on famously) that she would be powerless to break away. With considerable skill he managed to arrange four such meetings in twenty days. On 2 November Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Alice, and Rose visited New York and were entertained by the Roosevelts; on 17 November Bamie and Corinne visited Chestnut Hill, and the Saltonstalls gave a dinner in their honor. On 18 November the Lees repeated the compliment. Finally, on 22 November, Theodore held an elaborate, thirty-four-plate luncheon in the Porcellian, at which elders of all three families were represented. The rest of the company comprised the most attractive of his Boston girlfriends and the most fashionable of his college chums. Perhaps because of Alice’s youth, or because Theodore did not wish to arouse premature suspicions, he relegated her to the secondary position on his left; the place of honor went to a Miss Betty Hooper.
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This three-week diplomatic offensive paid off handsomely in terms of family goodwill. The Lees were in reported “raptures” over their New York trip, and his sisters had been effusively welcomed at Chestnut Hill. As for his luncheon, “everything went off to perfection; the dinner was capital, the wine was good, and the fellows all gentlemen.”
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For a few days Theodore basked in the glow of his achievements, then drove out to Chestnut Hill for Thanksgiving hoping that Alice would now look more favorably upon him.

Unfortunately she did not, although she continued, rather heartlessly, to flirt and tease. He returned to Harvard in a melancholy mood. Four days later Alice “came out” in the traditional shower of rosebuds, and Boston’s eligible youth began to circle ominously around her. Theodore was a guest at the party, and in the days following could no longer conceal his violent frustration. “See that girl?” he exclaimed at a Hasty Pudding function, pointing across the room at Alice: “I am going to marry her. She won’t have me, but I am going to have
her!
”
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As winter settled in, and the long evenings dragged out, Theodore felt the loneliness of unrequited love weigh heavily upon him. Unable to find solace in reading books, he began to write one, entitled
The Naval War of 1812.
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His insomnia worsened to the point that for night after night he did not even go to bed. He wandered endlessly through the frozen woods around Cambridge, declaiming Swinburne.
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After one such excursion he refused to return to his rooms. Seriously alarmed, a classmate telegraphed Theodore’s family for assistance. Fortunately James West Roosevelt was staying nearby, and rushed to the aid of his stricken cousin. Somehow, the distraught lover was soothed.
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He did not see Alice at all during the two weeks prior to his Christmas vacation. Returning to New York on 22 December he threw himself determinedly into the usual family festivities. On Christmas Eve he called on at least ten “very pretty girls,” as if to erase from his mind the picture of his beloved. Edith Carow was among them. “She is the most cultivated, best-read girl I know.”
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All at once, on the day after Christmas, the word “Alice” joyously reappears in his diary. That young coquette had decided to visit New York for a week, accompanied by a retinue of “Chestnut
Hillers.” Graciously accepting Theodore’s invitation to stay, she permitted him to squire her around town, and his delight knew no bounds. They had “an uproariously jolly time,” he told his diary, adding in a more reflective moment that her presence at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street seemed “so natural.”
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New Year’s Day, 1880, dawned calm and sunny, matching Theodore’s mood. He drove his guests out to Jerome Park for lunch and an afternoon of dancing.
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Alice bobbed and swayed enchantingly in his arms, and he sensed that his long agony would soon be over.

The engagement was kept secret pending family approval. For several days Theodore could not believe his luck. “I still feel as if it would turn out, as it so often has before, and that Alice will repent.” But she did not. Now that her defenses were down, he could kiss and cuddle her as often as he wished.
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In a daze of delight, he rushed to New York to break the news to his family. Mittie Roosevelt was stunned, but, thanks to her prior exposure to Alice, wholly satisfied. The girl had beauty, grace, and humor—qualities for which she herself had been famed in her time. As for Theodore,
Mittie had long since recognized that he, not Elliott, was his father’s son: decisive and masterful, a man who knew exactly what he wanted. Right now it was “a diamond ring for my darling.”
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While he shopped for it, Mittie wrote Alice a delicate, violet-scented note, formally welcoming her into the family. The reply came by return of post, and reassured her that Alice, no longer the coquette, was as deeply in love as Theodore.

There remained the problem of reconciling the Lees to the premature loss of their daughter. Although that amiable couple had no objection to Alice’s early engagement, Theodore foresaw “a battle royal” in winning their consent to her early marriage. With his usual regard for the calendar, he hoped to announce the former on Valentine’s Day, and celebrate the latter on his birthday, 27 October. Even that eight-month interval would likely be too short for Mrs. Lee.
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Alice wanted to press for a fall wedding, but he wisely left the date open when negotiating with her father. Pleased at this
show of responsibility, George Cabot Lee made the engagement official on 14 February 1880, and Theodore was free to dispatch a series of triumphant announcement notes to his friends. “I have been in love with her for nearly two years now; and have made everything subordinate to winning her.…”
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Now that Alice was his, Theodore’s natural exuberance, so long bottled up, burst out like champagne. His letters and diaries for the months following are awash with adoration. “My sweet, pretty, pure queen, my laughing little love … how bewitchingly pretty she is! I can not help petting her and caressing her all the time; and she is such a perfect little sunshine. I do not believe any man ever loved a woman more than I love her.”
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Although the February weather was snowy, he drove constantly to Chestnut Hill, “the horse plunging to his belly in great drifts,” impatient to be in the arms of “the purest, truest, and sweetest of all women.” When his family arrived in Boston later that month for a round of festive luncheons and dinner parties, Theodore worked himself up to such a pitch of excitement that he went for forty-four hours without sleep.
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For all his joy, there came now and again, cold as ice in his stomach, a reminder that he had very nearly failed. “The little witch led me a dance before she surrendered, I can tell you,” he confided to his cousin John, “and the last six months have been perfect agony … Even now, it makes me shudder to think of some of the nights I have passed.”
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He remained insecure about Alice long after the Lees agreed, in early March, to a fall wedding.
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“Roosevelt seemed constantly afraid,” recalled Alice’s cousin, “that someone would run off with her, and threaten duels and everything else. On one occasion he actually sent abroad for a set of French duelling pistols.”
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Planning an Easter visit to New York with Alice, he was naively anxious to impress his local friends at a dinner in her honor: “I want to include everybody, so as to rub up their memories about the existence of a man named Theodore Roosevelt, who is going to bring a pretty Boston wife back to New York next winter.”
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As the weather softened, and Alice remained faithful, Theodore learned to relax. By 1 April he was able to note smugly that “in spite of being engaged,” she was “certainly the belle of the Harvard
Assembly.” In order to spend every available minute with her, he resigned many of his official positions, including the vice-presidency of the Natural History Society, neglected his editorship of the
Advocate
, and began to cut recitations freely. His study hours dwindled from thirty-six to fifteen a week. “My marks were so good the first three years that I can afford to be idle now.” Already he was bored with scholastic honors. The fact that he had scored 94 and 98 in two semiannuals, written in the same week he successfully proposed to Alice Lee, did not seem remarkable to him.
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