The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (29 page)

An opportunity for advancement, he thought, arose early in April. Theodore’s only reference to it in his diary was: “Went to Republican Primary; grand row; very hopeless.” The story behind this cryptic entry is interesting, since it indicates that his very first political maneuver was in the direction of rebellion and reform. A citizens’ movement was under way to introduce a non-partisan Street Cleaning Bill into the State Legislature—then, as always, the cleanliness of New York’s streets varied according to who represented which district—and Theodore backed it. He made a speech on behalf of the bill at Morton Hall, and spoke with such force that he won several rounds of applause. By the time he sat down he was the object of at least one man’s thoughtful gaze.
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But the party machine was opposed to the measure; and on 5 May Theodore found himself with only six or seven votes out of three or four hundred.
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The young opportunist retired to lick his wounds. He did not go back to Morton Hall that spring. A few days later the law school broke up, Lightfoot was dispatched to the country, and Mittie Roosevelt ordered the blinds drawn at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street. Pausing only to dictate his will, and pack a thousand pounds of luggage, Theodore escorted Alice up the gangplank of the steamship
Celtic
on 12 May 1881. “Hurrah! for a summer abroad with the darling little wife.”
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H
IS EUPHORIA DWINDLED
before they were halfway across the Atlantic. “Confound a European trip, say I!” he wrote in his diary. Alice, who had never been overseas before, was so consistently
seasick that Theodore exhausted himself taking care of her.
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But Ireland, which they reached on 21 May, exerted its usual calming influence.
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They sailed smoothly up the River Lee to Cork, and awoke the following morning, Sunday, to the sound of the Bells of Shandon. Alice recovered immediately, and was able to endure ten days of riding on jaunting cars, ancient trains, and shaggy ponies with sweet equanimity. Meanwhile, Theodore reacted to everything with ears as well as eyes. He praised the birdsong and wildflowers at Castle Blarney, enjoyed the silence and “many-colored mountains” around Killarney, and thrilled to the echoing cliffs of Dunloe’s Gap. Unlike most visitors, he investigated some of the uglier aspects of life on the Emerald Isle. A heap of dirty rags on the road to Cork turned out to be a tramp, “insensible from sheer hunger.” With the help of some peasants, he revived the man, fed him, and sent him on his way with ten shillings. “A beautiful country,” Theodore concluded, “but with a terrible understratum of wretchedness.”
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By the end of the month, when they embarked on a glassy sea for England, Alice had become the best travelling companion he had ever known. Being athletically inclined, she was game for the most arduous excursions, yet was feminine enough to pretend helplessness while he juggled with suitcases, tickets, and hack-drivers. “Baby enjoys everything immensely,” he wrote after a marathon tour of the London galleries, “and has a far keener appreciation of most of the pictures than I have.”

Theodore’s own taste, on this third exposure to the art of Europe, was cheerfully unsophisticated: “Turner—idiotic.” He preferred such sentimental artists as Murillo and Gustave Doré, despite the latter’s tendency “to paint by the square mile.”
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A week in Paris, dining deliciously and exploring the caverns of the Louvre; five days in a Venetian palace, with evening rides through the “water-streets,” and balcony breakfasts shared with pigeons; an afternoon spent under the “immense, cool, vaulted arches” of Milan Cathedral; four days in the marbled splendor of the Villa d’Este on Lake Como; then north in a rented carriage for a tour of the Alps. Alice, riding on horseback, accompanied Theodore up “a fair-sized mountain” near Samaden, and in consequence spent the next several days nursing various tender areas of her person.
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During this lull, early in July, news came that President Garfield
had been shot, and was lying in a coma from which he was unlikely to recover. “Frightful calamity for America,” wrote Theodore in his diary, adding, “… this means work in the future for those who wish their country well.”
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The assassination of President Garfield was only the latest in a series of political explosions that shook America in the spring and summer of 1881, and whose rumblings followed Theodore across the Atlantic. Fuses had been lit the year before at the Republican National Convention, when the party went into deadlock over the nomination of its presidential candidate. Senator Conkling’s machine-minded “Stalwarts,” who had grown rich on patronage under Grant, and suffered under the righteous Hayes, wanted the general back in the White House. More independent (but equally corrupt) “Half-Breeds” were united in support of James G. Blaine. It had taken twenty-six ballots before James A. Garfield was nominated as an unpopular compromise. Both factions smoldered in resentment through his election and inauguration in March 1881.
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Then the first explosion occurred.

I
N AN UNCANNY REPETITION
of the events of 1877, Garfield named a reform Republican to the Collectorship of Customs for the Port of New York, just as Hayes before him had named Theodore Senior. Boss Conkling was so enraged by this second Presidential slap in the face that on 16 May he resigned his Senate seat, confident that his lieutenants in the New York State Legislature would reelect him and shame Garfield into withdrawing the appointment. No Senator had ever offered so dramatic a challenge to a President, and Theodore, anxiously devouring French and Italian newspapers, kept abreast of developments as best he could.

For a while it seemed that the Boss might win. But then a madman’s bullet shattered both Garfield’s spine and Conkling’s chances.
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While the President lay dying, Conkling became, by popular consent, the archvillain who had plotted his assassination. This rumor was false. Party leaders in Albany, however, were forced to elect another Senator.

A final stroke of irony, which Theodore had leisure to ponder in
his Alpine retreat, was that Garfield’s heir apparent was Vice President Chester A. Arthur—the very man whom Theodore Senior had been groomed to replace in 1877. Boss Conkling might be out of power, but as long as his father’s old rival sat in the White House, Theodore would be reminded of the uninterrupted power of the machine.

M
OVING ON THROUGH
Austria and Bavaria, the young man had opportunity to exercise his linguistic abilities, translating German into Italian for the benefit of the carriage driver, and both into English for the benefit of Alice.
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They found the summer heat of the Bavarian lowlands stifling, and by mid-July Theodore was climbing mountains again. In a period of ten days he “walked up” Pilatus (leaving an exhausted guide halfway down), the Rigi-Grindelwald, and the Jungfrau, confessing only that he felt “rather tired” after the latter. Then, having refreshed himself with a twenty-one-mile hike from Visp to Zermatt, he focused his eager spectacles on the Matterhorn.
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The notorious fifteen-thousand-foot peak curved into the sky like a giant scimitar, so steeply pointed that snow either slid off it or blew away in Alpine gales. Unconquered until 1865, the Matterhorn possessed for Theodore “a certain sombre interest from the number of people that have lost their lives on it.” This, plus the prestige he would win as one of the few unskilled climbers to ascend it, was enough to tempt him, and the presence of two British mountaineers in his hotel acted as a further goad.
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Determined to prove that he could climb as well as they could, he set off with two guides on the morning of 5 August.

H
AVING HAD HIS FILL
of exercise for a while, Theodore turned now to mental activity. The manuscript of “that favorite
chateau-en-espagne
of mine,”
The Naval War of 1812
formed a bulky part of the Roosevelt luggage, and he worked at it doggedly during his last month in Europe. “You would be amused,” he told Bamie from the Hague, “to see me writing it here. I have plenty of information now, but I can’t get it into words; I am afraid it is too big a task for me. I wonder if I won’t find everything in life too big for my abilities. Well, time will tell.”
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On 10 September the travelers reached Liverpool,
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laden with Parisian fashions and presents from the best London shops. Here Theodore’s “blessed old sea-captain” uncle, Irvine Bulloch, helped untangle some of the nautical knots in his manuscript.
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The young author’s confidence returned, and he found himself looking forward to the resumption of his legal, literary, and political work in New York.

Summarizing his third trip abroad in twelve years, Theodore wrote Bill Sewall: “I have enjoyed it greatly, yet the more I see the better satisfied I am that I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
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