Theodore Rex (5 page)

A STRANGE HOTHOUSE
glow filled Ansley Wilcox’s green library as Roosevelt entered it alone. From now on, he would have to get used to deference whenever he crossed a threshold.
The luminescence came from a stained-glass window, fringed with sunny ivy. He chose this bright spot for himself, and watched the Cabinet officers filing in. Cortelyou arranged them in arcs to left and right, while a federal judge, John R. Hazel, stood in the center of the room. Loeb, acting as doorman, admitted a selection of local dignitaries. Among them Roosevelt recognized Senator Chauncey Depew (R., New York), looking humble for once, doubtless regretting how he used to tease “Teddy” about wanting to be President. Next, Loeb beckoned in representatives of the three press agencies, and, in a final relaxation of proprieties, a small party of women.

Some constitutional documents were given to Judge Hazel, who shuffled them into order. Roosevelt gazed around the library. A glint in his spectacles
betrayed displeasure. Loeb came up inquiringly, and there was a whispered conversation in which the words
newspapermen
and
sufficient room
were audible. Hurrying outside, Loeb returned with two dozen delighted scribes.
They proceeded to report the subsequent ceremony with a wealth of detail unmatched in the history of presidential inaugurations.

The library clock struck 3:30. Elihu Root muttered something urgent to Roosevelt, then took up his position. There was a moment of extreme quietness, broken only by the chirp of a sparrow in the window. Roosevelt half turned, and gazed almost yearningly through the glass, a boy trapped in school. Root’s voice reclaimed his attention.

“Mr. Vice President, I—”

The Secretary of War choked, sobbed, and for a full minute struggled to control himself. Roosevelt’s face was stern, but as the suspense mounted his cheek muscles began to twitch, and his right foot pawed the floor. At last, Root managed to continue. “I have been asked, on behalf of the Cabinet of the late President … to request that, for reasons of weight affecting the administration of the government, you should proceed to take the constitutional office of the President of the United States.”

Roosevelt bowed, cleared his throat, and said waveringly, “I shall take the oath at once.” He, too, seemed to be fighting tears, but his voice grew rapidly stronger: “And in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement I wish to state that it shall be my aim—” (here he shook his shoulders and pulled back his head) “—to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, the prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country.”

This speech, the shortest inaugural anybody could remember, created a profound impression. It struck all present as “pledge, platform, and policy all in one.”
Roosevelt spoke with characteristic passion, punctuating his words with dental snaps, as if biting the syllables out of the air. He seemed to vibrate with force, sincerity, and reverence for the memory of his predecessor. To one observer, he symbolized “the magnificent moral and mental balance of the nation.” His statement “instantly solved the political and commercial crisis.” Finance, in the person of John G. Milburn, grew calm. Industry, in the person of Chauncey Depew, was comforted. And Government, in the persons of the Cabinet officers, breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Roosevelt was to receive worldwide praise for his few words. Yet they were not original.
Elihu Root had suggested,
sotto voce
while the clock was chiming, that he “declare his intention to continue unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and honor of the country.” Roosevelt’s parrot memory had preserved the words intact.

Judge Hazel clutched an inscribed parchment. “Please raise your right hand and repeat after me:
I, Theodore Roosevelt
…” Roosevelt’s arm shot up, fully extended. Throughout the oath, his hand remained high and steady,
as if carved from marble. His face was drawn, and his eyes glittered. Depew was struck by the “terrible earnestness” with which he articulated every word. Yet even at this moment of ritual fidelity to the text of the Constitution, Roosevelt could not resist adding a personal flourish.
“And thus I swear,”
he concluded, ejaculating the words like bullets. Then he bowed his head.

Two minutes ticked by. The room filled with an almost unbearable tension. Beads of sweat stood on Roosevelt’s brow. Not until a third minute elapsed did he look up.

“
Mr. President,” the judge said, holding out the certificate of oath, “please attach your signature.”

Roosevelt’s pen scratched across the parchment. Forty-three persons stood in thrall until he dismissed them with a kingly nod. They trooped out dreamy-eyed, as from a perfect theatrical performance. “
I have witnessed many of the world’s pageants in my time,” Senator Depew said afterward, “—fleets and armies, music and cannon, … but they all seemed to me tawdry and insignificant in the presence of that little company in the library of the Wilcox house in Buffalo.”

ROOSEVELT REMAINED BEHIND
to shake hands with members of his Cabinet. Asking them to prepare for an immediate meeting, he went into the hall to receive the farewells of departing guests. “God bless you, Mr. President.” “The whole country will pray for you, Mr. President.” There were tears on many faces, but he seemed unmoved.

A reporter was struck by Roosevelt’s “curious nervous tension,” so at odds with his usual boyish good cheer. “The cause of it was not at all any sense of the weight of his new position … but the reaction of a strong man to the idea that he was entering a domain where assassins lurked in the shadows and the ground might open at any moment under his feet.”

The Cabinet meeting proceeded behind closed doors. Afterward Roosevelt came out onto the porch to announce that all six officers had agreed to remain in their positions, “at least for the present.” He had similar “assurances” from his two absent Secretaries, John Hay and Lyman Gage. This was true, in the sense that both men had wired messages of support. But until he saw them in Washington, he hardly knew what their “assurances” were worth.

Business completed, Roosevelt put on his borrowed silk hat. “Let’s take a walk,” he said to Elihu Root. “It will do us both good.” A quartet of policemen fell into line behind him on the gravel path. Irritatedly, he shooed them away. “I do not want to establish the precedent of going about guarded.” The policemen touched their helmets, retreated a yard or two, and followed as before.
Roosevelt headed for the gate like an escaping bull, but found Delaware Avenue blocked by cordoned-off crowds. He was forced to take leave of Root in the street, and marched back to the mansion in frustration.

Refuge was at least available in the morning room, where Cortelyou had laid a desk with pencils, an exercise book, and a copy of
Messages of the Presidents
. Turning to a proclamation of President Arthur, Roosevelt drew the rough pad toward him. He began to scrawl his first presidential order, making 19 September a day of official mourning.
God in his infinite wisdom …
The pencil hovered, then slashed back through the cliché.
A great and terrible bereavement
, it wrote instead,
has come upon our nation
. Roosevelt tried to make the last words more personal:
has befallen our people. The President of the United States has been struck down.…
How to describe the act of assassination?
A foul and dastardly crime … the basest of all crimes … a crime so dastardly …

He struggled to reconcile his love of strong language with the need for dignified expression.
It had always been thus with him: conflict between belligerence and civilized restraint, between animal brutality and human decency, between pessimism and optimism, or, as his perceptive friend Owen Wister put it, “between what he knew, and his wish not to know it.” In youth, the aggressive impulse had predominated, but in maturity he had strengthened himself to a state of containment, like a volcano sheathed in hardened lava. For three years there had been no serious fissures. At any rate, his struggle today was brief. The sentences began to shape themselves into statesmanlike prose, and soon the pencil was moving confidently.
Now, therefore I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States …

AT FOUR O’CLOCK
, word came that Mark Hanna’s carriage was outside. Roosevelt hurried onto the porch and watched the old man descend, trembling on a cane. Hanna was clearly broken by the death of his adored “William.” He was pallid and stooped, and his piggy feet dragged in the gravel. “The Senator,” a reporter scribbled, “seems to have aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours.” With spontaneous grace, Roosevelt ran down to meet him, hand outstretched. Hanna was surprised and moved. Shifting his soft white hat and cane, he returned the gesture. “Mr. President, I wish you success and a prosperous administration, Sir. I trust that you will command me if I can be of service.” Roosevelt smiled and murmured a few sympathetic words about McKinley. He helped Hanna up the steps, and said, “I want your friendship.”

Seated inside, Hanna resisted further blandishment. He said that he would support the Roosevelt Administration only as long as it remained an extension of McKinley’s. As to the question of the Republican presidential nomination in 1904, that was “something for the future to decide.” Roosevelt
replied, “I understand perfectly,” and escorted the Senator back to his carriage. Hanna drove away without so much as a wave.

That evening, George Cortelyou announced that there would be a private memorial service for McKinley at the Milburn House the next morning, Sunday. Roosevelt and his Cabinet officers would attend, and remain in Buffalo until Monday morning, when a funeral train would depart for Washington. On Tuesday, there would be further memorial exercises at the Capitol, followed by an interment ceremony Wednesday in Canton, Ohio. Mrs. McKinley would vacate the White House at her convenience. In the meantime, Roosevelt would stay at his sister’s house on N Street.

While Cortelyou talked, Roosevelt ate an early dinner, then went exhausted to bed.

SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT
in New York City, three hundred miles away, John F. Schrank began to dream. He was twenty-six years old, short, and reclusive. He lay above a saloon that had employed him once, before the Sunday-closing crusade of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Since that crusade (and because of it, Schrank believed), he had been unable to get a job.

Now, as he dreamed, his shabby surroundings were transformed into a funeral parlor full of flowers. An open coffin stood before him. President McKinley sat up in it and pointed to a dark corner of the room. Schrank, peering, made out a man in monk’s raiment. Under the cowl were the bespectacled features of Theodore Roosevelt.

“
This is my murderer,” said McKinley. “Avenge my death.” Schrank woke, and checked his watch. 1:30
A.M.
Almost immediately, he went back to sleep. McKinley did not speak to him again that night. Indeed, the appeal would not be renewed for another eleven years—until the same hour of the same night of the week, in another gruesome September.