Ver.04.29.93*END*
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY
BY
WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER
1919
PREFACE
In finishing the correction of the last proofs of this sketch, I
perceive that some of those who read it may suppose that I
planned to write a deliberate eulogy of Theodore Roosevelt. This
is not true. I knew him for forty years, but I never followed his
political leadership. Our political differences, however, never
lessened our personal friendship. Sometimes long intervals
elapsed between our meetings, but when we met it was always with
the same intimacy, and when we wrote it was with the same candor.
I count it fortunate for me that during the last ten years of his
life, I was thrown more with Roosevelt than during all the
earlier period; and so I was able to observe him, to know his
motives, and to study his character during the chief crises of
his later career, when what he thought and did became an integral
part of the development of the United States.
After the outbreak of the World War, in 1914, he and I thought
alike, and if I mistake not, this closing phase of his life will
come more and more to be revered by his countrymen as an example
of the highest patriotism and courage. Regardless of popular
lukewarmness at the start, and of persistent official thwarting
throughout, he roused the conscience of the nation to a sense of
its duty and of its honor. What gratitude can repay one who
rouses the con science of a nation? Roosevelt sacrificed his life
for patriotism as surely as if he had died leading a charge in
the Battle of the Marne.
The Great War has thrown all that went before it out of
perspective. We can never see the events of the preceding
half-century in the same light in which we saw them when they
were fresh. Instinctively we appraise them, and the men through
whom they came to pass, by their relation to the catastrophe. Did
they lead up to it consciously or un consciously? And as we judge
the outcome of the war, our views of men take on changed
complexions. The war, as it appears now, was the culmination of
three different world-movements; it destroyed the attempt of
German Imperialism to conquer the world and to rivet upon it a
Prussian military despotism. Next, it set up Democracy as the
ideal for all peoples to live by. Finally, it revealed that the
economic, industrial, social, and moral concerns of men are
deeper than the political. When I came to review Roosevelt's
career consecutively, for the purpose of this biography, I saw
that many of his acts and policies, which had been misunderstood
or misjudged at the time, were all the inevitable expressions of
the principle which was the master-motive of his life. What we
had imagined to be shrewd devices for winning a partisan
advantage, or for overthrowing a political adversary, or for
gratifying his personal ambition, had a nobler source. I do not
mean to imply that Roosevelt, who was a most adroit politician,
did not employ with terrific effect the means accepted as
honorable in political fighting. So did Abraham Lincoln, who
also, as a great Opportunist, was both a powerful and a shrewd
political fighter, but pledged to Righteousness. It seems now
tragic, but inevitable, that Roosevelt, after beginning and
carrying forward the war for the reconciliation between Capital
and Labor, should have been sacrificed by the Republican Machine,
for that Machine was a special organ of Capital, by which Capital
made and administered the laws of the States and of the Nation.
But Roosevelt's struggle was not in vain; before he died, many of
those who worked for his downfall in 1912 were looking up to him
as the natural leader of the country, in the new dangers which
encompassed it. "Had he lived," said a very eminent man who had
done more than any other to defeat him, "he would have been the
unanimous candidate of the Republicans in 1920." Time brings its
revenges swiftly. As I write these lines, it is not Capital, but
overweening Labor which makes its truculent demands on the
Administration at Washington, which it has already intimidated.
Well may we exclaim, "Oh, for the courage of Roosevelt!" And
whenever the country shall be in great anxiety or in direct peril
from the cowardice of those who have sworn to defend its welfare
and its integrity, that cry shall rise to the lips of true
Americans.
Although I have purposely brought out what I believe to be the
most significant parts of Roosevelt's character and public life,
I have not wished to be uncritical. I have suppressed nothing.
Fortunately for his friends, the two libel suits which he went
through in his later years, subjected him to a microscopic
scrutiny, both as to his personal and his political life. All the
efforts of very able lawyers, and of clever and unscrupulous
enemies to undermine him, failed; and henceforth his advocates
may rest on the verdicts given by two separate courts. As for the
great political acts of his official career, Time has forestalled
eulogy. Does any one now defend selling liquor to children and
converting them into precocious drunkards? Does any one defend
sweat-shops, or the manufacture of cigars under worse than
unsanitary conditions? Which of the packers, who protested
against the Meat Inspection Bill, would care to have his name
made public; and which of the lawyers and of the accomplices in
the lobby and in Congress would care to have it known that he
used every means, fair and foul, to prevent depriving the packers
of the privilege of canning bad meat for Americans, although
foreigners insisted that the canned meat which they bought should
be whole some and inspected? Does any American now doubt the
wisdom and justice of conserving the natural re sources, of
saving our forests and our mineral sup plies, and of controlling
the watershed from which flows the water-supply of entire States?
These things are no longer in the field of debate. They are
accepted just as the railroad and the telegraph are accepted. But
each in its time was a novelty, a reform, and to secure its
acceptance by the American people and its sanction in the statute
book, required the zeal, the energy, the courage of one man-
-Theodore Roosevelt. He had many helpers, but he was the
indispensable backer and accomplisher. When, therefore, I have
commended him for these great achievements, I have but echoed
what is now common opinion.
A contemporary can never judge as the historian a hundred years
after the fact judges, but the contemporary view has also its
place, and it may be really nearer to the living truth than is
the conclusion formed when the past is cold and remote and the
actors are dead long ago. So a friend's outlined portrait, though
obviously not impartial, must be nearer the truth than an enemy's
can be--for the enemy is not impartial either. We have fallen too
much into the habit of imagining that only hostile critics tell
the truth.
I wish to express my gratitude to many persons who have assisted
me in my work. First of all, to Mrs. Roosevelt, for permission to
use various letters. Next, to President Roosevelt's sisters, Mrs.
William S. Cowles and Mrs. Douglas Robinson, for invaluable
information. Equally kind have been many of Roosevelt's
associates in Government and in political affairs: President
William H. Taft, former Secretary of War; Senator Henry Cabot
Lodge; Senator Elihu Root and Colonel Robert Bacon, former
Secretaries of State; Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, former
Attorney-General; Hon. George B. Cortelyou, former Secretary of
the Interior; Hon. Gifford Pinchot, of the National Forest
Service; Hon. James R. Garfield, former Commissioner of Commerce.
Also to Lord Bryce and the late Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, British
Ambassadors at Washington; to Hon. George W. Wickersham,
Attorney-General under President Taft; to Mr. Nicholas Roosevelt
and Mr. Charles P. Curtis, Jr.; to Hon. Albert J. Beveridge,
ex-Senator; to Mr. James T. Williams, Jr.; to Dr. Alexander
Lambert; to Hon. James M. Beck; to Major George H. Putnam; to
Professor Albert Bushnell Hart; to Hon. Charles S. Bird; to Mrs.
George von. L. Meyer and Mrs. Curtis Guild; to Mr. Hermann
Hagedorn; to Mr. James G. King, Jr.; to Dean William D. Lewis; to
Hon. Regis H. Post; to Hon. William Phillips, Assistant Secretary
of State; to Mr. Richard Trimble; to Mr. John Woodbury; to Gov.
Charles E. Hughes; to Mr. Louis A. Coolidge; to Hon. F. D.
Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; to Judge Robert
Grant; to Mr. James Ford Rhodes; to Hon. W. Cameron Forbes.
I am under especial obligation to Hon. Charles G. Washburn,
ex-Congressman, whose book, "Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of his
Career," I have consulted freely and commend as the best analysis
I have seen of Roosevelt's political character. I wish also to
thank the publishers and authors of books by or about Roosevelt
for permission to use their works. These are Houghton Mifflin
Co.; G. P. Putnam's Sons; The Outlook Co.; The Macmillan Co.
To Mr. Ferris Greenslet, whose fine critical taste I have often
drawn upon; and Mr. George B. Ives, who has prepared the Index;
and to Miss Alice Wyman, my secretary, my obligation is profound.
W. R. T.
August 10, 1919
CONTENTS
I. ORIGINS AND YOUTH
II. BREAKING INTO POLITICS
III. AT THE FIRST CROSSROADS
IV. NATURE THE HEALER
V. BACK TO THE EAST AND LITERATURE
VI. APPLYING MORALS TO POLITICS
VII. THE ROUGH RIDER
VIII. GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK--VICE-PRESIDENT
IX. PRESIDENT
X. THE WORLD WHICH ROOSEVELT CONFRONTED
XI. ROOSEVELT'S FOREIGN POLICY
XII. THE GREAT CRUSADE AT HOME
XIII. THE TWO ROOSEVELTS
XIV. THE PRESIDENT AND THE KAISER
XV. ROOSEVELT AND CONGRESS
XVI. THE SQUARE DEAL IN ACTION
XVII. ROOSEVELT AT HOME
XVIII. HITS AND MISSES
XIX. CHOOSING HIS SUCCESSOR
XX. WORLD HONORS
XXI. WHICH WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
XXII. THE TWO CONVENTIONS
XXIII. THE BRAZILIAN ORDEAL
XXIV. PROMETHEUS BOUND
XXV. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
ABBREVIATIONS
Autobiography = "Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography." Macmillan
Co.; New York, 1914.
*** The titles of other books by Mr. Roosevelt are given without
his name as they occur in the footnotes.
Leupp = Francis E. Leupp: "The Man Roosevelt." D. Appleton & Co.;
New York, 1904.
Lewis = Wm. Draper Lewis: "The Life of Theodore Roosevelt." John
C. Winston Co.; Philadelphia, 1919.
Morgan = James Morgan: "Theodore Roosevelt; The Boy and the Man."
Macmillan Co., new ed., 1919.
Ogg = Frederic A.Ogg: "National Progress, 1907-1917." American
Nation Series. Harper& Bros.; New York, 1918.
Riis = Jacob A. Riis: "Theodore Roosevelt; the Citizen." Outlook
Co.; New York, 1904.
Washburn = Charles G. Washburn: "Theodore Roosevelt; The Logic of
His Career." Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
CHAPTER I. ORIGINS AND YOUTH
Nothing better illustrates the elasticity of American democratic
life than the fact that within a span of forty years Abraham
Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Presidents of the United
States. Two men more unlike in origin, in training, and in
opportunity, could hardly be found.
Lincoln came from an incompetent Kentuckian father, a pioneer
without the pioneer's spirit of enterprise and push; he lacked
schooling; he had barely the necessaries of life measured even by
the standards of the Border; his companions were rough frontier
wastrels, many of whom had either been, or might easily become,
ruffians. The books on which he fed his young mind were very few,
not more than five or six, but they were the best. And yet in
spite of these handicaps, Abraham Lincoln rose to be the leader
and example of the American Nation during its most perilous
crisis, and the ideal Democrat of the nineteenth century.
Theodore Roosevelt, on the contrary, was born in New York City,
enjoyed every advantage in education and training; his family had
been for many generations respected in the city; his father was
cultivated and had distinction as a citizen, who devoted his
wealth and his energies to serving his fellow men. But, just as
incredible adversity could not crush Abraham Lincoln, so lavish
prosperity could not keep down or spoil Theodore Roosevelt.
In his "Autobiography" he tells us that "about 1644 his ancestor,
Claes Martensen van Roosevelt, came to New Amsterdam as a
'settler'--the euphemistic name for an immigrant who came over in
the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth century. From
that time for the next seven generations from father to son every
one of us was born on Manhattan Island." * For over a hundred
years the Roosevelts continued to be typical Dutch burghers in a
hard-working, God-fearing, stolid Dutch way, each leaving to his
son a little more than he had inherited. During the Revolution,
some of the family were in the Continental Army, but they won no
high honors, and some of them sat in the Congresses of that
generation--sat, and were honest, but did not shine. Theodore's
great-grandfather seems to have amassed what was regarded in
those days as a large fortune.
* Autobiography, 1.
His grandfather, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, a glass
importer and banker, added to his inheritance, but was more than
a mere money-maker.
His son Theodore, born in 1831, was the father of the President.
Inheriting sufficient means to live in great comfort, not to say
in luxury, he nevertheless engaged in business; but he had a high
sense of the obligation which wealth lays on its possessors. And
so, instead of wasting his life in merely heaping up dollars, he
dedicated it to spending wisely and generously those which he
had. There was nothing puritanical, however, in his way of
living. He enjoyed the normal, healthy pleasures of his station.
He drove his coach and four and was counted one of the best whips
in New York. Taking his paternal responsibilities seriously, he
implanted in his children lively respect for discipline and duty;
but he kept very near to their affection, so that he remained
throughout their childhood, and after they grew up, their most
intimate friend.
What finer tribute could a son pay than this which follows?
'My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He
combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and
great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children
selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness.
As we grew older he made us understand that the same standard of
clean living was demanded for the boys as for the girls; that
what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man. With great
love and patience and the most understanding sympathy and
consideration he combined insistence on discipline. He never
physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom
I was ever really afraid.' *
*Autobiography, 16.
Thus the President, writing nearly forty years after his father's
death. His mother was Martha Bulloch, a member of an old Southern
family, one of her ancestors having been the first Governor of
Georgia. During the Civil War, while Mr. Roosevelt was busy
raising regiments, supporting the Sanitary Commission, and doing
whatever a non-combatant patriot could do to uphold the Union,
Mrs. Roosevelt's heart allegiance went with the South, and to the
end of her life she was never "reconstructed." But this conflict
of loyalties caused no discord in the Roosevelt family circle.
Her two brothers served in the Confederate Navy. One of them,
James Bulloch, "a veritable Colonel Newcome," was an admiral and
directed the construction of the privateer Alabama. The other,
Irvine, a midshipman on that vessel, fired the last gun in its
fight with the Kearsarge before the Alabama sank. After the war
both of them lived in Liverpool and "Uncle Jimmy" became a rabid
Tory. He "was one of the best men I have ever known," writes his
nephew Theodore; "and when I have sometimes been tempted to
wonder how good people can believe of me the unjust and
impossible things they do believe, I have consoled myself by
thinking of Uncle Jimmy Bulloch's perfectly sincere conviction
that Gladstone was a man of quite exceptional and nameless infamy
in both public and private life."
Theodore Roosevelt grew up to be not only a stanch but an
uncompromising believer in the Union Cause; but the fact that his
parents came from the North and from the South, and that, from
his earliest memory, the Southern kindred were held in affection
in his home, must have helped him towards that non-sectional,
all-American point of view which was the cornerstone of his
patriotic creed.
The Roosevelt house was situated at No. 28 East Twentieth Street,
New York City, and there Theodore was born on October 27, 1858.
He passed his boyhood amid the most wholesome family life.
Besides his brother Elliott and two sisters, as his Uncle Robert
lived next door, there were cousins to play with and a numerous
kindred to form the background of his young life. He was,
fortunately, not precocious, for the infant prodigies of seven,
who become the amazing omniscients of twenty-three, are seldom
heard of at thirty. He learned very early to read, and his
sisters remember that when he was still in starched white
petticoats, with a curl carefully poised on top of his head, he
went about the house lugging a thick, heavy volume of
Livingstone's "Travels" and asking some one to tell him about the
"foraging ants" described by the explorer. At last his older
sister found the passage in which the little boy had mistaken
"foregoing" for "foraging." No wonder that in his mature years he
became an advocate of reformed spelling. His sense of humor,
which flashed like a mountain brook through all his later
intercourse and made it delightful, seems to have begun with his
infancy. He used to say his prayers at his mother's knee, and one
evening when he was out of sorts with her, he prayed the Lord to
bless the Union Cause; knowing her Southern preferences he took
this humorous sort of vengeance on her. She, too, had humor and
was much amused, but she warned him that if he repeated such
impropriety at that solemn moment, she should tell his father.
Theodore and the other children had a great fondness for pets,
and their aunt, Mrs. Robert, possessed several of unusual
kinds--pheasants and peacocks which strutted about the back yard
and a monkey which lived on the back piazza. They were afraid of
him, although they doubtless watched his antics with a fearful
joy. From the accounts which survive, life in the nursery of the
young Roosevelts must have been a perpetual play-time, but
through it all ran the invisible formative influence of their
parents, who had the art of shaping the minds and characters of
the little people without seeming to teach.
Almost from infancy Theodore suffered from asthma, which made him
physically puny, and often prevented him from lying down when he
went to bed. But his spirit did not droop. His mental activity
never wearied and he poured out endless stories to the delight of
his brother and sisters. "My earliest impressions of my brother
Theodore," writes his sister, Mrs. Robinson, "are of a rather
small, patient, suffering little child, who, in spite of his
suffering, was the acknowledged head of the nursery .... These
stories," she adds, "almost always related to strange and
marvelous animal adventures, in which the animals were
personalities quite as vivid as Kipling gave to the world a
generation later in his 'Jungle Books.'"
Owing to his delicate health Theodore did not attend school,
except for a little while, when he went to Professor MacMullen's
Academy on Twentieth Street. He was taught at home and he
probably got more from his reading than from his teachers. By the
time he was ten, the passion for omnivorous reading which
frequently distinguishes boys who are physically handicapped,
began in him. He devoured Our Young Folks, that excellent
periodical on which many of the boys and girls who were his
contemporaries fed. He loved tales of travel and adventure; he
loved Cooper's stories, and especially books on natural history.
In summer the children spent the long days out of doors at some
country place, and there, in addition to the pleasure of being
continuously with nature, they had the sports and games adapted
to their age. Theodore was already making collections of stones
and other specimens after the haphazard fashion of boys. The
young naturalist sometimes met with unexpected difficulties.
Once, for instance, he found a litter of young white mice, which
he put in the ice-chest for safety. His mother came upon them,
and, in the interest Of good housekeeping, she threw them away.
When Theodore discovered it he flew into a tantrum and protested
that what hurt him most was "the loss to Science! the loss to
Science!" On another occasion Science suffered a loss of unknown
extent owing to his obligation to manners. He and his cousin had
filled their pockets and whatever bags they had with specimens.
Then they came upon two toads, of a strange and new variety.
Having no more room left, each boy put one of them on top of his
head and clapped down his hat. All went well till they met Mrs.
Hamilton Fish, a great lady to whom they had to take off their
hats. Down jumped the toads and hopped away, and Science was
never able to add the Bufo Rooseveltianus to its list of Hudson
Valley reptiles.
In 1869 Mr. Roosevelt took his family to Europe for a year. The
children did not care to go, and from the start Theodore was
homesick and little interested. Of course, picture galleries
meant nothing to a boy of ten, with a naturalist's appetite, and
he could not know enough about history to be impressed by
historic places and monuments. He kept a diary from which Mr.
Hagedorn* prints many amusing entries, some of which I quote:
* H. Hagedorn: The Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt. Harper &
Bros. 1918.
Munich, October. "In the night I had a nightmare dreaming that
the devil was carrying me away and had collorer morbos (a
sickness that is not very dangerous) but Mama patted me with her
delicate fingers."
Little Conie also kept a diary: the next entry is from it:
Paris. "I am so glad Mama has let me stay in the butiful hotel
parlor while the poor boys have been dragged off to the orful
picture galary."
Now Theodore again:
Paris, November 26. "I stayed in the house all day, varying the
day with brushing my hair, washing my hands and thinking in fact
haveing a verry dull time."
"Nov. 27. I Did the same thing as yesterday."
Chamounix. "I found several specimens to keep and we went on the
great glacier called 'Mother of ice!'"
"We went to our cousins school at Waterloo. We had a nice time
but met Jeff Davises son and some sharp words ensued."
Venice. "We saw a palace of the doges. It looks like a palace you
could be comfortable and snug in (which is not usual)--We went to
another church in which Conie jumped over tombstones spanked me
banged Ellies head &c."
"Conie" was his nickname for his younger sister Corinne.*
* She subsequently married Mr. Douglas Robinson.
November 22. "In the evening Mama showed me the portrait of
Eidieth Carow and her face stirred up in me homesickness and
longings for the past which will come again never aback never."
The little girl, the sight of whose portrait stirred such
longings for the past in the heart of the young Theodore, was
Edith Carow, the special playmate of his sister Conie and one of
the intimate group whom he had always known. Years later she
became his wife.
The Roosevelt family returned to New York in May, 1870, and
resumed its ordinary life. Theodore, whom one of his fellow
travelers on the steamer remembers as "a tall thin lad with
bright eyes and legs like pipestems," developed rapidly in mind,
but the asthma still tormented him and threatened to make a
permanent invalid of him. His father fitted up in the house in
Twentieth Street a small gymnasium and said to the boy in
substance, "You have brains, but you have a sickly body. In order
to make your brains bring you what they ought, you must build up
your body; it depends upon you." The boy felt both the obligation
and the desire; he willed to be strong, and he went through his
gymnastic exercises with religious precision. What he read in his
books about knights and paladins and heroes had always greatly
moved his imagination. He wanted to be like them. He understood
that the one indispensable attribute common to all of them was
bodily strength. Therefore he would be strong. Through all his
suffering he was patient and determined. But I recall no other
boy, enfeebled by a chronic and often distressing disease, who
resolved as he did to conquer his enemy by a wisely planned and
unceasing course of exercises.
Improvement came slowly. Many were the nights in which he spent
hours gasping for breath. Sometimes on summer nights his father
would wrap him up and take him on a long drive through the
darkness in search of fresh air. But no matter how hard the
pinch, the boy never complained, and when ever there was a
respite his vivacity burst forth as fresh as ever. He could not
attend school with other boys and, indeed, his realization that
he could not meet them on equal physical terms made him timid
when he was thrown with them. So he pursued his own tastes with
all the more zeal. He read many books, some of which seemed
beyond a boy's ken, but he got something from each of them. His
power of concentration already surprised his family. If he was
absorbed in a chapter, nothing which went on outside of him,
either noise or interruption, could distract his attention. His
passion for natural his tory increased. At the age of ten, he
opened in one of the rooms of his home "The Roosevelt Museum of
Natural History." Later, he devoted himself more particularly to
birds, and learned from a taxidermist how to skin and stuff his
specimens.
In 1873, President Grant appointed Mr. Roosevelt a Commissioner
to the Vienna Exposition and the Roosevelt family made another
foreign tour. Hoping to benefit Theodore's asthma they went to
Algiers, and up the Nile, where he was much more interested in
the flocks of aquatic fowl than in the half-buried temples of
Dendera or the obelisks and pylons of Karnak. He even makes no
mention of the Pyramids, but records with enthusiasm that he
found at Cairo a book by an English clergyman, whose name he
forgot, on the ornithology of the Nile, which greatly helped him.
Incidentally, he says that from the Latin names of the birds he
made his first acquaintance with that language. While Mr.
Roosevelt attended to his duties in Vienna the younger children
were placed in the family of Herr Minckwitz, a Government
official at Dresden. There, Theodore, "in spite of himself,"
learned a good deal of German, and he never forgot his pleasant
life among the Saxons in the days be fore the virus of Prussian
barbarism had poisoned all the non-Prussian Germans. Minckwitz
had been a Liberal in the Revolution of 1848, a fact which added
to Theodore's interest in him.
On getting home, Theodore, who was fifteen years old, set to work
seriously to fit himself to enter Harvard College. Up to this
time his education had been unmethodical, leaving him behind his
fellows in some subjects and far ahead of them in others. He had
the good fortune now to secure as a tutor Mr. Arthur H. Cutler,
for many years head of the Cutler Preparatory School in New York
City, thanks to whose excellent training he was able to enter
college in 1876. During these years of preparation Theodore's
health steadily improved. He had a gun and was an ardent
sportsman, the incentive of adding specimens to his collection of
birds and animals outweighing the mere sport of slaughter. At
Oyster Bay, where his father first leased a house in 1874, he
spent much of his time on the water, but he deemed sailing rather
lazy and unexciting, compared with rowing. He enjoyed taking his
row-boat out into the Sound, and, if a high headwind was blowing,
or the sea ran in whitecaps, so much the better. He was now able
to share in all of the athletic pastimes of his companions,
although, so far as I know, he never indulged in baseball, the
commonest game of all.
When he entered Harvard as a Freshman in 1876, that institution
was passing through its transition from college to university,
which had begun when Charles W. Eliot became its President seven
years before. In spite of vehement assaults, the Great Educator
pushed on his reform slowly but resistlessly. He needed to train
not only the public but many members, perhaps a majority, of his
faculty. Young Roosevelt found a body of eight hundred
undergraduates, the largest number up to that time. While the
Elective System had been introduced in the upper classes,
Freshmen and Sophomores were still required to take the courses
prescribed for them.
To one who looks back, after forty years, on the Harvard of that
time there was much about it, the loss of which must be
regretted. Limited in many directions it was, no doubt, but its
very limitations made for friendship and for that sense of
intimate mutual, relationship, out of which springs mutual
affection. You belonged to Harvard, and she to you. That she was
small, compared with her later magnitude, no more lessened your
love for her, than your love for your own mother could be
increased were she suddenly to become a giantess. The
undergraduate community was not exactly a large family, but it
was, nevertheless, restricted enough not only for a fellow to
know at least by sight all of his classmates, but also to have
some knowledge of what was going on in other classes as well as
in the College as a whole. Academic fame, too, had a better
chance then than it has now. There were eight or ten professors,
whom most of the fellows knew by sight, and all by reputation;
now, however, I meet intelligent students who have never heard
even the name of the head of some department who is famous
throughout the world among his colleagues, but whose courses that
student has never taken.
In spite of the simplicity and the homelikeness of the Harvard
with eight hundred undergraduates, however, it was large enough
to afford the opportunity of meeting men of many different tastes
and men from all parts of the country. So it gave free play to
the development of individual talents, and its standard of
scholarship was already sufficiently high to ensure the
excellence of the best scholars it trained. One quality which we
probably took little note of, although it must have affected us
all, sprang from the fact that Harvard was still a crescent
institution; she was in the full vigor of growth, of expansion,
of increase, and we shared insensibly from being connected with
that growth. In retrospect now, and giving due recognition to
this crescent spirit, I recall that, in spite of it, Omar Khayyam
was the favorite poet of many of us, that introspection, which
sometimes deepened into pessimism, was in vogue, and that a
spiritual or philosophic languorous disenchantment sicklied o'er
the somewhat mottled cast of our thought.
Roosevelt took rooms at No. 16 Winthrop Street, a quiet little
lane midway between the College Yard and Charles River, where he
could pursue his hobbies without incessant interruption from
casual droppers-in. Here he kept the specimens which he went on
collecting, some live--a large turtle and two or three harmless
snakes, for instance--and some dead and stuffed. He was no
"grind"; the gods take care not to mix even a drop of pedantry in
the make-up of the rare men whom they destine for great deeds or
fine works. Theodore was already so much stronger in his health
that he went on to get still more strength. He had regular
lessons in boxing. He took long walks and studied the flora and
fauna of the country round Cambridge in his amateurish but
intense way. During his first Christmas vacation, he went down to
the Maine Woods and camped out, and there he met Bill Sewall, a
famous guide, who remained Theodore's friend through life, and
Wilmot Dow, Sewall's nephew, another woodsman; and this trip,
subsequently followed by others, did much good to his physique.
He still had occasional attacks of asthma--he "guffled" as Bill
Sewall called it--and they were sometimes acute, but his tendency
to them slowly wore away.
All his days Roosevelt was proud of being a Harvard man. Even in
the period when academic Harvard was most critical of his public
acts, he never wavered in his devotion to Alma Mater herself,
that dear and lovely Being, who, like the ideal of our country,
lives on to inspire us in spite of unsympathetic administrations
and unloved leaders.
"The One remains, the many change and pass."
Nevertheless, in his "Autobiography," Theodore makes very scant
record of his college life. "I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard," he
says, "and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general
effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which
helped me in after life." * Like nine out of ten men who look
back on college he could make no definite estimate of the actual
gains from those four years; but it is precisely the
indefiniteness, the elusiveness of the college experience which
marks its worth. This is not to be reckoned financially by an
increase in dollars and cents, or intellectually, by so many
added foot-pounds of knowledge. Harvard College was of
inestimable benefit to Roosevelt, because it enabled him to find
himself--to be a man with his fellow men.
*Autobiography, 27.
During his youth his physical handicap had rather cut him off
from companionship on equal terms with his fellows. Now, however,
he could enter with zest in their sports and societies. At the
very beginning of his Freshman year he showed his classmates his
mettle. During the presidential torchlight parade when the
jubilant Freshmen were marching for Hayes, some Tilden man
shouted derisively at them from a second-story window and pelted
them with potatoes. It was impossible for them to get at him, but
Theodore, who was always stung at any display of meanness-- and
it was certainly mean to attack the paraders when they could not
retaliate--stood out from the line and shook his fist at the
assailant. His fellow marchers asked who their champion was, and
so the name of Roosevelt and his pugnacious little figure became
generally known to them. He was little then, not above five feet
six in height, and under one hundred and thirty pounds in weight.
By degrees they all knew him. His unusual ways, his loyalty to
his hobbies, which he treated not as mere whims but as being
worthy of serious application, his versatility, his
outspokenness, his almost unbroken good-nature, attracted most of
the persons with whom he came in contact. He rose to be President
of the Natural History Society, a distinction which implied some
real merit in its possessor. His family antecedents, but still
more his personal qualities, made easy for him the ascent of the
social terraces at Harvard--the Dicky, the Hasty Pudding Club,
and the Porcellian. He was editor of the Harvard Advocate, which
opened the door of the O.K. Society, where he found congenial
intellectual companionship with the editors from the classes
above and below him; and when Dr. Edward Everett Hale wished to
revive and perpetuate the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, Roosevelt
was one of the half-dozen men from the Class of 1880 whom he
selected.
My first definite recollection of him is at the annual dinner of
the Harvard Crimson in January or February, 1879. He was invited
as a guest to represent the Advocate. Since entering college I
had met him casually many times and had heard of his oddities and
exuberance; but throughout this dinner I came to feel that I knew
him. On being called on to speak he seemed very shy and made,
what I think he said, was his maiden speech. He still had
difficulty in enunciating clearly or even in running off his
words smoothly. At times he could hardly get them out at all, and
then he would rush on for a few sentences, as skaters redouble
their pace over thin ice. He told the story of two old gentlemen
who stammered, the point of which was, that one of them,--after
distressing contortions and stoppages, recommended the other to
go to Dr. X, adding, "He cured me."
A trifling bit of thistledown for memory to have preserved after
all these years; but still it is interesting to me to recall that
this was the beginning of the public speaking of the man who
later addressed more audiences than any other orator of his time
and made a deeper impression by his spoken word.
One other reminiscence of Roosevelt at Harvard, almost as
unsubstantial as this. Late in his Senior year we had a committee
meeting of the Alpha Delta Phi in Charles Washburn's room at 15
Holworthy. Roosevelt and I sat in the window-seat overlooking the
College Yard and chatted together in the intervals when business
was slack. We discussed what we intended to do after graduation.
"I am going to try to help the cause of better government in New
York City; I don't know exactly how," said Theodore.
I recall, still, looking hard at him with an eager, inquisitive
look and saying to myself, "I wonder whether he is the real
thing, or only the bundle of eccentricities which he appears."
There was in me then, as there has always been, a mingling of
skepticism and of deep reverence for those who dealt with
reality, and I had not had sufficient opportunity to determine
whether Roosevelt was real or not. One at least of his
classmates, however, saw portents of greatness in Theodore, from
their Freshman year, and most of us, even when we were amused and
puzzled by his " queerness," were very sure that the man from
whom they sprang was not commonplace.
So far as I remember, Roosevelt was the first undergraduate to
own and drive a dog-cart. This excited various comments; so did
the reddish, powder-puff side whiskers which no chaffing could
make him cut. There was never the slightest suggestion of the
gilded youth about him; though dog-carts, especially when owned
by young men, implied the habits and standards of the gilded
rich. How explain the paradox? On the other hand, Theodore taught
Sunday School at Christ Church, but he was so muscular a
Christian that the decorous vestrymen thought him an unwise guide
in piety. For one day a boy came to class with a black eye which
he had got in fighting a larger boy for pinching his sister.
Theodore told him that he did perfectly right--that every boy
ought to defend any girl from insult--and he gave him a dollar as
a reward. The vestrymen decided that this was too flagrant
approval of fisticuffs; so the young teacher soon found a welcome
in the Sunday School of a different denomination.
Of all the stories of Roosevelt's college career, that of his
boxing match is most vividly remembered. He enrolled in the
light-weight sparring at the meeting in the Harvard Gymnasium on
March 22 1879, and defeated his first competitor. When the
referee called "time," Roosevelt immediately dropped his hands,
but the other man dealt him a savage blow on the face, at which
we all shouted, "Foul, foul!" and hissed; but Roosevelt turned
towards us and cried out "Hush! He didn't hear," a chivalrous act
which made him immediately popular. In his second match he met
Hanks. They both weighed about one hundred and thirty-five
pounds, but Hanks was two or three inches taller and he had a
much longer reach, so that Theodore could not get in his blows,
and although he fought with unabated pluck, he lost the contest.
More serious than his short reach, however, was his
near-sightedness, which made it impossible for him to see and
parry Hanks's lunges. When time was called after the last round,
his face was dashed with blood and he was much winded; but his
spirit did not flag, and if there had been another round, he
would have gone into it with undiminished determination. From
this contest there sprang up the legend that Roosevelt boxed with
his eyeglasses lashed to his head, and the legend floated hither
and thither for nearly thirty years. Not long ago I asked him the
truth. "Persons who believe that," he said, "must think me
utterly crazy; for one of Charlie Hanks's blows would have
smashed my eyeglasses and probably blinded me for life."
In a class of one hundred and seventy he graduated twenty second,
which entitled him to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa, the
society of high scholars. To one who examines his academic record
wisely, the best symptom is that he did fairly well in several
unrelated subjects, and achieved preeminence in one, natural
history. He had the all-round quality which shows more promise
than does a propensity to light on a particular topic and suck it
dry; but he had also power of concentration and thoroughness. As
I have just said, he was a happy combination of the amateurish
and intense. His habit of absorption became a by-word; for if he
visited a, classmate's room and saw a book which interested him,
instead of joining in the talk, he would devour the book,
oblivious of, everything else, until the college bell rang for
the next lecture, when he would jump up with a start, and dash
off. The quiet but firm teaching of his parents bore fruit in
him: he came to college with a body of rational moral principles
which he made no parade of, but obeyed instinctively. And so,
where many young fellows are thrown off their balance on first
acquiring the freedom which college life gives, or are dazed and
distracted on first hearing the babel of strange philosophies or
novel doctrines, he walked straight, held himself erect, and was
not fooled into mistaking novelty for truth, or libertinism for
manliness.
Two outside events which deeply influenced him must be noted.
During his Sophomore year his father died; and during his Senior
year, Theodore became engaged to Miss Alice Hathaway Lee,
daughter of George C. Lee, of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.