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Transcriber’s note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
A detailed transcriber's note will be found at the end
of the text.
MY BROTHER THEODORE ROOSEVELT
[Illustration:
_From a photograph, copyright by C. Le Gendre._
Theodore Roosevelt with his little granddaughter, Edith Roosevelt
Derby, 1918.]
MY BROTHER THEODORE ROOSEVELT
by
CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON
With Illustrations
New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
Published September, 1921
The Scribner Press
WITH TENDER AFFECTION I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO MY SISTER
ANNA ROOSEVELT COWLES
WHOSE UNSELFISH DEVOTION TO HER BROTHER
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
NEVER WAVERED THROUGH HIS WHOLE LIFE, AND FOR WHOM
HE HAD FROM CHILDHOOD
A DEEP AND UNSWERVING LOVE AND ADMIRATION
PREFACE
This Preface I write to my fellow countrymen as I give into their hands
these intimate reminiscences of my brother, Theodore Roosevelt.
A year and a half ago I was invited by the City History Club of New
York to make an address about my brother on Washington’s Birthday.
Upon being asked what I would call my speech, I replied that as George
Washington was the “Father of his country,” as Abraham Lincoln was the
“Saviour of his country,” so Theodore Roosevelt was the “Brother of his
country,” and that, therefore, the subject of my speech would be “The
Brother of His Country.”
In the same way, I feel that in giving to the public these almost
confidential personal recollections, I do so because of the attitude of
that very public toward Theodore Roosevelt. There is no sacrilege in
sharing such memories with the people who have loved him, and whom he
loved so well.
This book is not a biography, it is not a political history of the
times, although I have been most careful in the effort to record
facts accurately, and carefully to search my memory before relating
conversations or experiences; it is, I hope, a clear picture, drawn
at close hand by one who, because of her relationship to him and her
intercourse with him, knew his loyalty and tenderness of heart in a
rare and satisfying way, and had unusual opportunity of comprehending
the point of view, and therefore perhaps of clarifying the point of
view, of one of the great Americans of the day.
As I have reread his letters to me, as I have dwelt upon our long and
devoted friendship--for we were even more friends than brother and
sister--his character stands out to me more strongly than ever before
as that of “The Great Sharer.” He shared all that he had--his worldly
goods, his strong mentality, his wide sympathy, his joyous fun, and his
tender comprehension--with all those with whom he came in contact, and
especially with those closest and dearest to him--the members of his
own family and his sisters.
In the spirit of confidence that my frankness will not be
misunderstood, I place a sister’s interpretation of a world-wide
personality in the hands of my fellow Americans.
CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON.
September, 1921.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE NURSERY AND ITS DEITIES 1
II. GREEN FIELDS AND FOREIGN FARING 34
III. THE DRESDEN LITERARY AMERICAN CLUB 69
IV. COLLEGE CHUMS AND NEW-FOUND LEADERSHIP 94
V. THE YOUNG REFORMER 116
VI. THE ELKHORN RANCH AND NEAR-ROUGHING IT IN YELLOWSTONE
PARK 135
VII. TWO RECREANT NEW YORK POLICEMEN 155
VIII. COWBOY AND CLUBMAN 164
IX. THE ROUGH RIDER STORMS THE CAPITOL AT ALBANY 181
X. HOW THE PATH LED TO THE WHITE HOUSE 194
XI. HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 206
XII. HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE (_Continued_) 236
XIII. WALL STREET HOPES EVERY LION WILL DO ITS DUTY 254
XIV. THE GREAT DENIAL 264
XV. WHISPERINGS OF WAR 276
XVI. “DO IT NOW” 303
XVII. WAR 323
XVIII. “THE QUIET QUITTING” 359
ILLUSTRATIONS
Theodore Roosevelt with his little granddaughter, Edith
Roosevelt Derby, 1918 _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., aged thirty, 1862 8
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, twenty-two years old, about 1856 8
Theodore Roosevelt, about eighteen months old, 1860 18
Theodore Roosevelt, about four years old, 1862 18
Elliott Roosevelt, aged five and a half years, about 1865 32
Corinne Roosevelt, about four years old, 1865 32
Theodore Roosevelt, aged seven, 1865 32
Corinne Roosevelt, 1869, at seven and a half years 46
Theodore Roosevelt at ten years of age 46
Anna Roosevelt at the age of fifteen when she spoke of herself
as one of the “three older ones” 46
The Dresden Literary American Club--Motto, “W. A. N. A.”
(“We Are No Asses”) 72
Theodore Roosevelt, Oyster Bay, September 21, 1875 92
Theodore Roosevelt, December, 1876, aged eighteen 92
Portrait taken in Chicago, July, 1880, on the way to the hunting
trip of that season 114
We had that lovely dinner on the portico at the back of the
White House looking toward the Washington Monument 230
A review of New York’s drafted men before going into training
in September, 1917 332
MY BROTHER
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THE STAR
EPIPHANY, 1919
Great soul, to all brave souls akin,
High bearer of the torch of truth,
Have you not gone to marshal in
Those eager hosts of youth?
Flung outward on the battle’s tide,
They met in regions dim and far;
And you, in whom youth never died,
Shall lead them, as a star.
--MARION COUTHOUY SMITH.
MY BROTHER THEODORE ROOSEVELT
I
THE NURSERY AND ITS DEITIES
The first recollections of a child are dim and hazy, and so the nursery
at 28 East 20th Street, in New York City, does not stand out as clearly
to me as I wish it did--but the personality of my brother overshadowed
the room, as his personality all through life dominated his environment.
I suppose I must have been about four, and he about seven, when my
first memory takes definite form. My older sister, Anna, though only
four years older than my brother Theodore, was always mysteriously
classed with the “grown people,” and the “nursery” consisted of my
brother Theodore, my brother Elliott, a year and a half younger than
Theodore, and myself, still a year and a half younger than Elliott.
In those days we were “Teedie,” “Ellie,” and “Conie,” and we had the
most lovely mother, the most manly, able, and delightful father, and
the most charming aunt, Anna Bulloch, the sister of my Southern mother,
with whom children were ever blessed.
Theodore Roosevelt, whose name later became the synonym of virile
health and vigor, was a fragile, patient sufferer in those early days
of the nursery in 20th Street. I can see him now struggling with the
effort to breathe--for his enemy was that terrible trouble, asthma--but
always ready to give the turbulent “little ones” the drink of water,
book, or plaything which they vociferously demanded, or equally ready
to weave for us long stories of animal life--stories closely resembling
the jungle stories of Kipling--for Mowgli had his precursor in the
brain of the little boy of seven or eight, whose knowledge of natural
history even at that early age was strangely accurate, and whose
imagination gave to the creatures of forest and field impersonations as
vivid as those which Rudyard Kipling has made immortal for all time.
We used to sit, Elliott and I, on two little chairs, near the higher
chair which was his, and drink in these tales of endless variety, and
which always were “to be continued in our next”--a serial story which
never flagged in interest for us, though sometimes it continued from
week to week, or even from month to month.
It was in the nursery that he wrote, at the age of seven, the famous
essay on “The Foregoing Ant.” He had read in Wood’s “Natural History”
many descriptions of various species of ant, and in one instance on
turning the page the author continued: “The foregoing ant has such
and such characteristics.” The young naturalist, thinking that this
particular ant was unique, and being specially interested in its
forthgoing character, decided to write a thesis on “The Foregoing Ant,”
to the reading of which essay he called in conclave “the grown people.”
One can well imagine the tender amusement over the little author, an
amusement, however, which those wise “grown people” of 28 East 20th
Street never let degenerate into ridicule.
No memories of my brother could be accurate without an analysis of the
personalities who formed so big a part of our environment in childhood,
and I feel that my father, the first Theodore Roosevelt, has never been
adequately described.
He was the son of Cornelius Van Shaack and Margaret Barnhill Roosevelt,
whose old home on the corner of 14th Street and Broadway was long a
landmark in New York City. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was a typical
merchant of his day, fine and true and loyal, but ultraconservative
in many ways; and his lovely wife, to whom he addressed, later, such
exquisite poems that I have always felt that they should have been
given more than private circulation, was a Pennsylvanian of Quaker
blood.
The first Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest of five sons, and I
remember my mother used to tell me how friends of her mother-in-law
once told her that Mrs. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was always
spoken of as “that lovely Mrs. Roosevelt” with those “_five horrid
boys_.”
As far as I can see, the unpleasant adjective “horrid” was only
adaptable to the five little boys from the usual standpoint of boyish
mischief, untidiness, and general youthful irrepressibleness.
The youngest, my father, Theodore Roosevelt, often told us himself
how he deplored the fate of being the “fifth wheel to the coach,”
and of how many a mortification he had to endure by wearing clothes
cut down from the different shapes of his older brothers, and much
depleted shoes about which, once, on overhearing his mother say, “These
were Robert’s, but will be a good change for Theodore,” he protested
vigorously, crying out that he was “tired of changes.”
As the first Theodore grew older he developed into one of the most
enchanting characters with whom I, personally, have ever come in
contact; sunny, gay, dominant, unselfish, forceful, and versatile,
he yet had the extraordinary power of being a focussed individual,
although an “all-round” man. Nothing is as difficult as to achieve
results in this world if one is filled full of great tolerance and
the milk of human kindness. The person who achieves must generally be
a one-ideaed individual, concentrated entirely on that one idea, and
ruthless in his aspect toward other men and other ideas.
My father, in his brief life of forty-six years, achieved almost
everything he undertook, and he undertook many things, but, although
able to give the concentration which is necessary to achievement, he
had the power of interesting himself in many things outside of his own
special interests, and by the most delicate and comprehending sympathy
made himself a factor in the lives of any number of other human beings.
My brother’s great love for his humankind was a direct inheritance
from the man who was one of the founders in his city of nearly every
patriotic, humanitarian, and educational endeavor. I think, perhaps,
the combination of the stern old Dutch blood with the Irish blood, of
which my brother always boasted, made my father what he was--unswerving
in duty, impeccable in honesty and uprightness, and yet responsive to
the joy of life to such an extent that he would dance all night, and
drive his “four-in-hand” coach so fast that the old tradition was “that
his grooms frequently fell out at the corners”!
I remember that he always gave up one day of every week (and he was a
very busy merchant and then banker) to the personal visiting of the
poor in their homes. He was not satisfied with doing active work on
many organizations, although he did the most extraordinary amount of
active organization work, being one of the founders of the Children’s
Aid Society, of the State Aid Society, of the Sanitary Commission
and Allotment Commission in the time of the Civil War, and of the
Orthopædic Hospital, not to mention the Museum of Natural History and
the Museum of Art--but he felt that even more than this organized
effort must be the effort to get close to the hearts and homes of those
who were less fortunately situated than he.
My older sister suffered from spinal trouble, and my father was
determined to leave no stone unturned to make her body fit for life’s
joys and life’s labors, and it was because of his efforts to give his
little girl health--successful efforts--that in co-operation with his
friends Howard Potter and James M. Brown and several others he started
the great work of the New York Orthopædic Hospital, having become
imbued with belief in the methods of a young doctor, Charles Fayette
Taylor. Nobody at that time believed in treating such diseases in quite
the way in which modern orthopædy treats them now, but my father, like
his son, had the vision of things to be, and was a leader in his way,
as was my brother in his.
He could not at first influence sufficient people to start the building
of a hospital, and he decided that if the New York public could only
_see_ what the new instruments would do for the stricken children, that
it could be aroused to assist the enterprise.
And so, one beautiful spring afternoon, my mother gave what was
supposed to be a purely social reception at our second home, at 6 West
57th Street, and my father saw to it that the little sufferers in whom
he was interested were brought from their poverty-stricken homes to
ours and laid upon our dining-room table, with the steel appliances
which could help them back to normal limbs on their backs and legs,
thus ready to visualize to New York citizens how these stricken little
people might be cured. He placed me by the table where the children
lay, and explained to me how I could show the appliances, and what
they were supposed to achieve; and I can still hear the voice of the
first Mrs. John Jacob Astor, as she leaned over one fragile-looking
child and, turning to my father, said: “Theodore, you are right; these
children must be restored and made into active citizens again, and I
for one will help you in your work.”
That very day enough money was donated to start the first Orthopædic
Hospital, in East 59th Street. Many business friends of my father used
to tell me that they feared his sudden visits when, with a certain
expression in his eyes, he would approach them, for then before he
could say anything at all they would feel obliged to take out their
pocketbooks and ask: “How much this time, Theodore?”
One of his most devoted interests was the newsboys’ lodging-house in
West 18th Street, and later in 35th Street, under the auspices of the
Children’s Aid Society. Every Sunday evening of his life he went to
that lodging-house, after our early hospitable Sunday supper, to which
many a forlorn relation or stranded stranger in New York was always
invited, and there he would talk to the boys, giving them just such
ideas of patriotism, good citizenship, and manly morality as were the
themes of his son in later years.
The foundational scheme of the Children’s Aid Society was, and is, to
place little city waifs in country homes, and thus give them the chance
of health and individual care, and a very dramatic incident occurred
many years after my father’s death, when my brother, as governor of
New York State and candidate for the vice-presidency in 1900, had gone
to the Far West to make the great campaign for the second election of
William McKinley. The governors of many Western States decided to meet
in the city of Portland, Ore., to give a dinner and do honor to the
governor of the Empire State, and as Governor Roosevelt entered the
room they each in turn presented themselves to him. The last one to
come forward was Governor Brady, of Alaska, and as he shook hands with
Governor Roosevelt he said: “Governor Roosevelt, the other governors
have greeted you with interest, simply as a fellow governor and a great
American, but I greet you with infinitely more interest, as the son of
your father, the first Theodore Roosevelt.”
My brother smiled and shook him warmly by the hand, and asked in what
special way he had been interested in our father, and he replied: “Your
father picked me up from the streets in New York, a waif and an orphan,
and sent me to a Western family, paying for my transportation and early
care. Years passed and I was able to repay the money which had given
me my start in life, but I can never repay what he did for me, for it
was through that early care and by giving me such a foster mother and
father that I gradually rose in the world, until today I can greet his
son as a fellow governor of a part of our great country.”
I was so thrilled when my brother told me this story on his return
from that campaign, that the very next Sunday evening I begged him to
go with me to the old 35th Street lodging-house to tell the newsboys
that were assembled there the story of another little newsboy, now the
governor of Alaska, to show that there is no bar in this great, free
country of ours to what personal effort may achieve.
My father was the most intimate friend of each of his children, and in
some unique way seemed to have the power of responding to the need of
each, and we all craved him as our most desired companion. One of his
delightful rules was that on the birthday of each child he should give
himself in some special way to that child, and many were the perfect
excursions which he and I took together on my birthday.
The day being toward the end of September was always spent in the
country, and lover as he was of fine horses, I was always given the
special treat of an all day’s adventure behind a pair of splendid
trotters. We would take the books of poetry which we both loved and we
would disappear for the whole day, driving many miles through leafy
lanes until we found the ideal spot, where we unharnessed the horses
and gave them their dinner, and having taken our own delicious picnic
lunch, would read aloud to each other by the hour, until the early
September twilight warned us that we must be on our way homeward.
In those earlier days in New York the amusements were perhaps simpler,
but the hospitality was none the less generous, and our parents were
indeed “given to hospitality.”
My lovely Southern mother, of whom I will speak more later, had
inherited from her forebears a gift for hospitality, and we young
children, according to Southern customs, were allowed to mingle more
with our elders than was the case with many New York children. I am a
great believer in such mingling, and some of the happiest friendships
of our later lives were formed with the chosen companions of our
parents, but many things were done for us individually as well. When
we were between thirteen and sixteen I remember the delightful little
Friday-evening dances which my mother and father organized for us in
57th Street, and in which they took actual part themselves.
As I said before, my father could dance all night with the same
delightful vim that he could turn to his business or his philanthropy
in the daytime, and he enjoyed our pleasures as he did his own. It
always seems to me sad that the relationship between father and son, or
father and daughter, should not have the quality of charm, a quality
which it so often lacks, and which I believe is largely lacking because
of the failure of the older generation to enter into the attitude of
the younger generation.
I was delicate at one period and could not dance as I had always done,
and I remember when I was going to a little entertainment, just as I
was leaving the house I received an exquisite bunch of violets with a
card from my father, asking me to wear the flowers, and think of his
wish that I should not overtire myself, but also of his sympathy that I
could not do quite what I had always done.
Comparatively few little girls of fourteen have had so lover-like an
attention from a father, and just such thought and tender, loving
comprehension made our relationship to our father one of perfect
comradeship, and yet of respectful adoration. He taught us all, when
very young, to ride and to swim and to climb trees. I remember the
careful way in which he would show us dead limbs and warn us about
watching out for them, and then, having taught us and having warned us,
he gave us full liberty to try our wings and fall by the wayside should
they prove inadequate for our adventures.
[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., aged thirty, 1862.]
[Illustration: Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, twenty-two years old, about
1856.]
After graduating from our first Shetland pony, he provided us each with
a riding-horse, and always rode with us himself, and a merry cavalcade
went forth from our country home, either early in the morning before
he started for the train or in the soft summer evenings on his return.
When at one time we were living on the Hudson River, we had hoped one
autumn afternoon that he would come home early from the city, and
great was our disappointment when a tremendous storm came up and we
realized that he would take a later train, and that our beloved ride
must be foregone. We were eagerly waiting in the hall for his return
and watching the rain falling in torrents and the wind blowing it in
gusts, when the depot wagon drove up to the door and my father leaped
out, followed by the slight figure of a somewhat younger man. As the
young man tried to put up his umbrella it blew inside out and, like a
dilapidated pinwheel loosened from his hand, ran round and round in a
circle. The unknown guest merrily chased the umbrella pinwheel, and my
mother, who had joined us children at the window, laughingly wondered
who my father’s new friend was. The front door opened and the two
dripping men came in, and we rushed to meet them.
I can see the laughing face of the young man become suddenly shy and a
little self-conscious as my father said to my mother: “Mittie, I want
to present to you a young man who in the future, I believe, will make
his name well known in the United States. This is Mr. John Hay, and I
wish the children to shake hands with him.”
Many and many a time, long, long years after, when John Hay was
secretary of state in the cabinet of the second Theodore Roosevelt,
he used to refer to that stormy autumn afternoon when a delicate boy
of eleven, at the instigation of his father, shook hands with him and
looked gravely up into his face, wondering perhaps how John Hay was
going to make his name known throughout the United States. How little
did Mr. Hay think then that one day he would be the secretary of state
when that same little delicate boy was President of the United States.
My father’s intimacy with John Hay had come about through the fact of
contact in the Civil War, when they both worked so hard in Washington
together.
My father stands out as the most dominant figure in our early
childhood. Not that my mother was not equally individual, but her
delicate health prevented her from entering into our sports and unruly
doings as our father did; but I have always thought that she, in an
almost equal degree with my father, influenced my brother’s nature,
both by her French Huguenot and Scotch blood and her Southern ancestry.
The story of her meeting with my father has a romantic flavor to it.
My grandmother, Mrs. Stephens Bulloch, lived in an old plantation above
Atlanta, on the sand-hills of Georgia. There, in the old white-columned
house overlooking a beautiful valley, my grandmother led a patriarchal
life, the head of a large family, for she had been as a young girl the
second wife of Senator John Elliott, and she not only brought up the
children of that marriage but the children and stepchild of her second
marriage as well. My own mother was the second daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
Stephens Bulloch, but she never knew the difference between her Elliott
half brother and sisters, her Bulloch half-brother and her own brother
and sister.
In the roomy old home with its simple white columns there was led
an ideal life, and the devotion of her children to my beautiful
grandmother, as the many letters in my possession prove, was one of
the inspiring factors in their lives, and became the same to our own
childhood, for many were the loving stories told us by my mother and
aunt of the wonderful character of their mother, who ran her Southern
plantation (Mr. Bulloch died comparatively young) with all the
practical ability and kindly supervision over her slaves characteristic
of the Southern men and women of her time.
The aforesaid slaves were treated as friends of the family, and they
became to us, her little Northern grandchildren, figures of great
interest. We were never tired of hearing the stories of “Daddy Luke”
and “Mom Charlotte.”
The first of these two, a magnificent Nubian, with thick black lips
and very curly hair, was the coachman and trusted comrade of my
grandmother’s children, while his wife, “Mom Charlotte,” was a very
fastidious mulatto, slender and handsome, who, for some illogical
reason, considered her mixed blood superior to his pure dark strain.
She loved him, but with a certain amount of disdain, and though on
week-days she treated him more or less as an equal, on Sundays, when
dressed in her very best bandanna and her most elegant prayer-book
in hand, she utterly refused to have him walk beside her on the path
to church, and obliged him ignominiously to bring up the rear with
shamefaced inferiority. Mom Charlotte on Sundays, when in her superior
mood, would look at her spouse with contempt, and say, “B’ Luke, he
nothin’ but a black nigger; he mout’ stan’ out to de spring,” referring
to Daddy Luke’s thick Nubian lips, and pointing at the well about one
hundred yards distant from the porch.
There was also a certain “little black Sarah,” who was the
foster-sister of my uncle, Irvine Bulloch, my mother’s younger brother.
In the old Southern days on such plantations there was almost always
a colored “pickaninny” to match each white child, and they were
actually considered as foster brother or sister. Little Irvine was
afraid of the darkness _inside_ the house, and little Sarah was afraid
of the darkness _outside_ the house, and so the little white boy and
the little black girl were inseparable companions, each guarding
the other from the imaginary dangers of house or grounds, and each
sympathetically rounding out the care-free life of the other.
My mother’s brilliant half-brother, Stewart Elliott, whose love of art
and literature and music took him far afield, spent much of his time
abroad, and when he came back to Roswell (the name of the plantation)
he was always much amused at the quaint slave customs. One perfect
moonlight night he took his guitar into the grove near the house to
sing to the group of girls on the porch, but shortly afterward returned
much disgusted and described the conversation which he had overheard
between little white Irvine and little black Sarah on the back porch.
It ran as follows, both children gazing up into the sky: _Sarah_:
“Sonny, do you see de Moon?” “Yes, S_a_rah, it do crawl like a worrum.”
The moon at the moment was performing the feat which Shelley poetically
described as gliding, “glimmering o’er its fleecelike floor.” The young
musician could not stand the proximity of such masters of simile as
were Irvine and Sarah, and demanded that they should be forbidden the
back porch on moonlight nights from that time forth!
There was also another young slave who went by the name of “Black
Bess,” and was the devoted companion of her two young mistresses,
Martha, my mother, and her sister, Anna Bulloch. She slept on a mat at
the foot of their beds and rendered the devoted services that only the
slave of the old plantation days ever gave to his or her mistress. My
mother used to accompany her mother on her visits to all the outlying
little huts in which the various negroes lived, and she often told us
the story of a visit one day to “Mom Lucy’s” little home, where a baby
had just been born.
Mom Lucy had had several children, none of whom had lived but a few
hours, and when my grandmother and her little daughter visited the
new baby, now about a week old, the mother, still lying on her couch,
looked up at my grandmother and said: “Ole Miss, I jus’ done name her.”
“And what have you named her, Lucy?” asked my grandmother; “she is a
fine baby and I am so glad you are going to have the comfort of her all
your life.” “Oh!” said the colored woman sadly, “I don’t ’spec’ her to
live, dey ain’t none of ’em done live, and so I jus’ call her Cumsy.”
“Cumsy?” said my grandmother, “and what may that mean, Lucy?” “Why, ole
Miss, don’t you understan’? Dey all done go to deir heavenly home, and
so I jus’ call dis one ‘Come-see-de-world-and-go,’ and my ole man and
me we is goin’ to call her ‘Cumsy’ for short.”
My grandmother tried to argue Lucy out of this mortuary cognomen, but
with no effect, and years afterward when my mother revisited Roswell
as Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the first negroes to greet her was
“Come-see-the-world-and-go!”
All these stories of the old plantation were fascinating to the
children of the nursery in 20th Street, and we loved to hear how the
brothers and sisters in that old house played and worked, for they
all did their share in the work of the household. There the beautiful
half-sister of my mother, Susan Elliott, brought her Northern lover,
Hilborne West, of Philadelphia, whose sister, Mary West, had shortly
before married Weir Roosevelt, of New York, the older brother of my
father, Theodore Roosevelt. This same Hilborne West, a young physician
of brilliant promise, adored the informal, fascinating plantation life,
and loved the companionship of the two dainty, pretty girls of fourteen
and sixteen, Martha and Anna Bulloch, his fiancée’s young half-sisters.
Many were the private theatricals and riding-parties, and during that
first gay visit Doctor West constantly spoke of his young connection by
marriage, Theodore Roosevelt, who he felt would love Roswell as he did.
A year afterward, inspired by the stories of Doctor West, my father,
a young man of nineteen, asked if he might pay a visit at the old
plantation, and there began the love-affair with a black-haired girl
of fifteen which later was to develop into so deep a devotion that
when the young Roosevelt, two years later, returned from a trip abroad
and found this same young girl visiting her sister in Philadelphia,
he succumbed at once to the fascination from which he had never fully
recovered, and later travelled once more to the old pillared house
on the sand-hills of Georgia, to carry Martha Bulloch away from her
Southern home forever.
I cannot help quoting from letters from Martha Bulloch written in July,
1853, shortly after her engagement, and again from Martha Roosevelt a
little more than a year later, when she revisits her old home. She had
been hard to win, but when her lover leaves Roswell at the end of his
first visit, immediately following their engagement, she yields herself
fully and writes:
Roswell, July 26, 1853.
THEE, DEAREST THEE:
I promised to tell you if I cried when you left me. I had
determined not to do so if possible, but when the dreadful feeling
came over me that you were, indeed, gone, I could not help my tears
from springing and had to rush away and be alone with myself.
Everything now seems associated with you. Even when I run up the
stairs going to my own room, I feel as if you were near, and turn
involuntarily to kiss my hand to you. I feel, dear Thee,--as though
you were part of my existence, and that I only live in your being,
for now I am confident of my own deep love. When I went in to lunch
today I felt very sad, for there was no one now to whom to make the
request to move “just a quarter of an inch farther away”--but how
foolish I am,--you will be tired of this “rhapsody....”
Tom King has just been here to persuade us to join the Brush
Mountain picnic tomorrow. We had refused but we are reconsidering.
July 27th, ----
We have just returned after having had a most delightful time.
It was almost impossible for our horses to keep a foothold, the
Mountain was so steep, but we were fully repaid by the beautiful
extended view from the top, and when we descended, at the bottom,
the gentlemen had had planks spread and carriage cushions arranged
for us to rest, and about four o’clock we had our dinner. Such
appetites! Sandwiches, chicken wings, bread and cheese disappeared
miraculously.
Tom had a fire built and we had nice hot tea and about six o’clock
we commenced our return. I had promised to ride back with Henry
Stiles, so I did so, and you cannot imagine what a picturesque
effect our riding party had,--not having any Habit, I fixed a
bright red shawl as a skirt and a long red scarf on my head, turban
fashion with long ends streaming. Lizzie Smith and Anna dressed
in the same way, and we were all perfectly wild with spirits and
created quite an excitement in Roswell by our gay cavalcade--But
all the same I was joked all day by everybody, who said that they
could see that my eyes were swollen and that I had been crying.
All this in a very delicate Italian hand, and leaving her lover, I
imagine, a little jealous of “Henry Stiles,” in spite of the “rhapsody”
at the beginning of the letter!
My father’s answer to that very letter is so full of deep joy at the
“rhapsody,” in which his beautiful and occasionally capricious Southern
sweetheart indulged, that I do not think he even remembered “Henry
Stiles,” for he replies to her as follows:
New York, August 3rd.
How can I express to you the pleasure which I received in reading
your letter! I felt as you recalled so vividly to my mind the last
morning of our parting, the blood rush to my temples; and I had, as
I was in the office, to lay the letter down, for a few minutes to
regain command of myself. I had been hoping against hope to receive
a letter from you, but _such_ a letter! O, Mittie, how deeply, how
devotedly I love you! Do continue to return my love as ardently as
you do now, or if possible love me more. I know my love for you
merits such return, and do, dear little Mittie, continue to write,
(when you feel moved to!) just such “rhapsodies.”
On December 3, 1853, very shortly before her wedding, Martha Bulloch
writes another letter, and in spite of her original “rhapsody,” and
her true devotion to her lover, one can see that she has many girlish
qualms, for she writes him: “I do dread the time before our wedding,
darling--and I wish that it was all up and that I had died game!”
A year and a half later, May 2, 1855, Martha Roosevelt is again at the
home of her childhood, this time with her little baby, my older sister,
Anna, and her husband has to leave her, and she writes again:
“I long to hear you say once again that you love me. I know you do but
still I would like to have a fresh avowal. You have proved that you
love me dear, in a thousand ways and still I long to hear it again and
again. It will be a joyful day when we meet again. I feel as though I
would never wish to leave your side again. You know how much I enjoy
being with mother and Anna, but all the same I am only waiting until
‘Thee’ comes, for you can hardly imagine what a _wanting_ feeling I
have when you are gone.
“Mother is out in the entry talking to one of the ‘Crackers.’ While I
was dressing mother brought in a sweet rose and I have it in my breast
pin. I have picked one of the leaves off just this moment and send it
to you--for Thee--the roses are out in beautiful profusion and I wish
you could see them....”
A year and a half in the cold North had not dimmed the ardor of
affection between the young couple.
We children of the nursery in 28 East 20th Street loved nothing better
than to make my mother and aunt tell us the story of the gay wedding at
the old home near Atlanta. I remember still the thrill of excitement
with which I used to listen to the details of that wonderful week
before the wedding when all the bridesmaids and ushers gathered at the
homestead, and every imaginable festivity took place.
One of my mother’s half-brothers had just returned from Europe, and
fell in love at first sight with one of her beautiful bridesmaids,
already, alas! engaged to another and much older man, not a member of
the wedding-party. My child’s heart suffered unwarranted pangs at the
story of the intense attraction of these two young people for each
other, and I always felt that I could see the lovely bridesmaid riding
back with the man to whom she had unwittingly given her heart, under
the Southern trees dripping with hanging moss. The romantic story
ended tragically in an unwilling marriage, a duel, and much that was
unfortunate.
But my mother and my father had no such complications in their own
lives, and the Southern girl who went away with her Northern lover
never regretted that step, although much that was difficult and
troublous came into their early married life because of the years
of war from 1861 to 1865, when Martha Bulloch’s brothers fought for
the South and Theodore Roosevelt did splendid and unselfish work in
upholding the principles for which the North was giving its blood and
brawn.
The fighting blood of James Dunwoody and Irvine Bulloch was the same
blood infused through their sister into the veins of their young
kinsman, the second Theodore Roosevelt, and showed in him the same
glowing attributes. The gallant attitude of their mother, Mrs. Stephens
Bulloch, also had its share in the making of her famous grandson.
Her son Irvine was only a lad of sixteen, while her stepson, James,
was much older and was already a famous naval blockade-runner when she
parted from them. Turning to her daughter Anna she prayed that she
might never live to know if Irvine were killed or Richmond taken by the
Northern army. I cannot but rejoice that her life passed away before
such news could come to her. It must have been bitter, indeed, for her
under these circumstances to face the necessity of accepting the bread
of her Northern son-in-law, and it speaks volumes for the characters of
both that during the whole war there was never a moment of estrangement
between them or between my father and his lovely sister-in-law, Anna
Bulloch, who became, because of the fact that she lived with us during
those early years of our lives, one of the most potent influences of
our childhood.
I, myself, remember nothing of the strain of those troubled days; but
my aunt has often told me of the bedtime hour in the nursery when a
certain fair-haired, delicate little boy, hardly four years old, would
kneel at her side to say his evening prayer, and feeling that she would
not dare interrupt his petition to the Almighty, would call down in
baby tones and with bent head the wrath of the Almighty upon the rebel
troops. She said that she could never forget the fury in the childish
voice when he would plead with Divine Providence to “grind the Southern
troops to powder.”
This same lovely aunt taught us our letters at her knee, in that same
nursery, having begged, in return for my father’s hospitality, that
she should be accepted as our first instructress, and not only did she
teach us the three R’s, but many and many a delightful hour was passed
in listening to her wonderful renderings of the “Br’er Rabbit” stories.
Both my aunt and my mother had but little opportunity for consecutive
education, but they were what it seems to me Southern women ever
are--natural women of the world, and yet they combined with a perfect
readiness to meet all situations an exquisite simplicity and sensitive
sympathy, rarely found in the women of the North. This sensitiveness
was not only evidenced in their human relationships but in all
pertaining to art and literature. I have often said that they were
natural connoisseurs.
I remember that my father would never buy any wine until my mother had
tasted it, and experts of various kinds came to her in the same way for
expressions of her opinion. She was very beautiful, with black, fine
hair--not the dusky brunette’s coarse black hair, but fine of texture
and with a glow that sometimes seemed to have a slightly russet shade,
what her French hair-dresser called “noir doré,” and her skin was the
purest and most delicate white, more moonlight-white than cream-white,
and in the cheeks there was a coral, rather than a rose, tint. She was
considered to be one of the most beautiful women of the New York of
her day, a reputation only shared by Mrs. Gardiner Howland, and to us,
her children, and to her devoted husband she seemed like an exquisite
“objet d’art,” to be carefully and lovingly cherished. Her wit, as
well as that of my aunt, was known by all her friends and yet it was
never used unkindly, for she had the most loving heart imaginable, and
in spite of this rare beauty and her wit and charm, she never seemed
to know that she was unusual in any degree, and cared but little for
anything but her own home and her own children. Owing to delicate
health she was not able to enter into the active life of her husband
and children, and therefore our earliest memories, where our activities
were concerned, turn to my father and my aunt, but always my mother’s
gracious loveliness and deep devotion wrapped us round as with a
mantle.
[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt, about eighteen months old, 1860.]
[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt, about four years old, 1862.]
And so these were the three Deities of the Nursery in which Theodore
Roosevelt spent his first years, and even at that early time they
realized that in that simple room in the house which the patriotic
women of America are about to restore as a mecca for the American
people there dwelt a unique little personality whose mentality grasped
things beyond the ken of other boys of his age, and whose gallant
spirit surmounted the physical difficulties engendered by his puny and
fragile body.
* * * * *
The nursery at 28 East 20th Street in the early years of the Civil War
missed its chief deity, my father. From the letters exchanged by my
mother and father, preserved by each of them, I have formed a clear
realization of what it meant to that nursery to lose for almost two
years the gay and vigorous personality who always dominated _his_
environment as did later his son.
Mr. William E. Dodge, in a very beautiful letter written for the
memorial meeting of the Union League Club in February, 1878, just
after my father’s death, gave the following interesting account of my
father’s special work in the Civil War. This letter was read after an
eloquent speech delivered by Mr. Joseph H. Choate. The part of the
letter to which I especially refer ran as follows:
“When the shadows of the coming war began to grow into a reality he
(Theodore Roosevelt) threw himself with all his heart and soul into
work for the country.
“From peculiar circumstances he was unable to volunteer for military
service, as was his wish, but he began at once to develop practical
plans of usefulness to help those who had gone to the front.
“He became an active worker on the Advisory Board of the Woman’s
Central Association of Relief, that wonderful and far-reaching
organization of patriotic women out of which grew the Sanitary
Commission.
“He worked with the ‘Loyal Publication Society,’ which, as many of our
members know, was a most active and useful educating power in the days
when there was great ignorance as to the large issues of the conflict.
“He joined enthusiastically in the organization of the Union League
Club, was for years a most valued member of its executive committees
and aided in the raising and equipment of the first colored troops.
“His great practical good sense led him to see needs which escaped most
other minds. He felt that the withdrawal from the homes of so many
enlisted men would leave great want in many sections of the country.
He saw the soldiers were more than amply clothed and fed, and their
large pay wasted mostly among the sutlers, and for purposes which
injured their health and efficiency. So with two others he drafted a
bill for the appointment of Allotment Commissioners, who without pay
should act for the War Department and arrange to send home to needy
families, without risk or cost, the money not needed in the camps. For
three months they worked in Washington to secure the passage of this
act--delayed by the utter inability of Congressmen to understand why
anyone should urge a bill from which no one could selfishly secure an
advantage.
“When this was passed he was appointed by President Lincoln one of the
three Commissioners from this State. For long, weary months, in the
depth of a hard winter, he went from camp to camp, urging the men to
take advantage of this plan.
“On the saddle often six to eight hours a day, standing in the cold and
mud as long, addressing the men and entering their names.
“This resulted in sending many millions of dollars to homes where it
was greatly needed, kept the memory of wives and children fresh in the
minds of the soldiers, and greatly improved their morale. Other States
followed, and the economical results were very great.
“Towards the close of the war, finding the crippled soldiers and the
families of those who had fallen were suffering for back pay due and
for pensions, and that a race of greedy and wicked men were taking
advantage of their needs to plunder them, he joined in organizing the
Protective War-Claim Association, which without charge collected these
dues. This saved to the soldiers’ families more than $1,000,000 of fees.
“He also devised and worked heartily in the Soldiers’ Employment
Bureau, which found fitting work for the crippled men who by loss of
limb were unfitted for their previous occupations. This did wonders
toward absorbing into the population of the country those who otherwise
would have been dependent, and preserved the self-respect of the men.
I believe it did more and vastly better work than all the ‘Soldiers’
homes’ combined. For the work in the Allotment Commission he received
the special and formal thanks of the State in a joint resolution of the
Legislature.”
Nothing was more characteristic of my father’s attitude toward life
than his letters during this period to my mother. He realized fully
that in leaving his young family he was putting upon his youthful and
delicate wife--whose mental suffering during the war must have been
great, owing to the fact of her being a Southerner--her full share
of what was difficult in the situation. He writes with the utmost
frankness of his wish that she might look on the great question of
which the war was a symptom from the same standpoint as his, but the
beautiful love and trust which existed between them was such that in
all these letters which passed so constantly during my father’s labors
as Allotment Commissioner, there was never the slightest evidence of
hurt feelings or friction of any kind.
In the early fall of 1861 he was struggling to have passed by Congress
the bill to appoint Allotment Commissioners, and spent weary days
in Washington to achieve that purpose. When the bill was passed and
he and Mr. William E. Dodge and Mr. Theodore Bronson were appointed
as the three commissioners, he threw himself with all the ardor and
unselfishness of his magnificent nature into the hard work of visiting
the camps in mid-winter, and persuading the reluctant soldiers to
believe that it was their duty to allot a certain portion of their pay
to their destitute families.
He writes on January 1, 1862: