Park up the Mall, at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon of this week [it
was then Tuesday] and notice a young man standing under the third tree
on the left with a red handkerchief tied around his throat, it will be
of interest to them.”
As my mother finished reading the letter she burst into tears, for it
was long since the younger brother had been heard from, as the amnesty
granted to all those taking part in the Rebellion had not been extended
to those who had gone to England, as had my two uncles, to assist in
the building and the sailing of the _Alabama_, and letters from them
were considered too dangerous to be received.
This “Irvine” had been saved when the _Alabama_ sank, after her brief
career, and the two brothers had settled in Liverpool, and my mother
knowing the great sorrow that his mother’s death had meant to this
younger brother, had always longed during the intervening months to see
him and tell him of that mother’s undying devotion, though she herself
had passed away the year before.
It seemed now to the active imaginations of the Southern sisters that
somehow or other Irvine had braved the authorities, and would be able
to see them and hear from their lips the story of the past five years.
One can well imagine the excitement of the children around the
breakfast-table at the romantic meeting suggested by the anonymous
letter. And so, on the following Thursday, the two sisters went
in to New York and walked up the Mall in Central Park, and there,
standing under the third tree to the left, was the young man--a thin,
haggard-looking young man compared to the round-faced boy with whom
they had parted so long ago, but eagerly waiting to get from them the
last news of the mother who had hoped she would die before any harm
could befall him. He had worked his way over in the steerage of a
sailing-vessel under an assumed name, for he was afraid of bringing
some trouble on my father, and had taken the method of the anonymous
letter to bring to him the sisters he had loved and missed so sorely.
What a meeting it must have been under that “third tree to the left”
of the old Mall of Central Park, and what reminiscences of happier
childhood days those three must have indulged in in the brief hour
which the brother could give his sisters before sailing back across
the broad ocean, for he did not dare meet them again for fear of some
unpleasant results for the Northern brother-in-law, for whom he had
great admiration.
Later, of course, my uncles were given the right to return to their
own country, but although they often visited us, they never settled in
America again, having rooted their business interests on English soil,
though their hearts always turned loyally to the country of their birth.
In taking into consideration the immediate forebears of my brother,
Theodore Roosevelt, I would once more repeat that to arrive at a
true comprehension of his many-sided character one must realize the
combination of personalities and the different strains of blood in
those personalities from whom he was descended in summing up the man he
was.
The stability and wisdom of the old Dutch blood, the gaiety and abandon
of the Irish strain that came through the female side of his father’s
people, and on his mother’s side the great loyalty of the Scotch and
the fiery self-devotion of the French Huguenot martyrs, mixed as it
was with the light touch which shows in French blood of whatever
strain--all this combined to make of the boy born of so varied an
ancestry one who was akin to all human nature.
In April, 1868, the little boy of nine and a half shows himself,
indeed, as father to the man in several characteristic letters which I
insert here. They were written to his mother and father and the little
sister Conie when the above members of the family were paying a visit
to Savannah, and are as follows:
New York April 28th, 1868.
MY DEAR MAMMA
I have just received your letter! What an excitement! How nice to
read it. What long letters you do write. I don’t see how you can
write them. My mouth opened wide with astonishment when I heard how
many flowers were sent in to you. I could revel in the buggie ones.
I jumped with delight when I found you had heard a mocking-bird.
Get some of its feathers if you can. Thank Johnny for the feathers
of the soldier’s cap, give him my love also. We cried when you
wrote about Grand-Mamma. Give My love to the good natured (to use
your own expresion) handsome lion, Conie, Johnny, Maud, and Aunt
Lucy. I am sorry the trees have been cut down. Aunt Annie, Edith
and Ellie send their love to you and all, I send mine to. I send
this picture to Conie. In the letters you write to me tell me how
many curiosities and living things you have got for me. I miss
Conie very much. I wish I were with you and Johnny for I could hunt
for myself. There is Conie’s letter.
MY DEAR CONIE:
As I wrote so much in Mamma’s letter I cannot write so much in
yours. I have got four mice, two white skined, red eyed velvety
creatures, very tame for I let them run all over me, they trie
to get down the back of my neck and under my vest, and two brown
skined, black eyed, soft as the others but wilder. Lordy and Rosa
are the names of the white mice, which are male and female. I keep
them in different cages
White mouse cage. brown mouse cage.
[Illustration]
MY DEAR PAPA
You can all read each other’s letters. I hear you were very seasick
on your voyage and that Dora and Conie were seasick before you
passed Sandy-hook. Give my greatest love to Johnny. You must write
too. Wont you drive Mamma to some battle field for she is going to
get me some trophies? I would like to have them so very much. I
will have to stop now because Aunty wants me to learn my lessons.
The chaffinch is for you. The wren for Mamma. The cat for Conie.
Yours lovingly,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
P. S. I liked your peas so much that I ate half of them.
New York, April 30th, 1868.
MY DEAR FATHER
I received your letter yesterday. Your letter was more exciting
than Mother’s. I have a request to ask of you, will you do it? I
hope you will, if you will it will figure greatly in my museum. You
know what supple jacks are, do you not? Please get one for Ellie
and two for me. Ask your friend to let you cut off the tiger-cat’s
tail, and get some long moos and have it mated together. One of the
supple jacks (I am talking of mine now) must be about as thick as
your thumb and finger. The other must be as thick as your thumb.
The one which is as thick as your finger and thumb must be four
feet long and the other must be three feet long. One of my mice
got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it was a common
mouse. Its name was Brownie. Nothing particular has happened since
you went away for I cannot go out in the country like you can. The
trees and the vine on our piazza are buding and the grass is green
as can be, and no one would dream that it was winter so short a
time ago. All send love to all of you.
Yours lovingly,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
The “excitement” referred to in the first letter was the wonderful
reception accorded to my mother on her return to the city of her
girlhood days. Her rooms in the hotel in Savannah were filled by her
friends with flowers--and how she loved flowers--but not the “buggie
ones” in which her young naturalist son says he would “revel!”
One can see the ardent little bird-lover as he wrote “I jumped with
delight when I found you had heard a mocking-bird,” and again when he
says “Tell me how many curiosities and living things you have got for
me.” Insatiable lover of knowledge as he was, it was difficult indeed
for his parents to keep pace with his thirst for “outward and visible
signs of the things that be.”
More than fifty years have passed since the painstaking penning of
the childish letters, but the heart of his sister in reading them
thrills hotly at the thought that the little “Conie” of those days was
“very much” missed by her idolized brother, and how she treasured the
letter written all for her, with the pictures of the cages in which he
kept his beloved mice! It was sad that the pictures of the chaffinch,
wren, and cat, evidently enclosed for each of the travellers, should
have been lost. In the two letters to his father he enlists that
comrade-father’s services for his adored “museum” by the plea for
“trophies from some battle field,” and the urgent request for the
“supple jack,” the nature of which exciting article I confess I do not
understand. I do understand, however, his characteristic distress that
“one of my mice got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it
was a common mouse.” That last sentence brought the tears to my eyes.
How true to type it was! the “common mouse” was the one he liked best
of all--never the rare, exotic thing, but the every-day, the plain,
the simple, and he probably liked it so much just because that little
“common mouse” had shown courage and vitality and affection! All
through Theodore Roosevelt’s life it was to the plain simple things and
to the plain simple people that he gave his most loyal devotion.
In May, 1869, because of a great desire on the part of my mother to
visit her brothers in England, as well as to see the Old World of which
she had read and studied so much, she persuaded my father to take the
whole family abroad.
After those early summers at Madison, which still stand out so clearly
in my memory, there comes a less vivid recollection of months passed
at the beautiful old place at Barrytown, on the Hudson River, which my
parents rented from Mr. John Aspinwall, and where a wonderful rushing
brook played a big part in the joys of our holiday months.
We “younger ones” longed for another summer at this charming spot and
regretted, with a certain amount of suspicion, the decision of the
“Olympians” to drag us from our leafy haunts to improve our rebellious
young minds, but my parents were firm in their decision, and we started
on the old paddle-wheel steamship _Scotia_, as I have said, in May,
1869.
In a letter from my mother to my aunt, who had married Mr. James King
Gracie, and was therefore regretfully left behind, she described with
an easy pen some incidents of the voyage across the ocean, as follows:
“Elliott is the leader of children’s sports and plays with the little
Winthrop children all day. A short while ago Thee made up his mind
suddenly that Teedie must play too, so hunted up the little fellow who
was deeply enjoying a conversation with the only acquaintance he has
made, a little man, whom we call the ‘one too many man,’ for he seems
to go about with no acquaintances. His name is Mr. St. John and he
is a quaint little well of knowledge,--very fond of natural history
and fills Teedie’s heart with delight. Teedie brought him up and
introduced him to me, his eyes dancing with delight and he constantly
asks me, ‘Mamma, have you really conversed with Mr. St. John?’ I feel
so tenderly to Teedie, that I actually stopped reading the ‘Heir of
Redcliffe,’ and talked to the poor little man who has heart complaint
so badly that his voice is even affected by it.
“The two little boys were pretty seasick on Sunday and I do not know
what I should have done without Robert, the bedroom steward, and an
amiable deck steward, who waits on those who remain on deck at meals.
He seems a wonderfully constructed creature, having amiable knobs all
over his body, upon which he supports more bowls of soup and plates of
eatables than you can imagine, all of which he serves out, panting over
you while you take your plate, with such wide extended nostrils that
they take in the Irish coast, and the draught from them cools the soup!
“Anna,--the carpet in my stateroom is filled with organic matter which,
if distilled, would make a kind of anchovy paste, only fit to be the
appetizer before the famous ‘witches’ broth,’ the receipt for which
Shakespeare gives in “Macbeth”,--but on the whole the _Scotia_ is well
ordered and cleaner than I had expected.
“On Sunday morning Thee was sick and while in bed, little Conie came
into the room. He looked down from his upper berth, looking like a
straw-colored Cockatoo, but Conie stopped in the middle of what she
was saying and said, ‘Oh Papa! you have such a lovely little curl on
your forehead’ with a note of great admiration in her voice and meaning
it all, _really_, but her position looking up, and his looking down
reminded me forcibly of the picture of the flattered crow who dropped
his cheese when the fox complimented him!”
This letter, perhaps, more than almost any other, gives the quaint
humor and also the tenderness of my mother’s attitude toward her
children and husband.
On our arrival in Liverpool we were greeted by the Bulloch uncles,
and from that time on the whole European trip was one of interest
and delight to the “grown people.” My older sister, though not quite
fifteen, was so unusually mature and intelligent that she shared their
enjoyment, but the journey was of rather mitigated pleasure to the
three “little ones,” who much preferred the nursery at 28th East 20th
Street, or their free summer activities in wood and field, to the
picture-galleries and museums, or even to the wonderful Swiss mountains
where they had to be so carefully guarded.
In the letters written faithfully to our beloved aunt, the note of
homesickness is always apparent.
Our principal delight was in what we used to call “exploring” when
we first arrived at a hotel, and in the occasional intercourse with
children of our own age, or, as in Teedie’s case, with some expert
along the line of his own interests, but the writing and receiving of
home letters stand out more strongly than almost any other memory of
this time, and amongst those most treasured by Teedie and myself were
the little missives written by our most intimate friend, Edith Kermit
Carow, a little girl who was to have, in later days, the most potent
influence of all over the life of Theodore Roosevelt. How little she
thought when she wrote to her friend “Conie” from Redbank, November
19, 1869, “I was much pleased at receiving your kind letter telling me
all about Teedie’s birthday,” that one day that very Teedie would be
President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow the mistress of the
White House.
The old friendship of our parents for Mr. and Mrs. Carow, who lived
with Mr. Carow’s older sister, Mrs. Robert Kermit, in a large house
backing up against the 14th Street mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius
Van Schaack Roosevelt, was the natural factor in the relationship of
the younger generation, and little Edith Carow and little Corinne
Roosevelt were pledged friends from the time of their birth.
The “Teedie” of those days expressed always a homesick feeling when
“Edie’s” letters came. They seemed to fill him with a strong longing
for his native land!
In the little note written on yellow, very minute writing-paper, headed
by a satisfied-looking cat, “Edie” expresses the wish that “Teedie”
could have been with her on a late picnic, and “Teedie,” I am equally
sure, wished for her presence at his eleventh-birthday festivities,
which were described by my sister Anna in a letter to our aunt, Mrs.
James King Grade. I quote a few lines from that letter, for again
its contents show the beautiful devotion of my father and mother and
sister to the delicate little boy--the devotion which always put their
own wishes or arrangements aside when the terrible attacks of asthma
came, for those attacks seemed to make them feel that no plan was
too definite or important to change at once should “Teedie’s” health
require it. My sister writes, the letter being dated from Brussels,
October 30, 1869:
“Last Thursday was dear little Teedie’s birthday; he was eleven years
old. We all determined to lay ourselves out on that occasion, for
we all feared that he would be homesick,--for he is a great little
home-boy. It passed off very nicely indeed. We had to leave Berlin
suddenly the night before, for ‘Teedie’ was not very well; so we left
Berlin on Wednesday night at eight o’clock and arrived at Cologne on
Thursday morning about nine. You can imagine it was a very long trip
for the three little children, although they really bore it better
than we three older ones. [She one of the older ones at fourteen and
a half!] It was a bitterly cold night and snowed almost all the time.
Think of a snow storm on the night of the 27th of October! Teedie was
delighted at having had a snow storm on his birthday morning, for he
had never had _that_ before. When we reached Cologne we went to the
same hotel, and had the same nice rooms which we had had on our former
stay there, and that of course made us feel very much more at home.
Teedie ordered the breakfast, and they all had ‘real tea’ as a very
great treat, and then Teedie ordered the dinner, at which we were all
requested to appear in full dress; so Mamma came in her beautiful white
silk dinner dress, and Papa in dress coat and light kid gloves. I was
very cold, so only wore silk. After Teedie’s dinner Papa brought in all
his presents. They, Mamma and Papa, gave each of the three, writing
desks marked with their names and filled with all the conveniences.
Then Teedie received a number of smaller presents as well.”
What parents, indeed, so fully to understand the romantic feeling of
the little boy about his birthday dinner, that they were more than
willing to don their most beautiful habiliments, and appear as they had
so lately appeared when received at the Vienna Court! Such yielding
to what by many people might have been considered as too childish a
whim to be countenanced shows with special clearness the quality in
my father and mother which inspired in us all such undying adoration.
Another letter--not written by my older sister, but in the painstaking
handwriting of a little girl of seven--describes my own party the
month before. We were evidently staying in Vienna at the time, for I
say: “We went to Schönbrunn, a ‘shatto.’” (More frequently known as a
château, but quite as thrilling to my childish mind spelled in my own
unique manner!) And there in the lovely grounds my mother had arranged
a charming al fresco supper for the little homesick American girl,
and just as the “grown people” were in “full dress” for “Teedie’s”
birthday, so they gave themselves up in the grounds of the great
“shatto” to making merry for the little seven-year-old girl.
[Illustration: Corinne Roosevelt, 1869, at seven and a half years.]
[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt at ten years of age.]
[Illustration: Anna Roosevelt at the age of fifteen when she spoke of
herself as one of the “three older ones.”]
After the great excitements of the birthdays came our interesting
sojourn in Rome. In spite of my mother’s efforts to arouse a somewhat
abortive interest in art in the hearts of the three little children, my
principal recollections of the Rome of 1869 are from the standpoint of
the splendid romps on the Pincian Hill. In those contests of running
and racing and leaping my brother Elliott was always the leader,
although “Teedie” did his part whenever his health permitted. One scene
stands out clearly in my mind. It was a beautiful day, one of those
sunny Italian days when ilex and olive shone with a special glistening
quality, and when the “Eternal City” as viewed from the high hill awoke
even in the hearts of the little Philistine foreigners a subconscious
thrill which they themselves did not quite understand. We were playing
with the Lawrence children, playing leap-frog (how inappropriate to the
Pincian Hill!) over the many posts, when suddenly there came a stir--an
unexpected excitement seemed everywhere. Word was passed that the
Pope was coming. “Teedie” whispered to the little group of American
children that he didn’t believe in popes--that no real American would;
and we all felt it was due to the stars and stripes that we should
share his attitude of distant disapproval. But then, as is often the
case, the miracle happened, for the crowd parted, and to our excited,
childish eyes something very much like a scene in a story-book took
place. The Pope, who was in his sedan-chair carried by bearers in
beautiful costumes, his benign face framed in white hair and the close
cap which he wore, caught sight of the group of eager little children
craning their necks to see him pass; and he smiled and put out one
fragile, delicate hand toward us, and, lo! the late scoffer who, in
spite of the ardent Americanism that burned in his eleven-year-old
soul, had as much reverence as militant patriotism in his nature, fell
upon his knees and kissed the delicate hand, which for a brief moment
was laid upon his fair curling hair. Whenever I think of Rome this
memory comes back to me, and in a way it was so true to the character
of my brother. The Pope to him had always meant what later he would
have called “unwarranted superstition,” but that Pope, Pio Nono, the
kindly, benign old man, the moment he appeared in the flesh brought
about in my brother’s heart the reaction which always came when the
pure, the good, or the true crossed his path.
Amongst my mother’s efforts to interest us in art there was one
morning when she decided positively that her little girl, at least,
should do something more in keeping with the “Eternal City” than
playing leap-frog on the Pincian Hill, and so, a reluctant captive,
I was borne away to the Vatican Galleries, and was there initiated
into the beauties of some of the frescos and sculpture. My mother,
who I have already said was a natural connoisseur in all art, had
especial admiration for that wonderful piece of sculpture from the
hand of Michael Angelo known as “The Torso of the Vatican.” This work
of art stood alone in a small room, so that nothing else should take
away from its effect. As those who know it well need hardly be told,
it lacks both arms and both legs, and to the little girl who was
summarily placed by her mother in the only chair in the small room,
it seemed a very strange creation. But, with the hope of arousing
artistic instinct, my lovely mother said: “Now, darling, this is one
of the greatest works of art in the world, and I am going to leave you
here alone for five minutes, because I want you to sit very quietly
and look at it, and perhaps when I come back in the five minutes
you will be able to realize how beautiful it is.” And then I saw my
mother’s slender figure vanish into another room. Having been always
accustomed to obey my parents, I virtuously and steadily kept my eyes
upon the legless, armless Torso, wondering how any one _could_ think
it a beautiful work of art; and when my mother, true to her words,
returning in five minutes with an expectant look on her face, said,
“Now, darling, what do you think of the great ‘Torso’?” I replied
sadly, “Well, mamma, it seems to me a little ‘chumpy’!” How often later
in life I have heard my mother laugh immoderately as she described her
effort to instil her own love of those wonderful shoulders and that
massive back into her recalcitrant small daughter; and when, years
after, I myself, imbued as she was with a passion for Italy and Italian
art, used to wander through those same galleries, I could never go into
that little room without the memory of the small girl of long ago, and
her effort to think Michael Angelo’s “Torso” anything but “chumpy.”