Christmases at home as was possible in a foreign hotel. It had always
been our custom to go to our parents’ room at the pleasant hour of 6
A. M., and generally my mother had induced my long-suffering father
to be dressed in some special and marvellous manner at that early
hour when we “undid” the bulging, mysterious-looking stockings, and
none of these exciting rites were omitted because of our distance
from our native land. I think, for that reason, at the end of the
beautiful Christmas Day, 1869, the special joy in the hearts of the
three little American children was that they had actually forgotten
that they were in Rome at all! On January 2, “Teedie” himself writes
to his beloved Aunt Annie (Mrs. Gracie) on a piece of note-paper which
characteristically has at the top a bird on a bough--that paper being
his choice for the writing-desks which had been given to the three
children on his birthday: “Will you send the enclosed to Edith Carow.
In it I described our ascent of Vesuvius, and so I will describe
Pompeii to you.” In a rather cramped hand he enters then into an
accurate description of everything connected with Pompeii, gloating
with scientific delight over the seventeen skeletons found in the
Street of the Tombs, but falling for one moment into a lighter vein, he
tells of two little Italian boys whom my father had engaged to come and
sing for us the same evening at Sorrento, and whose faces were so dirty
that my father and his friend Mr. Stevens washed them with “Kissengin
Water.” That extravagance seems to have been specially entertaining to
the mind of the young letter-writer.
During the year abroad there were lovely times when we were not obliged
to think of sculpture or painting--weeks in the great Swiss mountains
when, in spite of frequent attacks of his old enemy, my father writes
that “Teedie” walked many miles and showed the pluck and perseverance
which were so strikingly part of his character. In another letter he is
described, while suffering from a peculiarly severe attack of asthma,
as being propped up all night in a big chair in the sitting-room, while
his devoted mother told him stories of “when she was a little girl” at
the old plantation at Roswell; and yet within two days of that very
time he is following my father and brother on one of the longest walks
they took in the mountains. All through the letters of that period
one realizes the developing character of the suffering little boy. My
mother writes in a letter to her sister: “Teedie and Ellie have walked
to-day thirteen miles, and are very proud of their performance. Indeed
Teedie has been further several times.”
And so the year of exile had its joyous memories, but in spite of
them never were there happier children than those who arrived home in
America in the spring of 1870.
Earlier in our lives my father, always thinking of the problem of
the fragile health of his two older children, conceived the idea of
turning the third room of the second story at 28 East 20th Street
into an out-of-doors piazza, a kind of open-air gymnasium, with every
imaginable swing and bar and seesaw, and my mother has often told me
how he called the boy to him one day--Theodore was now about eleven
years of age--and said: “Theodore, you have the mind but you have not
the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as
it should. You must _make_ your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s
body, but I know you will do it.” The little boy looked up, throwing
back his head in a characteristic fashion; then with a flash of those
white teeth which later in life became so well known that when he was
police commissioner the story ran that any recreant policeman would
faint if he suddenly came face to face with a set of _false_ teeth in a
shop-window--he said, “_I’ll make my body_.”
That was his first important promise to himself and the delicate
little boy began his work; and for many years one of my most vivid
recollections is seeing him between horizontal bars, widening his chest
by regular, monotonous motion--drudgery indeed--but a drudgery which
eventuated in his being not only the apostle but the exponent of the
strenuous life.
What fun we had on that piazza! The first Theodore Roosevelt, like
his son, was far ahead of his times, and fresh air was his hobby,
and he knew that the children who will cry if they are made to take
dull walks on dreary city streets, will romp with dangerous delight
ungovernessed and unmaided in an outdoor gymnasium. I use the word
“dangerous” advisedly, for one day my lovely and delicate mother had an
unforgetable shock on that same piazza. She happened to look out of the
window opening on to the piazza and saw two boys--one of whom, needless
to say, was Theodore--carefully balancing the seesaw from the high
rail which protected the children from the possibility of falling into
the back yard, two stories below. Having wearied of the usual play, the
aforesaid two boys thought they would add a tinge of excitement to the
merriment by balancing the seesaw in such a manner as to have one boy
always in the thrilling position of hanging on the farther side of the
top rail, with the possibility (unless the equilibrium were kept to
perfection) of seesaw, boys, and all descending unexpectedly into the
back yard.
One may well imagine the horror of the mother as she saw her
adventurous offspring crawling out beyond the projection of the
railing, and only great self-control enabled her to reach the wooden
board held lightly by the fingers of an equally criminal cousin, and by
an agonized clutch make it impossible for the seesaw to slide down with
its two foolhardy riders.
Needless to say, no such feat was ever performed again, but the piazza
became the happy meeting-ground of all the boys and girls of the
neighborhood, and there not only Theodore Roosevelt but many of his
friends and family put in a stock of sturdy health which was to do them
good service in later years. At the same time the children of that
house were leading the normal lives of other little children, except
for the individual industry of the more delicate one, who put his hours
of necessary quiet into voracious reading of history, and study of
natural history.
Again the summers were the special delight of our lives, and the
following several summers we spent on the Hudson River, at or near
Riverdale, where warm friendships were formed with the children of our
parents’ friends, Mr. and Mrs. William E. Dodge, Mr. and Mrs. Percy R.
Pyne, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Harriman, and Mr. Robert Colgate.
Groups of joyous children invented and carried into effect every
imaginable game, and, as ever, our father was the delightful
collaborator in every scheme of pleasure. There began Theodore’s more
active collection of birds and animals. There he advertised for
families of field-mice, and the influx of the all-too-prolific little
animals was terrifying to the heart of so perfect a housekeeper as
my mother. The horror produced by the discovery of several of the
above-named families in the refrigerator was more than trying to
the nerves of one less devoted to science. My sister Anna, the most
unselfish of older sisters, was the chief sufferer always, as, in
spite of her extreme youth--for she was only four years older than my
brother--her unusual ability and maturity made her seem more like a
second mother than a sister. On one special occasion Theodore, having
advertised and offered the large sum of ten cents for every field-mouse
and thirty-five cents for a family, left for a trip to the Berkshire
hills, and my poor sister was inundated by hundreds of active and
unattractive families of field-mice, while clamoring country people
demanded their ten-cent pieces or the larger sum irrelevantly offered
by the absentee young naturalist. In the same unselfish manner my
sister was the unwilling recipient of families of young squirrels,
guinea-pigs, etc., and I can see her still bringing up one especially
delicate family of squirrels on the bottle, and also begging a
laundress not to forsake the household because turtles were tied to her
tubs!
Those summers on the Hudson River stand out as peculiarly happy days.
As I have said before, we were allowed great freedom, although never
license, in the summer-time, and situated as we then were, with a group
of little friends about us, the long sweet days passed like a joyous
dream.
Doctor Hilborne West, the husband of my mother’s half-sister, stands
prominently out as a figure in those childhood times. My mother writes
of him as follows: “Dr. West has made himself greatly beloved by each
child. He has made boats and sailed them with Ellie; has read poetry
and acted plays with Conie; and has talked science and medicine and
natural history with Teedie, who always craves knowledge.” In spite of
his craving for knowledge the boy, now nearly fourteen years old, had
evidently, however, the normal love of noise and racket, as evinced by
the following “spread-eagle” letter to his aunt, who, in her turn, had
gone abroad that summer.
Dobb’s Ferry, July 9th, 72.
DEAR AUNTIE
We had the most splendid fun on the fourth of July. At eight
o’clock we commenced with a discharge of three packs of
firecrackers, which awoke most of the people. But we had only begun
now, and during the remainder of the day six boxes of torpedoes and
thirty-six packs of firecrackers kept the house in an exceedingly
lively condition. That evening it rained which made us postpone
the fireworks until next evening, when they were had with great
success, excepting the balloons, which were an awful swindle. We
boys assisted by firing roman candles, flowerpots and bengolas. We
each got his fair share of burns.
Conie had a slight attack of asthma last night but I took her
riding this morning and we hope she is well now.
We are permitted now to stay in the water as long as we please. The
other day I came near being drowned, for I got caught under water
and was almost strangled before I could get out. I study English,
French, German and Latin now. Bamie spent the fourth at Barrytown
where she had Tableaux, Dances, &c. to her heart’s content. Give my
love to Uncles and Cousin Jimmie. Aunt Hattie &c. Tell Aunt Hattie
I will never forget the beautiful jam and the splendid times we had
at her cottage.
Ever your little
T. D.
Later in life, in thinking of this same uncle, whose subsequent career
never squared with his natural ability, I have come to feel that
sometimes people whom we call failures should not be so called,--for
it is often their good fortune to leave upon the malleable minds of
the next generation an inspiration of which they themselves fall
sadly short. In the character of this same charming uncle there must
have been some lack of fibre, for, brilliant as he was, he let his
talents lie dormant. Yet, perhaps, of all those who influenced our
early childhood, the effect upon us produced by his cultivation, his
marvellous memory, his literary interests, and his genial good humor
had more to do with the early stirring of intellectual desires in his
little relatives than almost any other influence at that time. The very
fact that he was not achieving a thousand worth-while things, as was my
father, the very fact that he was not busied with the practical care
and thought for us, as were my mother and aunt--brought about between
us that delightful relationship when the older person leads rather
than drives the younger into the paths of literature and learning. To
have “Uncle Hill” read Shakespeare to us under the trees, and then
suggest that we “dress up” and act the parts, to have “Uncle Hill”
teach us parts of the famous plays of all the ages and the equally
famous poems, was a delight rather than a task; and he interspersed
his Shakespeare with the most remarkable, and, to our childish minds,
brilliant doggerel, sometimes of his own making, that could possibly be
imagined--so that Hamlet’s soliloquy one day seemed quite as palatable
as “Villikins and His Dinah,” or “Horum, Chorum, Sumpti Vorum,” the
next. To show the relationship between the charming physician of
Philadelphia (the home of my uncle and aunt was in that city) and the
young philosopher of New York, I am tempted to insert a letter from
the latter to the former written in 1873 from Paris on our second trip
abroad.
“From Theodore the Philosopher to Hilborne, Elder of the Church of
Philadelphia. Dated from Paris, a city of Gaul, in the 16th day of the
11th month of the 4th year of the reign of Ulysses. [I imagine that
General Grant was then President.] Truly, O Hilborne! this is the first
time in many weeks that I have been able to write you concerning our
affairs. I have just come from the city of Bonn in the land of the
Teuton, where I have been communing with our fellow labourer James
of Roosevelt, surnamed The Doctor [our first cousin, young James
West Roosevelt], whom I left in good health. In crossing the Sea of
Atlantis I suffered much of a malady called sickness of the sea, but am
now in good health, as are also all our family. I would that you should
speak to the sage Leidy concerning the price of his great manuscript,
which I am desirous of getting. Give my regards to Susan of West, whom
I hope this letter will find in health. I have procured many birds of
kinds new to me here, and have preserved them. This is all I have to
say for the time being, so will close this short epistle.”[A]
[A] This in a boyish hand which is beginning to show the
character of the young author.
* * * * *
That summer of 1872 was very enchanting, although overshadowed by the
thought of another “terrible trip to Europe,” for after much thought
my father and mother had decided that the benefits of a winter on the
Nile, and a summer studying German in Dresden, would outweigh the
possible disadvantage of breaking into the regular school studies of
the three children of the 20th Street nursery. Therefore the whole
family set sail again in the autumn of 1872.
After a delightful time with the uncles and aunts who had settled in
England, and many gay excursions to Hampton Court and Bushey Park,
and other places of interest, we went by way of Paris and Brindisi to
Alexandria, and after some weeks in Cairo set sail on a dahabeah for
three months on the Nile. In a letter from my brother Elliott to my
aunt he speaks of my father’s purchase of a boat. With characteristic
disregard of the historic interest of the Nile he says: “Teedie and
I won’t mind the Nile very much, now that we have a boat to row in,
perhaps it won’t be so bad after all what with rowing, boxing, and
Christmas and playing, in between lessons and the ruins.” Reaching
Egypt, the same young lover of boxing and boats writes of meeting
much-beloved cousins, and again the characters of “Ellie” and “Teedie”
are markedly brought out in the childish letter, for he says, “We had
such a cosey tea. Frank and I poured tea and cut up chicken, while
Teedie and Jimmie [the young cousin referred to in ‘Teedie’s’ letter to
Doctor West] talked about natural history.”
The experience of a winter on the Nile was a very wonderful one for
the little American children, and “Ellie’s” anticipations were more
than carried out. Before we actually set sail I write in my journal of
our wonderful trip to the pyramids and our impressions, childish ones
of course, of the marvellous bazaars; and then we finally leave Cairo
and start on the journey up the ancient river. I have always been so
glad that our trip was before the days of the railway up to Karnak, for
nothing could have been more Oriental and unlike modern life than the
slow progress of our dahabeah, the _Aboo Erdan_. When there was wind
we tacked and slowly sailed, for the boat was old and bulky, but when
there was no wind the long line of sailors would get out on the bank of
the river and, tying themselves to the rope attached to the bow, would
track slowly along, bending their bronzed backs with the effort, and
singing curious crooning songs.
In a letter dated December 27 I write to my aunt: “I will tell you
about my presents. Amongst others I got a pair of pretty vases, and
Teedie says the little birds they have on them are an entirely new
species. Teedie and Father go out shooting every day, and so far have
been very lucky. Teedie is always talking about it whenever he comes
in the room,--in fact when he does come in the room you always hear
the words ‘bird’ and ‘skin.’ _It certainly is great fun for him._” In
connection with these same shooting-trips my father writes: “Teedie
took his gun and shot an ibis and one or two other specimens this
morning while the crew were taking breakfast. Imagine seeing not only
flocks of these birds, regarded as so rare by us in days gone by as to
be selected as a subject for our game of ‘twenty questions,’ but also
of storks, hawks, owls, pelicans, and, above all, doves innumerable.
I presented Teedie with a breech-loader at Christmas, and he was
perfectly delighted. It was entirely unexpected to him, although he
had been shooting with it as mine. He is a most enthusiastic sportsman
and has infused some of his spirit into me. Yesterday I walked through
the bogs with him at the risk of sinking hopelessly and helplessly, for
hours, and carried the dragoman’s gun, which is a muzzle-loader, with
which I only shot several birds quietly resting upon distant limbs and
fallen trees; _but I felt I must keep up with Teedie_.”
The boy of fourteen, with his indomitable energy, was already leading
his equally indomitable father into different fields of action. He
never rested from his studies in natural history. When not walking
through quivering bogs or actually shooting bird and beast, he,
surrounded by the brown-faced and curious sailors, would seat himself
on the deck of the dahabeah and skin and stuff the products of his
sport. I well remember the excitement, and, be it confessed, anxiety
and fear inspired in the hearts of the four young college men who,
on another dahabeah, accompanied us on the Nile, when the ardent
young sportsman, mounted on an uncontrollable donkey, would ride
unexpectedly into their midst, his gun slung across his shoulders in
such a way as to render its proximity distinctly dangerous as he bumped
absent-mindedly against them. When not actually hunting he was willing
to take part in exploration of the marvellous old ruins.
In a letter to “Edie” I say: “The other day we arrived at Edfoo, and
we all went to see the temple together. While we were there Teedie,
Ellie, Iesi (one of our sailors), and I started to explore. We went
into a little dark room and climbed in a hole which was in the middle
of the wall. The boys had candles. It was dark, crawling along the
passage doubled up. At last we came to a deep hole, into which Teedie
dropped, and we found out it was a mummy pit. It didn’t go very far
in, but it all seemed very exciting to us to be exploring mummy pits.
Sometimes we sail head foremost and sometimes the current turns us all
the way around--and I wish you could hear the cries of the sailors when
anything happens.”
They were busy days, for our wise parents insisted upon regularity
of a certain kind, and my older sister, only just eighteen, gave us
lessons in both French and English in the early morning before we went
on the wonderful excursions to the great temples, or before “Teedie”
was allowed to escape for his shooting expeditions. I do not think the
three months’ absence from school was any detriment, and I am very
grateful for the stimulating interest which that trip on the Nile gave
to my brothers and me. I can still see in retrospect, as if it were
yesterday, the great temple of Karnak as we visited it by moon-light;
the majestic colossi at Medinet Haboo; and the more beautiful and
delicate ruins of Philæ. Often my father would read Egyptian history to
us or explain the kind of architecture which we were seeing; but always
interspersed with more serious instruction were merry walks and games
and wonderful picnic excursions, so that the winter on the Nile comes
back to me as one of romantic interest mixed with the usual fun and
cheerful intercourse of our ordinary family life. The four young men
who had chartered the dahabeah _Rachel_ were Messrs. Nathaniel Thayer
and Frank Merriam of Boston, Augustus Jay of New York, and Harry Godey
of Philadelphia, and these four friends, with the addition of other
acquaintances whom we frequently met, made for my sister and my parents
a delightful circle, into which we little ones were welcomed in a most
gracious way.
In spite of the fact of the charms of the Nile and the fun we
frequently had, I write on February 1, from Thebes, to my little
playmate “Edie,” with rather melancholy reminiscence of a more
congenial past: “My own darling Edie,” I say, “don’t you remember what
fun we _used_ to have out in the country, and don’t you remember the
day we got Pony Grant up in the Chauncey’s summer house and couldn’t
get him down again, and how we always were losing Teedie’s india rubber
shoes? I remember it so perfectly, and what fun it was!” I evidently
feel that such adventures were preferable to those in which we were
indulging in far-away Egypt, although I conscientiously describe the
ear on one of the colossi at Medinet Haboo as being four feet high,
and the temple, I state, with great accuracy, has twelve columns at
the north and ten on either side! I seem, however, to be glad to come
back from that expedition to Medinet Haboo, for I state that I wish
she could see our dahabeah, which is a regular little home. I don’t
approve--in this same letter--of the dancing-girls, which my parents
allowed me to see one evening. With early Victorian criticism I state
that “there is not a particle of grace in their motions, for they only
wriggle their bodies like a snake,” and that I really felt they were
“very unattractive”--thus proving that the little girl of eleven in
1873 was more or less prim in her tastes. I delight, however, in a poem
which I copy for “Edie,” the first phrase of which has rung in my ears
for many a long day.
“Alas! must I say it, fare-farewell to thee,
Mysterious Egypt, great land of the flea,
And thy Thebaic temples, Luxor and Karnac,
Where the natives change slowly from yellow to black.
Shall I ne’er see thy plain, so fraught with renown,
Where the shadoofs go up and the shadoofs go down,
Which two stalwart natives bend over and sing,
While their loins are concealed by a simple shoe string.”
This verse, in spite of the reference to the lack of clothes of the
stalwart natives, evidently did not shock my sensibilities as much as
the motions of the dancing-girls. Farther on in the letter I describe
the New Year’s Eve party, and how Mr. Merriam sang a song which I
(Conie) liked very much, and which was called “She’s Naughty But So
Nice.” “Teedie,” however, did not care for that song, but preferred one
called “Aunt Dinah,” because one verse ran: “My love she am a giraffe,
a two-humped camamile.” [Music had apparently only charms to soothe him
when suggestive of his beloved animal studies.] From Thebes also my
brother writes to his aunt one of the most interesting letters of his
boyhood:
Near Kom Obos, Jan. 26th, 1873.
DEAR AUNT ANNIE:
My right hand having recovered from the imaginary attack from which
it did _not_ suffer, I proceed to thank you for your kind present,
which very much delighted me. We are now on the Nile and have been
on that great and mysterious river for over a month. I think I have
never enjoyed myself so much as in this month. There has always
been something to do, for we could always fall back upon shooting
when everything else failed us. And then we had those splendid
and grand old ruins to see, and one of them will stock you with
thoughts for a month. The temple that I enjoyed most was Karnak.
We saw it by moonlight. I never was impressed by anything so much.
To wander among those great columns under the same moon that had
looked down on them for thousands of years was awe-inspiring; it
gave rise to thoughts of the ineffable, the unutterable; thoughts
which you cannot express, which cannot be uttered, which cannot be
answered until after The Great Sleep.
[Here the little philosopher breaks off and continues in less
serious mood on February 9.]
I have had great enjoyment from the shooting here, as I have
procured between one and two hundred skins. I expect to procure
some more in Syria. Inform Emlen of this. As you are probably
aware, Father presented me on Christmas with a double-barrelled
breech loading shot gun, which I never move on shore without,
excepting on Sundays. The largest bird I have yet killed is a Crane
which I shot as it rose from a lagoon near Thebes.
The sporting is injurious to my trousers....
Now that I am on the subject of dress I may as well mention that
the dress of the inhabitants up to ten years of age is nothing.
After that they put on a shirt descended from some remote ancestor,
and never take it off till the day of their death.
Mother is recovering from an attack of indigestion, but the rest
are all well and send love to you and our friends, in which I join
sincerely, and remain,
Your Most Affectionate Nephew,
T. ROOSEVELT, JR.