of our lives, as my father decided to join the colony which had been
started by his family at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and we rented a
country place which, much to the amusement of our friends, we named
“Tranquillity.” Anything less tranquil than that happy home at Oyster
Bay could hardly be imagined. Endless young cousins and friends of
both sexes and of every kind of varied interest always filled the
simple rooms and shared the delightful and unconventional life which
we led in that enchanted spot. Again I cannot say too much of the
way in which our parents allowed us liberty without license. During
those years--when Theodore was fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen--every
special delight seems connected with Oyster Bay. We took long rides on
horseback through the lanes then so seemingly remote, so far from the
thought of the broad highways which now are traversed by thousands of
motors, but were then the scenes of picnics and every imaginable spree.
Our parents encouraged all mental and physical activity and having,
as I say, a large circle of young cousins settled around us, we were
never at a loss for companionship. One of our greatest delights was
to take the small rowboats with which we were provided and row away
for long days of happy leisure to what then seemed a somewhat distant
spot on the other side of the bay, called Yellow Banks, where we
would have our picnic lunch and climb Cooper’s Bluff, and read aloud
or indulge in poetry contests and games which afforded us infinite
amusement. One of our favorite games was called Crambo. We each wrote
a question and each wrote a word, then all the words were put into one
hat and all the questions into another, and after each child had drawn
a question and a word, he or she was obliged to answer the question
and bring in the word in a verse. Amongst my papers I find some of
the old poetic efforts of those happy summer days. One is dated Plum
Point, Oyster Bay, 1875. I remember the day as if it were yesterday;
Theodore, who loved to row in the hottest sun, over the roughest water,
in the smallest boat, had chosen his friend Edith as a companion; my
cousin West Roosevelt, the “Jimmie” of earlier childhood, whose love
of science and natural history was one of the joys that Theodore found
in his companionship, took as his companion my friend Fannie Smith,
now Mrs. Parsons, and my brother Elliott and I made up the happy six.
Lying on the soft sand of the Point after a jolly luncheon, we played
our favorite game, and Theodore drew the question: “Why does West enjoy
such a dirty picnic?” The word which he drew was “golosh,” and written
on the other side of the paper in his own boyish handwriting is his
attempt to assimilate the query and the word!
“Because it is his nature to,
He finds _his_ idyl in the dirt,
And if you do not sympathize
But find _yours_ in some saucy flirt,
Why that is your affair you know,
It’s like the choosing a (?) golosh,
_You_ doat upon a pretty face,
_He_ takes to carrots and hogwash.”
Perhaps this sample of early verse may have led him later into _other_
paths than poetry!
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF VERSES BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT FOR A FAVORITE
GAME]
We did not always indulge in anything as light and humorous as the
above example of poetic fervor. I have in my possession all kinds of
competitive essays--on William Wordsworth, Washington Irving, and
Plutarch’s “Lives,” written by various members of the happy group of
young people at Oyster Bay; but when not indulging in these literary
efforts “Teedie” was always studying his beloved natural history. At
that time in his life he became more and more determined to take up
this study as an actual career. My father had many serious talks with
him on the subject. He impressed the boy with the feeling that, if
he should thus decide upon a career which of necessity could not be
lucrative, it would mean the sacrifice of many of the pleasures of
which our parents’ environment had enabled us to partake. My father,
however, also told the earnest young naturalist that he would provide
a small income for him, enabling him to live simply, should he decide
to give himself up to scientific research work as the object of his
life. During all those summers at Oyster Bay and the winters in New
York City, before going to college, “Teedie” worked along the line
of his chief interest with a very definite determination to devote
himself permanently to that type of study. Our parents realized fully
the unusual quality of their son, they recognized the strength and
power of his character, the focussed and reasoning superiority of his
mentality, but I do not think they fully realized the extraordinary
quality of leadership which, hitherto somewhat hampered by his ill
health, was later to prove so great a factor, not only in the circle of
his immediate family and friends but in the broader field of the whole
country. He was growing stronger day by day; already he had learned
from those fine lumbermen, “Will Dow” and “Bill Sewall,” who were his
guides on long hunting trips in the Maine woods, how to endure hardship
and how to use his rifle as an adept and his paddle as an expert.
His body, answering to the insistence of his character, was growing
stronger day by day, and was soon to be an instrument of iron to use in
the future years.
Mr. Arthur Cutler was engaged by my parents to be at Oyster Bay during
these summers to superintend the studies of the two boys, and with his
able assistance my brother was well prepared for Harvard College, which
he entered in September, 1876. It seems almost incredible that the
puny, delicate child, so suffering even three years before, could have
started his college life the peer, from a physical standpoint, of any
of his classmates. A light-weight boxer, a swift runner, and in every
way fitted to take his place, physically as well as mentally, in the
arena of college life, he entered Harvard College.
[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt, Oyster Bay, September 21, 1875.]
[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt, December, 1876, aged eighteen.]
In looking back over our early childhood there stands out clearly
before me, as the most important asset of the atmosphere of our home,
the joy of life, combined with an earnest effort for spiritual and
intellectual benefit. As I write I can hear my father’s voice calling
us to early “Morning Prayers” which it was his invariable custom to
read just before breakfast. Even this religious service was entered
into with the same joyous zest which my father had the power of putting
into every act of his life, and he had imbued us with the feeling
that it was a privilege rather than a duty to be present, and that
also the place of honor while we listened to the reading of the Bible
was the seat on the sofa between him and the end of the sofa. When we
were little children in the nursery, as he called to us to come to
prayers, there would be a universal shout of “I speak for you and the
cubby-hole too,” the “cubby-hole” being this much-desired seat; and as
my brother grew to man’s estate these happy and yet serious memories
were so much a part of him that when the boy of eighteen left Oyster
Bay that September afternoon in 1876, to take up the new life which the
entrance into college always means for a young man, he took with him as
the heritage of his boyhood not only keen joy in the panorama of life
which now unrolled before him but the sense of duty to be performed, of
opportunity to be seized, of high resolve to be squared with practical
and effective action, all of which had been part of the teaching of his
father, the first Theodore Roosevelt.
IV
COLLEGE CHUMS AND NEW-FOUND LEADERSHIP
During the winter and summer of 1876, preceding that September when
Theodore Roosevelt left his home for Harvard College, he had entered
more fully into the social life of the boys and girls of his immediate
acquaintance. As a very young boy, there was something of the recluse
about him, although in his actual family (and that family included a
number of cousins) he was always the ringleader. His delicate health
and his almost abnormal literary and scientific tastes had isolated
him somewhat from the hurly-burly of ordinary school life, and even
ordinary vacation life; but during the winter of 1876 he had enjoyed
to the full a dancing-class which my mother had organized the winter
before, and that dancing-class sowed the seeds of many friendships.
The Livingston, Clarkson, Potter, and Rutherfurd boys, and amongst the
girls my friends Edith Carow, Grace Potter, Fannie Smith, Annie Murray,
and myself, formed the nucleus in this dancing-class, and the informal
“Germans” (as they were called in those days) and all the merriment
connected with happy skating-parties and spring picnics in Central Park
cemented relationships which lasted faithfully through later days. My
brother Elliott, more naturally a _social_ leader, influenced the young
naturalist to greater interest in his _humankind_, and when the spring
merged into happy summer at Oyster Bay, Theodore was already showing a
keener pleasure in intercourse with young people of his own age.
In a letter to “Edith” early in the summer, I write of an expedition
which he took across the bay to visit another girl friend. He started
at five o’clock in the morning and reached the other shore at eight
o’clock. Thinking it too early to pay a call, he lay down on a large
rock and went to sleep, waking up to find his boat had drifted far
away. When he put on his spectacles he could see the boat at a
distance, but, of course, did not wish to swim with his clothes on,
and decided to remove them temporarily. Having secured the boat, he
forgot that it might be wise to put on his clothes before sleeping
again under the dock. To his perfect horror, waking suddenly about an
hour later, the boat, clothes, and all had vanished. At the same moment
he heard the footsteps of his fair inamorata on the wooden planks of
the dock above his head. She had walked down with a friend to greet
the admirer whom she expected at about nine o’clock. His description
of his feelings as he lay shivering, though not from cold, while above
him they calmly discussed his probable arrival and the fact that they
thought they would wait there to greet him, can probably be imagined.
The girls, after a period of long waiting, walked away into the woods,
and the self-conscious young man proceeded to swim down a hidden creek
where he thought the tide had taken his recalcitrant boat, and where,
sure enough, he found it. The sequel to this little story throws much
light on masculine human nature, for he conceived an aversion to the
lady who so unconsciously had put him in this foolish position, and
rowed defiantly back to Oyster Bay without paying the proposed visit!
During that summer my father, who always gave his children such
delightful surprises, drilled us himself in a little play called “To
Oblige Benson,” in which Theodore took the part of an irascible and
absent-minded farmer, and our beloved cousin John Elliott the part
of an impassioned lover, while my friend Fannie Smith and I were the
heroines of the adventures. My father’s efforts to make Theodore into
a farmer and John into a lover were commendable though not eminently
successful, but all that he did for us in those ways gave to his
children a certain ease in writing and speaking which were to be of
great value in later years. Fannie Smith, to show how Theodore still
dominated the little circle from the standpoint of intellect, writes
that same July: “I have no power to write sensibly today. If I were
writing to Theodore I would have to say something of this kind, ‘I
have enjoyed Plutarch’s last essay on the philosophy of Diogenes
excessively.’” In his early college days, however, he seems temporarily
to put the “philosophy of Diogenes” aside, and to become a very normal,
simple, pleasure-loving youth, who, however, always retained his
earnest moral purpose and his realization that education was a tool for
future experience, and, therefore, not to be neglected.
He writes on November 26, 1876: “I now belong to another whist club,
composed of Harry Minot, Dick Saltonstall and a few others. They are
very quiet fellows but also very pleasant. Harry Minot was speaking
to me the other day about our making a collecting trip in the White
Mountains together next summer. I think it would be good fun.” The
result of that collecting trip will be shown a little later in this
chapter. On December 14 he writes again: “Darling Pussie [his pet
name for me]: I ought to have written you long ago but I am now
having examinations all the time, and am so occupied in studying for
them that I have very little time for myself, and you know how long
it takes me to write a letter. My only excitement lately has been
the dancing class which is very pleasant. I may as well describe a
few of my chief friends.” He then gives an account of his specially
intimate companions, and speaks as follows of one whose name has become
prominent in the annals of his country’s history as able financier,
secretary of state, and colonel in the American Expeditionary
Force--Robert Bacon: “Bob Bacon is the handsomest man in the class
and is as pleasant as he is handsome. He is only sixteen, but is very
large.” He continues to say that he would love to bring home a few
of his friends at Christmas time, and concludes: “I should like a
party very much if it is _perfectly_ convenient.” The party proved a
delightful Christmas experience, and the New York girls and Boston boys
fraternized to their hearts’ content. On his return to Cambridge after
these Christmas holidays he writes one of his amusing, characteristic
little notes, interspersed with quaint drawings. “Darling Pussie: I
delivered your two notes safely and had a very pleasant journey on in
the cars. To drown my grief at parting from you all, I took refuge,
not in the flowing bowl, but in the _Atlantic Monthly_ and _Harper’s
Magazine_--not to mention squab sandwiches. A journey in the cars
always renders me sufficiently degraded to enjoy even the love stories
in the latter magazine. I think that if I was forced to travel across
the continent, towards the end of my journey, I should read dime novels
with avidity. Good-bye darling. Your loving Tedo.”
The signature was followed by accurate representations of _Harper’s
Magazine_, _Atlantic Monthly_, and the squab sandwich, which he labels
“my three consolations”!
A letter dated February 5, 1877, shows the Boston of those days in
a very pleasant light. He begins: “Little Pussie: I have had a very
pleasant time this week as, in fact, I have every week. It was cram
week for ‘Conic Sections’ but, by using most of my days for study, I
had two evenings, besides Saturday, free. On Wednesday evening, Harry
Jackson gave a large sleighing party; this was great fun for there
were forty girls and fellows and two matrons in two huge sleighs. We
sang songs for a great part of the time for we soon left Boston and
were dragged by our eight horses rapidly through a great many of the
pretty little towns which form the suburbs of Boston. One of the girls
looked quite like Edith only not nearly as pretty as her ladyship. We
came home from our sleigh ride about nine and then danced until after
twelve. I led the German with Harry Jackson’s cousin, Miss Andrews.
After the party, Bob Bacon, Arthur Hooper, myself and some others,
came out in a small sleigh to Cambridge, making night hideous with our
songs. On Saturday I went with Minot Weld to an Assembly (a juvenile
one I mean) at Brookline. This was a very swell affair, there being
about sixty couples in the room. I enjoyed myself very much indeed....
I came home today in time for my Sunday-school class; I am beginning
to get very much interested in my scholars, especially in one who is a
very orderly and bright little fellow--two qualities which I have not
usually found combined. Thank Father for his dear letter. Your loving
brother, Ted.”
The above letter shows how normal a life the young man was leading,
how simply and naturally he was responding to the friendly hospitality
of his new Boston friends. Boston had welcomed him originally for the
sake of his older sister, who, during two charming summer visits to Bar
Harbor, Maine, had made many New England friends. The Sunday-school
which he mentions, and to which he gave himself very faithfully, proved
a big test of character, for it was a great temptation to go with the
other fellows on Saturday afternoons to Chestnut Hill or Brookline
or Milton, where open house was kept by the Lees, Saltonstalls,
Whitneys, and other friends, and it was very hard either to refuse
their invitation from the beginning or to leave the merry parties early
Sunday morning and return to Cambridge to be at his post to teach the
unruly little people of the slums of Cambridge. So deeply, however, had
the first Theodore Roosevelt impressed his son with the necessity of
giving himself and the attainments with which his superior advantages
had endowed him to those less fortunate than he, that all through the
first three years of his college life he only failed to appear at his
Sunday-school class twice, and then he arranged to have his class taken
by a friend. Truly, when _he_ put his hand to the plough he never
turned back.
On March 27 of his first year at college he writes again in his usual
sweet way to his younger sister: “Little Pet Pussie: 95 per cent _will_
help my average. I want to pet you again awfully! You cunning, pretty,
little, foolish Puss. My easy chair would just hold myself and Pussie.”
Again on April 15: “Little Pussie: Having given Motherling an account
of my doings up to yesterday, I have reserved the more frivolous part
for little pet Pussie. Yesterday, in the afternoon, Minot Weld drove
me over to his house and at six o’clock we sallied forth in festive
attire to a matinée ‘German’ at Dorchester which broke up before
eleven o’clock. This was quite a swell affair, there being about 100
couples.... I spent last night with the Welds and walked back over here
to Forest Hill with Minot in the afternoon, collecting a dozen snakes
and salamanders on the way.” Still the natural historian, even although
on pleasure bent; so snakes and salamanders hold their own in spite of
“swell matinée Germans.” From Forest Hill that same Sunday he writes
a more serious letter to his father: “Darling Father: I am spending
my Easter vacation with the Minots, who, with their usual kindness,
asked me to do so. I did not go home for I knew I should never be able
to study there. I have been working pretty steadily, having finished
during the last five days, the first book of Horace, the sixth book of
Homer, and the ‘Apology of Socrates.’ In the afternoon, some of the
boys usually come out to see me and we spend that time in the open air,
and on Saturday evening I went to a party, but during the rest of the
time I have been working pretty faithfully. I spent today, Sunday, with
the Welds and went to their church where, although it was a Unitarian
Church, I heard a really remarkably good sermon about ‘The Attributes
of a Christian.’ I have enjoyed all your letters very much and my
conscience reproaches me greatly for not writing you before, but as you
may imagine, I have had to study pretty hard to make up for lost time,
and a letter with me is very serious work. Your loving son, T. R. Jr.”
On June 3, as his class day approaches, and after a visit to Cambridge
on the part of my father, who had given me and my sister and friends
Edith Carow and Maud Elliott the treat of accompanying him, Theodore
writes: “Sweet Pussie: I enjoyed your visit so much and so did all of
my friends. I am so glad you like my room, and next year I hope to have
it even prettier when you all come on again.” His first class day was
not specially notable, but he finished his freshman year standing high
in his class and having made a number of good friends, although at that
period I do not think that he was in any marked degree a leader amongst
the young men of the class. He was regarded more as an all-round good
sport, a fellow of high ideals from which he never swerved, and one
at whom his companions, who, except Harry Minot, had not very strong
literary affiliations, were always more or less surprised because of
the way in which their otherwise perfectly normal comrade sank into
complete oblivion when the magic pages of a book were unrolled before
him.
That summer, shortly after class day, he and Harry Minot took their
expedition to the Adirondacks with the following results, namely:
a catalogue written in the mountains of “The Summer Birds of the
Adirondacks in Franklin County, N. Y., by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and
H. D. Minot.” This catalogue was sent to me by Mr. John D. Sherman,
Jr., of Mt. Vernon, N. Y. He tells me that it was originally published
in 1877 and favorably mentioned soon after publication in the _Nuttall
Bulletin_. Mr. Sherman thinks that the paper was “privately” published,
and it was printed by Samuel E. Casino, of Salem, who, when a mere
boy, started in the natural-history-book business. The catalogue shows
such careful observation and such perseverance in the accumulation of
data by the two young college boys that I think the first page worthy
of reproduction as one of the early evidences of the careful study
Theodore Roosevelt had given to the subject which always remained
throughout his life one of the nearest to his heart.
[Facsimile: THE SUMMER BIRDS
OF THE ADIRONDACKS IN FRANKLIN COUNTY, N. Y.
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JR., AND H. D. MINOT
The following catalogue (written in the mountains) is based upon
observations made in August, 1874, August, 1875, and June 22d to July
9th, 1877, especially about the Saint Regis Lakes, Mr. Minot having
been with me, only during the last week of June. Each of us has used
his initials in making a statement which the other has not verified.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Jr.
The general features of the Adirondacks, in those parts which we have
examined, are the many lakes, the absence of _mountain_-brooks, the
luxuriant forest-growth (the taller deciduous trees often reaching
the height of a hundred feet, and the White Pines even that of a
hundred and thirty), the sandy soil, the cool, invigorating air, and
both a decided wildness and levelness of country as compared with the
diversity of the White Mountain region.
The _avifauna_ is not so rich as that of the latter country, because
wanting in certain “Alleghanian” birds found there, and also in species
belonging especially to the Eastern or North-eastern Canadian fauna.
Nests, moreover, seem to be more commonly inaccessible, and rarely
built beside roads or wood-paths, as they often are in the White
Mountains. M.
=1. Robin.= _Turdus migratorius_ (Linnæus). Moderately common.
Sometimes found in the woods.
=2. Hermit Thrush.= _Turdus Pallasi_ (Cabanis). Common. Sings until
the middle of August (R.).
=3. Swainson’s Thrush.= _Turdus Swainsoni_ (Cabanis). The commonest
thrush.
=4. Cat-bird.= _Mimus Carolinensis_ (Linnæus). Observed beyond the
mountains to the northward, near Malone.
=5. Blue Bird.= _Sialia sialis_ (Linnæus). Common near Malone.
=6. Golden-crowned “Wren.”= _Regulus satrapa_ (Lichten.). Quite
common; often heard singing in June.
=7. Chickadee.= _Parus atricapillus_ (Linnæus). Rather scarce in
June. Abundant in August (R.).
=8. Hudsonian Chickadee.= _Parus Hudsonicus_ (Forster). Found in
small flocks at Bay Pond in the early part of August (R.).
=9. Red-bellied Nuthatch.= _Sitta Canadensis_ (Linnæus). Common.
The White-bellied Nuthatch has not been observed here by us.
=10. Brown Creeper.= _Certhia familiaris_ (Linnæus). Common.
=11. Winter Wren.= _Troglodytes hyemalis_ (Vieillot). Moderately
common.
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF THE “CATALOGUE OF SUMMER BIRDS,” MADE IN
1877 BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JR., AND H. D. MINOT]
His love of poetry in those days became a very living thing, and
the summer following his first college year was one in which the
young people of Oyster Bay turned with glad interest to the riches
not only of nature but of literature as well. I find among my
papers, painstakingly copied in red ink in my brother’s handwriting,
Swinburne’s poem “The Forsaken Garden.” He had sent it to me, copying
it from memory when on a trip to the Maine woods. Later, on his
return, we would row by moonlight to “Cooper’s Bluff” (near which spot
he was eventually to build his beloved home, Sagamore Hill), and there,
having climbed the sandy bulwark, we would sit on the top of the ledge
looking out on the shimmering waters of the Sound, and he would recite
with a lilting swing in the tone of his voice which matched the rhythm
of the words:
“In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
By the sea down’s edge, twixt windward and lee,
Walled round by rocks like an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brush-wood and thorn encloses
The steep-scarred slope of the blossomless bed,
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses--
Now lie dead.”
He always loved the rhythm of Swinburne, just as he loved later the
wonderful ringing lines of Kipling, which he taught to his children and
constantly repeated to himself.