Vice-President were very different. In the home of my sister, Mrs.
Cowles, where we all stayed for the inauguration, quaint happenings
occurred. A certain Captain ----, a great admirer of my brother,
telegraphed that he was sending from Thorley’s florist shop in New
York a “floral tribute” to be erected wherever the Vice-President was
staying. My sister’s house was moderate in size, but that made no
difference to Captain ----. That “floral tribute” had to be erected.
It cost, if I remember rightly, in the neighborhood of three thousand
dollars. (My brother laughingly but pathetically said it was about
half of his income at the time, and he wished the tribute could have
been added to the income.) It had to be erected, and erected it was.
It arrived in long boxes, painfully suggestive of coffins, much to
the delight of the young members of the family, who were also staying
with my always hospitable sister. There, for a whole day, three men
worked haggardly building the “tribute,” until the whole front room
of my sister’s house (which was much in demand for large numbers of
delegations who wished to pay their respects to my brother) was filled
in every nook and cranny by this enormous and marvellous structure,
which reached from wall to wall and up to the ceiling. The overworked
and tired men who created it were so exhausted by the questions of the
small members of the Roosevelt and Robinson family that toward the
end of the afternoon they sent word to Mrs. Cowles that unless those
children were sent out of the house, that “tribute” would never be
finished. Finished it was, however, and we were almost suffocated by
the sweetness of its scents, and it was all that we could do, in spite
of our spontaneous gaiety, to rise above the semifunereal feeling that
this mass of conventional flowers produced upon the atmosphere of the
whole house.
The inaugural ball was really a charming sight, but was shadowed for
the presidential party by the fact that Mrs. McKinley was not well a
short while before it took place. She was able to be present, however,
in her box, but the shade of sadness was heavy on the President’s face;
and the people, for that very reason, turned with peculiar pleasure to
the care-free younger couple, who were asked to come down from the box,
and to walk in stately fashion once around the room, to the infinite
admiration of the many interested observers.
After the inauguration my brother retired quietly to Oyster Bay, and
it was from there on April 15, 1901, that he wrote me one of his most
characteristic notes. At that time, as in the days of his governorship,
he would frequently notify his friends to meet him and lunch with him
at my house, much to my delight. On this particular occasion, he had
invited so incongruous an assortment of people that he decided that
one or two more equally incongruous would be advisable, and writes
as follows: “Darling Corinne: Inasmuch as we are to have Cocky Locky,
Henny Penny and Goosey Poosey at lunch, why omit Foxy Loxy? I am
anxious to see Dr. R---- and I do hope you will ask him to lunch on
Thursday also. Ever yours, T. R.”
That lunch-party proved to be a great success, as did various others
later; and then came a moment, for me, of serious anxiety when my
eldest boy was stricken with diphtheria in college. At once many loving
letters came from Oyster Bay--and later, when the young freshman had
recovered from his illness, and I was at my home on Orange Mountain,
the newly inaugurated Vice-President acceded to my wish that he should
come to my home, where my husband and I had lived all our young married
life, and be the hero and excitement of the neighborhood at a reception
on my lawn. It proved a hot day in July, but his pleasure in meeting
all my friends was unabated, and he took special interest in my butcher
and grocer and fish man and ice man, and the kindly farming people
who had been devoted to my husband’s mother as well as to me for many
years. At the end of the day he resuscitated with tender care an old
veteran of the Civil War, who had stumbled up the hill in the blinding
heat to pay his respects to the colonel of the Rough Riders, now
Vice-President of the United States.
That same summer he engineered a sailing trip for his little boys and
mine, and writes me in answer to a request from me to know how much
I owed for the trip: “About $12 would cover completely your boys’
share of the expenses. It is just like you to want to pay it, but I
would like to feel that for this trivial matter your two boys were my
guests. So if you don’t mind, I am going to ask you to _sacrifice_ your
feelings. As I have told you the extent of the obligation, and it is
surely _not_ heavy, let me continue to stand as the munificent host!”
Once that summer during his “month’s rest,” of which I have already
spoken at the beginning of this chapter, I spent a night at Sagamore
Hill, and my sister-in-law, Mrs. Roosevelt, said to me that she was
anxious about my brother. The “rest” did not quite agree with him,
and the prospect of a more or less sedentary life in his new position
weighed on the active initiative of his mind.
A little later they went to a hunting-lodge in the Adirondacks, and all
the world knows what happened on September 6, 1901. Then came the great
anxiety as to whether Mr. McKinley would recover from the assassin’s
onslaught, and on September 14, he succumbed to the weakness engendered
by his wound. While the dramatic drive from the Adirondack Mountains,
where Theodore Roosevelt was found, was in process, I, the only member
of the Roosevelt family near New York, was inundated in my Orange
Mountain home by reporters. That evening after receiving a number of
reporters and giving them what slight information I could give, I said
that I could not stand the strain any longer, that I could not be
interviewed any more, and with the dear cousin, John Elliott, who had
been our early childhood companion, and who happened to be visiting
me, I went into my writing-room, shut the door to the world outside,
and a strange coincidence occurred. My sister-in-law, Mrs. Theodore
Roosevelt, had shortly before returned to me a number of childhood
letters which we had exchanged, first as little children, and then as
growing girls, for we had always been very intimate friends. These
letters were in a box on my writing-table, and I said to my cousin
John: “Let us forget all these terrible things that are happening, and
for a moment, at least, go back into our merry, care-free past. Here
are these letters. I am going to pick one out at random and see how it
will remind us of our childhood days.”
So speaking, I put my hand into the box and proceeded to draw out a
letter. Curiously enough, as I opened the yellow envelope and the
sheets fell from it, I saw that it was dated from Washington in 1877,
and looking more closely I read aloud the words:
“Dearest Corinne: Today, for the first time, I went to the White
House. Oh, how much I wished for you. It seemed so wonderful to me to
be in the old mansion which had been the home of President Lincoln,
and which is so connected with all our country’s history. It gave me
a feeling of awe and excitement. I wish you could have been here to
share the feeling with me, for I don’t suppose it is likely that we
shall ever be in the White House together, and it would have been so
interesting to have exchanged our memories of things that had happened
in that wonderful old house. But how unlikely it is that you or I shall
ever come in contact with anything connected with the White House.”
As I read these words, I exclaimed with astonishment, for it did seem a
curious freak of fate that almost at the very moment that I was reading
the lines penned by the girl of fifteen, an unexpected turn of the
wheel had made that same young girl the lady of the White House.
XI
HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Uncrowned the brow,
Where truth and courage meet,
The citizen alone confronts the land.
* * * * *
A man whose dreamful, valiant mind conceives
High purpose, consecrated to his race.
--Margaret Ridgely Partridge.
The deed of the cowardly assassin had done its work. William McKinley
was dead; the young Vice-President had made the hazardous trip from
the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, had taken the solemn oath in
Buffalo, had followed the body of his chief to the final resting-place,
and had returned to Washington. From Washington he telegraphed to my
husband and myself, with the thought which he always showed, and told
us that as Mrs. Roosevelt was attending to last important matters
at Sagamore, she could not be with him the day he moved into the
White House, and that he was very anxious that not only my sister,
Mrs. Cowles, and her husband, but that we also should dine with him
the first night that he slept in the old mansion. So we went on to
Washington, and were with him at that first meal in the house for which
he had such romantic attachment because it had sheltered the hero of
his boyhood and manhood, Abraham Lincoln. As we sat around the table
he turned and said: “Do you realize that this is the birthday of our
father, September 22? I have realized it as I signed various papers
all day long, and I feel that it is a good omen that I begin my duties
in this house on this day. I feel as if my father’s hand were on my
shoulder, and as if there were a special blessing over the life I am
to lead here.” Almost as he finished this sentence, the coffee was
passed to us, and at that time it was the habit at the White House to
pass with the coffee a little boutonnière to each gentleman. As the
flowers were passed to the President, the one given to him was a yellow
saffronia rose. His face flushed, and he turned again and said: “Is it
not strange! This is the rose we all connect with my father.” My sister
and I responded eagerly that many a time in the past we had seen our
father pruning the rose-bush of saffronia roses with special care. He
always picked one for his buttonhole from that bush, and whenever we
gave him a rose, we gave him one of those. Again my brother said, with
a very serious look on his face, “I think there is a blessing connected
with this,” and surely it did seem as if there were a blessing
connected with those years of Theodore Roosevelt in the White House;
those merry happy years of family life, those ardent, loving years
of public service, those splendid, peaceful years of international
amity--a blessing there surely was over that house.
Nothing could have been harder to the temperament of Theodore Roosevelt
than to have come “through the cemetery,” as Peter Dunne said in his
prophetic article, to the high position of President of the United
States. What he had achieved in the past was absolutely through his own
merits. To him to come to any position through “dead men’s shoes” was
peculiarly distasteful; but during the early years of his occupancy
of the White House, feeling it his duty so to do, he strove in every
possible way to fulfil the policies of his predecessor, retaining his
appointees and working with conscientious loyalty as much as possible
along the lines laid down by President McKinley.
That first winter of his incumbency was one of special interest. Many
were the difficulties in his path. England, and, indeed, all foreign
countries were watching him with deep interest. I realized that fact in
a very special way as that very spring of 1902 I took my young daughter
abroad to place her at a French school directed by Mademoiselle
Souvestre in England. It was the spring when preparations were being
made for the coronation of King Edward VII, and because of the fact
that I was the sister of the President of the United States, I was
received with great courtesy. Our dear friend Mr. Joseph H. Choate was
then ambassador to England. Mrs. Choate presented me at court, and the
King paid me the unusual compliment--out of respect to my brother--of
leaving the dais on which he and the Queen stood, and came forward to
greet me personally in order to ask for news of my brother. Special
consideration was shown to me in so many ways that when Mr. Robinson
and I were visiting Edinburgh, it seemed in no way unusual that we
should be invited to Holyrood Castle to the reception given by the
lord high commissioner, Lord Leven and Melville. It so happened that
we were in Edinburgh during that week of festivity when the lord high
commissioner of Scotland, appointed as special representative of the
King of Great Britain, holds court in the old castle as though he were
actually the King.
We had dined with friends before the reception, and were therefore late
in reaching the castle, and were literally the last people at the end
of the long queue approaching the dais on which Lord and Lady Leven and
Melville stood. As King Edward had himself stepped forward to meet me
in Buckingham Palace, I was not surprised when Lord Leven and Melville
stepped down from the dais, and I expected him also to ask news of my
brother, the President of the United States, as King Edward had done,
but to my great surprise, and be it confessed intense pleasure, I heard
the lord high commissioner speak as follows: “Mrs. Douglas Robinson,
you have been greeted with special courtesy in our country because of
your distinguished brother, the President of the United States, but
I am greeting you with even greater interest because of your father,
the first Theodore Roosevelt. You probably do not remember, for you
were a little girl at the time, that a raw-boned young Scotchman named
Ronald Leslie Melville came long ago to New York and was much at your
home, having had letters of introduction to your father as one of the
men best fitted to teach him the modern philanthropic methods used in
America. Only to-day,” he continued, “I told the children of Edinburgh,
assembled, as is the custom, to listen to the lord high commissioner,
that the father of the present President of the United States was the
first man who taught me to _love_ my fellow men.”
My heart was very full as I made my courtesy and answered the lord high
commissioner. Before he let me pass on he said, with a charming smile:
“If you and Mr. Robinson will come tomorrow to lunch with us quietly
I will take you to Lord Darnley’s room, which is my dressing-room
during the week of Holyrood festivities, and on my dressing-table
you will see the photograph of your father, for I never go anywhere
without it.” I accepted the invitation gladly, and the next day we
went to Holyrood Castle, lunched informally with the delightful
chatelain and chatelaine, and I was taken, as the former promised, to
see Lord Damley’s room, where my father’s face smiled at me from the
dressing-table. My brother loved to hear me tell this story, and I feel
that it is not amiss to include it in any recollections concerning my
brother, for he was truly the spirit of my father reincarnate.
In May, 1902, Mrs. Roosevelt writes that “Theodore” is just about
to leave for a hunting trip, which she hopes will “rest” him. (The
rest the year before, of writing a life of Oliver Cromwell, had not
been made quite strenuous enough for a real rest!) Later he returned
and made a famous speech in Providence, a speech epoch-making, and
recognized as such by an English newspaper, _The Morning Post_ of
August 27, 1902, a clipping from which I have at hand, and which runs
as follows:
“Our New York correspondent announced yesterday that President
Roosevelt’s great speech at Providence on the subject of ‘Trusts’ is
regarded on all sides and by both parties as an absolutely epoch-making
event. This is not surprising to those who have studied the conditions
of American politics, and the merits of the particular economic
question involved, so far as they are intelligible to us, or last
but by no means least, the character and personality of President
Roosevelt. It would now seem that the people of the United States are
at the parting of the ways between the corrupt, old political system
and a newer, manlier, honester conception of public rights and duties.”
Perhaps this sentence foreshadows more than any other contemporary
expression the enormous instrument for honesty in high places in the
history of his country which it was Theodore Roosevelt’s destiny to be.
Mingled with these great cares and far-reaching issues came, later,
brighter moments, and it was about that time that during an interval
of play at Oyster Bay, he started the custom of his famous “obstacle
walks.” He would gather all the little cousins and his own children and
mine, if I could bring them down for a week-end, on Sunday afternoon
at Sagamore Hill (even an occasional “grown person” was considered
sufficiently adventurous to be included in the party), and would start
on one of the strenuous scrambles which he called an “obstacle walk.”
It was more like a game than a walk, for it had rules and regulations
of its own, the principal one being that each participant should follow
the presidential leader “over or through” any obstacle but never
“around.” There were sometimes as many as twenty little children as
we stood on the top of Cooper’s Bluff, a high sand-bank overlooking
the Sound, ready for the word “go,” and all of them children were agog
with excitement at the probable obstacles in their path. As we stood on
the brink of the big sand-bank, my brother would turn with an amused
twinkle in his eye and say: “There is a little path down the side, but
I always jump off the top.” This, needless to say, was in the form of
a challenge, which he always accompanied by a laugh and a leap into
the air, landing on whatever portion of his body happened to be the
one that struck the lower part of the sand-bank first. Then there
would be a shout from the children, and every one would imitate his
method of progress, I myself, generally the only other grown person,
bringing up the rear rather reluctantly but determined not to have to
follow the other important rule of the game, which was that if you
could not succeed in going “over or through” that you should put your
metaphorical tail between your physical legs and return home. You were
not jeered at, no disagreeable remark was directed at you, but your
sense of failure was humiliation enough.
Having reached the foot of the bank in this promiscuous fashion,
we would all sit on stones and take off our shoes and stockings to
shake the quantities of sand therefrom, and then start on the real
business of the day. With a sense of great excitement we watched our
leader and the devious course he pursued while finding the most trying
obstacles to test our courage. I remember one day seeing in our path
an especially unpleasant-looking little bathing-house with a very
steep roof like a Swiss chalet. I looked at it with sudden dismay,
for I realized that only the very young and slender could chin up its
slippery sides, and I hoped that the leader of the party would deflect
his course. Needless to say, he did not, and I can still see the
somewhat sturdy body of the then President of the United States hurling
itself at the obstruction and with singular agility chinning himself
to the top and sliding down on the other side. The children stormed it
with whoops of delight, but I thought I had come to my Waterloo. Just
as I had decided that the moment had come for that ignominious retreat
of which I have already spoken, I happened to notice a large rusty
nail on one side of the unfinished shanty, and I thought to myself:
“If I _can_ get a footing on that nail, then perhaps I _can_ get my
hands to the top of that sloping roof, and if I _can_ get my hands
there, perhaps by Herculean efforts I too can chin myself over the
other side.” Nothing succeeds like success, for having performed this
almost impossible feat and having violently returned into the midst
of my anxious group of fellow pedestrians, very much as the little boy
does on his sled on the steepest snow-clad hill, I was greeted with
an ovation such as I have never received in later life for the most
difficult achievement, literary or philanthropic! From that moment I
was regarded as one really fit to take part in the beloved “obstacle
walks,” which were, I cannot help but think, strong factors in planting
in the hearts and characters of the children who thus followed their
leader, the indomitable pluck and determination which helped the
gallant sons and nephews of Theodore Roosevelt to go undauntedly “over
the top” on Flanders Field.
“Over or through, never around”--a good motto, indeed, for Young
America, and one which was always exemplified by that American of
Americans, my brother, Theodore Roosevelt.
At the end of October that year, his affectionate concern for me (for I
was delicate at the time) takes form in a lovely letter in which, after
giving me the best of advice, and acknowledging humorously that no one
ever really took advice offered, he says: “Heaven bless you always
whether you take my advice or not.” He never failed to show loving and
tender interest in the smallest of my pleasures or anxieties, nor did
he and Mrs. Roosevelt ever fail to invite, at my instigation, elderly
family friends to lunch at the White House, or gladly to send me
autographs for many little boys, or checks to “Dolly,” the nurse of his
childhood, whose advanced years I superintended.
In April, 1903, he started on a long trip, and at that time felt that,
as the years of his inherited incumbency were drawing to a close, he
could forward his own gospel. A humorous reference comes in a letter
just before he starts, in which he says: “I was immensely amused
with Monroe’s message [my second son, then at St. Paul’s School]
about boxing and confirmation, the one evidently having some occult
connection with the other in his mind. Give him my love when you
write.... Well, I start on a nine-weeks’ trip tomorrow, as hard a trip
as I have ever undertaken, with the sole exception of the canvass in
1900. As a whole, it will be a terrific strain, but there will be an
occasional day which I shall enjoy.”
Again, as he actually starts on that “hard” trip, he sends me a little
line of never-failing love. “White House, April 1, 1903. [This in his
own writing.] Darling Pussie: Just a last line of Good-bye. I am so
glad your poor hand is better at last. Love to dear old Douglas. The
house seems strange and lonely without the children. Ever yours, T. R.”
Those little notes in his own dear handwriting, showing always the
loving thought, are especially precious and treasured.
After that exhausting journey, replete with many thrilling experiences,
he returns to Oyster Bay for a little rest, and writes with equal
interest of the beautiful family life which was always led there.
My boy Stewart was with him at the time, and he speaks of him
affectionately in connection with his own “Ted,” who was Stewart’s
intimate friend:
“Stewart, Ted and I took an hour and a half bareback ride all together.
Ted is always longing that Stewart should go off on a hunting trip
with him. I should be delighted to have them go off now. Although I
think no doubt they would get _into_ scrapes, I have also no doubt that
they would get _out of_ them. We have had a lovely summer, as lovely
a summer as we have ever passed. All the children have enjoyed their
various activities, and we have been a great deal with the children,
and in addition to that, Edith and I have ridden on horseback much
together, and have frequently gone off for a day at a time in a little
row boat, not to speak of the picnics to which everybody went.
“In the intervals I have chopped industriously. I have seen a great
many people who came to call upon me on political business. I have had
to handle my correspondence of course, and I have had not a few wearing
matters of national policy, ranging from the difficulties in Turkey to
the scandals in the Post Office. But I have had three months of rest,
of holiday, by comparison with what has gone before. Next Monday I go
back to Washington, and for the thirteen months following, there will
be mighty little let-up to the strain. But I enjoy it to the full.
“What the outcome will be as far as I am personally concerned, I do
not know. It looks as if I would be renominated; whether I shall
be re-elected I haven’t the slightest idea. I know there is bitter
opposition to me from many sources. Whether I shall have enough support
to overcome this opposition, I cannot tell. I suppose few Presidents
can form the slightest idea whether their policies have met with
approval or not. Certainly _I_ cannot. But as far as I can see, these
policies have been right, and I hope that time will justify them. If it
doesn’t why I must abide the fall of the dice, and that is all there is
to it. Ever yours, T. R.”
That letter is very characteristic of his usual attitude. Strain, yes;
hard work, yes; but equally “I enjoy it to the full”! Equally also was
he willing to abide by the “fall of the dice,” having done what he
fully believed to have been the right thing for the country.
That December, the day after Christmas, he writes again:
“Darling Sister: I so enjoyed seeing you here, but I have been so
worried about you. I am now looking forward to Stewart’s coming, and to
seeing Helen and Ted. But I do wish you would take a rest.