House there followed a reception to the Rough Riders. What a happy
time the President had with them recalling bygone adventures, while
the Roosevelt and Robinson children ran merrily about listening to the
wonderful stories and feeding the voracious Rough Riders. Later the
President went bareheaded to the steps under the porte-cochère and
received the cowboys, who rode past one after another, joyfully shaking
hands with their old chief, ready with some joke for his special
benefit, to which there was always a repartee. It was a unique scene
as they cheered the incoming magnate under the old porte-cochère, and
one never to be repeated. And then the Harvard men filed past to shake
hands. Needless to say, dinner was rather late, though very merry, and
we were all soon off to the inaugural ball. It was a beautiful sight,
the hall enormous, with two rows of arches and pillars, one above the
other, along each side. The floor was absolutely crowded with moving
people, all with their faces straining up at our box. Ten thousand
people bought tickets. Mr. Matthew Hale, then tutor to my nephew
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., has described the scene as follows: “The whole
room was beautifully decorated with lights and wreaths and flowers. As
I stood looking down on the great pageant I felt as though I were in
some other world,--as though these people below there and moving in and
out were not real people, but were all part of some great mechanism
built for our special benefit. And then my feeling would change to the
other extreme when I thought of each one of those men and women as
individuals, each one thinking, and feeling and acting according to his
own will,--and that all, just for that one night, came together for a
common purpose, to see the President. Soon an open place appeared in
the throng before us, and the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, and behind
them Vice-President and Mrs. Fairbanks, walked to the other end of the
hall and back, while the people cheered and cheered.” And soon it was
time to go back to the White House, and then, best of all, came what
we used to call a “back-hair” talk in Theodore and Edith’s room. What
fun we had as we talked the great day over in comfortable déshabille. A
small round bottle of old wine was found somewhere by Mrs. Roosevelt,
and the family drank the President’s health, and we talked of old times
and childhood days, and of the dear ones whose hearts would have glowed
so warmly had they lived to see that day. We laughed immoderately over
all kinds of humorous happenings, and we could hardly bear to say “good
night,” we still felt so gay, so full of life and fun, so invigorated
and stimulated by the excitement and by the deeper thoughts and
desires, which, however, only took the form that night of increasing
hilarity!
Shortly after that March inauguration my daughter Corinne, just
eighteen, was asked by her kind aunt to pay a visit at the White House,
and I impressed upon her the wonderful opportunity she would have of
listening to the great men of the world at the informal luncheon
gatherings which were a feature of my brother’s incumbency. “Do not
miss a word,” I said to my daughter. “Uncle Ted brings to luncheon
all the great men in Washington--almost always several members of the
cabinet, and any one of interest who is visiting there. Be sure and
listen to everything. You will never hear such talk again.” When she
returned home from that visit I eagerly asked her about the wonderful
luncheons at the White House, where I had so frequently sat spellbound.
My somewhat irreverent young daughter said: “Mother, I laughed
internally all through the first luncheon at the White House during my
visit. Uncle Ted was perfectly lovely to me, and took me by the hand
and said: ‘Corinny, dear, you are to sit at my right hand to-day, and
you must have the most delightful person in the room on your other
side.’ With that he glanced at the distinguished crowd of gentlemen
who were surrounding him waiting to be assigned to their places, and
picking out a very elderly gentleman with a long white beard, he said
with glowing enthusiasm: ‘You shall have John Burroughs, the great
naturalist.’ I confess I had hoped for some secretary in the cabinet,
but, no, Uncle Ted did not think there was any one in the world that
compared in thrilling excitement to his wonderful old friend and
lover of birds. Even so, I thought, ‘Mother would wish me to learn
all about natural history, and I shall hear marvellous ornithological
tales, even if politics must be put aside.’ But even in that I was
somewhat disappointed, for at the very beginning of luncheon Uncle
Ted leaned across me to Mr. Burroughs and said: ‘John, this morning
I heard a chippy sparrow, and he sang twee, twee, right in my ear.’
Mr. Burroughs, with a shade of disapproval on his face, said: ‘Mr.
President, you must be mistaken. It was not a _chippy_ sparrow if it
sang twee, twee. The note of the _chippy_ sparrow is twee, twee, twee.’
From that moment the great affairs of our continent, the international
crises of all kinds were utterly forgotten, while the President of the
United States and his esteemed guest, the great naturalist, discussed
with a good deal of asperity whether that chippy sparrow had said
‘twee, twee,’ or ‘twee, twee, twee.’ We rose from the table with the
question still unsettled.” My brother always loved to hear my daughter
tell this story, although his face would assume a somewhat sheepish
expression as she dilated on the difference between her mother’s
prognostications of what a luncheon at the White House would mean from
an intellectual standpoint, and what the realization actually became!
In spite of my daughter’s experience, however, I can say with truth
that there never were such luncheons as those luncheons at the White
House during my brother’s life there. The secretary of state, Mr.
Elihu Root, with his unusual knowledge, his pregnant wit, and quiet,
brilliant sarcasm; the secretary of war, Mr. Taft, with his gay smile
and ready response; Mr. Moody, the attorney-general with his charming
culture and universal kindliness, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the
brilliant scholar and statesman, my brother’s most intimate friend and
constant companion, were frequent members of the luncheon-parties, and
always, the most distinguished visitor to Washington, from whatever
country or from whatever State of our own country, would be brought
in with the same informal hospitality and received for the time being
by President and Mrs. Roosevelt into the intimacy of family life.
The whole cabinet would occasionally adjourn from one of their most
important meetings to the lunch-table, and then the President and Mr.
Root would cap each other’s stories of the way in which this or that
question had been discussed during the cabinet meeting. I doubt also if
ever there were quite such cabinet meetings as were held during those
same years!
That spring Mr. Robinson and I took my daughter to Porto Rico to visit
Governor and Mrs. Beekman Winthrop. My brother believed strongly
in young men, and having admired the intelligence of young Beekman
Winthrop (he came of a fine old New York family) as circuit judge in
the Philippines, he decided to make him governor of Porto Rico. He was
only twenty-nine, and his charming wife still younger, but they made
a most ideal couple as administrators of the beautiful island. After
having been with them in the old palace for about a week, and having
enjoyed beyond measure all that was so graciously arranged for us, I
was approached one day by Governor Winthrop, who told me that he was
much distressed at the behavior of a certain official and that he felt
sure that the President would not wish the man to remain in office, for
he was actually a disgrace to the United States. “Mrs. Robinson,” he
said, “will you not go to the President on your return, and tell him
that I am quite sure he would not wish to retain this man in office?
I know the President likes us to work with the tools which have been
given us, and I dislike beyond measure to seem not to be able to do so,
but I am convinced that this man should not represent the United States
in this island.” “Have you your proofs, Beekman?” I asked. “I should
not be willing to approach my brother with any such criticism without
accurate proofs.” “I most assuredly have them,” he answered, and sure
enough he _did_ have them, and I shortly afterward sailed with them
back to New York. Immediately upon my arrival I telegraphed my brother
as follows: “Would like to see you on Porto Rican business. When shall
I come?” One of Theodore Roosevelt’s most striking characteristics
was the rapidity with which he answered letters or telegrams. One
literally felt that one had not posted a letter or sent the telegram
rushing along the wire before the rapid answer came winging back again,
and _that_ particular telegram was no exception to the rule. I had
rather hoped for a week’s quiet in which to get settled after my trip
to Porto Rico, but that was not to be. The rapid-fire answer read as
follows: “Come tomorrow.” Of course there was nothing for me to do but
go “tomorrow.” It was late in April, and as I drove up to the White
House from the station, I thought how lovely a city was Washington
in the springtime. The yellow forsythias gave a golden glow to the
squares, and the soft hanging petals of the fringe-trees waved in the
scented air. I never drove under the White House porte-cochère without
a romantic feeling of excitement at the realization that it was _my_
brother, lover of Lincoln, lover of America, who lived under the roof
which symbolized all that America means to her children. As I went up
the White House steps, he blew out of the door, dressed for his ride on
horseback. His horse and that of a companion were waiting for him. He
came smilingly toward me, welcomed me, and said: “Edie has had to go to
Philadelphia for the night to visit Nellie Tyler, so we are all alone,
and I have ordered dinner out on the back porch, for it is so warm and
lovely, and there is a full moon, and I thought we could be so quiet
there. I have so much to tell you. All sorts of political things have
happened during your absence, and besides that I have learned several
new poems of Kipling and Swinburne, and I feel like reciting them to
you in the moonlight!” “How perfectly lovely,” I replied, “and when
shall I see you about Porto Rico?” A slight frown came on his brow, and
he said, “Certainly not to-night,” and then rather sternly: “You have
your appointment at nine o’clock to-morrow morning in the office to
discuss business matters.” Then with a returning smile: “I will be back
pretty soon. Good-by.” And he jumped on his horse and clattered away
toward Rock Creek.
[Illustration:
_From the drawing by Jules Guérin._
We had that lovely dinner on the portico at the back of the White House
looking toward the Washington Monument.]
It all came true, although it almost seemed like a fairy-tale. We
_had_ that dinner _à deux_ on the lovely portico at the rear of the
White House looking toward the Washington Monument--that portico was
beautifully reproduced by Sargent’s able brush for Mrs. Roosevelt
later--and under the great, soft moon, with the scent of shrub
and flower in the air, he recited Kipling and Swinburne, and then
falling into more serious vein, gave me a vivid description of some
difficulty he had had with Congress, which had refused to receive a
certain message which he had written and during the interval between
the sending of it and their final decision to receive it, he had shut
himself up in his library, glad to have a moment of unexpected leisure,
and had written an essay, which he had long desired to write, on the
Irish sagas. The moon had waned and the stars were brighter and deeper
before we left the portico. We never could go to bed when we were
together, and I am so glad that we never did!
The next morning I knocked at his door at eight o’clock, to go down to
the early breakfast with the children, which was one of the features
also, quite as much as were the brilliant lunches, of home life in the
White House. He came out of his dressing-room radiant and smiling,
ready for the day’s work, looking as if he had had eight hours of
sleep instead of five, and rippling all over with the laughter which
he always infused into those family breakfasts. As we passed the
table at the head of the staircase, at which later in the day my
sister’s secretary wrote her letters, the telephone-bell on the table
rang, and with spontaneous simplicity--not even thinking of ringing
a bell for a “menial” to answer the telephone-call--he picked up the
receiver himself as he passed by. His face assumed a listening look,
and then a broad smile broke over his features. “No,” he said. “No, I
am not Archie, I am Archie’s father.” A second passed and he laughed
aloud, and then said: “All right, I will tell him; I won’t forget.”
Hanging up the receiver, he turned to me half-sheepishly but very much
amused. “That’s a good joke on any President,” he said. “You may have
realized that there was a little boy on the other end of that wire,
and he started the conversation by saying, ‘Is that you, Archie?’ and
I replied, ‘No, it is Archie’s father.’ Whereupon he answered, with
evident disgust: ‘Well, you’ll _do_. Be sure and tell Archie to come
to supper. Now, don’t forget.’ ‘How the creatures order you about!’”
he gaily quoted from our favorite book, “Alice in Wonderland,” and
proceeded to run at full speed down to the breakfast-room. There the
children greeted us vociferously, and the usual merry breakfast ensued.
For that half-hour he always belonged to the children. Questions and
answers about their school life, their recreation when out of school,
etc., etc., followed in rapid succession, interspersed with various
fascinating tales told by him for their special edification.
After they had dispersed there was still a half-hour left before he
went to the office at 9 o’clock, and whenever I visited the White House
(my visits were rather rare, as my husband, being a busy real-estate
broker in New York, could not often break away) that half-hour was
always given to me, and we invariably walked around the great circle
at the back of the White House. It was his most vigorous moment of the
day, that hour from 8.30 to 9. He had not yet met the puzzling defeats
and compromises necessitated by the conflicting interests of the many
appointments in the office, and he was fresh and vivid, interested in
the problems that were to be brought to him for solution that day,
and observant of everything around him. I remember that morning as we
walked around the circle he was discussing a very serious problem that
had to be decided immediately, and he held his forefinger straight up,
and said: “You know my temperament always wants to get there”--putting
his other forefinger on the apex of the first. “I naturally wish to
reach the goal of my desire, but would I not be very blind and stupid
if, because I couldn’t get _there_, I decided to stay here” [changing
his right forefinger to the base of the left] “rather than get
here”--finishing his simile by placing the right finger to the third
notch of the finger on his other hand.
Just as he was finishing this simile his eye caught sight of a tiny
object on the pathway, so minute a little brown spot that I should
never have noticed it; but he stooped, picked it up, and held it
between his forefinger and thumb, looking at it eagerly, and then
muttering somewhat below his breath: “Very early for a fox-sparrow.”
He threw the tiny piece of fluff again upon the path. “How do you
know that that was a feather from a fox-sparrow, Theodore?” I said,
in my usual astonishment at his observation and information. “I can
understand how you might know it was a sparrow, but how know it
belonged to the fox-sparrow rather than to any of the other innumerable
little creatures of that species?” He was almost deprecatory in his
manner as he said in reply: “Well, you see I have really made a great
study of sparrows.” And then we were back at the entrance to the
White House, and in a moment I leaned out of the dining-room window
and watched him walk across the short space between that window and
the office, his head thrown back, his shoulders squared to meet the
difficulties of the day, and every bit of him alert, alive, and glowing
with health and strength and power and mentality.
I went up-stairs, put on my “best bib and tucker,” and proceeded to go
around the other way to the front door of the offices. As I rang the
bell the dear old man who always opened the door greeted me warmly, and
said: “Yes, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, your appointment is at 9. It is just
time.” I went into the outer hall, where a number of the appointees of
9.15, 9.30, etc., were already waiting, to be surely on hand for their
appointments, and in a moment or two Mr. Loeb opened the door of the
private office of the President, and came out into the hall and said
in a rather impersonal way, “Mrs. Douglas Robinson’s appointment,” and
I was shown into the room. My brother was seated at a large table, and
on it was every imaginable paper marked “Porto Rico.” As I entered he
was still reading one of these papers. He looked up, and I almost felt
a shock as I met what seemed to be a pair of perfectly opaque blue
eyes. I could hardly believe they were the eyes of the brother with
whom I had so lately parted, the eyes that had glistened as he recited
the poems of Kipling and Swinburne, the eyes that had almost closed to
see better the tiny breast-fluff of the fox-sparrow. These were rather
cold eyes, the eyes of a just judge, eyes that were turned upon his
sister as they would have been turned upon any other individual who
came to him in connection with a question about which he must give his
most careful and deliberate decision. He waved me to a chair, finished
the paper he was reading, and then turning to me, his eyes still stern
and opaque, he said: “I believe you have come to see me on business
connected with Porto Rico. Kindly be as condensed as possible.” I
decided to meet him on his own ground, and made my eyes as much like
his as possible, and was as condensed as possible. Having listened
carefully to my short story, he said: “Have you proof of this?” still
rather sternly. Again I decided to answer as he asked, and I replied:
“I should not be here, wasting your time and mine, did I not have
adequate proof.” With that I handed him the notes made by the governor
of Porto Rico, and proceeded to explain them. He became a little less
severe after reading them, but no less serious, and turning to me more
gently, said: “This is a very serious matter. I have got to be sure of
the correctness of these statements. A man’s whole future hangs upon my
decision.” For a moment I felt like an executioner, but realizing as I
did the shocking and disgraceful behavior of the official in question,
I knew that no sentimentality on my part should interfere with the
important decision to be made, and I briefly backed up all that the
governor had written. I can still hear the sound of the President’s
pen as he took out the paper on which the man’s name was inscribed,
and with one strong stroke effaced that name from official connection
with Porto Rico forever. That was the way that Theodore Roosevelt did
business with his sister.
During that same year, 1905, the old Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral
sent him his volume called “Mireille,” and the acknowledgment of the
book seems to me to express more than almost any other letter ever
written by my brother the spirit which permeated his whole life. It
shows indisputably that though he had reached the apex of his desires,
that though he was a great President of a great country, perhaps the
most powerful ruler at the moment of any country, that his ideals for
that country, just as his ideals for himself and for his own beloved
home life, were what they had always been before the sceptre of power
had been clasped by his outstretched hand.
White House, Washington,
December 15, 1905.
MY DEAR M. MISTRAL:
Mrs. Roosevelt and I were equally pleased with the book and the
medal, and none the less because for nearly twenty years we
have possessed a copy of Mireille. That copy we shall keep for
old association’s sake, though this new copy with the personal
inscription by you must hereafter occupy the place of honor.
All success to you and your associates! You are teaching the lesson
that none need more to learn than we of the West, we of the eager,
restless, wealth-seeking nation; the lesson that after a certain
not very high level of material well-being has been reached, then
the things that really count in life are the things of the spirit.
Factories and railways are good up to a certain point, but courage
and endurance, love of wife and child, love of home and country,
love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in man’s work and in
nature, love and emulation of daring and of lofty endeavour, the
homely work-a-day virtues and the heroic virtues--these are better
still, and if they are lacking, no piled-up riches, no roaring,
clanging industrialism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall
avail either the individual or the nation. I do not undervalue
these things of a nation’s body; I only desire that they shall not
make us forget that beside the nation’s body there is also the
nation’s soul.
Again thanking you on behalf of both of us, believe me,
Faithfully yours,
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
To M. Frédéric Mistral.
No wonder that Mistral turned to a friend after reading that letter
and said with emotion: “It is he who is the new hope of humanity.”
XII
HOME LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE
(CONTINUED)
Men smile through falling tears,
Remembering the courage of his years
That stood each one for God, humanity,
And covenanted world-wide Liberty!
--Edith Daley.
One of the most extraordinary things about my brother was that
in the midst of his full political life, a life “pressed down
and overflowing,” he still had time for the most loving interest
in personal family matters. Just after the great moment of his
inauguration, he sent me a number of photographs of my eldest son and
his young wife, just married, who had gone around the world and were
staying with General Wood in the Philippines, and adds in the letter:
“It was such a pleasure to have Douglas and you down here for the
inauguration, and to see the boys and Corinne.” In June of that same
year, when my two younger boys had each won a boat-race at St. Paul’s
School, he takes a moment from his pressing duties to write another
letter: “Darling Corinne: Good for Monroe and Stewart! Give them my
hearty congratulations; I have only time for this line.” Such unusual
thoughtfulness could not fail to keep burning perpetually the steady
fire of my love for him.
In July, 1905, he sent me one of the inauguration medals signed by
Saint-Gaudens. In looking at the head upon that medal, one realized
perfectly by the strong lines of temple and forehead that Theodore
Roosevelt had come to the fulness of his intellectual powers.
About the same time there was a naval review at Oyster Bay, and Mrs.
Roosevelt writes: “The review was a wonderful sight. I wish you could
have been here. The morning was dark and stormy, with showers of
driving rain, until Theodore’s flag broke out from the _Mayflower_,
when the clouds suddenly dispersed and the sun shone brightly.” How
often we used to feel that the sun always broke out when Theodore’s
flag flew!
One other little line from his pen, December 19, 1905, shows the same
constant thoughtfulness. He says: “Will you send the enclosed note
to Dora? I am not sure of her address. I hate to trouble you, but I
want to have poor ‘Dolly’ get it by Christmas Day.” Dora was his old,
childhood nurse, one to whom we were very much devoted, and whom he
never forgot.
At the beginning of the new year, 1906, he writes to my husband: “Dear
Douglas,--By George! Stewart is doing well. [I think this referred
to the fact that my youngest boy had been chosen as goal-keeper of
the St. Paul’s School hockey team!] That is awfully nice. I was
mighty glad Wadsworth was elected. I shall have difficulties this
year, and I cannot expect to get along as well as I did last year,
but I shall do the best I can.” Never blinded by past popularity,
always ready for the difficulties to come, and yet never dwelling
so strongly on these difficulties that by the very dwelling on them
even greater difficulties were brought to bear upon him. It was
quite true that it proved in many ways, a more difficult year than
the one preceding, but a happy year all the same, a happiness which
culminated in his satisfaction in the marriage of his daughter Alice
to Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, Ohio, an able member of the
House of Representatives. His announcement to me of the engagement
was made at the dinner-table one evening before it was known to the
world, and not wishing to have it disclosed _to_ the world through the
table-servants, he decided to give me the news in French. His French
was always fluent, but more or less of a literal translation from the
English, which method he exaggerated humorously. “Je vais avoir un fils
en loi,” he said, smiling gaily at me across the table, delighted at my
puzzled expression. With a little more explanation I realized what he
was suggesting to my befuddled brain, and he then proceeded to describe
a conversation he had had with the so-called “fils en loi,” and how he
had talked to him like “un oncle Hollandais,” or “Dutch uncle”!