The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  Although his class numbered some 250—each of whom could, on graduation day, consider himself privileged above fifty thousand American youths—Theodore considered only a minute fraction to be the “gentleman-sort,”9 and took little notice of the rest. But his personality was too warm, and his manners too good, for him to ignore them completely. “Roosevelt was perfectly willing to talk to others,” recalled a member of the lower orders, “when the occasion arose.”10

  As a result of this attitude, his popularity at Harvard was confined to the minority who could call him “Teddy.” Partly because he gave so little of himself to the majority, and partly because the variety of his interests kept him constantly on the move, vignettes of him during those early days at Cambridge are sketchy and dissimilar. Yet all are vivid. He trots around Holmes Field in a bright red football jersey, “the man with the morning in his face.” Flushing with indignation, he leaps to his feet during roll call, and protests harshly the mispronunciation of his name; he drops from a horsecar in the Square, “thin-chested, spectacled, nervous and frail”; he hunches over a book in a roomful of noisy students, frowning with absorption, oblivious to horseplay around his chair, and to the fact that his boots are being charred by the fire; he stands in the door of Memorial Hall, talking vehemently, stammering, baring his teeth; he actually runs from one recitation to another, although it is not considered Harvard form to move at more than walking speed; again and again he leaps to his feet at lectures, challenging statements and demanding clarifications, until a professor shouts angrily, “See here, Roosevelt, let me talk. I’m running this course.”11

  Perhaps the most revealing anecdote is that of Richard Welling, who was, at this time, the strongest student in the records of Harvard Gymnasium. His first impression of Theodore was “a youth in the kindergarten stage of physical development,” drearily swinging between vertical poles. Later that winter, when the youth invited him to go skating in bitter weather, Welling changed his mind. Theodore escorted him to Fresh Pond, which was

  too big and too unprotected from the furious winds to be good skating ground, rough ice, dull skates, wretched skaters scuffling about, mostly arms waving like windmills in a gale—and when any sane man would have voted to go home, as the afternoon’s sport was clearly a flop, Roosevelt was exclaiming, “Isn’t this bully!”—and the harder it blew, and the more we skated, the more often I had to hear, “Isn’t this bully!” There was no trace of shelter where we could rub our ears, restore our fingers to some resemblance of feeling, or prevent our toes from becoming perhaps seriously frostbitten. Never in college was my own grit so put to the test, and yet I would not be the first to suggest “home.”

  Nearly three hours passed before Roosevelt finally said: “It’s too dark to skate any more,” (as though, if there had been a moon, we could have gone on to midnight) … I recall my numbed fingers grasping the key to my room and unable to make a turn in the lock. That afternoon of so-called sport made me realize Roosevelt’s amazing vitality.12

  Theodore Senior, admitting to an “almost sinful” interest in his son’s progress, worried sometimes about the physical phenomenon he had helped create. “His energy seems so superabundant that I fear it may get the better of him in one way or another.”13

  Clearly, the young man was going to have to do something about his temper. Arguments at his eating club provoked him to furious volleys of food-throwing, and on one occasion he slammed a whole pumpkin down on the head of an adversary. He reacted to personal abuse with instant fisticuffs, even punching friends who tried to restrain him.14

  At first the social butterflies of Harvard did not know what to make of this hornet in their midst. His name was too foreign, his manner too “bumptious” to win instant acceptance. However, it did not take the Minots and Saltonstalls and Chapins long to discover that he was the brother of Bamie Roosevelt, the charming Knickerbocker who had summered in Bar Harbor, Maine, the last few years, and that his bumptiousness was a side-effect of his uncontrolled enthusiasms. They found it hard to dislike someone so supremely unconscious of his own peculiarity. “Teddy” happened to be a fascinating, if spluttery, talker: he could analyze lightweight boxing techniques, discuss the aerodynamics of birds and the protective coloration of animals, quote at will from the Nibelungenlied and the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, and explain what it was like trying to remain submerged in the Dead Sea. He was “queer,” he was “crazy,” he was “a bundle of eccentricities,” but he was wholly interesting.15

  It was the custom in those days for members of Harvard’s more exclusive clubs to wander through the streets after election meetings, and serenade each new addition to their rolls. At least a dozen times, during the years 1876–80, the name that floated up through the night air was that of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.16

  FEARING THE DAMPNESS OF ground-floor dormitories, to which freshmen were traditionally assigned, Theodore took a room on the second floor of Mrs. Richardson’s boardinghouse at 16 Winthrop Street, about halfway between the Yard and the Charles River. Furnished and decorated by Bamie, it was already “just as cosy and comfortable as it could look” when he moved in on 27 September 1876. Four big windows, facing north and east, supplied all the light an amateur taxidermist could wish for. The walls were tastefully papered, the carpet deep and warm. Cushions and a heavy fur rug awaited him on the chaise longue. There were his birds under domes of glass, and his bowie knives crossed over the mantel. A massively carved table stood in the center of the room, under the gas jet, along with the hard, bare chair which New Englanders considered appropriate for study. Theodore gazed about him in delight. “When I get my pictures and books,” he assured Bamie, “I do not think there will be a room in College more handsome.”17

  As he settled in, and felt for the first time the joy of adulthood, he overflowed with gratitude to the parents who had brought him thus far. “It seems perfectly wonderful,” he wrote Mittie, “looking back over my eighteen years of existence, to see how I have literally never spent an unhappy day, unless by my own fault. When I think of this and also of my intimacy with you all (for I hardly know a boy who is on as intimate and affectionate terms with his family as I am) I feel I have an immense amount to be thankful for.”18 Another letter dating from the early months of his freshman year is full of documentary detail:

  Perhaps you would like me to describe completely one day of college life; so I shall take last Monday. At half past seven my scout, having made the fire and blacked the boots, calls me, and I get round to breakfast at eight. Only a few of the boys are at breakfast, most having spent the night in Boston. Our quarters now are nice and sunny, and the room is prettily papered and ornamented. For breakfast we have tea or coffee, hot biscuits, toast, chops or beef steak, and buckwheat cakes. After breakfast I study till ten, when the mail arrives and is eagerly inspected. From eleven to twelve there is a Latin recitation with a meek-eyed Professor, who calls me Rusee-felt (hardly any one can get my name correctly, except as Rosy). Then I go over to the gymnasium, where I have a set-to with the gloves with “General” Lister, the boxing master—for I am training to box among the lightweights in the approaching match for the championship of Harvard. Then comes lunch, at which all the boys are assembled in an obstreperously joyful condition; a state of mind which brings on a free fight, to the detriment of Harry Jackson, who, with a dutch cheese and some coffee cups is put under the table; which proceeding calls forth dire threats of expulsion from Mrs. Morgan. Afterwards studying and recitation took up the time till halfpast four; as I was then going home, suddenly I heard “Hi, Ted! Catch!” and a baseball whizzed by me. Our two “babies,” Bob Bacon and Arthur Hooper, were playing ball behind one of the buildings. So I stayed and watched them, until the ball went through a window and a proctor started out to inquire—when we abruptly separated. That evening I took dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Tudor, and had a very pleasant home-like time … When I returned I studied for an hour, and then, it being halfpast ten, put on my slippers, which are as comfort
able as they are pretty, drew the rocking chair up to the fire, and spent the next half hour toasting my feet and reading Lamb.19

  From time to time, as Theodore sat writing, he could glance over his shoulder and see the firelight reflected in the eyes of salamanders. He had established an impromptu vivarium in the corner of the room, where animals awaiting execution had an opportunity to review their past lives. At first this collection was small enough to reassure his landlady, but its population gradually expanded to include snakes, lobsters, and a giant tortoise. The latter managed to escape from its pen while Theodore was out, and wandered through the house in search of freedom: Mrs. Richardson, stumbling upon it, was frightened into hysterics. Rooseveltian eloquence presumably saved the day, for Theodore continued to reside at 16 Winthrop Street throughout his college career.20

  In addition to boxing, wrestling, body-building, and his daily hours of recitation, the young freshman attended weekly dancing-classes, hunted in the woods around Cambridge, taught in Sunday school, stuffed and dissected his specimens, organized a whist club, took part in poetry-reading sessions, followed the Harvard football team to Yale (“The fellows … seem to be a much more scrubby set than ours”), and, in time-honored undergraduate fashion, caroused with his friends, making the night hideous with his harsh, unmusical singing.21 He developed a sudden, and ardent, interest in the girls of Boston, and, thanks to his excellent local connections, was soon seeing many of them. Hardly a week went by, in those early months of 1877, without its round of matinees, theater parties, and balls. Theodore reported them all enthusiastically to his family, along with assurances that he was not neglecting his studies, and at least one guilty protestation that he remained faithful to Edith Carow.22

  Although he had not lacked for female company hitherto in his life, it had been confined mostly to the Roosevelt family circle. Even his intimacy with Edith had the quality of a brother-sister relationship. Sickly and reclusive as a child, preoccupied with travel and self-improvement in his teens, he had had little opportunity to knock on strange doors. Now, doors were opening of their own accord, disclosing scores of fresh faces and alluring young figures. Understandably Theodore was dazzled. Almost every girl he met is described in his letters as “sweet,” “bright,” or “pretty.”

  What the girls thought of him, with his crooked spectacles, grinning teeth, and alarmingly frank conversation, was another matter. The evidence is that they tolerated him (to one debutante, he was “studious, ambitious, eccentric—not the sort to appeal at first”) until they found they had grown fond of him.23

  It might be mentioned here that neither during his student years, nor indeed at any time in his life, did Theodore show the slightest tolerance for women (or for that matter men) who were anything but “rigidly virtuous.” His judgments of people lower down the moral or social scale could be particularly prudish. “Have just received a letter telling me that [cousin] Cornelius has distinguished himself by marrying a French actress!” he wrote in his diary one day. “He is a disgrace to the family—the vulgar brute.”24 Sex, to him, was part of the mystical union of marriage, and, however pleasurable as an act of love, its function was to procreate. Outside marriage, as far as he was concerned, it simply did not exist.25

  Of the inclinations that naturally beset a young man when he returns, hot from the intimacies of a sleigh-ride, to his private room, it is perhaps unnecessary to speak. There are erasures and pages torn out of Theodore’s diaries, yet also the ecstatic declaration, when he finally fell in love, “Thank Heaven, I am … perfectly pure.”26

  At the same time that he became a ladies’ man, he developed into something of a fashion plate, or, as he preferred to describe himself, “very swell.” Invited away for the weekend, he was suddenly ashamed of his hat, and sent home for a beaver. Selecting a new wardrobe, he agonized for days over his afternoon coat, “being undecided whether to have it a frock or a cutaway.” He complained that his washerwoman did not act squarely “on the subject of white cravats.”27 He sported one necktie so brilliant it cast a glow upon his cheeks, and combed his whiskers until they swayed in the breeze. Sniggers could be heard in the Yard, as he marched dazzlingly by. But Theodore, in the manner of all dandies, pretended not to notice he was being noticed.28

  WHEN HE ASSURED his parents that he was not neglecting his studies, he was telling the truth. Indeed, he got through prodigious quantities of work. Iron self-discipline had become a habit with him, and he plotted every day with the methodism of a Wesleyan minister. The amount of time he spent at his desk was comparatively small—rarely more than a quarter of the day—but his concentration was so intense, and his reading so rapid, that he could afford more time off than most. Even these “free” periods were packed with mental, physical, or social activity. “He was forever at it,” said one classmate. Another marveled: “Never have I seen or read of a man with such an amazing array of interests.”29 Tumbling into bed at midnight or in the small hours, Theodore could luxuriate in healthy tiredness, satisfied that he had wasted not one minute of his waking hours.

  His regimen was flexible, but balanced. Any overindulgence in sport or flirtation would be immediately compensated for by extra study. When an attack of measles laid him low in February 1877, he made up for lost time by canceling his Easter vacation in New York, secluding himself on a friend’s farm, and finishing in five days “the first book of Horace, the sixth book of Homer, and the Apology of Socrates.”30

  It must not be assumed that Theodore struck any of the Harvard faculty as intellectually remarkable during this stage of his academic career. On the contrary, he was regarded as “an average B man … not in any way distinguished.”31 He paled in comparison with the scintillating, sixteen-year-old Bob Bacon, and at least half a dozen of his classmates surpassed him in composing themes. “Roosevelt’s writing was to the point,” said one instructor, “but did not have their air of cultivation.”32 Like many voluble men, he was a slow writer, painfully hammering out sentences which achieved force and clarity at the expense of polite style.

  Neither this nor the pessimism of professors prevented him from scoring an average of 75 at the end of his freshman year, with honor grades in five out of seven subjects.33 If it could not be counted a “distinguished” performance, for a boy who had largely educated himself, then it would do for the time being.

  BEFORE LEAVING HARVARD for the summer of 1877, Theodore played host to several guests from New York, including Edith Carow. The latter, perhaps aware that she had local rivals, flirted with him and his classmates so successfully that he exclaimed afterward, “I don’t think I ever saw Edith looking prettier; everyone … admired her little Ladyship intensely, and she behaved as sweetly as she looked.” He begged Corinne to pass on the word that “I enjoyed her visit very much indeed.”34

  But within a day or two he was praising other girls again. When college broke up on 21 June, he hurried, not to the parlors of New York City, but to the lonely forests of the Adirondacks, “so as to get the birds in as good plumage as possible.”35 Possibly Edith, hearing this, heaved a quiet sigh. She could compete with the belles of Boston, but what were her charms compared with those of the orange-throated warbler, red-bellied nuthatch, and hairy woodpecker?

  IN MID-JULY, THEODORE joined his family at Tranquillity, and soon afterward published his first printed work, The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks. This scientific catalog was the fruit of three expeditions dating back to August 1874, on the last of which he had been briefly joined by Harry Minot, his best friend from Harvard. Minot contributed a few observations and was listed as co-author, but the title-page typography left no doubt as to who took full credit. Ninety-seven species—some unknown even to longtime residents of the area—were described in precise thumbnail sketches, remarkable for their emphasis on song as well as plumage. Theodore’s acute ear had been ravished, in the Adirondacks, by a wealth of melody such as he had never heard before. His notebooks, upon which Birds was based, are so full of auditory obse
rvations that visual ones are sometimes forgotten. Spectacles or no spectacles, sound always meant more to him than color. One rhapsodic passage shows how sensuously he reacted to it:

  Perhaps the sweetest bird music I have ever listened to was uttered by a hermit thrush. It was while hunting deer on a small lake, in the heart of the wilderness; the night was dark, for the moon had not yet risen, but there were clouds, and as we moved over the surface of the water with the perfect silence so strange and almost oppressive to the novice in this sport, I could distinguish dimly the outlines of the gloomy and impenetrable pine forests by which we were surrounded. We had been out for two or three hours but had seen nothing; once we heard a tree fall with a dull, heavy crash, and two or three times the harsh hooting of an owl had been answered by the unholy laughter of a loon from the bosom of the lake, but otherwise nothing had occurred to break the death-like stillness of the night; not even a breath of air stirred among the tops of the tall pine trees. Wearied by our unsuccess we at last turned homeward when suddenly the quiet was broken by the song of a hermit thrush; louder and clearer it sang from the depths of the grim and rugged woods, until the sweet, sad music seemed to fill the very air and to conquer for the moment the gloom of the night; then it died away and ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Perhaps the song would have seemed less sweet in the daytime, but uttered as it was, with such surroundings, sounding so strange and so beautiful amid these grand but desolate wilds, I shall never forget it.