58 Kermit was at Plattsburg TR, Letters, 8.1194.
59 “My dear General” Ibid., 8.1193.
60 Pershing replied TR, Letters, 8.1193. The general did not add that he agreed with Baker and Wilson about the unwisdom of sending a TR-headed division to Europe. Cowley, The Great War, 417.
61 “army of the air” Cowley, The Great War, 294.
62 “Colonel Roosevelt is” Quoted in a memo by Parker, ca. 1928, transcribed and edited by Gary L. Lavergne in “John M. Parker’s Confrontation with Woodrow Wilson,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, 10.2. During his interview with WW on the afternoon of 18 May 1917, Parker enraged the President by calling him an “autocrat” and “hired man of the people.”
63 “Never, except” Leary, Talks with T.R., 115. TR’s only ally in the Wilson administration wrote years later, “The only fault I ever had to find in him was that he took defeat too hard.” Anne W. Lane and Louise H. Wall, eds., The Letters of Franklin K. Lane (New York, 1922), 306.
64 “as good American” TR, Letters, 8.1195–97.
65 “It is possible” The New York Times, 28 May 1917.
66 “I told Wilson” Pringle, TR, 599.
67 secretly become engaged QR recalls their betrothal this month in a letter to Flora Whitney, ca. Nov. 1917 (FWM).
68 Edith Roosevelt had taken QR to Flora Whitney, 15 Nov. 1917 (FWM); EKR to QR, quoted in QR to Flora Whitney, 18 May 1918 (FWM). EKR was a woman whose affection had to be earned by prospective daughters-in-law. Eleanor qualified by virtue of shared Mayflower ancestors. Belle, regrettably, was a Democrat. Grace was too independent and pushy. Flora was a touch nouveau, but she had been received by British royalty, and there was much to be said for her expectations. Moreover, the girl spoke French as well as QR, and might pass for a Parisienne with her darkness and smallness and balletic way of posing for photographs.
69 “Ah, Fouf” QR to Flora Whitney, 28 May 1917 (FWM).
70 He was a year Palmer, Newton D. Baker, 1.287; McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, 289; Palmer, Newton D. Baker, 1.287; The New York Times, 9 Apr. 1917.
71 The war had so QR to KR, 19 June 1917.
72 Flora was as sure For a full account by Thomas Fleming of the love affair of QR and Flora Whitney, see Cowley, The Great War, 286–303.
73 Ted and Archie EKR diary, 20 June 1917 (TRC); TR to Lloyd George, 20 June 1917 (TRC). See also TR, Letters, 8.1201–3; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 256–57; EKR diary, 14 July 1917 (TRC).
74 Quentin simultaneously The New York Times, 15 July 1917; Parsons, Perchance Some Day, 265.
75 He told Edith EKR diary, 21 July 1917 (TRC); TR, Letters, 8.1356.
76 Dearest … Flora to QR, 19 July 1917 (FWM).
77 On Monday morning EKR diary, 23 July 1917 (TRC); EKR to ERD, 23 July 1917 (TRC).
78 She murmured Flora to ERD, 24 July 1917 (FWM); Longworth, Crowded Hours, 257–58.
CHAPTER 26: THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 81.
2 “I have always believed” TR to H. C. Stokes, 5 Aug. 1914 (TRC).
Biographical Note: TR’s last major statement on religion, an essay entitled “Shall We Do Away with the Church?” appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1917. It confirmed that faith, for him, was a social rather than spiritual force. Decrying clerical formalism as “the enemy of religion” from the days of the Pharisees to those of modern “ultra-sabbatarians,” he argued that nevertheless, “a churchless community … is a community on the rapid downgrade.” Conversely, communities already depressed by economic or other misfortune, such as the “abandoned-farm” regions of New York and the poor-white South, became revitalized when church activities resumed. The church was a sort of moral gymnasium: to attend Sunday services was to “tone up” one’s system for the rest of the week. Communal worship gave the individual a sense of belonging to a larger whole. It helped resolve the opposing tensions of “envy and arrogance.” There was much to be said, too, for the aesthetic beauty of the litany and religious music. TR acknowledged that charismatic evangelists could arouse “that flame of the spirit which mystics have long known to be real and which scientist now admit to be real,” but he noted that such ardor subsides quickly. He was contemptuous of Calvinism because of its “tendency to confuse pleasure and vice.” The ideal faith was democratic rather than domineering, and valued good works over dogma.
3 He was being punished In an impotent gesture, TR published his entire correspondence with Newton D. Baker in the Aug. 1917 issue of Metropolitan magazine.
4 “I love you, dearest” QR to Flora Whitney, 23 July 1917 (FWM).
5 “Flora came over” TR to QR, 28 July 1917 (FWM).
6 It was too early Flora to QR, 18 Dec. 1917; Flora to ERD, 24 July 1917 (FWM).
7 “I am so sorry” Flora to ERD, 24 July 1917 (FWM).
8 On 9 August TR, Letters, 8.1221–22. ABR was transferred to the Twenty-sixth Infantry in late July 1917. ABR, “Lest We Forget.”
9 “I had no idea” TR, Letters, 8.1221–22.
10 In a snub The New York Times, 8 Aug. 1917; TR to Julian Street, ca. 8 Aug. 1917 (JS). Taft had his own joke during this period of delay-plagued mobilization. “When I see the way things are going in Washington, it makes my blood fairly boil,” he told Albert Beveridge. “But when I think how much madder they must make T.R., I feel a whole lot better.” Leary, Talks with T.R., 200.
11 symptoms of extreme stress Carleton B. Case, Good Stories About Roosevelt (Chicago, 1920), 115; TR, Letters, 8.1207; EKR to KR, 19 Aug. 1917 (KRP).
12 “an absolutely selfish” TR, Letters, 8.1224. For an example of TR’s paranoia about WW at this time, see his reprimand to William Allen White for a making a complimentary reference to the President in ibid., 8.1197–99.
13 Seven months after TR to KR, 10 Dec. 1917 (TRC); TR, Letters, 8.1225.
14 He was diverted KR to TR, 12 Aug. 1917 (KRP); TR, Letters, 8.1226–27.
15 Another thing Eleanor B. Roosevelt, Day Before Yesterday, 77–78; TR, Letters, 8.1207.
16 “One of the” TR, Letters, 8.1229.
17 Dearest Quentin Original in TRC.
18 “I confess” QR to Flora Whitney, 19 Aug. 1917 (FWM).
19 “appalling reality” Ibid.
20 “The thing that” Ibid.
21 called on to interpret QR to Flora Whitney, 20 Aug. 1917 (FWM).
22 Flora registered QR to EBR, 20 Jan. 1918 (TRJP). Flora’s later feelings about Edith Normant are suggested by a large cross drawn over the girl’s image in a photograph QR sent her. Scrapbook, 17 Feb. 1918 (FWM).
23 “Ah, dearest” QR to Flora Whitney, 31 Aug. 1917 (FWM).
24 Among the lucrative Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 415; H. J. Whigham interviewed by Hermann Hagedorn, 12 May 1949 (TRB).
25 It was therapeutic EKR to KR, 19 Aug. 1917 (KRP); TR, Letters, 8.1347.
26 No less a bandmaster EKR to KR, 22 Sept. 1917 (KRP); Oakland Tribune, 23 Sept. 1917; Kenneth S. Lynn, Hemingway (New York, 1987), 68. TR’s contributions to the paper were posthumously collected and published as Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-time Editorials (Boston, 1921).
27 The Roosevelts moved The New York Times, 27 Sept. 1917; TR, Letters, 8.1243.
28 Edith became concerned EKR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, 26 Sept. 1917 (TRC); Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 553; unidentified news photographs, Sept. 1917, Pratt Collection scrapbook (TRB).
29 Other women EKR to Ruth Lee, 26 Sept. 1917 (AL); Mary Roberts Rinehart, My Story (New York, 1931), 241; Ida Tarbell in Baker, notebook XIV.74–75 (RSB); EKR to ERD, mid-Oct. 1917 (ERDP).
30 “The household enthralls” TR, Letters, 8.1246.
31 “What’s the matter” Jack Cooper interviewed by J. F. French, ca. 1922 (TRB).
32 Cooper said that Ibid.
33 The Reducycle, a machine Ibid.
34 “Cooper’s not” EKR diary, 22 Oct. 1917 (TRC). TR had, nevertheless, reduced his waist measurement by “three or four inches,” according to EKR’s
count, “and he is just hard muscle.” EKR to KR, 27 Oct. 1917 (KRP).
35 Flora received QR to Flora Whitney, 9, 13 Sept. 1917 (FWM).
36 “I don’t see” QR to Flora Whitney, 15, 25 Sept. 5 Dec., Oct. 1917 (FWM).
37 She felt the same Flora Whitney to QR, 1 Nov. 1917 (EDRP).
38 He confessed to her QR to Flora Whitney, 15 Nov., 11 Oct. 1917 (FWM).
39 Belle had allowed The New York Times, 27 Sept. 1917.
40 For Theodore Roosevelt Boston Evening Transcript photograph, ca. 4 Oct. 1917 (KRP); TR, Letters, 8.1245.
41 At the beginning of November Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 474–77.
42 The Willy-Nicky Correspondence New York, 1918.
43 “the folly of” Ibid., iii.
44 The Foes of Our Own Household New York, 1917. Reprinted in TR, Works, 21.
45 He argued that The Nation, 15 Nov. 1917.
46 The critic was Ibid.
47 “I have never” To TR, 8 Oct. 1917, Georges Clemenceau, Correspondance, 1858–1928 (Paris, 2008), 523.
48 Flora no longer In an effort to cheer Flora (and himself) up, TR took her with him on a short speaking trip to Toronto at the end of November. His rapturous reception in that city, where he spoke in favor of Canada’s Victory Loan, served only to intimidate Flora. The New York Times, 27 Nov. 1917.
49 There is ruin Robinson, Collected Poems, 82.
CHAPTER 27: THE DEAD ARE WHIRLING WITH THE DEAD
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 355.
2 partying with the Ned McLeans Longworth, Crowded Hours, 266.
3 The Colonel agreed Wallace, Sagamore Hill, 1.30.
4 “If you wish to” TR, Letters, 8.1266–67.
5 Ted and Dick Derby Eleanor B. Roosevelt, Day Before Yesterday, 77–78; TR, Letters, 8.1266–67.
6 This imbalance The United States had declared war on Austria-Hungary on 7 Dec. 1917.
7 mud and Scheisse The latter was real. Torrential rains, combined with British bombardment of the clay fields around Passchendaele, destroyed the area’s intricate sewage system and turned the mud into a slough of human and animal waste.
8 On Saturday, 5 January Cooper, Woodrow Wilson, 321; Sullivan, Our Times, 5.446; Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 482–83; Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 470–71.
9 Wilson presented Lloyd Morris, Not So Long Ago (New York, 1949), 414; Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 471. For a newsman’s take on the hyperactive Creel, who may have been an inspiration to Joseph Goebbels, see Sullivan, Our Times, 5, chap. 21.
10 “A general association” WW’s original typescript text quoted in Daniel Boorstin, ed., An American Primer (Chicago, 1966), 2.772ff.
11 The last point Lloyd George had proposed many of the same ideas as WW, only three days before in London. Strachan, The First World War, 303–4.
12 “Le bon Dieu” Charles à Court Repington, The First World War: 1914–1918 (Boston, 1920), 472.
13 “I am sorry” Leary, notebook 8 (JJL).
14 ten speeches in nine days TR, Letters, 8.1493. For a charming account of TR’s tour of city child-welfare facilities on 16 and 17 Jan. 1918, see Sara J. Baker, Fighting for Life (New York, 1939), 176–82.
15 Witty and graceful Baker, notebook XV.42 (RSB). Offstage, Carl Akeley found TR to be consumed that night with a sense of doom threatening one or more of his sons.
16 Republican strategists A front-page story in the The New York Times, 24 Jan. 1918, reported that TR had again become “leader of the Republican Party.”
Biographical Note: The immediate reason for TR’s visit to Washington in Jan. 1917 was a crisis in confidence in the administration’s management of the war effort. He and Senator George F. Chamberlain, a respected Democrat and chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, had attacked Newton D. Baker’s War Department at a meeting of the National Security League in New York, Chamberlain sensationally announcing, “The military establishment of America had broken down.” The result was a short-lived bipartisan campaign, involving TR, to create a coalition war cabinet like that of Lloyd George’s government in Britain. However, Roosevelt Republicans—the old term could now be revived—had been trying since Nov. 1917 to get the Colonel to come to town and help them plot ways to break the Democratic monopoly of the government. “They were all of them anxious to have me take some position of leadership,” TR reported to William Allen White, “and equally anxious that … I should not think it committed them to making me the candidate in 1920.” He was being coy when he wrote this, because Senators Smoot and Bourne had already made clear that they wanted him to run for another term as president. Alice exulted in the prospect of a resurgent GOP. “My father president again and my husband speaker.…” Sullivan, Our Times, 5.74–75; TR, Letters, 8.1274, 1307; ERD to Richard Derby, 6 Dec. 1917 (ERDP); Cordery, Alice, 264.
17 He took Edith TR, Letters, 8.1276–77; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 264ff.; The Washington Post, 22–25 Jan. 1917 passim; Adams, Letters, 2.782; Cecil Spring Rice to Florence Spring Rice, 13 Sept. 1917 (CSR). Spring Rice, never popular with the Wilson administration, had been effectively sidelined as British ambassador since Balfour’s visit to Washington in the spring of 1917. He was succeeded by Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Lord of Reading, in the new year of 1918, allegedly on the grounds of ill health.
18 “Mother found” TR to KR, 29 Jan. 1918 (TRC). TR unconsciously inverted Wilde’s original lines, from The Harlot’s House (1885): The dead are dancing with the dead, / The dust is whirling with the dust.
19 severe pain in the rectum The following narrative of TR’s near-death experience in Feb. 1917 is largely based on information collected by John J. Leary in notebook 7 (JJL), and on daily letters sent by ERD to her husband in France (TRC). Specific medical details come from the report of Dr. Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP). Quotations are cited separately.
20 An abscess had formed The abscess, inflaming his right buttock, appeared near the site of the one lanced by Dr. Cajazeira in Brazil. EKR to KR, 10 Feb. 1918 (KRP); Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
21 Around four Josephine Stricker, “Roosevelt a Hero to His Private Secretary,” New York Tribune, 5 Oct. 1919; Leary, notebook 7 (JJL). Apparently, TR felt he had to keep an engagement back at his club, where a gathering of artists and writers expected to have dinner with him. They were informed that the Colonel was “ill with jungle fever.” Baker, notebook XV.73, 5 Feb. 1917 (RSB).
22 His pain Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
23 The name of the James R. Lathrop, History and Description of the Roosevelt Hospital, New York City (New York, 1893). The hospital was endowed by James Henry Roosevelt (1800–1863).
24 “Father looks terribly” ERD to Richard Derby, 6 Feb. 1917 (ERDP). ERD inadvertently transposed the last two words.
25 Roosevelt’s only complaint Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
26 At 4:10 P.M. The details of this operation, in which four surgeons participated, are in the report of Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
27 “should have no” Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
28 On the contrary Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP). Duel told Julian Street that he had operated on four cases similar to TR’s, and all the patients had died. Memo, “In the Roosevelt Hospital, February 1918” (JS).
29 “He’s a peach” Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
30 He was told Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
31 The first he WHT to TR, 8 Feb. 1918 (TRP); TR to WHT, 12 Feb. 1918 (WHTP). In 1902, as governor of the Philippines, WHT reported his alimentary problems to the War Department in more detail than seemed necessary for national security. See Taft file #164, Elihu Root Papers, Library of Congress.
32 Edwin Arlington Robinson penned To TR, 5 Mar. 1919 (TRP); TR, Letters, 8.1298.
33 “You stand” TR to QR, 16 Feb. 1918 (TRC).
34 When, at last ERD to Richard Derby, 27 Feb. 1918 (ERDP); QR to Fl
ora Whitney, 16 Feb. 1918 (FWM); QR to EBR, 20 Jan., 4 Feb. 1918 (TRJP) (“How can I write ‘interesting’ letters like Arch’s when, aside from my epistolary talents, he is at the Front & I’m embuscé?”); Edith Normant scrapbook (FWM).
35 in Gallic tastes Hamilton Coolidge to Flora Whitney, 18 Sept. 1918 (FWM). In another letter Ham spoke enviously of QR’s “complete mastery of the language.” (To “Mother,” 10 Mar. 1918 [TRC].) “[The Normants] say I must be half French.” QR to Flora Whitney, 13 Feb. 1918 (FWM).
36 YOUR LETTER Original, ca. 28 Feb. 1918, in TRC. There is no record of TR reprimanding ABR for demoralizing QR. In late Apr., the latter heard from Eleanor that ABR was saying “I had more brains than any of the rest of the family, but he didn’t think I’d get as far as the rest of the family.… I lacked push.” QR to Flora Whitney, ca. May 1918 (FWM).
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