What parents, indeed, so fully to understand the romantic feeling of the little boy about his birthday dinner, that they were more than willing to don their most beautiful habiliments, and appear as they had so lately appeared when received at the Vienna Court! Such yielding to what by many people might have been considered as too childish a whim to be countenanced shows with special clearness the quality in my father and mother which inspired in us all such undying adoration. Another letter—not written by my older sister, but in the painstaking handwriting of a little girl of seven—describes my own party the month before. We were evidently staying in Vienna at the time, for I say: “We went to Schönbrunn, a ‘shatto.’” (More frequently known as a château, but quite as thrilling to my childish mind spelled in my own unique manner!) And there in the lovely grounds my mother had arranged a charming al fresco supper for the little homesick American girl, and just as the “grown people” were in “full dress” for “Teedie’s” birthday, so they gave themselves up in the grounds of the great “shatto” to making merry for the little seven-year-old girl.
Corinne Roosevelt, 1869, at seven and a half years.
Theodore Roosevelt at ten years of age.
Anna Roosevelt at the age of fifteen when she spoke of herself as one of the “three older ones.”
After the great excitements of the birthdays came our interesting sojourn in Rome. In spite of my mother’s efforts to arouse a somewhat abortive interest in art in the hearts of the three little children, my principal recollections of the Rome of 1869 are from the standpoint of the splendid romps on the Pincian Hill. In those contests of running and racing and leaping my brother Elliott was always the leader, although “Teedie” did his part whenever his health permitted. One scene stands out clearly in my mind. It was a beautiful day, one of those sunny Italian days when ilex and olive shone with a special glistening quality, and when the “Eternal City” as viewed from the high hill awoke even in the hearts of the little Philistine foreigners a subconscious thrill which they themselves did not quite understand. We were playing with the Lawrence children, playing leap-frog (how inappropriate to the Pincian Hill!) over the many posts, when suddenly there came a stir—an unexpected excitement seemed everywhere. Word was passed that the Pope was coming. “Teedie” whispered to the little group of American children that he didn’t believe in popes—that no real American would; and we all felt it was due to the stars and stripes that we should share his attitude of distant disapproval. But then, as is often the case, the miracle happened, for the crowd parted, and to our excited, childish eyes something very much like a scene in a story-book took place. The Pope, who was in his sedan-chair carried by bearers in beautiful costumes, his benign face framed in white hair and the close cap which he wore, caught sight of the group of eager little children craning their necks to see him pass; and he smiled and put out one fragile, delicate hand toward us, and, lo! the late scoffer who, in spite of the ardent Americanism that burned in his eleven-year-old soul, had as much reverence as militant patriotism in his nature, fell upon his knees and kissed the delicate hand, which for a brief moment was laid upon his fair curling hair. Whenever I think of Rome this memory comes back to me, and in a way it was so true to the character of my brother. The Pope to him had always meant what later he would have called “unwarranted superstition,” but that Pope, Pio Nono, the kindly, benign old man, the moment he appeared in the flesh brought about in my brother’s heart the reaction which always came when the pure, the good, or the true crossed his path.
Amongst my mother’s efforts to interest us in art there was one morning when she decided positively that her little girl, at least, should do something more in keeping with the “Eternal City” than playing leap-frog on the Pincian Hill, and so, a reluctant captive, I was borne away to the Vatican Galleries, and was there initiated into the beauties of some of the frescos and sculpture. My mother, who I have already said was a natural connoisseur in all art, had especial admiration for that wonderful piece of sculpture from the hand of Michael Angelo known as “The Torso of the Vatican.” This work of art stood alone in a small room, so that nothing else should take away from its effect. As those who know it well need hardly be told, it lacks both arms and both legs, and to the little girl who was summarily placed by her mother in the only chair in the small room, it seemed a very strange creation. But, with the hope of arousing artistic instinct, my lovely mother said: “Now, darling, this is one of the greatest works of art in the world, and I am going to leave you here alone for five minutes, because I want you to sit very quietly and look at it, and perhaps when I come back in the five minutes you will be able to realize how beautiful it is.” And then I saw my mother’s slender figure vanish into another room. Having been always accustomed to obey my parents, I virtuously and steadily kept my eyes upon the legless, armless Torso, wondering how any one could think it a beautiful work of art; and when my mother, true to her words, returning in five minutes with an expectant look on her face, said, “Now, darling, what do you think of the great ‘Torso’?” I replied sadly, “Well, mamma, it seems to me a little ‘chumpy’!” How often later in life I have heard my mother laugh immoderately as she described her effort to instil her own love of those wonderful shoulders and that massive back into her recalcitrant small daughter; and when, years after, I myself, imbued as she was with a passion for Italy and Italian art, used to wander through those same galleries, I could never go into that little room without the memory of the small girl of long ago, and her effort to think Michael Angelo’s “Torso” anything but “chumpy.”
Christmas in Rome was made for us as much like our wonderful Christmases at home as was possible in a foreign hotel. It had always been our custom to go to our parents’ room at the pleasant hour of 6 A. M., and generally my mother had induced my long-suffering father to be dressed in some special and marvellous manner at that early hour when we “undid” the bulging, mysterious-looking stockings, and none of these exciting rites were omitted because of our distance from our native land. I think, for that reason, at the end of the beautiful Christmas Day, 1869, the special joy in the hearts of the three little American children was that they had actually forgotten that they were in Rome at all! On January 2, “Teedie” himself writes to his beloved Aunt Annie (Mrs. Gracie) on a piece of note-paper which characteristically has at the top a bird on a bough—that paper being his choice for the writing-desks which had been given to the three children on his birthday: “Will you send the enclosed to Edith Carow. In it I described our ascent of Vesuvius, and so I will describe Pompeii to you.” In a rather cramped hand he enters then into an accurate description of everything connected with Pompeii, gloating with scientific delight over the seventeen skeletons found in the Street of the Tombs, but falling for one moment into a lighter vein, he tells of two little Italian boys whom my father had engaged to come and sing for us the same evening at Sorrento, and whose faces were so dirty that my father and his friend Mr. Stevens washed them with “Kissengin Water.” That extravagance seems to have been specially entertaining to the mind of the young letter-writer.