In this letter, after speaking of ranch losses which necessitated selling his beloved hunter, Sagamore, he signs himself, “Your extravagant and irrelevant but affectionate brother, the White Knight,” the latter being a reference to the character in “Alice in Wonderland,” from which enchanting book we invariably quoted in ordinary conversation or letters.
From Venice, in February, he writes: “Venice is perfectly lovely. It is more strange than any other Italian town, and the architecture has a certain florid barbarism about it,—Byzantine,—dashed with something stronger—that appeals to some streak in my nature.” They returned to London later, and were shown many attentions, for even at that early period in his life, England recognized the statesman in Theodore Roosevelt. He speaks of Mr. Bryce the historian as a “charming man”—their friendship was to last all through my brother’s life, and he mentions many other well-known young Englishmen, who have now grown old in their country’s service. In a letter dated March 6 he says: “I have been having great fun in London, and have seen just the very nicest people, social, political, and literary. We have just come back from a lunch at the Jeunes’, which was most enjoyable. Edith sat beside Chamberlain, who impresses me very much with his keen, shrewd intellect and quiet force. I sat between Trevelyan, who was just charming, and a Lady Leamington.”
Unless I am mistaken, that was the first time my brother met Sir George Trevelyan, with whom he carried on a faithful and interesting correspondence for many years. “Mrs. Jeune has asked us to dine to meet Lord Charles Beresford and Lord Hartington, and I have been put down for the Athenæum Club, and also taken into the Reform Club. Last night, I dined at a Bohemian Club, the famous Savage Club, with Healy and one or two Parnellites, (having previously lunched with several of the Conservatives, Lord Stanhope and Seton-Carr, and others). The contrast was most amusing, but I like Healy immensely. Later on I met a brother of Stanhope’s who is a radical, and listened to a most savage discussion with a young fellow named Foster, a nephew of the late Secretary of Ireland, who has also been very polite to me. I have enjoyed going to the House of Commons under the guidance of Bryce, the historian, and a dear old Conservative member named Hoare, very greatly. It is amusing to see the Conservatives, fresh-looking, well-built, thoroughly well-dressed gentlemen, honest and plucky but absolutely unable to grapple with the eighty odd, erratic Parnellite Irishmen. The last named, by the way, I know well of old,—I have met them in the New York Legislature!”
These comments by the young man of twenty-eight are along the line of comments made much later when almost all of his reactions to the men named or suggested had come true. The travellers were more than glad to get back to their native land, and by the early summer were settled at Sagamore Hill, to begin there the beautiful family life which grew in richness up to the moment of my brother’s death.
June 8, 1887, he writes from Sagamore, describing amusingly his efforts to become a polo-player. He has often expressed his own feeling about sports—he loved them, enjoyed his hunting and other athletic exercises to the full, but they were always a relaxation, never a pursuit with him. “Frank Underhill and I ride industriously around the field and brandish our mallets so as to foster the delusion among simple folk that we likewise are playing polo. Two other would-be players also come now and then; but as they have not yet even learned to sit on horseback and strike the ball simultaneously, and, after trial, having found it impracticable to do so alternately, our games are generally duels. Yesterday, I beat Frank two out of three—and in addition, stood on my head on the sward in the enthusiasm of one mêlée where we got rather mixed. Day before yesterday, I rowed Edith to Lloyd’s Neck, portaged across—at low tide, the hardest work I ever did almost,—into Huntington Harbor, then rowed out into the Sound. We took our lunch and some volumes of Thackeray. It was an ideal day—but wasn’t I stiff and blistered next morning! Do come soon and stay as long as possible. Yours as ever, Theodore Roosevelt.”
During that same summer I took my little niece Alice, with my children, to our old home on the Mohawk Hills for a change of air, and he writes me in his usual loving way of his warm appreciation of the pleasure I was giving the child, and sends his love to the little “yellow-haired darling,” and incidentally, in the letters, says his book “Morris [”Gouverneur Morris“] goes drearily on by fits and starts, and in the intervals, I chop vigorously and have lovely rowing excursions”; and so the happy summer wore to its close and was crowned in September by the birth of his first boy, the third Theodore Roosevelt. He describes with amusement little Alice’s remark—“a truthful remark,” he says—“My little brother is a howling polly parrot.” All through the letter one realizes his joy and pride in his firstborn son, and shortly after that, in December of the same year, he writes me to congratulate me on the birth of my second son, Monroe, and says: “How glad I am that Ted, Junior, has a future playmate. Just won’t they quarrel, though!”
Owing to the fact that in my brother’s own biography he describes fully his work as civil service commissioner, police commissioner, and assistant secretary of the navy, I do not purport to give a detailed account of his labors, especially as during the period that he served in the first position, I have comparatively few letters from him, and it was not until he returned to New York in the second capacity that I saw as much of him as usual. One winter, however, we had a most characteristic intercourse. I do not remember exactly the date of that winter. I had married young, my children had been born in rapid succession, and owing to the delicacy of my health just before I was grown up, I was conscious of the fact that I was not as grounded in certain studies, especially American history, as I should have been, and I found myself with a very slim knowledge of the most important facts of my nation’s birth and early growth. The consequence was that when my brother returned for a brief period to New York, I decided to consult him as to how best to study American History, thinking perhaps that I might go to Columbia College or something of that kind.
I began my effort for information by saying: “Theodore, I really know very little about American history.” I can see the flash in his eyes as he turned to me. “What do you mean?” he said; “it’s disgraceful for any woman not to know the history of her own country.” “I know it is,” I replied, “and that is just why I am consulting you about it. I know you feel I ought to know all about American history, but I also know that you preach large families, and you must remember that I have done my best in that direction in these last five years, and now I am ready to study American history!” “Do you mean really to study?” he said, looking at me sternly. “Just as really to study as whooping-cough, measles, chicken-pox, and other family pleasures will allow,” I said. “Well,” he replied, still sternly, and not laughing at my sally, “if you really mean to study, I will teach you myself. I will come at nine o’clock every week on Tuesday and Friday for one hour, if you will be ready promptly and give me all your attention.” Needless to say, I was enchanted at the thought, and, true to his word, the busy man came at nine o’clock every Tuesday and Friday for several months, and in my library at 422 Madison Avenue I was ready with note-book and blackboard, and he lectured to me for that hour twice a week as if I were a matriculating class at Harvard College. I have now many of the notes he made for me at that time, and I shall always remember the painstaking way in which he drew the battle-fields, and explained how “one commander came up in this position at just the right moment and saved the day,” or how the lack of preparedness ruined many a courageous adventure. These quiet hours come back to me with a rush of recollection as I write, and I am proud to think that he felt it was worth while to give me such instruction. Once I said to him: “How can you do this, Theodore; how can you take the time to study for these lectures?” “Oh!” he said, “I do not have to study; I could not, of course, give quite as much time as that. You see, I just happen to know my American history.” He certainly did “happen to know” his American history, as was proved in many a controversy later in his life. His American history and, indeed, the history of almost every other country of the world were all at his finger-tips.
During his civil service commissionership, a period of a number of years, the letters were few and far between, but I have one dated July 28, 1889, in which he writes: “Struggle as I will, my life seems to grow more and more sedentary, and as for my polo, it is one of the things that has been; witness the enclosed check which is for Cranford, and I am trying to sell Diamond too;—how I hate to give it up! We have had lovely days this summer, however, at Sagamore. I took all the children down on the pond once, and made them walk out on a half-sunken log, where they perched like so many sand-snipes. I am leaving for the West soon to have a whack at the bears in the Rockies; I am so out of training that I look forward with acute physical terror to going up the first mountain. [He seems for the moment to have forgotten that his life was growing very “sedentary.”] I have mortally hated being so much away from home this summer, but I am very glad I took the place [civil service commissionership] and I have really enjoyed my work. I feel it incumbent on me to try to amount to something, either in politics or literature because I have deliberately given up the idea of going into a money-making business. Of course, however, my political life is but an interlude—it is quite impossible to continue long to do much between two sets of such kittle-kattle as the spoilsmen and the mugwumps.”
The seed of the birth of the Progressive party of 1912 was sown by that feeling of Theodore Roosevelt of the difficulty to do much “between two sets such as the spoilsmen and the mugwumps.” The honest effort to play honest politics for honest purposes and practical ideals was the stimulating idea translated into action in that great attempt for better government called the Progressive party; but this letter of the young Civil Service Commissioner was written in 1889, and it was not until twenty-three years later that the seed fructified into a movement which, had it succeeded, would, I verily believe, have changed the fate of the world.