My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt

by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Each one of the above I saw with the eyes of Theodore Roosevelt, and can still hear the tones of his voice as he described to me their habits of life and the differences between them and others of their kind. To him this trip must, of necessity, have been somewhat dull, based as it was upon the companionship of three women who were not hunters; but never once during those weeks did he seem anything but happy, and as far as we were concerned, to see the beauties of nature through those ardent eyes, to hear the bird-notes through those ears, attuned to each song, and to listen constantly to his stories of wood and plain, his interpretation of the lives of those mighty pioneer men of the West—all of this comes back to me, as a rare experience which I have gladly stored away in what Emerson calls “the amber of memory.” How we laughed over the strange rules and regulations of the park! Fierce bears were trapped, but could not be killed without the kind permission of one of the secretaries in Washington, the correspondence on the subject affording my brother infinite amusement. His methods under like circumstances would have been so very different!

The experiences at Elkhorn Ranch and again in the Yellowstone Park were of special benefit to me from the standpoint of the comprehension which they gave me of the absolute sympathy which my brother felt both with the nature and the human nature of the great West. No period of the life of Theodore Roosevelt seems to me quite as important, in the influence which it was to bear upon his future usefulness to his country, as was that period in which, as man to man, he shared the vigorous work and pastimes of the men of that part of our country. Had he not actually lived the life not only of the hunter and cattleman, but had he not taken actual part as sheriff in the methods of government of that part of our country, he would never have been able to interpret the spirit of the West as he did. He would never have been recognized as such an interpreter, and when the time came that America could no longer look from an uninterested distance at the Spanish iniquities in Cuba, the fact that Theodore Roosevelt had become so prominent a figure in the West proved the essential factor in the flocking to his standard of that mass of virile manhood which, under his leadership, and that of the then army doctor, Leonard Wood, became the picturesque, well-known “Rough Rider” Volunteer Cavalry of the Spanish-American War.

At Elkhorn Ranch, also, the long silences and stretches of solitude had much to do with the mental growth of the young man. There he read and wrote and thought deeply. His old guide Bill Sewall was asked not long since about his opinion of my brother as a religious man. His answer was as follows: “I think he read the Bible a great deal. I never saw him in formal prayer, but as prayer is the desire of the heart, I think he prayed without ceasing, for the desire of his heart was always to do right.” Thus, sharing the hardships and the joys of their primitive life with his comrades of the West, the young rancher became an integral part of that country, which never failed to rouse in him the spirit of high adventure and romance.

Theodore Roosevelt, himself, in a letter to John Hay, written long after our visit to his ranch and our gay excursion to the Yellowstone, describes the men of that part of the world. He was taking an extended trip, as President, in 1903, on the first part of which journey Mr. Hay had accompanied him, and at Oyster Bay, on his return, he writes to his secretary of state in order to give him further details of the trip:

“From Washington, I turned southward, and when I struck northern Montana, again came to my old stamping grounds and among my old friends. I met all kinds of queer characters with whom I had hunted and worked and slept and sometimes fought. From Helena, I went southward to Butte, reaching that city in the afternoon of May 27th. By this time, Seth Bullock had joined us, together with an old hunting friend, John Willis, a Donatello of the Rocky Mountains,—wholly lacking, however, in that morbid self-consciousness which made Hawthorne’s ‘faun’ go out of his head because he had killed a man. Willis and I had been in Butte some seventeen years before, at the end of a hunting trip in which we got dead broke, so that when we struck Butte, we slept in an outhouse and breakfasted heartily in a two-bit Chinese restaurant. Since then I had gone through Butte in the campaign of 1900, the major part of the inhabitants receiving me with frank hostility, and enthusiastic cheers for Bryan.

“However, Butte is mercurial, and its feelings had changed. The wicked, wealthy, hospitable, full-blooded, little city, welcomed me with wild enthusiasm of a disorderly kind. The mayor, Pat Mullins, was a huge, good-humored creature, wearing, for the first time in his life, a top hat and a frock coat, the better to do honor to the President.

“National party lines counted very little in Butte where the fight was Heinze and anti-Heinze, Ex-Senator Carter and Senator Clark being in the opposition. Neither side was willing to let the other have anything to do with the celebration, and they drove me wild with their appeals, until I settled that the afternoon parade and speech was to be managed by the Heinze group of people, and the evening speech by the anti-Heinze people; and that the dinner should contain fifty of each faction and should be presided over in his official capacity by the mayor. The ordinary procession, in barouches, was rather more exhilarating than usual, and reduced the faithful secret service men very nearly to the condition of Bedlamites. The crowd was filled with whooping enthusiasm and every kind of whiskey, and in their desire to be sociable, broke the lines and jammed right up to the carriage.... Seth Bullock, riding close beside the rear wheel of my carriage, for there were hosts of so-called ‘rednecks’ or ‘dynamiters’ in the crowd, was such a splendid looking fellow with his size and supple strength, his strangely marked aquiline face, with its big moustache, and the broad brim of his soft dark hat drawn down over his dark eyes. However, no one made a motion to attack me....

“My address was felt to be honor enough for one hotel, so the dinner was given in the other. When the dinner was announced, the Mayor led me in!—to speak more accurately, tucked me under one arm and lifted me partially off the ground so that I felt as if I looked like one of those limp dolls with dangling legs, carried around by small children, like Mary Jane in the ‘Gollywogs,’ for instance. As soon as we got in the banquet hall and sat at the end of the table, the Mayor hammered lustily with the handle of his knife and announced, ‘Waiter, bring on the feed.’ Then, in a spirit of pure kindliness, ‘Waiter, pull up the curtains and let the people see the President eat’;—but to this, I objected. The dinner was soon in full swing, and it was interesting in many respects. Besides my own party, including Seth Bullock and Willis, there were fifty men from each of the Butte factions.

“In Butte, every prominent man is a millionaire, a gambler, or a labor leader, and generally he has been all three. Of the hundred men who were my hosts, I suppose at least half had killed their man in private war or had striven to compass the assassination of an enemy. They had fought one another with reckless ferocity. They had been allies and enemies in every kind of business scheme, and companions in brutal revelry. As they drank great goblets of wine, the sweat glistened on their hard, strong, crafty faces. They looked as if they had come out of the pictures in Aubrey Beardsley’s Yellow Book. The millionaires had been laboring men once, the labor leaders intended to be millionaires in their turn, or else to pull down all who were. They had made money in mines, had spent it on the races, in other mines or in gambling and every form of vicious luxury, but they were strong men for all that. They had worked, and striven, and pushed, and trampled, and had always been ready, and were ready now, to fight to the death in many different kinds of conflicts. They had built up their part of the West, they were men with whom one had to reckon if thrown in contact with them.... But though most of them hated each other, they were accustomed to take their pleasure when they could get it, and they took it fast and hard with the meats and wines.”

The above description by the pen of my brother is the most vivid that could be given of a certain type of man of the West. The types were many.... The Sylvane Ferrises and the Will Merrifields were as bold and resourceful as these inhabitants of the city of Butte and its vicinity, but for the former, life was an adventure in which the spirit of beauty and kindness had its share in happy contrast to the aims and objects of the men described by my brother in this extraordinary pen-picture. The picture is so forcibly painted that it brings before one’s mind, almost as though it were an actual stage-setting, this type of American, who would appear to be a belated brother of the men of the barbaric period of the Middle Ages in the Old World, in their case, however, rendered even more formidable by a New World enterprise and acumen, strangely unlike what has ever been produced before.