My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt

by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Whether “Mr. Dooley” simply meant that as vice-presidents had always been supposed to be dead men as far as future preferment was concerned, or whether, with prophetic touch, he visualized the horror that was to come, and the way in which Theodore Roosevelt’s path to a higher position actually did lie “through the cemetery,” I know not, but those were approximately the very words which appeared in that Philadelphia newspaper the morning after Roosevelt was nominated as candidate for vice-president on the McKinley ticket.

Later in the autumn he started on one of the most strenuous campaigns of his life, and swung around the country asking for Republican support for William McKinley’s second term. Just before Election day he was to return to New York to make his final address at Madison Square Garden. As usual, he was to spend the night before and the night of the meeting at my house. Just before he was to arrive I received a telegram saying that his voice was entirely gone from the strain of weeks of speaking, and would I please have a throat doctor at the house on his arrival to treat his throat. Of course I arranged that this should be done, and he arrived, bright and gay, although distinctly hoarse. The doctor treated him, and he was ordered to keep perfectly still during the evening. We went up to the library after dinner, and I said to him: “Now, Theodore, we must only have a few minutes’ talk, and then you must go to bed.” “But,” he said, “I must tell you a few of the very funny incidents that happened on my trip.” And with that he began—my husband and I feeling very conscience-stricken, but so fascinated that we had not the strength of mind to stop him. Suddenly, to our perfect surprise, the early morning light crept in through the windows, the milk-wagons began to rattle in the streets, and we realized that the dawn of another day had come, and that the future vice-president had outraged his doctor’s orders and had talked all night long! And such stories as they were, too; I shall never forget them. One after another, he pictured to us the various audiences, the wonderful receptions, the unique chairmen of the different meetings. There was always a “bellowing” chairman, as he expressed it, or else one whose ineffectual voice did not reach even the first circle of the huge audiences that gathered everywhere to hear him. Out in the Far West eight-horse vehicles would meet the trains on which the nominees travelled, and inadvertent bands would blow in the ears of “shotgun” teams that had never been hitched up before, with such astounding results as the complete loss of the whole team at once, which necessitated the dragging of the carriage by ardent cowboy admirers, or, worse luck, eventuated in terrifying runaways, which, however, never seemed to produce anything but casual discomfort.

Mr. Curtis Guild, of Boston, and Judge John Proctor Clarke accompanied Governor Roosevelt on this trip, and on one occasion the aforesaid “bellowing” chairman introduced my brother as “one whose name was known from shore to shore and whose life story was part of every fireside, and whose deeds were household words from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” Finding that this introduction was greeted with vociferous applause, he then made use of the same extravagant exaggeration in introducing Mr. Guild. The only trouble in the latter case was that, after stertorously repeating the aforesaid introduction, the chairman suddenly forgot the name of the second speaker, “so well known from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” and turned with solemn disapproval to the refined New England statesman, whispering hoarsely: “What in h— is your name, anyway?”

Such were the tales with which he regaled us that too-short night in November, 1900. Any other man, having so disobeyed the doctor’s stern commands to refrain from using his voice, would have been punished the following evening by not having any voice at all; but, on the contrary, his tones were clear and strong, his personality vital and inspiring, as he leaned from the platform toward the thousands of cheering human beings in the great Madison Square Garden, to put the finishing touch on that stirring campaign for the second nomination of McKinley.

The inauguration in Washington, in March, 1901, had a peculiar charm about it. Perhaps one felt this charm especially because of the youth of the Vice-President and of his wife, and because of the contrast between those two happy young people and the more serious President, weighed down as he was with many cares, the greatest of which was his loving anxiety for his fragile little wife.

Because we were the sisters of the Vice-President, Mrs. McKinley sent for my sister, Mrs. Cowles, and me just after the inauguration, and I remember very well the touching quality of that dainty personality, in whose faded face was the remains of exquisite beauty. She received us up-stairs in her bedroom, and by her side was a table on which was a little Austrian vase in which bloomed one superb red rose. As we sat down she pointed to the rose with her delicate little hand, and said softly: “My dearest love brought me that rose. He always brings me a rose every day, Mrs. Robinson.” And then, a faint smile flitting over her face, she said: “My dearest love is very good to me. Every evening he plays eight or ten games of cribbage with me, and I think he sometimes lets me win.” I remember the feeling in my heart when she spoke those words, as I thought of the man in the White House, oppressed with many cares; even, perhaps, at the time when the shadow of the war with Spain hung over his troubled head, sitting down with gentle affection and quiet self-control to play “eight or ten games of cribbage,” “one for his nob, and two for his heels,” with the pathetic little creature from whom the tender love of his early youth had never swerved.

The scenes outside of the White House connected with the young Vice-President were very different. In the home of my sister, Mrs. Cowles, where we all stayed for the inauguration, quaint happenings occurred. A certain Captain ——, a great admirer of my brother, telegraphed that he was sending from Thorley’s florist shop in New York a “floral tribute” to be erected wherever the Vice-President was staying. My sister’s house was moderate in size, but that made no difference to Captain ——. That “floral tribute” had to be erected. It cost, if I remember rightly, in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. (My brother laughingly but pathetically said it was about half of his income at the time, and he wished the tribute could have been added to the income.) It had to be erected, and erected it was. It arrived in long boxes, painfully suggestive of coffins, much to the delight of the young members of the family, who were also staying with my always hospitable sister. There, for a whole day, three men worked haggardly building the “tribute,” until the whole front room of my sister’s house (which was much in demand for large numbers of delegations who wished to pay their respects to my brother) was filled in every nook and cranny by this enormous and marvellous structure, which reached from wall to wall and up to the ceiling. The overworked and tired men who created it were so exhausted by the questions of the small members of the Roosevelt and Robinson family that toward the end of the afternoon they sent word to Mrs. Cowles that unless those children were sent out of the house, that “tribute” would never be finished. Finished it was, however, and we were almost suffocated by the sweetness of its scents, and it was all that we could do, in spite of our spontaneous gaiety, to rise above the semifunereal feeling that this mass of conventional flowers produced upon the atmosphere of the whole house.

The inaugural ball was really a charming sight, but was shadowed for the presidential party by the fact that Mrs. McKinley was not well a short while before it took place. She was able to be present, however, in her box, but the shade of sadness was heavy on the President’s face; and the people, for that very reason, turned with peculiar pleasure to the care-free younger couple, who were asked to come down from the box, and to walk in stately fashion once around the room, to the infinite admiration of the many interested observers.

After the inauguration my brother retired quietly to Oyster Bay, and it was from there on April 15, 1901, that he wrote me one of his most characteristic notes. At that time, as in the days of his governorship, he would frequently notify his friends to meet him and lunch with him at my house, much to my delight. On this particular occasion, he had invited so incongruous an assortment of people that he decided that one or two more equally incongruous would be advisable, and writes as follows: “Darling Corinne: Inasmuch as we are to have Cocky Locky, Henny Penny and Goosey Poosey at lunch, why omit Foxy Loxy? I am anxious to see Dr. R—— and I do hope you will ask him to lunch on Thursday also. Ever yours, T. R.”

That lunch-party proved to be a great success, as did various others later; and then came a moment, for me, of serious anxiety when my eldest boy was stricken with diphtheria in college. At once many loving letters came from Oyster Bay—and later, when the young freshman had recovered from his illness, and I was at my home on Orange Mountain, the newly inaugurated Vice-President acceded to my wish that he should come to my home, where my husband and I had lived all our young married life, and be the hero and excitement of the neighborhood at a reception on my lawn. It proved a hot day in July, but his pleasure in meeting all my friends was unabated, and he took special interest in my butcher and grocer and fish man and ice man, and the kindly farming people who had been devoted to my husband’s mother as well as to me for many years. At the end of the day he resuscitated with tender care an old veteran of the Civil War, who had stumbled up the hill in the blinding heat to pay his respects to the colonel of the Rough Riders, now Vice-President of the United States.