My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt

by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

In spite of the noise and general excitement, whenever he had a spare moment of quiet, I noticed that he always returned to his own special seat in a corner of the car, and became at once completely absorbed in two large volumes which were always ready on his chair for him. The rest of us would read irrelevantly, perhaps, talk equally irrelevantly, and the hours sped past; but my brother, when he was not actually receiving delegations or making an occasional impromptu speech at the rear end of the car to the patient, waiting groups who longed to show him their devotion, would return in the most detached and focussed manner to the books in which he absorbed himself.

Our two days at St. Louis were the type of days only led by a presidential party at a fair. Before experiencing them I had thought it would be rather “grand” to be a President’s sister, with the aforesaid President when he opened a great fair. “Grand” it certainly was, but the exhaustion outbalanced the grandeur. I ran steadily for forty-eight hours without one moment’s intermission. My brother never seemed to walk at all, and my whole memory of the St. Louis Fair is a perpetual jog-trot, only interrupted by interminable receptions, presentations of gifts, lengthy luncheons and lengthier evening banquets, and I literally remember no night at all! Whether we never went to bed during the time we were at the fair, or exactly what happened to the nights after twelve o’clock, is more than I can say. At the end of the time allotted for the fair, after the last long banquet, we returned to our private car, and I can still see the way in which my sister-in-law (she was not born a Roosevelt!) fell into her stateroom. I was about to follow her example (it was midnight) when my brother turned to me in the gayest possible manner and said: “Not going to bed, are you!” “Well,” I replied, “I had thought of it.” “But no,” he said; “I told my stenographer this morning to rest all day, for I knew that I would need her services to-night, and now she is perfectly rested.” I interrupted him: “But, Theodore, you never told me to rest all day. I have been following you all day—” He laughed, but firmly said: “Sit right down here. You will be sorry if you go to bed. I am going to do something that is very interesting. William Rhodes has asked me to review his second and third volumes of the ‘History of the United States.’ You may have noticed I was reading those volumes on the way from Washington. I feel just like doing it now. The stenographer is rested, and as for you, it will do you a great deal of good, because you don’t know as much as you should about American history.” Smilingly he put me in a chair and began his dictation. Lord Morley is reported to have said, after his visit to the United States, when asked what he thought most interesting in our country: “There are two great things in the United States: one is Niagara, the other is Theodore Roosevelt.” As I think of my brother that night, Lord Morley’s words come back to me, for it seemed as if, for once, the two great things were combined in one. Such a Niagara as flowed from the lips of Theodore Roosevelt would have surprised even the brilliant English statesman. He never once referred to the books themselves, but he ran through the whole gamut of their story, suggesting here, interpolating there, courteously referring to some slight inaccuracy, taking up occasionally almost a page of the matter (referring to the individual page without ever glancing at the book), and finally, at 5 A. M., with a satisfied aspect, he turned to me and said: “That is all about ‘Rhodes’s History.’”

I rose feebly to my feet and said: “Good night, darling.” But not at all—still gaily, as if he had just begun a day’s work, instead of having reached the weary, littered end of twenty-four hours, he said once more: “Don’t go to bed. I must do one other piece of work, and I think you would be especially interested in it. Peter Dunne—‘Dooley,’ you know—has sent me an article of his on the Irish Question, and wants a review on that from me. I am very fond of Dunne, and really feel I should like to give him my opinions, as they do not entirely agree with his in this particular article. I feel like doing this now. Sit down again.” He never asked me to do anything with him that I ever refused, were it in my power to assent to his suggestion. How I rejoice to think that this was the case, and there was no exception made to my usual rule at 5 A. M. that November morning. I sat down again, and sure enough, in a few moments all fatigue seemed to vanish from me, as I listened with eager interest to his masterly review of Peter Dunne’s opinions on the Irish situation at that moment. It was a little late, or perhaps one might say a little early, to begin so complicated a subject as the Irish Question, and my final memories of his dictation are confused with the fact that at about 7 A. M. one of the colored porters came in with coffee, and shortly after that I was assisted to my berth in a more or less asphyxiated condition, from which I never roused again until the train reached the station at Washington. That was the way in which Theodore Roosevelt did work. I have often thought that if some of us always had the book at hand that we wanted to read, instead of wasting time in looking for it, if we always had clearly in our minds the extra job we wanted to do, and the tools at hand with which to do it, we might accomplish in some small degree the vast numbers of things he accomplished because of preparedness.

As early as December 19, 1904, my sister-in-law wrote me: “Theodore says that he wants you and Douglas under his roof for the Inauguration.” I always felt a deep appreciation of the fact that both my brother and his wife made us so welcome at the most thrilling moments of their life in the White House.

In January, 1905, he came to stay with me in New York to speak at several dinners, and a most absurd and yet trying incident occurred, an incident which he met with his usual sunny and unselfish good humor. We had had a large luncheon for him at my home, and when the time came for him to dress in the evening for the dinner at which he was to speak, I suddenly heard a call from the third story, a pitiful call: “I don’t think I have my own dress coat.” I ran up-stairs, and sure enough the coat laid out with his evening clothes, when he tried to put it on, proved to be so tight across his broad shoulders that whenever he moved his hands it rose unexpectedly almost to his ears. I called my butler, who insisted that he had taken the President’s coat with the rest of his clothes to brush, and had brought it back again to his room. This, however, was untrue, for the awful fact was soon divulged that the extra waiter engaged for the luncheon, and who had already left the house, had apparently confused the President’s coat, which was in the basement to be pressed, with his own, and had taken away the President’s coat! No one knew at this man’s house where he had gone. There seemed no method of tracing the coat. We dressed my brother in my husband’s coat, but that was even worse, for my husband’s coat fell about him in folds, and there seemed nothing for it but to send him to the large public dinner with a coat that, unless most cleverly manipulated, continued to rise unexpectedly above his head. No one but my brother would have taken this catastrophe with unruffled gaiety, but he started off apparently perfectly contented, rather than give me a more dejected feeling than I already had about the misadventure. I, myself, was to go later to the dinner to hear his speech from one of the boxes, and I shall never forget my trepidation when he began his address, as I saw the coat slowly rising higher and higher. At the most critical moment, when it seemed about to surmount his head, a messenger-boy, flurried and flushed with exertion, ran upon the stage with a package in his hand. The recalcitrant waiter had been found by my butler, and the President’s coat had been torn from his back. Excusing himself for a moment, with a laughing gesture which brought the coat completely over his head he retired into the wings, changed the article in question, and a few moments later brought down the whole house by his humorous account of the reason for his retirement.

On March 3, 1905, as the guests of my cousin Emlen Roosevelt, who took a special car for the occasion, the members of my family, my husband, and myself started for the inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt as President. Memories crowd about me of those two or three days at the White House. The atmosphere was one of great family gaiety, combined with an underlying seriousness which showed the full realization felt by my brother of the great duties which he was again to assume this time as the choice of the people.

What a day it was, that inaugural day! As usual, the personal came so much into it. The night before, Mr. John Hay sent him a ring with a part of the lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair which John Hay himself had cut from the dead President’s forehead almost immediately after his assassination. I have never known my brother to receive a gift for which he cared so deeply. To wear that ring on the day of his own inauguration as President of the United States, elected to the office by the free will of the great American people, was to him, perhaps, the highest fulfilment of his desires. The day dawned dark and threatening and with snow filtering through the clouds, but occasionally rifts of sunlight broke through the sombre bank of gray. The ceremonies were fraught, to those of us who loved him so deeply, with great solemnity. The Vice-President taking his oath in the senate-chamber, the arrival there of the judges of the Supreme Court, the glittering uniforms of the foreign ambassadors and their suites, the appearance of the President-elect, and our withdrawal to the porch of the Capitol, from which he was to make his inaugural address—all of this remains indelibly impressed upon my mind. His solemn, ardent words as he dedicated himself afresh to the service of the country, the great crowd straining to hear each sentence, the eager attitude of the guard of honor (his beloved Rough Riders)—all made a vivid picture never to be forgotten. An eye-witness wrote as follows: “Old Chief Justice Fuller with his beautiful white hair and his long, judicial gown administered the oath, and Roosevelt repeated it so loudly that he could be heard in spite of the wind. In fact the wind rather added to the impressiveness than otherwise, as it gave the President a chance to throw back his shoulders to resist it, and that gave you a wonderful feeling of strength that went splendidly with the speech itself. The speech was short, and was mainly a plea for the ‘Peace of Justice’ as compared with the ‘Peace of the Coward.’ It was very stirring. The applause was tremendous.”

I would have my readers remember that when Theodore Roosevelt pleaded for such a peace it was in 1905, nine years before peace was broken by the armies of the Huns, and during those long years he never once failed to preach that doctrine, and to the last moment of his life abhorred and denounced the peace of the coward.

Following quickly on his inaugural speech came the luncheon at the White House, at which friends from New York were as cordially welcomed as were Bill Sewall’s large family from the Maine woods and Will Merrifield, who, now a marshal, brought the greetings of the State of Montana. After luncheon we all went out on the reviewing-stand. The President stood at the front of the box, his hat always off in response to the salutes. The great procession lasted for hours—West Pointers and naval cadets followed by endless state organizations, governors on horseback, cowboys waving their lassos and shouting favorite slogans (they even lassoed a couple of men, en passant), Chief Joseph, the grand old man of the Nez Percé tribe, gorgeously caparisoned, his brilliant head-dress waving in the wind, followed by a body of Indians only a shade less superb in costume, and then a hundred and fifty Harvard fellows in black gowns and caps—and how they cheered for the President as they passed the stand! Surely there was never before such an inauguration of any President in Washington. Never was there such a feeling of personal devotion in so many hearts. Other Presidents have had equal admiration, equal loyalty perhaps, but none has had that loyalty and admiration given by so liberal and varied a number of his fellow countrymen.

It was dark before we left the stand, and soon inside of the White House there followed a reception to the Rough Riders. What a happy time the President had with them recalling bygone adventures, while the Roosevelt and Robinson children ran merrily about listening to the wonderful stories and feeding the voracious Rough Riders. Later the President went bareheaded to the steps under the porte-cochère and received the cowboys, who rode past one after another, joyfully shaking hands with their old chief, ready with some joke for his special benefit, to which there was always a repartee. It was a unique scene as they cheered the incoming magnate under the old porte-cochère, and one never to be repeated. And then the Harvard men filed past to shake hands. Needless to say, dinner was rather late, though very merry, and we were all soon off to the inaugural ball. It was a beautiful sight, the hall enormous, with two rows of arches and pillars, one above the other, along each side. The floor was absolutely crowded with moving people, all with their faces straining up at our box. Ten thousand people bought tickets. Mr. Matthew Hale, then tutor to my nephew Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., has described the scene as follows: “The whole room was beautifully decorated with lights and wreaths and flowers. As I stood looking down on the great pageant I felt as though I were in some other world,—as though these people below there and moving in and out were not real people, but were all part of some great mechanism built for our special benefit. And then my feeling would change to the other extreme when I thought of each one of those men and women as individuals, each one thinking, and feeling and acting according to his own will,—and that all, just for that one night, came together for a common purpose, to see the President. Soon an open place appeared in the throng before us, and the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, and behind them Vice-President and Mrs. Fairbanks, walked to the other end of the hall and back, while the people cheered and cheered.” And soon it was time to go back to the White House, and then, best of all, came what we used to call a “back-hair” talk in Theodore and Edith’s room. What fun we had as we talked the great day over in comfortable déshabille. A small round bottle of old wine was found somewhere by Mrs. Roosevelt, and the family drank the President’s health, and we talked of old times and childhood days, and of the dear ones whose hearts would have glowed so warmly had they lived to see that day. We laughed immoderately over all kinds of humorous happenings, and we could hardly bear to say “good night,” we still felt so gay, so full of life and fun, so invigorated and stimulated by the excitement and by the deeper thoughts and desires, which, however, only took the form that night of increasing hilarity!