Shortly after that March inauguration my daughter Corinne, just eighteen, was asked by her kind aunt to pay a visit at the White House, and I impressed upon her the wonderful opportunity she would have of listening to the great men of the world at the informal luncheon gatherings which were a feature of my brother’s incumbency. “Do not miss a word,” I said to my daughter. “Uncle Ted brings to luncheon all the great men in Washington—almost always several members of the cabinet, and any one of interest who is visiting there. Be sure and listen to everything. You will never hear such talk again.” When she returned home from that visit I eagerly asked her about the wonderful luncheons at the White House, where I had so frequently sat spellbound. My somewhat irreverent young daughter said: “Mother, I laughed internally all through the first luncheon at the White House during my visit. Uncle Ted was perfectly lovely to me, and took me by the hand and said: ‘Corinny, dear, you are to sit at my right hand to-day, and you must have the most delightful person in the room on your other side.’ With that he glanced at the distinguished crowd of gentlemen who were surrounding him waiting to be assigned to their places, and picking out a very elderly gentleman with a long white beard, he said with glowing enthusiasm: ‘You shall have John Burroughs, the great naturalist.’ I confess I had hoped for some secretary in the cabinet, but, no, Uncle Ted did not think there was any one in the world that compared in thrilling excitement to his wonderful old friend and lover of birds. Even so, I thought, ‘Mother would wish me to learn all about natural history, and I shall hear marvellous ornithological tales, even if politics must be put aside.’ But even in that I was somewhat disappointed, for at the very beginning of luncheon Uncle Ted leaned across me to Mr. Burroughs and said: ‘John, this morning I heard a chippy sparrow, and he sang twee, twee, right in my ear.’ Mr. Burroughs, with a shade of disapproval on his face, said: ‘Mr. President, you must be mistaken. It was not a chippy sparrow if it sang twee, twee. The note of the chippy sparrow is twee, twee, twee.’ From that moment the great affairs of our continent, the international crises of all kinds were utterly forgotten, while the President of the United States and his esteemed guest, the great naturalist, discussed with a good deal of asperity whether that chippy sparrow had said ‘twee, twee,’ or ‘twee, twee, twee.’ We rose from the table with the question still unsettled.” My brother always loved to hear my daughter tell this story, although his face would assume a somewhat sheepish expression as she dilated on the difference between her mother’s prognostications of what a luncheon at the White House would mean from an intellectual standpoint, and what the realization actually became!
In spite of my daughter’s experience, however, I can say with truth that there never were such luncheons as those luncheons at the White House during my brother’s life there. The secretary of state, Mr. Elihu Root, with his unusual knowledge, his pregnant wit, and quiet, brilliant sarcasm; the secretary of war, Mr. Taft, with his gay smile and ready response; Mr. Moody, the attorney-general with his charming culture and universal kindliness, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the brilliant scholar and statesman, my brother’s most intimate friend and constant companion, were frequent members of the luncheon-parties, and always, the most distinguished visitor to Washington, from whatever country or from whatever State of our own country, would be brought in with the same informal hospitality and received for the time being by President and Mrs. Roosevelt into the intimacy of family life. The whole cabinet would occasionally adjourn from one of their most important meetings to the lunch-table, and then the President and Mr. Root would cap each other’s stories of the way in which this or that question had been discussed during the cabinet meeting. I doubt also if ever there were quite such cabinet meetings as were held during those same years!
That spring Mr. Robinson and I took my daughter to Porto Rico to visit Governor and Mrs. Beekman Winthrop. My brother believed strongly in young men, and having admired the intelligence of young Beekman Winthrop (he came of a fine old New York family) as circuit judge in the Philippines, he decided to make him governor of Porto Rico. He was only twenty-nine, and his charming wife still younger, but they made a most ideal couple as administrators of the beautiful island. After having been with them in the old palace for about a week, and having enjoyed beyond measure all that was so graciously arranged for us, I was approached one day by Governor Winthrop, who told me that he was much distressed at the behavior of a certain official and that he felt sure that the President would not wish the man to remain in office, for he was actually a disgrace to the United States. “Mrs. Robinson,” he said, “will you not go to the President on your return, and tell him that I am quite sure he would not wish to retain this man in office? I know the President likes us to work with the tools which have been given us, and I dislike beyond measure to seem not to be able to do so, but I am convinced that this man should not represent the United States in this island.” “Have you your proofs, Beekman?” I asked. “I should not be willing to approach my brother with any such criticism without accurate proofs.” “I most assuredly have them,” he answered, and sure enough he did have them, and I shortly afterward sailed with them back to New York. Immediately upon my arrival I telegraphed my brother as follows: “Would like to see you on Porto Rican business. When shall I come?” One of Theodore Roosevelt’s most striking characteristics was the rapidity with which he answered letters or telegrams. One literally felt that one had not posted a letter or sent the telegram rushing along the wire before the rapid answer came winging back again, and that particular telegram was no exception to the rule. I had rather hoped for a week’s quiet in which to get settled after my trip to Porto Rico, but that was not to be. The rapid-fire answer read as follows: “Come tomorrow.” Of course there was nothing for me to do but go “tomorrow.” It was late in April, and as I drove up to the White House from the station, I thought how lovely a city was Washington in the springtime. The yellow forsythias gave a golden glow to the squares, and the soft hanging petals of the fringe-trees waved in the scented air. I never drove under the White House porte-cochère without a romantic feeling of excitement at the realization that it was my brother, lover of Lincoln, lover of America, who lived under the roof which symbolized all that America means to her children. As I went up the White House steps, he blew out of the door, dressed for his ride on horseback. His horse and that of a companion were waiting for him. He came smilingly toward me, welcomed me, and said: “Edie has had to go to Philadelphia for the night to visit Nellie Tyler, so we are all alone, and I have ordered dinner out on the back porch, for it is so warm and lovely, and there is a full moon, and I thought we could be so quiet there. I have so much to tell you. All sorts of political things have happened during your absence, and besides that I have learned several new poems of Kipling and Swinburne, and I feel like reciting them to you in the moonlight!” “How perfectly lovely,” I replied, “and when shall I see you about Porto Rico?” A slight frown came on his brow, and he said, “Certainly not to-night,” and then rather sternly: “You have your appointment at nine o’clock to-morrow morning in the office to discuss business matters.” Then with a returning smile: “I will be back pretty soon. Good-by.” And he jumped on his horse and clattered away toward Rock Creek.
From the drawing by Jules Guérin.
We had that lovely dinner on the portico at the back of the White House looking toward the Washington Monument.
It all came true, although it almost seemed like a fairy-tale. We had that dinner à deux on the lovely portico at the rear of the White House looking toward the Washington Monument—that portico was beautifully reproduced by Sargent’s able brush for Mrs. Roosevelt later—and under the great, soft moon, with the scent of shrub and flower in the air, he recited Kipling and Swinburne, and then falling into more serious vein, gave me a vivid description of some difficulty he had had with Congress, which had refused to receive a certain message which he had written and during the interval between the sending of it and their final decision to receive it, he had shut himself up in his library, glad to have a moment of unexpected leisure, and had written an essay, which he had long desired to write, on the Irish sagas. The moon had waned and the stars were brighter and deeper before we left the portico. We never could go to bed when we were together, and I am so glad that we never did!
The next morning I knocked at his door at eight o’clock, to go down to the early breakfast with the children, which was one of the features also, quite as much as were the brilliant lunches, of home life in the White House. He came out of his dressing-room radiant and smiling, ready for the day’s work, looking as if he had had eight hours of sleep instead of five, and rippling all over with the laughter which he always infused into those family breakfasts. As we passed the table at the head of the staircase, at which later in the day my sister’s secretary wrote her letters, the telephone-bell on the table rang, and with spontaneous simplicity—not even thinking of ringing a bell for a “menial” to answer the telephone-call—he picked up the receiver himself as he passed by. His face assumed a listening look, and then a broad smile broke over his features. “No,” he said. “No, I am not Archie, I am Archie’s father.” A second passed and he laughed aloud, and then said: “All right, I will tell him; I won’t forget.” Hanging up the receiver, he turned to me half-sheepishly but very much amused. “That’s a good joke on any President,” he said. “You may have realized that there was a little boy on the other end of that wire, and he started the conversation by saying, ‘Is that you, Archie?’ and I replied, ‘No, it is Archie’s father.’ Whereupon he answered, with evident disgust: ‘Well, you’ll do. Be sure and tell Archie to come to supper. Now, don’t forget.’ ‘How the creatures order you about!’” he gaily quoted from our favorite book, “Alice in Wonderland,” and proceeded to run at full speed down to the breakfast-room. There the children greeted us vociferously, and the usual merry breakfast ensued. For that half-hour he always belonged to the children. Questions and answers about their school life, their recreation when out of school, etc., etc., followed in rapid succession, interspersed with various fascinating tales told by him for their special edification.
After they had dispersed there was still a half-hour left before he went to the office at 9 o’clock, and whenever I visited the White House (my visits were rather rare, as my husband, being a busy real-estate broker in New York, could not often break away) that half-hour was always given to me, and we invariably walked around the great circle at the back of the White House. It was his most vigorous moment of the day, that hour from 8.30 to 9. He had not yet met the puzzling defeats and compromises necessitated by the conflicting interests of the many appointments in the office, and he was fresh and vivid, interested in the problems that were to be brought to him for solution that day, and observant of everything around him. I remember that morning as we walked around the circle he was discussing a very serious problem that had to be decided immediately, and he held his forefinger straight up, and said: “You know my temperament always wants to get there”—putting his other forefinger on the apex of the first. “I naturally wish to reach the goal of my desire, but would I not be very blind and stupid if, because I couldn’t get there, I decided to stay here” [changing his right forefinger to the base of the left] “rather than get here”—finishing his simile by placing the right finger to the third notch of the finger on his other hand.
Just as he was finishing this simile his eye caught sight of a tiny object on the pathway, so minute a little brown spot that I should never have noticed it; but he stooped, picked it up, and held it between his forefinger and thumb, looking at it eagerly, and then muttering somewhat below his breath: “Very early for a fox-sparrow.” He threw the tiny piece of fluff again upon the path. “How do you know that that was a feather from a fox-sparrow, Theodore?” I said, in my usual astonishment at his observation and information. “I can understand how you might know it was a sparrow, but how know it belonged to the fox-sparrow rather than to any of the other innumerable little creatures of that species?” He was almost deprecatory in his manner as he said in reply: “Well, you see I have really made a great study of sparrows.” And then we were back at the entrance to the White House, and in a moment I leaned out of the dining-room window and watched him walk across the short space between that window and the office, his head thrown back, his shoulders squared to meet the difficulties of the day, and every bit of him alert, alive, and glowing with health and strength and power and mentality.