The day being toward the end of September was always spent in the country, and lover as he was of fine horses, I was always given the special treat of an all day’s adventure behind a pair of splendid trotters. We would take the books of poetry which we both loved and we would disappear for the whole day, driving many miles through leafy lanes until we found the ideal spot, where we unharnessed the horses and gave them their dinner, and having taken our own delicious picnic lunch, would read aloud to each other by the hour, until the early September twilight warned us that we must be on our way homeward.
In those earlier days in New York the amusements were perhaps simpler, but the hospitality was none the less generous, and our parents were indeed “given to hospitality.”
My lovely Southern mother, of whom I will speak more later, had inherited from her forebears a gift for hospitality, and we young children, according to Southern customs, were allowed to mingle more with our elders than was the case with many New York children. I am a great believer in such mingling, and some of the happiest friendships of our later lives were formed with the chosen companions of our parents, but many things were done for us individually as well. When we were between thirteen and sixteen I remember the delightful little Friday-evening dances which my mother and father organized for us in 57th Street, and in which they took actual part themselves.
As I said before, my father could dance all night with the same delightful vim that he could turn to his business or his philanthropy in the daytime, and he enjoyed our pleasures as he did his own. It always seems to me sad that the relationship between father and son, or father and daughter, should not have the quality of charm, a quality which it so often lacks, and which I believe is largely lacking because of the failure of the older generation to enter into the attitude of the younger generation.
I was delicate at one period and could not dance as I had always done, and I remember when I was going to a little entertainment, just as I was leaving the house I received an exquisite bunch of violets with a card from my father, asking me to wear the flowers, and think of his wish that I should not overtire myself, but also of his sympathy that I could not do quite what I had always done.
Comparatively few little girls of fourteen have had so lover-like an attention from a father, and just such thought and tender, loving comprehension made our relationship to our father one of perfect comradeship, and yet of respectful adoration. He taught us all, when very young, to ride and to swim and to climb trees. I remember the careful way in which he would show us dead limbs and warn us about watching out for them, and then, having taught us and having warned us, he gave us full liberty to try our wings and fall by the wayside should they prove inadequate for our adventures.
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., aged thirty, 1862.
Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, twenty-two years old, about 1856.