My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt

by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

(4) And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

He was very apt to sum up a situation in some pregnant verse from the Bible.

The winter of 1915 was trying to him in certain ways, especially on account of the Barnes libel suit. He had made the statement that Mr. Barnes had, politically, a bipartisan attitude, and indeed more than attitude, and Mr. Barnes decided to bring a suit for libel against him. In spite of this annoyance, however, he writes me various letters, some merry, and all dealing with subjects where he or I could be of help to others less fortunate. In one case, in connection with a certain French pastor, to whom I could not be of assistance in the way in which he had hoped, he writes: “I understand perfectly. I felt like a swine when I wrote you, but the poor, dear pastor was such a pathetic figure that from sheer mushy weakness I yielded, and strove to do something for him.” And later, in connection with a penniless poet: “Can you give me any advice? I wish I knew some wealthy creature who was interested in poor struggling poets and could help them, and also help their poor wives and children after their deaths. Lord! how hard life is!” That time I was able to help him, and raised quite a sum for the struggling individual in question, whom I thought truly deserved help.

Just then Mrs. William Astor Chanler arranged a charming play for the benefit of a war charity, a play in which there were scenes depicting Washington at Valley Forge. My little grandson took the part of his many times great-grandfather, Captain Isaac Roosevelt, and my brother, with sympathetic pleasure, came as an honored guest to the performance, and was later photographed with the small actors. He writes from Syracuse, where he had gone to take the defense for himself in the libel suit: “Was little Captain Isaac Roosevelt one of the bewildering number of small Revolutionary leaders who had their photographs taken with me? I have felt a pang that I did not particularly seek him out, but the confusion was so great that I could not identify any one of the constantly revolving small boys and girls behind the scenes; and until we were actually in place I had supposed that they were all to have their photographs taken with me.” In this same letter he says, speaking of the fact that his wife had been ill when he left New York: “I have been so worried about Edith that this libel suit has bothered me very little. Of course I was rather tired by my nine days on the witness stand, but I felt I made my case pretty clear. How the suit will go I have no idea, but in any event I do not feel that my friends have any cause to be ashamed of me.” On May 24, at the end of the suit, in which he scored a great triumph, he writes: “Dearest Corinne and Douglas: It was fine to get your telegrams and letters. You two were among those who I knew would stand by me absolutely, win or lose; but I am awfully glad it is a case of winning and not losing. Just as soon as you get back from Virginia I must see you both and tell you everything.” He did tell us everything, and many were the things that he told!

Twice in his life Theodore Roosevelt took part in libel suits. In the first case he brought the suit against a newspaper which had openly accused him of intoxication. In the second place he was the defendant, as I have already mentioned. Nothing was ever more unfounded than the strange and persistent rumor that Theodore Roosevelt indulged in intoxicating liquors. It has been my great good fortune to have been associated with men of great self-control as regards drink, but of all my intimate contemporaries, no one ever drank as little as my brother. I do not think he ever in his life tasted a cocktail, and he hated whiskey, and it rarely could be found at Sagamore Hill. He occasionally took a glass of sherry or port or champagne, but those, even, only occasionally; and how the report started that he overindulged in drink no one has ever been able to discover; but like many another sinister thing it swelled with its own volume, and after serious thought he chose an occasion when he could make a definite charge, and demanded a trial when the newspaper in question printed the heretofore only whispered untruth. I do not believe that so many distinguished men ever before travelled to a remote Western town, as travelled to give testimony about the sobriety of Theodore Roosevelt. Foreign ambassadors, famous generals, scientists, literary men, artists, all journeyed in an endless trail to give, with ardent loyalty, their personal knowledge of the impeccable habits of my brother. The result was an award of damages which my brother refused to take and the most abject apologies on the part of the editor. The other suit, the Barnes suit, was entirely different, for in that transaction he was the man to make the accusation, and his opponent was a most brilliant and acute individual, and even although my brother’s followers were confident of the accuracy of the statement he had made, for his statements were consistently accurate, still we felt that some apparent lack of proof, even though only apparent, might bring about an unfortunate result. Mr. John Bowers, one of the most able of his profession, was my brother’s lawyer, and he later gave me many an amusing description of that extraordinary case. The counsel for the plaintiff were always averse to allowing my brother to testify, for the effect he produced upon the jury was immediate and startling. The opposing side would object to nearly everything he said, simply because anything he said induced a rapid and favorable response from the jury. In one part of the testimony Mr. Bowers told me that my brother had repeated a conversation between Mr. Barnes and himself, and had gone into accurate detail, which was listened to by the jury with intense and sympathetic excitement, whereupon the lawyer for the plaintiff objected to Mr. Roosevelt’s statement as an “irrelevant monologue.” Quick as a flash my brother turned upon the objector and said that “of course the gentleman in question might call it a monologue, but as Mr. Barnes had had as much to do with the conversation as himself, he, personally, would call it a dialogue.” This retort brought down not only the house but the jury, and the unfortunate opposing lawyer withdrew his objection. That story and many others my brother recounted to us with humorous and sarcastic delight, shortly after the end of the trial, around a family tea-table one Sunday evening at Sagamore Hill.

In September of that year, 1915, we suffered the loss of our beloved friend Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge. Since the early days of 1884, she had shared the joys and sorrows of our lives. Beautiful, brilliant, sympathetic, exquisite in her delicate individuality, in her intellectual inspiration, in her fine humor and sense of values—her beautiful head like a rare cameo, her wonderful gray-blue eyes looking out under dark, level brows, she remains one of the pictures most treasured in the memories of the Roosevelt family. My brother was always at his best with her, and I have rarely heard him talk in a broader and more comprehensive way of politics and literature than in the homelike library at 1765 Massachusetts Avenue, the house where Senator and Mrs. Lodge were always surrounded by an intimate circle of friends. By her tea-table, in the rocking-chair bought especially for him, Theodore Roosevelt would sit and rock when he snatched a happy half-hour after his ride with the senator in those old days when he was the President of the United States. Mrs. Lodge had the power of stimulating the conversation of others, as well as the gift of leading in conversation herself, and the best “talk” that I have ever heard was around her tea-table in Washington. Her sudden death was a great blow to my brother as it was to us all.

All through that year and through the year to come, although severely censured for his criticisms of the President’s policies, my brother worked with arduous determination, shoulder to shoulder with General Leonard Wood and Augustus P. Gardner, to arouse the American people to the danger of non-preparedness, and to the shame of allowing the exhausted Allies to bear without America’s help the brunt of the battle. Those men of vision realized, fully, that in a world aflame, no nation could possibly escape the danger of conflagration. Not only from that standpoint did the apostles of preparedness press forward, but from the love of democracy also. These courageous patriots wished to have their country share spontaneously from the beginning the effort for righteousness for which France, England, and Italy were giving the lives of the flower of their youth.

By pen, and even more by word of mouth, always at the expense of his energy, Theodore Roosevelt went up and down the country, preaching the doctrine of brotherhood and preparedness for self-defense. As early as January, 1915, General Wood had asked me to have a meeting to interest some of the men of New York in his plans for the training-camps, which later developed into the “Plattsburg idea.” Many of the men who in later days were patriotically ardent in their support of that Plattsburg idea spoke to me with amused indifference at the end of that meeting in January, 1915, and asked me why I had made such a point of their coming to it! At the same time, Augustus P. Gardner, in the House of Representatives, struggled to arouse the country from its lethargy. Gradually, however, the force of the truth of the doctrine which was being preached by the few percolated through the minds and hearts of many of the American people, and at the beginning of the year 1916 one could feel a certain response to a higher ideal. In May, 1915, after the dastardly sinking of the Lusitania, the country could have been easily led in the path of duty and high ideals. The psychological moment was at hand when over a hundred women and children, non-combatants, and over whom flew the British flag, were hurled into the sea by the dastardly tactics of Germany,—but this is a digression. In January, 1916, I was chosen a delegate by the National Security League (an organization started during the first year of the war to uphold the policy of “Preparedness”) to its first conference at Washington, and there I was asked to read a letter from my brother, as he could not be present at the conference. He writes me on January 22, 1916: “I was very much surprised and much pleased when I saw in the papers that you had read my letter to the Security League.” And again, two days later, came one of his characteristic little notes (no one ever took such pains to do and say loving and lovely things): “Darling Pussie,” he says this time: “Judge Nortoni and Bob Bacon have been out here to Sagamore Hill separately, and both feel that your speech was the feature of the Washington meeting. I will tell you all that they say next Sunday when you come to us. I was really touched by their enthusiastic admiration of you and the speech. My letter was apparently regarded only as the peg on which the speech was hung. Ever yours, T. R.” Needless to say, my speech was only an insignificant addendum to his letter, but he truly believed that his sister’s speech was the more important of the two things!

In February he gladly lent me his name for the New York advisory committee of “The Fatherless Children of France,” a society started by two magnificent Englishwomen, Miss Schofield and Miss Fell, for which I was privileged to form the New York City committee. “Of course use my name,” he says. I do not remember ever asking him for it that he did not lend it to me—that name which counted more than almost any other name of his time.

In March, 1916, he sailed with Mrs. Roosevelt for Trinidad, and during his absence there began again the rumblings of desire on the part of the people of the United States to have him named as presidential candidate on the Republican ticket in the forthcoming convention. A certain faction of the Progressive party still clung to the hope that it could achieve its heart’s desire and name him on their ticket, but he had come more and more to the conclusion that the Republican and the Progressive parties must amalgamate in their choice of a nominee, for he firmly believed that Mr. Wilson’s policies had been of sinister influence in the country, and he was convinced that nothing was so important as to remove this, from his standpoint, unfortunate influence. More and more he believed that our country should bear a gallant part in the terrible adventure across the sea; more and more he preached the doctrine that we should go to the aid of the war-worn countries who sorely needed America’s help.