Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [16]
“THE ELITE OF ANGLO-SUDANESE SOCIETY AWAITED HIM.”
Roosevelt arrives in Khartoum, 14 March 1910. (photo credit i1.1)
Yet he was aware of the constant menace of Arab nationalism, obscure yet encircling, like the mirages wavering on the desert horizon. The haze that hung over the city seemed, to his vivid historical imagination, to be red with the blood of General Gordon, murdered in this very palace by Mahdist dervishes.
KHARTOUM’S NORTH STATION was cordoned off when he met the Cairo express at 5:30 P.M. He climbed into his wife’s private car the moment it came to a halt, and remained inside for a long time. Finally the two of them emerged arm in arm, with Kermit and Ethel close behind. All four Roosevelts were laughing.
Edith’s smile transformed her normally stiff public face, exposing perfect teeth and lighting up the blue of her eyes. At forty-eight, she was no longer slender, but had just enough height to carry off the consequences of never having had to cook for herself, and her wrists and ankles and sharp profile were as elegant as ever. She had suffered during her year-long separation from Theodore, more from worry about him on safari than distress about herself: books and music and children had always been her solace.
That evening, Roosevelt changed into a tuxedo and replaced the wire spectacles he had worn on safari with beribboned pince-nez. Transformed thus, he looked dapper for the first time in nearly a year, and worthy of the place card that confronted him at Slatin Pasha’s table: THE HONORABLE COLONEL ROOSEVELT.
So far he had managed to keep at bay the reporters that Henry Cabot Lodge had warned him about. They were clamoring for statements on a hot local news item—the murder, by a Nationalist student, of Egypt’s Coptic prime minister, Boutros Ghali Pasha. Roosevelt had heard about this incident before arriving in Khartoum.
He was not unwilling to speak about it, but preferred to wait until he made a scheduled address on the issue of condominium at Cairo University in two weeks’ time. As for commenting on American issues, he needed first to go through a fat sack of telegrams and letters from home. John Callan O’Laughlin of the Chicago Tribune had collared the sack and was offering to serve as his traveling stenographer, as F. Warrington Dawson had in British East Africa. Roosevelt was fond of O’Laughlin, an experienced foreign policy man, and admired his sass. (It had been “Cal” who, scattering piastres like couscous, chartered the steamboat that met the Dal at Ar Rank.) However, another contender for secretarial honors was at hand: Lawrence F. Abbott, president of The Outlook. Roosevelt felt that, as an employee of that magazine himself (he was listed in its masthead as “Contributing Editor”), he could not turn Abbott down. His work for Scribner’s Magazine was done, and he must look to The Outlook for income—and, not incidentally, space to promulgate his political views.
So O’Laughlin was consoled with a promise of special access, the press corps invited to accompany the Omdurman excursion, and Abbott granted a close-up position from which to observe, and record, the Colonel’s return to public life.
EDITH KERMIT ROOSEVELT was a woman of impeccable sang-froid—a phrase that came naturally to her, as did other Gallicisms deriving from her Huguenot ancestry. About the only scrutiny that shook her public composure was that of the camera lens. As mistress of the White House, she had managed to avoid it almost entirely. But now, to her consternation, she found a battery of photographers waiting at Omdurman. Worse still, they continued clicking as camels kneeled to carry the Roosevelt party to the battlefield.
In the event, she withstood the swaying journey better than her husband, enjoying herself as Slatin Pasha pointed out the plain on which Arab bodies had piled up in masses under the fire of Kitchener’s artillery. Roosevelt chafed, not having been in a saddle of any kind for