Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [347]
17 His safari has generated TR’s financial arrangement with the Smithsonian was that he would pay all safari expenses incurred by himself and KR (about two-fifths of a total estimated cost of $50,000), leaving museum fund-raisers to cover the rest. This presupposed $20,000 from him ($385,000 in today’s [2010] dollars) and $30,000 ($533,000) from his sponsors, but early on it became clear that the safari was going to cost twice as much as he had planned. He was therefore obliged to solicit further funds, including $27,000 ($480,000) from Carnegie. All monetary equivalents are from Measuring Worth (http://www.measuringworth.com/).
18 He wants to show Morris, The Rise of TR, 27; Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady (New York, 1980), 23–26; TR to EKR, n.d., ca. 7 Aug. 1909 (KRP).
19 “Jambo Bwana King ya Amerik!” “Greetings, Lord King of America!” Quoted in Bartle Bull, Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure (New York, 1988), 169.
20 the largest safari yet mounted For detailed accounts of the expedition, supplementary to TR’s own, see Bull, Safari, chap. 5, Wilson, TR Hunter-Conservationist, chap. 9, and Tweed Roosevelt, “Theodore Roosevelt’s African Safari,” in Natalie Naylor et al., eds., Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American (Interlaken, N.Y., 1992), 413–32. The size and scope of TR’s safari remains a record in Kenya history.
21 a third term in 1908 TR’s first term must be understood to have been the three and a half executive years he inherited from William McKinley, and his second the four years he won in the election of 1904. In his lifetime, there was no constitutional limit to the number of terms a president could serve.
22 Mount Kenya In 1909, Kenya was spelled Kenia, and denoted only the highlands of British East Africa. Ten years later, the entire region down to the coast was renamed “Kenya Colony and Protectorate.”
23 “If I am where” Robinson, My Brother TR, 251.
24 He has, besides Bull, Safari, 160–63; Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (Urbana, Ill., 1985), 26–37, 169–82. TR’s youthful 622-item “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History,” featuring an impressive collection of Nile bird skins, was accepted by the Smithsonian in 1882. For TR’s conservation record as President, see Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (New York, 2009). The classic work on the hunter-conservationist paradox is John F. Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, 3rd ed. (Corvallis, Ore., 2001).
25 this highly professional expedition TR, Works, 5.5–6; Kermit Roosevelt, The Long Trail (New York, 1921), 44–45.
26 His son may not qualify KR to EKR, 10 Aug. 1909 (KRP); Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 298. In the early days of the expedition, KR’s title of Bwana Mdogo became Bwana Maridadi (“Master Dandy”), a change not entirely to TR’s liking. However, the mandolin-strumming youth soon won general respect.
27 How Edith Roosevelt feels Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 347–49; EKR to Mrs. William D. Foulke, 7 Apr. 1909, Foulke Papers, Library of Congress.
28 By now she should Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 348; Archibald W. Butt, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt, Military Aide, 2 vols. (New York, 1930), 25.
29 My dear Theodore TR, Letters, 7.3–4.
30 “I am no hanger-on” Ibid., 6.1230.
31 there is one title TR to J. Alden Loring et al. on board SS Hamburg, quoted in Frederick S. Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him: The Personal Recollections of One Hundred and Fifty of His Friends and Associates (Philadelphia, 1927), 221–22. See also Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography (New York, 1931), 510. On the very day TR quit the White House, he had pleasedly patted the shoulder of a reporter addressing him as “Colonel.” “This man knows how to flatter me.” The New York Times, 6 Mar. 1909.
32 If war ever comes TR’s safari luggage contained a military greatcoat with gold braid round the sleeves. When preparing for