Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [359]
54 When he embarked Sheik Ali Youssuf in North American Review, June 1910. About a year later, TR recalled that his “good advice” to the Egyptians had been received “with well-dissembled gratitude.” TR, Works, 6.455.
CHAPTER 2: THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN THE WORLD
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 75.
2 as if he were still Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.”
3 He saw less TR, Letters, 7.354.
4 Moving on Ibid., 7.354–59; John C. O’Laughlin memo, ca. Apr. 1910 (OL). In an open letter to The Outlook, TR made sure that Catholics and Protestants back home understood his scruples. “The more an American sees of other countries the more profound must be his feelings of gratitude that in his own land there is not merely complete toleration but the heartiest goodwill and sympathy between sincere and honest men of different faith.” TR, Letters, 7.358.
5 He rejoiced TR, Letters, 7.359–60; KR diary, 4 Apr. 1910 (KRP); The New York Times, 5 Apr. 1910. Citations for the rest of this chapter frequently refer to TR’s two epistolary accounts of his European experiences, to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 1 Oct. 1911, and to David Gray, 5 Oct. 1911. (TR, Letters, 7.348–99, 401–15.) Enormously long and often very funny, these letters have been separately published in Cowboys and Kings: Three Great Letters by Theodore Roosevelt, Elting E. Morison, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). More than any of TR’s other writings, they convey the full charm of his personality.
6 Roosevelt was unfazed TR, Letters, 7.362–63. Before leaving Rome on 7 Apr., TR lunched with the Italian historian Guglielmo Ferrero, whose works he had read, and learned from, as President. (Morris, Theodore Rex, 495–96; and Ferrero, “Theodore Roosevelt: A Characterization,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 9 [1910].) TR was determined to make his trip through Europe an intellectual as well as a political odyssey. “Cannot you arrange,” he typically wrote to the American ambassador in Sweden, “to have me see Sven Hedin, Nathorst, Colthorp, Nordenskiöld and Montelius? Cannot I see with the last-named the collection of Swedish antiquities, and I would also like to see the battle flags of Gustavus and Charles XII, and the tombs of the kings. Cannot I meet Professor and Mrs. Retzius?” TR to Charles H. Graves, 22 Apr. 1910 (TRP).
7 Edith’s unmarried younger sister See Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 350–51 and passim. There is a vignette of Emily Carow in O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 98: “She reminded me of a little humming bird as she flitted from side to side … pointing out the beauties of the landscape.”
8 Lanky, passionate Miller, Gifford Pinchot, prologue passim; Sullivan, Our Times, 4.386.
9 Roosevelt, in contrast Sullivan, Our Times, 4.486, describes Pinchot as one “whose eyes, as they pass through the world, instinctively look about for a hero, and for martyrdom in the hero’s service.” For a concise analysis of the relationship between Pinchot and TR, see Miller, Gifford Pinchot, 147–76.
10 “One of the best” Ibid., 233. A long political letter from TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, written this day, avoids any mention of Pinchot. TR, Letters, 7.69–74.
11 All warned Mowry, TR, 108, 125.
12 He was more Lodge, Selections, 2.367; TR, Letters, 7.336. See also Morris, Theodore Rex, 486–87.
13 Four days later EKR diary, 13 Apr. 1910 (TRC).
14 A familiar, courtly figure TR, Letters, 7.368; Henry White to Mrs. White, 15 Apr. 1910 (HW).
15 the great comet Halley’s Comet was just beginning its 1910 passage past the sun. It was observed in perihelion at 5° Aquarius over Curaçao on 19 Apr.
16 After a reunion Henry White to Mrs. White, 15 Apr. 1910 (HW); TR, Letters, 7.369.
17 He spoke in French Ibid.
18 Roosevelt had detected TR, Letters, 7.360–61. Tempora mutantur: “The times are changing.”
19 The best that could TR, Letters, 7.369, 409. TR was both right and wrong about Franz Ferdinand. The archduke was reactionary in the sense that he wanted