Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [370]
22 a vow of political silence TR’s vow was transmitted to WHT twice on 18 June, verbally by Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and in a note delivered by Archie Butt. (Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 404; Pringle, TR, 534.) For TR’s literary ambitions at this time, see Henry L. Stoddard, As I Knew Them: Presidents and Politics from Grant to Coolidge (New York, 1927), 327.
23 During the next TR, Works, 22.370–71.
24 Birds of Oyster Bay A copy of this extremely rare paper, printed in Mar. 1879, is in TRC.
25 Over the weekend New York World, 19 June 1910; New York Evening Post and Literary Digest, 18 June 1910. A veteran journalist rated TR’s current candle-power as higher than that of Jack Johnson. Charles Willis Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents (Indianapolis, 1929), 27.
26 the right to doze For Taft’s somnolence, see Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 18, 504 (“I have never seen a man with such capacity for sleep”), and Irwin H. Hoover, Forty-two Years in the White House (Boston, 1934), 269.
27 were convinced Morris, Theodore Rex, 508.
28 The letters Archie Butt For the diplomatic role played by Archibald Butt in the writing of these letters, see Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 388–92. WHT made a show of reluctance over them (“I do not want to say anything at first which might mislead Roosevelt into thinking that I expect of desire advice”), but the querulous tone of the first letter speaks for itself. WHT declined to address TR as “Colonel” in his second communication, saying that plain “Mr.” was good enough.
29 “I do not know” WHT to TR, 26 May 1910 (TRP).
30 Taft took credit for Ibid.
31 “[They] have done” Ibid. Henry Cabot Lodge was of the same angry opinion. Lodge to TR, 30 Apr. 1910 (TRP).
32 He mentioned WHT to TR, 14 June 1910 (WHTP).
33 Now, my dear TR, Letters, 7.89.
34 Two days later Joseph H. Choate (eyewitness) to Carrie Choate, ca. 1910 (HKB); Robinson, My Brother TR, 262–63.
35 “I am like Peary” Charles G. Washburn, Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of His Career (Boston, 1916), 166. A copy of the exquisite dinner program is preserved in SUL.
36 “I am very much pleased” Thomas Dreier, Heroes of Insurgency (Boston, 1910), 30. Quoted in Pringle, TR, 535. Actually, La Follette was far from being pleased. Ambitious to run for the presidency on a progressive platform, he got the feeling, during this visit, that TR had similar designs. For the political pas de deux now embarked on by both men—full of courtly gestures, solo variations, and teetering levées (with La Follette constantly afraid that he would be dropped), see Herbert F. Margulies, “La Follette, Roosevelt and the Republican Presidential Nomination of 1912,” Mid-America, 58.1 (1976).
37 Most of the pilgrims In private, the progressives were not so circumspect. “Glorious to have him back and ready to lead the great fight against special interest and for the common weal,” Garfield wrote in his diary. TR was reportedly “in absolute agreement” with the aims of Garfield and Pinchot, and asked them to work out for him a declaration of principles that he could publicly espouse. This would appear to be the nucleus of TR’s “New Nationalism” speech. James Garfield diary, 23 June 1910 (JRGP).
38 “He says he will” Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 416.
39 Colonel Roosevelt is now New York World, 20 June 1910.
40 “democracy of the heart” Mowry, TR, 52.
41 a fifth of the general populace The population of the United States in 1910 was 91,972,266, or 93,402,000 if Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico were included (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. [1911]).
42 Roosevelt had been wary Morris, Theodore Rex, 144–45 and passim; Sullivan, Our Times, 4.351.
43 “hideous human swine” TR, Letters, 5.264. TR complained to Owen Wister, who as a young writer showed Zolaesque inclinations, “I think that conscientious descriptions of the unspeakable do not constitute an interpretation of life.… There’s nothing masculine in being revolting.” Wister, Roosevelt, 34.
44 From infancy, he had Leary, Talks with T.R., 208–9. “I have never known