Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [381]
5 “a young girl entitled” TR, Letters, 7.315.
6 The Roosevelt retinue Wallace, Sagamore Hill, 1.22–27; TR, Letters, 7.316. Scholars of race nomenclature might note that in the latter, TR refers to his male servants alternately as “black,” “colored,” and “native Americans.”
7 “I am really thinking” TR, Letters, 7.295; Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 23 Aug. 1911. See also TR, Letters, 7.219–22, 303–4. “I wish I could devote myself exclusively to work as a naturalist,” he wrote Henry Fairfield Osborn on 5 July 1911 (AMNH). TR’s monograph was an expansion of his critical appendix on protective coloration theory in African Game Trails (reprinted in TR, Works, 6.375–405). The main proponent of the theory, the artist Abbott H. Thayer, replied to TR’s criticisms in the July issue of Popular Science Monthly and in the America Museum Bulletin on 14 Sept. 1912. TR’s final word on the subject was published in American Museum Journal, Mar. 1918. For a beautifully illustrated discussion of the whole confrontation, see Alexander Nemerov, “Vanishing Americans: Abbott Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Attraction of Camouflage,” American Art, Summer 1997.
8 Roosevelt followed it See TR, Works, 14.439–47, 195–203, 52–57; TR, Letters, 7.302. TR’s reviews of the Chamberlain and Weigall books are in TR, Works, 14.52–57, 195–203.
9 Somehow, he could not TR, Letters, 7.311.
10 “As you know” Ibid., 7.310; TR, Last Will and Testament, 13 Dec. 1912, copy in AC. TR was disappointed to hear from Charles Scribner on 21 Aug. that African Game Trails had not proved to be the bestseller he had expected, after its promising launch in the fall of 1910. “While it did not do all we had hoped for, the sale falling off rather suddenly at the last,” Scribner wrote, “we are by no means through with it and we are thoroughly contented.” He enclosed a check for $4,178, representing a half-year of royalties on all Roosevelt rights held by his house (SCR). TR’s income from his many books issued by various publishers is summarized below, 657.
11 “The kaleidoscope changes” TR, Letters, 7.311.
12 Not only he Ibid., 7.164–65; Mowry, TR, 166.
13 “I very earnestly” TR, Letters, 7.334.
14 “The word panic” Ibid. TR’s phrase, “fear, unreasoning fear” may have implanted itself in the memory of his young cousin Franklin Roosevelt, who had not yet left town on vacation.
Historical Note: TR was accused of approving (or, technically, promising not to prosecute), a deal transferring ownership of the world’s richest known tract of iron ore from the Tennessee Coal Company to U.S. Steel for only $30 million. By 1911, the tract was valued at $2 billion. In doing so, the Stanley Committee alleged, he had made himself a puppet of the steel magnates Henry Clay Frick and Judge Elbert H. Gary. TR read to Stanley one of his self-exonerating “posterity letters,” dictated immediately after meeting with the two men on 4 Nov. 1907, and delivered within the hour to his attorney general, Charles Joseph Bonaparte. It reported that Frick and Gary had informed him, with Secretary of State Elihu Root standing by as a witness, that “a certain business firm” (Moore & Schley) owning a majority of the shares of TCC would fail and cause a “general industrial smashup” unless it was bought at once by U.S. Steel. They had argued convincingly that they were performing a public service in acquiring an asset they really did not want. In return, they asked for a guarantee of antitrust protection. “I answered,” Roosevelt wrote, “that while of course I could not advise them to take the action proposed, I felt it no public duty of mine to interpose any objection.” Congressman Stanley, intimidated as much by TR’s extraordinary record-keeping as by the forcefulness of his reading, failed to follow up with an interrogation that could have shown how manipulated the President had in fact been, at the hands of two adroit businessmen congenial to Elihu Root. (The New York Times, 6 Aug. 1911; TR, Letters, 5.830