Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [458]
18 “Mother found” TR to KR, 29 Jan. 1918 (TRC). TR unconsciously inverted Wilde’s original lines, from The Harlot’s House (1885): The dead are dancing with the dead, / The dust is whirling with the dust.
19 severe pain in the rectum The following narrative of TR’s near-death experience in Feb. 1917 is largely based on information collected by John J. Leary in notebook 7 (JJL), and on daily letters sent by ERD to her husband in France (TRC). Specific medical details come from the report of Dr. Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP). Quotations are cited separately.
20 An abscess had formed The abscess, inflaming his right buttock, appeared near the site of the one lanced by Dr. Cajazeira in Brazil. EKR to KR, 10 Feb. 1918 (KRP); Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
21 Around four Josephine Stricker, “Roosevelt a Hero to His Private Secretary,” New York Tribune, 5 Oct. 1919; Leary, notebook 7 (JJL). Apparently, TR felt he had to keep an engagement back at his club, where a gathering of artists and writers expected to have dinner with him. They were informed that the Colonel was “ill with jungle fever.” Baker, notebook XV.73, 5 Feb. 1917 (RSB).
22 His pain Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
23 The name of the James R. Lathrop, History and Description of the Roosevelt Hospital, New York City (New York, 1893). The hospital was endowed by James Henry Roosevelt (1800–1863).
24 “Father looks terribly” ERD to Richard Derby, 6 Feb. 1917 (ERDP). ERD inadvertently transposed the last two words.
25 Roosevelt’s only complaint Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
26 At 4:10 P.M. The details of this operation, in which four surgeons participated, are in the report of Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
27 “should have no” Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
28 On the contrary Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP). Duel told Julian Street that he had operated on four cases similar to TR’s, and all the patients had died. Memo, “In the Roosevelt Hospital, February 1918” (JS).
29 “He’s a peach” Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
30 He was told Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
31 The first he WHT to TR, 8 Feb. 1918 (TRP); TR to WHT, 12 Feb. 1918 (WHTP). In 1902, as governor of the Philippines, WHT reported his alimentary problems to the War Department in more detail than seemed necessary for national security. See Taft file #164, Elihu Root Papers, Library of Congress.
32 Edwin Arlington Robinson penned To TR, 5 Mar. 1919 (TRP); TR, Letters, 8.1298.
33 “You stand” TR to QR, 16 Feb. 1918 (TRC).
34 When, at last ERD to Richard Derby, 27 Feb. 1918 (ERDP); QR to Flora Whitney, 16 Feb. 1918 (FWM); QR to EBR, 20 Jan., 4 Feb. 1918 (TRJP) (“How can I write ‘interesting’ letters like Arch’s when, aside from my epistolary talents, he is at the Front & I’m embuscé?”); Edith Normant scrapbook (FWM).
35 in Gallic tastes Hamilton Coolidge to Flora Whitney, 18 Sept. 1918 (FWM). In another letter Ham spoke enviously of QR’s “complete mastery of the language.” (To “Mother,” 10 Mar. 1918 [TRC].) “[The Normants] say I must be half French.” QR to Flora Whitney, 13 Feb. 1918 (FWM).
36 YOUR LETTER Original, ca. 28 Feb. 1918, in TRC. There is no record of TR reprimanding ABR for demoralizing QR. In late Apr., the latter heard from Eleanor that ABR was saying “I had more brains than any of the rest of the family, but he didn’t think I’d get as far as the rest of the family.… I lacked push.” QR to Flora Whitney, ca. May 1918 (FWM).
37 “There is therefore” Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 474. On 8 Mar. 1918, Clemenceau reminded the French Chamber of Deputies “that we are at war, that it is necessary to wage war, to think only of war.… So let us wage war.” Strachan, The First World War, 259–60.
38 still unsteady John Leary compared TR’s gait at this time to that of “a landlubber on a pitching deck at sea—with his legs wide apart as though to brace himself.” Leary, notebook 8 (JJL).
39 Cove Neck exuded ERD to Richard Derby, 24 Feb. 1918 (ERDP); TR to QR, 5 Mar. 1918 (TRC).