Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [462]
CHAPTER 28: SIXTY
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 97.
2 When American forces A friend [“Bill”] to Flora Whitney, 10 Aug. 1918 (FWM). This description, reporting a personal visit to QR’s grave shortly after his burial, is cited as more primary than that given in Kermit Roosevelt, Quentin Roosevelt, 176.
3 The autopsy Official German press announcement, relayed to the Roosevelts from the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, quoted in ERD to Flora Whitney, “Thursday,” July 1918 (FWM). See also Kermit Roosevelt, Quentin Roosevelt, 172–74.
4 Woodrow Wilson’s telegram The New York Times, 21 July 1918. See also EBR to mother, 19 July 1918 (TJRP).
5 “Ex-Tsar of Russia” The official Russian wireless announcement quoted by The Times reported only Nicholas’s death on 16 July. His wife and son were said to be “in a place of security.” No mention was made of the four Romanov daughters.
6 That Sunday happened ERD to Richard Derby, 21 July 1918 (ERDP).
7 They returned home Ibid.; Robinson, My Brother TR, 346.
8 “Why not come” ERD to Richard Derby, 22 July 1918 (ERDP).
9 brown-shingled “cottages” Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., The Summer Cottages of Islesboro, 1890–1930 (Islesboro, Maine, 1989), 28 and passim; Belfast (Maine) Republican Journal, 1 Aug. 1918. Ethel’s summer home is now known as the Edward Adams Cottage. Other visual and atmospheric details in this section derive from a tour arranged for the author by the Islesboro Historical Society in Sept. 2006.
10 He and Edith arrived EKR to KR, 28 July 1918 (KRP); Belfast (Maine) Republican Journal, 1 Aug. 1918.
11 “In time” TR, Letters, 8.1360.
12 That was even ERD to KR, 28 July 1918 (KRP); TR to ABR, 21 July 1918 (ABRP); ERD to Richard Derby, 21 July 1918 (ERDP).
13 “I can see” TR to KR, 28 July 1918 (KRP).
14 Nevertheless, the place TR, Letters, 8.1358; Belfast (Maine) Republican Journal, 1 Aug. 1918; Flora Whitney to ERD, 28 Aug. 1918 (ERDP).
15 “It is no use” TR, Letters, 8.1360.
16 Even his poems QR, untitled poem about star-gazing, 1915, preserved in FWM.
17 explosive rather than propulsive “I do lack push, and I haven’t any idea why.” QR to Flora Whitney, ca. early May 1918 (FWM).
18 “black gloom” Hamilton Coolidge memorial to QR, unfinished ms., copied in ERD to Flora Whitney, 4 June 1919 (FWM); Coolidge to Flora, 16 July 1918 (FWM).
19 As Edith had Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 397; EKR to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 5 May 1912 (ARC).
20 Only in two As far as one can tell, QR’s affair with Flora was unconsummated. His letters to her are devoid of any hint of sexual intimacy. One (6 Oct. 1917 [FWM]) loftily invokes the virtue of coming to marriage “clean and pure.” As such, it reads like an outtake from his father’s college diary of 38 years before. See Morris, The Rise of TR, 63.
21 Test-piloting QR to ERD, 22 Dec. 1917 (ERDP); QR to Flora Whitney, 27 Jan. 1918 (FWM).
22 “The months that” QR to Flora Whitney, 21 Feb. 1918 (FWM).
23 “His back will” Quoted in ERD to KR, 25 Aug. 1918 (KRP).
24 “form succeeds form” TR, Works, 14.70.
25 ptomaine poisoning TR injudiciously ate lobster salad at an inland restaurant on 1 May, and the following evening, addressing a Liberty Loan rally in Boston, was overcome with violent abdominal pain and nausea. “He came near to having to leave the platform,” his host for the night recalled, “and only finished by one of those incredible acts of will, recalling the Hatha Yoga of India, by which he habitually … ignored physical pain and disability.” Before going to bed, TR dosed himself with one of his favorite medicines, ammonia. William Sturgis Bigelow to Hermann Hagedorn, 23 May 1919 (HH).
26 Look now QR, “The Greatest Gift,” ms., ca. 1918 (TRC).
27 “There is no” TR to Edith Wharton, 15 Aug. 1918 (EW); TR, Letters, 8.1403.
28 Only those are fit TR, “The Great Adventure,” Metropolitan magazine, Oct. 1918. The article was prepublished in newspapers on 17 Sept. 1918, and