Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [55]
He came out of the house now, as Roosevelt arrived. “Ah, Theodore, it is good to see you.”
“How are you, Mr. President? This is simply bully.”
“See here now, drop the ‘Mr. President.’ ”
“Not at all. You must be Mr. President and I am Theodore. It must be that way.”
They affected male exuberance, with shoulder punches reminiscent of their old friendship. But the strain between them was palpable. Taft led the way to a group of wicker chairs on the breezy side of the porch. Roosevelt said that he “needed rather than wanted” a Scotch and soda. Nobody else drank. Lodge and Butt puffed cigars.
To get a dialogue going, Taft raised the subject of Hughes’s primary bill. He confirmed that he would do all he could to help its passage. Roosevelt said that as a citizen of New York, he supported it too. This lame exchange went nowhere, and a telephone message from Lloyd Griscom gave them no encouragement. The chairman advised that every member of his committee looked on the fight as “hopeless.”
Taft and Roosevelt were clearly cast down. The President blustered that he would continue to issue appeals for votes.
“I wish they had both remained out of it,” Lodge muttered to Butt.
The arrival on the porch of Mrs. Taft, still half mute from her stroke, put a further damp on the proceedings. Roosevelt was sensitive enough not to force her into conversation. He rambled politely until she relaxed.
“Now, Mr. President,” Taft said, “tell me about cabbages and kings.”
Roosevelt was willing to oblige, but protested being called by his old title.
“The force of habit is very strong in me,” Taft said, with the simplicity that was a large part of his charm. “I can never think of you save as ‘Mr. President.’ ”
“TAFT LED THE WAY TO A GROUP OF WICKER CHAIRS ON THE BREEZY SIDE OF THE PORCH.”
The summer White House in Beverly, Massachusetts. (photo credit i4.4)
For an hour, Roosevelt told royal stories, and was funny enough about M. Pichon and “the poor little Persian” to get everyone laughing.
When he got up to go, Lodge informed him that there were about two hundred newsmen and photographers waiting outside the gates. Roosevelt asked Taft for permission to say that their visit had been personal, and delightful. “Which is true as far as I am concerned.”
“And more than true as far as I am concerned,” Taft answered. “This has taken me back to some of those dear old afternoons when I was Will and you were Mr. President.”
They parted with tacit acknowledgment that whatever remained of their friendship, “dearness” was no longer an option.
BEFORE LEAVING BOSTON for New York, Roosevelt paid a visit to Corey Hospital in Brookline, where Justice William Henry Moody lay bent and emaciated with rheumatoid arthritis. Only fifty-six, Moody was the last, and to some minds the most distinguished of his three appointments to the Supreme Court. Yet after four short terms, the justice had been felled by a streptococcal storm that left him unable to walk and deeply depressed.
It was a poignant reunion for both, and Roosevelt was mute about it afterward. He had looked to Moody to serve for many years as his representative on the bench, whenever cases arose that tested the constitutionality of his presidential policies. Back when nobody quite knew what progressive meant, Moody had been his most forward-looking cabinet officer, first as secretary of the navy, then as a resolutely antitrust attorney general—along with Root and Taft, one of the administration’s famous “Three Musketeers.”
Now that happy trio was disbanded. Aramis was bedridden for life, Athos intellectually stifled in the Senate, and Porthos no longer the jovial giant. Bereft of their company, whither D’Artagnan?
* Niece of Theodore Roosevelt.
* From now on, unqualified references to “Eleanor” should be understood to refer to Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., not her later more famous namesake.
CHAPTER 5
The New Nationalism
He’ll break out some day like a keg of ale
With too much independent frenzy in it.
ROOSEVELT RETURNED