FDR - Jean Edward Smith [75]
* As a young diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice served as best man at TR’s wedding to Edith Carow in 1886 and always had a warm spot in his heart for the president. “You must always remember that Roosevelt is about six,” he gently reminded a friend when TR was in the White House. Jusserand, for his part, had once skinny-dipped with TR in the Potomac near Chain Bridge wearing only his gloves. “We might meet ladies,” he informed the president when asked about his attire. Lodge and TR had maintained a mutual admiration society since the Republican National Convention in 1884, co-authored three books, and shared a view of America’s muscular role in the world. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 249–250, 357 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979); Theodore Rex 512–513 (New York: Random House, 2002).
* FDR received his pay from the Navy Department every two weeks. Initially, he took it in cash and put the money in his pocket. “I don’t know where it went, it just went. I couldn’t keep an account with myself. After about six months of this, certain complaints came back from home about paying the grocery bill. And so I began taking my salary by check and putting it in the bank and taking perhaps five dollars cash for the week and putting it in my pocket—trying to anyway.” Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park 66 (New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons, 1973).
* FDR’s son James reports a rare instance in which Roosevelt overruled Howe. It was 1932 in Chicago, en route to accepting the Democratic nomination. “I squeezed into the car which carried Father to the hotel. Louis Howe rode in the back seat next to Father, and immediately there began one of the most incongruous performances I have ever witnessed. Louis had strong objections to parts of Father’s proposed acceptance speech and he began arguing with him even as the car was rolling in from the airport. Pa listened with one ear—all the while smiling and waving at the wildly cheering crowds. Finally, Pa exploded: ‘Damnit, Louie, I’m the nominee.’ ” James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 225–226 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).
* Occasionally a request was beyond the pale, especially if it ran against Daniels’s puritanical instincts. In 1915 Congressman Lathrop Brown, FDR’s Harvard roommate, wrote to request that a young friend named Donald Clapham be allowed to enlist in the Navy. Clapham had gone astray with a young woman, had been convicted of stealing $38, and had received a suspended sentence. Howe replied to Brown on FDR’s behalf:
Now, about your young friend … who appears to be one of nature’s noblemen and to have nothing against him except that he has broken most of the Ten Commandments. I am willing to admit that if we bar from the Navy every gent who has become mixed up with a beautiful female we would have to put most of our ships out of commission and I am afraid we might lose an admiral or two, but in this case the young man was unfortunately caught with the goods. You have run against one of the secretary’s strongest antipathies. And while I know Mr. Roosevelt will speak to Mr. Daniels about the case again, I honestly do not think he has a chance on earth. Do you want one of those “we are doing everything on earth to get this done because of the affection for the Congressman” letters or not? Will send you a masterpiece that will convince your friends that Mr. Roosevelt is sitting on Mr. Daniels’ doorstep every night waiting for a chance to make one more plea when he comes home to supper, if that will ease the strain any.
Louis Howe to Lathrop Brown, September 21, 1915, FDRL.
* The “Roosevelt corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, announced by TR in his annual message to Congress on December 6, 1904, provided that “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in