The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [174]
Roosevelt told Packard that he was thinking of accepting a minor appointment which had been offered him in New York—the presidency of the Board of Health. Henry Cabot Lodge thought the job infra dig, but he was not so sure: he felt he could do his best work “in a public and political way.”
The young editor’s reaction was immediate. “Then you will become President of the United States.”75
Roosevelt did not seem in the least surprised by this remark. Indeed, Packard got the impression that he had already thought the matter over and come to the same conclusion. “If your prophecy comes true,” he said at last, “I will do my part to make a good one.”76
THREE DAYS LATER, Roosevelt left unexpectedly for New York. If he hoped to find the Board of Health job open to him, he was disappointed: the incumbent had simply refused to resign, despite an indictment for official corruption.77 Clearly little had changed for the better in municipal politics.
He spent three weeks checking the manuscript of Benton in the Astor Library, then—yet again—kissed “cunning little yellow headed Baby Lee” good-bye, and headed back to the Badlands in a mood of restless melancholy.78 It was ironic that at this time of resurgent political ambition he could see “nothing whatever ahead.”79 The city of his birth, his child, his home, his future wife, all lay behind him, pulling his thoughts back East, even as the train hauled him West. Much as he loved Dakota, he knew now that his destiny lay elsewhere: it must have been difficult to escape the feeling that he was traveling in altogether the wrong direction.
Arriving at Medora on 5 August, he found letters from Edith confirming a December wedding in London.80 From now on he could only count the days that separated him from her.
THE CRIES OF A NEWBORN BABY greeted Roosevelt at Elkhorn next day. Mrs. Sewall had just presented her husband with a son. Mrs. Dow, not to be outdone, produced a son of her own less than a week later.81 “The population of my ranch,” Roosevelt informed Bamie, “is increasing in a rather alarming manner.”82 The squalling of these two new arrivals, not to mention the jam-smeared face of little Kitty Sewall, and Elkhorn’s growing air of alien domesticity, seemed to emphasize his bachelor status and growing sense of misplacement. It was as if the house were no longer his own, and he merely the guest of his social inferiors.
Still restless, he hurried off to Mandan, where he witnessed the conviction and sentencing to three years in prison of Redhead Finnegan and the half-breed Burnsted. He withdrew his charge against Pfaffenbach, saying “he did not have enough sense to do anything good or bad.” The old man expressed fervent gratitude, and Roosevelt said that was the first time he had ever been thanked for calling somebody a fool.83
Notwithstanding his legal triumph, Roosevelt seemed to be under considerable nervous strain during the several days he spent in Mandan. A reporter from the Bismarck Tribune remarked on his “facial contortions and rapid succession of squints and gestures.”84 His hosts were surprised to hear him pacing the floor of his room and groaning over and over again, “I have no constancy! I have no constancy!”85 Evidently Edith’s recent letter had evoked once again the guilty memory of Alice Lee.
About this time Roosevelt heard reports of a border clash with Mexico which, in his fertile imagination, seemed likely to lead to major hostilities.86 Instantly he conceived the idea of raising “an entire regiment of cowboys,” and wrote to Secretary of War William C. Endicott notifying him that he was “at the service of the government.” From Mandan he beseeched Lodge: “Will you tell me at once if war becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behind hand that I might not hear the news for a week … as my chance of doing anything in the future worth doing seems to grow continually smaller I intend to grasp at every opportunity that turns up.” But Secretary Endicott decided to settle the dispute diplomatically, to