The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [193]
Inside, Theodore and Edith unhooked shutters, pulled dust-sheets off beds and sofas, and distributed the latest batch of hunting-trophies from Dakota (already the walls were forested with antlers, and snarling bear-jaws caught the unwary foot). They crammed some very big pieces of oak furniture into the very small dining room, and Edith, insisting that at least one corner of the house should be allowed to look feminine, arranged some rather more delicate furniture in the west parlor.52
Theodore’s own retreat, which none could visit without his permission,53 was a pleasantly cluttered room on the top floor, full of guns and sporting books and photographs of his ranches. There was a desk rammed against a blind wall, so that when he sat down to work he would not be distracted by the sight of Long Island Sound brimming blue in the window. Here, sometime early in June, he dipped a steel pen into an inkwell and began to write his fourth book. By the time the nib needed recharging he was already 135 years back in the past, in the New York City of his forebears—
a thriving little trading town, whose people in summer suffered much from the mosquitoes that came back with the cows when they were driven home at nightfall for milking; while from the locusts and water-beeches that lined the pleasant, quiet streets, the tree-frogs sang so shrilly through the long, hot evenings that a man in speaking could hardly make himself heard.54
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS, WHICH Roosevelt worked on steadily throughout the summer of 1887, was a companion biography to his Thomas Hart Benton in the American Statesmen series. The critical success of the earlier book had prompted Houghton Mifflin to commission another study of a neglected historical figure. Only one life of Morris had hitherto been published—a ponderous tome now half a century out of date. It was time, the editors felt, for their breezy young author to blow the dust off Morris’s letters and diaries, and subject the great New Yorker to a fresh scrutiny.55
With his powdered wig and peg-leg, his coruscating wit and picaresque adventures, Morris (1752–1816) was a biographer’s dream. There was about him, Roosevelt remarked, “that ‘touch of the purple’ which is always so strongly attractive.”56 Well-born, well-bred, charming, literate, and widely traveled, he had been a strong believer in centralized government, an aggressive moralist, and a passionate patriot. All these characteristics were shared, to varying degrees, by Roosevelt himself. Yet, as with Benton, there were enough antipathetic elements to keep the portrait objective.
Unfortunately a major obstacle loomed early in Roosevelt’s research. “The Morrises won’t let me see the old gentleman’s papers at any price,” he complained to Cabot Lodge. “I am in rather a quandary.”57 Being in no position to pay back his advance, he resolved to make what he could of public documents. Fortunately these were copious,58 and the complete manuscript was ready for the printer by 4 September.59
AS HISTORY, the first five chapters of Gouverneur Morris are adequate but unrewarding; as biography they are tedious. Roosevelt’s lack of family material forces him to weave the thread of Morris’s early life (1752–86) into a general tapestry of the Revolutionary period. The resultant cloth is drab, for he seems determined, as in The Naval War of 1812, to avoid any hint of romantic color. Only a couple of pages devoted to Morris as the founder of the national coinage are worth reading for their lucid treatment of a complex subject.60 Matters become more interesting in chapter 6, “The Formation of the National Constitution.” Now the author has access to official transcripts, and can ponder the actual speeches of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, and the two Morrises (Gouverneur and Robert). “Rarely in the world’s history,” he concludes, “has there been a deliberative body which contained so many remarkable