The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [213]
What funnily varied lives we do lead, Cabot! We touch two or three little worlds, each profoundly ignorant of the others. Our literary friends have but vague knowledge of our actual political work; and a goodly number of our sporting and social acquaintances know us only as men of good family, one of whom rides to hounds, while the other hunts big game in the Rockies.…95
BENJAMIN HARRISON’S HANDSHAKE was, in the words of one recipient, “so like a wilted petunia”96 that only a Roosevelt could react warmly to it. The Civil Service Commissioner was noticeably the most ebullient guest at the White House reception on 1 January 1890. He crushed the petunia heartily, and insisted, at some length, that his Chief have a Happy New Year.97
Sincere or not, Roosevelt’s wishes came true. 1890 was indeed a year of honeyed contentment for the President and his Administration. Republicans were firmly in control of Congress, and thousands of party workers had swarmed, despite frantic net-waving by the Civil Service Commission, back into the federal beehive. The Union was richer by four new states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington), and two more would soon be admitted (Wyoming and Idaho). All six were firmly committed to the GOP. Political prospects could not be more favorable—at least through the November elections—and as for economic indicators, they were almost too good to be true. “Our country’s cornucopious bounty seemed to overflow,” sighed one Washington matron forty years later. “Never again shall any of us see such abundance and cheapness, such luxurious well-being, as prosperous Americans then enjoyed.”98
The new social season, beginning with the President’s reception, was correspondingly brilliant and lavish. Roosevelt was already popular enough (even among those Cabinet officers who were his sworn enemies politically) to take his pick of invitations. Delighted to have a young and attractive wife to squire around town, he dined out at least five times a week, going on to all the best suppers and balls. Browsing at random through names dropped in his weekly letters to Bamie, one finds those of the Vice President, the Secretaries of State, War, Navy, and Agriculture, ministers from Great Britain and Germany, a Supreme Court Justice, the Speaker of the House, numerous Senators and Congressmen, the president of the American Historical Association, and two “inoffensive” English peers. While crowding such persons into his own little dining room, Roosevelt was embarrassed at not being able to afford champagne,99 but nobody, so far as he could see, seemed to mind very much. He and Edith calculated their guest-lists “pretty carefully,” trying to maintain the right admixture of power, brains, and breeding.100
Gradually, as the season progressed, a group of favored friends began to form. Roosevelt was not so much the leader of this group as its most gregarious member, equally at ease with all.101 Towering—literally—above the others was Speaker Reed, all six feet two inches and three hundred pounds of him, a vast, blubbery whale of a man, poised on two flipper-like feet. Reed was the cleverest politician in Washington, and the most domineering: his gong-like voice, which filled every corner of the House with ease, could reduce even Roosevelt to silence. Indeed, there was little to be said when the big man had the floor, for he gave off such waves of authority that few men dared contradict him.102 That February he had already established himself as one of the great Speakers of the House, having just made his historic ruling against members who refused to stand up and be counted. (“The Chair is making a statement of fact that the gentleman is present. Does the gentleman deny it?”103) His wit was brilliant and usually cruel. “They never open their mouths,” he complained of two House colleagues, “without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” Asked to attend the funeral of a political enemy, he refused, “but that does