The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [222]
Were it not for Anna’s present delicate condition (she was a frail person at the best of times), Theodore would no doubt have ordered Bamie to fetch her home at once. There was nothing to do but let Bamie go over as planned and privately confront Elliott with the news. If nothing else, it might sober him up long enough to commit himself to a sanitarium for treatment. Such an act of voluntary self-incarceration, wrote Theodore, “will serve to explain and atone for what cannot otherwise ever be explained.” As souls pass through Purgatory in order to wash away sin, so, presumably, could a repentant Elliott redeem his fit of “insanity.”11 In the meantime Theodore and the lawyers would await the birth of Katy Mann’s baby; should any Roosevelt blood be identifiable in it, they would pay her whatever hush-money was necessary.12
Bamie sailed for Europe in early February 1891. While she was still on the high seas, Theodore received an affectionate and unsuspecting letter from Elliott. Despite his newfound contempt for “the dear old beloved brother,” memories of their happy closeness in the past crowded in on him, and he sank into the deepest gloom. “It is horrible, awful; it is like a brooding nightmare. If it was mere death one could stand it; it is the shame that is so fearful.”13 Much of the “shame,” of course, was his own: he felt acute distaste for the role he had inherited as go-between in a shabby paternity suit. If it ever got out that the Civil Service Commissioner was involved in blackmail payments, Frank Hatton would annihilate him. But he saw no other way of protecting his family from a catastrophic scandal.
At the end of February, Bamie wrote to say that Elliott, surprisingly, had already placed himself in the Marien Grund Sanctuary at Graz. He was in a highly excitable state, bursting into tears at the slightest hint of disapproval, so she would wait until he was stronger before telling him about Katy Mann. The incarceration was to last three months. Although Theodore was pessimistic about the effects of so short a stay in so luxurious a retreat, he was relieved for Anna’s sake—“Elliott is purely secondary.”14 With neither of his brother’s babies due until the spring,15 he could devote his full attention to Civil Service matters.
IT HAPPENED THAT Roosevelt’s family troubles during the early part of 1891 coincided with a period of renewed political difficulties. At times he felt he was “battling with everybody … the little gray man in the White House looking on with cold and hesitating disapproval.”16 The struggle was provoked by his efforts to extend the classification of the Civil Service to all offices in the Indian Bureau. Rioting by Sioux in South Dakota reservations, where maladministration and corruption were rife, had forced him to rethink his old paternal attitudes to the red man, and he now tried to persuade Administration officials that Indians should take part wherever possible in agency affairs. “I should take the civilized members of the different tribes and put them to work in instructing their fellows in farming, blacksmithing and the like, and should extend the present system of paid Indian judges and police.” But the officials were apathetic, and President Harrison flatly refused to admit that conditions on the reservations were bad.17
February saw the usual appropriations crisis in Congress. Republican spoilsmen lobbied to such good effect that for two days the Civil Service Commission was in danger of losing its entire operating budget. Speaker Reed had to use his massive personal influence before the funds were voted on 14 February.18
With the departure of Congress in early