The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [226]
SOMETIME THAT SPRING he was overjoyed to receive a “temperate, natural, truthful” letter from his brother, whom Bamie had at last told about Katy Mann. It amounted to a total rejection of the girl’s story.45 Naively reassured, Theodore wondered if he should call her bluff. “It is a ticklish business,” he told Bamie. “I hate the idea of [a] public scandal; and yet I never believe in yielding a hair’s breadth to a case of simple blackmail.”46
But Katy Mann—who had given birth to a son—was not in the least deterred from pressing her suit. She claimed that Elliott had given her a locket and some compromising letters, which she would be happy to produce in court. Other servants, moreover, were willing to testify that he had been infatuated with her, and that his voice had been heard in her room. “Of course she is lying,” Theodore wrote uneasily.47
He was still wondering how to proceed when the reports from Europe took on a sudden, alarming turn. Elliott had quit the sanitarium in Graz on some wild impulse, and had dragged Anna, Bamie, and the children to Paris. There he had taken on an American mistress, a Mrs. Evans, begun to drink again, and was occasionally so violent as to frighten Anna into hysterics.48 Theodore chafed with frustration. Were it not for the fact that his own wife was heavily pregnant, he would have taken the next ship to Paris. He insisted, in a brutally decisive letter dated 7 June, that Elliott must be left to drink himself to death, if necessary, the moment Anna’s confinement was over.
Anna must be made to understand that it is both maudlin and criminal—I am choosing my words with scientific exactness—to continue living with Elliott … Do everything to persuade her to come home at once, unless Elliott will put himself in an asylum for a term of years, or unless, better still, he will come too. Once here I’ll guarantee to see that he is shut up …
Make up your mind to one dreadful scene. Use this letter if you like. Tell him that he is either responsible or irresponsible. If responsible then he must go where he can be cured; if irresponsible he is simply a selfish brutal and vicious criminal, and Anna ought not to stay with him an hour.
Do not care an atom for his threats of going off alone. Let him go … What happens to him is of purely minor importance now; and the chance of public scandal must not be weighed for a moment against the welfare, the life, of Anna and the children …
If he can’t be shut up, and will neither go of his own accord, nor let Anna depart of his free will, then make your plans and go off some day in his absence. If you need me telegraph me, and I (or Douglas [Robinson] if it is impossible for me to go on account of Edith) will come at once. But remember, I come on one condition. I come to settle the thing once and for all … You can tell him that Anna has a perfect right to a divorce; she or you or I have but to express belief in the Katy Mann story and no jury in the country would refuse a divorce.
Notwithstanding his threat to uphold Katy Mann in court, Theodore still wanted to believe that the girl was lying.49 As a gentleman he had to accept his brother’s denial until it was proved false. He therefore ordered his representatives “to tell her to go on with her law suit … she will get nothing from us.” Senior members of the family were alerted to the likelihood of “some pretty ugly matters” surfacing in the press.50
At this