The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [228]
His mood was not improved by an awkward business meeting with President Harrison on 1 July. “Throughout the interview he was as disagreeable and suspicious of manner as well might be,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge. “He is a genial little runt, isn’t he?”62 Actually the meeting had positive results. Harrison approved some new Civil Service rules governing promotions which Roosevelt had been pressing as part of his campaign to root out favoritism in government departments; but the coolness between the two men was such that even their treaties seemed like truces.
ROOSEVELT WAS NOW FREE to leave Washington for the summer, there being little work in his hot, musty office that he could not do at Sagamore Hill. Edith and the children had long since preceded him north, and he missed them so painfully he would look over his shoulder for them on walks through Rock Creek Park. Pausing only to stuff a suitcase with fireworks, he caught the Limited to New York on Friday, 3 July,63 arriving home in time for the holiday.
It was not a very festive weekend. On Sunday he was obliged to cross the Sound for the funeral of his cousin Alfred—killed horribly under the wheels of a train64—and he returned to news that Katy Mann had finally named her price: $10,000. This, Theodore wrote Bamie, was “so huge a sum” that the hoped-for compromise seemed unlikely. The scandal would break any day now, he feared. It was impossible to deny Elliott’s culpability: an “expert in likenesses” had seen the baby, and its features were unmistakably Rooseveltian.65
Telegrams from Europe crossed his letter to report that Elliott had been inveigled into an inebriate asylum outside Paris. He was now safely under lock and key, and Bamie had persuaded Anna to return to the States without him.66
About this time the figure of Katy Mann begins mysteriously to fade from history. The last specific reference to her in Theodore’s correspondence is a remark dated 21 July: “Frank Weeks [Elliott’s lawyer] advises me that I have no power whatever to compromise in the Katy Mann affair. I suppose it will all be out soon.” But the scandal never broke. Evidently the girl got her money, although how much, and when, and who paid it, is unknown.67
A SCANDAL OF ANOTHER SORT began to loom on 4 August, when Roosevelt sent advance copies of his Baltimore report to the White House and Post Office Department. Official reaction to the document was best symbolized by Assistant Postmaster General Clarkson, who took one look at it and placed it under lock and key.68 An abridged form of the report was released for publication on 16 August, and instantly became front-page news.69 Fortunately both President Harrison and Postmaster General Wanamaker were on vacation, and would not return until early September, by which time Roosevelt planned to be two thousand miles west in the Rockies.70 The inevitable confrontation between them would thus be delayed until October at least.
Try as he might, Roosevelt could not keep his name out of current headlines. On 17 August, the day after his Baltimore report was broadcast to the nation, the New York Sun splashed the following sensational story:
ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT INSANE
His Brother Theodore Applies for a Writ in Lunacy
A Commission [has been] appointed by Justice O’Brien of the Supreme Court to enquire into the mental condition of Elliott Roosevelt, with a view to having a committee appointed to care for his person and for his estate. The application was made by his brother, United States Civil Service Commissioner and ex-Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt, with the approval of Elliott Roosevelt’s wife, Anna Hall Roosevelt.…
Theodore Roosevelt avers in the papers in the case that the mental faculties of his brother have been failing him for