The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [230]
Financial worry continued to plague Roosevelt. The expense of maintaining two households, and moving his family back and forth twice a year, had caused an escalation of his debts. Ethel’s arrival during the summer had made it impossible to live any longer in the little house on Jefferson Place, so the Commissioner rented a larger establishment at 1215 Nineteenth Street for the new season.
Personal frustration always tended to increase Roosevelt’s natural belligerency, and that winter’s news of the mob killing of two American sailors in Valparaiso, Chile, made him rampant for war—as he had been in 1886, over the Mexican border incident. To his disgust, the United States merely asked Chile to apologize. An amused John Hay wrote to Henry Adams, “Teddy Roosevelt … goes about hissing through his clenched teeth that we are dishonest. For two nickels he would declare war himself, shut up the Civil Service Commission, and wage it sole.”81
On top of everything, there was the vexatious problem of what to do about Elliott. The insanity suit was getting nowhere, owing to disagreement between the certifying doctors and bickering among various relatives. Elliott had published a denial of his madness in the Paris edition of the Herald, and lodged a formal protest with the court in New York.82 He kept sending “unspeakably terrible” letters to Theodore, some of them penitent, others vituperative. “They are so sane,” his brother marveled, “and yet so absolutely lacking in moral sense.”83
In the last week of November, Roosevelt succumbed to an attack of severe bronchitis, and the doctor warned it might turn to pneumonia. He recovered briefly, only to collapse again in December. Edith ordered him to bed for eight days—his longest recorded confinement since childhood. Although he complained about being treated like “a corpulent valetudinarian,” it was plain that he was physically and emotionally spent.84
CHRISTMAS WITH “the Bunny chillum” restored him to health, and by New Year’s Day his metabolism was running at top speed again. About this time he made a lightning decision to cross the Atlantic and confront his brother with an out-of-court settlement.85 Instinct told him that Elliott, too, had slipped into despair recently, and that now or never was the time to shock him back to his senses. Elliott had always worshiped him—Oh, Father will you ever think me a ‘noble boy,’ you are right about Teedie he is one and no mistake.… 86—had always craved his authority, even when protesting he could do without it. They must square off again, just as they had in the days when Theodore was “Skinny” and Elliott was “Swelly.” 1st Round. Results: Skinny, lip swelled and bleeding. Swelly, sound in every limb if nose and lip can be classed as such … 87 But this time Skinny intended to be the victor.
President Harrison sympathetically granted his request for leave of absence, and he sailed from New York on 9 January 1892. There followed a period of anxious suspense for the family, broken by this triumphant letter from Paris, dated 21 January:
Won! Thank Heaven I came over …
I found Elliott absolutely changed. I was perfectly quiet, but absolutely unwavering and resolute with him: and he surrendered completely, and was utterly broken, submissive, and repentant. He signed the deed, for two-thirds of all his property (including the $60,000 trust); and agreed to the probation. I then instantly changed my whole manner, and treated him with the utmost love and tenderness. I told him we would do all we legitimately could to get him through his two years (or thereabouts) of probation; that our one object now would be to see him entirely restored to himself; and so to his wife and children. He today attempted no justification whatever; he acknowledged how grievously he had sinned, and failed in his duties; and said he would do all in his power to prove himself really reformed. He was in a mood that was terribly