The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [25]
WHILE MITTIE PLUNGED INTO an ecstatic, ten-day reunion with her exiled brothers, the younger Roosevelts “jumped and romped” on the chilly English seashore. Theodore Senior, however, had not brought them abroad to play, and began to expose them to the bewildering variety of English history and architecture. Trips were made to the Duke of Devonshire’s country seat at Chatsworth, and “Haden hall an old feudeul castle of the 11th century,” where Teedie admired “the Leathern jacket in which a lord received his death wound.” In early June they proceeded north via “furnace abby” and the Lake District to “Edinbourg.” Despite the inevitable Scottish rain Teedie overcame an attack of asthma and greatly enjoyed visits to Walter Scott’s mansion at Abbotsford, “the tweed (quite a decent brook),” and “Loch Lomend … where the poem ‘Lady of the lake’ was lade.” The pace of sight-seeing intensified as the Roosevelts swung south via York to Oxford, by which time the young diarist had developed a formidable headache. “I have a tendency to headache,” he noted in London five days later, apparently still suffering. He was “a little disappointed” at the range of fauna in the Zoological Gardens, but had fun playing in “hide park” and visiting “Westnubster abby.” The “rare and beautiful specimens” in the British Museum fascinated him, as did the “christal palace” with its “imitations of egyptian, roman, greek etc. marbles,” and the ancient Tower of London, where “I put my head on the block where so many had been beheaded.” During this stay a doctor examined him and pronounced his lungs perfect. Teedie was immediately stricken with asthma so violent he had to be rushed to Hastings for three days of sea air.73
On 13 July the Roosevelts sailed down the Thames, “a verry, verry small river or a large creek,” and crossed the English Channel to Antwerp. Teedie prided himself on being the last of his family to vomit, and “the first one that got on the continent.” From Antwerp they began a leisurely tour of the Netherlands and northern Germany. While traveling up the Rhine, Teedie began to wheeze and cough: a rainy visit to Strasbourg made him “verry sick” and he spent the next morning in bed. In Switzerland he suffered alternate attacks of gastroenteritis, toothache, and asthma, yet showed amazing bursts of energy in between. He climbed an eight-thousand-foot mountain at Chamonix, scorning mules, walked nineteen miles across “the tatenwar” (La Tête Noire), thirteen miles around Visp, twenty miles through the Grimsel Pass, and ascended alone the steep hill of Wallenstein. “It is 3—and 3 miles back, and I went and came in 1 hour.” Such incredible statistics might be dismissed as boyish exaggeration were it not for the fact that Theodore Senior frequently accompanied him and confirmed them. In his diaries, as in all his later writings, Teedie was a scrupulously accurate reporter.
Despite recurring moments when the boy was “verry verry home sick,” he continued to stare seriously at everything around him, sketching the plan of a grotto in Geneva, comparing live Swiss chamois with the carved ones at home in East Twentieth Street, exploring the “gloomey dungeons” of Chillon Castle, researching everything he saw in guidebooks and geographies. In lighter moments he clowned raucously with Elliott and Corinne, gorged himself on fresh berries and cream, and waged war upon “several cross chambermaids.”
On 9 September, Teedie and his father hiked over the crest of the Splügen Pass. The other Roosevelts followed in a carriage. “Soft balmy Italy of the poets,” Teedie noted sarcastically, “is cold dreary