The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [257]
Clearly the message was getting through to the ranks. The only delinquent discovered on the whole East Side that night was Patrolman William E. Rath, who forsook his beat for an oyster saloon on upper Third Avenue. Here, according to the Excise Herald, the following dialogue took place:
ROOSEVELT RATH (entering) Why aren’t you on your post, officer? (deliberately swallowing oyster) What the——is it to you?
COUNTER MAN You gotta good nerve, comin’ in here and interferin’ with an officer.
ROOSEVELT I’m Commissioner Roosevelt.
RATH (reaching for vinegar bottle) Yes, you are. You’re Grover Cleveland and Mayor Strong all in a bunch, you are. Move on now, or—
COUNTER MAN (in a horrified whisper) Shut up, Bill, it’s His Nibs, sure, don’t you spot his glasses?
ROOSEVELT (authoritatively) Go to your post at once.
(EXIT patrolman, running)66
At 3:00 A.M. the night-walkers retired to Mike Lyon’s all-night restaurant on the Bowery for steaks, salad, and beer. Little notice was taken of them at first, until an alert reporter identified the two Commissioners, and word spread quickly from table to table. Even the chef came out to stare. Roosevelt was obliged to hold an impromptu press conference before he could proceed with his steak.67
Refreshed, he escorted his companions over to the West Side for a tour of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth precincts—the latter being the notorious Tenderloin district. Here things were much less satisfactory. No fewer than seven patrolmen were found to be off their posts, including three who had literally to be awakened to a sense of their duties. Roosevelt jotted down their names and numbers in his pocketbook, and, much later in the day, handed the list to Chief Conlin, saying, “This time there will be no mercy.” At the disciplinary hearing he himself appeared as complainant.68
These and subsequent nocturnal jaunts delighted the citizens of New York, who for years had been starved of entertaining municipal news. No such eccentric behavior by a public official had ever been recorded. The somnambulant Commissioner was nicknamed Haroun-el-Roosevelt, after the caliph who liked to stalk unrecognized through Baghdad after dark. Cartoons were published of policemen trembling before drugstore displays of false teeth and spectacles.69 One enterprising peddler showed up on Mulberry Street with a sackload of celluloid dentures, each equipped with a toy whistle and wire tooth-grippers. “This is the way Roosey whistles!” the peddler cried, clipping on a set and hissing convincingly at passersby. The dentures sold as fast as he could fish them out of the bag, and Mulberry Street began to resound with shrilling noises.70 Whether “Roosey” heard the racket in his second-floor office is unknown, but a Captain Groo quickly emerged from headquarters and arrested the peddler for doing unlicensed business.71
Roosevelt inspected the teeth later and allowed that they were “very pretty.”72 With his instinct for public relations, he must have known that the merchandising of one’s features, even those most regrettably prominent, is a sure sign of popular acceptance. He had won a wide reputation before, of course, but only in the sense that a few thousand editors, columnists, political observers, and sophisticated newspaper readers across the country knew who he was and what he stood for. But here, in his hand, was the first tactile proof that his “image” was working its way into the folk consciousness of America. These celluloid teeth grinned cheerful news, and he could not but delight in them.
The exact number of midnight patrols Roosevelt took in the summer of 1895 is a mystery. Certainly there were others. But for some reason, after the first two or three, he discouraged the press from