The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [29]
Dr. A. D. Rockwell found him “a bright, precocious boy … by no means robust,” and recommended “plenty of fresh air and exercise.”4 This advice seemed superfluous (for Teedie was, on his good days, almost frenziedly active out-of-doors) but it related in particular to the development of his chest. The lungs crammed into that narrow cavity were themselves crammed with asthma, and the mere act of breathing placed a strain on his heart. Theodore Senior pondered Rockwell’s diagnosis, and decided the time had come to present a major challenge to his son. Accordingly he sent for him.
“THEODORE,” THE BIG MAN SAID, eschewing boyish nicknames, “you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.”
Mittie, who was an eyewitness, reported that the boy’s reaction was the half-grin, half-snarl which later became world-famous. Jerking his head back, he replied through clenched teeth: “I’ll make my body.”5
The promise, once made, was adhered to with bulldog tenacity. Teedie began to make daily visits to Wood’s Gymnasium, where he swung chest-weights with such energy that his mother wondered aloud “how many horse-power he was expending.” At home, Theodore Senior fitted out the second-floor piazza with an arsenal of athletic equipment, and encouraged Teedie to spend all his spare time out there exercising.6
The piazza was a pleasant place for a city boy to work out. It faced south across the enormous Goelet garden, whence floated a constant supply of plant-purified air. Since the row of houses opposite, on the far side of Nineteenth Street, was low, sunshine poured down all day, all year round. Here, to the caw of peacocks and magpies, and the occasional moo of a cow, Teedie pushed and pulled and stretched and swung, working himself into the rhythmic trance of the true body-builder. “For many years,” wrote Corinne afterward, “one of my most vivid recollections is seeing him between horizontal bars, widening his chest by regular, monotonous motion—drudgery indeed.”7
Drudgery it may have seemed to the little girl, but to a boy of such hyperactive temperament as Teedie, the work was both a release and a pleasure. He exercised throughout the winter and spring of 1870–71. Fiber by fiber, his muscles tautened, while the skinny chest expanded by degrees perceptible only to himself. But the overall results were dramatic.8 There is not a single mention of illness in his diary throughout August of 1871—his longest spell of health in years.
Glorying in his newfound strength, he plunges into the depths of icy rapids, and clambers to the heights of seven mountains (one of them twice on the same day). Along with this physical exuberance, he develops a more studious interest in nature. Observed species are now identified by their full zoological names. Paddling across Lake Regis, Teedie discovers flocks of Aythya americana and Colymbus torquatus. A beryle alcyon dives for fish and a Putorious vison swims across his path, while coveys of Orytx virginianus and Bonasa umbellus rise from the banks on either side. Riding behind a stagecoach to Au Sable Forks, he jumps off whenever he sees “a particularly beautiful lichen or moss,” and collects several hundred specimens for preservation in the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.9
TEEDIE’S THIRTEENTH WINTER and spring were much the same as his twelfth, except that the weights on the chest machine were heavier and his hours on the piazza longer. Meanwhile he continued to read voraciously. A friend of the period remembered him as “the most studious little brute I ever knew in my life.”10 Private tutors