The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [37]
Mittie was scornfully amused and unbelieving, but Fräulein Anna prided herself, in her old age, on being the first to predict Teedie’s future glory.
RECROSSING THE ATLANTIC in late October, Teedie turned fifteen. He was now, if not yet a man, then at least a youth of more than ordinary experience of the world. He had traveled exhaustively in Britain, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, visiting their great cities time and again and actually living in some for long periods. He had plumbed the Catacombs and climbed the Great Pyramid, slept in a monastery and toured a harem. He had hunted jackals on horseback, kissed the Pope’s hand, stared into a volcano, traced an ancient civilization to its source, and followed the wanderings of Jesus. He had been exposed to much of the world’s greatest art and architecture, become conversant in two foreign languages, and felt as much at home in Arab bazaars as at a German kaffeeklatsch, or on the shaven lawns of an English estate.
As is frequently the case with globetrotting children, the very variety of Teedie’s knowledge put him at something of a disadvantage when it came to the requirements of formal education. His ambition was to enter Harvard in the fall of 1876, which meant he would have to be ready, by the summer of 1875, to take a series of stiff entrance examinations. Strong as he might be in science, history, geography, and modern languages, he was weak in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. For the next one and a half years he would have to apply himself to these uncongenial subjects. Also he would have to complete the building of his body. He was still too frail to think of going to boarding school;51 to go to Harvard he must be able to compete, physically and mentally, with the finest young men in America. Theodore Senior was confident, on the record of Teedie’s past accomplishments, that this challenge would be met and overcome. He had already retained an eminent tutor, Arthur Hamilton Cutler, to take charge of the boy’s education.52
Nothing is known of the Roosevelts’ reunion on the docks of Lower Manhattan, save that it took place on 5 November 1873. We may assume that it was joyous, and that Teedie’s mood, as their carriage clattered up Broadway, was expectant.
INSTEAD OF TURNING EAST toward the familiar row of brown-stones on Twentieth Street, the horses continued north to the distant green of Central Park. Theodore Senior had spent the last five months supervising the construction of a mansion at 6 West Fifty-seventh Street, on the outer fringes of New York City. Now in the prime of life—he was forty-two, a millionaire twice over, a founder of the Metropolitan and Natural History museums, a patron of the New York Orthopedic Hospital and many charities—he wished to establish himself in appropriately grand surroundings. “It seems like another landmark reached on my life’s journey,” he wrote Mittie after his first night in the new house. “We have now probably one abiding-place for the rest of our days.”53
The mansion was designed by Russell Sturgis, New York’s most fashionable architect. Although its blocky facade conformed with the town-house style of the period, its interior furnishings were unusually rich, with heavy Persian rugs in every hall, sumptuous furniture, and much ornamental woodwork, including a hand-carved staircase. Knowing his wife’s intolerance of anything artificial, Theodore Senior had even gone to the length of ripping out a “beautifully finished” plaster ceiling and replacing it with real oak beams. There was a large museum in the garret for Teedie, and a fully equipped gymnasium on the top floor for all the children.54
Teedie lost no time in plunging into his new studies. He took an instant liking to Mr. Cutler, who in turn registered approval of “the alert, vigorous character of young Roosevelt’s mind.” At first Elliott and West Roosevelt, a cousin, joined in the lessons, but Teedie, working from six to eight hours a day, soon left them behind, and they dropped out the following summer. From then on he studied entirely