The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [392]
37. Eve. Star, Jan. 1, 1907; Fenwick, passim; Rand McNally Pictorial Guide to Washington, 1909.
38. Ib.; Willets, Gilson, Inside History of the White House (Christian Herald, 1908) 49, 195–202; Harper’s Weekly, July 14, 1906.
39. Storer, Maria Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt the Child (privately printed, 1921) 27. See Sinclair, David F., “Monarchical Manners in the White House” in Harper’s Weekly, June 13, 1908.
40. Ib.; Rob.230–3; But.53, 160, 246.
41. Lewis, William D., The Life of Theodore Roosevelt (John C. Winston, 1919) 181; Hale, A Week, 52; Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 29, 1906; Edel, Leon, Henry James: The Master (London, 1972) 275–6.
42. TR to William Roscoe Thayer (TRB mss.).
43. Bea.7; TRB mss.
44. Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 29, 1906; “How the President is Protected from Cranks,” in Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1907.
45. Eve. Star, Jan. 1, 1907; Willets, Inside History, 184; TR to Kermit Roosevelt, Oct. 2, 1903.
46. Pri.475, Wag.61; TRB memo.
47. Mor.3.392; see also “K” in The American Magazine, LXV.6. Apr. 1908.
48. Qu. Wag. 224. See also “Cleveland’s Opinions of Men” in McLure’s, XXXII, Apr. 1909: “… the most ambitious man and the most consummate politician I have ever seen.”
49. Hale, A Week, 56; “K” (pseudonym), “The Powers of a Strenuous President,” The American Magazine, April 1908; James to Edith Wharton, qu. Edel, James, 276.
50. W. Post, Jan. 2, 1907; un. clip in Fenwick.
51. Hale, A Week, 16, 44, 57. For an example of the sort of thing TR found funny, see the account by a White House secretary (N.Y. Sun, Jan. 27, 1927) of a letter sent to the President by the former heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan. Requesting leniency for an erring nephew in the U.S. military, Sullivan wrote apologetically, The boy was always a little wild, he even took to music once. At this, wrote the secretary, “Roosevelt let out a whoop of laughter and almost had a choking spell. He … had to leave his chair and go to the window for air. I never saw a man so convulsed with laughter.”
52. Cha.201; Davenport in Phil. Public Ledger, n.d., TRB clip.
53. Jusserand, What Me Befell, 330.
54. Ib.; also in Memorial Lecture, Oct. 27, 1919, TRB mss. For other anecdotes of TR’s Rock Creek Park expeditions, see, e.g., Miles, Nelson M., “Ambassadors at the Court of Theodore Roosevelt,” Mississippi Historical Review, Sept. 1955; But.119–23, 229.
55. Amos, James, Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to His Valet (John Day, 1927) 39–41.
56. Egan, Maurice, Recollections of a Happy Life (NY, 1924) 219–220; Loo.152. Others who thought the President insane: Henry Adams (Ada.587) and Marse Henry Watterson (Pri.371).
57. N.Y. Tribune, Jan. 2, 1907; Gwy.1.437.
58. Amos, Valet, 11; Loo.115; Wag. 173.
59. Trib., Jan. 2, 1907.
60. Bea.5, 13; NYS Legislature, A Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt (Feb. 21, 1919) 22; Wag.112. See also TR’s Annual Message, Dec. 5, 1906: “Good manners should be an international no less than an individual attribute … we must act uprightly to all men.”
61. Mrs. Harper Sibley in TRB mss. (Aug. 10, 1955, interview); Wag.116, 154; But.160.
62. Wag.153, 4; Mor.3.392; Rii.9.
63. Fenwick, 1907; Willets, Inside History, 198; Eve. Star, Jan. 1, 1907; N.Y. Her., Jan. 2.
64. Bis.1.338.
65. Hale, A Week, 116.
66. The only authoritative measurement of TR’s height (5′9″) is that given in his passport application, 1881 (National Archive). Six years earlier, at age seventeen, he measured himself at 5′8” (see Ch. 2).
67. Physical description from (select list) ib.; Whi.297, also William Allen White, Masks in a Pageant (Macmillan, 1928), 284–5; N.Y. World, May 17, 1895; But. 18 and Amos, Valet, 101 (the former estimates TR’s shoe size as “4 or 5”); Loo.15; Mike Donovan, Phys. Ed. Director, N.Y. Athletic Club, qu. Colman, Gossip, 287–8; pors.
68. Willey, Day Allen, “When You Meet the President,” The Independent, June 30, 1904; Brooks, Sidney, in The Reader, Jan. 12, 1907; Hale, A Week, 15–16; N.Y. World, May 17, 1895; Wag.8.
69. Hale, A Week, 15.
70.