The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [393]
71. Wis.68. The greatest photograph ever taken of TR, by Edward Steichen in 1908, captures all of these subtleties. See A Life in Photography: Edward Steichen (Doubleday, 1963) pl.56.
72. White, Masks, 284; Julian Street in TRB mss.; Smith, Ira, Dear Mr. President: The Story of Fifty Years in the White House Mail Room (NY, 1949) 50.
73. Wag.9–10; Smith, Dear Mr. President, 64; Hale, A Week, 26–41; see Chs. 4 and 6 for references to this impediment.
74. N.Y. World, May 17, 1895; HUN.5.
75. But.7; Outlook, Dec. 21, 1895; Chicago Times-Herald, July 22, 1895.
76. Loo.17; Street, Julian, The Most Interesting American, 10; Ada. 419.
77. John J. Milholland, int. FRE. (TRB).
78. Loo.21.
79. Wells, H.G., Experiment in Autobiography (Macmillan, 1934) 648–9.
80. Wells in Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 6, 1906.
81. Yet see Wag. 81 ff. for evidence that TR was on the contrary sensitive to, and not without taste in, the fine arts. Samuel Eliot Morison, in The Oxford History of the American People (NY, 1965), praises TR’s beautification of Washington during his administrations, his commissioning of Augustus St.-Gaudens to design a new gold coinage, and his sponsorship of the classically elegant postage stamps of 1908 (816). See also the illustrated article “Roosevelt and our Coin Designs,” in Century, Apr. 1920, for a full account of TR’s efforts to give the United States “one coinage at least which shall be as good as that of the Ancient Greeks.” The resultant $10 and $20 gold pieces are still regarded as the most beautiful ever produced by the American mint. A $20 coin recently sold for $3,600 at a numismatics auction (N.Y.T., 7.24.77).
82. Wells, Autobiography, 649.
83. Howard of Penrith, Lord Esmé, Theatre of Life (London, 1936) 2.110.
84. Wag.35; Curtis, Natalie, “Mr. Roosevelt and Indian Music,” Outlook, CXXI.399–400 and CXX-III.87 ff. (1919); C. Hart Merriam, qu. Sul.3.157; Cut. passim; Rob.232.
85. Wag.7. For a modern assessment of TR’s mind, see Blum, John M., in Michigan Quarterly Review, 1959: “He was, to begin with, perhaps the most learned of all modern residents of the White House … He was an intellectual, and he was proud of it.”
86. Wag.7.
87. But. 87; Wag. 8; Amos, Valet, 62–3; Booth Tarkington at TR Medal Award ceremony, 1942, TRB mss.
88. HUN.64; Wag.120; Washburn, Charles G., Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of his Career (Houghton Mifflin, 1916) 205; Wag.119; Kipling, Rudyard, Something of Myself (London, 1936) 134; TR to Brander Matthews, Dec. 9, 1894.
89. Storer, Child, 8; Wis.94; Booth Tarkington (see note 91).
90. Robert E. Livingstone int. FRE. (TRB).
91. Hale, A Week, 115–6; see also Wis.47.
92. Straus qu. Wag.107.
93. N.Y. Trib., Jan. 1, 1907; W. Post, Jan. 2; Mrs. Longworth, int. Jan. 2, 1956, TRB: “He loved cologne. He’d give us all a sniff of his handkerchief, which was practically saturated with cologne, when he met us in the hall.” Apparently TR also liked verbena leaves, “which he would crumple and smell with exquisite pleasure” whenever he found them in fingerbowls. (Ib.)
94. Hale, A Week, 16; Donovan, qu. Edna M. Colman, White House Gossip: From Johnson to Coolidge (Doubleday, 1927), 287–8: “A plumbline could be dropped from the back of his head to his waist”; Eve. Star, Jan. 2, 1906; HUN.70 (“He like to have crushed my hand”) and Clark, Chester M., in St. Nicholas, Jan. 1908 (“a cordial vise”); un. clip, Nov. 13, 1898, in TRB.
95. Wis.110; Hale, A Week, 48, 111; Thwing, Eugene, The Life and Meaning of Theodore Roosevelt (NY, 1919) 129, 130.
96. Robert E. Livingstone int. FRE.; Burroughs, John, in The Life and Letters, ed. Clara Barrus (Russell & Russell, 1968) 2.146: “He is a sort of electric bombshell, if there can be such a thing.” Lewis, E. B., Edith Wharton (Harper & Row, 1975) 113, and Mrs. Wharton qu. Wag.109.
97. Amy Belle (Cheney) Clinton to Hermann Hagedorn, Jan. 27, 1949 (TRB).
98. Henry Watterson, un. clip, TRB mss.
99. Spooner qu. Wag. 109; White House appointments diary, TRP; Edel, James, 275.
100. Gar.86–7; Muir qu. Wag.109; Rii.131.
101. Phil.