The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [400]
5. Mor.36.
6. TR to Harry Minot, July 5, 1880, qu. Put.193–4.
7. Rose Lee to Carleton Putnam, qu. Put.166; Pri.42–3; Rob.63.
8. TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880.
9. Mor.36.
10. See Put.178.
11. TR to John Roosevelt, Feb. 25, 1880; Put.173.
12. TR.Pri.Di. Dec. 11, 1879.
13. Ib., Dec. 21, 1878.
14. Mor.34.
15. Wis.12.
16. Cut. 23–25; TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 18, 1879.
17. Laughlin, J. Laurence, “Roosevelt at Harvard,” Review of Reviews, LXX (1924) 397. Robert Bacon was U.S. Secretary of State, Jan. 27-Mar. 5, 1909.
18. Thayer, William Roscoe, TR: An Intimate Biography (Houghton Mifflin, 1919) 20. TR’s classmate Frederick Almy recalls TR leading a deputation of students to Harvard President Charles W. Eliot and stammering for some time in the great man’s presence. Eventually he forced it out: “Mr. Eliot, I am President Roosevelt.” PRI.n. Washburn, Charles G., TR: The Logic of His Career (Houghton Mifflin, 1916) says that “at the Pudding we often incited a discussion for the purpose of rousing ‘Teddy.’ In his excitement he would sometimes lose altogether the power of articulation, much to our delight. He then had almost a defect in his speech which made his utterance deliberate and even halting.” (p.5) References to this impediment are frequent in TR’s late teens and early twenties, non-existent thereafter.
19. Put.177.
20. Ib.
21. Put.178. These two remarks, and the fact that TR abandoned his habit of taking field-notes in 1879, suggest that Alice Lee was instrumental in changing TR’s vocation to something other than natural history. While admittedly slender, the speculation is borne out by anecdotes indicating that Alice’s own interest in the world of animals was minimal. On one occasion she innocently asked Theodore “who had shaved the lions” at a zoo, “being otherwise unable to account for their manes.” (Mor.48) John Gable suggests that economic scruples may have caused TR to forego an academic career—but he was after all worth $8,000 p.a. and Alice came of an equally wealthy family.
22. TR.Pri.Di. Jan. 11, 31, 1879; Mor.38.
23. Pors. in TRC; Mor.38. TR’s record of expenditures for the years 1877–79 show that dress was always the major item of his budget, exceeding what he spent on board, lodging, education, travel, and sport. Whereas the average Harvard student’s total expenditures in the late 1870s was $650 to $850 (even the wealthiest rarely exceeded $1,500) Theodore spent $1,742 in his first year, $2,049 in his second, and $4,113 in his third. See King, Moses, Harvard and its Surroundings (Cambridge, 1878); Grant, Robert, “Harvard College in the Seventies,” Scribner’s, May 1897, and TR.Pri.Di. Dec. 31, 1879.
24. The following account of TR’s vacation in Maine is drawn from Sew.5–6, Put.159–61.
25. Mor.37.
26. Sew.5.
27. Hag.Boy.59; Mor.37.
28. Sew. 6.
29. Sewall to TR, reminding him of their conversation, June 1902, TRP.
30. TR to Mittie, qu. Put.161.
31. TR.Pri.Di. Mar. 15, 1879.
32. TR to B, Mar. 23, 1879; Wis.33.
33. Har.13; Put.144.
34. Wis.4–5.
35. Cut.3, 7, 8.
36. H. E. Armstrong in The Independent, Sept. [?], 1902, Presidential Scrapbook, TRP; Richard Welling, “TR at Harvard,” Outlook clip, n.d., in TRB; Tha.23; Hag.Boy.57–8.
37. TR.Pri.Di. Apr. 2, 1879.
38. Mor.39.
39. TR.Pri.Di. May 8, 1879.
40. Put.174; TR.Pri.Di. May 13, 1879.
41. Put.175.
42. Mor.40.
43. See TR.Pri.Di., Jan. 25, 1880.
44. Ib., June 19, 1879. The following account of Class Day, 1879, owes much to Putnam’s treatment in Put. 180–2, as well as TR.Pri.Di. June 20.
45. Memo by E in TRC.
46. Put.183.
47. TR.Pri.Di. July 5, 9, 1879.
48. Ib., July 30, 1879.
49. Las. 3–9.
50. Fanny Parsons, note in TRB.
51. TR.Pri.Di. Aug. 16, 1879.
52. Ib., Aug. 18, 1879. TR, dictating his Autobiography in 1913, mused for several pages on the reasons behind this decision. See TR. Auto. 25–7.
53. TR to B, Aug. 22, 1879 (TRB); TR.Pri.Di., same date. For an unforgettable photograph of Alice and TR with tennis rackets, evocative of both the bewitcher and the bewitched, see Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations