The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [418]
36. Other details from Hag.RF.4, Put.532, and TRB picture files.
37. The panorama is now blocked by trees, mostly planted by TR in obedience to the family motto (see p. 299). But in 1885 the hilltop was bare.
38. TR.Auto.328.
39. Par. 63.
40. Elliott Roosevelt had married a fragile society beauty, Anna Rebecca Hall, on Dec. 1, 1882. See Las. Ch. 2 for an account of their courtship.
41. HUN.74: “Well, sir, that man planned his life from the start. He told me a good many times that he expected to get his life work done by the time he was sixty.” In the last months of his life TR told his sister Corinne that at twenty-one he had decided to live “up to the hilt” until he was sixty, and did not care how soon he died after that. Fate allowed him ten extra weeks.
42. HAG.Bln.; Put.530. “What a change!” commented a reporter who met TR en route. “Last March he was a pale, slim young man, with a thin, piping voice and a general look of dyspepsia … He is now brown as a berry and has increased 30 lbs in weight. The voice … is now hearty and strong enough to drive oxen.” (Pittsburgh Dispatch, Aug. 23, 1885, in TR.Scr.)
43. Hag.RBL.340–1; Put.536.
44. Ib.
45. HAG.Bln.; Twe.88.
46. Bad Lands Cowboy, May 27, 1885; Put.533.
47. Ib., 536. For more detail, see Twe. passim.
48. Hag.RBL.342.
49. New York Times, Aug. 22, 1885; Hag.RBL.342–4.
50. Mor.100; Put.533; other details in this and following paras. from HAG.Bln.; also see TR to B, Aug. 30, 1885 (TRB mss.).
51. TR.Wks.I.30.
52. Ib., 295–6; Hag.RBL.310–11; Sewall in Forum, May 1919.
53. Photocopy in TRB. See Put.534–5 for details of the LMSA meeting.
54. Twe.106–7; Dakota clip, n.d., in TRB.
55. Put.538.
56. TR.Wks.I.29. Here TR was perhaps being unduly modest. One Badlands veteran told Herman Hagedorn: “Fer a crittur with a squint he were plumb handy with a gun.” HAG.Bln.
57. Put.537.
58. Ib.
59. Wannegan had been hired as a “gofer” in the summer of 1884, and was now night-herder at Maltese Cross. “He was a genial soul, and Roosevelt liked him.” Hag.RBL.169, 338.
60. Qu. ib., 348. See also Sew.27.
61. Photostat in TRB.
62. The actual letter TR sent de Morès has disappeared, along with almost all of the Marquis’s personal papers. It is said to have stipulated “rifles at twelve paces, the adversaries to shoot until one or the other dropped.” (Hag.RBL.348.)
63. According to Hagedorn the Marquis also invited TR to dine with him at Chateau de Morès after the trial. (Ib., 349.)
64. See Put.538–542 for a different interpretation.
65. See TR.Wks.I.269–72 on the aridity of the Badlands.
66. See TR.Auto.110-11 for an account of firefighting on the prairie.
67. Put.542; Hag.RBL.350–2.
68. TR.Wks.I.16. In a New York lecture delivered in January 1886, he was openly contemptuous of the red man. “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.” (Qu. Hag.RBL.355.) In later years this harsh attitude mellowed considerably. See Wag.229–30 and below, Ch. 17.
69. Text here follows Putnam’s assumption “based on circumstantial evidence” that the trip took place during the first two weeks of Sep. 1885. Put.543.
70. TR.Wks.I.371–3.
71. See TR.Auto.54 for TR’s own analysis of courage as something that can be acquired “by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness.”
72. Qu. Twe.96–7. Also standing trial were the Marquis’s aides and ambush partners, Richard Moore, Frank Miller, and E. G. Paddock. All received the same verdict. See Twe.92 ff.
73. Put.542. The exact date of TR’s visit to the Marquis (Hag.RBL.344 and Twe.93) is unknown, but Sep. 16 seems almost certain. He was busy with fire-fighting, hunting, and the LMSA before that. He definitely left Medora on Sep. 16, and would have passed through Bismarck that same evening.
74. See Put.544 ff. for details.
75. Only once, in Brooklyn on Oct. 17, did he allow himself to make