The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [424]
3. Ib., 123.
4. Ib., 123–6; TR to B, Mar. 12, 1887.
5. Trib., Mar. 28, 1887; Her., N.Y.T., Sun, same date.
6. See TR to B, Jan. 10, 1887.
7. TR to B, Sep. 20, 1886. In fact he insisted. “Theodore has against my will insisted on my keeping Baby,” Bamie wrote Nannie Lodge on Nov. 2, 1886.
8. TR to B, Jan. 10, 1887.
9. TR to B, Apr. 16 and May 16, 1887.
10. Nor, apparently, could Alice. She loved Bamie extravagantly always, while preserving at best an ambiguous relationship with Edith. In old age Alice remarked sadly that “Auntie Bye did talk about my mother to me … none of the others ever mentioned her.” (Int. Nov. 9, 1954, TRB.)
11. Ib.
12. Rixey, Lilian, Bamie: TR’s Remarkable Sister (David McKay, 1963) 68; Gwy.60–1.
13. See Wag.210–16.
14. TR to B, Jan. 3, 1887. The words are Theodore’s, but the thoughts are manifestly Edith’s.
15. Ib. The hunting horse, at least, won a reprieve, for TR became quite maudlin about it. See Mor. 119. EKR, meanwhile, had to operate Sagamore Hill on a budget of something like half of what B had spent there. (Hag.RF. 15.)
16. TR.Wks.I.347; TR to W. Sewall, qu. Hag.RBL.441; Lan.246; Hag.RBL. 438.
17. Ib., 441; TR.Wks.I.347. Over the years he had bought a total of 3,000 head (Put.523 fn.), which reproduction probably raised to around 4,000 in 1886. One authority, Elwyn B. Robinson in History of North Dakota, puts the total as high as 5,000.
18. Lan.259; Mattison, Ray H., “The Hard Winter and the Range Cattle Business,” Montana Magazine of History, Vol. 1.4 (Winter, 1950) 18.
19. Put.594; Lan.246–59; North Dakota History, Vol. 17.3; Mattison, “Winter,” passim.
20. TR.Wks.I.347; author’s estimate; Put.594. TR told a fellow-rancher he was “utterly crushed by the fearful tragedy.” Hoffman, W. Roy, TR: His Adventuring Spirit (unpublished ms. in TRB) qu. Pierre Wibaux, 311.
21. Mor.126. Actually the figure was in excess of $85,000. See Put.523 fn. and 588 fn. TR had himself predicted during the fall of 1886 that an overall loss of 50% would affect the range cattle industry should a harsh winter strike the overgrazed Badlands. See TR.Wks.I.290. Not for twelve years did he finally manage to extricate himself. During that period Merrifield and Ferris succeeded, by judicious management, in reducing his loss to $20,292. Put.595. But in 1887 any such relief seemed inconceivable.
22. Mor.127.
23. Lan.259; Dickinson Press, Jan.–April 1887, passim; Hag.RBL.451–2; Put.595–6; Lan.263; Twe.111–5; HAG. Bln.
24. Dickinson Press, May 7, 1887; Clay, John, My Life on the Range (NY Antiquarian Press, 1961) and Twe. passim.
25. Twe.70; Hag.RBL.450; John Good-all, pioneer, qu. Fifty Years in the Saddle Club, Looking Back Down the Trail, 288. Soon after TR arrived home, he must have read that the Marquis had been arrested in New York for nonpayment of business debts. See, e.g., Sun, May 20, 1887. De Morès bought his way out of this and other American entanglements, escaping to Europe later that summer. He returned to the Badlands only once, but like TR came only to hunt. After visits to India and China he settled in his native country and became an arch-reactionary, fighting on behalf of French royalists to overthrow the Republican government. He was for a while an ardent disciple of Boulanger. Later the Marquis decided that Jews were responsible for France’s economic and social ills. In May 1892 he was seen, immaculate in tails and top hat, throwing spitballs at Juliette de Rothschild’s wedding. Tiring once more of “civilization,” he went in 1896 to Morocco, hoping to promote a Franco-Islamic alliance against the British Empire. While crossing the Sahara en route to Sudan he was ambushed and killed by a band of Tuaregs. Brave to the end, de Morès left a circle of dead tribesmen around him before collapsing into the sand. His funeral in Paris was a public event. In its front-page obituary, Le Figaro commented: “Morès was always marvellously optimistic … everywhere that he went was like a novel of chivalry … he was the classic