The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [52]
Perhaps the best of these “best friends,” now that Harry Minot had dropped out of Harvard to study law, was Dick Saltonstall, whose family mansion on Chestnut Hill became a second home to Theodore in the fall and winter of 1878. The first invitation to this bastion of Boston society came on Friday, 18 October. The two young men drove out of Cambridge in Saltonstall’s buggy, crossed the river, and headed west into a brilliant fall landscape.75
Chestnut Hill lay six miles away. As the buggy creaked toward it, through increasingly luxuriant woods, Theodore could sense the waves of peace and security which flow around the enclaves of the very rich. A private lane curved up the hillside to where Leverett Saltonstall’s house lay, huge and rambling, backed by chestnut trees, and fronting on an immense sweep of lawn. The lawn was shared by another, equally imposing mansion, the home of George Cabot Lee; a mere twenty yards of grass, and a token garden gate, separated the one property from the other.76 Dick had doubtless already explained to Theodore that the Lees and Saltonstalls were more than mere neighbors. Mr. Lee was his uncle by marriage, and seventeen-year-old Alice Lee was the inseparable companion of his sister, Rose Saltonstall.77 Theodore met both girls that evening. In his diary he described them with his usual vague adjectives, “sweet,” “pretty,” and “pleasant”—the last being reserved for Rose, who was decidedly the more homely of the two.
He greatly enjoyed himself that weekend, walking through the woods with Alice and Rose, attending church with both families on Sunday morning, and “chestnutting” alone with Alice in the afternoon.78 As always, his soul responded to people of his own class, conversation on his own level, manners whose every nuance was familiar to him. Only a month ago Bill Sewall had convinced him that “the nobles of the earth” were “men of toil”—and probably would convince him again, as he intended to return to Island Falls one day. But in the meantime, the Lees and Saltonstalls were aristocracy enough for Theodore Roosevelt.
ON 27 OCTOBER, AS HIS second decade came to an end, the young man’s thoughts turned to the past, and his grief for his father surged up afresh. To distract himself he took a ramble through the woods with his gun. His diary entry for that night proves, with unconscious humor, that his heart had at last healed: “Oh Father, sometimes I feel as though I would give half my life to see you but for a moment! Oh, what loving memories I have of you! 2 grey squirrel.”
ON 2 NOVEMBER 1878, Theodore was initiated into the Porcellian.79 It seems the honor rather went to his head. “Was ‘higher’ with wine than ever before—or will be again,” he wrote. “Still, I could wind up my watch.” Then, in a revealing afterword: “Wine makes me awfully fighty.”80 A throbbing hangover confirmed his lifelong resolve never to get drunk again, and the evidence is he never did. He continued to enjoy “sprees” at the Porc, including the traditional suppers of partridge and burgundy, and champagne breakfasts on Sundays; but he remained severely teetotal on most of these occasions, and abstemious on the others. As for smoking, he had promised his father to abstain from that manly practice until he was twenty-one, with the result that when the time came he had lost all interest in it. The third vice that appeals to most undergraduates was beneath his contemplation: he remained “perfectly pure” throughout his bachelor years.81
His second visit to Chestnut Hill occurred on 11 November, when he drove over to take tea with the Saltonstalls and their ubiquitous visitor from next door, who was “as sweet and pretty as ever.” So, of course, was practically every girl that Theodore met. But Alice Lee seems to have merited his praise rather more than any other. When he saw her again, he was a houseguest for Thanksgiving, and already so much a part of the Chestnut Hill circle that she allowed him to call her “Alice.”82