The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [57]
THE OCCASION WAS THE spring meeting of the Harvard Athletic Association on 22 March 1879. T. Roosevelt, Jr., weighing in at 135 pounds, was entered for the semifinal bout of the lightweight boxing championship, against W. W. Coolidge, at 133¼ pounds. The winner would presumably take on the defending champion, C. S. Hanks, entered at 133½ pounds.32 Theodore, who was known to possess a wicked right hand, had given Coolidge “a tremendous thrashing” the year before,33 no doubt hoped to repeat the performance now for the benefit of Alice Lee. She sat in the gallery with a party of other Boston girls, prettily wrapped in furs, for the gymnasium was freezing.34
The first bout went well for Theodore. According to the Harvard Advocate, he “displayed more coolness and skill than his opponent,” and had no trouble in dispatching Coolidge. There was a ripple of delicate applause from the gallery, and he retired to sponge off for the final bout. When he came out, Hanks (who had duly won the other semifinal) was waiting for him. Again to quote the Advocate, “a spirited contest followed, in which Mr. Hanks succeeded in getting the best of his opponent by his quickness and power of endurance.”
These terse words might have been the only record of the afternoon’s fighting, except that some students in the audience were so impressed by Theodore’s performance that they talked about it the rest of their lives. One of them was the future novelist Owen Wister, destined, like William Roscoe Thayer, to become a biographer of the skinny figure in the ring. His description of the bout has made it perhaps the most celebrated episode in Theodore’s Harvard career:
We freshmen on the floor and those girls in the gallery witnessed more than a spirited contest; owing to an innocent mistake of Mr. Hanks, we saw that prophetic flash of the Roosevelt that was to come.
Time was called on a round, Roosevelt dropped his guard, and Hanks landed a heavy blow on his nose, which spurted blood. Loud hoots and hisses from gallery and floor were set up, whereat Roosevelt’s arm was instantly flung out to command silence, while his alert and slender figure stood quiet.
“It’s all right,” he assured us eagerly, his arm still in the air to hold the silence; then, pointing to the time-keeper, “he didn’t hear him,” he explained, in the same conversational but arresting tone. With bleeding nose he walked up to Hanks and shook hands with him.35
According to another spectator, Hanks said good-naturedly, “Hadn’t we better stop?” Theodore shook his head like a terrier, bared his teeth, and began punching again. The rest of the bout was “distinctly gory.” It was plain that the smaller man was outclassed. Hanks had a much longer reach; his eyesight, moreover, was normal, whereas Theodore was obliged to box without spectacles. “It was no fight at all,” another student remembered. “… You should have seen that little fellow staggering about, banging the air. Hanks couldn’t put him out and Roosevelt wouldn’t give up. It wasn’t a fight, but, oh, he showed himself a fighter!”36
One wonders if Alice Lee, shuddering into her furs, admired the bloody Theodore as much as his classmates, however. At any rate, he succeeded in drawing himself to her attention again. As soon as his cuts and bruises healed she accepted an invitation to “a little lunch party” in his rooms. Five other girls and college boys were present, under the benign chaperonage of Mrs. Saltonstall. The lynx rug was presented with great ceremony. Alice announced that she would make Teddy a pair of slippers.37 Their relationship was moving into an intimate, more serious phase, and Mrs. Saltonstall surely reported this fact back to Chestnut Hill. But the Lees did not seem to fear losing a daughter who, at the tender age of seventeen, had yet to make her debut.
With spring sweetening the air, and Alice growing increasingly receptive to his advances, Theodore decided to pay court to her on horseback, in the style of a true gallant. Lightfoot was accordingly shipped to Cambridge.