The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [61]
To his delight, the rig went beautifully, Lightfoot breaking only at the occasional roar of a locomotive. Theodore was conscious of the stares of passersby, and presumed that he was cutting a fine figure: “I really think that I have as swell a turnout as any man.”63 If by any man he meant his fellow students, he understated the case; for this was the first dog-cart ever seen at Harvard, and remained the only one throughout his senior year. With such stylish equipage, he could hardly escape the amused notice of his classmates. Hitherto, he had managed to keep his visits to Chestnut Hill fairly secret, but now rumors began to fly.64 The amorous Don Quixote, spurring Rocinante across the plain of La Mancha, was no more comic a courtier than Theodore, as he wobbled on tall wheels over the Charles River Bridge. In the words of his classmate Richard Welling:
Some of us were surprised, senior year, when we saw our serious friend Teddy driving a dog-cart, and, between you and me, not a very stylish turnout. Among the fashionables there was in those days an exquisite agony about a dog-cart which stamped it as the summit of elegance. The driver should hold the reins in a rather choice manner as though presenting a bouquet to a prima donna, and the long thorn-wood whip with its white pipe-clayed lash should be handled in a graceful way, like fly casting, to flick the horse’s shoulder. The cart should be delightfully balanced so that, although the horse trotted, the driver’s seat would not joggle. The driver was thus serenely perched on his somewhat elevated seat, and holding his whip athwart the lines, acknowledge the salutes of friends by gently raising his whip hand to his hat brim, his poise never for an instant disturbed. In short, in a horse show where the judges were passing upon fine points of equipment and technique, I fear Roosevelt would have been given the gate.65
History does not record what Alice Lee thought of this apparition as it creaked to a halt outside the Saltonstalls’ house. Presumably she was not as dazzled as Theodore had hoped, for he studiously avoids mentioning her in his diary entry for the day, 26 September 1879: “… they were all so heartily glad to see me that I felt as if I had come home.” On the next page Theodore writes: “Dr. and Mrs. Saltonstall are just too sweet for anything, and the girls are as lovely as ever.”
Something is obviously wrong. For the rest of September, all of October, and most of November, he shows a strange reluctance to refer to Alice, even obliquely. Her name appears but once, in a list of his guests at an opera party on 16 October. Two pages are ripped out just prior to that date. There is also a reduction in the flow of Theodore’s perpetual cheerfulness. Yet the evidence is that he continued to drive over to Chestnut Hill, and his relationship with the rest of that sociable community remained as warm as ever. Only Alice, apparently, was cool.
If he was not happy during these first months of his senior year, Theodore was too busy to be depressed. “I have my hands altogether too full of society work,” he mildly complained, “being Librarian of the Porcellian, Secretary of the Pudding, Treasurer of the O.K., Vice President of the Natural History Soc., and President of the A.D.Q.; Editor of the Advocate.” His diary makes frequent reference to theater parties and suppers—“I find I don’t get to bed too early.”66 Although he had purposely arranged a light study schedule (only five courses, as opposed to nine in his junior year), he worked at it six to eight hours a day.67 He was determined to keep up his three-year average of