The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [62]
Alice was not at Theodore’s side when he turned twenty-one on 27 October 1879. But his adoring family was, and he saw no reason to be despondent. He would get his girl—he knew it. If still not altogether certain about his career, he at least knew roughly what he would like to do, and his achievements to date, whether social, physical, or intellectual, had not dishonored the memory of his father. For once, he could look back at the past without regret, and at the future without bewilderment. Simply and touchingly, he wrote in his diary: “I have had so much happiness in my life so far that I feel, no matter what sorrows come, the joys will have overbalanced them.”70
SORROWS CAME sooner than he expected. Early in November, Alice’s resistance to his advances, hitherto always softened with a hint of future compliance, began to show signs of permanent hardening. Theodore was immediately plunged into a state of sleepless, aching frustration. “Oh the changeableness of the female mind!” he burst out in a letter home, a remark which must have caused the Roosevelts some puzzlement, since he did not go on to explain it.71 The prospect of failure clearly terrified him. “I did not think I could win her,” he afterward confessed, “and I went nearly crazy at the mere thought of losing her.”72
As usual he kept despair at bay by burying himself in books (for his birthday he had requested “complete editions of the works of Prescott, Motley, and Carlyle”) and studying harder than ever.73 Somehow he managed to conceal his agony from his classmates. Frederick Almy, class secretary, heard Theodore read a paper at the November meeting of the O.K. Society and was impressed by his vigorous, confident manner. “Roosevelt spoke on the machine in politics, illustrating by the recent election in New York. An interesting discussion followed … I have a very high opinion of Roosevelt.”74
As Thanksgiving, the anniversary of his vow, approached, he made a desperate, last-minute effort to press his suit. Alice would “come out” a week after the festival, and become fair game for all the eligible young men in Boston. He reasoned that his best hope lay in bringing their respective families together, enmeshing Alice in such warm webs of mutual affection (for he was sure everybody would get on famously) that she would be powerless to break away. With considerable skill he managed to arrange four such meetings in twenty days. On 2 November Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Alice, and Rose visited New York and were entertained by the Roosevelts; on 17 November Bamie and Corinne visited Chestnut Hill, and the Saltonstalls gave a dinner in their honor. On 18 November the Lees repeated the compliment. Finally, on 22 November, Theodore held an elaborate, thirty-four-plate luncheon in the Porcellian, at which elders of all three families were represented. The rest of the company comprised the most attractive of his Boston girlfriends and the most fashionable of his college chums. Perhaps because of Alice’s youth, or because Theodore did not wish to arouse premature suspicions, he relegated her to the secondary position on his left; the place of honor went to a Miss Betty Hooper.75
This three-week diplomatic offensive paid off handsomely in terms of family goodwill. The Lees were in reported “raptures” over their New York trip, and his sisters had been effusively welcomed at Chestnut Hill. As for his luncheon, “everything went off to perfection; the dinner was capital, the wine was good, and the fellows all gentlemen.”76 For a few days Theodore basked in the glow of his achievements,