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By Root 2882 0

1 April he was able to note smugly that “in spite of being engaged,” she was “certainly the belle of the Harvard Assembly.” In order to spend every available minute with her, he resigned many of his official positions, including the vice-presidency of the Natural History Society, neglected his editorship of the Advocate, and began to cut recitations freely. His study hours dwindled from thirty-six to fifteen a week. “My marks were so good the first three years that I can afford to be idle now.” Already he was bored with scholastic honors. The fact that he had scored 94 and 98 in two semiannuals, written in the same week he successfully proposed to Alice Lee, did not seem remarkable to him.96

NOW THAT THEODORE’S romance was common knowledge on the Yard, he not unnaturally became something of a figure of fun. Professor A. S. (“Ass”) Hill, his instructor in forensics, was so amused by the “precocious sentimentality” of a Rooseveltian essay that he read it aloud to the class, keeping the name of the author secret. Afterward he waspishly asked Theodore to criticize it, and sat back to enjoy the young man’s blushes.97

Theodore’s dog-cart and dandified appearance (he now sported a silk hat, regarded as the non plus ultra of college fashion)98 did not escape the satire of Owen Wister, who wrote the songs for the D.K.E. theatricals. During one burlesque production of Der Freischütz, the chorus launched into a serenade about

The cove who drove

His doggy Tilbury cart …

Awful tart,

And awful smart,

With waxed mustache and hair in curls:

Brand-new hat,

Likewise cravat,

To call upon the dear little girls!99

Wister, gleefully pounding the piano, was unaware that the incensed “cove” himself happened to be in the audience. Next morning, rumors circulated that Teddy Roosevelt was “very angry,” and had muttered something about “bad taste.” Wister innocently claimed that since Roosevelt’s mustache was not waxed, his lyrics were not libelous.100 He might have added that Theodore had no mustache at all, only whiskers.

But the latter was too much in love to stay angry for long, and looked puzzled when Wister apologized.101 They soon became fast friends. Theodore was attracted by the sophomore’s wit and intelligence, while Wister was one of the first to define the peculiar glow of the mature Rooseveltian personality. During the past few years, this glow had only flickered at sporadic intervals. Now it began to beam forth steadily, throwing Theodore into ever-greater prominence against the muted backdrop of Harvard. “He was his own limelight, and could not help it,” Wister wrote many years later. “A creature charged with such a voltage as his, became the central presence at once, whether he stepped on a platform or entered a room.”102

THE VOLTAGE, OF COURSE, was stimulated by Alice. Its radiance suffuses almost all the diary entries in that spring of 1880.103 On the fresh April mornings, they played tennis together, she gracefully mobile in her long white dress, he awkward and jerky, clutching his racket halfway up the spine. Later, while Alice sewed, he read to her from Prescott’s Conquest of Peru. They took endless drives in the dog-cart, with Alice prettily perched beside him in his high seat, as Lightfoot (losing weight rapidly) bowled them along miles of blossom-strewn roads. In the evenings, they sat at whist and listened to the younger Lees practicing the piano. Before bedtime, Theodore generally managed to sneak Alice off for an hour alone in the moonlight. “How I love her! She seems like a star of heaven, she is so far above other girls; my pearl, my pure flower. When I hold her in my arms there is nothing on earth left to wish for; and how infinitely blessed is my lot … Oh, my darling, my own bestloved little Queen!”104

THEODORE’S ENGAGEMENT seems to have removed the last vestiges of doubt concerning his future. “I shall study law next year, and must there do my best, and work hard for my little wife.”105 He had already made it clear that he considered law a stepping-stone to politics, and confirmed that larger ambition