The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [69]
On 26 October, the eve of his wedding, he checked into the Brunswick Hotel, along with a large party of New York friends, and “in wild spirits” tipped Fanny’s chair back, until she feared she would do a reverse somersault. Later he went up alone to his room. At midnight he would be twenty-two, and twelve hours later he would be married. Tomorrow there would be another person in his bed. “My happiness is so great it makes me almost afraid.”130
“I wonder if I won’t find everything in life too big for my abilities.”
Theodore Roosevelt at the time of his assault on the Matterhorn, 1881. (Illustration 4.3)
CHAPTER 5
The Political Hack
To avenge his father slain
And reconquer realm and reign
Came the youthful Olaf home.
“IT WAS THE DEAREST little wedding,” Fanny Smith reported in her diary of 27 October 1880. “Alice looked perfectly lovely and Theodore so happy and responded in the most determined and Theodorelike tones.” Bride and groom had emerged from the Unitarian Church, Brookline, into the splendor of a perfect fall afternoon. Indian summer warmed the air and cast a mild glow over the surrounding countryside. Coats and hats were dispensed with on the short drive to Chestnut Hill, and the agreeable holiday mood of a Wednesday wedding spread from carriage to carriage. At the reception in the Lee mansion, sunshine and champagne generated such euphoria that even Edith Carow, who of all the guests had the least reason to celebrate, “danced the soles off her shoes.”1
The young couple took their departure around four o’clock, and traveled to Springfield, where Theodore had reserved a suite of rooms at the old Massasoit House. Later that evening he noted tersely in his diary: “Our intense happiness is too sacred to be written about.”2
They journeyed on to New York the next day. There was to be no official honeymoon, only a quiet fortnight together at Oyster Bay. Since Theodore was already registered for the fall and winter terms at Columbia Law School, he could not afford to cut too many classes. Alice was consoled with the promise of a five-month vacation in Europe the following spring.3
Mittie Roosevelt had placed Tranquillity at the disposal of the newlyweds. When they arrived, late on Thursday afternoon, they found the house empty save for two maids, an old black groom, and one “melancholy cat.” Theodore’s rowboat rocked at the jetty. The other houses around the bay were shuttered up, their piazzas strewn with fallen leaves. Wooded hills—flaming red and rusty gold as the setting sun caught them—sealed the little community off from the rest of Long Island. Supper had already been ordered by the thoughtful Bamie. Theodore and Alice had nothing to do but luxuriate in each other’s company. For the next two weeks they would spend “hardly an hour of the twenty-four apart.”4
A SENSE OF DELICIOUS PRIVACY, of port after stormy seas, possessed Theodore as he settled into the domestic routine which he would always consider the height of human bliss. “I am living in dreamland,” he told himself.5 At breakfast Alice prettily presided over the tea-things, “in the daintiest little pink and gray morning dress, while I, in my silk jacket and slippers, sit at the other end of the table.” Later she proved herself his equal on the tennis court, and kept pace with him on “long fast walks” through the countryside. There were many excursions, no doubt, up the slopes of Theodore’s favorite hill. Alice was persuaded to approve the purchase, for $10,000, of an initial sixty acres overlooking the bay. Together they devoured the newspapers (“Our only intercourse with the outside world”) and endlessly discussed “everything …