The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [65]
Roosevelt at Harvard University in 1877. Desperate to become masculine he worked-out everyday with free weights.
T.R. at Harvard. (Courtesy of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library)
Also, 1876 was a presidential election year, with his father backing Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio and Uncle Rob behind Samuel J. Tilden of New York. T.R. didn’t get very involved even if, like all good young Republicans, he believed the campaign hoopla: “Hurrah for Hayes and Honest Ways!” Politics was thin gruel to Roosevelt. He complained that both Hayes and Tilden sneered at the teachings of naturalists such as Coues and Darwin. Roosevelt instead pored over zoology books, including the new Manual of the Vertebrates of the Northern United States, whose author, David Starr Jordan, was only seven years older than himself.19 Suddenly, Roosevelt, influenced by Dr. Jordan and Uncle Rob, became interested in game fishes, particularly bass and trout; he was determined to enter Harvard as the best-rounded naturalist of his up-and-coming generation. As promised since the family trip down the Nile, Roosevelt was going to be a Harvard-trained foot soldier in the Darwinian revolution.
II
Before classes started in late September, Roosevelt tried to get his asthma under control. Unfortunately, his breathing had been thick for much of the year. It was as if a fungus had taken hold in his lungs. Because Harvard offered him only first-floor dormitory rooms, Roosevelt sought lodgings elsewhere. (Basements or ground-level rooms developed dampness and mildew, he claimed, which in turn triggered his coughing fits.) Roosevelt—already segregated from mainstream before the first day of class—rented a second floor suite in a house at 16 Winthrop Street (since torn down) just blocks from the campus. There were shady elm trees to admire from his four picture windows and, better yet, he could see the Charles River from the rooftop. Worried that he’d turn his living quarters into a taxidermy studio, Roosevelt’s overprotective sister Bamie prepared the rooms, fixing up his study and alcove.20 “Ever since I came here I have been wondering what I should have done if you had not fitted up my room for me,” he wrote to Bamie in earnest gratitude. “When I get my pictures and books, I do not think there will be a room in College more handsome.”21
Within two or three weeks Roosevelt had transformed his Winthrop Street quarters into a virtual vivarium. Mounted birds cluttered his desk and a well-used portfolio of Audubon’s Birds of America was placed on his shelf like an old friend, soothing and familiar. Stuffed owls, deer antlers, bottles of formaldehyde, arsenic paste, wren’s nests, and colorful eggs abounded—and those were just the inanimate objects. Roosevelt was like a golden retriever; you never knew, when he entered 16 Winthrop Street, whether he would be carrying a wounded squirrel or a kicking rabbit. Then there were the live finches and tadpoles, mice litters, and a formicary. One evening, his landlady—a Mrs. Richardson—nearly tripped over one of his escaped turtles; her face turned white with fright. Even though Roosevelt’s rent money was good, the notion of having a philotherian tenant made her uneasy.22
Having untamed animals running around indoors marked young Theodore as an eccentric at Harvard. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, since singularity had its time-honored virtues. After all, Cambridge was replete with brilliant characters. Oliver Wendell Holmes scouted the out-door bookstalls for rare editions, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could be seen strolling down Brattle Street window-shopping for elegant canes. The great historian Francis Parkman was sometimes found in the library working on Montcalm and Wolfe, and Charles Francis Adams served