Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [351]
5 At eleven o’clock Unidentified Cabinet officer in Boston Transcript, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).
6 “I need your advice” Harry Thurston Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885–1905 (New York, 1906), 667.
7 He interrupted Boston Transcript, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).
8 The President’s hunger TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1346; New York Herald, 21 Sept. 1901.
9 “This being my” David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston, 1924), 267.
10 A certain code Ibid., 267–68.
11 Boynton and Barry Ibid., 268–69.
12 MUCH LATER THAT EVENING TR’s sister lived at 1733 N Street. Her home—soon known as “the Little White House”—was to become a social hideaway for the President and his family over the next seven years. See Lilian Rixey, Bamie: Theodore Roosevelt’s Remarkable Sister (New York, 1963).
Chronological Note: On Tuesday, 17 Sept. 1901, TR had attended McKinley memorial services in the Capitol. He then followed the dead President’s coffin to Canton, Ohio, where it was interred on the nineteenth. TR was accompanied by his entire Cabinet, with the exception of John Hay, whom he ordered to remain in Washington, “on the avowed ground,” Hay wrote a friend amusedly, “that he did not want too many eggs in the same Pullman car” (William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay [New York, 1915], vol. 2, 267). The presidential party returned on an overnight train, arriving back in Washington early on 20 Sept.
13 “My great difficulty” TR, qu. by William Allen White, “Remarks at the Roosevelt Memorial Association Dinner, 27 Oct. 1933” (HH). The following account is based on this source, with extra details from White, Autobiography, 338–39, and Rixey, Bamie, 172–76. The date of the dinner is fixed by William Allen White to TR, 17 Sept. 1901 (TRP), and the Washington Times, 21 Sept. 1901.
14 Commander Cowles, replete White, “Remarks.”
15 “I shall be” Ibid. TR would in fact be fifty come March 1909.
16 “I don’t want” White, Autobiography, 339.
17 Undisturbed by the Ibid; Nicholas Murray Butler, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections (New York, 1939), vol. 1, 312–13.
18 QUIET SETTLED Washington Evening Star, 25 Sept. 1901; Review of Reviews, Nov. 1901.
19 “You ought to” New York World, 23 Sept. 1901. For a man who relished publicity, TR had an odd dislike of being photographed. For a considerable time he refused even to pose formally with his Cabinet. Photo editors were reduced to exhuming group portraits of the McKinley Administration and pasting TR’s head and shoulders onto those of his predecessor (Washington Evening Star, 5 Nov. 1901). The results were grotesque enough to persuade him eventually to relent. To the end of his life he had difficulty relaxing in front of the camera; “candid” news-reels show how quickly he froze at the sight of a lens. Consequently, his iconographic record is grim. Only a dozen or so shots survive to show that he was the most genial of men.
20 Later, on a Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), 503.
21 “Here is the task,” TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, 23 Sept. 1901, Letters, vol. 3, 150.
22 The presidential suite The New York Times, 24 Sept. 1901; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 161; Robinson, My Brother, 206–7.
23 Later, when decorations Robinson, My Brother. Mrs. Robinson misdates this dinner by one day.
24 TWO EVENINGS LATER John Barrett (dinner guest) to Caroline S. Barrett, 28 Sept. 1901 (JB); New York Herald and New York Journal, 26 Sept. 1901. See also Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, chap. 18.
25 Kermit and Ethel New York Herald and New York Journal, 26 Sept. 1901.
26 “It is understood” The Washington Post, 28 Sept. 1901.
27 The White House police Ibid.
28 Alice, naughtily Teague, Mrs. L., 62; Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Crowded Hours: Reminiscences of Alice Roosevelt Longworth