Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [428]
5 Merely to look Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 315–16; Wister, Roosevelt, 146. Taft’s weight in early 1904 is given at 330 pounds by Horace D. Taft in Memories and Opinions (New York, 1942), 114. Taft was six feet two inches tall.
6 he was periodically Hoover, Forty-Two Years in the White House, 269. Taft’s scrapbooks in WHT consist largely of souvenir menus.
7 Yet he was not Taft, Memories and Opinions, 107–8; Thompson, Party Leaders, 308.
8 The Supreme Court Taft to TR, 27 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Helen H. Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York, 1914), 269.
9 “Who do you suppose” The story of Taft’s two refusals of the Supreme Court in 1902 and 1903 is told in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 358–59, 368, 382–83, 407, and 413. Donald Anderson, William Howard Taft, 10–12, advances the theory that TR wanted to eliminate Taft as a potential rival in 1904. But Taft was surely almost as far out of the way in the Philippines as he would have been on the bench. A more plausible theory is that Elihu Root (who personally recommended the Governor as his successor) was planning for a Taft presidency in 1908, as both the logical consequence of, and conservative correction to, TR’s reform-minded administration. Henry W. Taft to Taft, 10 Jan. 1903 (WHT).
10 TWO DAYS LATER George Cortelyou memorandum of meeting, 29 Jan. 1904 (ER); Albert Shaw, “Reminiscences” (ALS); Charles Willis Thompson in New York Sun, 3 Nov. 1938; Wister, Roosevelt, 162; Elihu Root to William H. Taft, 16 Apr. 1903 (ER).
11 Roosevelt rambled on George Cortelyou memorandum of meeting, 29 Jan. 1904 (ER).
12 “I thank you” Ibid.
13 The following evening Montage by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post, 31 Jan. 1904; Washington Evening Star, 1 Feb. 1904.
14 “How is your health” The Washington Post, 16 Feb. 1904; Beer, Hanna, 621. “I have had quite a pull with this infernal ‘grip,’ ” Hanna had written Myron Herrick earlier in the day. “I think it [the Gridiron dinner] will brace me up.” He complained that Roosevelt had been “poisoned” against him by Senator Foraker. But he added significantly, “We must organize our full strength [in Ohio] and choose the Roosevelt delegates from among our friends” (copy in TRP).
15 The jingling cavalrymen Hanna occupied the entire second floor of the Arlington Hotel, on Lafayette Square. The Washington Post, 2 Feb. 1904; Philadelphia Press, 27 Mar. 1905.
16 Day followed upon Sir Mortimer Durand to A. S. Hardy, 4 Jan. 1904 (HMD); Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 190–92, 200; Alice Roosevelt diary, 22 Jan. 1904 (ARL).
17 Something about Alice’s Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 200.
18 Roosevelt took a William Sturgis Bigelow to TR, 2 Feb. 1904 (TRP); Kerr, Bully Father, 147; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 706–9; The Washington Post, 28 Jan. 1904; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 87. The white man had been recommended by Mrs. Cox.
19 “He is not safe” The New York Times, 4 Feb. 1904; Review of Reviews, Mar. 1904; speech copy in GBC.
20 When Root used Whitelaw Reid to TR, 9 Feb. 1904 (TRP); Franklin Murphy to TR, 9 Feb. 1904, and TR to Root, 4 Feb. 1904 (ER). One week after this speech, Governor Odell of New York came out strongly for TR. “It was time to set a back fire,” Root wrote TR. “I do not think that I realized how far down the disaffection had gone” (15 Feb. 1904 [TRP]).
21 Late on the evening George Cortelyou, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 Apr. 1906 (MHM); Washington Evening Star, 5 Feb. 1904.
22 “My dear Mr.” Mark Hanna to TR, 5 Feb. 1904, facsimile in Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 452.
23 The Senator lay Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 18 May 1905 (MHM).
24 HALF A WORLD Foreign Relations 1904, 413. The image of “claps