Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [452]
131 The door to Witte, Memoirs, vol. 2, 434, 439.
132 As the President handled The simile of a hostess is again that of Forman, who was stationed in the room with a notebook. It was the first decisive moment of the peace conference, a pas de deux or pas de quatre, a symbolic crossing of the threshold between formality and conviviality. The subsequent relaxation of tension was not to last.
133 Asia and Russia “Two and two they came, arm in arm.” Forman’s original eyewitness account makes plain that TR and his senior guests did not, as often stated, enter all in a row. He led the way, as President of the United States, and the plenipotentiaries followed, “Baron Komura’s shoulder touching Mr. Witte’s elbow.” Witte managed, by means of his longer stride, to get a foot over the threshold first.
134 Those set aside Not even the punctilious Rosen recalled his orientation. “We were seated all in a group surrounding our genial host” (Forty Years, vol. 1, 265). Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 222, says without attribution that the principals shared a long wall seat, while TR took “the only chair in the room, facing them.”
135 To Komura, he Rosen tried to interpret, but was ignored.
Historical Note: TR read French easily, as indicated by his consumption of all of La Corce and Cahun’s Turcs et Mongols in 1905 (“with such thoroughness … that at the end it was dangling out of the covers”). He spoke the language with equal ease (“Je le parle comme une langue touranienne”), although John Hay noticed that his grammar was “entirely lawless,” and Jules Jusserand was amused by his occasional, entirely unself-conscious pauses before settling on le mot juste (TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1268; André Zardieu, “Trois Visites à M. Roosevelt,” Le Temps, 15 Apr. 1908; Thayer, John Hay, vol. 2, 356; Jusserand, What Me Befell, 338).
According to Ethel Roosevelt Derby (interview, 1962 [TRB]), her father read German “equally well”—works of literature, history, and science, as well as poetry. In youth, he could recite stretches of the Nibelungenlied by heart. As President, TR often conversed in German with Germans (Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 1, 373; Butt, Letters, 116). He was less versed in Italian, although, as noted above, he read E. de Michelis’s L’Origine degli Indo-Europei from cover to cover in 1904. For more on TR’s “not inconsiderable” linguistic achievements, see Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 34–35.
134 Other guests Review of Reviews, Sept. 1905.
135 Roosevelt went on See TR, Works, vol. 18, 409.
136 When lunch was Rosen’s position right next to the President, opposite Komura, was not accidental. As Russian Ambassador to the United States, “I was the ranking person of both delegations.” Rosen, Forty Years, vol. 1, 265.
137 AT TWENTY MINUTES New York Sun, 6 Aug. 1905, precisely gives departure times. In what is possibly a jingoistic slip of the pen, Korostovetz has the Dolphin wallowing in the Mayflower’s wake. Diary, 37.
138 “I think we” Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 223, qu. Joseph Bucklin Bishop.
139 The self-important New York Sun, 19 Aug. 1905; Forman, “So Brief a Time,” 34–35. For the negotiations up to this point, see Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 128–38. Trani’s overall account of the conference is the only one based on Japanese and Russian, as well as American, primary sources.
140 His news today Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 137–39.
141 Later that evening George Meyer to TR, 18 Aug. 1905 (TRP); Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 139.
142 Roosevelt detected See, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222–23.
143 A fantasy began Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 306.
144 He told Kaneko Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 140.
145 That night, Roosevelt Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 296–97.
146 It was galvanizing The telegram, addressed to Witte, read: “I earnestly request that you send either Baron Rosen or some other gentleman who is in your confidence to see me immediately, so that I may through him send you a strictly confidential message.” Dennett, Roosevelt, 251–52.
147 Roosevelt was playing Korostovetz, Diary, 92.
148 He said that