Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [461]
8 Edith was well-read Butt, Letters, 127. Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 583; Baker, notebook no. 28, Jan. 1905 (RSB); Jules Jusserand to Ministère des Affaires Étrangers 9 Mar. 1909 (JJ).
9 Whereas his For EKR’s role as patroness of White House “musicales,” see Elise K. Kirk, Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit (Urbana, 1986), 169–88.
10 largest and worst Nicholas Roosevelt, Front Row Seat, 25.
11 His attitude toward Alsop, unpublished autobiography, 4 (TRC); Alice Roosevelt Longworth interview, Nov. 1954 (TRB); William Allen White, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, ca. 1936 (HKB); Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 168–69.
12 Her attitude toward Landor, “Death,” qu. in Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 500: I warmed both hands at the fire of life, / It sinks, and I am ready to depart. Rixey, Bamie, 231.
13 HE DID NOT LOOK EKR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, 4 June 1906 (TRC).
14 “damned little Jew” Maurice Low, Washington correspondent of the London Morning Post, had reported that TR acknowledged the congratulations only of Wilhelm II after the Portsmouth peace treaty. “He spoke savagely—as he ought not have spoken to me about an Englishman” (Sir Mortimer Durand diary, 8 May 1906 [HMD]). On another occasion, TR called Low a “circumcised skunk.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 918.
15 William E. Chandler Leon B. Richardson, William E. Chandler (New York, 1940), 666–67; Watson, As I Knew Them, 83; J. Van Vechten Olcott, interviewed by J. F. French, 1922 (TRB). Another Roosevelt explosion is described in Mrs. Dewey’s diary, 11 May 1906 (GD).
16 And Norman Hapgood TR to Hapgood, 29 June 1906 (TRP). “The usages which obtain among gentlemen leave no option in such a case; and your [refusal to name sources] both fixes your status and leads inevitably to the conclusion that you made the statement knowing it to be false.”
17 But Roosevelt had TR, Letters to Kermit, 130; TR to Ethel Roosevelt, 17 June 1906 (TRP); Gifford Pinchot to Irving Fisher, 22 Aug. 1905 (GP). TR had been aware for at least four years that he had an eating problem. “I am rather an early Goth and eat too much and drink too much, and then trust in hard work to do away with the effects,” he wrote Pierre de Coubertin, a French friend, on 21 Nov. 1902 (TRP). By “drink” he meant such liquids as milk and coffee. Apart from his bibulous evening on the night of the Cannon birthday party (which he cited years later as an aberration), TR’s alcohol intake verged on that of teetotalism. See Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 92–97.
18 “It is clear” Fisher to Pinchot, 2 Sept. 1905 (GP).
19 Edith sweetly New York Tribune, 5 July 1906; Oyster Bay Pilot, 27 July 1906; The Washington Post, 11 July 1907. Alice teased her father that he seemed to hay “with a view to his political future.” TR to Alice Longworth, 29 June 1908 (TRP).
20 “J’ESSAIE DE” Samuel H. Church to William Loeb, 9 Aug. 1906 (TRP).
Biographical Note: An earlier letter (2 Aug.) from Church to Loeb states that Rodin, who was intending to visit the United States in 1907, had told Church of his “strong desire” to execute a bust or statue of TR. He felt the resulting work would convey the President’s “tremendous energy and vitality,” and very likely be his masterpiece. Church informed TR, through Loeb, that the Carnegie Institute would pay for the statue and subsequently exhibit it in Pittsburgh. TR agreed to pose for Rodin. For undisclosed reasons, the proposal came to nothing.
21 (“Theodore,” Edith) Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 38.
22 “It is now” The Washington Post, 18 Aug. 1906.
23 “At a few minutes” Summary Discharge or Mustering Out of Regiments or Companies: Message of the President of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1908), 20–21 (hereafter Summary Discharge).
24 Roosevelt ordered Ibid., 20, 32. Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Port Washington, N.Y., 1971), 5–17; John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station, 1992), 29–30. The garrison’s previous occupants had been white. Protests against its occupation by “nigger” troops were