Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [49]
The band swung into the tune the Rough Riders had adopted at training camp in San Antonio. Seizing another partner, Roosevelt stomped out a joyous cakewalk, and the sound of singing voices rolled out into Lafayette Square:
When you hear dem-a bells go ding, ling, ling,
All join round, and sweetly you must sing,
And when the verse am through,
In the chorus all join in,
There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!
CHAPTER 5
Turn of a Rising Tide
Divvle a bit do I care whether
they dig th’ Nicaragoon Canal
or cross th’ Isthmus in a balloon.
WALTER WELLMAN, REPORTER, was strolling beside the Potomac one day early in 1902 when a horsewoman rode past at a sedate clip. Presently, another rider followed, cantering to catch up with her. The stiff beard and haughty posture identified him as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Then came the noise of a big stallion moving at full gallop. Wellman stepped out of the way as it drummed by in a spray of gravel. The bespectacled rider was waving an old campaign hat and laughing with pleasure. “Ki-yi!” he screamed, galloping on. “Ki-yi!”
To Wellman and other Washington correspondents, Roosevelt’s recreational antics were a welcome diversion from politics. The President was variously reported to have marched twenty miles through heavy rain (in Norfolk jacket, corduroy knickers, yellow leggings, and russet shoes), swum nude across the freezing river, and climbed with fingers and toes up the blast holes of a disused quarry. His habit of forcing luncheon guests to accompany him on afternoon treks did not endear him to those who would have preferred to remain behind with the wine and walnuts.
Foreign offices in Britain and Europe worried that their representatives might not be up to the physical hazards of dealing with Theodore Roosevelt. Junior diplomats campaigned for postings to his court, on the basis of common youth and strength. The essential qualification was perhaps best expressed by Cecil Spring Rice, Roosevelt’s former best man and now a British Commissioner in Egypt: “You must always remember that the President is about six.”
Charles William Eliot of Harvard University confirmed that Roosevelt “had always been a boy.” A former Secretary of State, Richard Olney, was reminded of the prophecy of Ecclesiastes: Woe to thee, O land, when thy King is a child and thy princes eat in the morning. He copied the words out, adding, “The last part of the sentence may be regarded as an extraordinary forecast of the present White House lunches.”
It was the lunches, indeed, that made Roosevelt exercise so hard. He enjoyed entertaining as much for the food as for the conversation, and shamelessly hogged both. Talking relieved his mind, but eating had no such purgative effect. The Washington social season was at its height, and whatever fat he burned off during the afternoon was restored, even added to, at nightly receptions and gala dinners. The presidential shirtfront continued to swell with flesh and animal vitality. Roosevelt’s monologues grew so uninhibited that some guests wondered what the stewards were serving him. “Theodore is never sober,” Henry Adams observed, “only he is drunk with himself and not with rum.”
Adams was back in town from Europe, gossipy and peevish as ever after a long stay abroad. He was more saddened than amused by a reunion of the old Hay-Adams circle around Roosevelt’s table. “None of us have improved,” he wrote afterward. Hay seemed slower and more formal, Lodge looked dangerous with ambition, while the President had become increasingly dogmatic. “He lectures me on history as though he were a high school pedagogue.”
The Fifty-seventh Congress, Adams predicted, would not reward Roosevelt with any worthwhile legislation. Other, less grudging observers were not so sure. The President was obviously an adroit politician. Speed was his most astonishing characteristic, combined improbably with thoroughness. Four naval officers gave him an oral briefing, then found, on