Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [89]
PAINTERS AND PLASTERERS were putting the finishing touches to a restored White House when Roosevelt arrived back in Washington on 24 September 1902. But the gleaming halls and new Executive Wing were still bare of furnishings, so he was carried back to his temporary quarters at 22 Jackson Place. An anxious Edith was waiting to nurse him. “I feel a great deal better than I look,” he told reporters before she closed the door.
She established him in a second-floor parlor overlooking Lafayette Square. The room was large and sunny and full of well-wishers’ flowers. Treetops waved beneath its windows. It was an ideal place to recuperate, but the President, rolling around in a wheelchair, with his leg trussed stiffly in front of him, soon complained of inactivity.
He regretted that he had not been able to discuss tariff policy in the Midwest as fully as he wished. Still, his two big speeches had done much to quash the Iowa Idea. Governor Cummins was disavowing any threat to Republican unity, and other tariff reformers were following suit.
That did not stop Roosevelt from worrying if he had, indeed, gone too far with conservatives in his Logansport address. “I only hope Uncle Mark doesn’t mind it.” His fears seemed realized on 27 September, when Hanna rose at the Ohio State Convention and scoffed at the notion of a tariff commission. Amid cheers of “Hanna in 1904,” the Senator continued: “A year ago I gave you a piece of advice, ‘Let well enough alone.’ … Today I say, ‘stand pat.’ ”
Stand pat. That was it: Old Guard Republicanism in two words. Roosevelt’s dilemma, as he plotted his uncertain future, was how to convince reformers that he was their best hope, while standing pat enough to please conservatives.
Right now, he could not stand at all. Ominously, his left leg had begun to throb again.
ON SUNDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER, the Surgeon General of the Navy, Dr. Presley M. Rixey, decided that a second operation was necessary. The President’s temperature was rising, and there was a new swelling, large and shiny as a monocle, on his shin. This time—since Rixey intended to cut to the bone—Roosevelt allowed himself to be semi-anesthetized with whiskey. Cocaine was rubbed around the swelling. Then Rixey, assisted by an orthopedist, made a two-inch incision over the tibia and reopened the periosteum. Serous fluid welled out. It was allowed to drain, revealing a length of white, roughened bone. A few dark spots, the size of knitting-needle points, were visible. Rixey scraped the bone smooth, and left the incision unstitched, so that further fluid could flow out naturally, in the process of healing. Overnight, Roosevelt’s temperature subsided. A bulletin listing his condition as “satisfactory” was posted Monday morning, together with orders that he must remain chair-bound for at least another fortnight.
CHILL WEATHER THAT weekend sent the first tremors of panic through coal-dependent states. Northeastern hospitals, alarmed by a rise in the pneumonia rate, competed for reserve anthracite at three or four times last winter’s cost. Poor families burned coconut shells, available at fifteen cents a sack from candy companies, to keep warm. From New York, Mayor Seth Low wired the President: “I CANNOT EMPHASIZE TOO STRONGLY THE IMMENSE INJUSTICES OF THE EXISTING COAL SITUATION.… MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE … WILL ENDURE REAL SUFFERING IF PRESENT CONDITIONS CONTINUE.”
Henry Cabot Lodge, who viewed all situations politically, whether they were social, sexual, or seasonal, feared that his Bay State constituents might vote Democratic in November. “They say (and this is literal) ‘We don’t care whether you are to blame or not. Coal is going up, and the party in power must be punished.’ ” He made a characteristic inquiry. “Is there anything we can appear to do?”
“Literally nothing,” Roosevelt wrote back, “so far as I have yet been able to find out.” Unless Pennsylvania requested federal