Chapter XVII: War 323 (2)

“I spent all of yesterday kicking my heels in the ante-room of the Secretary of War, and in making out an order for him which he promised to sign and afterwards refused. [How history repeats itself!] I was with him about two hours, altogether, and received any number of the highest kind of compliments, but I wanted a more important proof of his good feeling which I did not get. I still hope that I may get it through the President.”

On February 12, 1862, comes this description of the delightful visit to Newport News and he says:

“All the officers received us in such a hospitable spirit and the weather assisted in making our stay agreeable. I passed two of the pleasantest days that I have enjoyed when away from home. General Mansfield suggested some practice with the parrot gun, and one of those sad accidents occurred, for a gun burst and two men were killed.

“We have been treated like princes here. The steamboat was put at our disposal and when, through a misunderstanding, it left before we were on board, another one was immediately sent with us. I enclose several things to keep for me.”

Amongst the enclosures was a note which is sufficiently interesting to give in facsimile.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON

MR. ROSEVALT.

_Dear Sir_:

I very much regretted that a severe headache confined me to my room
on yesterday, this morning I find we are expected to hold a noon
reception which will be over by three and a half o’clock at which
time I will be very happy to have you ride with us.

Very truly yours
MRS. A. LINCOLN.

This quaint missive reminds me of the fact of my father’s kindly tolerance of “Mrs. A. Lincoln’s” little peculiarities. I remember how he used to tell us, when occasionally he was invited, as this letter says, to “ride” with her, that he would also be invited to stop at the shop where she bought her bonnets, and give his advice on which bonnet was especially becoming!

In an earlier letter, after referring to an interview with Secretary Stanton, he speaks of his apparent decision of character. But he was disappointed when he could not, in the beginning, make the secretary take his point of view about the Allotment Commission. Later, however, he received the full support of Secretary Stanton.

In a letter dated February 5 he speaks of “justified pleasure” as follows:

“I find that only about six men under fifty [he himself was only twenty-nine] are invited to the President’s to-night, and I have determined to go for a short time, at least. There will be the largest collection of notables there ever gathered in this country, and it would probably be a sight worth remembering.”

Under date of Washington, February 14, he writes again:

“I have so many acquaintances here now that I could easily find a temporary companion. Hay [John Hay] is going with me to Seward’s to-night, and I am hoping to procure the pass for your mother. [My grandmother was most anxious to get back to her own people in the South]. In Baltimore I saw, or fancied I saw, on the faces of our class of the inhabitants, their feelings in consequence of the news just received of the taking of Roanoke Island. They looked very blue. The sutlers here are serious obstacles in getting allotments. As soon as _we_ see a Regiment and persuade the men to make allotments, _they_ send around an agent to dissuade them from signing their names, convincing them that it is a swindle because _they_ want the money to be spent in Camp and go into their pockets instead of being sent home to the poor families of the men, who are in such want.

“I enclose you a flower from the bouquet on the table of the Executive Mansion. Also a piece of silk from an old-fashioned piano cover in Arlington House.”

As I opened the letter, the flower fell to dust in my hands, but the little piece of green silk, faded and worn, had evidently been treasured by my mother as being a relic of Arlington House.

On February 27, 1862, his stay in Washington was drawing to a close, and my father regretted, as so many have done, that he had not kept a diary of his interesting experiences. He writes on September 27:

“All those whom I have seen here in Washington in social intercourse day by day will be characters in history, and it would be pleasant to look over a diary hereafter of my own impressions of them, and recall their utterly different views upon the policy which should be pursued by the Government. I have rarely been able to leave my room in the evening, for it has been so filled with visitors, but I have not felt the loss of liberty from the fact that those who were my guests I would have taken a great deal of trouble to see, and never could have seen so informally and pleasantly anywhere except in my own room.

“It has, of course, been more my duty to entertain those whose hospitality I was daily receiving, in the camps, by invitations to drop in during the evening; all of these are striving to make their marks as statesmen, and some, I am sure, we will hear from hereafter.”

On March 1, 1862, he says:

We have all been in a state of excitement for some days past,
caused by movements in the Army foreshadowing a general battle.
The snow which is now falling fast, has cast a damper over all our
spirits.... Several of the Generals have stated to me their belief
that the war, as far as there was any necessity for so large an
army, would be closed by some time in May,--probably the first of
May. If so, my work will be all over when I return to New York, and
I can once more feel that I have a wife and children, and enjoy
them.

It is Sunday afternoon, and I have a peculiar longing to see you
all again, the quiet snow falling outside, my own feelings being
very sad and that of those around being in the same condition makes
me turn to my own quiet fireside for comfort. I wish we sympathized
together on this question of so vital moment to our country, but
I know you cannot understand my feelings, and of course I do not
expect it.

YOUR LOVING HUSBAND WHO WANTS
VERY MUCH TO SEE YOU.

One can well imagine the note of sadness in the strong young man who had relinquished his urgent desire to bear arms because of the peculiar situation in which he found himself, but who gave all his time and thought and physical endurance to the work vitally needed, and which he felt he could have handled better with the sympathy of his young wife, whose anxiety about her mother and brothers was so poignant and distressing. Never, however, in the many letters exchanged between the parents of my brother, Theodore Roosevelt, was there one word which was calculated to make less possible the close family love and the great respect for each other’s feelings.

In the last letter quoted above, one feels again that history does indeed repeat itself, when one thinks that it was written in March, 1862, and that those “generals” of whom my father speaks were expecting that no large army would be needed after May 1 of that year, when in reality the long agony of civil war was to rack our beloved country for nearly three years more. This was proven shortly after to my father, and in the following October he is writing again from Baltimore, and this time in a less wistful mood:

Since I last wrote you I have enjoyed my pleasantest experiences
as Allotment Commissioner. The weather was lovely our horses good
and Major Dix accompanied us from the Fortress to Yorktown. It was
about twenty-five miles of historic ground passing over the same
country that General McClellan had taken his army along last spring.

First comes the ruins of the little town of Hampton, then through
Big Bethel where Schanck was whipped, to the approaches to
Yorktown. There ravines have been cut through miles of roads made,
and immense breastworks thrown up by our army.

Suydam was away but the rest of General Keyes’ staff received us
most hospitably, and after dinner furnished us with fresh horses to
visit the regiments, one of their number accompanying us.

I had practise for both my French and German in the Enfans Perdus,
Colonel Comfort’s regiment and it was quite late before our
return. As I had broken my eyeglasses I had to trust entirely
to my horse who jumped over the ditches in a most independent
manner. We all sat up together until about twelve except Bronson
who had seemed used up all day, and had not accompanied me to the
regiments. He seemed to feel the shock of the fall when the car ran
off the track, and not to recover from it so easily as myself.

Next morning we rode another twenty-five miles to Newport News to
see the Irish Brigade. General Corcoran was there, and accompanied
us to the regiments first suggesting Irish whiskey to strengthen
us. At dinner ale was the beverage and after dinner each Colonel
seemed to have his own particular tope. On our return they made
an Irish drink called “scal thun” and about one o’clock gave us
“devilled bones.” The servant was invited in to sing for us and
furnished with drinks at odd times by the General, who never
indulged, however, himself to excess. We then went the grand rounds
with the General at two in the morning, arrested two officers for
not being at their posts and returned at half past three, well
prepared to rest quietly after a very fatiguing day, and one of the
most thoroughly Irish nights that I ever passed.

Next morning (yesterday) we had a delightful ride over to Fortress
Monroe, and had lunch at General Dix’s before leaving in the boat.

A dozen of the officers were down at the boat, and we felt as we
bid goodbye to some of them, like leaving old friends....

Dearest: a few words more and I must close. Bronson has a very bad
cold and decides that he will leave me to-morrow. If well enough
he will undoubtedly call on you. Of course this makes me doubly
homesick but I must see it through.

Goodbye. Yours as ever,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Again on October 18, having apparently been able to return for a brief visit to his family, he writes from Niagara:

“I was able to get a top berth and retired for the 31st time in two months to spend the night on the railroad. My three nights at home have made it hard, rather than easier, to continue my journeys.

“All our party started from Albany to Fonda, and I had a hard day’s work for the men had been deceived by the bounty and were suspicious about everything regarding the Allotment Commission. The officers’ dinner was a good deal like pigs eating at a trough. When at night three companies had not yet been visited, I determined to do it wholesale. I had two tents pitched and occupied one already prepared, placing a table, candles and allotment roll in each. I then had the three companies formed into three sides of a square and used all my eloquence. When I had finished they cheered me vociferously. I told them I would be better able to judge who meant the cheers by seeing which company made most allotments. [This sentence of my father’s makes me think so much of my brother’s familiar “shoot; don’t shout!” when he would receive vociferous cheers for any advice given.] I thus raised the spirit of competition and those really were the best that I had taken during the day. By eight o’clock we found our work done, dark as pitch, and rain descending in torrents, but still the work was done.”

These letters give, I think, a vivid picture of my father’s persistence and determined character, and the quality of “getting there,” which was so manifestly the quality of his son as well, and at the same time the power of enjoyment, the natural affiliation with his humankind, and always the thoughtfulness and consideration for his young wife left with her little charges at home.

In that same home the spirit of the war permeated through the barriers of love raised around the little children of the nursery, and my aunt writes of the attitude of the small, yellow-haired boy into whose childish years came also the distant din of battle, arousing in him the military spirit which even at four years of age had to take some expression. She says: “Yesterday Teedie was really excited when I said to him that I must fit his zouave suit. His little face flushed up and he said, ‘Are me a soldier laddie too?’ and when I took his suggestion and said, ‘Yes and I am the Captain,’ he was willing to stand for a moment or two to be fitted.” Even then Theodore Roosevelt responded to his country’s call, and equally to the discipline of the superior officer!

II

GREEN FIELDS AND FOREIGN FARING

From the nursery in 20th Street my early memories turn with even greater happiness to the country place which my parents rented at Madison, N. J., called Loantaka, where we spent several summers. There the joy of a sorrel Shetland pony became ours--(Pony Grant was his name)--a patriotic effort to commemorate the name of the great general, still on the lips of every one, whose indomitable will and military acumen had at that very moment been the chief factor in bringing the Civil War to a close. I, however, labored under the delusion that he, the general, was named after the pony, which seemed to me at the time much the more important of the two personalities. The four-legged Grant was quite as determined and aggressive as his two-legged namesake, and he never allowed any of us to be his master. When my father first had him brought to the front door of the country home at Madison, I shall never forget the thrill of excitement in the breasts of the three little children of the nursery. “Who will jump on his back?” called out my father gaily.

It has always been the pride of my life that, although I was only about four years old, I begged for the privilege before the “boys” were quite ready to decide whether to dare the ferocious glance in his dark eyes. Owing to my temerity he was presented to me, and from that time on was only a loan to my brothers. Each in turn, however, we would climb on his back, and each in turn would be repeatedly thrown over his head, but having shown his ability to eject, he would then, satisfied by thus proving his superiority, become gentle as a really gentle lamb. I qualify my reference to lambs, remembering well the singularly _ungentle_ lamb which later became a pet also in the family.

In those country days before the advent of the motor, the woods and lanes of New Jersey were safe haunts for happy childhood, and we were given much liberty, and, accompanied by our two little cousins from Savannah, John and Maud Elliott, who spent those two summers with us, having suffered greatly from the devastating war, we roamed at will, leading or riding our pony, playing endless games, or making believe we were Indians--always responsive to some story of Theodore’s which seemed to cast a glamour around our environment.

I can still feel the somewhat uncanny thrill with which I received the suggestion that a large reddish stain on a rock in the woods near by was the blood of a white girl, lately killed by the chief of the Indian tribe, to which through many mysterious rites we were supposed to belong. I remember enticing there in the twilight our very Hibernian kitchen-maid, and taking delight in her shrieks of terror at the sight of the so-called blood.

My brother always felt in later years, and carried the feeling into practice with his own children, that liberty in the summer-time, for a certain period at least, stimulated greatly the imagination of a child. To rove unhampered, to people the surroundings with one’s own creations, to watch the habits of the feathered or furry creatures, and insensibly to react to the beauty of wood and wind and water--all this leaves an indelible impression on the malleable nature of a young child, and we five happy cousins, in spite of Theodore’s constant delicacy, were allowed this wonderful freedom to assimilate what nature had to give.

I never once remember that we came to the “grown people” with that often-heard question “What shall we do next?” The days never seemed long enough, the hours flew on golden wings. Often there would be days of suffering for my brother, even in the soft summer weather, but not as acute as in the winter-time, and though my father or my aunt frequently had to take Theodore for change of air to one place or another, and rarely, even at his best, could he sleep without being propped up in bed or in a big chair, still his spirit was so strong and so recuperative that when I think of my earliest country memories, he seems always there, leading, suggesting, explaining, as all through my life when the nursery was a thing of the past and the New Jersey woodlands a faint though fair green memory, he was always beside me, leading, suggesting, explaining still.

It was in those very woodlands that his more accurate interest in natural history began. We others--normal and not particularly intelligent little children--joyed in the delights of the country, in our games and our liberty, but he was not only a leader for us in everything, but he also led a life apart from us, seriously studying the birds, their habits and their notes, so that years afterward the result of those long hours of childish concentration took form in his expert knowledge of bird life and lore--so expert a knowledge that even Mr. John Burroughs, the great nature specialist, conceded him equality of information with himself along those lines.

It was at Lowantaka, at the breakfast-table one day, after my father had taken the train to New York--this was the second year of our domicile there, and the sad war was over--that my mother received a peculiar-looking letter. I remember her face of puzzled interest as she opened it and the flush that came to her cheek as she turned to my aunt and said: “Oh, Anna, this must be from Irvine!” and read aloud what would now seem like a “personal” on a page of the New York _Herald_. It was as follows:

“If Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Miss Anna Bulloch will walk in Central Park up the Mall, at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon of this week [it was then Tuesday] and notice a young man standing under the third tree on the left with a red handkerchief tied around his throat, it will be of interest to them.”

As my mother finished reading the letter she burst into tears, for it was long since the younger brother had been heard from, as the amnesty granted to all those taking part in the Rebellion had not been extended to those who had gone to England, as had my two uncles, to assist in the building and the sailing of the _Alabama_, and letters from them were considered too dangerous to be received.

This “Irvine” had been saved when the _Alabama_ sank, after her brief career, and the two brothers had settled in Liverpool, and my mother knowing the great sorrow that his mother’s death had meant to this younger brother, had always longed during the intervening months to see him and tell him of that mother’s undying devotion, though she herself had passed away the year before.

It seemed now to the active imaginations of the Southern sisters that somehow or other Irvine had braved the authorities, and would be able to see them and hear from their lips the story of the past five years.

One can well imagine the excitement of the children around the breakfast-table at the romantic meeting suggested by the anonymous letter. And so, on the following Thursday, the two sisters went in to New York and walked up the Mall in Central Park, and there, standing under the third tree to the left, was the young man--a thin, haggard-looking young man compared to the round-faced boy with whom they had parted so long ago, but eagerly waiting to get from them the last news of the mother who had hoped she would die before any harm could befall him. He had worked his way over in the steerage of a sailing-vessel under an assumed name, for he was afraid of bringing some trouble on my father, and had taken the method of the anonymous letter to bring to him the sisters he had loved and missed so sorely.

What a meeting it must have been under that “third tree to the left” of the old Mall of Central Park, and what reminiscences of happier childhood days those three must have indulged in in the brief hour which the brother could give his sisters before sailing back across the broad ocean, for he did not dare meet them again for fear of some unpleasant results for the Northern brother-in-law, for whom he had great admiration.

Later, of course, my uncles were given the right to return to their own country, but although they often visited us, they never settled in America again, having rooted their business interests on English soil, though their hearts always turned loyally to the country of their birth.

In taking into consideration the immediate forebears of my brother, Theodore Roosevelt, I would once more repeat that to arrive at a true comprehension of his many-sided character one must realize the combination of personalities and the different strains of blood in those personalities from whom he was descended in summing up the man he was.

The stability and wisdom of the old Dutch blood, the gaiety and abandon of the Irish strain that came through the female side of his father’s people, and on his mother’s side the great loyalty of the Scotch and the fiery self-devotion of the French Huguenot martyrs, mixed as it was with the light touch which shows in French blood of whatever strain--all this combined to make of the boy born of so varied an ancestry one who was akin to all human nature.

In April, 1868, the little boy of nine and a half shows himself, indeed, as father to the man in several characteristic letters which I insert here. They were written to his mother and father and the little sister Conie when the above members of the family were paying a visit to Savannah, and are as follows:

New York April 28th, 1868.

MY DEAR MAMMA

I have just received your letter! What an excitement! How nice to
read it. What long letters you do write. I don’t see how you can
write them. My mouth opened wide with astonishment when I heard how
many flowers were sent in to you. I could revel in the buggie ones.
I jumped with delight when I found you had heard a mocking-bird.
Get some of its feathers if you can. Thank Johnny for the feathers
of the soldier’s cap, give him my love also. We cried when you
wrote about Grand-Mamma. Give My love to the good natured (to use
your own expresion) handsome lion, Conie, Johnny, Maud, and Aunt
Lucy. I am sorry the trees have been cut down. Aunt Annie, Edith
and Ellie send their love to you and all, I send mine to. I send
this picture to Conie. In the letters you write to me tell me how
many curiosities and living things you have got for me. I miss
Conie very much. I wish I were with you and Johnny for I could hunt
for myself. There is Conie’s letter.

MY DEAR CONIE:

As I wrote so much in Mamma’s letter I cannot write so much in
yours. I have got four mice, two white skined, red eyed velvety
creatures, very tame for I let them run all over me, they trie
to get down the back of my neck and under my vest, and two brown
skined, black eyed, soft as the others but wilder. Lordy and Rosa
are the names of the white mice, which are male and female. I keep
them in different cages

White mouse cage. brown mouse cage.

MY DEAR PAPA

You can all read each other’s letters. I hear you were very seasick
on your voyage and that Dora and Conie were seasick before you
passed Sandy-hook. Give my greatest love to Johnny. You must write
too. Wont you drive Mamma to some battle field for she is going to
get me some trophies? I would like to have them so very much. I
will have to stop now because Aunty wants me to learn my lessons.

The chaffinch is for you. The wren for Mamma. The cat for Conie.

Yours lovingly,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

P. S. I liked your peas so much that I ate half of them.

New York, April 30th, 1868.

MY DEAR FATHER

I received your letter yesterday. Your letter was more exciting
than Mother’s. I have a request to ask of you, will you do it? I
hope you will, if you will it will figure greatly in my museum. You
know what supple jacks are, do you not? Please get one for Ellie
and two for me. Ask your friend to let you cut off the tiger-cat’s
tail, and get some long moos and have it mated together. One of the
supple jacks (I am talking of mine now) must be about as thick as
your thumb and finger. The other must be as thick as your thumb.
The one which is as thick as your finger and thumb must be four
feet long and the other must be three feet long. One of my mice
got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it was a common
mouse. Its name was Brownie. Nothing particular has happened since
you went away for I cannot go out in the country like you can. The
trees and the vine on our piazza are buding and the grass is green
as can be, and no one would dream that it was winter so short a
time ago. All send love to all of you.

Yours lovingly,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

The “excitement” referred to in the first letter was the wonderful reception accorded to my mother on her return to the city of her girlhood days. Her rooms in the hotel in Savannah were filled by her friends with flowers--and how she loved flowers--but not the “buggie ones” in which her young naturalist son says he would “revel!”

One can see the ardent little bird-lover as he wrote “I jumped with delight when I found you had heard a mocking-bird,” and again when he says “Tell me how many curiosities and living things you have got for me.” Insatiable lover of knowledge as he was, it was difficult indeed for his parents to keep pace with his thirst for “outward and visible signs of the things that be.”

More than fifty years have passed since the painstaking penning of the childish letters, but the heart of his sister in reading them thrills hotly at the thought that the little “Conie” of those days was “very much” missed by her idolized brother, and how she treasured the letter written all for her, with the pictures of the cages in which he kept his beloved mice! It was sad that the pictures of the chaffinch, wren, and cat, evidently enclosed for each of the travellers, should have been lost. In the two letters to his father he enlists that comrade-father’s services for his adored “museum” by the plea for “trophies from some battle field,” and the urgent request for the “supple jack,” the nature of which exciting article I confess I do not understand. I do understand, however, his characteristic distress that “one of my mice got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it was a common mouse.” That last sentence brought the tears to my eyes. How true to type it was! the “common mouse” was the one he liked best of all--never the rare, exotic thing, but the every-day, the plain, the simple, and he probably liked it so much just because that little “common mouse” had shown courage and vitality and affection! All through Theodore Roosevelt’s life it was to the plain simple things and to the plain simple people that he gave his most loyal devotion.

In May, 1869, because of a great desire on the part of my mother to visit her brothers in England, as well as to see the Old World of which she had read and studied so much, she persuaded my father to take the whole family abroad.

After those early summers at Madison, which still stand out so clearly in my memory, there comes a less vivid recollection of months passed at the beautiful old place at Barrytown, on the Hudson River, which my parents rented from Mr. John Aspinwall, and where a wonderful rushing brook played a big part in the joys of our holiday months.

We “younger ones” longed for another summer at this charming spot and regretted, with a certain amount of suspicion, the decision of the “Olympians” to drag us from our leafy haunts to improve our rebellious young minds, but my parents were firm in their decision, and we started on the old paddle-wheel steamship _Scotia_, as I have said, in May, 1869.

In a letter from my mother to my aunt, who had married Mr. James King Gracie, and was therefore regretfully left behind, she described with an easy pen some incidents of the voyage across the ocean, as follows:

“Elliott is the leader of children’s sports and plays with the little Winthrop children all day. A short while ago Thee made up his mind suddenly that Teedie must play too, so hunted up the little fellow who was deeply enjoying a conversation with the only acquaintance he has made, a little man, whom we call the ‘one too many man,’ for he seems to go about with no acquaintances. His name is Mr. St. John and he is a quaint little well of knowledge,--very fond of natural history and fills Teedie’s heart with delight. Teedie brought him up and introduced him to me, his eyes dancing with delight and he constantly asks me, ‘Mamma, have you really conversed with Mr. St. John?’ I feel so tenderly to Teedie, that I actually stopped reading the ‘Heir of Redcliffe,’ and talked to the poor little man who has heart complaint so badly that his voice is even affected by it.

“The two little boys were pretty seasick on Sunday and I do not know what I should have done without Robert, the bedroom steward, and an amiable deck steward, who waits on those who remain on deck at meals. He seems a wonderfully constructed creature, having amiable knobs all over his body, upon which he supports more bowls of soup and plates of eatables than you can imagine, all of which he serves out, panting over you while you take your plate, with such wide extended nostrils that they take in the Irish coast, and the draught from them cools the soup!

“Anna,--the carpet in my stateroom is filled with organic matter which, if distilled, would make a kind of anchovy paste, only fit to be the appetizer before the famous ‘witches’ broth,’ the receipt for which Shakespeare gives in “Macbeth”,--but on the whole the _Scotia_ is well ordered and cleaner than I had expected.

“On Sunday morning Thee was sick and while in bed, little Conie came into the room. He looked down from his upper berth, looking like a straw-colored Cockatoo, but Conie stopped in the middle of what she was saying and said, ‘Oh Papa! you have such a lovely little curl on your forehead’ with a note of great admiration in her voice and meaning it all, _really_, but her position looking up, and his looking down reminded me forcibly of the picture of the flattered crow who dropped his cheese when the fox complimented him!”

This letter, perhaps, more than almost any other, gives the quaint humor and also the tenderness of my mother’s attitude toward her children and husband.

On our arrival in Liverpool we were greeted by the Bulloch uncles, and from that time on the whole European trip was one of interest and delight to the “grown people.” My older sister, though not quite fifteen, was so unusually mature and intelligent that she shared their enjoyment, but the journey was of rather mitigated pleasure to the three “little ones,” who much preferred the nursery at 28th East 20th Street, or their free summer activities in wood and field, to the picture-galleries and museums, or even to the wonderful Swiss mountains where they had to be so carefully guarded.

In the letters written faithfully to our beloved aunt, the note of homesickness is always apparent.

Our principal delight was in what we used to call “exploring” when we first arrived at a hotel, and in the occasional intercourse with children of our own age, or, as in Teedie’s case, with some expert along the line of his own interests, but the writing and receiving of home letters stand out more strongly than almost any other memory of this time, and amongst those most treasured by Teedie and myself were the little missives written by our most intimate friend, Edith Kermit Carow, a little girl who was to have, in later days, the most potent influence of all over the life of Theodore Roosevelt. How little she thought when she wrote to her friend “Conie” from Redbank, November 19, 1869, “I was much pleased at receiving your kind letter telling me all about Teedie’s birthday,” that one day that very Teedie would be President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow the mistress of the White House.

The old friendship of our parents for Mr. and Mrs. Carow, who lived with Mr. Carow’s older sister, Mrs. Robert Kermit, in a large house backing up against the 14th Street mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, was the natural factor in the relationship of the younger generation, and little Edith Carow and little Corinne Roosevelt were pledged friends from the time of their birth.

The “Teedie” of those days expressed always a homesick feeling when “Edie’s” letters came. They seemed to fill him with a strong longing for his native land!

In the little note written on yellow, very minute writing-paper, headed by a satisfied-looking cat, “Edie” expresses the wish that “Teedie” could have been with her on a late picnic, and “Teedie,” I am equally sure, wished for her presence at his eleventh-birthday festivities, which were described by my sister Anna in a letter to our aunt, Mrs. James King Grade. I quote a few lines from that letter, for again its contents show the beautiful devotion of my father and mother and sister to the delicate little boy--the devotion which always put their own wishes or arrangements aside when the terrible attacks of asthma came, for those attacks seemed to make them feel that no plan was too definite or important to change at once should “Teedie’s” health require it. My sister writes, the letter being dated from Brussels, October 30, 1869:

“Last Thursday was dear little Teedie’s birthday; he was eleven years old. We all determined to lay ourselves out on that occasion, for we all feared that he would be homesick,--for he is a great little home-boy. It passed off very nicely indeed. We had to leave Berlin suddenly the night before, for ‘Teedie’ was not very well; so we left Berlin on Wednesday night at eight o’clock and arrived at Cologne on Thursday morning about nine. You can imagine it was a very long trip for the three little children, although they really bore it better than we three older ones. [She one of the older ones at fourteen and a half!] It was a bitterly cold night and snowed almost all the time. Think of a snow storm on the night of the 27th of October! Teedie was delighted at having had a snow storm on his birthday morning, for he had never had _that_ before. When we reached Cologne we went to the same hotel, and had the same nice rooms which we had had on our former stay there, and that of course made us feel very much more at home. Teedie ordered the breakfast, and they all had ‘real tea’ as a very great treat, and then Teedie ordered the dinner, at which we were all requested to appear in full dress; so Mamma came in her beautiful white silk dinner dress, and Papa in dress coat and light kid gloves. I was very cold, so only wore silk. After Teedie’s dinner Papa brought in all his presents. They, Mamma and Papa, gave each of the three, writing desks marked with their names and filled with all the conveniences. Then Teedie received a number of smaller presents as well.”

What parents, indeed, so fully to understand the romantic feeling of the little boy about his birthday dinner, that they were more than willing to don their most beautiful habiliments, and appear as they had so lately appeared when received at the Vienna Court! Such yielding to what by many people might have been considered as too childish a whim to be countenanced shows with special clearness the quality in my father and mother which inspired in us all such undying adoration. Another letter--not written by my older sister, but in the painstaking handwriting of a little girl of seven--describes my own party the month before. We were evidently staying in Vienna at the time, for I say: “We went to Schönbrunn, a ‘shatto.’” (More frequently known as a château, but quite as thrilling to my childish mind spelled in my own unique manner!) And there in the lovely grounds my mother had arranged a charming al fresco supper for the little homesick American girl, and just as the “grown people” were in “full dress” for “Teedie’s” birthday, so they gave themselves up in the grounds of the great “shatto” to making merry for the little seven-year-old girl.

After the great excitements of the birthdays came our interesting sojourn in Rome. In spite of my mother’s efforts to arouse a somewhat abortive interest in art in the hearts of the three little children, my principal recollections of the Rome of 1869 are from the standpoint of the splendid romps on the Pincian Hill. In those contests of running and racing and leaping my brother Elliott was always the leader, although “Teedie” did his part whenever his health permitted. One scene stands out clearly in my mind. It was a beautiful day, one of those sunny Italian days when ilex and olive shone with a special glistening quality, and when the “Eternal City” as viewed from the high hill awoke even in the hearts of the little Philistine foreigners a subconscious thrill which they themselves did not quite understand. We were playing with the Lawrence children, playing leap-frog (how inappropriate to the Pincian Hill!) over the many posts, when suddenly there came a stir--an unexpected excitement seemed everywhere. Word was passed that the Pope was coming. “Teedie” whispered to the little group of American children that he didn’t believe in popes--that no real American would; and we all felt it was due to the stars and stripes that we should share his attitude of distant disapproval. But then, as is often the case, the miracle happened, for the crowd parted, and to our excited, childish eyes something very much like a scene in a story-book took place. The Pope, who was in his sedan-chair carried by bearers in beautiful costumes, his benign face framed in white hair and the close cap which he wore, caught sight of the group of eager little children craning their necks to see him pass; and he smiled and put out one fragile, delicate hand toward us, and, lo! the late scoffer who, in spite of the ardent Americanism that burned in his eleven-year-old soul, had as much reverence as militant patriotism in his nature, fell upon his knees and kissed the delicate hand, which for a brief moment was laid upon his fair curling hair. Whenever I think of Rome this memory comes back to me, and in a way it was so true to the character of my brother. The Pope to him had always meant what later he would have called “unwarranted superstition,” but that Pope, Pio Nono, the kindly, benign old man, the moment he appeared in the flesh brought about in my brother’s heart the reaction which always came when the pure, the good, or the true crossed his path.

Amongst my mother’s efforts to interest us in art there was one morning when she decided positively that her little girl, at least, should do something more in keeping with the “Eternal City” than playing leap-frog on the Pincian Hill, and so, a reluctant captive, I was borne away to the Vatican Galleries, and was there initiated into the beauties of some of the frescos and sculpture. My mother, who I have already said was a natural connoisseur in all art, had especial admiration for that wonderful piece of sculpture from the hand of Michael Angelo known as “The Torso of the Vatican.” This work of art stood alone in a small room, so that nothing else should take away from its effect. As those who know it well need hardly be told, it lacks both arms and both legs, and to the little girl who was summarily placed by her mother in the only chair in the small room, it seemed a very strange creation. But, with the hope of arousing artistic instinct, my lovely mother said: “Now, darling, this is one of the greatest works of art in the world, and I am going to leave you here alone for five minutes, because I want you to sit very quietly and look at it, and perhaps when I come back in the five minutes you will be able to realize how beautiful it is.” And then I saw my mother’s slender figure vanish into another room. Having been always accustomed to obey my parents, I virtuously and steadily kept my eyes upon the legless, armless Torso, wondering how any one _could_ think it a beautiful work of art; and when my mother, true to her words, returning in five minutes with an expectant look on her face, said, “Now, darling, what do you think of the great ‘Torso’?” I replied sadly, “Well, mamma, it seems to me a little ‘chumpy’!” How often later in life I have heard my mother laugh immoderately as she described her effort to instil her own love of those wonderful shoulders and that massive back into her recalcitrant small daughter; and when, years after, I myself, imbued as she was with a passion for Italy and Italian art, used to wander through those same galleries, I could never go into that little room without the memory of the small girl of long ago, and her effort to think Michael Angelo’s “Torso” anything but “chumpy.”

Christmas in Rome was made for us as much like our wonderful Christmases at home as was possible in a foreign hotel. It had always been our custom to go to our parents’ room at the pleasant hour of 6 A. M., and generally my mother had induced my long-suffering father to be dressed in some special and marvellous manner at that early hour when we “undid” the bulging, mysterious-looking stockings, and none of these exciting rites were omitted because of our distance from our native land. I think, for that reason, at the end of the beautiful Christmas Day, 1869, the special joy in the hearts of the three little American children was that they had actually forgotten that they were in Rome at all! On January 2, “Teedie” himself writes to his beloved Aunt Annie (Mrs. Gracie) on a piece of note-paper which characteristically has at the top a bird on a bough--that paper being his choice for the writing-desks which had been given to the three children on his birthday: “Will you send the enclosed to Edith Carow. In it I described our ascent of Vesuvius, and so I will describe Pompeii to you.” In a rather cramped hand he enters then into an accurate description of everything connected with Pompeii, gloating with scientific delight over the seventeen skeletons found in the Street of the Tombs, but falling for one moment into a lighter vein, he tells of two little Italian boys whom my father had engaged to come and sing for us the same evening at Sorrento, and whose faces were so dirty that my father and his friend Mr. Stevens washed them with “Kissengin Water.” That extravagance seems to have been specially entertaining to the mind of the young letter-writer.

During the year abroad there were lovely times when we were not obliged to think of sculpture or painting--weeks in the great Swiss mountains when, in spite of frequent attacks of his old enemy, my father writes that “Teedie” walked many miles and showed the pluck and perseverance which were so strikingly part of his character. In another letter he is described, while suffering from a peculiarly severe attack of asthma, as being propped up all night in a big chair in the sitting-room, while his devoted mother told him stories of “when she was a little girl” at the old plantation at Roswell; and yet within two days of that very time he is following my father and brother on one of the longest walks they took in the mountains. All through the letters of that period one realizes the developing character of the suffering little boy. My mother writes in a letter to her sister: “Teedie and Ellie have walked to-day thirteen miles, and are very proud of their performance. Indeed Teedie has been further several times.”

And so the year of exile had its joyous memories, but in spite of them never were there happier children than those who arrived home in America in the spring of 1870.

Earlier in our lives my father, always thinking of the problem of the fragile health of his two older children, conceived the idea of turning the third room of the second story at 28 East 20th Street into an out-of-doors piazza, a kind of open-air gymnasium, with every imaginable swing and bar and seesaw, and my mother has often told me how he called the boy to him one day--Theodore was now about eleven years of age--and said: “Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must _make_ your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.” The little boy looked up, throwing back his head in a characteristic fashion; then with a flash of those white teeth which later in life became so well known that when he was police commissioner the story ran that any recreant policeman would faint if he suddenly came face to face with a set of _false_ teeth in a shop-window--he said, “_I’ll make my body_.”

That was his first important promise to himself and the delicate little boy began his work; and for many years one of my most vivid recollections is seeing him between horizontal bars, widening his chest by regular, monotonous motion--drudgery indeed--but a drudgery which eventuated in his being not only the apostle but the exponent of the strenuous life.

What fun we had on that piazza! The first Theodore Roosevelt, like his son, was far ahead of his times, and fresh air was his hobby, and he knew that the children who will cry if they are made to take dull walks on dreary city streets, will romp with dangerous delight ungovernessed and unmaided in an outdoor gymnasium. I use the word “dangerous” advisedly, for one day my lovely and delicate mother had an unforgetable shock on that same piazza. She happened to look out of the window opening on to the piazza and saw two boys--one of whom, needless to say, was Theodore--carefully balancing the seesaw from the high rail which protected the children from the possibility of falling into the back yard, two stories below. Having wearied of the usual play, the aforesaid two boys thought they would add a tinge of excitement to the merriment by balancing the seesaw in such a manner as to have one boy always in the thrilling position of hanging on the farther side of the top rail, with the possibility (unless the equilibrium were kept to perfection) of seesaw, boys, and all descending unexpectedly into the back yard.

One may well imagine the horror of the mother as she saw her adventurous offspring crawling out beyond the projection of the railing, and only great self-control enabled her to reach the wooden board held lightly by the fingers of an equally criminal cousin, and by an agonized clutch make it impossible for the seesaw to slide down with its two foolhardy riders.

Needless to say, no such feat was ever performed again, but the piazza became the happy meeting-ground of all the boys and girls of the neighborhood, and there not only Theodore Roosevelt but many of his friends and family put in a stock of sturdy health which was to do them good service in later years. At the same time the children of that house were leading the normal lives of other little children, except for the individual industry of the more delicate one, who put his hours of necessary quiet into voracious reading of history, and study of natural history.

Again the summers were the special delight of our lives, and the following several summers we spent on the Hudson River, at or near Riverdale, where warm friendships were formed with the children of our parents’ friends, Mr. and Mrs. William E. Dodge, Mr. and Mrs. Percy R. Pyne, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Harriman, and Mr. Robert Colgate.

Groups of joyous children invented and carried into effect every imaginable game, and, as ever, our father was the delightful collaborator in every scheme of pleasure. There began Theodore’s more active collection of birds and animals. There he advertised for families of field-mice, and the influx of the all-too-prolific little animals was terrifying to the heart of so perfect a housekeeper as my mother. The horror produced by the discovery of several of the above-named families in the refrigerator was more than trying to the nerves of one less devoted to science. My sister Anna, the most unselfish of older sisters, was the chief sufferer always, as, in spite of her extreme youth--for she was only four years older than my brother--her unusual ability and maturity made her seem more like a second mother than a sister. On one special occasion Theodore, having advertised and offered the large sum of ten cents for every field-mouse and thirty-five cents for a family, left for a trip to the Berkshire hills, and my poor sister was inundated by hundreds of active and unattractive families of field-mice, while clamoring country people demanded their ten-cent pieces or the larger sum irrelevantly offered by the absentee young naturalist. In the same unselfish manner my sister was the unwilling recipient of families of young squirrels, guinea-pigs, etc., and I can see her still bringing up one especially delicate family of squirrels on the bottle, and also begging a laundress not to forsake the household because turtles were tied to her tubs!

Those summers on the Hudson River stand out as peculiarly happy days. As I have said before, we were allowed great freedom, although never license, in the summer-time, and situated as we then were, with a group of little friends about us, the long sweet days passed like a joyous dream.

Doctor Hilborne West, the husband of my mother’s half-sister, stands prominently out as a figure in those childhood times. My mother writes of him as follows: “Dr. West has made himself greatly beloved by each child. He has made boats and sailed them with Ellie; has read poetry and acted plays with Conie; and has talked science and medicine and natural history with Teedie, who always craves knowledge.” In spite of his craving for knowledge the boy, now nearly fourteen years old, had evidently, however, the normal love of noise and racket, as evinced by the following “spread-eagle” letter to his aunt, who, in her turn, had gone abroad that summer.

Dobb’s Ferry, July 9th, 72.

DEAR AUNTIE