Theodore Rex (125 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
“
THERE IS A LITTLE
hole in my stomach,” Q remarked to his father on the day after the convention, “when I think of leaving the White House.”
Roosevelt maintained a cheerful attitude over Taft’s huge win, but when writing to intimates, such as Nannie Lodge, he could not avoid imparting a similar wistfulness. “Four more years” had been so urgently, so almost compellingly, offered him, not once but day after day—years in which he could without doubt accomplish the most far-reaching reforms since Reconstruction. Declining that opportunity had, as always with him, been a matter of moral compulsion:
It was absolutely necessary that any stampede for me should be prevented, and that I should not be nominated.… If I had accepted, my power for useful service would have forever been lessened, because nothing could have prevented the wide diffusion of the impression that I had not really meant what I had said, that my actions did not really square with the highest and finest code of ethics—and if there is any value whatever in my career, as far as my countrymen are concerned, it consists in their belief that I have been both an efficient public man, and at the same time, a disinterested public servant.
Ray Stannard Baker stopped by to see the President that evening, and found him in a rare reflective mood: “
Well, I’m through now. I’ve done my work.”
They talked until midnight. Baker suggested that the American people might not be through with him, and might be clamoring for his return to the White House in four years’ time.
“
No, revolutions don’t go backwards,” Roosevelt said. He seemed tired, and his voice had a note of sad finality. “New issues are coming up. I see them. People are going to discuss economic issues more and more: the tariff, currency, banks. They are hard questions, and I am not deeply interested in them: my problems are moral problems, and my teaching has been plain morality.”
He stayed in Washington only long enough to accept Taft’s resignation as Secretary of War, along with his profuse thanks and vows of obligation. They agreed that Luke Wright, a former Ambassador to Japan and coauthor of the Gentlemen’s Agreement, should be given charge of the War Department. As to other members of the Cabinet, Taft said, in the flood of his gratitude, that he saw no reason why they should not continue to serve if he was elected President.
The President, delighted, relayed this information to all concerned. “
He and I view public questions exactly alike,” he wrote George Otto Trevelyan. “In fact, I think it is very rare that two public men have ever been so much at one in all the essentials of their public beliefs.”
On 20 June, he left town for Oyster Bay.
Taft headed in the opposite direction to work on his acceptance speech in Hot Springs, Virginia.
FOUR DAYS LATER
, Grover Cleveland died. On 10 July, delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, nominated William Jennings Bryan for President. While doing so, they proved that their lungs were more leathery than those of Roosevelt’s puny claque in Chicago, as they cheered the Commoner for an hour and twenty-eight minutes.
Edith was not impressed. She had met Bryan at the Governors’ Conference and decided that American voters had been right in rejecting him for the presidency twice already. “
A trifle too fat and oily for the fastidious,” she wrote her sister-in-law.
Oily or not, Bryan was by no means unattractive to voters. He was an orator of legendary eloquence, unlike Taft, whose platform manner was awkward and gaffe-prone. (The Grand Army of the Republic had not appreciated his reminder, on Memorial Day, that General Grant had had a drinking problem.) Bryan, a genuine man of the people, was able to empathize with his audiences “one on one,” whereas Taft the judge manqué always sounded as if he was handing down majority opinions.
Democratic campaign planners felt that Taft’s biggest asset—his presidential backing—had counted more at the Republican Convention than it would on Election Day. By then, Roosevelt would be, ideologically, a spent force, and unless Taft built a big new political personality for himself, voters might well decide that twelve years of Republican continuity were enough.
Bryan, besides, had already had plenty of experience in leading his own party. Taft’s behavior after drafting his acceptance speech indicated a certain lack of confidence after years of submitting to Roosevelt’s will.
Instead of heading straight home to Cincinnati to confer with his family and advisers, he took a detour to Oyster Bay, disastrously announcing that he needed “the President’s judgment and criticism.” Roosevelt received him at Sagamore Hill on 24
July, made a few changes to the speech, wished him well, and sent him on his way.
As Taft headed west, another visitor came to spend a few nights with the Roosevelts
en famille
, accompanied by Assistant Treasury Secretary Beekman Winthrop. Captain Archibald Butt, he of the glittering, much-befrogged soldierly presence at the Conservation Conference, had with astonishing speed become the President’s closest companion. Other military and naval aides had come and gone at the Roosevelt White House—among them an extraordinarily handsome West Pointer named Douglas MacArthur—but “Archie” combined personal charm and professional efficiency to such a degree that he was already indispensable.
Large, strong, plumpish, and always beautifully turned out, whether in dress blue or mufti, he was forty-two years old, unmarried, and devoted to his widowed mother, to whom he wrote almost daily. As a youth, he had been the Washington correspondent of a small group of Southern newspapers, and shown a distinct gift for social reporting. He had carried his writing habit into the Army, with vague thoughts of one day collecting and publishing extracts from his letters for publication. To such a natural scribe, appointment to the Roosevelt White House was a privilege worthy of St.-Simon. Mrs. Butt, a Georgian lady of unreconstructed views, was finding that her son was the best-informed gossip in the United States.
JULY
25, 1908
My dear Mother:
The greatest surprise to me so far has been the utmost simplicity of life at Sagamore Hill. I am constantly asking myself if this can really be the home of the President of the United States, and how is it possible for him to enforce such simplicity in his environment. It might be the home of a well-to-do farmer with literary tastes or the house of some college professor.…
There was no one at the house when we got there. Mrs. Roosevelt
had been out to see some sick neighbor and the President was playing tennis. They both came in together, however, he in tennis garb and she in a simple white muslin with a large white hat of some cloth material, with flowers in it, a wabbly kind of hat which seemed to go with trees and water. He welcomed us with his characteristic handshake and she most graciously and kindly. The President was so keen for us to take a swim that he did not give us time to see our rooms before we were on the way to the beach.
I do not know when I have enjoyed anything so much. I could not help remarking how pretty and young Mrs. R. looked in her bathing suit. I did not admire his, however, for it was one of those one-piece garments and looked more like a suit of overalls than a bathing suit, and I presume he did not think it dignified for the President to wear one of those abbreviated armless suits which we all think are so becoming. I confess to liking to have as much skin surface in contact with the water as possible.
Dinner was at 8:00 and we hurried home to put on evening clothes. I had asked Mrs. R. if the President dressed for dinner and she said that he always wore his dinner jacket, but to wear anything I wanted, as the only rule they had at Oyster Bay was that they had no rules or regulations. I finally wore white trousers and white waistcoat with the dinner jacket and black tie. He said it was a costume he liked more than any other for summer and that he often wore it himself. He put Mrs. Winthrop on his right, and I sat on his left. There was no special formality, and the only deference which was paid to the President was the fact that all dishes were handed to him first, then to Mrs. Roosevelt, and after that to the guest of honor, and so on.
Miss Ethel was late in coming to dinner and everyone, including the President, rose. From the conversation which followed I learned that it had always been the rule to be on time for their meals, and this remark started the Roosevelt ball rolling. The President said that he thought that Ethel ought to try to be on time, too; that he preferred that no notice be taken of him when he came to his meals late, but that since Mrs. Roosevelt (with a deferential wave of the hand toward her) insisted upon this modicum of respect being paid to the President he always tried to be on time to his meals. Mrs. Roosevelt said that she did not insist upon the mark of respect being shown to the President but to their father, whereupon all laughed, and Ethel said that she would try to be on time to all her meals except breakfast.
I was very hungry and enjoyed my dinner, being helped twice to nearly everything. We had soup, fish, fried chicken, and corn on the cob, and jelly. There was nothing to drink but water. The President asked me if I would have something, but as it was not the custom I declined.
“We often have something,” the President said, “so do not hesitate to take what you want. We are not the tipplers that our friends in Wall Street would make us out, but don’t mistake us for prohibitionists.” …
I forgot to mention the fact that the fried chicken was covered with white gravy, and oh, so good! The President said that his mother had always said it was the only way to serve fried chicken; that it gave the gravy time to soak into the meat, and that if the gravy was served separately he never took it.
Ted is now grown up and, while not handsome, has a keen face and is certainly clever and has a splendid sense of humour. Kermit is very attractive in manner and in appearance, and I have an idea that he is his mother’s favorite, though of course, she would deny it, just as you do when accused of favouring me over the others. Archie is the one who was so ill, and still looks very delicate. He is the pugnacious member, evidently, for he takes up the cudgel at every chance. Quentin is the youngest, and a large, bouncing youngster, who brought in his last-made kite to show his father, and who explained to me the merits of the newfangled kites for flying purposes, which controversy would not interest you in the least.
There, I have introduced you to the family, and will stop, as lunch is nearly ready, the first bell having been some ten minutes ago. By the way, the bell is a cow bell, just the kind you hear on cows in the cow lot, but sounds just as sweet as any other if one is hungry.
After lunch, the women retired to snooze, Ethel walked her dog, and the boys rowed out to spend the night on the
Mayflower
. Butt and Winthrop sat
smoking on the porch with Roosevelt, gazing down the slope of Sagamore Hill to the Sound. There were no other houses to be seen anywhere, just a rich variety of trees lower down, and then nothing but water. The talk naturally drifted to Taft, his impending acceptance speech, and his prospects for election.
Roosevelt admitted to some worries on the last score. “If the people knew Taft there would be no doubt of his election. They know what he has done, but they don’t know the man. If they knew him they would know that he can be relied on to carry out the policies which I stand for. He is committed to them just the same as I am and has been made the mouthpiece for them as frequently as I.”
Butt said that Taft’s major problem was “the residuary legatee idea.” However, his legacy also included the President’s popularity.
“Yes,” Roosevelt said, “I think so.”
CAPTAIN BUTT STAYED
at Sagamore Hill for four more days, enchanted by the Roosevelt family, while they in turn found him to be unflappable, tireless, well-bred, and discreet.
Like the President, he was a heroic trencherman, and matched Roosevelt plate by oversized plate, from double helpings of peaches and cream for breakfast, followed by fried liver and bacon and hominy grits with salt and butter (“Why, Mr. President, this is a Southern breakfast”), through three-course lunches and meat dinners suppurating with fat. “You think me a large eater,” Butt wrote in his next letter home. “Well, I am small in comparison to him. But he has a tremendous body and really enjoys each mouthful. I never saw anyone with a more wholesome appetite, and then he complains of not losing flesh. I felt like asking him today: ‘How can you expect to?’ ”