Colonel Roosevelt (155 page)

34
“Thou Shalt Not”
TR,
Letters
, 7.739.

35
He was sufficiently alarmed
EKR to ERD, 11 May 1913 (ERDP); TR,
Letters
, 7.729. “For the first time,” Edith wrote TR’s sister Bamie, “He begins to wish his hand was on the helm.” (12 May 1913 [TRC].) TR’s attitude to the California-Japan crisis of 1913 is spelled out in TR,
Letters
, 7.720–22 and 727–31. The Wilson administration was itself sufficiently concerned about the Pacific threat to devote a cabinet debate to it on 16 May. Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 301.

36
Like David Livingstone
The Victorian era’s saintly missionary converted only one African, who subsequently reverted to paganism. Tim Jeal,
Livingstone
(New York, 1973), 80–81.

37
“go up the Paraguay”
TR,
Works
, 6.3; TR,
Letters
, 7.741.

38
his essay on faith
See above, 154–57.

39
There was a certain
TR,
Letters
, 7.741; See also John Augustine Zahm,
Through South America’s Southland: With an Account of the Roosevelt Scientific Expedition to South America
(New York, 1916), 4–9; TR,
Works
, 6.4.

40
Chapman suggested
Frank Chapman to Henry Fairfield Osborn, 24 June 1913 (AMNH);
National Cyclopaedia of American Biography
, 37.387–98, 40.320.

41
Roosevelt reviewed
TR to Frank Chapman, 30 July 1913 (AMNH); TR,
Works
, 6.ix–x, 5–6. Cherrie had given help to opponents of the Venezuelan dictator Cipriano Castro, immortalized by TR as “that unspeakably villainous little monkey.”

42
he was recruited
TR,
Works
, 6.5. Miller was twenty-six. TR offered to pay the traveling expenses of both naturalists, on condition that they would publish nothing competitive with his own memoir of the expedition. The museum agreed to provide scientific equipment and take care of the transportation of specimens. TR to Henry Fairfield Osborn, 20 July 1913 (AMNH).

43
Anthony Fiala, a
Zahm,
Through South America’s Southland
, 11; Candice Millard,
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey
(New York, 2005), 33–34; TR to Lauro Müller, 14 Oct. 1913 (TRP); Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 296–97; TR to KR, 30 June 1913, ts. (TRC).

44
graduated at last
TR had attended ABR’s commencement in Andover on 13 June 1913.

45
Two days later
The chronology of TR’s movements from 12 July–22 Aug. 1913 in TR,
Letters
, 8.1481 is inaccurate. The correct sequence of night stops is July 12–14: El Tovar; 15: Phantom Ranch; 16–31: Kaibab Plateau; Aug. 1: House Rock Valley; 2–3: Lees Ferry; 4: Painted Desert; 5–6: Tuba; 7: camp; 8: Marsh Pass; 9: Kayenta; 10: Bubbling Spring Valley; 11: Navajo Mountain; 12: Rainbow Bridge, Utah; 13–14: camp; 15–16: Kayenta; 17–18: camp; 19–20: Walpi; 21: Ganado; 22: Gallup, N.M.

46
Moonlit and mysterious
The following account of TR’s vacation in Arizona is based on his articles “A Cougar Hunt on the Rim of the Grand Canyon,” “Across the Navajo Desert,” and “The Hopi Snake Dance,”
The Outlook
, 4, 11, and 18 Oct. 1913. They are cited as reprinted in TR,
Works
, 4. Supplementary details and chronology from Nicholas Roosevelt,
TR
, 110ff.

47
Leave it as
See Morris,
Theodore Rex
, 225–26.

48
“He still has”
Nicholas Roosevelt,
TR
, 117.

49
Roosevelt indulged in
TR,
Works
, 4.22. A lookout southeast of Vista Encantada was dedicated by the National Park Service in 1990 as “Roosevelt Point.”

50
The soil was so arid
It is a conjecture that the future author of “The Waste Land” may have read TR’s article “Across the Navajo Desert” in
The Outlook
that fall, before moving to England in the spring of 1914.

51
Roosevelt was reminded
TR,
Works
, 4.26, quoting Joaquin Miller,
Song of the Sierras
(Boston, 1871), xii.

52
Kayenta was
TR,
Works
, 4.31, 36. See Elizabeth Compton Hegemann,
Navaho Trading Days
(Albuquerque, 1963), 224ff., for a photographic memoir of the Wetherills and the entire region TR traversed in 1913.

53
On 10 August
Nicholas Roosevelt,
TR
, 120; TR,
Works
, 4.37.

54
He noted the next
TR,
Works
, 4.38.

55
proposals to cut up and sell
Dana and Mary R. Coolidge,
The Navajo Indians
(Boston, 1930), 268.

56
Although he held no brief
TR,
Works
, 4.28.

57
Roosevelt’s attitude
Hagedorn,
Roosevelt in the Bad Lands
, 355; Morris,
The Rise of TR
, 304–5, 466–67. The most comprehensive survey of TR’s prepresidential Indian policies is that of Dyer,
TR and the Idea of Race
, 70–83.

58
As President
See Lewis L. Gould,
The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
(Lawrence, Kan., 1991), 207–9. But see also McGerr,
A Fierce Discontent
, 205–9.

59
He had protected
Natalie Curtis,
The Indians’ Book
(New York, 1907), 476. Natalie Curtis, later Burlin (1875–1921), was related to the great Western photographer Edward S. Curtis, a family friend of the Roosevelts. This connection helped smooth her introduction to TR in 1903. See Natalie Curtis, “Mr. Roosevelt and Indian Music: A Personal Reminiscence,”
The Outlook
, 5 Mar. 1919, and TR,
Letters
, 3.523. Her pioneering musicology, using cylinder recordings, was taken seriously in Europe, where composers such as Béla Bartók were conducting similar researches. Ferruccio Busoni’s
Red Indian Fantasy
for piano and orchestra (1915) was based on themes from
The Indians’ Book
. A biographical website devoted to Miss Curtis is available at
http://www.nataliecurtis.org/
.

60
“These songs cast”
Reproduced in facsimile in Curtis,
The Indians’ Book
.

61
He talked to her
TR,
Works
, 4.41.

62
Dawn, beautiful dawn
Ibid., 4.44.

63
Roosevelt decided
Ibid., 4.42. TR also wrote that Kayenta “would be an excellent place for a summer school of archeology and ethnology.” Ibid., 38–39.

64
At mid-morning
TR,
Works
, 4.47; Natalie Curtis, “Theodore Roosevelt in Hopi-Land,”
The Outlook
, 17 Sept. 1919. The following anecdote, with quotations, is taken entirely from this source.

65
It was Natalie Curtis
Miss Curtis’s embarrassment was compounded when she found that the good-looking young “cowboy” who had helped her milk the gasoline from a parked car was none other than Archie. Curtis, “Theodore Roosevelt in Hopi-Land.”

66
Roosevelt then gave himself
Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of TR’s stay in Walpi is based on his essay “The Hopi Snake-Dance,” in TR,
Works
, 4.48–72.

67
On Wednesday morning
Curtis, “Theodore Roosevelt in Hopi-Land.”

68
Roosevelt listened and memorized
In her memoir of TR’s visit, Miss Curtis remarked on the “impersonality” with which he absorbed what she had to tell him. This, plus the “electric snap” of his comprehension and the accuracy of his memory, gave him “an astonishing command of data in subjects that no one would imagine he could know … without years of study.”

69
At dawn the following day
Curtis, “Theodore Roosevelt in Hopi-Land”; TR,
Works
, 4.63–64.

70
privately wishing
TR,
Works
, 4.64.

71
When each priest
Ibid., 4.65–68.

72
At five o’clock
“Hopi Indians Dance for TR [at Walpi, Ariz.] 1913,” a film available online from the Library of Congress at
http://memory.loc.gov/
, shows TR watching this event with a woman who may be Natalie Curtis.

73
“If I don’t write”
Curtis, “Theodore Roosevelt in Hopi-Land.”

74
“I can never afford”
Ibid. Miss Curtis, writing in 1919, misremembered her own and TR’s schedule, but she was specific in describing the editorial session she had with him before he left Walpi. Even for a writer of his promptitude, completing such a lengthy manuscript so soon was a remarkable feat. He may have already written the parts of it that covered the events of 19 and 20 Aug.

75
The Colonel returned
TR arrived back in New York on 26 Aug. 1913. His three Arizona articles were published in
The Outlook
on 4, 11, and 18 Oct. 1913.

76
He was overjoyed
EKR was slightly piqued not to have been consulted about TR’s proposed expedition until it was a fait accompli. She wrote KR from Europe to complain, “In his letters to me he preserves a sphinx like silence and except for the fact that he sails on October 4th I know nothing of his plans.” 15 July 1913 (KRP).

77
One of her favorite quotations
Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 397. EKR was probably thinking of the passage in Boccaccio’s version of the story, “Therefore let us flee hence in secret and go there together, thou and I; and what span of life we have left in the world, heart of my body, let us spend it together in delight.” R. K. Gordon, ed.,
The Story of Troilus
(London, 1934), 88.

78
“I am having”
TR to QR, 29 Sept. 1913 (TRC).

79
On 27 September
The New York Times
, 28 Sept. 1913. TR also forced the nomination of Samuel Seabury, a Democrat, as associate justice running on the Progressive ticket.

80
Finally he allowed
The New York Times
, 4 Oct. 1913. The official text of TR’s speech, entitled “The United States and the South American Republics,” is in TR,
Works
, 18.391–405. TR was embarrassed when some paragraphs he decided not to read, being overly critical of Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy, were accidentally released to newspapers.

81
he sold
The Outlook
EKR to ERD, 4 July 1913 (ERDP). TR’s income from writing
and speaking in 1913, based on his wife’s figures and royalty statements in SCR, was approximately $46,000, or $764,000 in contemporary (2010) dollars. This total does not include whatever he may have earned from his inheritance and investments. His and EKR’s frequent protestations of poverty in later life were those of old-money aristocrats, as reflexive as middle-class complaints about the weather. Before returning home from South America, EKR informed ERD that in order to get through the winter alone at Sagamore Hill, she would require the in-house services of a cook, a kitchen maid, a waitress, a chambermaid, and a parlormaid (20 Oct. 1913 [ERDP]).

82
Quentin and Archie
Having qualified for Harvard, ABR congratulated himself on at last being able to associate with men “of my own class.” Apparently Andover had not come up to his social standards. ABR note, n.d., enclosed in EKR to KR, 9 Mar. 1913 (KRP).

83
Alice was more
EKR to KR, 24, 27 May 1913 (KRP); EKR to ERD, 15 July 1913 (ERDP). According to ARL in later life, TR and EKR showed more concern for the social consequences of a loud public divorce than for her or Nick’s personal distress. “Although they didn’t quite lock me up, they exercised considerable pressure … told me to think it over very carefully indeed.… Not done, they said. Emphatically.” Teague,
Mrs. L
, 158. See also Cordery,
Alice
, 238.

84
“Naturally,” he wrote
TR,
An Autobiography
, 243 (foreword, dated 1 Oct. 1913).

1
Inevitably, they dwarfed
Illustration in
The Outlook
, 18 Oct. 1913. There is a full account of the dedication in
The Times
, 20 Oct. 1913.

2
The Battle of Leipzig
Also known in various languages as the Battle of Nations, because of the multiplicity of armies that took part. Germans usually refer to the monument as
der Volkerschlachtdenkmal
.

3
in tomorrow’s European papers
See, e.g., page 8 of
The Times
, 20 Oct. 1913.

4
His
particular phobia
Bismarck’s constant, typically Prussian refrain had been, “The Reich is in danger.” (Ecksteins,
Rites of Spring
, 66.) For a discussion of the anthropological significance of the Battle of Nations monument, see Rudy Koshar,
From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1890–1990
(Berkeley, Calif., 2000) 43–47.

5
“
Ich gehe mi Euch
”
Lawrence Sondhaus,
Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf
(Boston, 2000), 133. In an alternate translation of this remark, the Kaiser sounds more peremptory: “you would be at Belgrade” becomes “you must be in Belgrade.” (H. W. Koch, ed.,
The Origins of the First World War: Great Power Rivalry and German War Aims
[London, 1972], 136.) Conrad himself was the source of the quotation.