The Everything Theodore Roosevelt Book (43 page)

The members of the Institute of Arts and Letters objected to being called “Immortals,” because it made them sound like elite French academicians. They considered themselves to be nothing more than a group of artists pursuing practical policies for their mutual benefit as part of an official organization—preferably one with a federal charter.

According to Lodge, TR, et al., the incorporation would benefit the country. They included in their bill a provision that the government might call on members of either organization to get advice on literary matters when needed. A Judiciary Committee deleted the provision. Worse, it denied the “immortals” a charter, offering to incorporate the groups in Washington, D.C., to deprive them of national recognition. The slap in the face did not deter TR or Lodge.

Within a few days of the Judiciary Committee’s ruling, TR issued an executive order to form a National Fine Arts Council and appoint an Advisory Arts Committee to the Government, which individuals involved claimed was independent of the attempts to incorporate the institute and the academy.

According to a spokesperson for the Executive Committee of the Academy of Arts, it was sheer coincidence that “all the painters and sculptors of the President’s National Fine arts Committee, and eight of the twenty-one are architects, are members of the National Institute of the Arts, but the movements are entirely independent and without the slightest combination.”

Receiving the Charter

Coincidence or not, the organizations did not get their charters before TR left office. The National Institute of Arts and Letters was incorporated by Congress in 1913, one of the last papers signed by outgoing President William H. Taft, TR’s successor. The American Academy of Arts and Letters was incorporated in New York state in 1914 and received its federal charter in 1916.

In any case, TR was not affected. He had earned his way into both organizations, did what he could to help them while he was in office, and remained a member in good standing, since acceptance carried with it a lifetime membership.

Author

TR wrote more books and magazine articles in his sixty years than some people can read in a longer lifetime. His first published article, “Fall Meeting of the Athletic Association,” appeared in the October 1879 issue of the
Harvard Advocate
. It was five years before his next piece, a letter to the editor about Chimney Butte Ranch, showed up in print in
Forest and Stream
(December 1884).

Only five months later,
Century
magazine printed TR’s first “real” article, “Phases of State Legislation.” After that, there was no stopping him. Seemingly, the only times he stopped producing articles for magazines were when he was writing books.

Social reformer Jacob Riis elegantly summed up TR’s writing style. He wrote, “Critics sometimes say that his books are not ‘literature,’ by which they apparently mean words strung together to sound well. They are not. But what he writes no one can misunderstand, and the style seems to the reader unimportant, though it is notably direct, terse and vigorous.”

Critiques

Certainly, when TR was writing
The Naval War of 1812
, he had no way of knowing that he would someday become assistant secretary of the navy and open himself up to some of the same criticisms he heaped on American commanders and political leaders during the war. In Chapter VIII of
The Naval War of 1812
, he discussed their extreme caution, sometimes “verging on timidity.” And, he claimed that the land segment of the war was not worth studying.

In
The Naval War of 1812, TR wrote:

But a short examination showed that these operations were hardly worth serious study. They teach nothing new; it is the old, old lesson, that a miserly economy in preparation may in the end involve a lavish outlay of men and money, which, after all, comes too late to more than partially offset the evils produced by the original short-sighted parsimony
.

TR also observed, “At present people are beginning to realize that it is folly for the great English-speaking Republic to rely for defence [sic] upon a navy composed partly of antiquated hulks, and partly of new vessels rather more worthless than the old.” Those words would help him later on in life when building a strong navy became his responsibility.

Perhaps it was the arrogance of his youth and inexperience in political and military matters at the time that encouraged him to include these observations, but he stored the lessons he learned and applied them in later years. That was one of his strong points: He learned from everything he did and used his knowledge for positive purposes later. And, more often than not, what he learned became the subject of subsequent books and articles.

TR Takes TJ to Task

In his preface to the third edition of
The Naval War of 1812
, TR chastised presidents Thomas Jefferson and his successor James Madison for their lack of preparation for war. (The fact that the book was printed in a third edition lent credence to the historical value of his work to readers.)

He stated, “It was criminal folly for Jefferson, and his follower Madison, to neglect to give us a force either of regulars or of well trained volunteers during the twelve years they had in which to prepare for the struggle that any one might see was inevitable.”

Again, he could not see into the future, but he faced some of the same monetary restraints as Jefferson and Madison did almost 100 years prior to his presidency.

All in all, TR’s first book was a success. It did not make him rich, but it helped him build a reputation as a scholar and military tactician, two talents he developed more fully as he took on more and more responsibility in his many political positions. It certainly encouraged him to accelerate his writing career, especially in the publication of books.

There was a three-year gap between the publication of
The Naval War of 1812
and his next book,
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Parts 1 and 2
. After that, he produced books almost every year, regardless of what his job happened to be at the time.

Topics ranged from biography
(Thomas Hart Benton)
to history
(Hero Tales from American History)
, which he co-authored with Henry Cabot Lodge, his future conspirator in the charter fiasco; nature
(The Deer Family
, with T. S. Van Dyke, D. G. Elliot, and A. J. Stone); and politics
(American Problems
and
The New Nationalism)
. The latter two appeared in 1910, along with his
Presidential Addresses and State Papers, 8 Volumes
shortly after he left the presidency. If nothing else, readers had a clear history of TR’s years as U.S. president and a keen insight into what was wrong with America.

Post-Presidency Writings

TR’s post-presidency writings for the most part veered away from political topics and homed in on “self-help” topics. He had packed a lot into his first half century on earth, and he wanted to share what he had learned with others.

One passage from his 1912 book,
Realizable Goals
, which was a collection of talks he delivered as part of the Earl Lectures of Pacific Theological Seminary at Berkeley, California, in 1911, provided a look at the one tenet that ruled his life:

What is necessary is to tell [young people] that their first duty is to earn their own livelihood, to support themselves and those dependent upon them; but that when that first duty has been performed there yet remains a very large additional duty, in the way of service to their neighbor, of service to the rest of mankind
.

Those words epitomized Theodore Roosevelt’s personal philosophy, which he was never loath to reveal in his writings. In retrospect, his books were just one more block in his “bully pulpit’s” foundation—and a valuable part of his considerable legacy. But his writing went far beyond just books.

During his lifetime, TR produced an estimated 2,000 articles about history, politics, travel, and nature for magazines such as
The Century, Scribner’s, Metropolitan, McClure’s, Atlantic Monthly
, as well as numerous newspapers. He also penned more than 150,000 personal letters, many of which were included in the book
Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children
, edited by Joseph Bucklin Bishop and published in 1919, the year of TR’s death.

One article in particular proved how truly eclectic TR was: “Some Recent Criticism of America” appeared in the eponymously named
Eclectic Magazine
in November 1888.

New “Outlook”

As his presidency ended, TR cast about for new opportunities. He settled immediately on one that gave him a chance to remain in the public’s eye and continue to espouse his views on matters he deemed important. TR accepted a position as contributing editor of
Outlook
, a leading journal of the time, with which he had a longstanding relationship.

TR’s first article for
Outlook
, “The Higher Life of American Cities,” was included in the December 1895 issue. His choice to work with
Outlook
was so important that the
New York Times
trumpeted it in a March 5, 1910 article, “Roosevelt Begins Work As An Editor.”

TR stated plainly in his first editorial that the magazine would be his vehicle to support people who believed in “a wise individualism” because the magazine owners “preach the things that are most necessary to the salvation of this people.” Those ideas were not necessarily a new outlook for TR, who had been espousing them for most of his life. He was off on a new adventure.

Additional Success

TR’s first eleven pieces as contributing editor for
Outlook
, which were published quickly in book form, demonstrated his eclecticism at its finest. Topics ranged from “A Scientific Expedition” to “Where We Cannot Work With Socialists,” “Where We Can Work With Socialists,” “The Japanese Question,” and “The Thraldom of Names,” a warning to readers not to fall for labels. They were the first of many.