The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (25 page)

N
OW THAT
T
HEODORE’S
romance was common knowledge on the Yard, he not unnaturally became something of a figure of fun. Professor A. S. (“Ass”) Hill, his instructor in forensics, was so amused by the “precocious sentimentality” of a Rooseveltian essay that he read it aloud to the class, keeping the name of the author secret. Afterward he waspishly asked Theodore to criticize it, and sat back to enjoy the young man’s blushes.
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Theodore’s dog-cart and dandified appearance (he now sported a silk hat, regarded as the
non plus ultra
of college fashion)
⁹⁸
did not escape the satire of Owen Wister, who wrote the songs for the D.K.E. theatricals. During one burlesque production of
Der Freischütz
, the chorus launched into a serenade about

Wister, gleefully pounding the piano, was unaware that the incensed “cove” himself happened to be in the audience. Next morning, rumors circulated that Teddy Roosevelt was “very angry,” and had muttered something about “bad taste.” Wister innocently
claimed that since Roosevelt’s mustache was not waxed, his lyrics were not libelous.
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He might have added that Theodore had no mustache at all, only whiskers.

But the latter was too much in love to stay angry for long, and looked puzzled when Wister apologized.
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They soon became fast friends. Theodore was attracted by the sophomore’s wit and intelligence, while Wister was one of the first to define the peculiar glow of the mature Rooseveltian personality. During the past few years, this glow had only flickered at sporadic intervals. Now it began to beam forth steadily, throwing Theodore into ever-greater prominence against the muted backdrop of Harvard. “He was his own limelight, and could not help it,” Wister wrote many years later. “A creature charged with such a voltage as his, became the central presence at once, whether he stepped on a platform or entered a room.”
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T
HE VOLTAGE, OF COURSE
, was stimulated by Alice. Its radiance suffuses almost all the diary entries in that spring of 1880.
¹⁰³
On the fresh April mornings, they played tennis together, she gracefully mobile in her long white dress, he awkward and jerky, clutching his racket halfway up the spine. Later, while Alice sewed, he read to her from Prescott’s
Conquest of Peru
. They took endless drives in the dog-cart, with Alice prettily perched beside him in his high seat, as Lightfoot (losing weight rapidly) bowled them along miles of blossom-strewn roads. In the evenings, they sat at whist and listened to the younger Lees practicing the piano. Before bedtime, Theodore generally managed to sneak Alice off for an hour alone in the moonlight. “How I love her! She seems like a star of heaven, she is so far above other girls; my pearl, my pure flower. When I hold her in my arms there is nothing on earth left to wish for; and how infinitely blessed is my lot … Oh, my darling, my own bestloved little Queen!”
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T
HEODORE’S ENGAGEMENT
seems to have removed the last vestiges of doubt concerning his future. “I shall study law next year, and must there do my best, and work hard for my little wife.”
¹⁰⁵
He
had already made it clear that he considered law a stepping-stone to politics, and confirmed that larger ambition in a conversation with William Roscoe Thayer. The occasion was a meeting of Alpha Delta Phi in Holworthy, shortly before Commencement.

Theodore was, however, in dead earnest. For his senior thesis he chose the most controversial political subject of the day: it was entitled “Practicability of Giving Men and Women Equal Rights.”
¹⁰⁷
The very first sentence struck the keynote of his career as a politician. “In advocating any measure we must consider not only its justice but its practicability.” Some of his less realistic classmates were shocked by this frank admission that a principle could be both just and impracticable. Yet Theodore made no bones about his real feelings later in the document:

By these remarks Theodore laid himself open to charges of effeminacy, and at least one instructor suggested he was too much influenced by “feeling” to be entirely masculine.
¹⁰⁹
For the rest of his
life he would remain acutely aware of the needs and sensibilities of women. Few things disgusted him more than “male sexual viciousness,” or the Victorian conceit that a wife is the servant of her husband’s lusts. Although a woman’s place was in the home, he believed that the home was superior to the state, and that its mistress was therefore the superior of the public servant. The question of suffrage, as his dissertation made plain, was not so much controversial as unimportant. If women wished to vote, then they should be allowed to do so. Yet he could not resist adding, “Men can fight in defense of their rights, while women cannot. This certainly makes a powerful argument against putting the ballot into hands unable to defend it.”
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O
N 30
J
UNE 1880
, Theodore Roosevelt graduated from Harvard College as a B.A.
magna cum laude
, twenty-first in a class of 177.
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His family was present in force, and so was a large contingent from Chestnut Hill. President Eliot placed an embellished diploma in his hand, and murmured the special congratulations due a Phi Beta Kappa. Marching back to his seat in the bright sunlight, with his gown swirling triumphantly and a battery of adoring eyes upon him, Theodore could be excused a moment of self-satisfaction. His academic record was excellent; he was already, at twenty-one, a prominent member of society in Cambridge, Boston, and New York; he had been runner-up in the Harvard lightweight boxing championship; he was rich, pleasant-looking, and, within a limited but growing circle, popular; he was the author of two scholarly pamphlets, a notable thesis, and two chapters of what promised to be a definitive naval history. To crown it all, he was engaged to a beautiful young woman. “Only four months before we get married,” he told himself. “My cup of happiness is almost too full.”
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Yet there was wormwood in his cup, unknown to anybody but the graduate and Dr. Dudley A. Sargeant, college physician. On 26 March, after announcing his engagement, Theodore had undergone a complete physical examination, and had been told to his satisfaction that he had gained twelve pounds since coming to Harvard. But the doctor had other, less satisfactory news. Theodore’s heart,
strained by years of asthmatic heavings and over-exercise, was in trouble. Far from climbing mountains in Maine, he must in future refrain even from running upstairs. He must live quietly, and choose a sedentary occupation, otherwise, Sargeant warned, he would not live long.
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“Doctor,” came the reply, “I’m going to do all the things you tell me not to do. If I’ve got to live the sort of life you have described, I don’t care how short it is.”

Having spat the wormwood out, Theodore refused to acknowledge that he had ever tasted it. His diary for that night does not even mention the interview, although it is confirmed by Harvard records. Not even Alice Lee, to whom he had promised to tell “everything,”
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was permitted to know what ailed her future husband. Right through Commencement, Theodore continued to protest his health, happiness, and good fortune. On the following day he could write, with such conviction that every word was heavily underscored,
“My career at college has been happier and more successful than that of any man I have ever known.”
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A
LICE JOINED
T
HEODORE
at Oyster Bay for the first ten days of July. As he proudly escorted her through the landscapes of his boyhood, he vowed “she shall always be mistress over all that I have.”
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Perhaps this was when the idea of building her a great house overlooking the bay first entered his head. One hill in particular—King Olaf would have called it a
holm
, with its sandy bottom, wooded slopes, and grass-covered crown—he loved above all others. As a teenage ornithologist, he had spent countless hours crouched in its coverts, notating the songs of birds in his own peculiar phonetics
—cheech-ir’r’r’, fl’p-fl’p-trkeee, prrrrll-ch’k ch’k …
As a Longfellow addict, he had no doubt spent as much time sitting in that hot grass, and seen sails of silk creep over the horizon. Soon he would build a manor on that hill, and live, as Olaf had done, surrounded by his own fields and looking down upon his own ships—well, a rowboat at least. The house would be called Leeholm, after his Queen; and there they would live out their days.
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