The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (90 page)
Read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Online
Authors: Edmund Morris
“A
S USUAL
, I come back to rumors of my own removal,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge on 10 October. But the tone of his letter was spirited. He had killed nine elk in four weeks, and felt “in splendid trim” for a fight.
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General opinion held that he was too popular to be fired. “Mr. Harrison could be consoled if Mr. Roosevelt would resign,”
The New York Times
remarked, “but he will not, and the President will not dare ask him to do so.” Amazingly, even Frank Hatton hoped the rumors were not true. “Mr. Roosevelt is a sincere and genuine Civil Service reformer … There have been times in the past when [his] ideas of reform did not exactly comingle with those of the
Post
, but … it will be a sad day for Civil Service Reform when he steps down and out.”
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Postmaster Johnson of Baltimore did not share this view. He publicly prayed “that lightning may strike Mr. Theodore Roosevelt.”
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John Wanamaker no doubt added a fervent Amen. It was clearly his responsibility to dismiss the twenty-five Post Office employees who had, by their own testimony, indicted themselves in Roosevelt’s report; yet his pride would not let him. Shortly after the pesky Commissioner returned to town, Wanamaker handpicked a team of Postal Department inspectors and ordered them to reinvestigate the Baltimore case “since the evidence gathered so far is inconclusive.”
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Now it was Roosevelt’s turn to be angry. “You may tell the Postmaster-General from me,” he roared at a messenger, “that I don’t like him for two reasons. In the first place he has a very sloppy mind, and in the next place he does not tell the truth.”
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E
MBARRASSMENTS CROWDED IN
thickly as the year drew to its close—so much so that Roosevelt forgot his own thirty-third birthday. The Maryland Civil Service Reform League complained about his ineffectiveness in securing the twenty-five dismissals, and said a
golden opportunity to educate the rest of the country had been lost. Reformers in New York sent word that the law was being abused there just as cynically as it had been in Baltimore. And in Washington, President Harrison brushed aside a plan for new promotion methods in the classified service which Roosevelt had worked on for many months. Instead, Cabinet officers were told they could promote as they pleased, without further reference to the Civil Service Commission—leaving the agency even weaker than before.
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Financial worry continued to plague Roosevelt. The expense of maintaining two households, and moving his family back and forth twice a year, had caused an escalation of his debts. Ethel’s arrival during the summer had made it impossible to live any longer in the little house on Jefferson Place, so the Commissioner rented a larger establishment at 1215 Nineteenth Street for the new season.
Personal frustration always tended to increase Roosevelt’s natural belligerency, and that winter’s news of the mob killing of two American sailors in Valparaiso, Chile, made him rampant for war—as he had been in 1886, over the Mexican border incident. To his disgust, the United States merely asked Chile to apologize. An amused John Hay wrote to Henry Adams, “Teddy Roosevelt … goes about hissing through his clenched teeth that we are dishonest. For two nickels he would declare war himself, shut up the Civil Service Commission, and wage it sole.”
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On top of everything, there was the vexatious problem of what to do about Elliott. The insanity suit was getting nowhere, owing to disagreement between the certifying doctors and bickering among various relatives. Elliott had published a denial of his madness in the Paris edition of the
Herald
, and lodged a formal protest with the court in New York.
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He kept sending “unspeakably terrible” letters to Theodore, some of them penitent, others vituperative. “They are so sane,” his brother marveled, “and yet so absolutely lacking in moral sense.”
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In the last week of November, Roosevelt succumbed to an attack of severe bronchitis, and the doctor warned it might turn to pneumonia. He recovered briefly, only to collapse again in December. Edith ordered him to bed for eight days—his longest recorded
confinement since childhood. Although he complained about being treated like “a corpulent valetudinarian,” it was plain that he was physically and emotionally spent.
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C
HRISTMAS WITH
“the Bunny chillum” restored him to health, and by New Year’s Day his metabolism was running at top speed again. About this time he made a lightning decision to cross the Atlantic and confront his brother with an out-of-court settlement.
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Instinct told him that Elliott, too, had slipped into despair recently, and that now or never was the time to shock him back to his senses. Elliott had always worshiped him
—Oh, Father will you ever think me a ‘noble boy,’ you are right about Teedie he is one and no mistake.…
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—
had always craved his authority, even when protesting he could do without it. They must square off again, just as they had in the days when Theodore was “Skinny” and Elliott was “Swelly.”
1st Round. Results: Skinny, lip swelled and bleeding. Swelly, sound in every limb if nose and lip can be classed as such …
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But this time Skinny intended to be the victor.
President Harrison sympathetically granted his request for leave of absence, and he sailed from New York on 9 January 1892. There followed a period of anxious suspense for the family, broken by this triumphant letter from Paris, dated 21 January
:
Won! Thank Heaven I came over …
I found Elliott absolutely changed. I was perfectly quiet, but absolutely unwavering and resolute with him: and he surrendered completely, and was utterly broken, submissive, and repentant. He signed the deed, for two-thirds of
all
his property (including the $60,000 trust); and agreed to the probation. I then instantly changed my whole manner, and treated him with the utmost love and tenderness. I told him we would do all we legitimately could to get him through his two years (or thereabouts) of probation; that our one object now would be to see him entirely restored to himself; and so to his wife and children. He today attempted no justification whatever; he acknowledged how grievously he
had sinned, and failed in his duties; and said he would do all in his power to prove himself really reformed. He was in a mood that was terribly touching. How long it will last of course no one can say.…
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Part of the agreement was that Elliott, in exchange for the withdrawal of the writ of insanity, would return to the United States and undergo a five-week “cure” for alcoholism at the Keeley Center in Dwight, Illinois. This, coming after his six-month drying-out period at Suresnes, should enable him to start working again and reenter society by degrees. Should he prove himself sober and responsible, he might resume family life sometime in 1894.
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Theodore remained in Paris another full week before sailing from Le Havre on 27 January. It seems he wanted to punch every last ounce of immorality out of Elliott. Having done so, he left him to follow one day later, alone on a separate steamer.
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On 28 January, Elliott’s mistress, Mrs. Evans, made the following entry in her diary:
This morning, with his silk hat, his overcoat, gloves and cigar, E. came to my room to say goodbye. It is all over … Now my love was swallowed up in pity—for he looks so bruised, so beaten down by the past week with his brother. How could they treat so generous and noble a man as they have. He is more noble a figure in my eyes, with all his confessed faults, than either his wife or brother.…
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R
OOSEVELT RETURNED HOME
on 7 Feburary
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to find the Civil Service Commission pondering yet another case of political assessments, this time at federal offices in Owensboro, Kentucky.
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His presence was required in that state as soon as possible, but with the social season at its height he did not feel like immediately embarking on another journey. Elliott had expressed a desire to go south with him at the end of March, after the “Keeley cure” was complete; until then the Owensboro district attorney would simply have to muddle along.
Besides, the Kentucky case served as an exasperating reminder that nothing whatsoever had been done in Baltimore. It was now almost a year since his investigation, and the twenty-five lawbreakers were all still in office, drawing government salaries. John Wanamaker’s inspectors had filed their report the previous November, but the Postmaster General would not say whether it confirmed or denied Roosevelt’s findings. He also refused to send a copy to the Civil Service Commission, saying that it was an internal document, for his eyes only.
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On 8 March, Roosevelt made a special trip to New York in order to shout “Damn John Wanamaker!” at an executive meeting of the City Civil Service Reform Association.
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Crimson with rage, he launched into an account of the whole case, accusing Wanamaker and Harrison of obstruction of justice. He was sure that the postal inspectors’ report would corroborate his own—but how could its findings be made public?
The veteran reformer Carl Schurz made a simple suggestion. Roosevelt must demand a House investigation into the undeniable fact that twenty-five federal employees recommended for dismissal in July 1891 were still on the federal payroll in March 1892. It would be difficult for the House to refuse such a request. Wanamaker would then be obliged to present the inspectors’ report as grounds for his inaction; it would become part of the public record, and the Civil Service Reform League would see to it that millions of copies were distributed around the nation. If the document turned out to be a whitewash job, Wanamaker would be humiliated; if it duplicated Roosevelt’s original findings, Wanamaker would be destroyed. Either way, the cause of Civil Service Reform would benefit.
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