CHAPTER 17
The Dear Old Beloved Brother

In his house this malcontent

Could the King no longer bear.

IN JANUARY 1891 Roosevelt was forced to turn his attention to “a nightmare of horror”¹ that had been brooding over him for at least three years. His preoccupation with literature, politics, and his own immediate family had caused him to ignore warnings that Elliott Roosevelt was determinedly drinking himself to death. The two brothers, so close in youth, had recently seen very little of each other. Twenty miles of country road, and a yawning social gulf, separated their respective Long Island establishments. At Sagamore Hill the talk was of books and public affairs; at Hempstead, of parties, fashions, and horseflesh. On the rare occasions when the brothers met, friends were struck by the reversal of their teenage roles: where once Theodore had been sickly and solitary, and Elliott an effulgent Apollo, now it was the elder who glowed, and the younger who was wasting away.²

It is difficult to say whether Elliott Roosevelt was victim or culprit in his own decline. His misfortunes were physical as well as psychological. Since puberty he had been afflicted with semiepileptic seizures, usually brought on by stress, and when still adolescentdiscovered that alcohol was an effective depressant.³ Long before his twenty-first birthday, Elliott was drinking heavily, although his good looks and athletic bearing tended to disguise the fact. After marrying the beautiful but (in Theodore’s view) “utterly frivolous” Anna Hall,⁴ he had become a confirmed alcoholic. Withdrawal from drink after binges only worsened his tendency to epilepsy. A series of inexplicable sporting accidents, which may have been caused by seizures, progressively wrecked his health. The most serious of these—a fall from a trapeze during amateur theatricals in 1888—temporarily crippled his leg, and he became dependent on laudanum and morphine during the agony of recuperation. There had been a complete physical collapse in 1889, followed by such desperate drinking during the early part of 1890 as to shock even himself into awareness of his impending doom. Swearing never to touch alcohol again, he left the United States for Europe that summer, taking his wife, six-year-old daughter, and baby son with him.⁵ From Vienna, in September 1890, came news of the inevitable relapse, followed shortly before Christmas by a cri de coeur from Anna.⁶ She was pregnant again, and was afraid of spending the winter alone with her unstable husband. If Bamie—ever-willing, ever-capable Bamie—would come over and look after her, Elliott could surely be persuaded to enter a sanitarium for treatment. By the time the baby was born he should be decently dried out, and they could all return happily to New York in time for the next social season.

Although Theodore considered Anna’s optimism “thoroughly Chinese,” he did see the advisability of Bamie’s presence in Vienna.⁷ But no sooner had he given his official permission, as head of the family, than a bombshell announcement, on legal stationery, arrived from New York. His brother’s seed, apparently, was also sprouting in the body of a servant girl named Katy Mann. She claimed to have been seduced by Elliott shortly before his departure for Europe, and threatened a public scandal if she did not receive financial compensation for her pregnancy.⁸

Roosevelt’s reaction to this “hideous revelation” was entirely characteristic. “Of course he was insane when he did it.”⁹ Alcoholism he believed to be a disease that could be treated and cured. But infidelity was a crime, pure and simple; it could be neither forgiven nor understood, save as an act of madness. It was an offense against order, decency, against civilization; it was a desecration of the holy marriage-bed. By reducing himself to the level of a “flagrant man-swine,” Elliott had forfeited all claim to his wife and children. For Anna to continue to live with him now would be “little short of criminal,” he told Bamie. “She ought not to have any more children, and those she has should be brought up away from him.”¹⁰

Were it not for Anna’s present delicate condition (she was a frail person at the best of times), Theodore would no doubt have ordered Bamie to fetch her home at once. There was nothing to do but let Bamie go over as planned and privately confront Elliott with the news. If nothing else, it might sober him up long enough to commit himself to a sanitarium for treatment. Such an act of voluntary self-incarceration, wrote Theodore, “will serve to explain and atone for what cannot otherwise ever be explained.” As souls pass through Purgatory in order to wash away sin, so, presumably, could a repentant Elliott redeem his fit of “insanity.”¹¹ In the meantime Theodore and the lawyers would await the birth of Katy Mann’s baby; should any Roosevelt blood be identifiable in it, they would pay her whatever hush-money was necessary.¹²

Bamie sailed for Europe in early February 1891. While she was still on the high seas, Theodore received an affectionate and unsuspecting letter from Elliott. Despite his newfound contempt for “the dear old beloved brother,” memories of their happy closeness in the past crowded in on him, and he sank into the deepest gloom. “It is horrible, awful; it is like a brooding nightmare. If it was mere death one could stand it; it is the shame that is so fearful.”¹³ Much of the “shame,” of course, was his own: he felt acute distaste for the role he had inherited as go-between in a shabby paternity suit. If it ever got out that the Civil Service Commissioner was involved in blackmail payments, Frank Hatton would annihilate him. But he saw no other way of protecting his family from a catastrophic scandal.

At the end of February, Bamie wrote to say that Elliott, surprisingly, had already placed himself in the Marien Grund Sanctuary at Graz. He was in a highly excitable state, bursting into tears at the slightest hint of disapproval, so she would wait until he was stronger before telling him about Katy Mann. The incarceration was to last three months. Although Theodore was pessimistic about the effects of so short a stay in so luxurious a retreat, he was relieved for Anna’s sake—“Elliott is purely secondary.”¹⁴ With neither of his brother’s babies due until the spring,¹⁵ he could devote his full attention to Civil Service matters.

IT HAPPENED THAT Roosevelt’s family troubles during the early part of 1891 coincided with a period of renewed political difficulties. At times he felt he was “battling with everybody … the little gray man in the White House looking on with cold and hesitating disapproval.”¹⁶ The struggle was provoked by his efforts to extend the classification of the Civil Service to all offices in the Indian Bureau. Rioting by Sioux in South Dakota reservations, where maladministration and corruption were rife, had forced him to rethink his old paternal attitudes to the red man, and he now tried to persuade Administration officials that Indians should take part wherever possible in agency affairs. “I should take the civilized members of the different tribes and put them to work in instructing their fellows in farming, blacksmithing and the like, and should extend the present system of paid Indian judges and police.” But the officials were apathetic, and President Harrison flatly refused to admit that conditions on the reservations were bad.¹⁷

February saw the usual appropriations crisis in Congress. Republican spoilsmen lobbied to such good effect that for two days the Civil Service Commission was in danger of losing its entire operating budget. Speaker Reed had to use his massive personal influence before the funds were voted on 14 February.¹⁸

With the departure of Congress in early March, pressure on the Civil Service Commission finally eased, and Roosevelt found himself with little official work to do. His thoughts began to drift toward literature again, for the first reviews of his History of the City of New York¹⁹ were flowing in from both sides of the Atlantic.

THE BRITISH CRITICS were complimentary, if not enthusiastic. It was felt that Roosevelt had done as well as could be expected, given the largeness of his subject and the limitations of his space. New York was “pleasantly written,” remarked the Spectator, but as a story it was not inspiring. Roosevelt had been unable to prove that the city’s rapid growth had been to any good purpose. “An hour in New York suffices to inform the observing foreigner that it is among the worst-governed, worst-paved, worst-built, and worst-ordered cities in the world.” Still, one had to admire Roosevelt’s condemnation of municipal corruption and his freedom from “any trace of Chauvinism.”²⁰

It was left to an American periodical, the Nation, to point out that on the contrary Roosevelt was very chauvinistic indeed. The anonymous reviewer sounded a complaint that would be heard with increasing frequency during the next ten years: “Mr. Roosevelt preaches too much. He lays down the singular proposition that a feeling of broad, radical, intense Americanism is necessary if good work is to be done in any direction … The sooner we get over talking about ‘American’ systems of philosophy, and ethics, and art, and devote ourselves to what is true, and right, and beautiful, the sooner we shall shake off our provincialism.”²¹

The most that can be said of New York today is that it is a piece of honorable hackwork, tightly written, unflawed by any trace of originality. One or two passages are of semiautobiographical interest (Roosevelt can never resist injecting himself and his personal opinions into a historical narrative), and his command of urban details is at least as impressive as that of Western material in his earlier histories. The section dealing with the unprecedented tidal wave of immigration that battered New York after the War of 1812 is an early example of Roosevelt’s fascination with “ethnic turnover,” as he called it. “The public-school system and the all-pervading energy of American life proved too severe solvents to be resisted even by the German tenacity … The children of the first generation were half, and the grandchildren in most cases wholly, Americanized—to their own inestimable advantage.” There is also a characteristic passage that describes policemen attacking the Draft Rioters “with the most wholesome intent to do them physical harm.” Thirty rioters were slain “—an admirable object-lesson to the remainder.”²²

ROOSEVELT WAS WORKING in his office on the afternoon of Tuesday, 24 March—regretting that there was just enough paper on his desk to keep him from The Winning of the West²³—when a Mr. John C. Rose of Baltimore was shown in. Rose was counsel to the Maryland Civil Service Reform League, and as such considered himself a watchdog over the law in his hometown. He had serious irregularities to report.

A Republican primary was scheduled in Baltimore for the following Monday, Rose explained. Its purpose was to elect delegates to the Maryland State Convention, which would in turn establish procedures for the election of delegates to the National Convention in 1892.²⁴ At the moment things were not going well for the friends of Benjamin Harrison. It looked as if the city might choose an anti-Administration slate; in that case the President could forget about Maryland’s votes when he ran for renomination. As a result, the local postmaster and U.S. marshal—both Harrison appointees—were using their offices as emergency campaign chests. Senior federal employees were going around “assessing” subordinates for contributions ranging from $5 to $10 each.²⁵ This was in open defiance of Section One of the Civil Service Code, prohibiting the solicitation of money for political purposes on government property. The money would certainly be used to bribe election judges on Monday, and there was no saying what other means the pro-Administration forces might use to influence the course of the voting. Rose begged Roosevelt to come down and investigate the situation at once: several witnesses were prepared to testify to the truth of his allegations.²⁶

Roosevelt proved oddly coy. Although he did not say as much to Rose, he dreaded another contretemps with the Postmaster General—which would surely occur should he uncover further evidence of politicking in that gentleman’s department. Wanamaker had been smarting ever since the Paul/Shidy affair, and if stung once more could be expected to fight tooth and nail for Roosevelt’s removal.

Stalling for time, the Commissoner asked Rose to return to Baltimore and put his information in writing. When the letter arrived two days later he sent it on to Wanamaker, suggesting that as most of the allegations therein referred to the Post Office, the Postmaster General should perhaps investigate them himself. Wanamaker declined.²⁷ Roosevelt felt he had done what he could to protect the Administration, and must now do his duty. With his usual flair for the dramatic, he chose to arrive in Baltimore unannounced, on the morning of Election Day, 30 March.²⁸

As he wandered through the noisy wards he saw enough evidence of wanton illegality by federal employees to fill a fleet of police wagons. He tried to maintain an air of official disapproval, but the writer in him could not help rejoicing in scenes and incidents straight out of Pickwick Papers. On every sidewalk fists flew and money—taxpayers’ money—changed hands, while in house-windows overlooking the street, election judges sat in impassive groups of three, like monkeys who saw, heard, and spoke no evil. Relays of furniture carts rumbled in from all points of the compass, bringing hundreds of rural voters with no apparent connections to the local Republican party. Ward-workers entertained these transients in saloons where the beer flowed freely, compliments of Postmaster Johnson and Marshal Airey. Countless “pudding” tickets (six or seven slips folded together as one) were deposited on behalf of both factions; when a judge objected to this, his two colleagues threw him bodily into the crowd. Elsewhere an anti-Administration worker eliminated three pro-Administration judges by the simple expedient of pulling a blind down over their window. “On account of this excessive zeal,” wrote Roosevelt admiringly, “he was taken to the watch-house and fined.”²⁹

The polls closed at eight o’clock, and although there seemed to be three to four times as many votes as voters, the majority were clearly in favor of the anti-Administration forces. Roosevelt had no comment to make: he was busy interviewing federal employees who had contributed to, or participated in, the day’s proceedings.³⁰ Not one of them saw anything wrong in influencing the course of a political election. “As far as I could find out,” Roosevelt recalled, “… there seemed to be no question of principle at stake at all, but one of offices merely … it was not a primary which particularly affected the interest of private citizens.” The civil servants of Baltimore, he added, “were as thorough believers in a system of oligarchical government as if they had lived in Venice or Sparta.”³¹

Party reaction to his visit was immediate and violent. On 1 April the Washington correspondent of the Boston Post reported: “The removal of Theodore Roosevelt from the Civil Service Commission is among the possibilities of the near future.” The President, apparently, was “very mad” with him.³² Frank Hatton delightedly fanned the flames with a front-page story headlined “TEDDY AT THE POLLS—Helping To Hurt Mr. Harrison—He Is Hand-in-Glove with the Anti-Administration Men.” The article alleged that Roosevelt’s tour through the wards had caused many government employees to “desert the field,” resulting in a humiliating defeat for the Administration. “If the delegation sent to the next nominating convention is anti-Harrison, the President will have nobody to blame more than his Civil Service Commissioner.”³³

On 4 April, an incensed party of Maryland spoilsmen visited the White House to demand Roosevelt’s dismissal.³⁴ Harrison said he would wait for an official report of the investigation before deciding what to do. This was a clear warning to Roosevelt to modify, delay, or even suppress any embarrassing findings.

Aware that he had an ax hanging over him³⁵—an ax that threatened to split asunder not only the Civil Service Commission, but the entire Administration—Roosevelt drafted his report with extreme caution. He returned to Baltimore three times, on 6, 13, and 18 April, to gather extra material.³⁶ Every word of testimony was transcribed by a stenographer, lest the President doubt any of the evidence. Some interviews, despite his efforts to be severe, came out like music-hall dialogue:

Q. How do you do your cheating?

A. Well, we do our cheating honorably.³⁷

Although Roosevelt quoted such non sequiturs with relish, the cheerful mendacity of witness after witness gradually sickened him. Out of their own mouths, he wrote, no fewer than twenty-five Harrison appointees stood convicted, and the President should dismiss them at once. His analysis of the evidence contained a typically aggressive plea for the abolition of the spoils system, on the grounds of pure political morality. “Resolved into its ultimate elements, the view of the spoils politician is that politics is a dirty game, which ought to be played solely by those who desire, by hook or crook, to win pecuniary reward [in] the form of money or of office. Politics cannot possibly be put upon a healthy basis until this idea is absolutely eradicated … As for the Government officeholder, he must be taught in one way or another that his duty is to do the work of the Government for the whole people, and not to pervert his office for the use of any party or any faction.”³⁸

In conclusion, Roosevelt noted that Postmaster Johnson had weakly disclaimed responsibility for the politicking of his employees. Such men were loyal, not to him, but to their ward leaders, who had ordered Johnson to hire them in the first place. “This testimony,” Roosevelt remarked contemptuously, “… shows the utter nonsense of the talk that under the spoils system the appointing officers themselves make the appointments. They do nothing of the kind … outside politicians make the appointments for them.” There was not enough evidence to warrant indictment of either Johnson or Marshal Airey—although the latter had been seen tearing the coat-buttons off a recalcitrant judge. In an obvious attempt to placate the President, Roosevelt avoided direct censure of either official, but suggested that in future any such politicking by senior civil servants “shall be treated as furnishing cause for dismissal.”³⁹

THE REPORT OF COMMISSIONER Roosevelt Concerning Political Assessments and the Use of Official Influence to Control Elections in the Federal Offices at Baltimore, Maryland⁴⁰ was, and remains, a masterpiece in its genre. It was short (146 pages), dense with relevant information, yet so clearly written as to speed both reader and author irresistibly to the same conclusion. Indeed the document was so seductive, not to say seditious, in its indictment of Old Guard Republicanism that Roosevelt himself seems to have had second thoughts about sending it in, or at least to have yielded to the suggestions of Commissioners Lyman and Thompson that he delay its release until the summer vacations, when negative publicity would do the Administration least harm.⁴¹

As a result, he enjoyed a temporary lull in his “warfare with the ungodly,” and drifted into “the pleasant life one can lead in Washington in the spring, if there are several tolerably intimate families.”⁴² The Roosevelts dined the Reeds; the Reeds responded with lunch; the Hays dined the Roosevelts; and “good, futile, pathetic Springy” entertained everybody at the country club. Theodore and Edith made side trips to Senator Cameron’s estate in Pennsylvania, and to William Merritt Chase’s art studio in New York, where Carmencita performed the new dance sensation, flamenco. April was effulgent, “clear as a bell … the flowers in bloom, and the trees a fresh and feathery green.” There were moonlight drives along the Potomac, followed by dinner; receptions for “various Dago diplomats,” followed by dinner; lazy Saturday lunches and lingering Sunday teas, followed by yet more dinners.⁴³ Roosevelt, whose body was thickening steadily with age, attempted to lose weight by trotting up Rock Creek in heavy flannels. His Dutch Reformed conscience began to bother him. “I have been going out too much … I wish I had more chance to work at my books … I don’t feel as if I were working to lasting effect.”⁴⁴

SOMETIME THAT SPRING he was overjoyed to receive a “temperate, natural, truthful” letter from his brother, whom Bamie had at last told about Katy Mann. It amounted to a total rejection of the girl’s story.⁴⁵ Naively reassured, Theodore wondered if he should call her bluff. “It is a ticklish business,” he told Bamie. “I hate the idea of [a] public scandal; and yet I never believe in yielding a hair’s breadth to a case of simple blackmail.”⁴⁶

But Katy Mann—who had given birth to a son—was not in the least deterred from pressing her suit. She claimed that Elliott had given her a locket and some compromising letters, which she would be happy to produce in court. Other servants, moreover, were willing to testify that he had been infatuated with her, and that his voice had been heard in her room. “Of course she is lying,” Theodore wrote uneasily.⁴⁷

He was still wondering how to proceed when the reports from Europe took on a sudden, alarming turn. Elliott had quit the sanitarium in Graz on some wild impulse, and had dragged Anna, Bamie, and the children to Paris. There he had taken on an American mistress, a Mrs. Evans, begun to drink again, and was occasionally so violent as to frighten Anna into hysterics.⁴⁸ Theodore chafed with frustration. Were it not for the fact that his own wife was heavily pregnant, he would have taken the next ship to Paris. He insisted, in a brutally decisive letter dated 7 June, that Elliott must be left to drink himself to death, if necessary, the moment Anna’s confinement was over.

Anna must be made to understand that it is both maudlin and criminal—I am choosing my words with scientific exactness—to continue living with Elliott … Do everything to persuade her to come home at once, unless Elliott will put himself in an asylum for a term of years, or unless, better still, he will come too. Once here I’ll guarantee to see that he is shut up …

Make up your mind to one dreadful scene. Use this letter if you like. Tell him that he is either responsible or irresponsible. If responsible then he must go where he can be cured; if irresponsible he is simply a selfish brutal and vicious criminal, and Anna ought not to stay with him an hour.

Do not care an atom for his threats of going off alone. Let him go … What happens to him is of purely minor importance now; and the chance of public scandal must not be weighed for a moment against the welfare, the life, of Anna and the children …

If he can’t be shut up, and will neither go of his own accord, nor let Anna depart of his free will, then make your plans and go off some day in his absence. If you need me telegraph me, and I (or Douglas [Robinson] if it is impossible for me to go on account of Edith) will come at once. But remember, I come on one condition. I come to settle the thing once and for all … You can tell him that Anna has a perfect right to a divorce; she or you or I have but to express belief in the Katy Mann story and no jury in the country would refuse a divorce.

Notwithstanding his threat to uphold Katy Mann in court, Theodore still wanted to believe that the girl was lying.⁴⁹ As a gentleman he had to accept his brother’s denial until it was proved false. He therefore ordered his representatives “to tell her to go on with her law suit … she will get nothing from us.” Senior members of the family were alerted to the likelihood of “some pretty ugly matters” surfacing in the press.⁵⁰

At this point another letter arrived from Elliott,⁵¹ reiterating his innocence but authorizing Theodore to pay Katy Mann “a moderate sum” in exchange for a quit claim. The lawyers suggested three thousand dollars, rising to four if necessary.⁵² That was much more than Elliott had in mind, but they reminded Theodore that in cases of this kind, involving boozy playboys and humble servant girls, the jury’s sympathy was always with the plaintiff. In a letter to “dear old Nell,” dated 14 June 1891, Theodore tried desperately to convince his brother—and himself—that the amount was worth paying.

If you and I were alone in the world I should advise fighting her as a pure blackmailer, yet as things [are] I did not dare …

The woman must admit that on her own plea she must have been a willing, probably inviting party. But she has chosen her time with great skill. During that week [of the alleged seduction] you were very sick, and for hours at a time were out of your head, and did not have any clear recollection of what you were doing. You wandered much about the house those nights, alone. She could get testimony that you were often wild and irresponsible, either from being out of your head or from the use of liquor or opiates. At present you are not in any condition to go on the stand and be cross-examined as to your past and your personal habits by a sharp and unscrupulous lawyer. So that however the suit went, it would create a great scandal; and much would be dragged out that we are very desirous of keeping from the public.

This appeal to his brother’s sense of reason was rendered academic by a letter from Bamie the next day, saying that Elliott had begun to suffer from delirium tremens.⁵³ Worse news arrived with almost every mail. Elliott no longer denied sleeping with Katy Mann; he merely said “he could not remember” doing so. He refused to be shut up against his will, and threatened to cut Anna off without a penny if she deserted him. Simultaneously he threatened to go off on a long sea voyage as soon as her baby was born.⁵⁴ “He is evidently a maniac morally no less than mentally,” Theodore wrote in despair.⁵⁵

As the Commissioner pondered each fresh letter and telegram, he could detect a certain animal ruthlessness in Elliott’s behavior. What that golden sot really wanted was to have everything—to hold on to his wife and children as symbols of respectability, to drink as much as he liked, sleep with whomever he pleased, and squander his money on himself, rather than alimony and paternity suits.⁵⁶ Elliott could not care less about Katy Mann’s threats. He knew that the family elders were so afraid of scandal they would silence her at all costs. If he refused to pay her the $4,000, somebody else assuredly would.

Theodore did not doubt this, having already, in an unfortunate gaffe, told Elliott that an uncle was willing to provide the hush-money.⁵⁷ He confessed to Bamie on 20 June that he was at his wits’ end as to what to advise; he could only insist, ad nauseam, that Anna must come home and not condone Elliott’s “hideous depravity” by continuing to live with him “as man and wife.”⁵⁸ But there seemed little chance of that: Bamie wrote to say that Anna had called longingly for Elliott while giving birth to their son, Hall, on 28 June. “It is dreadful to think of the inheritance the poor little baby may have in him,” Theodore wrote somberly—and prophetically.⁵⁹

The thought of Elliott now being free to return to Anna’s bed saddened and sickened him. In his opinion, sex between them should cease until Elliott “by two or three years of straight life” had canceled out the sin of adultery.⁶⁰ It did not occur to him that Anna, who had no sins to atone for, might be in any way inconvenienced by such an arrangement.

ROOSEVELT’S WORRIES ABOUT Katy Mann, aggravated by nervousness over the political consequences of his Baltimore report (still pigeonholed despite frantic pleas from reformers for its release), plunged him into gloom as June gave way to July. “I am at the end of my career, such as it is,” he wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge. “… I often have a regret that I am not in with you, Reed, and others in doing the real work.” About the only people who seemed to approve of him at the moment were the mugwumps, and he needed none oftheir lisping praises. The “good party men” whose respect he craved seemed to cherish nothing but “bitter animosities” toward him.⁶¹

His mood was not improved by an awkward business meeting with President Harrison on 1 July. “Throughout the interview he was as disagreeable and suspicious of manner as well might be,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge. “He is a genial little runt, isn’t he?”⁶²Actually the meeting had positive results. Harrison approved some new Civil Service rules governing promotions which Roosevelt had been pressing as part of his campaign to root out favoritism in government departments; but the coolness between the two men was such that even their treaties seemed like truces.

ROOSEVELT WAS NOW FREE to leave Washington for the summer, there being little work in his hot, musty office that he could not do at Sagamore Hill. Edith and the children had long since preceded him north, and he missed them so painfully he would look over his shoulder for them on walks through Rock Creek Park. Pausing only to stuff a suitcase with fireworks, he caught the Limited to New York on Friday, 3 July,⁶³ arriving home in time for the holiday.

It was not a very festive weekend. On Sunday he was obliged to cross the Sound for the funeral of his cousin Alfred—killed horribly under the wheels of a train⁶⁴—and he returned to news that Katy Mann had finally named her price: $10,000. This, Theodore wrote Bamie, was “so huge a sum” that the hoped-for compromise seemed unlikely. The scandal would break any day now, he feared. It was impossible to deny Elliott’s culpability: an “expert in likenesses” had seen the baby, and its features were unmistakably Rooseveltian.⁶⁵

Telegrams from Europe crossed his letter to report that Elliott had been inveigled into an inebriate asylum outside Paris. He was now safely under lock and key, and Bamie had persuaded Anna to return to the States without him.⁶⁶

About this time the figure of Katy Mann begins mysteriously to fade from history. The last specific reference to her in Theodore’s correspondence is a remark dated 21 July: “Frank Weeks [Elliott’s lawyer] advises me that I have no power whatever to compromise in the Katy Mann affair. I suppose it will all be out soon.” But the scandal never broke. Evidently the girl got her money, although how much, and when, and who paid it, is unknown.⁶⁷

A SCANDAL OF ANOTHER SORT began to loom on 4 August, when Roosevelt sent advance copies of his Baltimore report to the White House and Post Office Department. Official reaction to the document was best symbolized by Assistant Postmaster General Clarkson, who took one look at it and placed it under lock and key.⁶⁸ An abridged form of the report was released for publication on 16 August, and instantly became front-page news.⁶⁹ Fortunately both President Harrison and Postmaster General Wanamaker were on vacation, and would not return until early September, by which time Roosevelt planned to be two thousand miles west in the Rockies.⁷⁰ The inevitable confrontation between them would thus be delayed until October at least.

Try as he might, Roosevelt could not keep his name out of current headlines. On 17 August, the day after his Baltimore report was broadcast to the nation, the New York Sun splashed the following sensational story:

ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT INSANE

His Brother Theodore Applies for a Writ in Lunacy

A Commission [has been] appointed by Justice O’Brien of the Supreme Court to enquire into the mental condition of Elliott Roosevelt, with a view to having a committee appointed to care for his person and for his estate. The application was made by his brother, United States Civil Service Commissioner and ex-Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt, with the approval of Elliott Roosevelt’s wife, Anna Hall Roosevelt.…

Theodore Roosevelt avers in the papers in the case that the mental faculties of his brother have been failing him for nearly two years. He says he saw him frequently until Elliott went to Europe in July 1890, and he had remarked the gradual impairment of his intellect. His conversation had been rambling and he could not tell a story consecutively … During the winter of 1890 he had several bad turns. He became violent and on three occasions threatened to take his own life. He had to be placed in surveillance. Mr. Roosevelt says he is “unable to say how far the result is due to indulgence in drink or other excesses.” He alleges that the property of his brother in this State consists of real estate, bonds, stocks, and is worth $170,000.

Substantially the same news item appeared in all the major dailies. Never before had the Roosevelts, that 250-year-old clan of unimpeachable respectability, been tarnished with such shameful revelations.⁷¹ The resentment of family elders against Theodore for having precipitated it may well be imagined, but he was convinced he had done the right thing for Anna and the children. It had been necessary to act hastily before Elliott was released from his French asylum and returned to the United States to claim his property. Even so, the court might not decide in time. “It is all horrible beyond belief,” Theodore wrote Bamie. “The only thing to do is go resolutely forward.”⁷²

All in all, the summer of 1891 must have been a time of anguish for the beleaguered Commissioner. Its only discernible blessing was the birth, on 13 August, of his fourth child and second daughter, “a jolly naughty whacky baby” named Ethel.⁷³ Even this was saddened by the almost simultaneous death of Wilmot Dow, the younger and more lovable of his Dakota partners. “I think of Wilmot all the time,” he wrote. “I can see him riding a bucker, paddling, shooting, hiking.…” Solace was to be found out West. At the end of the month he left for Medora and the Rockies.⁷⁴

“AS 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.⁷⁵ 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.”⁷⁶

Postmaster Johnson of Baltimore did not share this view. He publicly prayed “that lightning may strike Mr. Theodore Roosevelt.”⁷⁷ 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.”⁷⁸

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.”⁷⁹

EMBARRASSMENTS 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 agolden 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.⁸⁰

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.”⁸¹

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.⁸² 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.”⁸³

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 recordedconfinement since childhood. Although he complained about being treated like “a corpulent valetudinarian,” it was plain that he was physically and emotionally spent.⁸⁴

CHRISTMAS 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.⁸⁵Instinct 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.… ⁸⁶—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 …⁸⁷ 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.…⁸⁸

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 1894.⁸⁹

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.⁹⁰ 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.…⁹¹

ROOSEVELT RETURNED HOME on 7 Feburary⁹² to find the Civil Service Commission pondering yet another case of political assessments, this time at federal offices in Owensboro, Kentucky.⁹³ 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.⁹⁴

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.⁹⁵ 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.⁹⁶

ROOSEVELT LOST NO TIME in following Schurz’s advice. While awaiting the verdict of the House, he made his planned trip to the South with Elliott, who had agreed to manage Douglas Robinson’s estates in Virginia. The two brothers parted affectionately; Elliott declared he was completely cured, and anxious to atone for his misdeeds. Theodore went on to Kentucky, relieved that the long family crisis was over. “It is most inadvisable, on every account, that you and I should have any leading part in Elliott’s affairs hereafter,” he wrote Bamie, “especially as regards his relations with Anna … We have done everything possible … anything more would simply be interference, would not ultimately help her or him, and would hurt us.”⁹⁷

His business in Owensboro did not detain him long; neither did further business in Texas, for in early April he was at the ranch of a friend near the Mexican border. Here he spent two exhilarating days hunting wild hogs on horseback. Running down a band of five on the banks of the River Nueces, he managed to shoot a sow and a boar. “There was a certain excitement in seeing the fierce little creatures come to bay,” he mused afterward, “but the true way to kill these peccaries would be with the spear.”⁹⁸

THE HOUSE VOTED an investigation of the Baltimore affair by the Civil Service Reform Committee on 19 April 1892. John Wanamaker was asked how soon he could prepare a statement of his official position, and replied that “he would hold himself at the service of the Committee for any date on which Mr. Roosevelt was not to be present.”⁹⁹

A special hearing of the Postmaster General was promptly scheduled for Monday, 25 April. Speaking with an air of weary dignity, Wanamaker said that he had not laid eyes on Roosevelt’s report until returning from vacation the previous September. Soon afterward Postmaster Johnson had written to him complaining that the document was based on warped evidence. According to Johnson, Commissioner Roosevelt had arrived in Baltimore without warning, and had “frightened” and “bulldozed” Post Office employees into making rash statements that they later begged to withdraw. He had conducted a “star-chamber investigation” in which “men of very ordinary intellect” were denied counsel, and subjected them to a barrage of “leading questions.”¹⁰⁰ Wanamaker felt that the men were entitled to be heard on their own behalf, and had ordered his two most senior inspectors to reinvestigate the case. Their report—which he did not happen to have on him at the moment—proved that Roosevelt’s victims had not been soliciting election expenses at all; on the contrary, they were merely raising funds for a pool table. It was the official view of his department, therefore, that “the facts do not justify the dismissal of … anyone for violation of the Civil Service Law as charged.”¹⁰¹

Wanamaker, who regularly taught Sunday school in Philadelphia, was at his sanctimonious best in cross-examination. He said that Postmaster Johnson had been “reprimanded” for allowing his men “to give impressions to the Civil Service Commissioner which were not justified by facts.” Yet, on the whole, Johnson had done a remarkably good job in enforcing Civil Service rules. “The condition of the Baltimore Post Office is like the millenium in comparison with what it was in the previous Administration.” Then Wanamaker launched into a speech which must have made Roosevelt boggle when it appeared in the evening paper:

I consider myself the highest type of Civil Service man. I have governed the Post Office Department strictly by Civil Service rules … It seems to me to be small and trifling business and unworthy of a great Government to discharge a man who declares that he gave five dollars to a pool table … And while I have not seen my way clear to order any discharge or indictment … I might, if I saw the least thing on the part of these men at the next election to prove that they had not been honest or fair, dismiss them and forty more, if necessary. I am a law-keeper.¹⁰²

Roosevelt’s turn came a week later, on 2 May. He made his usual delayed entrance, interrupting testimony by Treasury Secretary Charles Foster, pumping hands right and left, waving aside a proffered chair. While awaiting his turn on the stand he “paced the floor nervously like a caged leopard,” and when sworn treated the committee to a series of dazzling grins, some of which clicked audibly. He pulled a typewritten statement from his pocket and read it with gusto.¹⁰³

“In the first place,” said Roosevelt, “I stand by my Baltimore report not only in its entirety, but paragraph by paragraph. It is absolutely impossible that my conclusions should be upset, for they are based upon the confessions of the accused persons made at the very time the events took place. It seems to me less a question of judgment in deciding on their guilt than it is a question of interpreting the English language as it is ordinarily used.” He offered no apologies for his methods of investigation. “Of course I used leading questions! I have always used them in examinations of this kind and always shall use them … to get at the truth.”¹⁰⁴

Having established his own position, Roosevelt turned to an analysis of Wanamaker’s. Apparently “the Honorable Postmaster General” (he used this phrase, with heavy sarcasm, no fewer than eighteen times) put more faith in contradictory testimony, prepared after the fact with the help of lawyers, than in verbatim confessions recorded at the scene of the crime. “It is difficult for me to discuss seriously the proposition that a man when questioned as to something which has just happened will lie to his own hurt, and six months afterward tell the truth to his own benefit.”

He was glad the Honorable Postmaster General admitted there had been violations of the law in Baltimore during the last Administration, but “if the wrongdoing is not checked it will be found at the end of four years to have been just as great under this Administration.” Roosevelt concluded, “I honestly fail to see how there can be a particle of question as to these men’s guilt, after reading the evidence that is before you; and if these men are not guilty, then it is absolutely impossible that men ever can be guilty under the Civil Service law.”¹⁰⁵

Before adjournment the committee voted a formal request for the Postmaster General’s report. “Ah! I presume I shall be allowed to see that testimony?” said Roosevelt eagerly. When the chairman nodded assent, he was as delighted as a child. “Thanks! Thanks!”¹⁰⁶

DELIGHT CHANGED TO DISGUST as he read the text of the nine-hundred-page document. Wanamaker’s inspectors had not been able to change the basic facts of the case—much of the testimony, indeed, was even more incriminating than before—but they blatantly ignored this evidence in presenting their conclusions. Commissioner Roosevelt, the report declared, had been “malicious,” “unfair,” and “partial in the extreme” in his investigation, determined “to deceive or mislead” witnesses for “some political purpose.”¹⁰⁷

Roosevelt reacted to these slurs with a dignity that merely emphasized the depths of his anger. He sent a registered letter to Wanamaker, saying that the Post Office inspectors had cast reflections not only on his actions, but on his motives. “There is no need in commenting on their gross impertinence and impropriety,” Roosevelt wrote,

used as they are by the subordinates of one department in reference to one of the heads of another, who is, like yourself, responsible to the President only. But I have nothing to do with these subordinates. It is with you, the official head, responsible for their action, that I have to deal. By submitting this report without expressly disclaiming any responsibility for it, you seem to assume that responsibility and make it your own. I can hardly suppose this was your intention, but I shall be obliged to treat these statements which in any way reflect on my acts and motives as yours, unless you disavow them with the same publicity with which they were made to the Committee. I therefore respectfully ask you whether you will or will not make such disavowal, so that I may govern myself accordingly, and not be guilty of any injustice.¹⁰⁸

Roosevelt waited nine days, but Wanamaker made no reply. On 25 May, therefore, he appeared at a final session of the Investigating Committee “with a typewritten statement under his athletic arm and fire in his eye.”¹⁰⁹

HE BEGAN by reading his letter to Wanamaker, to the sound of excited scribbling in the press gallery. Then, in a lucid analysis of the two masses of evidence gathered in Baltimore by himself and Wanamaker’s inspectors, he showed that at least two-thirds of the latter was even more damaging than his own. Yet Wanamaker had ignored this evidence in favor of the remaining third, which had obviously been gathered with intent to whitewash. “I have never sheltered myself behind my subordinates,” said Roosevelt loftily, “and I decline to let the Postmaster-General shelter himself behind his.” He would not accuse Wanamaker of an official cover-up, but “if the investigation in which this testimony was taken had been made with the deliberate intent of shielding the accused, covering up their wrongdoing, and attempting to perjure themselves, so that the [Post] Office could be cleared from the effect of their former truthful confessions, it would have been managed precisely as it actually was managed.”

In conclusion Roosevelt noted that the Postmaster General was in the habit of saying he cherished nothing but goodwill toward the Civil Service Commission. “I regret to say that I must emphatically dissent from this statement. Many of his actions … during the past two years seem to be explicable only on the ground of dislike of the Commission, and of willingness to hamper its work.”¹¹⁰

It was a masterly performance. Roosevelt kept tight rein over his temper, let the facts speak for themselves, and stepped from the stand with an air of complete self-assurance. The reaction of the editors of The New York Times next morning typified that of honest men across the nation:

We do not remember an instance in the history of our Government in which an officer of the Government, appointed by the President and charged with independent duties of a most responsible and important character, has felt called upon to go before a Congressional Committee and submit to it statements so damaging to the character of another officer of the Government of still higher rank … Nor do we see how Mr. Roosevelt could have refused to do what he has done. He has been forced to it, and by conduct on the part of Mr. Wanamaker that is entirely inexcusable and without any decent motive. It may be said that Mr. Roosevelt has taken upon himself to accuse Mr. Wanamaker of what amounts to untruthfulness … That is not a pleasing position to be occupied by a gentleman who is a Cabinet officer and a person of conspicuous pretensions to piety. But Mr. Roosevelt showed that Mr. Wanamaker had adopted and acted on statements that he knew were false … that he bore himself generally with a curious mingling of smug impertinence and cowardice … The exposure he has suffered from Mr. Roosevelt is merciless and humiliating, but it is clearly deserved.

The majority report of the investigating committee, dated 22 June, used even stronger language. It described Wanamaker’s testimony as “evasive” and “garbled,” and said he was clearly in “desperate straits.” The Postmaster General’s “extraordinary” failure to act in the Baltimore case indicated “either a determination not to enforce the law or negligence therein to the last degree.” As for the testimony taken by his inspectors, it “confirmed and corroborated fully” that taken in the original investigation.¹¹¹ The righteousness of the law was upheld, and Theodore Roosevelt could enjoy the sweetest political triumph of his career as Commissioner.

THE STORY OF the rest of the Harrison Administration can be briefly told. At 3:20 A.M. on the morning after the investigating committee filed the above-quoted report, Grover Cleveland was renominated by the Democrats for President of the United States.¹¹² This news, coinciding as it did with the public disgrace of John Wanamaker, and reports of “scandalous” use of patronage in the renomination of Benjamin Harrison at Minneapolis,¹¹³ came as a signal for all disillusioned reformers to desert the Republican party, as they had in 1884. Although memories of office-looting under the Democrats still lingered, they were neither as recent nor as disturbing as those publicized by the Republican Civil Service Commissioner. “Poor Harrison!” remarked the New York Sun. “If he has erred, he has been punished. The irrepressible, belligerent and enthusiastic Roosevelt has made him suffer, and has more suffering in store for him.”¹¹⁴

Actually Roosevelt ceased to pester the little general through the campaign of 1892, possibly because he knew Mrs. Harrison was dying of tuberculosis. In July he wrote a long, flattering article, “The Foreign Policy of President Harrison,” for publication in the 11 August issue of The Independent. Although the policy in question was largely that of Secretary of State James G. Blaine, Roosevelt’s conclusion, “No other Administration since the Civil War has made so excellent a record in its management of our foreign relations,” could not but have gratified his melancholy chief.¹¹⁵

Roosevelt enjoyed a renewed burst of literary activity that summer, publishing at least four other major articles on subjects ranging from anglomania to political assessments. He also forced himself to read all of Chaucer, whose lustier lyrics had hitherto made him gag. Even now, he found such tales as the Summoner’s “altogether needlessly filthy,” but he confessed to enjoying the others.¹¹⁶ He exercised strenuously to work off the effects of a sedentary winter, galloping through the woods around Washington with Lodge, playing tennis at the British Legation, and whacking polo balls around the green fields of Long Island. “I tell you, a corpulent middle-aged literary man finds a stiff polo match rather good exercise!”¹¹⁷

At the beginning of August, Roosevelt left to go West as usual, but official engagements in South Dakota permitted him only a week or two in the Badlands. He was not sorry to leave Elkhorn, for game was scarce and the empty cabin depressed him.¹¹⁸ Hell-Roaring Bill Jones agreed to drive him south to Deadwood, with Sylvane Ferris as a companion. This trip gave Roosevelt the opportunity to luxuriate in cowboy conversation, of which he had been starved in recent years.¹¹⁹

On 25 August, the wagon rolled into Deadwood, and Roosevelt soon discovered that, in spite of his sunburn and rough garb, he was regarded as a visiting celebrity. This was due more, perhaps, to his fame as the captor of Redhead Finnegan than to any relationship with the current Administration. A deputation of citizens waited upon him at his hotel and announced that a mass meeting had been scheduled in his honor that evening. At the appointed hour a band escorted him willy-nilly to the Deadwood Opera House, where he was obliged to open President Harrison’s local reelection campaign. There was no point in protesting that as Civil Service Commissioner he was not supposed to take sides in a political contest. Local comprehension of his title was typified by the sheriff of the Black Hills, who remarked genially, “Well, anything civil goes with me.”¹²⁰

HE SPENT THE NEXT MONTH on a “tedious but important” tour of the neighboring Indian reservations. The dusty hopelessness of those sprawling communities seems to have wrought a profound change in his attitude to the American Indian. During his years as a rancher, Roosevelt had acquired plenty of anti-Indian prejudice, strangely at odds with his enlightened attitude to blacks. But his research into the great Indian military heroes for The Winning of the West had done much to moderate this. Now, touring Pine Ridge and Crow Creek on behalf of the Great White Father, he looked on the red man not as an adversary but as a ward of the state, whom it was his duty to protect. Pity, not unmixed with honte du vainqueur, flared into anger when he discovered that even here, in decaying federal agencies and flyblown schools, the spoils system was an accepted part of government. Clerks and teachers testified they were routinely assessed for amounts up to $200 per head by the South Dakota Republican Central Committee, on pain of losing their jobs.¹²¹ Any time now the collectors would be around to seek “contributions” for President Harrison. Roosevelt promptly called a press conference in Sioux City and blasted the “infamy of meanness that would rob women and Indians of their meager wages.”¹²² He demanded the prosecution of several high Republican officials, and announced that Indians in the classified service “need not contribute a penny” to any future assessments.¹²³ The wretchedness he saw at Pine Ridge stayed with him long after he returned East. In a speech summing up his career as Civil Service Commissioner under President Harrison, Roosevelt sounded a note of human compassion rare in his early public utterances:

Here we have a group of beings who are not able to protect themselves; who are groping toward civilization out of the darkness of heredity and ingrained barbarism, and to whom, theoretically, we are supposed to be holding out a helping hand. They are utterly unable to protect themselves. They are credulous and easily duped by a bad agent, and they are susceptible of remarkable improvement when the agent is a good man, thoroughly efficient and thoroughly practical. To the Indians the workings of the spoils system at the agencies is a curse and an outrage … it must mean that the painful road leading upward from savagery is rendered infinitely more difficult and infinitely more stony for the poor feet trying to tread it.¹²⁴

On 25 October 1892, two days before Roosevelt’s thirty-fourth birthday, Mrs. Benjamin Harrison died, adding a final touch of doom to the moribund Republican campaign. The little general had not wanted to be renominated, and now, as grief crippled him, he wanted even less to be reelected. Privately he longed to go back to Indianapolis, but “a Harrison never runs away from a fight.”¹²⁵ On 8 November, however, his wish for retirement was granted. Grover Cleveland returned to power with a 3 percent majority, thanks to the swing of the reform vote. “Well, as to the general result I am disappointed but not surprised,” Roosevelt wrote Lodge. “But how it galls to see the self-complacent triumph of our foes!”¹²⁶

What probably galled him even more (although he did not say it) was the thought that Lodge, who had scored a personal coup in the Massachusetts election, was now in line for a seat in the U.S. Senate, while he would soon have to pack up his bags and return to Sagamore Hill. A few newspapers wanted him to be reappointed,¹²⁷ but it was unlikely the Democrats would favor a Civil Service Commissioner who had attacked President Cleveland so sharply in the past. He could scarcely have survived even if Harrison had won; since the Wanamaker affair, Republican spoilsmen had been insisting “in swarms” that Roosevelt must go.¹²⁸

“I … have the profound gratification of knowing that there is no man more bitterly disliked by many of the men in my own party,” he told a fellow reformer. “When I leave on March 5th, I shall at least have the knowledge that I have certainly not flinched from trying to enforce the law during these four years, even if my progress has been at times a little disheartening.”¹²⁹

ANOTHER DEATH SHOOK HIM on 7 December, and plunged the whole family into official mourning. Anna Roosevelt, her frail health broken by two years of humiliation, succumbed to diphtheria at the age of twenty-nine. The last message to Elliott in Virginia was a telegraphed “DO NOT COME.”¹³⁰ One wonders if this gave any momentary pang to Theodore, who more than anyone else was responsible for their separation.

DURING ITS LAST few months in power, the Harrison Administration was possessed of immortal longings. A robe and a crown, of sorts, became available in the Pacific, and the President hastened to put them on.¹³¹ They belonged to Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii, who early in the New Year had proclaimed a policy of “Hawaii for the Hawaiians,” in an attempt to end half a century of economic domination by the United States. She was immediately deposed in an uprising of native sugar growers, aided by some American marines, and abetted by the American Minister. Within weeks, representatives of the revolutionaries arrived in Washington to negotiate a treaty of annexation. President Harrison complied, although it was unlikely the incoming Democratic Administration would allow the document to get very far in Congress.¹³²

Washington society, meanwhile, embraced Hawaii as the theme of the season. Hostesses served lavish luaus to their guests, to the whine of native guitars. Fashionable couples, hurrying in furs from one party to another, hummed the latest hit, a serenade to the deposed island Queen:

Come, Liliu-o-kalani,

Give Uncle Sam

Your little yellow hannie …¹³³

Henry Adams proudly introduced the latest addition to his circle, a four-hundred-pound Polynesian chief named Tati Salmon. “A polished gentleman,” Roosevelt noted approvingly, “of easy manners, with an interesting undertone of queer barbarism.”¹³⁴

As the season wore on, a delicious fragrance filled the air, of pineapples and Pacific ozone, of warm dusky flesh and spices. It was the smell of Empire, and none sniffed it more eagerly than Roosevelt. With all his soul, he longed to remain in Washington, where the future of his country was blossoming like some brilliant tropical flower. Amazingly, it seemed that the President-elect bore him no grudge, and might invite him to stay on as Civil Service Commissioner. Benjamin F. Tracy, outgoing Secretary of the Navy, urged him to accept, and in doing so, bestowed a compliment which delighted Roosevelt more than any other he had ever received. “Well, my boy,” said Tracy, “you have been a thorn in our side during four years. I earnestly hope that you will remain to be a thorn in the side of the next Administration.”¹³⁵