Letters to His Children - Theodore Roosevelt
QUENTIN'S QUAINT SAYINGS
Oyster Bay, N. Y., Aug. 26, 1905.
DEAR KERMIT:
Mr. Phil Stewart and Dr. Lambert spent a night here, Quentin greeting
the former with most cordial friendship, and in explanation stating that
he always liked to get acquainted with everybody. I take Hall to chop,
and he plays tennis with Phil and Oliver, and rides with Phil and
Quentin. The Plunger (a submarine) has come to the Bay and I am going
out in it this afternoon--or rather down on it. N. B.--I have just been
down, for 50 minutes; it was very interesting.
Last night I listened to Mother reading "The Lances of Linwood" to the
two little boys and then hearing them their prayers. Then I went into
Archie's room, where they both showed all their china animals; I read
them Laura E. Richards' poems, including "How does the President take
his tea?" They christened themselves Punkey Doodle and Jollapin, from
the chorus of this, and immediately afterwards I played with them on
Archie's bed. First I would toss Punkey Doodle (Quentin) on Jollapin
(Archie) and tickle Jollapin while Punkey Doodle squalled and wiggled on
top of him, and then reverse them and keep Punkey Doodle down by heaving
Jollapin on him, while they both kicked and struggled until my shirt
front looked very much the worse for wear. You doubtless remember
yourself how bad it was for me, when I was dressed for dinner, to play
with all you scamps when you were little.
The other day a reporter asked Quentin something about me; to which that
affable and canny young gentleman responded, "Yes, I see him sometimes;
but I know nothing of his family life."
ADVICE REGARDING NEWSPAPER ANNOYANCES
When Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., entered Harvard as a freshman he had to
pay the penalty of being a President's son. Newspaper reporters followed
all his movements, especially in athletics, and he was the victim of
many exaggerated and often purely fictitious accounts of his doings.
His father wrote him indignant and sympathetic letters, two of which are
reproduced here.
White House, October 2, 1905.
BLESSED OLD TED:
The thing to do is to go on just as you have evidently been doing,
attract as little attention as possible, do not make a fuss about the
newspaper men, camera creatures, and idiots generally, letting it be
seen that you do not like them and avoid them, but not letting them
betray you into any excessive irritation. I believe they will soon drop
you, and it is just an unpleasant thing that you will have to live down.
Ted, I have had an enormous number of unpleasant things that I have had
to live down in my life at different times and you have begun to have
them now. I saw that you were not out on the football field on Saturday
and was rather glad of it, as evidently those infernal idiots were
eagerly waiting for you, but whenever you do go you will have to make up
your mind that they will make it exceedingly unpleasant for you for once
or twice, and you will just have to bear it; for you can never in the
world afford to let them drive you away from anything you intend to do,
whether it is football or anything else, and by going about your own
business quietly and pleasantly, doing just what you would do if they
were not there, generally they will get tired of it, and the boys
themselves will see that it is not your fault, and will feel, if
anything, rather a sympathy for you. Meanwhile I want you to know that
we are all thinking of you and sympathizing with you the whole time; and
it is a great comfort to me to have such confidence in you and to know
that though these creatures can cause you a little trouble and make you
feel a little downcast, they can not drive you one way or the other, or
make you alter the course you have set out for yourself.
We were all of us, I am almost ashamed to say, rather blue at getting
back in the White House, simply because we missed Sagamore Hill so much.
But it is very beautiful and we feel very ungrateful at having even a
passing fit of blueness, and we are enjoying it to the full now. I have
just seen Archie dragging some fifty foot of hose pipe across the tennis
court to play in the sand-box. I have been playing tennis with Mr.
Pinchot, who beat me three sets to one, the only deuce-set being the one
I won.
This is just an occasion to show the stuff there is in you. Do not
let these newspaper creatures and kindred idiots drive you one hair's
breadth from the line you had marked out in football or anything else.
Avoid any fuss, if possible.
White House, October 11, 1905.
DEAR TED:
I was delighted to find from your last letters that you are evidently
having a pretty good time in spite of the newspaper and kodak creatures.
I guess that nuisance is now pretty well abated. Every now and then
they will do something horrid; but I think you can safely, from now on,
ignore them entirely.
I shall be interested to hear how you get on, first of all with your
studies, in which you seem to have started well, and next with football.
I expected that you would find it hard to compete with the other
candidates for the position of end, as they are mostly heavier than you;
especially since you went off in weight owing to the excitement of your
last weeks of holiday in the summer. Of course the fact that you are
comparatively light tells against you and gives you a good deal to
overcome; and undoubtedly it was from this standpoint not a good thing
that you were unable to lead a quieter life toward the end of your stay
at Oyster Bay.
So it is about the polo club. In my day we looked with suspicion upon
all freshman societies, and the men who tried to get them up or were
prominent in them rarely amounted to much in the class afterwards; and
it has happened that I have heard rather unfavorably of the polo club.
But it may be mere accident that I have thus heard unfavorably about it,
and in thirty years the attitude of the best fellows in college to
such a thing as a freshman club may have changed so absolutely that my
experience can be of no value. Exercise your own best judgment and form
some idea of what the really best fellows in the class think on the
subject. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the men who are merely
undeveloped are really the best fellows, no matter how pleasant and
agreeable they are or how popular. Popularity is a good thing, but it
is not something for which to sacrifice studies or athletics or good
standing in any way; and sometimes to seek it overmuch is to lose it. I
do not mean this as applying to you, but as applying to certain men who
still have a great vogue at first in the class, and of whom you will
naturally tend to think pretty well.
In all these things I can only advise you in a very general way. You are
on the ground. You know the men and the general college sentiment. You
have gone in with the serious purpose of doing decently and honorably;
of standing well in your studies; of showing that in athletics you mean
business up to the extent of your capacity, and of getting the respect
and liking of your classmates so far as they can be legitimately
obtained. As to the exact methods of carrying out these objects, I must
trust to you.
INCIDENTS OF A SOUTHERN TRIP
White House, Nov. 1, 1905.
DEAR KERMIT:
I had a great time in the South, and it was very nice indeed having Mr.
John McIlhenny and Mr. John Greenway with me. Of course I enjoyed most
the three days when Mother was there. But I was so well received and
had so many things to say which I was really glad to say, that the whole
trip was a success. When I left New Orleans on the little lighthouse
tender to go down to the gulf where the big war ship was awaiting me, we
had a collision. I was standing up at the time and the shock pitched me
forward so that I dove right through the window, taking the glass all
out except a jagged rim round the very edge. But I went through so
quickly that I received only some minute scratches on my face and hands
which, however, bled pretty freely. I was very glad to come up the coast
on the squadron of great armored cruisers.
In the gulf the weather was hot and calm, but soon after rounding
Florida and heading northward we ran into a gale. Admiral Brownson is a
regular little gamecock and he drove the vessels to their limit. It was
great fun to see the huge warcraft pounding steadily into the gale and
forging onward through the billows. Some of the waves were so high that
the water came clean over the flying bridge forward, and some of the
officers were thrown down and badly bruised. One of the other ships lost
a man overboard, and although we hunted for him an hour and a half we
could not get him, and had a boat smashed in the endeavor.
When I got back here I found sister, very interesting about her Eastern
trip. She has had a great time, and what is more, she has behaved mighty
well under rather trying circumstances. Ethel was a dear, as always, and
the two little boys were as cunning as possible. Sister had brought them
some very small Japanese fencing armor, which they had of course put on
with glee, and were clumsily fencing with wooden two-handed swords.
And they had also rigged up in the dark nursery a gruesome man with
a pumpkin head, which I was ushered in to see, and in addition to the
regular eyes, nose, and saw-tooth mouth, Archie had carved in the back
of the pumpkin the words "Pumpkin Giant," the candle inside illuminating
it beautifully. Mother was waiting for me at the Navy Yard, looking
too pretty for anything, when I arrived. She and I had a ride this
afternoon. Of course I am up to my ears in work.
The mornings are lovely now, crisp and fresh; after breakfast Mother and
I walk around the grounds accompanied by Skip, and also by Slipper, her
bell tinkling loudly. The gardens are pretty dishevelled now, but the
flowers that are left are still lovely; even yet some honeysuckle is
blooming on the porch.
POETS AND PRINCES
White House, November 6, 1905.
DEAR KERMIT:
Just a line, for I really have nothing to say this week. I have caught
up with my work. One day we had a rather forlorn little poet and
his nice wife in at lunch. They made me feel quite badly by being
so grateful at my having mentioned him in what I fear was a very
patronizing and, indeed, almost supercilious way, as having written an
occasional good poem. I am much struck by Robinson's two poems which you
sent Mother. What a queer, mystical creature he is! I did not understand
one of them--that about the gardens--and I do not know that I like
either of them quite as much as some of those in "The Children of the
Night." But he certainly has got the real spirit of poetry in him.
Whether he can make it come out I am not quite sure.
Prince Louis of Battenberg has been here and I have been very much
pleased with him. He is a really good admiral, and in addition he is a
well-read and cultivated man and it was charming to talk with him. We
had him and his nephew, Prince Alexander, a midshipman, to lunch alone
with us, and we really enjoyed having them. At the State dinner he sat
between me and Bonaparte, and I could not help smiling to myself in
thinking that here was this British Admiral seated beside the American
Secretary of the Navy--the American Secretary of the Navy being the
grandnephew of Napoleon and the grandson of Jerome, King of Westphalia;
while the British Admiral was the grandson of a Hessian general who was
the subject of King Jerome and served under Napoleon, and then, by no
means creditably, deserted him in the middle of the Battle of Leipsic.
I am off to vote to-night.
NOVELS AND GAMES
White House, November 19, 1905.
DEAR KERMIT:
I sympathize with every word you say in your letter, about Nicholas
Nickleby, and about novels generally. Normally I only care for a novel
if the ending is good, and I quite agree with you that if the hero has
to die he ought to die worthily and nobly, so that our sorrow at the
tragedy shall be tempered with the joy and pride one always feels when
a man does his duty well and bravely. There is quite enough sorrow and
shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for
meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was
my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and
unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I had
shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no use
whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and squalor and
crime, or at least in reading them as a steady thing. Now and then there
is a powerful but sad story which really is interesting and which really
does good; but normally the books which do good and the books which
healthy people find interesting are those which are not in the least
of the sugar-candy variety, but which, while portraying foulness and
suffering when they must be portrayed, yet have a joyous as well as a
noble side.
We have had a very mild and open fall. I have played tennis a good deal,
the French Ambassador being now quite a steady playmate, as he and
I play about alike; and I have ridden with Mother a great deal. Last
Monday when Mother had gone to New York I had Selous, the great African
hunter, to spend the day and night. He is a perfect old dear; just as
simple and natural as can be and very interesting. I took him, with Bob
Bacon, Gifford Pinchot, Ambassador Meyer and Jim Garfield, for a
good scramble and climb in the afternoon, and they all came to
dinner afterwards. Before we came down to dinner I got him to spend
three-quarters of an hour in telling delightfully exciting lion and
hyena stories to Ethel, Archie and Quentin. He told them most vividly
and so enthralled the little boys that the next evening I had to tell
them a large number myself.
To-day is Quentin's birthday and he loved his gifts, perhaps most of all
the weest, cunningest live pig you ever saw, presented him by Straus.
Phil Stewart and his wife and boy, Wolcott (who is Archie's age), spent
a couple of nights here. One afternoon we had hide-and-go-seek, bringing
down Mr. Garfield and the Garfield boys, and Archie turning up with the
entire football team, who took a day off for the special purpose. We had
obstacle races, hide-and-go-seek, blind-man's buff, and everything else;
and there were times when I felt that there was a perfect shoal of small
boys bursting in every direction up and down stairs, and through and
over every conceivable object.
Mother and I still walk around the grounds every day after breakfast.
The gardens, of course, are very, very dishevelled now, the snap-dragons
holding out better than any other flowers.
CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO HIS OLD NURSE
(To Mrs. Dora Watkins)
White House, December 19, 1905.
DEAR DOLLY:
I wish you a merry Christmas, and want you to buy whatever you think you
would like with the enclosed check for twenty dollars. It is now just
forty years since you stopped being my nurse, when I was a little boy of
seven, just one year younger than Quentin now is.
I wish you could see the children play here in the White House grounds.
For the last three days there has been snow, and Archie and Quentin and
their cousin, cunning little Sheffield Cowles, and their other cousin,
Mr. John Elliott's little girl, Helena, who is a perfect little dear,
have been having all kinds of romps in the snow--coasting, having
snowball fights, and doing everything--in the grounds back of the White
House. This coming Saturday afternoon I have agreed to have a great
play of hide-and-go-seek in the White House itself, not only with these
children but with their various small friends.
DICKENS AND THACKERAY
White House, February 3, 1906.
DEAR KERMIT:
I agree pretty well with your views of David Copperfield. Dora was very
cunning and attractive, but I am not sure that the husband would retain
enough respect for her to make life quite what it ought to be with her.
This is a harsh criticism and I have known plenty of women of the Dora
type whom I have felt were a good deal better than the men they married,
and I have seen them sometimes make very happy homes. I also feel as you
do that if a man had to struggle on and make his way it would be a great
deal better to have some one like Sophie. Do you recollect that dinner
at which David Copperfield and Traddles were, where they are described
as seated at the dinner, one "in the glare of the red velvet lady"
and the other "in the gloom of Hamlet's aunt"? I am so glad you like
Thackeray. "Pendennis" and "The Newcomes" and "Vanity Fair" I can read
over and over again.
Ted blew in to-day. I think he has been studying pretty well this term
and now he is through all his examinations but one. He hopes, and I do,
that you will pay what attention you can to athletics. Play hockey, for
instance, and try to get into shape for the mile run. I know it is too
short a distance for you, but if you will try for the hare and hounds
running and the mile, too, you may be able to try for the two miles when
you go to Harvard.
The weather was very mild early in the week. It has turned cold now; but
Mother and I had a good ride yesterday, and Ted and I a good ride this
afternoon, Ted on Grey Dawn. We have been having a perfect whirl of
dinner engagements; but thank heavens they will stop shortly after
Sister's wedding.
A TRIBUTE TO ARCHIE
White House, March 11, 1906.
DEAR KERMIT:
I agree pretty much to all your views both about Thackeray and Dickens,
although you care for some of Thackeray of which I am not personally
fond. Mother loves it all. Mother, by the way, has been reading "The
Legend of Montrose" to the little boys and they are absorbed in it.
She finds it hard to get anything that will appeal to both Archie and
Quentin, as they possess such different natures.
I am quite proud of what Archie did the day before yesterday. Some of
the bigger boys were throwing a baseball around outside of Mr. Sidwell's
school and it hit one of them square in the eye, breaking all the
blood-vessels and making an extremely dangerous hurt. The other boys
were all rattled and could do nothing, finally sneaking off when Mr.
Sidwell appeared. Archie stood by and himself promptly suggested that
the boy should go to Dr. Wilmer. Accordingly he scorched down to Dr.
Wilmer's and said there was an emergency case for one of Mr. Sidwell's
boys, who was hurt in the eye, and could he bring him. Dr. Wilmer, who
did not know Archie was there, sent out word to of course do so. So
Archie scorched back on his wheel, got the boy (I do not know why Mr.
Sidwell did not take him himself) and led him down to Dr. Wilmer's, who
attended to his eye and had to send him at once to a hospital, Archie
waiting until he heard the result and then coming home. Dr. Wilmer told
me about it and said if Archie had not acted with such promptness the
boy (who was four or five years older than Archie, by the way) would
have lost his sight.
What a heavenly place a sandbox is for two little boys! Archie and
Quentin play industriously in it during most of their spare moments when
out in the grounds. I often look out of the office windows when I have a
score of Senators and Congressmen with me and see them both hard at work
arranging caverns or mountains, with runways for their marbles.
Good-bye, blessed fellow. I shall think of you very often during the
coming week, and I am so very glad that Mother is to be with you at your
confirmation.
PILLOW FIGHTS WITH THE BOYS
White House, March 19, 1906.
DARLING KERMIT:
. . . . .
During the four days Mother was away I made a point of seeing the
children each evening for three-quarters of an hour or so. Archie and
Quentin are really great playmates. One night I came up-stairs and found
Quentin playing the pianola as hard as he could, while Archie would
suddenly start from the end of the hall where the pianola was, and,
accompanied by both the dogs, race as hard as he could the whole length
of the White House clean to the other end of the hall and then tear back
again. Another evening as I came up-stairs I found Archie and Quentin
having a great play, chuckling with laughter, Archie driving Quentin by
his suspenders, which were fixed to the end of a pair of woollen reins.
Then they would ambush me and we would have a vigorous pillow-fight, and
after five or ten minutes of this we would go into Mother's room, and
I would read them the book Mother had been reading them, "The Legend of
Montrose." We just got through it the very last evening. Both Skip and
Jack have welcomed Mother back with frantic joy, and this morning came
in and lay on her bed as soon as she had finished breakfast--for she did
not come down to either breakfast or lunch, as she is going to spend the
night at Baltimore with the Bonapartes.
I was so interested in your reading "Phineas Finn" that I ordered a copy
myself. I have also ordered DeQuincey's works, as I find we have not got
them at the White House.
. . . . .
SORROWS OF SKIP
White House, April 1, 1906.
DARLING ARCHIE:
Poor Skip is a very, very lonely little dog without his family. Each
morning he comes up to see me at breakfast time and during most of
breakfast (which I take in the hall just outside my room) Skip stands
with his little paws on my lap. Then when I get through and sit down in
the rocking-chair to read for fifteen or twenty minutes, Skip hops into
my lap and stays there, just bathing himself in the companionship of the
only one of his family he has left. The rest of the day he spends with
the ushers, as I am so frightfully busy that I am nowhere long enough
for Skip to have any real satisfaction in my companionship. Poor Jack
has never come home. We may never know what became of him.
"AN INTERESTING CIRCUS EXPERIENCE"
White House, April 1, 1906.
DARLING ETHEL:
I haven't heard a word from the two new horses, and I rather believe
that if there had been any marked improvement in either of them I should
have heard. I gather that one at least and probably both would be all
right for me if I were twenty years younger, and would probably be all
right for Ted now; but of course as things are at present I do not want
a horse with which I have an interesting circus experience whenever we
meet an automobile, or one which I cannot get to go in any particular
direction without devoting an hour or two to the job. So that it looks
as if old Rusty would be good enough for me for some time to come. I am
going out on him with Senator Lodge this afternoon, and he will be all
right and as fresh as paint, for he has been three days in the stable.
But to-day is just a glorious spring day--March having ended as it
began, with rain and snow--and I will have a good ride. I miss Mother
and you children very much, of course, but I believe you are having a
good time, and I am really glad you are to see Havana.
A BIG AND LONELY WHITE HOUSE
White House, April 1, 1906.
DARLING QUENTY-QUEE:
Slipper and the kittens are doing finely. I think the kittens will be
big enough for you to pet and have some satisfaction out of when you
get home, although they will be pretty young still. I miss you all
dreadfully, and the house feels big and lonely and full of echoes with
nobody but me in it; and I do not hear any small scamps running up and
down the hall just as hard as they can; or hear their voices while I am
dressing; or suddenly look out through the windows of the office at the
tennis ground and see them racing over it or playing in the sand-box. I
love you very much.
A NEW PUPPY AND A NEW HORSE
White House, April 12, 1906.
DEAR KERMIT:
. . . . .
Last night I played "tickley" in their room with the two little boys. As
we rolled and bounced over all three beds in the course of the play,
not to mention frantic chases under them, I think poor Mademoiselle
was rather appalled at the result when we had finished. Archie's
seven-weeks-old St. Bernard puppy has come and it is the dearest puppy
imaginable; a huge, soft thing, which Archie carries around in his arms
and which the whole family love.
Yesterday I took a first ride on the new horse, Roswell, Captain Lee
going along on Rusty as a kind of a nurse. Roswell is not yet four and
he is really a green colt and not quite the horse I want at present, as
I haven't time to fuss with him, and am afraid of letting the Sergeant
ride him, as he does not get on well with him, and there is nobody else
in our stable that can ride at all. He is a beautiful horse, a wonderful
jumper, and does not pull at all. He shies pretty badly, especially when
he meets an automobile; and when he leaves the stable or strikes a road
that he thinks will take him home and is not allowed to go down it, he
is apt to rear, which I do not like; but I am inclined to think that he
will get over these traits, and if I can arrange to have Lee handle him
a couple of months more, and if Ted and I can regularly ride him down at
Oyster Bay, I think that he will turn out all right.
Mother and I walk every morning through the grounds, which, of course,
are lovely. Not only are the song-sparrows and robins singing, but the
white-throated sparrows, who will, I suppose, soon leave us for the
North, are still in full song, and this morning they waked us up at
daybreak singing just outside the window.