November 3, 2019 • 38 mins
Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation as a bull moose didn’t exempt him from the emotional desolation of losing a family member—and he lost several. First the death of his father, then his mother and first wife on the same day, followed by his brother, and finally his favorite son, Quentin, in World War I. Erin explores how each death affected Roosevelt’s state of mind, sometimes in surprising ways. Why did he omit his first wife, Alice, from his autobiography? Why did he sob unabashedly after the death of his brother, with whom he often clashed? Did Quentin’s death catalyze Roosevelt’s own death, just six months later? All of this and more on this week’s episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Floss. It's July sixteenth, nineteen eighteen, and Theodore Roosevelt
is at his Sagamore Hill home in Oyster Bay, New York,
dictating correspondence to his secretary. When there's a knock at
the door. It's a reporter who hands Roosevelt a telegram
that reads, watch Sagamore Hill an event of Then it ends,
(00:25):
the rest of the message edited out to protect it
from prying eyes. The message might be censored, but Roosevelt
knows what it means. World War One is raging and
all four of his sons signed up to fight. Ted
and Archie are injured, and Kermit isn't in a dangerous
area yet. That leaves Quinton, a twenty year old fighter pilot,
warding off German plains over France. Though he won't get
(00:47):
further confirmation for a few days. Roosevelt knows what has happened.
He knows that he's never going to see Quinton, his
youngest and favorite son again. Roosevelt asks the reporter not
to say anything to his wife. If he continues to
dictate letters. Soon he will be told Quentin is missing
in action following a fierce aerial battle. It's reported that
(01:08):
Quentin faced off against an ace German pilot before being
shot down. General John Pershing writes to Roosevelt that they're
holding out hope that Quentin landed, but there will be
no happy ending. Newspapers are reporting that Quentin has died,
and on July twenty, Roosevelt receives official word from President
Woodrow Wilson, confirming the news. The German government prince horrific
(01:28):
photograph of Quentin's body next to his downed plane. Publicly,
Roosevelt is stoic as ever. Privately, he heads to his
stable and embraces Quentin's pony, his arms around the animal's neck.
Poor Quinty Qui, he says, whispering Quentin's nickname, Poor Quinty Qui.
A friend and future biographer would say of Roosevelt that
(01:49):
the old exuberance the boy in him has died from
total floss and I heart Radio. This is History Versus,
a podcast about how your favorite historical figures faced off
against the greatest foes. I'm your host, Aaron McCarthy, and
(02:09):
this week's episode is tr versus Tragedy. It's not only
that Roosevelt has lost a son. Though that would be
enough to send any parent into a state of anguish,
it's that Roosevelt has once again been confronted with unimaginable tragedy,
the latest in a series of wounds that he's endured
throughout his life. Those closest to him, his mother, his father,
(02:29):
his first wife, his brother, and now his son have
all disappeared, most of them at a tragically early age.
These moments reveal a great deal about Roosevelt's character. They
shaped his worldview at times, they overwhelmed him. For tr
tragedy was a frequent visitor. The first time it struck,
he lost his idol. That was his father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Who,
(02:52):
when tr was a kid, implored his son not to
be discouraged by his frequent asthma attacks and to pursue
an active lifestyle. He loomed large in Roosevelt's life as
someone he aspired to be stout, resourceful, determined. In Roosevelt's words,
his father was the ideal man. At Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt
hung a portrait of his father that he could see
whenever he sat down in his library. So Roosevelt said,
(03:15):
that his father was the best man he ever knew.
And I certainly don't think that's just a son being
kind to his father. I truly believe that he felt
that way, that his father was the highest ideal that
he could achieve. And I think a lot of his
public service is aimed at writing the same wrongs and
writing societal ills that his father tried to write. By philanthropy,
(03:37):
Roosevelt attacks it from a different front, which is with
government policy or government action. That's Tyler Caliberta, the education
technician at Sagamore Hill, which is now a National Historic site.
He's looking at his father's portrait constantly, you would imagine,
as he's working, whether it's president or before the presidency
or after the presidency, his father is always there. His
father is a philanthropist. He's incredibly wealth either from one
(03:59):
of the wealthy families New York City, and Roosevelt's father
is his greatest inspiration. So TR's father would give away
a lot of their wealth to help found museums, orphanages,
hospitals in New York. Theodore Roosevelt Senior, or Thie, was
born in eighteen thirty one. Later, he pitched President Abraham
Lincoln on a program where soldiers in the Civil War
(04:20):
could send money back to their families. Lincoln liked the idea,
and the traveled around the front signing soldiers up. His
work was a kind gesture, but it wasn't entirely born
out of generosity. There may have been a little guilt involved.
Like many wealthy men of the era, he paid for
a substitute to enter the Civil War so he wouldn't
have to enlist, which could have put him at war
(04:41):
with his own wife. Tira's mother was from Roswell, Georgia,
and her brothers were blockade runners, so things were probably
a little tense at home. These philanthropy wasn't limited to
war efforts. Often he'd bring Roosevelt along on visits to
orphanages and missions, a spark that likely led to his
son's desire to work in public servi us. At the time,
(05:01):
it wasn't necessarily expected that someone wealthy would be so
active with their family. That familial closeness was something Roosevelt
would carry with him his entire life, spending as much
time as he could with his relatives. This wasn't a
time when if you are a wealthy family, if you're
a wealthy man, you're not necessarily expected to be with
your family other than at dinner every night. Otherwise you're
(05:22):
conducting business or you off doing whatever. Where's Roosevelt's father
spent a lot of time with them, and they were
actually considered an eccentric family because of how much time
they spent together, and I think how much they enjoyed
each other's company. After a childhood spent traveling with his
family and being privately tutored because he was too sick
for regular school, Roosevelt went off to Harvard in eighteen
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seventy six. In a sophomore year, his father was nominated
by President Rutherford B. Hayes as Collector of customs in
New York City. Hayes wanted to demonstrate he was committed
to civil service reform. The attention was taxing for thee
who found himself a pawn between Republicans who backed Hayes
and others who posed reform. He was eventually rejected for
the appointment. The stress of the experience may have compounded
(06:06):
his health issues. He had been struggling with pain and
digestive problems brought on by an intestinal tumor, and it
was progressing rapidly. The insisted that tr not be informed.
He wanted his son to focus on his studies. Eventually,
Roosevelt was summoned back and he rushed home from Harvard,
but he was too late. The died February nine, at
(06:29):
the age of forty six, just hours before tr made
it home. Roosevelt was only a sophomore in college when
his idol and when his family called great heart, left
his life forever. On the day of his father's funeral,
Roosevelt wrote in his diary, I shall never forget these
terrible three days. The hideous suspense of the ride on
(06:50):
the dull inert sorrow, during which I felt as if
I had been stunned, or as if part of my
life had been taken away. And the two moments of sharp,
bitter agony when I kissed the dear dead face and
realized that he would never again on this earth speak
to me or greet me with his loving smile. And
(07:13):
then when I heard the sound of the first cloud
dropping on the coffin holding the one I loved dearest
on earth, I feel that, if it were not for
the certainty that, as he himself had so often said,
he is not dead, but gone before I should almost
perish he was, Roosevelt wrote everything to me the Roosevelt
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would go on to experience the pain of personal loss
several times over. Never again would he articulate his grief
in such plain language. It was as though his father's
passing stripped him of every bit of self consciousness in
his writing. Those bare emotions continued pouring out in his diary.
Roosevelt struggled with a sense of guilt and a lack
of self worth. He was tortured by his helplessness and
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the fact that he had been unable to assist or
comfort his father in his last moments. He held his
father in such regard that he felt unworthy of being
his son. I often feel badly that such a wonderful
man as father should have had a son of so
little worth as I am. How little use I am,
or ever shall be in the world. I realized more
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and more every day that I am as much inferior
to father morally and mentally as physically. Roosevelt returned to
Harvard seemingly intent to prove himself wrong. He studied hard,
exercise often, and spent summers rowing around Long Island Sound
he refused to allow his body or his mind to
grow idle. Nature allowed him away out of the darkness.
(08:43):
He took steps forward. Still, Roosevelt rarely acted without first
comparing his plans to his father's best judgment. He leaves
his son this great sum of money, and Roosevelt uses
that money to purchase the land around side More heally
contracts with Lamb and riched build a Queen Anne style
home here. When he becomes president, he realizes that he's
(09:05):
about his father's age when his father had died, and
he says, I never weigh any heavy decision without considering
what father would have done. So his father is certainly
his inspiration. It's his main role model. I don't think
it's any coincidence why he hangs this portrait of him
looking over him at his desk. We'll be right back.
(09:26):
Roosevelt's morning period for the lasted for months. Then, in
October of eight seventy eight, just eight months following his
father's death, his life was unexpectedly brightened by the appearance
of Alice Hathaway Lee. The seventeen year old Alice was
a cousin of one of Roosevelt's Harvard friends, Richard Saltonstall.
Roosevelt was immediately smitten with a strong, energetic Alice, who
(09:48):
enjoyed physical activities like tennis and voting. She seemed to
blot out the gloom that had enveloped his life. He
spent the next year trying to court her before she
agreed to marry him. When they became engaged in January
eighteen eighty, he exalted her, my sweet, pretty, pure queen,
my laughing little love. How bewitchingly pretty she is. I
(10:10):
cannot help petting and caressing her all the time. I
do not believe any man ever loved a woman more
than I love her. She called him teddy. I think
he really fell for Alice. Um. If you read letters
between them, if you're an adult, you read them and
you're like, oh, boy, fell really hard for He describes
her as sonny. After they're married, he says that you know,
(10:32):
their relationship is too sacred for words things like that,
like really really gushy, mushy stuff. Roosevelt and Alice married
on October eighty, his twenty second birthday. Well Roosevelt attended
law school and worked on his book The Naval War
of eighteen twelve. Alice grew close to his mother, Mitty,
whom the couple lived with in New York City and
got along well with his sisters Anna better known as
(10:53):
Baby or By, and Karen. In one Roosevelt was elected
a state assemblyman. In eighteen eighty three, Alice became pregnant
with their first child. Soon he hired an architectural firm
to begin designing a house in Long Island for his
expanding family. Roosevelt intended to call the property Lee Home,
after Alice's maiden name. His intention was having a home
(11:15):
here is to get out of New York City like
his family have before him, and he's going to raise
his family here. He's going to maintain a country home
and be a country gentleman and as well as somebody
who lives in New York City. He buys the land
after his father dies. He buys a hundred and fifty
five acres. He starts buying in in eighteen eighty and
(11:36):
then the house is built in four. On February eighty four,
Roosevelt was an Albany on business when he received a
telegram with happy news. The day before, Alice had given
birth to a healthy daughter, whom she had named Alice
Lee Roosevelt, but his joy was short lived. Hours later,
he received a second telegram. The telegram no longer exists,
(11:59):
so we have no dea what it said, but we
can assume from what happened next that it informed him
that Alice was not in good health. She had Bright's disease,
and now obsolete term for a condition that seriously damages
the kidneys. Here's Holly Fry, co host of The Stuff
He Missed in History Class podcast. I were various theories that,
in fact Teddy's wife, Alice actually had kidney disease, it
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was undiagnosed before her pregnancy, and that carrying a child
exacerbated the problem, and that's really what led to her passing.
So soon as Alice was born, it got worse. His mother, Middy,
was also ill with typhoid fever. Middy had been just
as influential a figure in Roosevelt's life is his father,
regaling young TD with tales of southern chivalry and male
(12:43):
bravado culled from her own upbringing and from adventure novels. Suddenly,
the hopes and promises of Lee Holmes seemed to fade
into the background, and when Roosevelt made it back to
the family home in New York. That night, he was
met with a scene almost too terrible to comprehend. Nearly
six years to the day his father died, Roosevelt would
lose the two people closest to his heart. Alice was
(13:06):
only barely conscious when he arrived. He held her in
his arms through the early morning hours of February. As
Alice tried to cling to life, Roosevelt was summoned to
his mother's room one floor below. This time he could
at least be at her side, assuaging the guilt he
had long felt over not being near his father's She
passed away at three am. At two pm, Alice, just
(13:29):
twenty two years old, also died. She had been a
mother for only two days. He and his wife were
living with his mother, so it was like his entire
home life collapsed that day as he knew it, which
is really heartbreaking to think about, like, you know, essentially
to put it in kind of colloquial terms, like two
young kids who are starting to live together, and then
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it came to balls all the part. That same day,
Roosevelt drew a large x in his diary and wrote,
the light has gone out of my life. He was
just twenty five years old. Alice and Middy were buried
in Greenwood Cemetery in a double funeral. Close friends of
the family observed that Roosevelt appeared dazed and stunned, a
(14:11):
state hardly typical of his pragmatic and focused disposition. Some
even feared he might do something rash, taking total leave
of his senses. After the funeral, he wrote in his diary,
we spent three years of happiness, greater and more on
a lloyed than any I have ever known. Fall to
the lot of others, or joy or sorrow. My life
(14:33):
has now been lived out. After that, he rarely spoke
of Alice again, not of their love or their good
times together. Rather than confront his grief, Roosevelt seemed capable
only of erasing it. Love letters and photographs were destroyed.
He wouldn't even mention her in his autobiography, and after
this double tragedy, he would lock himself and his feelings
(14:56):
down for the most part. According to Kathleen Dalton, escape
and flight from pain provided familiar devices to protect himself
from his own strong emotions and from unpleasant facts he
wanted to avoid. In February eighteenth he returned to Albany
to finish out his term as assemblyman, where he worked
with frenetic energy. He left his daughter in the care
(15:18):
of his sister Baby and like Alice named for her mother,
he couldn't even bear to say her name, so they
started calling her baby Lee, and he allegedly forbid everyone
he knew in his family and social circle from saying
the name Alice for quite some time because it was
just so upsetting to him. Baby Alice looked a whole
lot like her mother too, so that must have been
(15:38):
really difficult for him. That's like a constant reminder of
your heartache, and it's interesting. People also talk about the
fact that he wrote just a little about his wife
in his life, even when he worked as a biographer
to write his life story. It was just too much
of an emotional burden for him, pretty much for the
rest of his life. We'll be right back. Roosevelt soon
(16:02):
left New York for the Dakota Territory and a ranch
where the solitude of the outdoors and the hard work
of ranching allowed him to dull the pain. Once again.
Lass had devastated him, and once again Roosevelt had to
rebuild himself. Roosevelt once said that he never would have
been president if not for his time in the Dakotas.
To find out why, we headed out there ourselves to
(16:23):
Theatore Roosevelt National Park, where we met with Eileen Andy's,
the chief of interpretation and public affairs at the park.
It's the experience going out there and enjoying the peace
and quiet and solitude that Roosevelt needed when he decided
to make that his home ranch. And he wrote about
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listening to the birds and hearing the wind in the
cottonwood trees, and listening to the sounds of the river.
Roosevelt came to the Dakotas to hunt bison in three
and while he was there invest it in the Maltese
Cross cattle ranch. After two tragedies and a bumpy last
term as a New York State assemblyman, he intended to
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permanently relocate there, but the Maltese Cross didn't fit all
of his needs. It was along the river, which was
a thoroughfare, and people kept stopping by, and he wanted solitude.
So somebody had told him about the Elkhorn Ranch site,
so he got on his horse and rode the river bottom.
It's three five miles along the river bottom to the site.
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He liked it, and he had two of his friends
from May income and build that cabin for him. And
when you go out there, you'll see it's down in
the river bottom, almost completely surrounded by bluffs, and there
was nobody out there. He had no neighbors, nobody to
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just drop by. And that's really what he was looking
for and really what he needed. And it's a it's
a beautiful quiet place. Roosevelt bought the rights to the
elk Hum property for four dollars, quite a steal. The
house is no longer standing after Roosevelt sold it off
in It was picked over by nineteen o one, but
(18:16):
you can still drive out to the site, which is
an hour and fifteen minutes from the park's visitor center.
So Tyler, a producer on this podcast, and I do
just that. At first, the roads are paved, but eventually
we turn off onto a red gravel road. The scientific
name for that red gravel is clinker. And it's not
long before our white suv is coated in a fine
layer of red dust. Like we went to Mars, we
(18:38):
are in the middle of nowhere. Want to go literally
in the middle of nowhere. Eventually we turn off the
gravel road onto another deeply rutted road. But put that's
a belt on. We are genuinely rough riding right now,
so I gotta make sure you're all buckled up. Yeah.
(19:02):
So the road is surrounded by all of these bluffs,
and some of them are really green, and some of
them have a lot of erosion, and there's all these
like yellow and white and gray layers. Well, not quite,
there's still a bit of a walk from the parking
lot out to the site. The path is surrounded by
(19:23):
grass on either side, punctuated by cottonwood and juniper trees
and yellow flowers and salsafy plants that look kind of
like huge dandelions when the seeds are ready to be
blown off. Occasionally, birds and the move of a cow
can be heard over the din of cicadas. Also, there
are a lot of insects or butterfly talking by face.
(19:44):
Finally we make it to the ranch site, which is
cordoned off with barbed wire. You want to give us
like a general description of where we are and with
the areas, like, yeah, so we are standing in between
a whole bunch of stones on the grass vaguely form
like a little rectangle um, although I guess it'd be
(20:04):
pretty big for a house out here. But yeah, we're
just in this sort of flat area, and on one
side is the Little Missouri River, and on the other
side are all these bluffs. They are like yellow and
gray and white. It's just a little bit of vegetation.
But there are a lot of trees surrounding the site.
(20:27):
It is really very peaceful. I can see why he
liked it. What was once here was a house thirty
ft long and sixty ft wide with seven ft high walls.
Nearby were stables, a shed for cattle, a chicken house,
and a blacksmith shop. On one side is a tall bluff,
and on the other through the trees is the Little
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Missouri River, which one expert told me is two hundred
yards away from where it was in Roosevelt's time. Here's
how Roosevelt himself described the site. My home ranch stands
on the river innk from the low long Verandah. Shaded
by leafy cottonwoods, One looks across sandbars and shallows to
a strip of meadow land, behind which rises a line
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of sheer cliffs and grassy plateaus. This Verandah is a
pleasant place in the summer evenings, when a cool breeze
stirs along the river and blows in the faces of
the tired men who lull back in the rocking chairs.
What true American does not enjoy a rocking chair book
in hand, though they do not often read the books,
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but rock gently to and fro, gazing sleepily out at
the weird looking buttes opposite until their sharp outlines grow
indistinct and purple in the afterglow of the sunset. Do
you know why he named it Elkhorn Ranch? Where is that?
He came out here and he found the skulls of
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two elk blocked together, so they had fought and then
got gotten stuck, and then they died. So tr named
Alcorn Ranch after that. For years, tr bounced back and
forth between his political obligations in New York and the
solitude offered here. More than silence, though, was the need
to stay busy. Ranch duties couldn't wait for a grieving caretaker.
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Things needed to be done, and Roosevelt threw himself into
his work, sometimes spending thirteen hours a day or more
in the saddle. He said black care seldom sits behind
the rider who moves fast enough. Something like that black
care I think was depression. The actual quote is black
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hare rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.
So Eileen nailed it. Elkhorn had everything he needed, distractions,
nature things that Roosevelt had long since learned cured whatever
dark thoughts might be crossing his mind. So when he
wasn't ranching or like working in the fields or doing
his cattle ranter stuff, he would sit on the veranda,
(23:07):
which he loved, and then he would write for like
up to five hours a day because then obviously he
was also reading a lot while he was out here.
But yeah, I can definitely see why he chose this
site because if the other house was like on a
route that was too busy and people were always stopping
(23:30):
by and you really wanted some solitude, I feel like
this is the place because it's not easy to get
to and his his nearest neighbors in either direction were
at least ten miles away, and after Alice died, he
didn't really talk about her ever again. But I'm pretty
sure he was out here when he wrote, like one
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of the only things that he wrote about her after
her death, and then he just kind of closed the
door on that chapter of his life because he was
not a person who liked to dwell on sad or
bad things, which is something that Edith would say later.
As Baby Lee grew up in Baby's home, Roosevelt found
(24:11):
comfort with a woman who would become his second wife.
Her name was Edith Kermit Carol. They were married in
eighteen eighty six. The following year, Baby Lee joined them
in Sagamore Hill. In eighteen eighty nine, just before the
birth of their second son, Kermit, Roosevelt moved to Washington
after being appointed U s Civil Service Commissioner. Another son, Archie,
was born in He would not be the only significant
(24:34):
personal event in Roosevelt's life that year. Roosevelt would go
on to have four boys and one more girl. For
the most part, the siblings got along well. That was
a marked departure from Roosevelt's own relationship with his brother, Elliott.
Born in eighteen sixty. Elliott was the black sheep of
the Roosevelt clan, and he often tried TR's patients. Eliot's
(24:55):
primary problem was the bottle he drank heavily and often
trying to sue with the lingering pain of a serious accident. Well,
he would sometimes attempt to curb his addiction to treatment centers.
It never stuck. All of this drove his straight laced
brother crazy, and worse than that, it threatened major scandal
when Elliott got Katie Mann, his wife's made pregnant in
(25:16):
eighteen ninety. Here's Roosevelt family biographer William Mann, author of
the Wars of the Roosevelts, The Ruthless Rise of America's
greatest political family. He was, in many ways Theodore's polar opposite.
Where Theodore was all about the rules of society and
the the expectations of society, and certainly of his class,
(25:38):
Elliott broke all of those rules. They had a lot
of common as well. I mean, they grew up together,
they were close as boys. They both were great sportsmen,
they both loved to hunt, they both had a love
of nature. But their personalities were very, very different. Roosevelt
thought Elliott was a burden not only to the Roosevelt
family as a whole, but to his own wife, Anna
(26:00):
and their three children, one of whom was future four
term First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who later became the American
spokesperson for the United Nations. Roosevelt attempted to become his
brother's conservator to curb his reckless spending and scandalous behavior.
He was an interesting role reversal. As children, it was
Elliott who looked out for his older brother. The interesting
thing about their relationship when they were children, and they
(26:23):
were both at different times caretakers for each other, and
I think that defines the rest of their time together,
their their their adult life as well. Because when Theodore
was young, of course, he was very famously asthmatic and
very frail and fragile. The family kept him pampered and sheltered,
and it was expected that the younger brother would take
(26:44):
care of the older brothers. So when they were traveling
or even just around the house, Elliott looked at Theodore,
helped him along, and and looked to his parents for
affirmation for that. They were always grateful that Elliot took
such good care of Theodore. As Roosevelt built his body
in mind, he needed Elliott less and less. Soon he
would achieve goals that were out of Elliott's reach. Traveling
(27:06):
in opposite directions, the brothers grew apart. I think the
first break comes when fed Or seriously says I want
to get ahead. I want to be president of the
Hited States, whether he articulated that particular thought himself or
if he simply said I want to reach for elected office.
That's the moment when Elliott becomes a problem, and a
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problem that had to be solved. When Elliott tried putting
his life together, Roosevelt did not encourage him or pat
him on the back. After Elliott checked himself into a
sanitarium in Europe, Anna asked Roosevelt's write Elliott a letter
praising him, but tr would not do it. To Roosevelt,
his brother's wayward behavior would only cause him harm if
he managed to continue his ascendency in politics. He believed
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the best way to maintain his reputation in the face
of his brother's mistakes was to make sure he could
demonstrate he had tried helping Elliott. Unfortunately, his dogmatic approach
may not have been an Elliotts best interests. It's heartbreaking
when you look back, because this was a man who
was not drinking at the time, but they needed to.
They needed to institutionalize him for drunkenness. By sales to France,
(28:11):
and moves into their household and essentially watches him like
an eagle eye and is constantly writing back the Theodore,
reporting on his every move, and it's stressing the whole
family out, is stressing Elliott's wife and his children, and
Elliott does because of this, he does begin to drink
a few times and they touch him. Aha, we we
we knew it. We knew you were going to drink
too much. And eventually they do get him away from
(28:34):
his family. They do get his wife's agreement, and he's institutionalized,
and it's all to all to be able to say, uh,
you know, should this scandal break that, well, look, we
did the right thing. We got him away from his family.
He was dissolute, he was depraved. We took him away
from his children because that's the right thing to do.
(28:54):
You know. You read Eleanor Roosevelt's memoirs and it's clear
as she never thought that was the right thing to do,
because she carried a scar for the rest of her
life losing her father. Tragedy soon found Elliott Anna died
of diphtheria in two One of Elliott's sons, Elliott Jr.
Succumbed to the same illness. The following year. These deaths
(29:15):
unraveled what was left of Elliott. On August ninety four,
Tierga to telegram, by this point, a method of communication
he must have grown to dread, notifying him that Elliott
was in New York and in poor health. He shunned
any attempts by his family to comfort him. Roosevelt honored
his wishes to be left alone, and the next day
(29:36):
Elliott tried to kill himself by jumping out of a window.
He survived, but a seizure followed. Elliot Roosevelt was dead
at the age of thirty four. Roosevelt had been able
to compartmentalize Eliott's problems by keeping his distance, but when
he saw Eliot's body, his coping method was of no use.
He wept openly. His sister Karin said that Theodore was
(29:58):
more overcome than I've ever seen in him and cried
like a little child for a long time. We don't
actually have any specific thoughts about how he felt about that,
except Karin's observation that he cried like a baby when
he stood over his brother's corpse. And I just have
to feel that in those tears there was every every
(30:20):
emotion there was grief, there was empathy, there was there
was guilt, perhaps even because the way Karin described it,
it was a very cathartic cry. And he was a
good man. Deardo Roosevelt was a good man at his
in his heart, he wanted to do the right thing,
even though he was often so constrained by what was
supposed to be done by society that I have to
(30:42):
believe that in that moment he felt all of those
emotions about his brother. You know, I don't think he
would ever have said to himself, even you know, what
I did was wrong, or what I did, or I
could have done something differently. I don't think he could
ever bring himself to think of that. Elliott Roosevelt was
like a stricken, hunted creature who had been pursued by
(31:03):
terrible demons. Any thoughts of Elliott as a stain on
his reputation seemed to evaporate. In death, Roosevelt saw him
only as a lost soul, Though he was later exhumed
and laid to rest next to Anna in the Hall
family mausoleum at Saint Paul's Church into Voli, New York.
Roosevelt initially insisted Elliott be buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery,
(31:24):
the site of the Roosevelt family plot, where he remained
for two years There. Tr wrote, Elliott could be next
to those who are associated only with his suite innocent youth.
The empty space left by his parents, by Alice and
by Elliott could never be filled. But by the nineteen tens,
Roosevelt had a number of important people in his life
to occupy his time and his mind. There was Edith
(31:46):
and his six children. For a time, life was relatively quiet,
as quiet as Tier's life could be anyway. Then came
America's entry into World War One, which tr had lobbied for.
He wanted to create a volunteer division, but President Woodrow
Wilson wouldn't allow it. Roosevelt's sons so revered their father
that they felt compelled to take up arms in his stead.
(32:07):
Archie Roosevelt once told a historian that we all knew
how badly Dad wanted to go, so we went for him.
He always told us to lead, meant to serve. World
War One was a conflict waged with an efficient brutality. Grenades,
heavy ammunition, planes and trenches all conspired to wound and
estimated twenty one million soldiers. Some came back home with
(32:28):
devastating injuries that required the use of plaster masks to
hide facial disfigurements. Others took round after round and machine
gun fire. It was this unforgiving environment that the Roosevelt
boys found themselves in Archie and Ted sailed to France.
Archie was seriously wounded in the knee and armed by
shell fragments. Later Ted would suffer a leg wound, but
(32:49):
it was Quentin who paid the ultimate price, shot down
by enemy fire. To feel that one has inspired a
boy to conduct that has resulted in his death as
a at a serious side for a father. And at
the same time, I would not have cared for my boys,
and they would not have cared for me if our
relations had not been just along that line. Here's Tyler Caliberta.
(33:13):
He doesn't talk about his feelings about publicly. He maintains
everything that he had said before the war about war
and about his son's being involved in at Quentin is,
you know, killed in battle, and Roosevelt calls that kind
of riding the crest of life. He he thinks it's
kind of the highest achievement you can have as a
(33:34):
person sacrificing yourself an effort of war. Roosevelt clung to
something with Quentin's death. It was the nobility of sacrifice,
a life exchanged for the greater good. Writing to King
George the Fifth in response to his and the Queen's condolences,
Tier said that his sons had sailed from our shores
over a year ago. Their mother and I knew their
(33:55):
temper and quality, and we did not expect to see
all of them come back. But he could also waiver.
Writing too Kermit's wife, Belle Willard Roosevelt, he lamented the
pain felt by Quentin's fiance, Flora. It is no use
pretending that Quentin's death is not very terrible. It is
useless for me to pretend that it is not very
(34:16):
bitter to see that good, gallant, tenderhearted boy leave life
at its crest when it held Flora such happiness and
certainly an honorable and perhaps a distinguished career. Edith has
a nice quote about the boys and their service and war.
She says that you cannot raise boys to be eagles
(34:39):
and then expect them to act like sparrows. So losing
Quentin for Roosevelt, I imagine that there was a lot
of questioning of his attitude towards war, about whether or
not he pressed his sons into service, and if that
was a correct thing to do for all of them.
We only know that he He continued to say that
(35:00):
Quentin was a valiant soldier and that it was a
higher purpose that he's acquified himself. Forth, Quentin's grave in
France became a shrine that was visited by many soldiers.
The Americans replaced a German cross marking the grave, and
the French built defense around it. The Roosevelt's decided to
leave his body there, where he had fallen in battle
and where respect was being paid. Roosevelt spent time with
(35:22):
Edith and Dark Harbor Maine, rowing out onto the lake
to commune with nature. It was his most enduring coping mechanism.
But he was older, now, a man of almost sixty,
and the strain and toil of losing a loved one
war on his constitution. He died in his sleep on
January six of a pulmonary embolism. Some storians have posited
(35:43):
that six months after Quintin dies, Roosevelt himself dies, So
some people have put it that he had died of
a broken heart and addition of physical ailments. Perhaps there's
something too that perhaps Roosevelt couldn't continue to go on
living in a world where maybe his entire view of war,
which is a big part of his outlook and his worldview,
(36:05):
maybe had changed. Prior to his death, supporters called for
Roosevelt to run for president once more, owing to his
advancing age. In the loss of Quentin, the man who
was previously ready to run back into battle could not
fathom taking on any more responsibility. Since Quentin's death, the
world seems to have shut down upon me. He wrote
(36:26):
four days, four telegrams for five tragedies. Each loss fundamentally
altered how Theodore Roosevelt looked at the world and fundamentally
altered him. It's hard to say if tr truly conquered tragedy.
You don't leave losses like these behind. They become a
part of you. What we know is that tragedy wounded him,
(36:50):
sometimes froze him, but it did not overcome him. History
Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was
written by Jake Rawson and researched by me, with additional
(37:13):
research by Michael Salgarolo, back checking by Austin Thompson, field
recording by John Meyer and Tyler Clang. Joe Wigan voiced
tr in this episode. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin.
This show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Low Berlante.
Special thanks to Tyler Caliberta, Holly Fry, Eileen Andy's, William Mann,
(37:37):
and North Dakota Tourism. To learn more about this episode
and Theodore Roosevelt, visit Mental Flass dot com slash History Versus.
That's Mental flass dot com slash h I S t
O R y B S History Versus is a production
of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss m HM. For
(38:10):
more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Floss. It's July sixteenth, nineteen eighteen, and Theodore Roosevelt
is at his Sagamore Hill home in Oyster Bay, New York,
dictating correspondence to his secretary. When there's a knock at
the door. It's a reporter who hands Roosevelt a telegram
that reads, watch Sagamore Hill an event of Then it ends,
(00:25):
the rest of the message edited out to protect it
from prying eyes. The message might be censored, but Roosevelt
knows what it means. World War One is raging and
all four of his sons signed up to fight. Ted
and Archie are injured, and Kermit isn't in a dangerous
area yet. That leaves Quinton, a twenty year old fighter pilot,
warding off German plains over France. Though he won't get
(00:47):
further confirmation for a few days. Roosevelt knows what has happened.
He knows that he's never going to see Quinton, his
youngest and favorite son again. Roosevelt asks the reporter not
to say anything to his wife. If he continues to
dictate letters. Soon he will be told Quentin is missing
in action following a fierce aerial battle. It's reported that
(01:08):
Quentin faced off against an ace German pilot before being
shot down. General John Pershing writes to Roosevelt that they're
holding out hope that Quentin landed, but there will be
no happy ending. Newspapers are reporting that Quentin has died,
and on July twenty, Roosevelt receives official word from President
Woodrow Wilson, confirming the news. The German government prince horrific
(01:28):
photograph of Quentin's body next to his downed plane. Publicly,
Roosevelt is stoic as ever. Privately, he heads to his
stable and embraces Quentin's pony, his arms around the animal's neck.
Poor Quinty Qui, he says, whispering Quentin's nickname, Poor Quinty Qui.
A friend and future biographer would say of Roosevelt that
(01:49):
the old exuberance the boy in him has died from
total floss and I heart Radio. This is History Versus,
a podcast about how your favorite historical figures faced off
against the greatest foes. I'm your host, Aaron McCarthy, and
(02:09):
this week's episode is tr versus Tragedy. It's not only
that Roosevelt has lost a son. Though that would be
enough to send any parent into a state of anguish,
it's that Roosevelt has once again been confronted with unimaginable tragedy,
the latest in a series of wounds that he's endured
throughout his life. Those closest to him, his mother, his father,
(02:29):
his first wife, his brother, and now his son have
all disappeared, most of them at a tragically early age.
These moments reveal a great deal about Roosevelt's character. They
shaped his worldview at times, they overwhelmed him. For tr
tragedy was a frequent visitor. The first time it struck,
he lost his idol. That was his father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Who,
(02:52):
when tr was a kid, implored his son not to
be discouraged by his frequent asthma attacks and to pursue
an active lifestyle. He loomed large in Roosevelt's life as
someone he aspired to be stout, resourceful, determined. In Roosevelt's words,
his father was the ideal man. At Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt
hung a portrait of his father that he could see
whenever he sat down in his library. So Roosevelt said,
(03:15):
that his father was the best man he ever knew.
And I certainly don't think that's just a son being
kind to his father. I truly believe that he felt
that way, that his father was the highest ideal that
he could achieve. And I think a lot of his
public service is aimed at writing the same wrongs and
writing societal ills that his father tried to write. By philanthropy,
(03:37):
Roosevelt attacks it from a different front, which is with
government policy or government action. That's Tyler Caliberta, the education
technician at Sagamore Hill, which is now a National Historic site.
He's looking at his father's portrait constantly, you would imagine,
as he's working, whether it's president or before the presidency
or after the presidency, his father is always there. His
father is a philanthropist. He's incredibly wealth either from one
(03:59):
of the wealthy families New York City, and Roosevelt's father
is his greatest inspiration. So TR's father would give away
a lot of their wealth to help found museums, orphanages,
hospitals in New York. Theodore Roosevelt Senior, or Thie, was
born in eighteen thirty one. Later, he pitched President Abraham
Lincoln on a program where soldiers in the Civil War
(04:20):
could send money back to their families. Lincoln liked the idea,
and the traveled around the front signing soldiers up. His
work was a kind gesture, but it wasn't entirely born
out of generosity. There may have been a little guilt involved.
Like many wealthy men of the era, he paid for
a substitute to enter the Civil War so he wouldn't
have to enlist, which could have put him at war
(04:41):
with his own wife. Tira's mother was from Roswell, Georgia,
and her brothers were blockade runners, so things were probably
a little tense at home. These philanthropy wasn't limited to
war efforts. Often he'd bring Roosevelt along on visits to
orphanages and missions, a spark that likely led to his
son's desire to work in public servi us. At the time,
(05:01):
it wasn't necessarily expected that someone wealthy would be so
active with their family. That familial closeness was something Roosevelt
would carry with him his entire life, spending as much
time as he could with his relatives. This wasn't a
time when if you are a wealthy family, if you're
a wealthy man, you're not necessarily expected to be with
your family other than at dinner every night. Otherwise you're
(05:22):
conducting business or you off doing whatever. Where's Roosevelt's father
spent a lot of time with them, and they were
actually considered an eccentric family because of how much time
they spent together, and I think how much they enjoyed
each other's company. After a childhood spent traveling with his
family and being privately tutored because he was too sick
for regular school, Roosevelt went off to Harvard in eighteen
(05:43):
seventy six. In a sophomore year, his father was nominated
by President Rutherford B. Hayes as Collector of customs in
New York City. Hayes wanted to demonstrate he was committed
to civil service reform. The attention was taxing for thee
who found himself a pawn between Republicans who backed Hayes
and others who posed reform. He was eventually rejected for
the appointment. The stress of the experience may have compounded
(06:06):
his health issues. He had been struggling with pain and
digestive problems brought on by an intestinal tumor, and it
was progressing rapidly. The insisted that tr not be informed.
He wanted his son to focus on his studies. Eventually,
Roosevelt was summoned back and he rushed home from Harvard,
but he was too late. The died February nine, at
(06:29):
the age of forty six, just hours before tr made
it home. Roosevelt was only a sophomore in college when
his idol and when his family called great heart, left
his life forever. On the day of his father's funeral,
Roosevelt wrote in his diary, I shall never forget these
terrible three days. The hideous suspense of the ride on
(06:50):
the dull inert sorrow, during which I felt as if
I had been stunned, or as if part of my
life had been taken away. And the two moments of sharp,
bitter agony when I kissed the dear dead face and
realized that he would never again on this earth speak
to me or greet me with his loving smile. And
(07:13):
then when I heard the sound of the first cloud
dropping on the coffin holding the one I loved dearest
on earth, I feel that, if it were not for
the certainty that, as he himself had so often said,
he is not dead, but gone before I should almost
perish he was, Roosevelt wrote everything to me the Roosevelt
(07:37):
would go on to experience the pain of personal loss
several times over. Never again would he articulate his grief
in such plain language. It was as though his father's
passing stripped him of every bit of self consciousness in
his writing. Those bare emotions continued pouring out in his diary.
Roosevelt struggled with a sense of guilt and a lack
of self worth. He was tortured by his helplessness and
(07:59):
the fact that he had been unable to assist or
comfort his father in his last moments. He held his
father in such regard that he felt unworthy of being
his son. I often feel badly that such a wonderful
man as father should have had a son of so
little worth as I am. How little use I am,
or ever shall be in the world. I realized more
(08:21):
and more every day that I am as much inferior
to father morally and mentally as physically. Roosevelt returned to
Harvard seemingly intent to prove himself wrong. He studied hard,
exercise often, and spent summers rowing around Long Island Sound
he refused to allow his body or his mind to
grow idle. Nature allowed him away out of the darkness.
(08:43):
He took steps forward. Still, Roosevelt rarely acted without first
comparing his plans to his father's best judgment. He leaves
his son this great sum of money, and Roosevelt uses
that money to purchase the land around side More heally
contracts with Lamb and riched build a Queen Anne style
home here. When he becomes president, he realizes that he's
(09:05):
about his father's age when his father had died, and
he says, I never weigh any heavy decision without considering
what father would have done. So his father is certainly
his inspiration. It's his main role model. I don't think
it's any coincidence why he hangs this portrait of him
looking over him at his desk. We'll be right back.
(09:26):
Roosevelt's morning period for the lasted for months. Then, in
October of eight seventy eight, just eight months following his
father's death, his life was unexpectedly brightened by the appearance
of Alice Hathaway Lee. The seventeen year old Alice was
a cousin of one of Roosevelt's Harvard friends, Richard Saltonstall.
Roosevelt was immediately smitten with a strong, energetic Alice, who
(09:48):
enjoyed physical activities like tennis and voting. She seemed to
blot out the gloom that had enveloped his life. He
spent the next year trying to court her before she
agreed to marry him. When they became engaged in January
eighteen eighty, he exalted her, my sweet, pretty, pure queen,
my laughing little love. How bewitchingly pretty she is. I
(10:10):
cannot help petting and caressing her all the time. I
do not believe any man ever loved a woman more
than I love her. She called him teddy. I think
he really fell for Alice. Um. If you read letters
between them, if you're an adult, you read them and
you're like, oh, boy, fell really hard for He describes
her as sonny. After they're married, he says that you know,
(10:32):
their relationship is too sacred for words things like that,
like really really gushy, mushy stuff. Roosevelt and Alice married
on October eighty, his twenty second birthday. Well Roosevelt attended
law school and worked on his book The Naval War
of eighteen twelve. Alice grew close to his mother, Mitty,
whom the couple lived with in New York City and
got along well with his sisters Anna better known as
(10:53):
Baby or By, and Karen. In one Roosevelt was elected
a state assemblyman. In eighteen eighty three, Alice became pregnant
with their first child. Soon he hired an architectural firm
to begin designing a house in Long Island for his
expanding family. Roosevelt intended to call the property Lee Home,
after Alice's maiden name. His intention was having a home
(11:15):
here is to get out of New York City like
his family have before him, and he's going to raise
his family here. He's going to maintain a country home
and be a country gentleman and as well as somebody
who lives in New York City. He buys the land
after his father dies. He buys a hundred and fifty
five acres. He starts buying in in eighteen eighty and
(11:36):
then the house is built in four. On February eighty four,
Roosevelt was an Albany on business when he received a
telegram with happy news. The day before, Alice had given
birth to a healthy daughter, whom she had named Alice
Lee Roosevelt, but his joy was short lived. Hours later,
he received a second telegram. The telegram no longer exists,
(11:59):
so we have no dea what it said, but we
can assume from what happened next that it informed him
that Alice was not in good health. She had Bright's disease,
and now obsolete term for a condition that seriously damages
the kidneys. Here's Holly Fry, co host of The Stuff
He Missed in History Class podcast. I were various theories that,
in fact Teddy's wife, Alice actually had kidney disease, it
(12:22):
was undiagnosed before her pregnancy, and that carrying a child
exacerbated the problem, and that's really what led to her passing.
So soon as Alice was born, it got worse. His mother, Middy,
was also ill with typhoid fever. Middy had been just
as influential a figure in Roosevelt's life is his father,
regaling young TD with tales of southern chivalry and male
(12:43):
bravado culled from her own upbringing and from adventure novels. Suddenly,
the hopes and promises of Lee Holmes seemed to fade
into the background, and when Roosevelt made it back to
the family home in New York. That night, he was
met with a scene almost too terrible to comprehend. Nearly
six years to the day his father died, Roosevelt would
lose the two people closest to his heart. Alice was
(13:06):
only barely conscious when he arrived. He held her in
his arms through the early morning hours of February. As
Alice tried to cling to life, Roosevelt was summoned to
his mother's room one floor below. This time he could
at least be at her side, assuaging the guilt he
had long felt over not being near his father's She
passed away at three am. At two pm, Alice, just
(13:29):
twenty two years old, also died. She had been a
mother for only two days. He and his wife were
living with his mother, so it was like his entire
home life collapsed that day as he knew it, which
is really heartbreaking to think about, like, you know, essentially
to put it in kind of colloquial terms, like two
young kids who are starting to live together, and then
(13:51):
it came to balls all the part. That same day,
Roosevelt drew a large x in his diary and wrote,
the light has gone out of my life. He was
just twenty five years old. Alice and Middy were buried
in Greenwood Cemetery in a double funeral. Close friends of
the family observed that Roosevelt appeared dazed and stunned, a
(14:11):
state hardly typical of his pragmatic and focused disposition. Some
even feared he might do something rash, taking total leave
of his senses. After the funeral, he wrote in his diary,
we spent three years of happiness, greater and more on
a lloyed than any I have ever known. Fall to
the lot of others, or joy or sorrow. My life
(14:33):
has now been lived out. After that, he rarely spoke
of Alice again, not of their love or their good
times together. Rather than confront his grief, Roosevelt seemed capable
only of erasing it. Love letters and photographs were destroyed.
He wouldn't even mention her in his autobiography, and after
this double tragedy, he would lock himself and his feelings
(14:56):
down for the most part. According to Kathleen Dalton, escape
and flight from pain provided familiar devices to protect himself
from his own strong emotions and from unpleasant facts he
wanted to avoid. In February eighteenth he returned to Albany
to finish out his term as assemblyman, where he worked
with frenetic energy. He left his daughter in the care
(15:18):
of his sister Baby and like Alice named for her mother,
he couldn't even bear to say her name, so they
started calling her baby Lee, and he allegedly forbid everyone
he knew in his family and social circle from saying
the name Alice for quite some time because it was
just so upsetting to him. Baby Alice looked a whole
lot like her mother too, so that must have been
(15:38):
really difficult for him. That's like a constant reminder of
your heartache, and it's interesting. People also talk about the
fact that he wrote just a little about his wife
in his life, even when he worked as a biographer
to write his life story. It was just too much
of an emotional burden for him, pretty much for the
rest of his life. We'll be right back. Roosevelt soon
(16:02):
left New York for the Dakota Territory and a ranch
where the solitude of the outdoors and the hard work
of ranching allowed him to dull the pain. Once again.
Lass had devastated him, and once again Roosevelt had to
rebuild himself. Roosevelt once said that he never would have
been president if not for his time in the Dakotas.
To find out why, we headed out there ourselves to
(16:23):
Theatore Roosevelt National Park, where we met with Eileen Andy's,
the chief of interpretation and public affairs at the park.
It's the experience going out there and enjoying the peace
and quiet and solitude that Roosevelt needed when he decided
to make that his home ranch. And he wrote about
(16:46):
listening to the birds and hearing the wind in the
cottonwood trees, and listening to the sounds of the river.
Roosevelt came to the Dakotas to hunt bison in three
and while he was there invest it in the Maltese
Cross cattle ranch. After two tragedies and a bumpy last
term as a New York State assemblyman, he intended to
(17:07):
permanently relocate there, but the Maltese Cross didn't fit all
of his needs. It was along the river, which was
a thoroughfare, and people kept stopping by, and he wanted solitude.
So somebody had told him about the Elkhorn Ranch site,
so he got on his horse and rode the river bottom.
It's three five miles along the river bottom to the site.
(17:31):
He liked it, and he had two of his friends
from May income and build that cabin for him. And
when you go out there, you'll see it's down in
the river bottom, almost completely surrounded by bluffs, and there
was nobody out there. He had no neighbors, nobody to
(17:53):
just drop by. And that's really what he was looking
for and really what he needed. And it's a it's
a beautiful quiet place. Roosevelt bought the rights to the
elk Hum property for four dollars, quite a steal. The
house is no longer standing after Roosevelt sold it off
in It was picked over by nineteen o one, but
(18:16):
you can still drive out to the site, which is
an hour and fifteen minutes from the park's visitor center.
So Tyler, a producer on this podcast, and I do
just that. At first, the roads are paved, but eventually
we turn off onto a red gravel road. The scientific
name for that red gravel is clinker. And it's not
long before our white suv is coated in a fine
layer of red dust. Like we went to Mars, we
(18:38):
are in the middle of nowhere. Want to go literally
in the middle of nowhere. Eventually we turn off the
gravel road onto another deeply rutted road. But put that's
a belt on. We are genuinely rough riding right now,
so I gotta make sure you're all buckled up. Yeah.
(19:02):
So the road is surrounded by all of these bluffs,
and some of them are really green, and some of
them have a lot of erosion, and there's all these
like yellow and white and gray layers. Well, not quite,
there's still a bit of a walk from the parking
lot out to the site. The path is surrounded by
(19:23):
grass on either side, punctuated by cottonwood and juniper trees
and yellow flowers and salsafy plants that look kind of
like huge dandelions when the seeds are ready to be
blown off. Occasionally, birds and the move of a cow
can be heard over the din of cicadas. Also, there
are a lot of insects or butterfly talking by face.
(19:44):
Finally we make it to the ranch site, which is
cordoned off with barbed wire. You want to give us
like a general description of where we are and with
the areas, like, yeah, so we are standing in between
a whole bunch of stones on the grass vaguely form
like a little rectangle um, although I guess it'd be
(20:04):
pretty big for a house out here. But yeah, we're
just in this sort of flat area, and on one
side is the Little Missouri River, and on the other
side are all these bluffs. They are like yellow and
gray and white. It's just a little bit of vegetation.
But there are a lot of trees surrounding the site.
(20:27):
It is really very peaceful. I can see why he
liked it. What was once here was a house thirty
ft long and sixty ft wide with seven ft high walls.
Nearby were stables, a shed for cattle, a chicken house,
and a blacksmith shop. On one side is a tall bluff,
and on the other through the trees is the Little
(20:49):
Missouri River, which one expert told me is two hundred
yards away from where it was in Roosevelt's time. Here's
how Roosevelt himself described the site. My home ranch stands
on the river innk from the low long Verandah. Shaded
by leafy cottonwoods, One looks across sandbars and shallows to
a strip of meadow land, behind which rises a line
(21:11):
of sheer cliffs and grassy plateaus. This Verandah is a
pleasant place in the summer evenings, when a cool breeze
stirs along the river and blows in the faces of
the tired men who lull back in the rocking chairs.
What true American does not enjoy a rocking chair book
in hand, though they do not often read the books,
(21:35):
but rock gently to and fro, gazing sleepily out at
the weird looking buttes opposite until their sharp outlines grow
indistinct and purple in the afterglow of the sunset. Do
you know why he named it Elkhorn Ranch? Where is that?
He came out here and he found the skulls of
(21:57):
two elk blocked together, so they had fought and then
got gotten stuck, and then they died. So tr named
Alcorn Ranch after that. For years, tr bounced back and
forth between his political obligations in New York and the
solitude offered here. More than silence, though, was the need
to stay busy. Ranch duties couldn't wait for a grieving caretaker.
(22:21):
Things needed to be done, and Roosevelt threw himself into
his work, sometimes spending thirteen hours a day or more
in the saddle. He said black care seldom sits behind
the rider who moves fast enough. Something like that black
care I think was depression. The actual quote is black
(22:42):
hare rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.
So Eileen nailed it. Elkhorn had everything he needed, distractions,
nature things that Roosevelt had long since learned cured whatever
dark thoughts might be crossing his mind. So when he
wasn't ranching or like working in the fields or doing
his cattle ranter stuff, he would sit on the veranda,
(23:07):
which he loved, and then he would write for like
up to five hours a day because then obviously he
was also reading a lot while he was out here.
But yeah, I can definitely see why he chose this
site because if the other house was like on a
route that was too busy and people were always stopping
(23:30):
by and you really wanted some solitude, I feel like
this is the place because it's not easy to get
to and his his nearest neighbors in either direction were
at least ten miles away, and after Alice died, he
didn't really talk about her ever again. But I'm pretty
sure he was out here when he wrote, like one
(23:50):
of the only things that he wrote about her after
her death, and then he just kind of closed the
door on that chapter of his life because he was
not a person who liked to dwell on sad or
bad things, which is something that Edith would say later.
As Baby Lee grew up in Baby's home, Roosevelt found
(24:11):
comfort with a woman who would become his second wife.
Her name was Edith Kermit Carol. They were married in
eighteen eighty six. The following year, Baby Lee joined them
in Sagamore Hill. In eighteen eighty nine, just before the
birth of their second son, Kermit, Roosevelt moved to Washington
after being appointed U s Civil Service Commissioner. Another son, Archie,
was born in He would not be the only significant
(24:34):
personal event in Roosevelt's life that year. Roosevelt would go
on to have four boys and one more girl. For
the most part, the siblings got along well. That was
a marked departure from Roosevelt's own relationship with his brother, Elliott.
Born in eighteen sixty. Elliott was the black sheep of
the Roosevelt clan, and he often tried TR's patients. Eliot's
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primary problem was the bottle he drank heavily and often
trying to sue with the lingering pain of a serious accident. Well,
he would sometimes attempt to curb his addiction to treatment centers.
It never stuck. All of this drove his straight laced
brother crazy, and worse than that, it threatened major scandal
when Elliott got Katie Mann, his wife's made pregnant in
(25:16):
eighteen ninety. Here's Roosevelt family biographer William Mann, author of
the Wars of the Roosevelts, The Ruthless Rise of America's
greatest political family. He was, in many ways Theodore's polar opposite.
Where Theodore was all about the rules of society and
the the expectations of society, and certainly of his class,
(25:38):
Elliott broke all of those rules. They had a lot
of common as well. I mean, they grew up together,
they were close as boys. They both were great sportsmen,
they both loved to hunt, they both had a love
of nature. But their personalities were very, very different. Roosevelt
thought Elliott was a burden not only to the Roosevelt
family as a whole, but to his own wife, Anna
(26:00):
and their three children, one of whom was future four
term First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who later became the American
spokesperson for the United Nations. Roosevelt attempted to become his
brother's conservator to curb his reckless spending and scandalous behavior.
He was an interesting role reversal. As children, it was
Elliott who looked out for his older brother. The interesting
thing about their relationship when they were children, and they
(26:23):
were both at different times caretakers for each other, and
I think that defines the rest of their time together,
their their their adult life as well. Because when Theodore
was young, of course, he was very famously asthmatic and
very frail and fragile. The family kept him pampered and sheltered,
and it was expected that the younger brother would take
(26:44):
care of the older brothers. So when they were traveling
or even just around the house, Elliott looked at Theodore,
helped him along, and and looked to his parents for
affirmation for that. They were always grateful that Elliot took
such good care of Theodore. As Roosevelt built his body
in mind, he needed Elliott less and less. Soon he
would achieve goals that were out of Elliott's reach. Traveling
(27:06):
in opposite directions, the brothers grew apart. I think the
first break comes when fed Or seriously says I want
to get ahead. I want to be president of the
Hited States, whether he articulated that particular thought himself or
if he simply said I want to reach for elected office.
That's the moment when Elliott becomes a problem, and a
(27:28):
problem that had to be solved. When Elliott tried putting
his life together, Roosevelt did not encourage him or pat
him on the back. After Elliott checked himself into a
sanitarium in Europe, Anna asked Roosevelt's write Elliott a letter
praising him, but tr would not do it. To Roosevelt,
his brother's wayward behavior would only cause him harm if
he managed to continue his ascendency in politics. He believed
(27:49):
the best way to maintain his reputation in the face
of his brother's mistakes was to make sure he could
demonstrate he had tried helping Elliott. Unfortunately, his dogmatic approach
may not have been an Elliotts best interests. It's heartbreaking
when you look back, because this was a man who
was not drinking at the time, but they needed to.
They needed to institutionalize him for drunkenness. By sales to France,
(28:11):
and moves into their household and essentially watches him like
an eagle eye and is constantly writing back the Theodore,
reporting on his every move, and it's stressing the whole
family out, is stressing Elliott's wife and his children, and
Elliott does because of this, he does begin to drink
a few times and they touch him. Aha, we we
we knew it. We knew you were going to drink
too much. And eventually they do get him away from
(28:34):
his family. They do get his wife's agreement, and he's institutionalized,
and it's all to all to be able to say, uh,
you know, should this scandal break that, well, look, we
did the right thing. We got him away from his family.
He was dissolute, he was depraved. We took him away
from his children because that's the right thing to do.
(28:54):
You know. You read Eleanor Roosevelt's memoirs and it's clear
as she never thought that was the right thing to do,
because she carried a scar for the rest of her
life losing her father. Tragedy soon found Elliott Anna died
of diphtheria in two One of Elliott's sons, Elliott Jr.
Succumbed to the same illness. The following year. These deaths
(29:15):
unraveled what was left of Elliott. On August ninety four,
Tierga to telegram, by this point, a method of communication
he must have grown to dread, notifying him that Elliott
was in New York and in poor health. He shunned
any attempts by his family to comfort him. Roosevelt honored
his wishes to be left alone, and the next day
(29:36):
Elliott tried to kill himself by jumping out of a window.
He survived, but a seizure followed. Elliot Roosevelt was dead
at the age of thirty four. Roosevelt had been able
to compartmentalize Eliott's problems by keeping his distance, but when
he saw Eliot's body, his coping method was of no use.
He wept openly. His sister Karin said that Theodore was
(29:58):
more overcome than I've ever seen in him and cried
like a little child for a long time. We don't
actually have any specific thoughts about how he felt about that,
except Karin's observation that he cried like a baby when
he stood over his brother's corpse. And I just have
to feel that in those tears there was every every
(30:20):
emotion there was grief, there was empathy, there was there
was guilt, perhaps even because the way Karin described it,
it was a very cathartic cry. And he was a
good man. Deardo Roosevelt was a good man at his
in his heart, he wanted to do the right thing,
even though he was often so constrained by what was
supposed to be done by society that I have to
(30:42):
believe that in that moment he felt all of those
emotions about his brother. You know, I don't think he
would ever have said to himself, even you know, what
I did was wrong, or what I did, or I
could have done something differently. I don't think he could
ever bring himself to think of that. Elliott Roosevelt was
like a stricken, hunted creature who had been pursued by
(31:03):
terrible demons. Any thoughts of Elliott as a stain on
his reputation seemed to evaporate. In death, Roosevelt saw him
only as a lost soul, Though he was later exhumed
and laid to rest next to Anna in the Hall
family mausoleum at Saint Paul's Church into Voli, New York.
Roosevelt initially insisted Elliott be buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery,
(31:24):
the site of the Roosevelt family plot, where he remained
for two years There. Tr wrote, Elliott could be next
to those who are associated only with his suite innocent youth.
The empty space left by his parents, by Alice and
by Elliott could never be filled. But by the nineteen tens,
Roosevelt had a number of important people in his life
to occupy his time and his mind. There was Edith
(31:46):
and his six children. For a time, life was relatively quiet,
as quiet as Tier's life could be anyway. Then came
America's entry into World War One, which tr had lobbied for.
He wanted to create a volunteer division, but President Woodrow
Wilson wouldn't allow it. Roosevelt's sons so revered their father
that they felt compelled to take up arms in his stead.
(32:07):
Archie Roosevelt once told a historian that we all knew
how badly Dad wanted to go, so we went for him.
He always told us to lead, meant to serve. World
War One was a conflict waged with an efficient brutality. Grenades,
heavy ammunition, planes and trenches all conspired to wound and
estimated twenty one million soldiers. Some came back home with
(32:28):
devastating injuries that required the use of plaster masks to
hide facial disfigurements. Others took round after round and machine
gun fire. It was this unforgiving environment that the Roosevelt
boys found themselves in Archie and Ted sailed to France.
Archie was seriously wounded in the knee and armed by
shell fragments. Later Ted would suffer a leg wound, but
(32:49):
it was Quentin who paid the ultimate price, shot down
by enemy fire. To feel that one has inspired a
boy to conduct that has resulted in his death as
a at a serious side for a father. And at
the same time, I would not have cared for my boys,
and they would not have cared for me if our
relations had not been just along that line. Here's Tyler Caliberta.
(33:13):
He doesn't talk about his feelings about publicly. He maintains
everything that he had said before the war about war
and about his son's being involved in at Quentin is,
you know, killed in battle, and Roosevelt calls that kind
of riding the crest of life. He he thinks it's
kind of the highest achievement you can have as a
(33:34):
person sacrificing yourself an effort of war. Roosevelt clung to
something with Quentin's death. It was the nobility of sacrifice,
a life exchanged for the greater good. Writing to King
George the Fifth in response to his and the Queen's condolences,
Tier said that his sons had sailed from our shores
over a year ago. Their mother and I knew their
(33:55):
temper and quality, and we did not expect to see
all of them come back. But he could also waiver.
Writing too Kermit's wife, Belle Willard Roosevelt, he lamented the
pain felt by Quentin's fiance, Flora. It is no use
pretending that Quentin's death is not very terrible. It is
useless for me to pretend that it is not very
(34:16):
bitter to see that good, gallant, tenderhearted boy leave life
at its crest when it held Flora such happiness and
certainly an honorable and perhaps a distinguished career. Edith has
a nice quote about the boys and their service and war.
She says that you cannot raise boys to be eagles
(34:39):
and then expect them to act like sparrows. So losing
Quentin for Roosevelt, I imagine that there was a lot
of questioning of his attitude towards war, about whether or
not he pressed his sons into service, and if that
was a correct thing to do for all of them.
We only know that he He continued to say that
(35:00):
Quentin was a valiant soldier and that it was a
higher purpose that he's acquified himself. Forth, Quentin's grave in
France became a shrine that was visited by many soldiers.
The Americans replaced a German cross marking the grave, and
the French built defense around it. The Roosevelt's decided to
leave his body there, where he had fallen in battle
and where respect was being paid. Roosevelt spent time with
(35:22):
Edith and Dark Harbor Maine, rowing out onto the lake
to commune with nature. It was his most enduring coping mechanism.
But he was older, now, a man of almost sixty,
and the strain and toil of losing a loved one
war on his constitution. He died in his sleep on
January six of a pulmonary embolism. Some storians have posited
(35:43):
that six months after Quintin dies, Roosevelt himself dies, So
some people have put it that he had died of
a broken heart and addition of physical ailments. Perhaps there's
something too that perhaps Roosevelt couldn't continue to go on
living in a world where maybe his entire view of war,
which is a big part of his outlook and his worldview,
(36:05):
maybe had changed. Prior to his death, supporters called for
Roosevelt to run for president once more, owing to his
advancing age. In the loss of Quentin, the man who
was previously ready to run back into battle could not
fathom taking on any more responsibility. Since Quentin's death, the
world seems to have shut down upon me. He wrote
(36:26):
four days, four telegrams for five tragedies. Each loss fundamentally
altered how Theodore Roosevelt looked at the world and fundamentally
altered him. It's hard to say if tr truly conquered tragedy.
You don't leave losses like these behind. They become a
part of you. What we know is that tragedy wounded him,
(36:50):
sometimes froze him, but it did not overcome him. History
Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was
written by Jake Rawson and researched by me, with additional
(37:13):
research by Michael Salgarolo, back checking by Austin Thompson, field
recording by John Meyer and Tyler Clang. Joe Wigan voiced
tr in this episode. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin.
This show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Low Berlante.
Special thanks to Tyler Caliberta, Holly Fry, Eileen Andy's, William Mann,
(37:37):
and North Dakota Tourism. To learn more about this episode
and Theodore Roosevelt, visit Mental Flass dot com slash History Versus.
That's Mental flass dot com slash h I S t
O R y B S History Versus is a production
of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss m HM. For
(38:10):
more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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