My Dear Papa

You can all read each other’s letters. I hear you were very seasick on your voyage and that Dora and Conie were seasick before you passed Sandy-hook. Give my greatest love to Johnny. You must write too. Wont you drive Mamma to some battle field for she is going to get me some trophies? I would like to have them so very much. I will have to stop now because Aunty wants me to learn my lessons.

The chaffinch is for you. The wren for Mamma. The cat for Conie.

Yours lovingly,
Theodore Roosevelt.

P.S. I liked your peas so much that I ate half of them.

New York, April 30th, 1868.

My Dear Father

I received your letter yesterday. Your letter was more exciting than Mother’s. I have a request to ask of you, will you do it? I hope you will, if you will it will figure greatly in my museum. You know what supple jacks are, do you not? Please get one for Ellie and two for me. Ask your friend to let you cut off the tiger-cat’s tail, and get some long moos and have it mated together. One of the supple jacks (I am talking of mine now) must be about as thick as your thumb and finger. The other must be as thick as your thumb. The one which is as thick as your finger and thumb must be four feet long and the other must be three feet long. One of my mice got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it was a common mouse. Its name was Brownie. Nothing particular has happened since you went away for I cannot go out in the country like you can. The trees and the vine on our piazza are buding and the grass is green as can be, and no one would dream that it was winter so short a time ago. All send love to all of you.

Yours lovingly,
Theodore Roosevelt.

The “excitement” referred to in the first letter was the wonderful reception accorded to my mother on her return to the city of her girlhood days. Her rooms in the hotel in Savannah were filled by her friends with flowers—and how she loved flowers—but not the “buggie ones” in which her young naturalist son says he would “revel!”

One can see the ardent little bird-lover as he wrote “I jumped with delight when I found you had heard a mocking-bird,” and again when he says “Tell me how many curiosities and living things you have got for me.” Insatiable lover of knowledge as he was, it was difficult indeed for his parents to keep pace with his thirst for “outward and visible signs of the things that be.”

More than fifty years have passed since the painstaking penning of the childish letters, but the heart of his sister in reading them thrills hotly at the thought that the little “Conie” of those days was “very much” missed by her idolized brother, and how she treasured the letter written all for her, with the pictures of the cages in which he kept his beloved mice! It was sad that the pictures of the chaffinch, wren, and cat, evidently enclosed for each of the travellers, should have been lost. In the two letters to his father he enlists that comrade-father’s services for his adored “museum” by the plea for “trophies from some battle field,” and the urgent request for the “supple jack,” the nature of which exciting article I confess I do not understand. I do understand, however, his characteristic distress that “one of my mice got crushed. It was the mouse I liked best though it was a common mouse.” That last sentence brought the tears to my eyes. How true to type it was! the “common mouse” was the one he liked best of all—never the rare, exotic thing, but the every-day, the plain, the simple, and he probably liked it so much just because that little “common mouse” had shown courage and vitality and affection! All through Theodore Roosevelt’s life it was to the plain simple things and to the plain simple people that he gave his most loyal devotion. In May, 1869, because of a great desire on the part of my mother to visit her brothers in England, as well as to see the Old World of which she had read and studied so much, she persuaded my father to take the whole family abroad.

After those early summers at Madison, which still stand out so clearly in my memory, there comes a less vivid recollection of months passed at the beautiful old place at Barrytown, on the Hudson River, which my parents rented from Mr. John Aspinwall, and where a wonderful rushing brook played a big part in the joys of our holiday months.

We “younger ones” longed for another summer at this charming spot and regretted, with a certain amount of suspicion, the decision of the “Olympians” to drag us from our leafy haunts to improve our rebellious young minds, but my parents were firm in their decision, and we started on the old paddle-wheel steamship Scotia, as I have said, in May, 1869.

In a letter from my mother to my aunt, who had married Mr. James King Gracie, and was therefore regretfully left behind, she described with an easy pen some incidents of the voyage across the ocean, as follows:

“Elliott is the leader of children’s sports and plays with the little Winthrop children all day. A short while ago Thee made up his mind suddenly that Teedie must play too, so hunted up the little fellow who was deeply enjoying a conversation with the only acquaintance he has made, a little man, whom we call the ‘one too many man,’ for he seems to go about with no acquaintances. His name is Mr. St. John and he is a quaint little well of knowledge,—very fond of natural history and fills Teedie’s heart with delight. Teedie brought him up and introduced him to me, his eyes dancing with delight and he constantly asks me, ‘Mamma, have you really conversed with Mr. St. John?’ I feel so tenderly to Teedie, that I actually stopped reading the ‘Heir of Redcliffe,’ and talked to the poor little man who has heart complaint so badly that his voice is even affected by it. “The two little boys were pretty seasick on Sunday and I do not know what I should have done without Robert, the bedroom steward, and an amiable deck steward, who waits on those who remain on deck at meals. He seems a wonderfully constructed creature, having amiable knobs all over his body, upon which he supports more bowls of soup and plates of eatables than you can imagine, all of which he serves out, panting over you while you take your plate, with such wide extended nostrils that they take in the Irish coast, and the draught from them cools the soup!

“Anna,—the carpet in my stateroom is filled with organic matter which, if distilled, would make a kind of anchovy paste, only fit to be the appetizer before the famous ‘witches’ broth,’ the receipt for which Shakespeare gives in “Macbeth”,—but on the whole the Scotia is well ordered and cleaner than I had expected.

“On Sunday morning Thee was sick and while in bed, little Conie came into the room. He looked down from his upper berth, looking like a straw-colored Cockatoo, but Conie stopped in the middle of what she was saying and said, ‘Oh Papa! you have such a lovely little curl on your forehead’ with a note of great admiration in her voice and meaning it all, really, but her position looking up, and his looking down reminded me forcibly of the picture of the flattered crow who dropped his cheese when the fox complimented him!”

This letter, perhaps, more than almost any other, gives the quaint humor and also the tenderness of my mother’s attitude toward her children and husband.

On our arrival in Liverpool we were greeted by the Bulloch uncles, and from that time on the whole European trip was one of interest and delight to the “grown people.” My older sister, though not quite fifteen, was so unusually mature and intelligent that she shared their enjoyment, but the journey was of rather mitigated pleasure to the three “little ones,” who much preferred the nursery at 28th East 20th Street, or their free summer activities in wood and field, to the picture-galleries and museums, or even to the wonderful Swiss mountains where they had to be so carefully guarded.

In the letters written faithfully to our beloved aunt, the note of homesickness is always apparent.

Our principal delight was in what we used to call “exploring” when we first arrived at a hotel, and in the occasional intercourse with children of our own age, or, as in Teedie’s case, with some expert along the line of his own interests, but the writing and receiving of home letters stand out more strongly than almost any other memory of this time, and amongst those most treasured by Teedie and myself were the little missives written by our most intimate friend, Edith Kermit Carow, a little girl who was to have, in later days, the most potent influence of all over the life of Theodore Roosevelt. How little she thought when she wrote to her friend “Conie” from Redbank, November 19, 1869, “I was much pleased at receiving your kind letter telling me all about Teedie’s birthday,” that one day that very Teedie would be President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow the mistress of the White House.

The old friendship of our parents for Mr. and Mrs. Carow, who lived with Mr. Carow’s older sister, Mrs. Robert Kermit, in a large house backing up against the 14th Street mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, was the natural factor in the relationship of the younger generation, and little Edith Carow and little Corinne Roosevelt were pledged friends from the time of their birth.

The “Teedie” of those days expressed always a homesick feeling when “Edie’s” letters came. They seemed to fill him with a strong longing for his native land!

In the little note written on yellow, very minute writing-paper, headed by a satisfied-looking cat, “Edie” expresses the wish that “Teedie” could have been with her on a late picnic, and “Teedie,” I am equally sure, wished for her presence at his eleventh-birthday festivities, which were described by my sister Anna in a letter to our aunt, Mrs. James King Grade. I quote a few lines from that letter, for again its contents show the beautiful devotion of my father and mother and sister to the delicate little boy—the devotion which always put their own wishes or arrangements aside when the terrible attacks of asthma came, for those attacks seemed to make them feel that no plan was too definite or important to change at once should “Teedie’s” health require it. My sister writes, the letter being dated from Brussels, October 30, 1869:

“Last Thursday was dear little Teedie’s birthday; he was eleven years old. We all determined to lay ourselves out on that occasion, for we all feared that he would be homesick,—for he is a great little home-boy. It passed off very nicely indeed. We had to leave Berlin suddenly the night before, for ‘Teedie’ was not very well; so we left Berlin on Wednesday night at eight o’clock and arrived at Cologne on Thursday morning about nine. You can imagine it was a very long trip for the three little children, although they really bore it better than we three older ones. [She one of the older ones at fourteen and a half!] It was a bitterly cold night and snowed almost all the time. Think of a snow storm on the night of the 27th of October! Teedie was delighted at having had a snow storm on his birthday morning, for he had never had that before. When we reached Cologne we went to the same hotel, and had the same nice rooms which we had had on our former stay there, and that of course made us feel very much more at home. Teedie ordered the breakfast, and they all had ‘real tea’ as a very great treat, and then Teedie ordered the dinner, at which we were all requested to appear in full dress; so Mamma came in her beautiful white silk dinner dress, and Papa in dress coat and light kid gloves. I was very cold, so only wore silk. After Teedie’s dinner Papa brought in all his presents. They, Mamma and Papa, gave each of the three, writing desks marked with their names and filled with all the conveniences. Then Teedie received a number of smaller presents as well.” What parents, indeed, so fully to understand the romantic feeling of the little boy about his birthday dinner, that they were more than willing to don their most beautiful habiliments, and appear as they had so lately appeared when received at the Vienna Court! Such yielding to what by many people might have been considered as too childish a whim to be countenanced shows with special clearness the quality in my father and mother which inspired in us all such undying adoration. Another letter—not written by my older sister, but in the painstaking handwriting of a little girl of seven—describes my own party the month before. We were evidently staying in Vienna at the time, for I say: “We went to SchÖnbrunn, a ‘shatto.’” (More frequently known as a chÂteau, but quite as thrilling to my childish mind spelled in my own unique manner!) And there in the lovely grounds my mother had arranged a charming al fresco supper for the little homesick American girl, and just as the “grown people” were in “full dress” for “Teedie’s” birthday, so they gave themselves up in the grounds of the great “shatto” to making merry for the little seven-year-old girl.

After the great excitements of the birthdays came our interesting sojourn in Rome. In spite of my mother’s efforts to arouse a somewhat abortive interest in art in the hearts of the three little children, my principal recollections of the Rome of 1869 are from the standpoint of the splendid romps on the Pincian Hill. In those contests of running and racing and leaping my brother Elliott was always the leader, although “Teedie” did his part whenever his health permitted. One scene stands out clearly in my mind. It was a beautiful day, one of those sunny Italian days when ilex and olive shone with a special glistening quality, and when the “Eternal City” as viewed from the high hill awoke even in the hearts of the little Philistine foreigners a subconscious thrill which they themselves did not quite understand. We were playing with the Lawrence children, playing leap-frog (how inappropriate to the Pincian Hill!) over the many posts, when suddenly there came a stir—an unexpected excitement seemed everywhere. Word was passed that the Pope was coming. “Teedie” whispered to the little group of American children that he didn’t believe in popes—that no real American would; and we all felt it was due to the stars and stripes that we should share his attitude of distant disapproval. But then, as is often the case, the miracle happened, for the crowd parted, and to our excited, childish eyes something very much like a scene in a story-book took place. The Pope, who was in his sedan-chair carried by bearers in beautiful costumes, his benign face framed in white hair and the close cap which he wore, caught sight of the group of eager little children craning their necks to see him pass; and he smiled and put out one fragile, delicate hand toward us, and, lo! the late scoffer who, in spite of the ardent Americanism that burned in his eleven-year-old soul, had as much reverence as militant patriotism in his nature, fell upon his knees and kissed the delicate hand, which for a brief moment was laid upon his fair curling hair. Whenever I think of Rome this memory comes back to me, and in a way it was so true to the character of my brother. The Pope to him had always meant what later he would have called “unwarranted superstition,” but that Pope, Pio Nono, the kindly, benign old man, the moment he appeared in the flesh brought about in my brother’s heart the reaction which always came when the pure, the good, or the true crossed his path.

Amongst my mother’s efforts to interest us in art there was one morning when she decided positively that her little girl, at least, should do something more in keeping with the “Eternal City” than playing leap-frog on the Pincian Hill, and so, a reluctant captive, I was borne away to the Vatican Galleries, and was there initiated into the beauties of some of the frescos and sculpture. My mother, who I have already said was a natural connoisseur in all art, had especial admiration for that wonderful piece of sculpture from the hand of Michael Angelo known as “The Torso of the Vatican.” This work of art stood alone in a small room, so that nothing else should take away from its effect. As those who know it well need hardly be told, it lacks both arms and both legs, and to the little girl who was summarily placed by her mother in the only chair in the small room, it seemed a very strange creation. But, with the hope of arousing artistic instinct, my lovely mother said: “Now, darling, this is one of the greatest works of art in the world, and I am going to leave you here alone for five minutes, because I want you to sit very quietly and look at it, and perhaps when I come back in the five minutes you will be able to realize how beautiful it is.” And then I saw my mother’s slender figure vanish into another room. Having been always accustomed to obey my parents, I virtuously and steadily kept my eyes upon the legless, armless Torso, wondering how any one could think it a beautiful work of art; and when my mother, true to her words, returning in five minutes with an expectant look on her face, said, “Now, darling, what do you think of the great ‘Torso’?” I replied sadly, “Well, mamma, it seems to me a little ‘chumpy’!” How often later in life I have heard my mother laugh immoderately as she described her effort to instil her own love of those wonderful shoulders and that massive back into her recalcitrant small daughter; and when, years after, I myself, imbued as she was with a passion for Italy and Italian art, used to wander through those same galleries, I could never go into that little room without the memory of the small girl of long ago, and her effort to think Michael Angelo’s “Torso” anything but “chumpy.”

Christmas in Rome was made for us as much like our wonderful Christmases at home as was possible in a foreign hotel. It had always been our custom to go to our parents’ room at the pleasant hour of 6 A.M., and generally my mother had induced my long-suffering father to be dressed in some special and marvellous manner at that early hour when we “undid” the bulging, mysterious-looking stockings, and none of these exciting rites were omitted because of our distance from our native land. I think, for that reason, at the end of the beautiful Christmas Day, 1869, the special joy in the hearts of the three little American children was that they had actually forgotten that they were in Rome at all! On January 2, “Teedie” himself writes to his beloved Aunt Annie (Mrs. Gracie) on a piece of note-paper which characteristically has at the top a bird on a bough—that paper being his choice for the writing-desks which had been given to the three children on his birthday: “Will you send the enclosed to Edith Carow. In it I described our ascent of Vesuvius, and so I will describe Pompeii to you.” In a rather cramped hand he enters then into an accurate description of everything connected with Pompeii, gloating with scientific delight over the seventeen skeletons found in the Street of the Tombs, but falling for one moment into a lighter vein, he tells of two little Italian boys whom my father had engaged to come and sing for us the same evening at Sorrento, and whose faces were so dirty that my father and his friend Mr. Stevens washed them with “Kissengin Water.” That extravagance seems to have been specially entertaining to the mind of the young letter-writer.

During the year abroad there were lovely times when we were not obliged to think of sculpture or painting—weeks in the great Swiss mountains when, in spite of frequent attacks of his old enemy, my father writes that “Teedie” walked many miles and showed the pluck and perseverance which were so strikingly part of his character. In another letter he is described, while suffering from a peculiarly severe attack of asthma, as being propped up all night in a big chair in the sitting-room, while his devoted mother told him stories of “when she was a little girl” at the old plantation at Roswell; and yet within two days of that very time he is following my father and brother on one of the longest walks they took in the mountains. All through the letters of that period one realizes the developing character of the suffering little boy. My mother writes in a letter to her sister: “Teedie and Ellie have walked to-day thirteen miles, and are very proud of their performance. Indeed Teedie has been further several times.”

And so the year of exile had its joyous memories, but in spite of them never were there happier children than those who arrived home in America in the spring of 1870.

Earlier in our lives my father, always thinking of the problem of the fragile health of his two older children, conceived the idea of turning the third room of the second story at 28 East 20th Street into an out-of-doors piazza, a kind of open-air gymnasium, with every imaginable swing and bar and seesaw, and my mother has often told me how he called the boy to him one day—Theodore was now about eleven years of age—and said: “Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.” The little boy looked up, throwing back his head in a characteristic fashion; then with a flash of those white teeth which later in life became so well known that when he was police commissioner the story ran that any recreant policeman would faint if he suddenly came face to face with a set of false teeth in a shop-window—he said, “I’ll make my body.”

That was his first important promise to himself and the delicate little boy began his work; and for many years one of my most vivid recollections is seeing him between horizontal bars, widening his chest by regular, monotonous motion—drudgery indeed—but a drudgery which eventuated in his being not only the apostle but the exponent of the strenuous life.

What fun we had on that piazza! The first Theodore Roosevelt, like his son, was far ahead of his times, and fresh air was his hobby, and he knew that the children who will cry if they are made to take dull walks on dreary city streets, will romp with dangerous delight ungovernessed and unmaided in an outdoor gymnasium. I use the word “dangerous” advisedly, for one day my lovely and delicate mother had an unforgetable shock on that same piazza. She happened to look out of the window opening on to the piazza and saw two boys—one of whom, needless to say, was Theodore—carefully balancing the seesaw from the high rail which protected the children from the possibility of falling into the back yard, two stories below. Having wearied of the usual play, the aforesaid two boys thought they would add a tinge of excitement to the merriment by balancing the seesaw in such a manner as to have one boy always in the thrilling position of hanging on the farther side of the top rail, with the possibility (unless the equilibrium were kept to perfection) of seesaw, boys, and all descending unexpectedly into the back yard.

One may well imagine the horror of the mother as she saw her adventurous offspring crawling out beyond the projection of the railing, and only great self-control enabled her to reach the wooden board held lightly by the fingers of an equally criminal cousin, and by an agonized clutch make it impossible for the seesaw to slide down with its two foolhardy riders.

Needless to say, no such feat was ever performed again, but the piazza became the happy meeting-ground of all the boys and girls of the neighborhood, and there not only Theodore Roosevelt but many of his friends and family put in a stock of sturdy health which was to do them good service in later years. At the same time the children of that house were leading the normal lives of other little children, except for the individual industry of the more delicate one, who put his hours of necessary quiet into voracious reading of history, and study of natural history.

Again the summers were the special delight of our lives, and the following several summers we spent on the Hudson River, at or near Riverdale, where warm friendships were formed with the children of our parents’ friends, Mr. and Mrs. William E. Dodge, Mr. and Mrs. Percy R. Pyne, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Harriman, and Mr. Robert Colgate.

Groups of joyous children invented and carried into effect every imaginable game, and, as ever, our father was the delightful collaborator in every scheme of pleasure. There began Theodore’s more active collection of birds and animals. There he advertised for families of field-mice, and the influx of the all-too-prolific little animals was terrifying to the heart of so perfect a housekeeper as my mother. The horror produced by the discovery of several of the above-named families in the refrigerator was more than trying to the nerves of one less devoted to science. My sister Anna, the most unselfish of older sisters, was the chief sufferer always, as, in spite of her extreme youth—for she was only four years older than my brother—her unusual ability and maturity made her seem more like a second mother than a sister. On one special occasion Theodore, having advertised and offered the large sum of ten cents for every field-mouse and thirty-five cents for a family, left for a trip to the Berkshire hills, and my poor sister was inundated by hundreds of active and unattractive families of field-mice, while clamoring country people demanded their ten-cent pieces or the larger sum irrelevantly offered by the absentee young naturalist. In the same unselfish manner my sister was the unwilling recipient of families of young squirrels, guinea-pigs, etc., and I can see her still bringing up one especially delicate family of squirrels on the bottle, and also begging a laundress not to forsake the household because turtles were tied to her tubs!

Those summers on the Hudson River stand out as peculiarly happy days. As I have said before, we were allowed great freedom, although never license, in the summer-time, and situated as we then were, with a group of little friends about us, the long sweet days passed like a joyous dream.

Doctor Hilborne West, the husband of my mother’s half-sister, stands prominently out as a figure in those childhood times. My mother writes of him as follows: “Dr. West has made himself greatly beloved by each child. He has made boats and sailed them with Ellie; has read poetry and acted plays with Conie; and has talked science and medicine and natural history with Teedie, who always craves knowledge.” In spite of his craving for knowledge the boy, now nearly fourteen years old, had evidently, however, the normal love of noise and racket, as evinced by the following “spread-eagle” letter to his aunt, who, in her turn, had gone abroad that summer.

Dobb’s Ferry, July 9th, 72.

Dear Auntie

We had the most splendid fun on the fourth of July. At eight o’clock we commenced with a discharge of three packs of firecrackers, which awoke most of the people. But we had only begun now, and during the remainder of the day six boxes of torpedoes and thirty-six packs of firecrackers kept the house in an exceedingly lively condition. That evening it rained which made us postpone the fireworks until next evening, when they were had with great success, excepting the balloons, which were an awful swindle. We boys assisted by firing roman candles, flowerpots and bengolas. We each got his fair share of burns.

Conie had a slight attack of asthma last night but I took her riding this morning and we hope she is well now.

We are permitted now to stay in the water as long as we please. The other day I came near being drowned, for I got caught under water and was almost strangled before I could get out. I study English, French, German and Latin now. Bamie spent the fourth at Barrytown where she had Tableaux, Dances, &c. to her heart’s content. Give my love to Uncles and Cousin Jimmie. Aunt Hattie &c. Tell Aunt Hattie I will never forget the beautiful jam and the splendid times we had at her cottage.

Ever your little
T.D.

Later in life, in thinking of this same uncle, whose subsequent career never squared with his natural ability, I have come to feel that sometimes people whom we call failures should not be so called,—for it is often their good fortune to leave upon the malleable minds of the next generation an inspiration of which they themselves fall sadly short. In the character of this same charming uncle there must have been some lack of fibre, for, brilliant as he was, he let his talents lie dormant. Yet, perhaps, of all those who influenced our early childhood, the effect upon us produced by his cultivation, his marvellous memory, his literary interests, and his genial good humor had more to do with the early stirring of intellectual desires in his little relatives than almost any other influence at that time. The very fact that he was not achieving a thousand worth-while things, as was my father, the very fact that he was not busied with the practical care and thought for us, as were my mother and aunt—brought about between us that delightful relationship when the older person leads rather than drives the younger into the paths of literature and learning. To have “Uncle Hill” read Shakespeare to us under the trees, and then suggest that we “dress up” and act the parts, to have “Uncle Hill” teach us parts of the famous plays of all the ages and the equally famous poems, was a delight rather than a task; and he interspersed his Shakespeare with the most remarkable, and, to our childish minds, brilliant doggerel, sometimes of his own making, that could possibly be imagined—so that Hamlet’s soliloquy one day seemed quite as palatable as “Villikins and His Dinah,” or “Horum, Chorum, Sumpti Vorum,” the next. To show the relationship between the charming physician of Philadelphia (the home of my uncle and aunt was in that city) and the young philosopher of New York, I am tempted to insert a letter from the latter to the former written in 1873 from Paris on our second trip abroad.

“From Theodore the Philosopher to Hilborne, Elder of the Church of Philadelphia. Dated from Paris, a city of Gaul, in the 16th day of the 11th month of the 4th year of the reign of Ulysses. [I imagine that General Grant was then President.] Truly, O Hilborne! this is the first time in many weeks that I have been able to write you concerning our affairs. I have just come from the city of Bonn in the land of the Teuton, where I have been communing with our fellow labourer James of Roosevelt, surnamed The Doctor [our first cousin, young James West Roosevelt], whom I left in good health. In crossing the Sea of Atlantis I suffered much of a malady called sickness of the sea, but am now in good health, as are also all our family. I would that you should speak to the sage Leidy concerning the price of his great manuscript, which I am desirous of getting. Give my regards to Susan of West, whom I hope this letter will find in health. I have procured many birds of kinds new to me here, and have preserved them. This is all I have to say for the time being, so will close this short epistle.”A

That summer of 1872 was very enchanting, although overshadowed by the thought of another “terrible trip to Europe,” for after much thought my father and mother had decided that the benefits of a winter on the Nile, and a summer studying German in Dresden, would outweigh the possible disadvantage of breaking into the regular school studies of the three children of the 20th Street nursery. Therefore the whole family set sail again in the autumn of 1872.

After a delightful time with the uncles and aunts who had settled in England, and many gay excursions to Hampton Court and Bushey Park, and other places of interest, we went by way of Paris and Brindisi to Alexandria, and after some weeks in Cairo set sail on a dahabeah for three months on the Nile. In a letter from my brother Elliott to my aunt he speaks of my father’s purchase of a boat. With characteristic disregard of the historic interest of the Nile he says: “Teedie and I won’t mind the Nile very much, now that we have a boat to row in, perhaps it won’t be so bad after all what with rowing, boxing, and Christmas and playing, in between lessons and the ruins.” Reaching Egypt, the same young lover of boxing and boats writes of meeting much-beloved cousins, and again the characters of “Ellie” and “Teedie” are markedly brought out in the childish letter, for he says, “We had such a cosey tea. Frank and I poured tea and cut up chicken, while Teedie and Jimmie [the young cousin referred to in ‘Teedie’s’ letter to Doctor West] talked about natural history.”

The experience of a winter on the Nile was a very wonderful one for the little American children, and “Ellie’s” anticipations were more than carried out. Before we actually set sail I write in my journal of our wonderful trip to the pyramids and our impressions, childish ones of course, of the marvellous bazaars; and then we finally leave Cairo and start on the journey up the ancient river. I have always been so glad that our trip was before the days of the railway up to Karnak, for nothing could have been more Oriental and unlike modern life than the slow progress of our dahabeah, the Aboo Erdan. When there was wind we tacked and slowly sailed, for the boat was old and bulky, but when there was no wind the long line of sailors would get out on the bank of the river and, tying themselves to the rope attached to the bow, would track slowly along, bending their bronzed backs with the effort, and singing curious crooning songs.

In a letter dated December 27 I write to my aunt: “I will tell you about my presents. Amongst others I got a pair of pretty vases, and Teedie says the little birds they have on them are an entirely new species. Teedie and Father go out shooting every day, and so far have been very lucky. Teedie is always talking about it whenever he comes in the room,—in fact when he does come in the room you always hear the words ‘bird’ and ‘skin.’ It certainly is great fun for him.” In connection with these same shooting-trips my father writes: “Teedie took his gun and shot an ibis and one or two other specimens this morning while the crew were taking breakfast. Imagine seeing not only flocks of these birds, regarded as so rare by us in days gone by as to be selected as a subject for our game of ‘twenty questions,’ but also of storks, hawks, owls, pelicans, and, above all, doves innumerable. I presented Teedie with a breech-loader at Christmas, and he was perfectly delighted. It was entirely unexpected to him, although he had been shooting with it as mine. He is a most enthusiastic sportsman and has infused some of his spirit into me. Yesterday I walked through the bogs with him at the risk of sinking hopelessly and helplessly, for hours, and carried the dragoman’s gun, which is a muzzle-loader, with which I only shot several birds quietly resting upon distant limbs and fallen trees; but I felt I must keep up with Teedie.”

The boy of fourteen, with his indomitable energy, was already leading his equally indomitable father into different fields of action. He never rested from his studies in natural history. When not walking through quivering bogs or actually shooting bird and beast, he, surrounded by the brown-faced and curious sailors, would seat himself on the deck of the dahabeah and skin and stuff the products of his sport. I well remember the excitement, and, be it confessed, anxiety and fear inspired in the hearts of the four young college men who, on another dahabeah, accompanied us on the Nile, when the ardent young sportsman, mounted on an uncontrollable donkey, would ride unexpectedly into their midst, his gun slung across his shoulders in such a way as to render its proximity distinctly dangerous as he bumped absent-mindedly against them. When not actually hunting he was willing to take part in exploration of the marvellous old ruins.

In a letter to “Edie” I say: “The other day we arrived at Edfoo, and we all went to see the temple together. While we were there Teedie, Ellie, Iesi (one of our sailors), and I started to explore. We went into a little dark room and climbed in a hole which was in the middle of the wall. The boys had candles. It was dark, crawling along the passage doubled up. At last we came to a deep hole, into which Teedie dropped, and we found out it was a mummy pit. It didn’t go very far in, but it all seemed very exciting to us to be exploring mummy pits. Sometimes we sail head foremost and sometimes the current turns us all the way around—and I wish you could hear the cries of the sailors when anything happens.”

They were busy days, for our wise parents insisted upon regularity of a certain kind, and my older sister, only just eighteen, gave us lessons in both French and English in the early morning before we went on the wonderful excursions to the great temples, or before “Teedie” was allowed to escape for his shooting expeditions. I do not think the three months’ absence from school was any detriment, and I am very grateful for the stimulating interest which that trip on the Nile gave to my brothers and me. I can still see in retrospect, as if it were yesterday, the great temple of Karnak as we visited it by moon-light; the majestic colossi at Medinet Haboo; and the more beautiful and delicate ruins of PhilÆ. Often my father would read Egyptian history to us or explain the kind of architecture which we were seeing; but always interspersed with more serious instruction were merry walks and games and wonderful picnic excursions, so that the winter on the Nile comes back to me as one of romantic interest mixed with the usual fun and cheerful intercourse of our ordinary family life. The four young men who had chartered the dahabeah Rachel were Messrs. Nathaniel Thayer and Frank Merriam of Boston, Augustus Jay of New York, and Harry Godey of Philadelphia, and these four friends, with the addition of other acquaintances whom we frequently met, made for my sister and my parents a delightful circle, into which we little ones were welcomed in a most gracious way.

In spite of the fact of the charms of the Nile and the fun we frequently had, I write on February 1, from Thebes, to my little playmate “Edie,” with rather melancholy reminiscence of a more congenial past: “My own darling Edie,” I say, “don’t you remember what fun we used to have out in the country, and don’t you remember the day we got Pony Grant up in the Chauncey’s summer house and couldn’t get him down again, and how we always were losing Teedie’s india rubber shoes? I remember it so perfectly, and what fun it was!” I evidently feel that such adventures were preferable to those in which we were indulging in far-away Egypt, although I conscientiously describe the ear on one of the colossi at Medinet Haboo as being four feet high, and the temple, I state, with great accuracy, has twelve columns at the north and ten on either side! I seem, however, to be glad to come back from that expedition to Medinet Haboo, for I state that I wish she could see our dahabeah, which is a regular little home. I don’t approve—in this same letter—of the dancing-girls, which my parents allowed me to see one evening. With early Victorian criticism I state that “there is not a particle of grace in their motions, for they only wriggle their bodies like a snake,” and that I really felt they were “very unattractive”—thus proving that the little girl of eleven in 1873 was more or less prim in her tastes. I delight, however, in a poem which I copy for “Edie,” the first phrase of which has rung in my ears for many a long day.

This verse, in spite of the reference to the lack of clothes of the stalwart natives, evidently did not shock my sensibilities as much as the motions of the dancing-girls. Farther on in the letter I describe the New Year’s Eve party, and how Mr. Merriam sang a song which I (Conie) liked very much, and which was called “She’s Naughty But So Nice.” “Teedie,” however, did not care for that song, but preferred one called “Aunt Dinah,” because one verse ran: “My love she am a giraffe, a two-humped camamile.” [Music had apparently only charms to soothe him when suggestive of his beloved animal studies.] From Thebes also my brother writes to his aunt one of the most interesting letters of his boyhood:

Near Kom Obos, Jan. 26th, 1873.

Dear Aunt Annie:

My right hand having recovered from the imaginary attack from which it did not suffer, I proceed to thank you for your kind present, which very much delighted me. We are now on the Nile and have been on that great and mysterious river for over a month. I think I have never enjoyed myself so much as in this month. There has always been something to do, for we could always fall back upon shooting when everything else failed us. And then we had those splendid and grand old ruins to see, and one of them will stock you with thoughts for a month. The temple that I enjoyed most was Karnak. We saw it by moonlight. I never was impressed by anything so much. To wander among those great columns under the same moon that had looked down on them for thousands of years was awe-inspiring; it gave rise to thoughts of the ineffable, the unutterable; thoughts which you cannot express, which cannot be uttered, which cannot be answered until after The Great Sleep.

[Here the little philosopher breaks off and continues in less serious mood on February 9.]

I have had great enjoyment from the shooting here, as I have procured between one and two hundred skins. I expect to procure some more in Syria. Inform Emlen of this. As you are probably aware, Father presented me on Christmas with a double-barrelled breech loading shot gun, which I never move on shore without, excepting on Sundays. The largest bird I have yet killed is a Crane which I shot as it rose from a lagoon near Thebes.

The sporting is injurious to my trousers....

Now that I am on the subject of dress I may as well mention that the dress of the inhabitants up to ten years of age is nothing. After that they put on a shirt descended from some remote ancestor, and never take it off till the day of their death. Mother is recovering from an attack of indigestion, but the rest are all well and send love to you and our friends, in which I join sincerely, and remain,

Your Most Affectionate Nephew,
T. Roosevelt, Jr.

The adoration of his little sister for the erudite “Teedie” is shown in every letter, especially in the letters to their mutual little friend “Edie.” On January 25 this admiration is summed up in a postscript which says: “Teedie is out shooting now. He is quite professionist [no higher praise could apparently be given than this remarkable word] in shooting, skinning and stuffing, and he is so satisfied.” This expression seems to sum up the absolute sense of well-being during that wonderful winter of the delicate boy, who, in spite of his delicacy, always achieved his heart’s desire.

In the efforts of his little sister to be a worthy companion, I find in my diary, written that same winter of the Nile, one abortive struggle on my own part to become a naturalist. On the page at the end of my journal I write in large letters:

NATURAL HISTORY

“QUAIL

“Ad. near Alexandria, Egypt, November 27th, 1872. Length 5—Expanse 13.0 Wings 5 Tail 1.3—Bill 5. Tarsus 1.2 Middle Toe 1.1 Hind Toe .3.”

Under these mystic signs is a more elaborate and painstaking description of the above bird. I can see my brother now giving me a serious lecture on the subject, and trying to inspire a mind at that time securely closed to all such interests—to open at least a crack of its reluctant door, for “Teedie” felt that to walk with blind eyes in a world of such fluttering excitement as was made for him by the birds of the air showed an innate depravity which he wished with all his soul to cure in his beloved little sister. At the end of my description of the quail I fall by the wayside, and only once again make an excursion into the natural history of the great land of Egypt; only once more do I struggle with the description of a bird called this time by the curious name of “Ziczac.” (Could this be “Zigzag,” or was it simply my childish mind that zigzagged in its painful efforts to follow the impossible trail of my elder brother?) In my account of this, to say the least, unusual bird I remark: “Tarsus not finished.” Whether I have not finished the tarsus, or whether the bird itself had an arrested development of some kind, I do not explain; and on the blank page opposite this final effort in scientific adventure I finish, as I began, by the words “Natural History,” and underneath them, to explain my own unsuccessful efforts, I write: “My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt, Esq.” Whether I had decided that all natural history was summed up in that magic name, or whether from that time on I was determined to leave all natural history to my brother, Theodore Roosevelt, Esq., I do not know; but the fact remains that from that day to this far distant one I have never again dipped into the mystery of mandibles and tarsi.

And so the sunny, happy days on the great river passed away. A merry eighteenth-birthday party in January for my sister Anna took the form of a moonlight ride to the great temple of Karnak, and, although we younger ones, naturally tired frequently of the effort to understand history and hieroglyphics, and turned with joy even in the shadow of the grand columns of Abydos to the game of “Buzz,” still I can say with truth that the easily moulded and receptive minds of the three little children responded to the atmosphere of the great river with its mighty past, and all through the after-years the interest aroused in those early days stimulated their craving for knowledge about the land of the Pharaohs.

On our way down the river an incident occurred which, in a sense, was also memorable. At Rhoda on our return from the tombs of Beni Hasan we found that a dahabeah had drawn up near ours, on which were the old sage Ralph Waldo Emerson and his daughter. My father, who never lost a chance of bringing into the lives of his children some worth-while memory, took us all to see the old poet, and I often think with pleasure of the lovely smile, somewhat vacant, it is true, but very gentle, with which he received the little children of his fellow countryman.

It was at this time that the story was told in connection with Mr. Emerson that some sentimental person said: “How wonderful to think of Emerson looking at the Sphinx! What a message the Sphinx must have had for Emerson.” Whereupon an irreverent wit replied: “The only message the Sphinx could possibly have had for Emerson must have been ‘You’re another.’” I can quite understand now, remembering the mystic, dreamy face of the old philosopher, how this witticism came about.

And now the Nile trip was over and we were back again in Cairo, and planning for the further interest of a trip through the Holy Land. Mr. Thayer and Mr. Jay, two of the young friends who had accompanied us on the Nile, decided to join our party, and after a short stay in Cairo we again left for Alexandria and thence sailed for Jaffa. In my diary I write at the Convent of Ramleh between Jaffa and Jerusalem, where we spent our first night: “In Jaffa we chose our horses, which was very exciting, and started on our long ride. After three hours of delightful riding through a great many green fields, we reached this convent and found they had no room for ladies, because they were not allowed to go into one part of the building as it was against the rules, but at last Father got the old monks to allow us to come into another part of the convent for just one night.”

“Father,” like his namesake, almost always got what he wanted.

From that time on one adventure after another followed. I write of many nice gallops, and of my horse lying down in the middle of streams; and, incidentally with less interest, of the Mount of Olives and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre! Antonio Sapienza proved to be an admirable dragoman, and always the practical part of the tenting cavalcade started early in the morning, and therefore as the rest of us rode over the hills in the later afternoon we would see arranged cosily in some beautiful valley the white tents, with the curling smoke from the kitchen-tent already rising with the promise of a delightful dinner.

Over Jordan we went, and what a very great disappointment Jordan was to our childish minds, which had always pictured a broad river and great waves parting for the Ark of the Covenant to pass. This Jordan was a little stream hardly more impressive than the brook at our old home at Madison, and we could not quite accustom ourselves to the disappointment. But Jerusalem with its narrow streets and gates, its old churches, the high Mount of Olives, and the little town of Bethlehem not far away, and, even more interesting from the standpoint of beauty, the vision of the Convent of Mar Saba on the high hill not far from Hebron, and beyond all else the blue sparkling waters of the Dead Sea, all remain in my memory as a wonderful panorama of romance and delight.

Arab sheiks visited us frequently in the evening and brought their followers to dance for us, and wherever my father went he accumulated friends of all kinds and colors, and we, his children, shared in the marvellous atmosphere he created. I remember, in connection with the Dead Sea, that “Teedie” and Mr. Jay decided that they could sink in it, although the guides had warned them that the salt was so buoyant that it was impossible for any living thing to sink in the waters (the Dead Sea was about the most alive sea that I personally have ever seen), and so the two adventurous ones undertook to dive, and tried to remain under water. “Teedie” fortunately relinquished the effort almost immediately, but Mr. Jay, who in a spirit of bravado struggled to remain at the bottom, suffered the ill effects from crusted salt in eyes and ears for many hours after leaving the water.

For about three weeks we rode through the Holy Land, and my memory of many flowers remains as one of the charms of that trip. Later, led in the paths of botany by a beloved friend, I often longed to go back to that land of flowers; but then to my childish eyes they meant nothing but beauty and delight.

After returning to Jerusalem and Jaffa we took ship again and landed this time at Beyrout, and started on another camping-trip to Damascus, through perhaps the most beautiful scenery which we had yet enjoyed. During that trip also we had various adventures. I describe in my diary how my father, at one of our stopping-places, brought to our tents some beautiful young Arab girls, how they gave us oranges and nuts, and how cordially they begged us, when a great storm came up and our tents were blown away, to come for shelter to their quaint little houses.

Even to the minds of the children of eleven and fourteen years of age, the great Temple of Baalbek proved a lure of beauty, and the diary sagely remarks that “It is quite as beautiful as Karnak, although in an entirely different way, as Baalbek has delicate columns, and Karnak great, massive columns.” The beauty, however, is not a matter of such interest as the mysterious little subterranean passages, and I tell how “Teedie” helped me to climb the walls and little tower, and to crawl through these same unexplored dark places.

The ride into Damascus itself remains still an expedition of glamour, for we reached the vicinity of the city by a high cliff, and the city burst upon us with great suddenness, its minarets stretching their delicate, arrow-like spires to the sky in so Oriental a fashion that even the practical hearts of the little American children responded with a thrill of excitement. Again, after an interesting stay in Damascus, we made our way back to Beyrout. While waiting for the steamer there my brother Elliott was taken ill, and writes in a homesick fashion to the beloved aunt to whom we confided all our joys and woes. Poor little boy! He says pathetically: “Oh, Auntie, you don’t know how I long for a finishing-up of this ever-lasting traveling, when we can once more sit down to breakfast, dinner and lunch in our own house. Since I have been sick and only allowed rice and chicken,—and very little of them—I have longed for one of our rice puddings, and a pot of that strawberry jam, and one of Mary’s sponge cakes, and I have thought of when I would go to your rooms for dinner and what jolly chops and potatoes and dessert I would get there, and when I would come to breakfast we would have buckwheat cakes. Perhaps I am a little homesick.” I am not so sure but what many an intelligent traveller, could his or her heart be closely examined, would find written upon it “lovely potatoes, chops and hot buckwheat cakes.”

But all the same, in spite of “Ellie’s” rhapsody, off we started on another steamer, and my father writes on March 28, 1873:

Steamer off Rhodes.

Teedie is in great spirits, as the sailors have caught for him numerous specimens, which he stuffs on deck, to the edification of a large audience.

I write during the same transit, after stopping at Athens, that “It is a very lovely town, and that I should have liked to stay there longer, but that was not to be.” I also decided that although the ruins were beautiful, I did not like them as much as either Karnak or Baalbek. Having dutifully made these architectural criticisms, I turn with gusto to the fact that Tom and Fannie Lawrence, “Teedie,” “Ellie,” and I have such splendid games of tag on the different steamers, and that I know my aunt would have enjoyed seeing us. The tag was “con amore,” while the interest in the temples was, I fear, somewhat induced. Our comprehending mother and father, however, always allowed us joyous moments between educational efforts. In a letter from Constantinople written by “Ellie” on April 7, he says: “We have had Tom and Frank Lawrence here to dinner, and we had a splendid game of ‘muggins’ and tried to play eucre (I don’t know that this is rightly spelled) with five, but did not suceede, Teedie did make such mistakes. [Not such an expert in cards, you see, as in tarsi and mandibles!] But we were in such spirits that it made no difference, and we did nothing but shout at the top of our voices the battle cry of freedom; and the playing of a game of slapjack helped us get off our steam with hard slaps, but even then there was enough (steam) left in Teedie and Tom to have a candle fight and grease their clothes, and poor Frank’s and mine, who were doing nothing at all!” As one can see by this description, the learned and rather delicate “Teedie” was only a normal, merry boy after all. “Ellie” describes also the wonderful rides in Constantinople, and many other joys planned by our indulgent parents. From that same city, called because of its many steeples The City of Minarets, “Teedie” writes to his little friend Edith:

I think I have enjoyed myself more this winter than I ever did before. Much to add to my enjoyment Father gave me a gun at Christmas, which rendered me happy and the rest of the family miserable.

I killed several hundred birds with it, and then went and lost it! I think I enjoyed the time in Egypt most, and after that I had the most fun while camping out in Syria.

While camping out we were on horseback for several hours of each day, and as I like riding ever so much, and as the Syrian horses are very good, we had a splendid time. While riding I bothered the family somewhat by carrying the gun over my shoulder, and on the journey to the Jordan, when I was on the most spirited horse I ever rode, I bothered the horse too, as was evidenced by his running away several times when the gun struck him too hard. Our tent life had a good many adventures in it. Once it rained very hard and the rain went into our open trunks. Another time our tents were almost blown away in a rough wind, and once I hunted a couple of jackals for two or three miles as fast as the horse could go.

Yours truly,
T. Roosevelt, Jr.

This little missive sums up the joy of “Teedie’s” winter in Egypt and Syria, and so it seems a fitting moment to turn to other interests and occupations, leaving the mysterious land of the pyramids and that sacred land of mountains and flowers behind us in a glow of child memories, which as year followed year became brighter rather than dimmer.