Introduction
I believe in a strong executive; but I believe that responsibility should go with power. (Theodore Roosevelt)1
While I am a Jeffersonian in my genuine faith in democracy and popular government, I am a Hamiltonian in my government views, especially with . . . the need of the exercise of broad powers by the National Government. (Theodore Roosevelt)2
The Constitution should be treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment, and not as a straightjacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth. (Theodore Roosevelt)3
I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition. (Theodore Roosevelt)4
To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace. (Theodore Roosevelt)5
Contrary to his most famous maxim, Theodore Roosevelt was anything but soft-spoken. Indeed, even his best friends had trouble shutting him up. He was notorious for his enthusiastic, rapid-fire, booming discourses on an encyclopedic array of subjects. His brilliant mind seethed with ideas, facts, and views that he eagerly shared with anyone, anywhere, anytime whether it was someone seated demurely beside him at a formal dinner party or thousands of boisterous people at a campaign rally.
Of course, Roosevelt was not just a talker, far more vitally he was a doer. Historians regularly rank him among the great or near great presidents but he chalked up just as dizzying an array of achievements at each lower stage of his political career.6 Of all his political posts he stayed longest in the White House with seven and a half years, followed by six years as a federal civil service commissioner, three years as a New York state assemblyman, two years as a New York City police commissioner, two years as New York’s governor, one year as assistant navy secretary, and half a year as vice president. Perhaps no one has had a more whirlwind triumphant military career, a mere 133 days from his commission to his mustering out. During that time, Roosevelt formed a regiment and, in “a crowded hour,” led his men to victory at the battle of San Juan Heights where his heroism earned him a postmortem Medal of Honor. Of the many awards he received during his lifetime, the most prestigious was
the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. In between his public offices he squeezed in stints as a rancher, explorer, and naturalist. He was also a prolific writer with thirty-eight published books and scores of articles amounting to millions of words. Finally, he was a loving family man; his first wife died in childbirth and he had five children with his second wife.
Given all this, Theodore Roosevelt bequeathed an enduring legacy for Americans over how to govern as progressively and how to live as genuinely as possible. His deeds and words provide a spectrum of provocative perspectives into perennial national debates over what it means to be an American, a progressive, a man, and a moral person. More than a century ago, he wrestled with what to do about such seemingly recent threats to America as the rich getting exorbitantly richer and the middle class and poor stagnating or getting poorer; corporate giants strangling the economy with monopolies and oligopolies; cities plagued by corrupt bureaucrats, brutal cops, lousy schools, festering diseases, crumbling infrastructure, mass poverty, and vicious criminal gangs; millions of immigrants accused of driving down wages and diluting national identity; the destruction of natural resources essential for the nation’s continued prosperity; swelling economic and military power posed by foreign adversaries; worsening anti-American revolutions in foreign lands deemed vital to national security; the relative effectiveness of mass torture, executions, and destruction for fighting wars or international arms control, laws, and organizations for fostering peace; and even Islamist terrorism. A mirror held up to Roosevelt’s life reveals a prism of inspiring and disturbing reflections into the challenges and dilemmas of our own.
How could one man accomplish so much? Theodore Roosevelt was a master of the art of American power. The art of power itself is as old as humanity and simply involves one’s ability to get what one wants in a conflict with others for the same thing. That includes asserting “smart” power or the appropriate available resources of “hard” or physical power and “soft” or psychological power. Leaders wield the art of American power when they protect or enhance the nation’s strategic, economic, social, and cultural interests guided by the Declaration of Independence’s values and the Constitution’s institutions. Of course, a leader must get national power before he can wield it. Each step upward in the hierarchy of local, state, and federal government at once demands and grants power. This progression is an art of American power as long as one’s selfinterests and the nation’s interests overlap. When they conflict, that person may have mastered the art of power but not the art of American power.
The art of American power distinguishes between how one asserts power at home and abroad, between domestic and foreign policy. If American principles and laws prevail at home, the restrictions for wield-
ing an array of soft and hard power assets abroad are far looser. In the international arena, the White House daily wields diplomacy and espionage to assert national interests with all countries, and covert actions, economic sanctions, saber-rattling, and war as appropriate against countries that pose varying threats. American power is further enhanced by its economic and military alliances with others. These essential means for defending or enhancing American interests remain constant even as the technologies that convey them undergo ever more revolutionary changes. For instance, over two and a half centuries, Americans have largely led the transformation in how wars are fought from massed men armed with bayoneted muskets charging one another or sailing ships maneuvering to get upwind of each other to nuclear-powered aircraft carries, cruise missiles, drones, and cybertage, to name a few of countless stunning changes.
Throughout his life Roosevelt asserted available or developed appropriate sources of power to realize both his personal ambitions and visions for America as a statesman, soldier, and scientist.7 He was among America’s greatest progressives. In each public post, he asserted power to solve problems and better the lives of the people under his care. Inseparable from how Roosevelt understood and asserted power was his patriotism. He sought to wield power by means that reflected the nation’s ideals and institutions respectively grounded in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, although at times he provoked controversy by how he interpreted and stretched those powers. He understood the dynamic relationship between prosperity and security for both the United States and its individual citizens. As such Roosevelt provides countless examples for those who followed him as president and for officials at all levels of federal, state, and local government for how to strengthen America and thus Americans strategically, economically, socially, and culturally.
Take, for instance, Roosevelt’s policy that resulted in the Panama Canal. He achieved that through three stages. In the first, like a chess master he wielded the essential mix of diplomats, spies, businessmen, warships, and marines to engineer Panama’s independence from Colombia followed by a treaty with the new government that authorized the United States to build, run, and defend a canal across that country to link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. He got that job done nearly bloodlessly; not a single American and only one Panamanian died during the military operation. In the second stage, he quickly rounded up more than the twothirds of senators needed to ratify the treaty. Finally, he helped organize the consortium of corporations capable of constructing and managing the canal, an engineering feat as astonishing for its time as the moon landing was six decades later. Since the Panama Canal’s completion in 1914, it has enormously enhanced American economic and strategic power. The United States and its people are far more secure and wealthy than they otherwise would have been without Roosevelt’s Panama policy. Thus did
Roosevelt bequeath to his White House successors a brilliant example of how to assert the appropriate array of soft and hard powers to take advantage of opportunities abroad that strengthen the United States at a minimal cost in treasure and blood. Yet any one of scores of Roosevelt’s other domestic or foreign policies could be just as enlightening.
For Roosevelt, what one did was inseparable from and dependent on who one was. As such, soft power surpassed hard power in getting what one wants in any conflict. Ambition and confidence are critical components of soft power. From an early age, he believed that he was destined for greatness and by acting on that belief empowered himself to eventually realize it. As a college student he quipped to a friend that: “You may laugh, but I have a presentiment that some time I may be President.”8 But ambition and confidence alone are not enough for success. They in turn must be grounded in character.
Indeed, of all the forces that shape an individual’s career and life, Roosevelt insisted that the most vital was one’s character or some mix of diligence, honesty, toughness, courage, compassion, and wisdom.9 He constantly struggled to exemplify these empowering attributes. He hoped that posterity would recall first his extraordinary character and then his extraordinary deeds, recognizing that one led to the other.
For him, moral and physical courage was the key dimension of both personal and national character: “Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is an unpardonable sin.”10 He developed an unflinching and at times reckless courage by striving “to become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness . . . by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.”11 For instance, when a mountain lion attacked his dogs, “I ran in and stabbed him behind the shoulder thrusting the knife you loaned me right into his heart. I have always wished to kill a cougar as I did this, with dogs and the knife.”12 This was only one of numerous near death experiences on the hunt or at war. He coolly put three bullets into a grizzly before the beast collapsed at his feet; he shot down charging African lions and American bisons within a few paces of mauling or goring him. In Cuba, bullets wounded or killed men around him as he conspicuously led the charge up Kettle Hill on horseback; barbed wire forced him to dismount and spearhead his men up San Juan Hill on foot. Roosevelt led a charmed life but he did not escape often severe injuries. While herding cattle at his Dakota ranch, his horse reared and fell on him, cracking his right shoulder. During a fox hunt on Long Island, his horse stumbled and threw him against a stone wall, which broke his arm; he remounted and finished the hunt before seeking a doctor. During his presidency he was stick-fighting with General Leonard Wood when a heavy blow from his opponent broke his right arm. A boxing match with a military aide at the White House cost him the sight in his left eye. At Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a trolley crashed into his carriage, killed one of
his bodyguards, and hurled the president, Governor Murray Crane, and private secretary George Cortelyou onto the ground. While his two companions suffered minor bruises, Roosevelt’s leg was badly cut and became inflected, which doctors eliminated only by cutting away the rotten flesh to the bone. During his trip down Brazil’s River of Doubt he badly bruised his leg, which became infected as malaria and parasites assailed him. In 1916, his horse threw him as he tried to heave himself atop and the fall broke two of his ribs.
Roosevelt’s most extraordinary near death experience came during his 1912 presidential campaign as the Progressive Party candidate. He was on his way to deliver a speech at a Milwaukee coliseum packed with fans when an assassin fired a bullet into his chest and it lodged inches from his heart. He dismissed the urgings of his aides that they immediately rush him to a hospital. Instead he hurried on to the coliseum where he spoke for more than an hour before the stunned crowd.
He had nearly hyperkinetic energy, which he described as “my usual restless, caged wolf feeling.”13 His physical prowess was legendary. Until recently he held the world record for handshakes on one day, 8,150 with visitors filing into the White House on January 1, 1907.14 He loved skinny-dipping in Rock Creek even in mid-winter, and from midstream joyfully calling on cabinet members, diplomats, and journalists shivering ashore to strip and join him. Roosevelt wanted all Americans to join him in the “strenuous life.”
Roosevelt exercised his mind as vigorously as he did his body. Intellectually he was among the most brilliant presidents. His memory by sight and sound was legendary. He could quote long passages of prose and poems that he had read long before. No president and few Americans have been more voracious readers than Roosevelt, including even Jefferson. He could speed-read two or three tomes in a single evening. He treated the Library of Congress as an extension of his own collection, and regularly sent over lists of books to be delivered to the White House. He often knew much more about a congressional district than its representative or a foreign nation’s history than its learned inhabitants.15
Roosevelt somehow found time from his frenetic public and private life not just to write but to become a prodigious and highly successful writer. He authored thirty-eight books and hundreds of articles in the fields of history, politics, and nature. His Naval War of 1812 and four volume Winning of the West series are his best known and enduring works, although his books on his hunting, ranching, and safari adventures remain vivid and insightful reading. Roosevelt dissects his subjects often in minute and lyrical detail. Much of his writings are autobiographical, and mostly modest for his successes and frank for his failures.
He was a proud workaholic; “I belong to the laboring classes and the eight hour law does not apply to me.”16 He insisted that: “There is only
success for those who know how to prepare it.”17 Success, however, should only be earned honestly. Business profit was “a good thing only so far at it is accompanied by, and develops, a high standard of conduct honor, integrity, civic courage.”18 President Benjamin Harrison recalled that “the only trouble I ever had with managing him was he wanted to put an end to all the evil in the world between sunrise and sunset.”19
Roosevelt dedicated much of his life to bettering conditions for his fellow citizens. He grounded his public policies on progressive values. Government had a moral duty to help those who could not help themselves. Workers should receive a living wage for an eight hour day. People should be freed from worry that the food or medicine they consumed were dangerous. Merit rather than connections or payoffs should determine who was hired for a job or whose bid was accepted for a project. He condemned corrupt officials who sold public assets for private gain or corrupt politicians who sold their votes. He insisted that Americans should wisely use rather than waste the nation’s natural resources so that future generations could enjoy the same benefits as the current generation. He championed national parks, forests, and monuments that preserved America’s historic, cultural, and natural heritage. He wanted a just society where each individual was free to develop his or her potential and dreams.
Power, of course, was essential to achieving all this. Roosevelt’s understanding of the relationship between soft and hard power is exemplified by his axiom: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Each depended on the other: “If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength.”20 A true man practiced what he preached and disdained those who talked a good fight but could not toe the line: “If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I preach. I have a horror of people who bark but don’t bite.”21 Reputation is a key element of power. Nations like people have a far better chance of getting what they want if their word can be trusted. He insisted that America “behave toward other nations precisely as a strong, honorable, and upright man behaves in dealing with his fellow-citizens.”22 Roosevelt was a voracious political animal who relished squaring off with others. He once explained that “I always genuinely enjoy” politics “and act as target and marksman alternatively with immense zest,” although he admitted “it is a trifle wearing.”23 Elihu Root described him as “essentially a fighter and when he gets into a fight he is completely dominated by the desire to destroy his adversary.”24 Cecil Rice concurred: “He always finds something to do and somebody to fight” and “is happiest when he conquers but quite happy if he only fights.”25 He was a pragmatist who at times cut corners and deals to get jobs done and finesse prob-
lems. When a friend questioned the propriety of such acts, he admitted that “in politics we have to do a great many things that we ought not to do.”26 He firmly believed the best defense was a vigorous offense: “I always like to do my fighting in the adversary’s corner.”27
A key to understanding Roosevelt’s art of power was his belief that life was a constant struggle at every human level whereby only the fittest survive let alone thrive. In this historian H.W. Brands provides an important insight into his psyche: “For Roosevelt the struggle was the thing; without struggle, life wasn’t worth living, for the individual or the nation.”28 Roosevelt’s state of nature mixed versions described by pessimist Thomas Hobbes and optimist Jean Jacques Rousseau. Yet over time this Social Darwinian struggle that let only the fittest survive would help more people than it harmed: “The doctrine seems merciless, and so it is; but it is just and rational for all that.”29 Although a man could never escape the laws of nature, he could master those laws and wield them to master and help other people. Indeed, material progress depended on more clever entrepreneurs and efficient producers squeezing out their lessers. Ethics was the antidote to such a Darwinian world. Victors have a moral duty to reach down and pull up all those below that they had previously vanquished. He insisted that: “No nation can claim rights without acknowledging the duties that go with the rights.”30
“Speak softly and carry a big stick” is Roosevelt’s best known axiom of power. This along with other celebrated sayings that he originated or popularized “strenuous life,” “muckraker,” “hat in the ring,” “bully pulpit,” “jawbone,” “trustbuster,” “anti-spoils,” “red-tape mind,” “lunatic fringe,” and “man in the arena” express life as a constant struggle. Yet other Roosevelt sayings like “square deal” and “wise use” pointed to ethical ways to alleviate the harshness of existence by promoting the highest refinements of civilization and morality. To these related ends he abhorred the notion that the winner should take all. A monopoly of wealth and power was synonymous with tyranny. He hated predatory capitalists as much as he hated predatory socialists. In America, he sought to nurture balances of power in every political and economic realm such as among business corporations, or between management and labor, or producers and consumers. He was at once pro-business and antitrust. He encouraged both the conservation and consumption of natural resources. As for international relations, he tried to manipulate regional distributions of power to favor American interests. He asserted American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and a vital American role as the balancing power in other regions. He sought to sublimate great power rivalries by encouraging them to work in concert to resolve common problems.
Roosevelt had a long list of heroes to emulate in different fields. Topping his list of the greatest statesmen were George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln. What these leaders shared was the
conviction that American prosperity and security depended on a muscular, problem-solving federal government led by the president. Looking back on his own presidency, he boasted that “I have used every ounce of power there was in the office and have not cared a rap for the criticism of those who spoke of my ‘usurpation of power’ I believe in a strong executive; but I believe that responsibility should go with power and that it is not well that the strong executive should be a perpetual executive.”31
With this interpretation, Roosevelt followed the philosophical footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, who penned 55 of the 85 Federalist Papers that explained the Constitution and urged its ratification. George Washington, who presided over the constitutional convention, completely agreed with this interpretation. Subsequent prominent Hamiltonians before Roosevelt included John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson was serving as the ambassador in Paris when Hamilton and others were meticulously framing the Constitution in Philadelphia from May to September 1787. Yet Jefferson’s erudition and gravitas established him as the symbolic leader of a radically different interpretation. Jeffersonians insist that the Constitution only permits what is explicitly written in the text. Their application of this notion, however, is selective and contradictory. They at once celebrate and ignore the American “people” as the Constitution’s foundation while insisting that the United States is a compact among the states, of which each retains its sovereign rights. Roosevelt explained the core of his political philosophy: “While I am a Jeffersonian in my genuine faith in democracy and popular government, I am a Hamiltonian in my government views, especially with . . . the need of the exercise of broad powers by the National Government.”
32
Like any president, Roosevelt complained about trying to get anything done with an obstructionist Congress. He admitted that he did “not much admire the Senate, because it is such a helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done.”33 He pointed out that Congress’s efficacy depended on the issue: “It is for the enormous interest of this Government to strengthen and give independence to the Executive in dealing with foreign powers, for a legislative body, because of its very good qualities in domestic matters, is not well fitted for shaping foreign policy on occasions when instant action is required.”34 Roosevelt broke with Hamiltonism on one critical issue, the power of the judiciary. For Hamiltonians the federal court system’s power of judicial review, or determining whether a law is constitutional, was a key principle. Roosevelt radically disagreed, asserting that the people should ultimately be superior to the courts in determining right from wrong: “When a judge decides a constitutional question, when he decides what the people as a whole can and cannot do, the people should have the right to recall that decision if they think it is wrong.” He advocated a further enhancement of the people’s power, recall votes on judges to “get
rid, not merely of a bad judge, but of a judge who, however virtuous, has grown so out of touch with social needs and facts that he is unfit longer to render good service on the bench.”35
A president is more than the policymaker in chief. Roosevelt was always well aware that as president his duty was to epitomize and inspire the nation: “Most of these people habitually led rather gray lives, and they came to see the President” for “something to talk over and remember and tell their children . . . I think that besides mere curiosity there was a feeling that the President was their man and symbolized their government, and that . . . he embodied their aspirations and best thought.”36 He recognized that his political power was partly grounded in his ability to personify a type of American hero: “The chief service I can render these plain people who believe in me is not to destroy their ideal of me.”37 H. W. Brands noted insightfully that “the ideal the public had formed of Roosevelt was largely a reflection of the ideal he had created for himself.”38
As America’s teacher in chief, Roosevelt wielded what he called his “bully pulpit” to educate the public on vital issues and inspire them to devote themselves to their civic duties: “I did not ‘divine’ what the people were going to think. I simply made up my mind what they ought to think and then did my best to get them to think it.”39 He deployed metaphors so his listeners could better understand his message. For instance, he likened monopolistic trusts to voracious, gigantic beasts stalking the economic jungle and devouring neighborhood businesses and families. He knew for most people style was more important than substance in grasping key points. He had a high-pitched voice that rasped with frequent overuse. For emphasis he bit off each word after saying it. He justified his speaking style by explaining “I have got to be emphatic to attract attention.”40
He was a master manipulator of the mass media, then mostly confined to newspapers and magazines.41 His power over the press was both charismatic and coercive. He provided them a room at the White House, spoke with them daily at length, answered all their questions, and fed them an unending stream of colorful stories and background information. The only catch was that they could only report what he permitted. He ousted anyone who broke that deal. This rarely happened. Newspaper rivalries, especially those in New York City like Joseph Pulitzer’s World and William Randolph Heart’s Journal, were fierce. Being excluded from the press pool meant losing scoops to one’s competitors. He timed many important releases for Sunday, the slowest news day, knowing that newspapers would carry the stories on their front pages on Monday morning. He issued anonymous trial balloons to test political and public reactions. He would squeeze out rivals trying to make news by unleashing deluges of stories.
Roosevelt was among the most charismatic presidents, exuding a powerful magnetism comparable to Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He was an exuberant people person who genuinely enjoyed being around fellow humans, and the more stimulating they were the better. He loved matching wits with first-rate minds. He reveled in inviting experts to his side for dinner, brisk walks, or horseback rides, during which he would pick their brains. As president he spent much of his $50,000 annual salary on entertaining influential congressmen, judges, businessmen, diplomats, scientists, authors, artists, professors, and journalists. William White was among those that he captivated. He recalled their first meeting when Roosevelt “sounded in my heart the first trumpet call of the new time that was to be . . . I had never known such a man as he and never shall again. He overcame me. And in the hour or two we spent that day . . . he poured into my heart such visions, such ideals, and such hopes, such a new attitude toward life and patriotism and the meaning of things, as I had never dreamed men had.”42
There was definitely a downside to being around Roosevelt. His insatiable extroversion at once exhilarated and exhausted those around him as eventually he vacuumed the energy and patience of everyone in a room. He dominated any social gathering with his nonstop talking and kinetic physical presence as he loudly asserted his views of politics, history, science, philosophy, religion, and morality. Some found him endlessly fascinating and amusing; others dismissed him as boorish and controlling. One recipient of “the Roosevelt treatment,” Richard Child, described the ordeal: “You go to the White House, you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk, and then you go home to wring the personality out of your clothes.”43
Although Roosevelt was the scion of a wealthy family embedded within society’s elite, unlike most people of his class, he was skeptical rather than fawning toward plutocrats: “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own businesses.”44 He insisted that of “all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.”45
Not surprisingly, Wall Street hated him as much as Main Street mostly adored him. Yet his haters were hardly confined to super-rich business tycoons. Woodrow Wilson called him “the most dangerous man of the age.”46 Henry James condemned him as “a dangerous and common jingo,” rendered more so because of “his amusing likeability.”47 Henry Adams dismissed him as “primitive,” “abnormal,” and “pure act,” and feared “the effect of unlimited power on limited mind.”48 Although harsh criticism by his most prominent foes could rile him, Roosevelt mostly shrugged off the chorus: “If a man has a very decided character,
has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies.”49
He harbored plenty of flaws, although they were rooted more in his personality than his character. He was a far better talker than listener. He tended to intimidate rather than encourage dissent among his advisors. He could be a sucker for flattery and being told what he wanted to hear. He could misjudge the motives and characters of others, assigning them attributes or faults they did not merit. He projected his own values and goals onto his favorites, most disastrously with William Howard Taft. He was a notorious showboat and scene-stealer; his daughter Alice quipped: “He wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.”50
Although he was affectionate to those he loved, he also had a coldhearted, callous side that extended even to his own family. After his first wife died in childbirth, he abandoned his baby Alice to his sister and thereafter had as little to do with her as possible even when she lived in his home with his second wife and children. He was so intent on hardening his first-born son that Theodore Junior suffered an emotional breakdown when he was ten. Deeply ashamed of what he had done, Roosevelt swore that thereafter “I shall never press Ted either in body or mind.”51 Yet he proudly sent all four of his sons off to the horrors of World War I to uphold and possibly be sacrificed on the altar of the family’s “honor.” When Quentin was killed and his other sons returned wounded emotionally and physically, Roosevelt again lamented his folly.
Underlying many of his worst failings was the clash between his cool reason and churning feelings. Intellectually he had a sophisticated understanding of history and the contemporary world. Emotionally he was a Manichean who tended to see issues in good versus evil terms; he assumed that he always represented good and demonized anyone who opposed him. One cannot compromise with evil, one can only vanquish it.
He struggled to suppress a dimension of himself filled with sorrow and rage. Tragedies forever haunted two days that should otherwise have been happy. He married his first wife on his birthday, October 27; her early death would thereafter darken that day for him. Diseases killed his wife and mother on Valentine’s Day, February 14, forever blackening that day as well. Cancer killed his father at age forty-six. Alcoholism ruined his younger brother Elliot’s life and drove him to suicide when he was thirty-four. Roosevelt buried the searing pain of these tragedies as deeply as possible in his psyche “until they are too dead to throb.”52 He recognized the bleaker side of human nature in himself as well as others: “There is no one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us. . . . It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.”53
As for religion, Roosevelt was raised in the Dutch Reformed Church, attended church weekly, and never publicly questioned Christian theology. He revealed a classic Calvinist outlook when he declared “I wish to show my faith by my works” and explained his dutiful churchgoing as “I want to set an example.”54 Yet, although late in life he occasionally evoked God in his speeches, he does not appear to have believed in an afterlife; for him death was going “into the blackness” where “all things are the same to every man.”55 He believed in a strict separation of church and state, going so far as to try to remove “In God We Trust” from the national currency.56 For Roosevelt, a religion’s chief value was promoting social cohesion and virtuous behavior. He was a small “c” Christian who called on “all clergymen, all laymen who thoroughly believe that the tree is to be judged by its fruits, that religion and christianity cannot prosper unless they result in moral uplift and social betterment. . . . This means . . . working with broad tolerance and charity, so that religion may find its expression in an upright and useful life.” This was best achieved “in a broad and catholic spirit in work for the essentials of christianity . . . without regard to sect” and joined “with all good men in whatever way they worship their Creator, to bring nearer the reign of righteousness and of brotherly kindness on this earth.”57
Among the paradoxes of Roosevelt’s life was that while he was a cutting-edge progressive on most public issues, he was a strict conservative on private moral issues. He was an old-fashioned gentleman who rose when any woman entered the room, and he sternly expected all other males present to pay the same courtesy. He was among America’s most prudish presidents. He condemned sex outside of marriage. He celebrated large families as signs of the husband’s virility and the wife’s fecundity, and as a duty to perpetuate one’s race. Although he was a moderate on nearly all issues, he was an extremist on birth control, “the one sin for which the penalty is national death a sin for which there is no atonement.”58
Roosevelt was the first president to conceive and assert American interests virtually around the world. The great powers crowded around the global chessboard with its irregularly shaped spaces, pawns of varying strengths, and rules varying from one cluster of spaces to the next. He sought to master this game by carefully determining just where and how to defend or enhance America’s critical interests. His core argument was that “the increasing interdependence and complexity of international political and economic relations render it incumbent on all civilized and orderly powers to insist on a proper policy for the world.”59 In today’s world “wars between the great civilized powers have become less and less frequent,” while “wars with barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples come in an entirely different category.” For reasons of both self-interest and morality, the great powers had an “international police duty which must be performed for the sake of the welfare of mankind.”60 Duty ac-
companied power; the more powerful an individual, group, or nation, the greater was one’s duty to wield one’s power responsibly. To this end, he called on the great powers to work together in concerts to keep the peace among themselves and resolve problems with poorer countries. During his 1910 address before the Nobel Prize Committee, he called for a League of Peace whereby the great powers would work together to settle differences among themselves and other states that had the potential to erupt in war. In peacemaking as in all his other endeavors, he led by example. In the 1905 Portsmouth conference he ended a war between Russia and Japan, and thus earned the Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1906 Algeciras conference he forestalled a likely war of France and Britain against Germany.
As a diplomat he had a style all his own. Historian H.W. Brands noted that “Roosevelt never would have made a good full-time diplomat; he was too impatient” and “longed to cut through the niceties of form and start pickaxing at the obdurate substance beneath.”61 His favorite diplomatic strategy was one on one with a statesman or diplomat, cajoling and charming him to his point of view. He was equally adept at issuing intricate instructions to a trusted envoy then dispatching him to forge a deal with a foreign leader.
Roosevelt held complex views of war and peace. Although he was not a warmonger, at times he sounded like one. He sincerely believed such nostrums as: “No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.”62 Yet as president, he initiated no war and ended an ongoing war a revolt by Filipinos against American rule begun by his predecessor. All along he asserted his belief that peace was best upheld through strength: “We infinitely desire peace, and the surest way of obtaining it is to show that we are not afraid of war. We should deal in a spirit of justice and fairness with weaker nations, and we should show to the strongest that we are able to maintain our rights.”63 He insisted that “I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war.”64 These principles guided his presidency’s foreign policies.
Roosevelt’s international big stick was the navy to protect America’s spheres of interest overseas, especially in the Western Hemisphere: “If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build, and keep at a pitch of the highest training, a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.”65 Just how much naval strength America needed depended on that of one’s potential foes and friends, but: “Better a thousand times err on the side of over readiness to fight, than to err on the side of tame submission to injury, or cold-blooded indifference to the misery of the oppressed.”66
The United States would intervene in foreign countries only as a last resort when violence threatened American lives and property: “All that we desire is to see all neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendliness. Brutal wrongdoing or an impotence that results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may finally require intervention by some civilized country, and in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty.”67
Roosevelt was a master of saber-rattling and gunboat policy. His most decisive assertion came in 1903, when he manipulated Panama’s independence from Colombia then a treaty with the new government that granted the United States the right to build, run, and defend a canal within a ten-mile wide swath from sea to sea. The key to his success was an American warship and 400 marines that squared off with as many Colombians; after a tense standoff, the Colombians sailed away. In 1907, he had a fleet of sixteen battleships and ten support vessels painted white and dispatched on a goodwill visit around the world, a feat that excited the popular imagination at the time much as the moon walk did six decades later. Yet the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation of the globe was no mere public relations stunt. It was an assertion of American geopolitical power that especially targeted Japan and Germany for intimidation.
A critical component behind the success of any foreign policy was enlisting the public’s support by educating them of its necessity. Otherwise an ignorant and emotional public could derail that policy. He explained: “This people of ours simply does not understand how things are outside our own boundaries; of course I do not desire to act unless I can get the bulk of our people to understand the situation and to back up the action; and to do that I have got to get the facts vividly before them.”68 He lamented that: “I suppose the United States will always be unready for war, and in consequence will always be exposed to great expense, and to the possibility of the gravest calamity, when the Nation goes to war. This is no new thing. Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience.”69
Despite the shortcomings he found among many of his countrymen, Roosevelt reveled in being an American, whose essence was defined by “spirit, conviction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace.”70 The nearly two years he spent in several prolonged periods in Europe reinforced his nationalism. Amid one trip he triumphantly wrote that “the more I see, the better satisfied I am that I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”71 Yet he was no sentimentalist when he assessed American national character: “We are barbarians of a certain kind. And what is most unpleasant we are barbarians with a certain middle-class Philistine quality of ugliness and pettiness, raw con-
ceit and raw sensitiveness. Where we get highly civilized, as in the northeast, we seem to become civilized in an unoriginal and ineffective way.”72
Theodore Roosevelt is among those instantly recognizable American icons. Although the Mount Rushmore sculpture is his best known image, there are hundreds of photos. Most images are of him posed with his family or friends or alone behind a desk in his various offices or triumphantly cradling a rifle and standing beside a wild beast he has just shot. Some photos capture him on the campaign trail amid throngs of people, romping with his children, or engaged in other vigorous actions. The photos generally reveal three versions of Roosevelt: jaw jutting, scowling, and pounding the air with his fist as he harangues a crowd; grinning wildly; or staring solemnly. Cartoonists loved him for his mouth seemingly filled with oversized teeth, his short hair neatly parted in the middle, his thick-lensed granny eyeglasses, his bushy walrus moustache, his chubby cheeks, and his ever stouter body. The black and white photos do not reveal his bluish-gray eyes and the light brown hair of his younger years that morphed steel-gray during his late forties and grayish-white during his late fifties. Recordings reveal a surprising high-pitched voice that chewed off words for emphasis. He was five foot eight inches tall, average for his epoch. He was skinny as a boy, lean and muscular in his twenties, then fattened steadily as he passed through middle to old age as even his frenetic activities could not burn off all the calories he devoured; he gorged daily on three huge multicourse meals and rarely skimped on seconds or even thirds. In his last years gout and old injuries made walking painful. After leaving the White House, he insisted on being referred to as Colonel Roosevelt rather than Mr. President, thus offering an insight into his values. The worst thing one could call him was “Teddy,” a term of endearment reserved solely to his wife and sisters.
Yet behind these quasi-heroic, quasi-cartoonish images was a consummate master of the art of American power.
NOTES
1. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1087.
2. Roosevelt to William Potter, April 23, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:216–17.
3. Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 643.
4. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1922), 357.
5. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1897), 1:265.
6. Gary M. Marshall, “The Evaluation of Presidents: An Extension of the Schlesinger Polls,” The Journal of American History, vol. 57, no. 1 (June 1970), 104–13; Elmer Pilschke, “Rating Presidents and Diplomats in Chief,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4 (Fall 1985), 725–42; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 112, no. 2 (Summer 1997), 179–90; Robert K. Murray and Tim H. Blessing, Greatness in the White House (College Station: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 8–9, 15.
7. For the most prominent critical biographies, see: Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931); Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative Years, 1858–1886 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1958); Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1958); Stefan Lorant, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Doubleday, 1959); William Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961, 1975); Nathan Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (New York: William Morrow, 1992); Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1979); David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982); H.W. Brands, T.R.: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1997); Louis Auchincloss, Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Times Books, 2001); Dalton, Kathleen, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Random House, 2002).
For the most prominent critical political biographies, see: John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); David H. Burton, Theodore Roosevelt, American Politician: An Assessment (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997); Paul Grondahl, I Rose like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 2004); Joshua David Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt: The Preacher of Righteousness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
For the most prominent critical books on his presidency, see: George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper, 1958); Willard B. Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1970); David H. Burton, The Learned Presidency: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson (London: Associated University Press, 1988); Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Modern Library, 2001); Alda DiPace Donald, Lion in the White House: A Life of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Basic Books, 2007); Peri Arnold, Remaking the Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, 1901–1916 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011).
8. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 89.
9. For a good book on how Roosevelt developed and asserted his values, see: Joshua David Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt: The Preacher of Righteousness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
10. Roosevelt speech to the Naval War College, June 2, 1897, Roosevelt Works, 2:69.
11. Roosevelt Autobiography, 35.
12. Watts, Rough Rider in the White House, 182.
13. Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt, May 15, 1886, Roosevelt Letters, 1:101.
14. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, xxxi–xxxii. In 2002, New Mexico gubernatorial candidate shook 13,392 hands on one day.
15. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 614–15.
16. Brands, T.R., 320.
17. Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval History of the War of 1812: The History of the United States Navy during the Last War with Great Britain (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1882), 171.
18. Roosevelt address to Congress, December 5, 1905, Roosevelt Works, 15:280.
19. Harry J. Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), 75.
20. Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, 1800, Roosevelt Works, 13:474–75.
21. Roosevelt to Douglas Robinson, April 2, 1898, Roosevelt Letters, 2:809.
22. Roosevelt Autobiography, 211–12.
23. Theodore Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, November 18, 1888, Roosevelt Letters, 1:149.
24. Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1938), 2:180–81.
25. Edward J. Renehan, The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 25.
26. David S. Barry, Forty Years in Washington (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), 279.
27. Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 14, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:858.
28. Brands, T.R., 388.
29. Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 17.
30. Roosevelt Autobiography, 273.
31. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1087.
32. Roosevelt to William Potter, April 23, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:216–17.
33. Roosevelt to Joseph Bishop, March 23, 1905, Bishop Letters, 1:433. See also: Ronald Reter, “President Theodore Roosevelt and the Senate’s ‘Advice and Consent,’ to Treaties,” Historian, vol. 44, no. 4 (1982), 483–504.
34. Roosevelt to William Howard Taft, September 17, 1906, Roosevelt Letters, 5:414.
35. Roosevelt address, Columbus Ohio, February 21, 1912, Roosevelt Works, 17:138.
36. Brands, T.R., 472.
37. Roosevelt to George Trevelyan, June 19, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1088.
38. Brands, T.R., 518.
39. Donald V. Weatherman, Endangered Guardians: Party Reform within a Constitutional System (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 39.
40. Roosevelt to Willard Straight, January 13, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1005.
41. For a good article, see: George Juergens, “President Roosevelt and the Press,” Daedalus, vol. 111, no. 4 (1982), 113–33. For broader studies of the mass media and Roosevelt’s era, see: Ted T. Smythe, The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900 (New York: Praeger, 2003); Fiona Dean Halloran, Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
42. William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White, ed. Sally Foreman Griffith (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1990), 297.
43. Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds of Roosevelt, 108.
44. Morris, Theodore Rex, 360.
45. Roosevelt Autobiography, 234.
46. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, xv.
47. Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 275.
48. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918, 2000), 417, 418.
49. William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961, 1975), 303.
50. Michael Teague, ed., Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth (New York: Doubleday, 1981), 156.
51. Roosevelt to Granville Hall, November 29, 1899, Roosevelt Letters, 2:100.
52. Roosevelt to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, March 7, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:966.
53. Roosevelt to Edwin Arlington Robinson, March 27, 1916, Roosevelt Letters, 8:1024.
54. George E. Mowry, The Era and Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 48, 111.
55. Roosevelt to Oliver Wendell Holmes, December 5, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:1059.
56. Willard B. Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1970), 213–15.
57. Roosevelt to John Mott, October 12, 1908, Roosevelt Letters, 6:1283–84.
58. Morris, Rise of Roosevelt, 790.
59. Roosevelt Annual Address, December 2, 1902, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:624.
60. Roosevelt Annual Address, December 3, 1901, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:575.
61. Brands, T.R., 534.
62. Roosevelt speech, Naval War College, June 2, 1897, Roosevelt Works, 2:69.
63. Roosevelt address, San Francisco, May 13, 1903, Roosevelt Addresses, 1:394.
64. Roosevelt Autobiography, 115.
65. Roosevelt Address, Chicago, Roosevelt Addresses, April 2, 1903, 1:266.
66. Roosevelt, Washington’s Forgotten Maxim, Roosevelt Works, 2:146.
67. Roosevelt to Elihu Root, May 20, 1904, Roosevelt Letters, 4:801.
68. Howard Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1956), 455. For a good book on the manipulation of the mass media and public opinion during the Roosevelt epoch, see: Robert C. Hildebrand, Power and the People: Executive Management of Public Opinion in Foreign Affairs, 1897–1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).
69. Roosevelt Autobiography, 114.
70. Theodore Roosevelt, “True Americanism,” Roosevelt Works, 13:13–26. For good studies of Roosevelt’s patriotism and nationalism, see: Gary Gerstle “Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism,” Journal of American History, vol. 86, no. 3 (1999), 1280–1307; Paul M. Rego, The American Ideal: Theodore Roosevelt’s Search for American Individualism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008).
71. Brands, T.R., 188.
72. Roosevelt to Cecil Rice, August 13, 1897, Roosevelt Letters, 1:648.
XXXIV.
Lerohanok a Városház-utcába és egyideig a kocsisok között állva, szemmel tartom a Victoria kapuját. De hiszen ő ma este rokonaival van együtt. Erre bemegyek a szállóba és beszélek a portással.
– Igen, a nagyságos asszony idehaza van. Második emelet, 12.
– Tehát a nagyságos asszony nincs a rokonainál?
– Nincs.
– Hamarosan elutazik?
– Eddig nem szólt semmit.
Megint kimegyek és a kocsisok kocsijuk fedelét lehajtva, magukhoz tessékelnek. Kiválasztok egyet és beszállok.
– Hova parancsolja?
– Itt fogunk állni. Óraszám fogadom föl magát.
A kocsisok összesugnak. Az egyik ezt mondja, a másik azt. Hogy biztosan vigyázni fog a szállodára, a felesége biztosan bent van egy kereskedelmi utazónál.
Igen, vigyázok a szállodára. Egyik-másik szobában világosság van és hirtelen eszembe jut, hogy ő fönn állhat az egyik ablakban és láthat engem.
– Várjon – mondom a kocsisnak és bemegyek a szállóba.
– Hol van a 12-es szoba?
– A második emelten.
– És az ablakai a Városház-utcára nyilnak?
– Igen.
– Akkor, ugy látszik, mégis a hugom integetett – mondom és hazudom, hogy bejuthassak.
Fölmegyek a lépcsőn és nehogy vissza találjak fordulni, azonnal kopogok, amint megtalálom a számot. Semmi válasz. Még egyszer kopogok.
– A szobalány van kint? – kérdi valaki bentről.
Nem mondhattam, hogy igen, a hangom elárult volna. Megnyomtam a kilincset. Be volt zárva. Ugylátszik félt, hogy jövök és talán látott is kint.
– Nem a szobalány van itt – mondom és hallom, hogy szavaim mily idegenül konganak.
Hosszu ideig várok és hallgatózom. Motozást hallok belülről, de ajtót nem nyit senki. Ekkor valamelyik szobából két rövid csöngetés hallatszik a portáshoz. Ez ő – mondom magamban –, idehivja a leányt, mert nyugtalan. Elmegyek az ajtajától, nehogy őrültséget kövessek el és amikor a lány jön, találkozom vele és ugy teszek, mintha lefelé mennék. Hallom még, amint a lány mondja: Igen, a szobalány. És hogy nyilik az ajtó.
– Nem a’ – mondja megint a lány –, csak egy ur volt, aki éppen most ment le.
Arra gondoltam, hogy kiveszek egy szobát a szállóban, de meggondoltam, hogy ő nem olyan asszony, aki kereskedelmi utazókkal szokott találkozni. Mikor lemegyek a portáshoz, menetközben mondom neki, hogy a nagyságos asszony bizonyára már lefeküdt.
Aztán kimegyek és megint beülök a kocsiba. Az idő mulik, az óra szalad, a kocsis azt kérdi, nem fázom-e? Ó igen, egy kicsit. Kérdi,
hogy várok-e valakit? Igen… ideadja a takaróját a bakról és mert ilyen kedves, valami borravalót adok neki.
Az idő mulik. Egyik óra a másik után telik el. A kocsisok már nem röstelkednek, hanem hangosan mondják egymásnak, hogy tönkrefagyasztom a lovat.
Nem, ez tényleg nem használ. Kifizetem a kocsit, hazamegyek és ezt a levelet irom:
„Nem volt szabad irnom, megengedi-e legalább hogy lássam? Érdeklődni fogok a szállodában holnap délután 5 órakor.
Korábbi időpontot irjak? Hiszen a délelőtti világosság olyan erős, hogyha meg leszek hatva és a szám vonaglani kezd, rémesen fogok festeni.
Magam vittem a levelet a Victoriába és megint hazamentem.
Egy hosszu éjszaka és milyen hosszuak voltak az órák! Nem tudok aludni, most, amikor kellene, hogy megerősödjem és friss legyek. Hajnalodott, fölkeltem. Miután sokáig csatangoltam az utcákon össze-vissza, megint hazarohanok, lefekszem és alszom.
Az órák telnek, amikor fölébredek és összeszedem a gondolataimat, a telefonhoz sietek és megkérdezem, hogy elutazotte?
– Nem, a nagyságos asszony nem utazott el.
Akkor hál’ Istennek mégsem akar előlem menekülni, mert a levelemet már régen megkaphatta. Nem, tegnap csak szerencsétlenül választottam meg az időt, ez volt az egész.
Eszem és ujra lefekszem aludni és amikor fölébredek, dél már elmult. Erre megint a telefonhoz sietek és oda kérek kapcsolást.
– Nem, a nagyságos asszony nem utazott el, de már becsomagolt. Most nincs idehaza.
Gyorsan elkészülök és rögtön lehajtatok a Városház-utcába és figyelek. Egy fél óra alatt sokan járnak ki és be a szálloda kapuján, de ő nincs közöttük. Most 5 óra van, bemegyek a szállóba.
– A nagyságos asszony elutazott.
– Elutazott?…
– Ön telefonált? Abban a pillanatban jött haza és elvitte a holmijait, de levelet hagyott itt.
Átveszem a levelet és anélkül, hogy fölbontanám, megkérdezem, hogy mikor megy a vonat.
– A vonat 4 óra 45 perckor ment el – mondja a portás és az órájára néz. Most 5 óra.
Fél órát pocsékoltam el a várakozással.
Leülök egy lépcsőfokra és magam elé meredek. A portás tovább fecseg és azt mondja, hogyha jól sejti, az a hölgy nem a hugom volt.
– Mondtam a nagyságos asszonynak, hogy éppen most telefonált egy ur. De csak annyit felelt, hogy nincs ideje és hogy adjam át önnek ezt a levelet.
– Volt vele egy másik hölgy is, amikor elutazott?
– Nem.
Fölugrom és megyek. Az utcán fölbontom a levelet és olvasom:
„Nem szabad üldöznie többé –“
Egészen kábultan a zsebembe dugom. Nem csudálkoztam, nem tett rám semmi nagyobb hatást. Igazi asszonyi munka. Kapkodó szavak az első benyomás után, aláhuzás, gondolatjel…
Azután eszembe jut, hogy elmegyek Erzsébet kisasszonyhoz. Ez volt az utolsó reményem. Hallom, amint a csengő berreg odabent, ahogy megnyomom a gombot és hallgatózom, mint a zugó orkánban.
– Erzsébet kisasszony egy órája elutazott. *
Erre sok bor és sok whisky következik, nagy tömeg whyski. És ujabb huszonegynapos dorbézolás következik, ami alatt függöny ereszkedik földi öntudatom elé. Ebben az állapotomban jut eszembe az egyik napon, hogy kis csinos aranyrámás tükröt küldök egy vidéki házikóba. Egy Olga nevü lánykának, aki éppen olyan kedves és csinos, mint valami kis borju.
Igen, mert a neuraszténiám még megvan.
A favágógép a szobámban fekszik. Nem tudom többé összeállitani, mert farészeinek legnagyobb részét otthagytam egy vidéki paplakban. Egészen mindegy, ha a szerelmem őiránta megszünt. Neuraszténiás uraim, beteg emberek vagyunk mi és annyit sem érünk, mint bármelyik állat…
Azután egy szép napon meguntam a hosszu öntudatlanságot és megint elutaztam egy szigetre.
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