Teddy Roosevelt (стр. 2 из 2)

(Left to right):
Quentin (1897-1918), Theodore (1858-1919), Theodore Jr. (1887-1944), Archibald (1894-1979),Alice Lee (1884-1980), Kermit (1889-1943), Edith Kermit (1861-1948),
and Ethel Carow (1891-1977)

Like Roosevelt himself, the first family was young, energetic, and a novelty in the White House. Public interest in them was spontaneous, as pictures of Theodore, Edith, and their six children began appearing in newspapers and magazines. For once in history, the executive mansion acquired aspects of a normal American home, complete, with roller skates, bicycles, and tennis racquets.

Theodore Roosevelt's eldest child, Alice Lee, was an impressionable teenager when the family moved into the White House in 1901. High-spirited and defiant by nature, she enjoyed pushing the limits of decorum, while competing for her father's attention. Naturally she was a favorite of the press, which called her Princess Alice. Stories about her antics, her favorite color, a blue-gray dubbed "Alice blue," and her cast of acquaintances filled the newspapers. She smoked in public, bet at the racetrack, and was caught speeding in her red runabout by the Washington police. Photographs of her connote the classic Gibson Girl and suggest an air of youthful haughtiness. In 1906, she married Nicholas Longworth, a Republican congressman from Ohio. He was fifteen years her senior, short and bald, and something of a bon vivant. Their White House wedding was the most talked-about social event of the Roosevelt years.

At the invitation of the first family, John Singer Sargent was a White House guest for a week in the middle of February 1903, while he painted a portrait of the President. For Sargent, the foremost Anglo-American portraitist of his era, the experience was vexing in many respects. Particularly, Sargent found the President's strong will daunting from the start. The choice of a suitable place to paint, where the lighting was good, tried Roosevelt's patience. No room on the first floor agreed with the artist. When they began climbing the staircase, Roosevelt told Sargent he did not think the artist knew what he wanted. Sargent replied that he did not think Roosevelt knew what was involved in posing for a portrait. Roosevelt, who had just reached the landing, swung around, placing his hand on the newel and said, "Don't I!" Sargent saw his opportunity and told the President not to move; this would be the pose and the location for the sittings. Still, over the next few days Sargent was frustrated by the President's busy schedule, which limited their sessions to a half-hour after lunch. Sargent would have liked to have had more time. Nevertheless, Roosevelt considered the portrait a complete success. He liked it immensely, and continued to favor it for the rest of his life. Commissioned by the federal government, Sargent's Roosevelt is the official White House portrait of the twenty-sixth President.

On an extended visit to the West in the spring of 1903, President Roosevelt sought the company of naturalists John Burroughs and John Muir. With Burroughs, Roosevelt camped in Yellowstone Park for two weeks, and with Muir he explored the wonders of the Yosemite Valley and had his picture taken in front of a giant sequoia tree in the Mariposa Grove. Roosevelt's visit was an opportunity for Muir to be able to impress upon the President the need for immediate preservation measures, especially for the giant forests. In 1908, Roosevelt paid tribute to Muir by designating Muir Woods, a redwood forest north of San Francisco, a national monument.

A hunting trip President Roosevelt made into the swamps of Mississippi in 1902 became legendary when he refused to shoot an exhausted black bear, which had been run down by a pack of hounds and roped to a tree. Although the incident was reported in the local press, Clifford K. Berryman, a staff artist for the Washington Post, made it memorable on November 16 with a small front-page cartoon titled "Drawing the Line in Mississippi." Roosevelt is shown holding a rifle, but refusing to shoot the bedraggled bear. The bear, however, received no executive clemency; Roosevelt ordered someone else to put the creature out of its misery. Clifford Berryman elected to keep the bear alive in his cartoons, and it evolved, ever more cuddly, as a companion to Roosevelt, ultimately spawning the Teddy Bear craze.

The Restless Hunter , 1909 - 1919

Only once in American history had a President vacated the White House and then returned to it again as President. This had been Grover Cleveland's unique destiny in 1893. That this had occurred within recent memory, and to a politician in whose footsteps Roosevelt had followed as governor of New York and finally as President, must have given Roosevelt reason to pause as he himself became a private citizen again in March 1909. He was only fifty years old, the youngest man to leave the executive office. Cleveland had been just eighteen months older when he temporarily yielded power to Benjamin Harrison in 1889. For the record, Roosevelt claimed that he was through with politics. This was the only thing he could have said as William Howard Taft, his successor, waited in the wings. Theodore Roosevelt had enjoyed being President as much as any person possibly could. Filling the post-White House vacuum would require something big and grand, and with that in mind, Roosevelt planned his immediate future. The prospect of a yearlong safari in Africa brightened for him what otherwise would have been the dreary prospect of retirement. It "will let me down to private life without that dull thud of which we hear so much," he wrote.

Aided by several British experts, Roosevelt oversaw every preparation: itinerary, gear and clothing, food and provisions, weapons, personnel, and expenses. He had been an avid naturalist and hunter since the days of his youth. Because he was genuinely interested in the African fauna, he arranged for his safari to be as scientific as possible, and enticed the Smithsonian Institution to join the expedition by offering to contribute extensively to its fledgling collection of wildlife specimens. Roosevelt invited his son, Kermit, along for companionship, if the lad would be willing to interrupt his first year of studies at Harvard. Kermit needed no persuading.

By President Roosevelt's last year in the White House, he had long grown tired of requests to sit to photographers and portrait painters. Only as a favor to an old friend from England, Arthur Lee, did he agree to sit for a portrait by the accomplished Hungarian born artist, Philip A. de Laszlo. The sittings took place in the spring of 1908, about which Roosevelt reported enthusiastically to Lee. "I took a great fancy to Laszlo himself," he wrote, "and it is the only picture which I really enjoyed having painted." Laszlo encouraged the President to invite guests to the sittings to keep Roosevelt entertained. "And if there weren't any visitors," said Roosevelt, "I would get Mrs. Laszlo, who is a trump, to play the violin on the other side of the screen." When the painting was finished, Roosevelt said that he liked it "better than any other."

Ten years later, however, Roosevelt expressed a preference for Sargent's portrait, done in 1903, which he thought had "a singular quality, a blend of both the spiritual and the heroic." Still he thought that Mrs. Roosevelt favored Laszlo's more relaxed image, a trademark of the artist's ingratiating style.

Three weeks after Theodore Roosevelt left the White House in March 1909, he embarked with his son, Kermit, upon an African safari, lasting nearly a year. He had always wanted to hunt the big game of Africa, but he also wanted his expedition to be as scientific as possible. With this in mind, he invited the Smithsonian Institution to take part, and promised to give the Institution significant animal trophies, representing dozens of new species for its collections. Roosevelt himself made extensive scientific notes about his African expedition. For instance, he was keenly interested in the flora of Africa, and recorded the dietary habits of the animals he killed after examining the contents of their stomachs.

While on safari, Roosevelt wrote extensively about his African adventure. Scribner's magazine was paying him $50,000 for a series of articles, that appeared in 1910 as a book, African Game Trails. This photograph of Roosevelt with a bull elephant was used as an illustration.

In March 1910, Roosevelt ended his eleven month African safari and, reunited with his wife, embarked on an extended tour of Europe. He accepted many invitations from national sovereigns and gave much anticipated lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Oxford University in England. In Norway, he delivered finally his formal acceptance speech for having won the Nobel Peace Prize four years earlier. "I am received everywhere," he wrote, "with as much wild enthusiasm as if I were on a Presidential tour at home."

This cover of Harper's Weekly, June 18, 1910, was one of numerous graphic commentaries celebrating Roosevelt's return to the United States.

Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer used to jest that William Howard Taft was the politest man in Washington, because he was perfectly capable of giving up his seat on a streetcar to three ladies. Taft's amicable disposition it was said that his laugh was one of the "great American institutions" was the foremost quality that won Roosevelt's admiration. "I think he has the most lovable personality I have ever come in contact with," said Roosevelt. As governor general of the Philippines and then as secretary of war, Taft proved to be a troubleshooter in Roosevelt's cabinet. His longtime ambition had been to someday sit with Justice Brewer on the bench of the Supreme Court. Taft would ultimately succeed to the Court, but not before Roosevelt pegged him to be his successor. "Taft will carry on the work substantially as I have carried it on," predicted Roosevelt. "His policies, principles, purposes and ideals are the same as mine." Yet when Taft later proved to be his own person, Roosevelt was distraught. Taft failed to convey the spirit of progressivism to which Roosevelt was ever leaning. "There is no use trying to be William Howard Taft with Roosevelt's ways," he bemoaned, "our ways are different."

Coaxed by his political admirers, and personally dissatisfied with what he considered to be President Taft's lack of leadership, Roosevelt announced early in 1912 that he would run for a historic third presidential term, if the GOP nomination were tendered to him. This was a monumental decision on his part, one he made contrary to his own established beliefs in the tradition of party loyalty, and without the full backing of party leaders. Roosevelt was counting on winning the support of the people, and was successful in those states that had direct primaries. But in June, at the Republican convention in Chicago, the party machine wrested control of the proceedings and nominated President Taft easily after the Roosevelt delegates had walked out. This was the start of the Progressive Party, in which Roosevelt proudly accepted the nomination. The press was especially happy to have him back in the running. From the moment he declared, "My hat is in the ring," he became the most visible, if not viable, candidate. Ultimately, Roosevelt would beat Taft in the election, but he would lose to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. This cover of Judge, August 6, 1910, raised "the question" from early on--"Can a champion come back?"

Theodore Roosevelt once declared himself to be "as strong as a bull moose." The appellation stuck and the moose became the popular symbol for the Progressive Party under Roosevelt. This cartoon depicting the mascots of the major parties appeared in Harper's Weekly, July 20, 1912, just before the "Bull Moose" convention opened in Chicago.

Chronology of the Public Career of Theodore Roosevelt

1882-1884 - New York State Assemblyman

1889-1895 - United States Civil Service Commissioner

1895-1897 - New York City Police Commissioner

1897-1898 - Assistant Secretary of the Navy

1898 - Rough Rider

1899-1900 - Governor of New York

1901- Vice President of the United States

1901-1909 - President of the United States

Source

1. www.yahoo.com

2. http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/roosevelt/index.htm