A Tough but Tender Teddy

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 21, 1998 | by Patrick Butters

Theodore Roosevelt -- writer, warrior, politician -- was one of America's legendary figures. An exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery tries to capture some of his many facets.

Visitors to the new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, "Theodore Roosevelt: Icon of the American Century," are greeted by John Singer Sargent's exquisite 1903 oil painting of Roosevelt himself, his right hand gripping the knob of a banister, his left fist on his hip, his gaze firm and steady. The White House chose it as Roosevelt's official portrait, not merely because Sargent was the premier portraitist of his time, but because the artist captured (as TR biographer David McCullough put it so succinctly) the melancholy in his eyes.

But the exhibit (which runs through Feb. 7, 1999) reveals that life was not always bully for the 26th president. Born into privilege and packed into a 5-foot-8-inch, 200-pound frame, Roosevelt was wound tighter than a coiled spring. His 60-year stay on Earth was full of bombast and adventure, yet Roosevelt was just as happy to ponder the poetry of close friend Edward Arlington Robinson as gallop off to war.

Roosevelt's personality was well-suited to politics. (He talked so much at Harvard University that one professor told him, "See here, Roosevelt, I'm conducting this class!") He served as New York assemblyman, police commissioner and governor. He led his troop of Roughriders into the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. He was vice president and, at 42, became the youngest president of the United States. He wrote two dozen books.

People knew TR would become legendary, so most of the artifacts in the exhibit are in pristine condition. "Where do you start?" asks exhibit curator James G. Barber. "Since we had only so much space, we could not cover every aspect of that life." Despite the sheer volume of activity documented in this exhibit -- a tour can be downright exhausting -- Barber avoided pedantry. There is much humor on display, and admirers of TR will even glimpse his soft side.

In an amusing, contradictory letter to his "darling wifey" Alice, he writes that he longs for her "oh so tenderly, doubly tenderly my sweetest." On the same page, he also reports sparring with his boxing teacher and "bloodying his nose by an uppercut and knocking him out of time."

Roosevelt led the rough life of a cowboy in a dandified style. To the left of the Sargent portrait, encased, in glass, is the custom-made 1880s buckskin suit he wore when he worked his cattle ranch in the Dakota Territory's Badlands. (One biographer opined that "his cowboy outfits dimmed the sunsets of the Western skies.") Next to it sits TR's ornate, personally engraved hunting knife with sterling silver sheath and handle crafted by Tiffany in 1885.

"He had the best of everything," Barber says, chuckling. "The other cowboys called him a `dude.'" They laughed when Roosevelt shouted to them, "Hasten forward quickly there!"

This cowboy image saddled Roosevelt for the rest of his life, although his battered hat, pince-nez and droopy mustache made him instantly recognizable -- thanks to cartoonists. Needless to say, the exhibit provides an ample variety of caricatures. As early as his police days, street vendors sold TR masks.

Although the family firmly was planted in Manhattan society, his mother was a Southern sympathizer. His aristocratic father immersed himself in philanthropy, but bought his way out of the Civil War. TR never got over his feeling of shame, leading him to over-romanticize the reality of war. Nevertheless, his militaristic jingoism fit neatly into the time of the Spanish-American War, when U.S. military ships sailed off to Cuba with full orchestras.

As the exhibit later suggests, Roosevelt's warrior spirit was tempered by World War I. His four sons all enlisted; Quentin, his youngest, was killed, leaving his father with guilt of a different kind.

Roosevelt was the victim of one of the most tragic coincidences ever encountered by a future U.S. president. In February 1884 -- on Valentine's Day, no less -- Alice died in childbirth, on the fourth anniversary of their engagement; on the same day, in the same house, his mother died of typhoid fever. A page from Roosevelt's diary of that day -- he was only 22 years old -- shows a black X, two lines high, and the words, "The light has gone out of my life." But he was unwilling to grieve long, preferring action. He went to the Badlands, remarried in London (after hesitating a good deal) and talked no more about his late wife to their only daughter, also named Alice.

Ninety years later, TR's sorrow was recalled by Richard Nixon on the day he resigned as president. In a tearful farewell to his staff, Nixon quoted Roosevelt, as if to comfort himself.

Yet Roosevelt's spirit remains, as does the public's fascination with the colonel. Though Roosevelt could never fully accept his flaws as well as his flair, his people could. And they still do.