My Brother, Theodore RooseveltRobinson, Corinne Roosevelt
History
My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt
Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
We had dined with friends before the reception, and were therefore late
in reaching the castle, and were literally the last people at the end
of the long queue approaching the dais on which Lord and Lady Leven and
Melville stood. As King Edward had himself stepped forward to meet me
in Buckingham Palace, I was not surprised when Lord Leven and Melville
stepped down from the dais, and I expected him also to ask news of my
brother, the President of the United States, as King Edward had done,
but to my great surprise, and be it confessed intense pleasure, I heard
the lord high commissioner speak as follows: “Mrs. Douglas Robinson,
you have been greeted with special courtesy in our country because of
your distinguished brother, the President of the United States, but
I am greeting you with even greater interest because of your father,
the first Theodore Roosevelt. You probably do not remember, for you
were a little girl at the time, that a raw-boned young Scotchman named
Ronald Leslie Melville came long ago to New York and was much at your
home, having had letters of introduction to your father as one of the
men best fitted to teach him the modern philanthropic methods used in
America. Only to-day,” he continued, “I told the children of Edinburgh,
assembled, as is the custom, to listen to the lord high commissioner,
that the father of the present President of the United States was the
first man who taught me to _love_ my fellow men.”
My heart was very full as I made my courtesy and answered the lord high
commissioner. Before he let me pass on he said, with a charming smile:
“If you and Mr. Robinson will come tomorrow to lunch with us quietly
I will take you to Lord Darnley’s room, which is my dressing-room
during the week of Holyrood festivities, and on my dressing-table
you will see the photograph of your father, for I never go anywhere
without it.” I accepted the invitation gladly, and the next day we
went to Holyrood Castle, lunched informally with the delightful
chatelain and chatelaine, and I was taken, as the former promised, to
see Lord Damley’s room, where my father’s face smiled at me from the
dressing-table. My brother loved to hear me tell this story, and I feel
that it is not amiss to include it in any recollections concerning my
brother, for he was truly the spirit of my father reincarnate.
In May, 1902, Mrs. Roosevelt writes that “Theodore” is just about
to leave for a hunting trip, which she hopes will “rest” him. (The
rest the year before, of writing a life of Oliver Cromwell, had not
been made quite strenuous enough for a real rest!) Later he returned
and made a famous speech in Providence, a speech epoch-making, and
recognized as such by an English newspaper, _The Morning Post_ of
August 27, 1902, a clipping from which I have at hand, and which runs
as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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