My Brother, Theodore RooseveltRobinson, Corinne Roosevelt
History
My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt
Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
in question might _call_ it a monologue, but as Mr. Barnes had had as
much to do with the conversation as himself, he, personally, would call
it a _dialogue_.” This retort brought down not only the house but the
jury, and the unfortunate opposing lawyer withdrew his objection. That
story and many others my brother recounted to us with humorous and
sarcastic delight, shortly after the end of the trial, around a family
tea-table one Sunday evening at Sagamore Hill.
In September of that year, 1915, we suffered the loss of our beloved
friend Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge. Since the early days of 1884, she
had shared the joys and sorrows of our lives. Beautiful, brilliant,
sympathetic, exquisite in her delicate individuality, in her
intellectual inspiration, in her fine humor and sense of values--her
beautiful head like a rare cameo, her wonderful gray-blue eyes looking
out under dark, level brows, she remains one of the pictures most
treasured in the memories of the Roosevelt family. My brother was
always at his best with her, and I have rarely heard him talk in a
broader and more comprehensive way of politics and literature than in
the homelike library at 1765 Massachusetts Avenue, the house where
Senator and Mrs. Lodge were always surrounded by an intimate circle of
friends. By her tea-table, in the rocking-chair bought especially for
him, Theodore Roosevelt would sit and rock when he snatched a happy
half-hour after his ride with the senator in those old days when he
was the President of the United States. Mrs. Lodge had the power of
stimulating the conversation of others, as well as the gift of leading
in conversation herself, and the best “talk” that I have ever heard was
around her tea-table in Washington. Her sudden death was a great blow
to my brother as it was to us all.
All through that year and through the year to come, although severely
censured for his criticisms of the President’s policies, my brother
worked with arduous determination, shoulder to shoulder with General
Leonard Wood and Augustus P. Gardner, to arouse the American people
to the danger of non-preparedness, and to the shame of allowing the
exhausted Allies to bear without America’s help the brunt of the
battle. Those men of vision realized, fully, that in a world aflame,
no nation could possibly escape the danger of conflagration. Not only
from that standpoint did the apostles of preparedness press forward,
but from the love of democracy also. These courageous patriots wished
to have their country share spontaneously from the beginning the effort
for righteousness for which France, England, and Italy were giving the
lives of the flower of their youth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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