My gripes with “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt”
I enjoyed reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris and plan to eventually read the other two books in the trilogy. Out of all the other presidential biographies I’ve read, this is the only one where I amassed a collection of “WTF” doodles.
Here are my beefs.
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Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. was appointed Collector of Customs to the Port of New York by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The elder Roosevelt thought he was being rewarded for the awesome stuff he’d done for New York City. In reality, Hayes was sticking it to Roscoe Conkling and his big, dumb machine. (My words, not Hayes’.)
Roscoe wanted Chester Arthur reappointed to the post. Aaaaand with one sentence, Morris’ credibility was shattered for me.
“The fact that Arthur was himself decent and incorruptible…”
What’s that now?
In 1877, Chester Arthur hadn’t yet dragged someone out of bed to bully him into giving up his cabinet post (yeah, that happened) but he was still corrupt. And about five years from being reformed by pen pal Julia Sand. This book was published in 1979… maybe all of Arthur’s terribleness wasn’t fully known then…? In any case, these two adjectives (“decent” and “Incorruptible”) made me wary.
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“Her skirts droop sexily over his shoe.”
Cloth touching leather. 🔥🔥🔥
I hope this post isn’t too sexy for you. Good thing he threw in the word “droop” which dilutes the sexiness.
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“Dusk came early, as always in Albany, for the little city straggles up the right bank of the …”
Does proximity to a river affect sunset? The moon affects tides. Do rivers affect the sun? Does proximity to a river negate the seasonality of sunsets? As someone who has lived in Albany, dusk doesn’t always come at the same time. And the Hudson River is nearly always there. (It’s always there.)
Feel free to correct me in the comments below if I clearly don’t understand how rivers, dusk, or Albany works.
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Nine months pregnant, Alice “obviously longed for the lusty male presence of her spouse.”
Alice is with her mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, her sister-in-law’s newborn baby, and is 9-months pregnant and is thinking “where’s that lusty man of mine?” Add to it that their papers were destroyed, this seems like a very big leap.
NOTE: there are other definitions for “lusty”. I still think this is an odd word choice. Even without “lusty”… longed for the “male presence of her spouse”? Still weird. Maybe just “she missed her husband.” I am not an etymologist or a historian. But I have been nine months pregnant two times more than this author and that’s not nothing.
Another questionable adjective choice: “plump” to describe a sister-in-law when the evidence hardly justifies it.
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This book claims that Edith claimed years later that if Alice hadn’t died, Theodore would have been driven to suicide by sheer boredom.
Why would Theodore grow and mature over the years, but Edith was destined to be a perma “child-wife”…? I’m dubious.
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“Like most Americans, Roosevelt had a profound contempt for sheep.”
Huh?
So, I looked into it a bit. There did seem to be a big cattle vs. sheep thing going on at the time. Saying “most American ranchers” would have been more accurate. Even “like many Americans during this time period”…
Maybe Morris thought all Americans both owned ranches and hated sheep? Or perhaps he met a few sheep-despising Americans and assume it was a foible shared by the whole lot? He was pretty new to the United States, after all. Perhaps during the decade he was here, he disproportionally encountered only staunch sheep-haters. (Given that Morris lived in NYC, it seems unlikely that he was naturally surrounded by people talking about or harboring contempt for sheep. But you never know.)
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“…yet in the glow of her flesh there was a hint of earthiness and much sexual potential.”
And you know what else? Her dress had pockets!! Pockets!
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“He may have heard rumors that the white Arctic owl had been seen in Montana, but only the [Native Americans] knew what that sign portended.”
This feels very ominous and foreshadowy. I looked it up — the white Arctic owl can symbolize death. Two things:
As far as I can tell, this reference had nothing to do with anything at all.
When this book came out, people didn’t have access to the internet. Unless the reader already knew the symbolism, they’d just be left feeling like this was somehow important but not sure how or why.
Full disclosure, I thought I caught Morris in a geographic goof… but the joke is on me.
Las Vegas, New Mexico is a real place.
Whattaya think?
Have you read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, or the other book books in the trilogy? Let me know what you think below.
