The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created A President
While not on a par with George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) is one of the most well-chronicled presidents in history. With several forests’ worth of trees having fallen in the service of books about Roosevelt and his family—ironic given Roosevelt’s environmentalism—the obvious challenge for a new biographer is finding a new angle.
Edward O’Keefe, the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation and an award-winning journalist found that angle by following the advice of former First Lady Abigail Adams: remember the ladies. He posits that despite Roosevelt’s image as a ruggedly individualistic and uber masculine figure, his career was heavily shaped by five women: his mother, two wives and two sisters.
The result is an interesting, though ultimately unsatisfying, book, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created A President.
O’Keefe writes that “it is clear from what evidence remains that the self-made man is a myth. Roosevelt had, in modern parlance, a support system, one that would care for and cajole, comfort and indulge, advise and listen, inspire and encourage him his entire life. His family, especially these incredible women, informed his career path and values.” (360)
While the role of the women is important, at times he seems to be padding. Perhaps a magazine article might have done the trick, especially considering the many outstanding biographies that have been published, including two Pulitzer Prize winners: Henry Pringle’s Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, and Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
Pringle’s book, the first independent biography of Roosevelt, is quite critical of Roosevelt. In fact, his tone prompted the family of Roosevelt’s frenemy William Howard Taft to designate Pringle Taft’s official biographer.1
Morris’s book is the first (and best) volume of a mostly sympathetic three-volume biography. It does not deal with Roosevelt’s presidency but provides a colorful picture of the events and people that shaped Roosevelt.2
While the role of the women is important, at times he seems to be padding. Perhaps a magazine article might have done the trick, especially considering the many outstanding biographies that have been published, including two Pulitzer Prize winners.
The arc of Roosevelt’s story is well known. He was born into an affluent New York City family, with two head-strong parents who helped him overcome a range of childhood illnesses including chronic asthma. His father, Theodore, Sr., died in 1878 while Teddy was in college. His first wife, Alice, and beloved mother Martha (Mittie), died within hours of each of other in 1884. In 1886, Roosevelt married his first love, Edith, who provided advice and support along with his sisters Anna (known as Bamie) and Corrine (known as Conie.) This team of ladies worked mostly behind the scenes, especially since for much of the time women could not vote.
O’Keefe reminds us that Roosevelt had long been a supporter of women’s equality. In his 1879 senior thesis at Harvard University, he wrote, “I contend that, even as the world now is, it is not only feasible but advisable to make women equal to men before the law…I would have the word ‘obey’ used no more by the wife, than by the husband.” (108)
That is an important point but readers who do not read closely might miss it because O’Keefe spends so much time giving a detailed account of Roosevelt’s courtship of Alice. The events described are relatively unremarkable and typical of wealthy people during the late nineteenth century. O’Keefe could have made more judicious use of the delete key.
O’Keefe’s account of TR’s career as a legislator, municipal official, and war hero are solid, but he does not break much new ground.
We do learn that it was Bamie who introduced her brother to Richard Harding Davis, the swashbuckling war correspondent whose dispatches about TR’s exploits during the Spanish-American War helped cement his reputation as a war hero.
During his subsequent 1898 campaign for governor of New York, where he played up his war record, Conie became Roosevelt’s unofficial publicist by sharing the letters he had written her during the war with selected journalists.
When he became Governor, Edith and both sisters advised him on strategy and other matters. Conie sometimes sat in on meetings and said nothing but afterwards she would share her observations with her brother. TR would often greet his sisters by saying “Haven’t we had fun being governor of New York State.”(253)
As for Edith, she was both a well-regarded first lady of New York and a political adviser to TR. “Though she proved to be a cordial hostess, she was also engaged with and informed about the governor’s business and delivered informed opinions when asked. This was not traditional with governors’ wives,” O’Keefe writes. (254)
TR later wrote: “Whenever I go against her judgment, I regret it.” (218)
Edith was also considered by many to be a better judge of people than he was. The book would have been better if O’Keefe had mentioned some of the policy and personnel decisions she weighed in on.
She was so outspoken and strong willed that author Henry Adams, a good friend of the family, wrote that TR stood in “abject terror of Edith.” (218) And O’Keefe concludes that the assessment “is provocative and rings with at least a modicum of truth, but it does not tell the whole tale. He respected her, her judgment, and her opinions.” (218)
Those wanting to take a deeper dive into Edith Roosevelt’s life and work will enjoy Sylvia Jukes Morris’s (Edmund’s wife) book Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady.3
As president, TR relied on his wife and sisters as sounding boards and to relay the unvarnished truth of what was happening in the country.
When TR brokered a settlement of the anthracite coal strike of 1902 that was crippling the nation’s economy, Edith and Bamie were in regular contact with him and helped persuade him to intervene even though there was no statutory requirement that he do so.
O’Keefe reminds us that Roosevelt had long been a supporter of women’s equality. In his 1879 senior thesis at Harvard University, he wrote, “I contend that, even as the world now is, it is not only feasible but advisable to make women equal to men before the law…I would have the word ‘obey’ used no more by the wife, than by the husband.”
TR joked afterward that “Auntie Bye [a nickname for Bamie] is as dear as ever and oversees the entire nation.” (292)
One astute observer of these relationships wrote: “[TR] put a great deal of trust in Auntie Bye who helped him a great deal, I believe, in analyzing situations.” (292)
That writer was TR’s niece Eleanor, who would of course go on to become arguably the most influential first lady in history during the presidency of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
O’Keefe is quite fond of TR and the women who shaped him. But admiration is not enough to carry an entire book. While fans of the late president will enjoy the book, they will not learn much that has not been written elsewhere.
