The White House tennis club

An elephant holds a tennis rule book that reads, “Love 40–The Deuce,” and thinks, “Every evidence of a dangerous game.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

President Andrew Jackson convened his informal “Kitchen Cabinet,” a term used more by political opponents for executive branch meetings apart from the regular confabs after the scandal-rumor events of the Peggy Eaton Affair. Eventually it came to mean presidential informal advisers, separate from cabinet secretaries. Often, such a circle has provided expert, dispassionate, and private counsel.

President Roosevelt’s version was a wide group of friends, some in the cabinet or other offices in government, and some friends outside government, even foreigners in the diplomatic corps. They were dubbed the “Tennis Cabinet” and indeed tennis was a bond that unified the group — perhaps as much as policy discussions. Roosevelt played tennis almost daily, as weather would allow, on courts built on White House grounds, but refused to be photographed in tennis whites or at play, which he thought would appear undignified.

Roosevelt tenderly wrote of his Tennis Cabinet in his Autobiography when, in the last days of his presidency, the large group, from far and wide, gathered for a luncheon in Washington and presented Roosevelt with a sculpture by Frederic Remington.

When a cartoonist of limited talent draws people, even celebrities, from photographs and deigns not to label them, or provide readers with a contextual news event, posterity confronts something like this drawing by Jack H. Smith in The Washington Herald. It might refer to actual members of the president’s athletic inner circle, possibly accompanying a reporter’s profile, or it might be an allusion to a contemporary crisis (and might explain the elephant “mascot” nervously perusing the rule book). In the latter, and likely, case, the depictions seems to be of Roosevelt friends (and actual Cabinet members) James Rudolph Garfield, Interior; George von Lengerke Meyer, Navy; and the bearded James Wilson, Agriculture.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-03-24

Creator(s)

Smith, Jack H. – 1935

Language

English

Period

U.S. President – 2nd Term (March 1905-February 1909)

Page Count

1

Production Method

Printed

Record Type

Image

Resource Type

Cartoon

Rights

These images are presented through a cooperative effort between the Library of Congress and Dickinson State University. No known restrictions on publication.

Citation