Your TR Source
President Roosevelt received a telegram from Ambassador Henry White stating Sir Cecil Spring Rice will sail next Wednesday and requests to stay with Henry Adams and visit Sir Ronald Craufurd Munro Ferguson. Roosevelt asks Secretary of State Hay to contact Adams and Ferguson on the matter.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-01-13
Theodore Roosevelt previously wrote on science and religion before receiving Emile Boutroux’s volume on the topic. He is “delighted” with the book and the sketch of Henry James. Roosevelt wishes he had a few days to discuss the subject with Boutroux.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-11-09
President Roosevelt disagrees with several statements Secretary of State John Hay wrote. While Hay was one of the most “delightful characters” Roosevelt had ever met, he found Hay lacking leadership qualities as a Secretary of State. Roosevelt provides Senator Lodge with his view of the Alaska Boundary dispute in 1903. He includes copies of the letters Roosevelt wrote to Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry White to show to British Secretary of State for the Colonies James Chamberlain and Prime Minister James Arthur Balfour. Roosevelt explains why certain appointments were made following the death of President William McKinley and details for why Hay was not consulted on matters concerning the Russo-Japanese War and the acquisition of Panama.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1909-01-28
President Roosevelt returns the copy of The Turn of the Screw to George Cabot Lodge, and thinks that it is “one of the most striking ghost stories I have ever read,” and that “it is just as gruesome to think of by daylight as by night.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-04-30
Edith Wharton introduces her friend, John Hugh Smith, who will be visiting the United States and would like to meet Theodore Roosevelt. Wharton regrets that she is leaving without seeing the Roosevelts; she is traveling to Italy on “the necessity of taking a cure.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-08-31
Henry Wallace considers President William H. Taft’s uprightness. He does not remember what he wrote to Gifford Pinchot and compares the matter to Henry James’ metaphor of a man and a squirrel. Wallace hopes there will be no alienation between Roosevelt and Pinchot.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-01-11
In his review of Hermione Lee’s biography of Edith Wharton, Harry N. Lembeck describes in detail her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, known as The Mount. Lembeck also discusses her relationships with her friend Walter Berry, her lover William Morton Fullerton, and fellow writer Henry James. Lembeck highlights her relationship with Theodore Roosevelt which centered on their mutual love of books and reading, their dislike of Woodrow Wilson, and their desire to see the United States abandon its neutrality and enter the Great War in Europe. Lembeck also highlights some aspects of Wharton’s writing that had been previously ignored.
Seven photographs supplement the text, including five of The Mount. One shows Wharton with two of Roosevelt’s sons, Quentin Roosevelt and Archibald B. Roosevelt. A text box with the mission statement of the Theodore Roosevelt Association also appears in the article.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2008
John A. Gable reviews the second volume of Edmund Morris’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex. Gable notes the literary character of the work, and he argues that Henry F. Pringle’s biography of Roosevelt is still read not because of its judgments, but because it is well written. Gable also compares Morris’s book to those of Lewis L. Gould and William Henry Harbaugh, and he quotes from several reviews of Theodore Rex in leading newspapers and magazines. Gable singles out the critical review of Christine Stansell, and he rebuffs some of her arguments by quoting from a response he wrote to her review. Gable concludes his essay by noting that many reviewers found parallels between the events of September 11, 2001 and the assassination of President William McKinley in September 1901.
A photograph of Roosevelt, two of Morris, and a text box advertising a CD-ROM published by the Theodore Roosevelt Association appear in the review.
Twelve books compete for space and attention in this crowded edition of the “Book Reviews” section which includes four feature reviews, two brief children’s book reviews, and notices about six other titles. Matthew Glover counters some of the assertions made by Louis Auchincloss in his Theodore Roosevelt by citing the work of historian John Milton Cooper. John A. Gable provides profiles of Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Eleanor Roosevelt, the subjects of Linda Donn’s The Roosevelt Cousins, and he notes the outsize influence that Theodore Roosevelt had on the extended Roosevelt clan. An anonymous review of Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. Navy, and the Spanish-American War lists the nine chapters that resulted from a conference of the same name, and it notes some of the authors’ ties to the Theodore Roosevelt Association.
Gable identifies four themes found in the ten essays that make up European Perceptions of the Spanish-American War of 1898, including most European nations’ hostility to the United States in the conflict, and he emphasizes the role played by the Roosevelt Study Center in fostering the emergence of a cohort of European scholars of American history. Two books aimed at children are reviewed in the “Kids Corner” section, and “Other New Books” highlights six titles published in 2001-2002, including new paperback editions of the Roosevelt biographies written by Edmund Morris and his wife Sylvia Jukes Morris.
Lee Cullum challenges the conclusions of historian Richard Hofstadter who downplayed the achievements and intellect of Theodore Roosevelt. Cullum claims that Roosevelt was superior to Woodrow Wilson in his handling of diplomacy and big business, and she asserts that Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy had a lot in common.
An illustration of Roosevelt in a dynamic speaking pose and a listing of the officers and members of the executive committee of the Theodore Roosevelt Association appear in the article.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
1987-12-27
Two books are reviewed and two books are revisited in this edition of the “Book Reviews” section. John A. Gable examines The Letters of Edith Wharton and focuses on what the letters reveal about Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, Theodore Roosevelt’s sister, and Ethel Roosevelt Derby, the president’s daughter. Gable provides portraits of each, and he notes that Edith Wharton “regarded [Theodore] Roosevelt with an awe bordering on worship.” Perry D. Floyd asserts that Garrett and Roosevelt falls short as a biography of the last twenty years of lawman Pat F. Garrett’s life in part because there was not much a relationship between Garrett and Roosevelt. Floyd says that the available evidence cannot support the book’s title.
The column offers extended quotes from Lewis L. Gould and Gable taken from their reviews of Carol Felsenthal’s biography Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and it features a notice (which acts as an advertisement) about the reissue of the Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia. The notice quotes from William Allen White’s foreword to the 1941 edition.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
1989
Transcript of a speech given by George Otto Trevelyan at a bookseller’s dinner. Trevelyan discusses many matters relating to bookselling, book buying, and publishing. He also discusses his reminiscences with various literary figures and reflects on the relationship between literature and politics.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-10-17
George Otto Trevelyan was “greatly stirred and fired” by President Roosevelt’s last letter. He reports on the achievements of his children, and discusses reading and education. Trevelyan notes that Henry James visits his family every year.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-02-10