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Leslie J. Tarlton describes a recent hunting safari he and a friend from Australia made in Kenya. Tarlton hunted many lions and elephants with Robert Barr Smith, and while they had very good luck with the lions, they were less fortunate hunting elephants.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-04-05
Edward North Buxton sends President Roosevelt communication from Alfred E. Pease, who owns an ostrich farm in British East Africa to get him excited for his upcoming safari. Buxton details several travel plans and recommendations to Roosevelt, citing the weather and transportation options of various routes.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-04-08
E. Wellesley Ashe has heard that President Roosevelt intends to visit Kenya for big game hunting and invites him to hunt on his land.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-04-11
George Ward Grazebrook tells John Frecheville Ramsden about his time hunting in British East Africa, and describes an incident where one of his companions was badly wounded by a lion and barely managed to kill it.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-03-02
Laurence James Oliphant had previously hoped to visit President Roosevelt last year, but was struck with a severe illness which he is only now recovering from. In going through the letters that accumulated during his illness, he has heard that Roosevelt has been making plans for his safari in British East Africa after leaving the presidency, and offers some recommendations of places that could offer good hunting. Oliphant hopes to renew his acquaintance with Roosevelt when Roosevelt returns from his safari, and is sorry that he could not have been more use sooner.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-03-02
The author of this letter describes their time on a safari in Africa in which one of their companions was severely injured in a lion attack. The injured companion was brought to the compound of William Northrup McMillan, an American, where he was able to get medical attention and eventually recover.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-03-04
The Duke of Westminster thanks James Bryant Lindley for the rifle and tells of the excellent hunting he and his company have encountered. He asks Lindley to join the party on October 1 when they will be at the Kafue River and sure to have “the best sport to come.” He hopes to ride in a steeplechase at Kenilworth in November.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-09-09
Kermit Roosevelt discusses a conversation he had with a school dean about his attendance, his concerns about the rifles he and Theodore Roosevelt will take to Africa, and slides he saw at a recent Audobon Society meeting of famed ornithologist Frank Michler Chapman’s trip to Africa.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-11
President Franklin D. Roosevelt is filmed speaking to a crowd from a podium at the American Museum of Natural History. Archival footage shows construction of the Panama Canal, Theodore Roosevelt delivering speeches, and his hunting expedition in Africa.
Sherman Grinberg Film Collection
1936-01-19
This song briefly pictures Theodore Roosevelt’s exploits on safari in Africa, and imagines the responses of the animals Roosevelt wishes to hunt. After calling a congress in the hopes they can negotiate with the “fearless hunter man,” the animals variously try to frighten Roosevelt away or flee, but to no avail.
Dr. Danny O. Crew Theodore Roosevelt Sheet Music Collection
1909
In his review of Darrin Lunde’s The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, a Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History, Lowell E. Baier identifies the two theses that animate the book: that Theodore Roosevelt was a world class museum naturalist and that he was the most important conservationist of his time. Baier provides context for and discusses many of Roosevelt’s encounters with the natural world, and he lists many of the explorers, writers, conservationists, and fellow hunters who shaped his thoughts and actions. Baier praises Lunde for placing Roosevelt’s hunting in the context of his times and for acknowledging that Roosevelt hunted for both sport and science, but he faults Lunde for not recognizing the adrenaline rush of hunting and for not treating Roosevelt’s conservation record as president in greater detail.
The front cover of Lunde’s book, two photographs, and three paintings by John Seerey-Lester populate the review.
Wallace Finley Dailey presents an exhibit, “Roosevelt Reading: The Pigskin Library, 1909-1910,” that opened at Harvard University in September 2003. Dailey provides an introduction to the exhibit which consists of photographs, excerpts of letters, and illustrations of the numerous pigskin bound volumes that Theodore Roosevelt took with him on his African safari. The exhibit is divided into three parts: “Classics and the Continent,” History and Romance,” and “Americans.” Many of the book illustrations have captions taken from letters or articles written by Roosevelt that comment on the book and its author.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2013
President Roosevelt writes Ambassador Reid about his plans to travel to Africa to hunt with his son Kermit Roosevelt at the conclusion of his presidency, but he says that he has no plans to visit Europe until after “the memory of my Presidency has faded.” Roosevelt criticizes the Congress and says that if the Republicans enjoy success in the fall 1908 elections it will be in spite of the present Congress.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
1908-05-25
Neil Edward Stubbs examines the influence that Theodore Roosevelt had on the novelist Ernest Hemingway. Stubbs looks at Hemingway’s childhood and notes how the culture that he was raised in the in the first decade of the twentieth century was dominated by Roosevelt. Stubbs explores Hemingway’s love of hunting, his desire to meld the strenuous life with the intellectual life, and his quest for military service as evidence of his desire to emulate Roosevelt. Stubbs speculates that Hemingway may have become disillusioned with Roosevelt after his service in World War I, but he notes that Hemingway pursued military service in the 1930s and 1940s.
Three photographs populate the essay, including one each of Roosevelt and Hemingway with lions they killed while on safari in Africa.
Gary Rice examines how the press covered Theodore Roosevelt’s 1909-1910 African safari. Rice stresses that Roosevelt wanted to severely restrict journalists’ access to his safari because the former president had signed contracts to publish his own articles and books, and he wanted to control what was written. Rice also notes that the press extensively covered Roosevelt’s preparations for the trip, and he highlights a scandal that erupted when a French journalist published an unauthorized story about Roosevelt during the safari. Roosevelt later relented and allowed American reporters Robert W. Foran and Warrington Dawson to file reports from Africa.
Rice notes that much of the coverage of the safari dealt with the number of animals Roosevelt had killed, and it stoked debates about the ethics of Roosevelt’s hunting. Rice concludes that Roosevelt’s safari and its coverage provided him with “an even bigger, more favorable public image.” Three photographs of Roosevelt in Africa appear in the article.
Three works come under consideration in the “Book Reviews” section. Cole Patrick looks at both the 1941 and 1989 editions of the Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia. He comments on the work of Albert Bushnell Hart in compiling and editing the first edition, and he quotes from William Allen White’s foreword from 1941. Patrick explains the various additions made to the 1989 edition by John A. Gable of the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA), including a bibliography, a chronology of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, and a history of the TRA.
Tweed Roosevelt examines Bartle Bull’s Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure and highlights its coverage of Theodore Roosevelt’s African safari of 1909-1910, and he also looks at other figures, British and American, who made safaris. He praises the book’s organization and illustrations but faults it for not giving a sense of who the hunters were as people, Roosevelt included. Marilyn E. Weigold praises Elizabeth Winthrop’s novel, In My Mother’s House, for its “precise descriptions of life in Manhattan in the last few decades of the nineteenth century.” The novel’s main character is based on the life of the daughter of Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, Theodore Roosevelt’s sister.
The front cover of the Spring, 1989, issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal shows a laughing Theodore Roosevelt atop a horse during his 1903 visit to Yellowstone National Park. On the back is a 1910 image of Roosevelt riding a camel during his 1910 visit to Sudan during his post-presidential safari.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
1989
Scenes of Theodore Roosevelt during his African safari. He fords a river on horseback and inspects a firearm while others in the hunting party look on.
Sherman Grinberg Film Collection
1909-1910
Theodore Roosevelt fords a river in Kenya on horseback, with other members of the hunting party following on foot. In another scene, Roosevelt inspects a firearm held by another member of the party.
Sherman Grinberg Film Collection
1910
Photograph showing African people carrying supplies and equipment atop their heads for Theodore Roosevelt during his African safari.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1919-05-14