Your TR Source
President Roosevelt writes to his son Kermit about a planned trip by Mother, Edith, Archie, and Quentin aborted due to the snow. Roosevelt has been negotiating with the Californians over their discriminating against Japanese children. Roosevelt laments that there are problems with everything he is trying to accomplish, then closes the letter by discussing the work of Mark Twain and Robert Browning.
1907-02-16
Francis W. Halsey asks President Roosevelt to review a brief description of himself for any errors. The passage will be part of a volume describing the homes of a number of American authors.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-01-02
Viereck, George Sylvester, 1884-1962
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Image
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President Roosevelt agrees with Nathan Haskell Dole about an “amusing piece of real literature,” and sends regards to Dole’s mother and brother.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-07-28
President Roosevelt updates his son Kermit about his mother’s and siblings’ lives, as well as the legislative progress he has made recently. Roosevelt has had difficulties with California, Japan, and Panama. He agrees with Kermit about the merits of Mark Twain and Robert Browning and their use of history as a narrative tool.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-02-16
After talking with George Horace Lorimer, President Roosevelt went back and read The Plum Tree through all the way, after previously having read only half of it. The ending of the book reconciles Roosevelt to many of the problems he had with it throughout, but he still holds many issues with the book which he lays out for Lorimer. The author, David Graham Phillips, falls into the trap of overstating the sort of corruption that is present in politics, and while Roosevelt freely admits that corruption is present–which, he points out, he is working against–there are also many good people working in politics as well. In a postscript of several days later, Roosevelt comments on several of Phillips’s articles on the Senate, in which he acts similarly by taking “certain facts that are true in themselves, and […] ignoring utterly a very much large mass of facts that are just as true and just as important.” Roosevelt criticizes Phillips for working with William Randolph Hearst to achieve notoriety.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-12
President Roosevelt regrets to inform George Brinton McClellan Harvey that he cannot attend the dinner celebrating Mark Twain’s seventieth birthday, but praises Twain’s work.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-11-28
President Roosevelt thanks Brander Matthews for the puzzle and would like him to bring Mark Twain and William Howells down to Washington, D.C., for lunch.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-02-27
John Carter Rose was interested in a statement that President Roosevelt said to him recently, that he was “successful in a larger portion of what [he] set out to do than any of [his] predecessors.” Rose considers all the previous presidents, and ultimately draws the comparison down to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Washington, Rose writes, made the nation, Lincoln preserved it, and Roosevelt has caused it to adapt to twentieth century conditions. He praises the various policies that Roosevelt has instituted during his term in office.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-12-14
Ambassador Reid sends an addition to “the bundle of gossip” he recently sent to Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, noting that this dispatch is a bit more serious and more likely to interest President Roosevelt with his description of a number of political events, in addition to more social fare.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-01
Ambassador Reid sends Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt descriptions of social events and diplomatic gossip from Great Britain. In a handwritten postscript, Reid says his wife and daughter are going to see her sick father in the Adirondacks and he will be alone by the end of summer.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-07-25
Secretary of War Taft updates President Roosevelt on the progress of his trip across the United States, as he gives speeches to help candidates in the upcoming election. Nebraska is likely to go Republican, as the prosperity there under Roosevelt’s policies has hampered William Jennings Bryan’s campaign. The person nominated for the Senate, however, is someone who Taft and Roosevelt did not wish. Public sentiment is the same as in Illinois in calling for Roosevelt’s running for president again, as his policies have been very successful. The only place Bryan may have a foothold is in Ohio. Taft thinks that William Randolph Hearst’s strength in New York has been overstated. He also informs Roosevelt about several conversations he has had with people, and about a letter he received from Gifford Pinchot.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-11-01
Andrew Dickson White discusses the political turmoil in Russia and the problems Russians cause in the United States and abroad. White thinks it wise that Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine, has avoided involvement with Maxim Gorky, and he wishes that Mark Twain and William Dean Howells had done the same.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-04-18
Douglas Eden dismisses Stephen Kinzer’s The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire as a piece of polemical journalism that should not be taken seriously as a work of history. Eden asserts that the work will appeal to certain segments of the academy and media, and he highlights episodes from the early years of the Cold War to demonstrate the author’s bias and lack of understanding of key events of that era, such as the start of the Korean War. Eden also notes that despite appearing in the book’s title, Mark Twain does not figure prominently in the work. The front cover of the The True Flag and one of its photographs supplement the review.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2018
Robert Wexelblatt describes his friendship with William N. Tilchin, the editor of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal (TRAJ). Wexelblatt explains how Tilchin made him into a Theodore Roosevelt expert by repeatedly asking him to review books about Roosevelt for the TRAJ. Wexelblatt writes that reviewing Philip James McFarland’s Mark Twain and the Colonel made him an enthusiast for Roosevelt while lowering his estimation of Mark Twain, and he admires Roosevelt for defeating the demon of depression.
A photograph of Wexelblatt and the front cover illustrations of three books supplement the address.
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
Robert Wexelblatt praises Philip McFarland for his even-handed approach in his dual biography Mark Twain and the Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New Century. Wexelblatt notes that the disagreements between the writer and the politician will interest most readers, and he highlights Twain’s anti-imperialism as the foremost of these issues. Wexelblatt commends McFarland for explaining the views of Twain, Roosevelt, and their contemporaries in the context of their time. He notes that McFarland also covers the similarities between “the two most famous and celebrated Americans,” and he credits McFarland for his research and his lively prose.
Photographs of Twain and Roosevelt, and the front cover illustration of Mark Twain and the Colonel, accompany the review.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2013
In his review of J. Lee Thompson’s Theodore Roosevelt Abroad, which studies Theodore Roosevelt’s 1909 to 1910 journey to Africa and Europe, Robert Wexelblatt highlights Thompson’s discussion of Roosevelt’s hunting ethics, his views on imperialism and race, and his commitment to a strong relationship between the United States and Great Britain. Wexelblatt also focuses on Roosevelt’s interactions with Kaiser William II of Germany. Wexelblatt credits Thompson for pointing out shortcomings in Roosevelt’s thoughts and actions, and he employs several block quotes to highlight passages from Thompson and Roosevelt.
The front cover illustration of the book appears at the center of the second page of the review.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2010
Art Koch reveals the subject and context of the third “TR-era image” which is a political cartoon showing Theodore Roosevelt shooting holes in a dictionary with two revolvers. Koch reveals that this cartoon from September 1906 pokes fun at Roosevelt’s directive to the Government Printing Office to use a simplified form of spelling in government documents, and he lists some notable Americans who supported Roosevelt’s reforms. The fourth image in the series shows a typical street scene of storefronts, horse drawn wagons, and telephone poles.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
1906
In the “Book Notes” column, Frederick W. Marks reviews William M. Gibson’s Theodore Roosevelt Among the Humorists and John A. Gable reviews Aloysius A. Norton’s Theodore Roosevelt. Marks criticizes Gibson for accepting the judgments of Theodore Roosevelt put forward by humorists such as Mark Twain, and he argues that Gibson, as a literature professor, is not qualified to make evaluations of Roosevelt’s diplomacy. Gable praises Norton’s study of Roosevelt as a writer, and his main criticism is that the book is too short to provide a thorough analysis of all of Roosevelt’s works. Marks and Gable contend that Roosevelt’s image continues to suffer from persistent stereotypes.
A picture of Roosevelt reading accompanies the article.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
1981