Sylvia Morris - Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady

Praise for Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady,
by Sylvia Jukes Morris

Morriss indefatigably busy camera catches everything that is catchable. The result is a narrative that one will want to return to and mull over, conscious of the hundred and one details that might have been missed the first time around, and with a readers freedom to speculate that Morris admirably denies herself. A footnote: This is the best and most intelligently illustrated biography that I have come upon in a long time an endlessly engrossing book, at once of historical and of human importance.

R.W.B. L EWIS , The Washington Post

Splendid New materials have been tapped, and what we now have is an admirable biography of a great and gracious and intelligent woman. An excellent biography. One reads on, intrigued by the character that emerges.

Chicago Sun-Times

Morris excels at putting Edith in her placein charge of the First Family at a heady time in American history. A marvelously full-blooded, engagingly written portrait.

Newsweek

This beautifully written biography gives us a fascinating view of the woman who was the perfect complement to Theodore Roosevelt. A story as fascinating and well written as a novel.

Worcester, Massachusetts, Telegram

Sylvia Morriss exploration, the first book-length one, of Ediths extraordinary character, results in a model biography but more: a genuinely enchanting story of a shy New York girl who became the symbol of the perfect Victorian wife, mother and woman.

El Paso Times

This is an outstanding biography, well written, superbly researched and documented.

Nashville Banner

A love story you will laugh and weep over, but the social history woven skillfully into the book is handled equally well, particularly during the White House years. Sylvia Morriss research is meticulous, and tidbits of information are beautifully organized and blended.

Forth Worth Star-Telegram

A full, intensely interesting biography of a very elusive First Lady.

Wilmington, Delaware, News Journal

Absolutely enchantingas splendidly written as it is researched.

W. A. S WANBERG

Effectively re-creates both the atmosphere of the period and the lively charm that made the White House a social, artistic and intellectual centerpiece as well as a familys home.

Booklist

Skillfully woven of rich detail will prove a joy to scholar and layman alike. Highly recommended.

Charleston, South Carolina, Evening Post

A stunning account of the woman who reared Roosevelts children, entertained heads of state and counseled Teddy in private. This portrait of a first lady is first-rate reading.

Pensacola News

Edith Kermit Roosevelt by Theobald Chartran, 1902

2001 Modern Library Paperback Edition

Copyright & 1980 by Sylvia Jukes Morris

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

M ODERN L IBRARY and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was originally published in 1980 by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Morris, Sylvia Jukes.
Edith Kermit Roosevelt: portrait of a First Lady / Sylvia Jukes Morris.
2001 Modern Library pbk. ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980.
eISBN: 978-0-307-52277-1
1. Roosevelt, Edith Kermit Carow, 18611948. 2. Roosevelt, Theodore, 18581919Family. 3. Presidents spousesUnited StatesBiography.
I. Title.
E757.3.R65 M67 2001
973.911092dc21

[B] 2001031234

Modern Library website address:
www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1_r1

A life of Aunt Edith should be written she managed TR very cleverly without his being conscious of itno slight achievement as anyone will concede.

F RANKLIN D ELANO R OOSEVELT

Looking down from a second-floor side window were Mr. Roosevelts grandsons.
Lincolns funeral procession, New York City, April 1865.

On a sunny April afternoon in 1865, Abraham Lincolns funeral procession moved slowly up Broadway. The Presidents body, having lain in state at City Hall, was on its way to the Hudson Ferry and a final tortuous journey to Springfield, Illinois.

Every building and column, as far as the eye could see, was draped with black muslin. Curtains were festooned with dark rosettes, flags drooped sadly at half mast, and even the street lamps were shrouded with black crepe hangings.

At the southwest corner of Union Square, the advance columns passed an immense property taking up the entire block from Fourteenth to Thirteenth Street. This was the four-story mansion of one of New Yorks richest men: investment counselor, real-estate agent, and plate-glass manufacturer Cornelius Van Schaak Roosevelt.

Looking down from a second-floor side window onto the dense throng, massed fifteen feet deep along either curb, were Mr. Roosevelts grandsons: Theodore, six and a half years old, and Elliott, five. With them was a fair, curly headed friend, Edith Kermit Carow, not yet four. In spite of the reassuring presence of her governess, Edith was frightened by the relentless blackness all around her, the sharp swords and bayonets glinting in the sun, the wailing

But, as Edith grew up in a neighboring town house, the fallen President became her hero. Time and again she walked across Union Square to gaze at Kirke Browns statue of him. As her eyes traveled down from the troubled face, past the coats stiff folds and the smokestack legs, they settled on the words at the base: With malice toward none; with charity for all.

Many years later, long after her marriage to the older of the two boys in the window, Edith told one of her sons that those splendid words of Abraham Lincoln had influenced her all her life.

And it was a long life, spanning the best part of a century. Born in Lincolns first term, Edith died while Truman was campaigning for his second. She lived through twenty-seven administrations of seventeen different Presidents, seven of whom she knew personally. Her own years as First Lady, from 1901 to 1909, coincided with Americas rise to world power, under the exuberant guidance of her husband, Theodore, the best-loved President after Washington.

Today, in an age of declining expectations, nostalgia is growing for that peaceful, golden decade when the nations prosperity seemed limitless, and when a large part of the globe joined in celebrating the Theodore Roosevelts and their six delightful children as the perfect American family. Never before or since have editors, cartoonists, and gossip columnists had such good copy from the White House. The young President and his attractive wife were high born and cultivated, yet they remained resolutely democratic. They were equally at ease entertaining Europes imperial elite in the Executive Mansion (which Edith restored from top to bottom) and picnicking on the sandy shores of Sagamore Hill (where an observer could not help remarking how pretty and young Mrs. R. looked in her bathing suit.) The antics of the younger Roosevelts alone, from Princess Alice to the ingeniously mischievous Quentin, filled many miles of newspaper print.