EDITH KERMIT ROOSEVELT(ISBN=) 英文原版

Marvelously full-blooded, engagingly written.
—Newsweek

“An endlessly engrossing book, at once of historical and human
importance… Morris’s 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
reader’s freedom to speculate that Morris admirably denies
herself.”
–R.W.B. Lewis, The Washington Post

“Morris excels at putting Edith in her place in charge of the First
Family at a heady time in American history.”
—Newsweek

“A splendid biography… One reads on, intrigued by the character
that emerges.”
—Chicago Sun-Times

“This biography represents craftsmanship of the highest
order.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

“A story as fascinating and well-written as a novel.”
—Worcester Telegram

“A superb life story enchantingly told.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“A warmly vivid account of a refined, intelligent, and gracious
lady and a contribution to the history of an era.”
–David H. Burton, St. Joseph’s University — Review

Edith Kermit Carow grew up in New York City in the same circles
as did Theodore Roosevelt. But only after TR’s first wife died at
age twenty-two did the childhood friends forge one of the most
successful romantic and political partnerships in American history.
Sylvia Jukes Morris’s access to previously unpublished letters and
diaries brings to full life her portrait of the Roosevelts and
their times. During her years as First Lady (1901-09), Edith Kermit
Roosevelt dazzled social and political Washington as hostess,
confidante, and mother of six, leading her husband to remark, “Mrs.
Roosevelt comes a good deal nearer my ideal than I do myself.”

Sylvia Jukes Morris is the author of Rage
for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce. She lives with her
husband, Edmund Morris, in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Introduction
Childhood: 1861-1872
Youth: 1872-1886
Marriage afid Motherhood: 1886-1901
First Lady: 1901-1909
Mistress of Sagamore Hill: 1909-1919
Early Widowhood: 1919-1927
Old Age: 1927-1948
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index

Chapter Two
Grave Alice, and laughing
Allegra
And Edith with golden hair . . .
-Longfellow

A thick veil descends on Carow family history after the closing of
the Tyler home. Were it not for a few glimpses culled from Edith?s
association with the Roosevelts, and from the nostalgia of her old
age, little could be told. She was to become an avid collector of
information concerning her early ancestors, but throughout her life
she compulsively destroyed data on her more immediate family,
especially Charles Carow. ?Mother . . . never told us stories about
her childhood at all,? complained her future stepdaughter.

The reason why Edith did not reminisce was simple: the subject
pained her. Despite her taciturnity, a few facts are certain.
First, Charles was a failure in business; second, he was an
alcoholic; third, he fell down the hold of one of his ships, hit
his head, and was never quite stable afterward; fourth, Gertrude
became increasingly hypochondriac; and, fifth, the family standard
of living went into decline.

At first, however, this decline was barely perceptible. During the
war years, at least, life for the Carows went normally. On April
18, 1865, Gertrude?s last child, Emily, was born and was placed,
along inside of a wall where the snow ceased and it was quite warm.
We then went on until we came to a small hole through which we saw
a red flame inside the mountain. I put my alpine stock in and it
caught fire right away. The smoke nearly suffacated us. We then
went on and saw a larger hole through which I could fall if I
liked. We put some pebbles down and they came up with pretty good
force. We here sat down to lunch. We ate some of the eggs boiled in
Vesuvius sand. Ellie and I played with some soildiers and then we
began the decent. This was on the opposite side of the mountain. I
was the last, then Mama with Papa on one and a guide on the other
side of her and then the rest. We went down the side in loose dirt
in which I sunk up to my knees.

The decent was verry steep. Mama was so exausted she could hardly
walk. When we got to the bottom we mounted our horses and went
along a miserable road. There were places where the men who were on
foot could hardly walk so it was verry hard for the horses.
We then drove to the hotel. But now goodby
Evere your loving friend,
T. Roosevelt

While Teedie went on to Rome and Florence, Edith began to feel
lonely. She was glad not to be spending the winter in the city, she
told Conie, ?for I shall miss you much and if I stay here I can
play with a beautiful sled that Uncle Guss gave me . . .?

With the Roosevelts away the nursery classes had been abandoned,
and there was some talk of sending Edith to school. But her
enrollment was postponed, purportedly because ?Mammma thinks my
eyes are not very strong.? In a complaint common to bookish
children, Edith added: ?She and Mame whenever they see a book in my
hands give me no peace till I lay it down.?

Every week, however, she attended classes at Mr. Dodsworth?s famous
school for dancing and deportment, at the corner of Twenty-sixth
Street and Fifth Avenue. The strict old dancing master and his wife
taught succeeding generations of New Yorkers not only how to waltz
and polka on the wide slippery floor, but also how to conduct
themselves in society. A later pupil remembered them both
vividly.

Mr. Dodsworth was the impersonation of elegance and etiquette,
coupled with a stinging sarcasm and discipline. We left our coats
and little fur-lined shoes in the room downstairs. We then shook
hands and curtsied to Mrs. Dodsworth, whose hair had the stiffest
ondulé, whose voice had the most liquid modulation, and whose
person was sheathed in a dress covered with spangles or embroidered
with pearls, or poured into a creation of cloth of gold. She sat at
a painted Louis XV desk with a register to mark our attendance
which she did with a fine pen and holding her little finger
slightly extended while she wrote. Mr. and Mrs. Dodsworth were the
visible expression of all that it meant to be a lady and a
gentleman in those days.

When the Roosevelts returned in the spring of 1870, they joined
Edith at the dancing school, and quickly became the nucleus of an
exclusive group. Fanny Smith was a member. ?There was no fear of
being a wallflower because we had . . . special badges and pledged
either definitely or otherwise only to dance with one
another.?

Years later, an outsider reminded Edith that ?for every dance there
was a scramble on the part of four Roosevelts, ?Teddy,? Elliott,
Alfred and Emlen to secure you for a partner.? Apparently Theodore
usually triumphed, because Edith saved the dance programs ?on which
his name was written oftener than any other boy?s.?

Gradually, over the next two decades, old established Oelrichs and
Stevenses and newly arrived Fricks and Carnegies began to settle
side by side in Fifth Avenue mansions which edged out the scattered
shanties that had long bordered Central Park. Wealth, not breeding,
now determined where people might live. The Roosevelts were able to
follow the prosperous migration north; but other well-bred
Knickerbockers who, like the Carows, had fallen on hard times were
forced to choose less exalted neighborhoods.

In 1870 New York?s population, having almost tripled in thirty
years, approached a million. Yet expansion was still entirely
lateral. Skyscrapers did not exist, and Trinity Church spire
remained the only vertical thrust of any stature. Large tracts
along Fifth Avenue and Broadway consisted of empty lots, while
Madison Avenue ended abruptly at Forty-second Street. Harlem was a
small country town, and the riverside between West Seventieth and
West 110th Streets was nothing more than a village.

Carriages, stagecoaches and four railroads running at street level
created tremendous noise and smoke in midtown. Ill-paved roads
littered with horse manure, and slimy gutters scavenged by pigs
were breeding grounds for malaria and typhoid. Barefoot street
urchins huddled in doorways and over gratings for warmth.
Sanitation hardly existed in rat-ridden tenements; an average of
seventy-eight people shared each slum privy. When cholera struck,
as it frequently did, medical help was scarce. The infant-mortality
rate was thirty percent, and life expectancy averaged only forty
years.

Crime ?was never so bold, so frequent, and so safe,? according to
the diarist George Templeton Strong. ?We breathe an atmosphere of
highway robbery, burglary and murder. Few criminals are caught and
fewer punished . . . We must soon fall back on the law of
self-preservation.?