## Impressions

*Mornings on Horseback* is an engrossing narrative about Theodore Roosevelt Jr., his family, and his parents. It reveals a lot about why Roosevelt did what he did later in life, and how his family upbringing, childhood, and young adult adventures shaped his philosophy on life and work.

## Notes

Theodore Roosevelt was actually Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. The son, just so happened to make the name more famous than the father, which was not easy to do. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was a wealthy businessman and philanthropist who loved to travel. His brother, Robert, told Theodore the purpose of travel

> is not to see scenery, you can see finer at home. It is not to see places where great people lived and died, that is a stupidity. But it is to see men. To enlarge your mind, which will never be enlarged by looking at a large hill, but by conversing with, and seeing the bent of the minds of other people.

Yet, he was a simple man. "Best were the pleasures of a morning walk or his books or a good cigar or what he called the quiet luxury of home life," McCullough writes. I can't help but agree.

A simple man who believed in hard work. "Man was never intended to become an oyster," he remarked. "He hated idleness," writes McCullough. "Every hour must be accounted for and one must also enjoy everything one did." Also: "I always believe in showing affection by doing what will please the one we love, not by talking."

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**Lead, don't drive, younger folks into learning**

Dr. Hillborne West, an uncle from Philadelphia, would recite poems to Teddy and his siblings under trees. "The very fact that he was not achieving a thousand worthwhile things, as was my father, the very fact that he was not busied with the practical care and thought for us, as were my mother and aunt, brought about between us that delightful relationship when the older person leads rather than drives the younger into paths of literature and learning," wrote Connie, Teddy's sister.

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**Why you should journal**

Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., upon leaving Washington, regretted not keeping a diary.

> All those whom I have seen in social intercourse day by day will be characters in history, and it would be pleasant hereafter [to read] my own impressions of them and recall their utterly different views upon the policy which should be pursued by the government.

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Two observations McCullough makes about a young Theodore Roosevelt demonstrate his demeanor well. On a ship, Mittie, Theodore's mom, had to "keep a weathered eye on Teedie, who alone of her four children refused to have anything to do with the the other children on board." When the boat finally arrived in Liverpool, Mittie notes the madness in her diary. Everyone was running amok, except Theodore who, "sat off to himself in the salon, reading a book," McCullough writes.

Teedie's knack for learning was demonstrated by someone else once again later during the trip. Ellie, who was suffering a bad throat, "took offense when told to ease up and miss part of one day's touring. 'I want to learn about things, too, like Teedie,' he insisted."

Later, McCullough continues: "Still, there remains a theme, a mounting refrain really, of the pleasure and pride in being the first to see or do something, and eagerness to set himself apart from the others, to distinguish himself, to get out ahead of them; or simply to be alone, absorbed in private thoughts."

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Foreshadowing the sorrow death would bring him later in his life, during this trip he was informed that his Uncle Weir Roosevelt died. He wrote in his diary, "It is the third relation that has died in my short life. What will come?"

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As a boy, Teedie's father instilled a sense of action, hard work, and exercise into all of his kids, especially Theodore Jr. The family doctor wrote something that would become the family creed: "Organs are made for action, not existence; they are made to work, not to be; and when they work well they can be well."

"Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must *make* your own body," Theodore's dad admonished him. "It is a drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it."

"it was no good wishing to appear like the heroes he worshipped if he made no effort to *be* like them. Strength had to come first; one must be strong before everything else," McCullough writes.

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"Asthma" in Greek means panting, something Theodore constantly struggled with as a kid. But these struggles made him stronger:

> Ailment other than asthma, any of the inevitable knocks and scrapes of childhood, or of later life, are often taken with notable stoicism. It is as if having experienced asthma, he finds other pains and discomforts mild by comparison.
> 
> He has learned at an early age what a precarious, unpredictable thing life is—and how very vulnerable *he* is. He must be prepared always for the worst.
> 
> But the chief lesson is that life is quite literally a battle. And the test is how he responds, in essence whether he sees himself as a helpless victim or decides to fight back, whether he becomes, as Teedie was to say of a particular variety of desert bird, "extremely tenacious of life."

[[Marcel Proust]] thought his asthma, like his homosexuality, was part of a price he had to pay for his creative gifts:

> We enjoy fine music, beautiful pictures, a thousand exquisite things, but we do not know what they cost those who wrought them in sleeplessness, tears, spasmodic laughter, rashes, asthma, epilepsy...Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly."

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On his father's parenting style, Teedie once remarked that his father "used now and then to say that he hesitated whether to tell something favorable because he did not think a sugar diet was good for me."

I love that. [[Don't give people sugar diets.]]

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Theodore Jr.'s father had the "power...of being focused." Louisa Schuyler said, "Without his power of concentration and great physical endurance such a life would have been impossible."

**If you want to do great things, you must cultivate the power of concentration.**

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When Theodore Jr. went off in the train for Harvard, Theodore Sr. wrote, "As I saw the last of the train bearing you away...I realized what a luxury it was to have a boy in whom I could place perfect trust and confidence..."

I think that's a perfect goal as a parent to strive for in raising your kids: raise them so when they grow up, you have complete confidence and trust in who they are and what they'll do.

This feeling was reciprocated by the son. Theodore wrote his dad while he was in college: "I do not think there is a fellow in college who has a family that love him as much as you all do me, and I am *sure* that there is no one who has a father who is also his best and most intimate friend, as you are mine...I do not find it nearly so hard as I expected not to drink and smoke..."

After attending his father's funeral, he poured out his soul to his diary: He experienced "bitter agony when I kissed the dear, dead face and realized he would never again on this earth speak to me. He was the most wise and loving father that ever lived: I owe everything to him."

With his father now gone, nothing seemed to matter anymore. "Am working away pretty hard," he wrote in May; "but I do not care so much for my marks now; what I most valued them for was *his* pride in them."

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On a gate to the entrance of Harvard Yard, William Roscoe Thayer had inscribed:

> Enter to grow in wisdom
> Depart better to serve thy country and they kind.

That's a good life motto.

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After Harvard, Roosevelt attended Columbia Law School:

> "The law work is very interesting," he said in his diary; and again, "I like the law school work very much." Some afternoons, when not at the Astor Library, he read law in the offices of Uncle Robert...

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Roosevelt wrote a book, *Naval War of 1812*, and his work habits are revealing about who he was and how he approached his calling:

> To write his *Naval War of 1812,* Theodore forced himself to master every nuance and technical term of seamanship—Theodore, who never particularly cared for sailing, who disliked long sea voyages. Theodore had plowed through everything in print on his subject, tracked down original documents to amass volumes of statistics on fighting ships, armaments, crews.

Sometimes, though, he felt as if he had taken on more than he could handle. He wrote, "I have plenty of information now, but I can't get it into words; I am afraid it is too big a task for me."

(I'm glad other people feel this. If I were to ever write a history book, I think this would be my problem. I'm amazed at authors like David McCullough or Ron Chernow who can not only do the research, but then shape that research into something that's very fun to read and actually coherent.)

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When Roosevelt was in the State Legislature, he shared a house. His roommate would "always know when it was Theodore returning from a weekend, because Theodore would swing the front door open and be halfway up the stairs before the door swung shut with a bang."

This is telling: it reveals the energy and drive with which Theodore went about his day and conducted his business.

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On the day that both his mother and wife died, February 14, 1884, Theodore wrote a big "X" on that day in his diary. Beneath it he wrote, "The light has gone out of my life."

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**What someone does *for* you, they'll eventually do *to* you:**

> Once, seeing one of his ablest cowboys about to put the Maltese brand on an unbranded stray found on Gregor Lang's range, Theodore dismissed him on the spot. The cowboy could not understand. "A man who will steal *for* me will steal *from* me," Theodore said. "You're fired."

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During his time in the West, Theodore Roosevelt came to embrace not only the lifestyle but the virtues of a "cowboy." He wrote in *Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail*:

> "Meanness, cowardice, and dishonestly are not tolerated," he observed. "There is a high regard for truthfulness and keeping one's word, intense contempt for any kind of hypocrisy, and a hearty dislike for a man who shirks his work." It was, of course, exactly the code he had been raised on. (Recalling his father years later, he would use very nearly the same words: "He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness.") The cowboy was bold, cared about his work; he was self-reliant and self-confident. Perhaps most important of all, the cowboy seemed to know how to deal with death, death in a dozen different forms being an everyday part of his life.

(That is probably one of my favorite passages I've ever read.)

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I like wrote McCullough wrote of Theodore in the Afterword:

> A book was about the only thing that could make him sit still and his love of books lasted as long as he lived. He read everything and anything, sometimes two books in an evening, and his favorites—theIrish sagas, Bunyan, Scott, Cooper, the letter of Abraham Lincoln, *Huckleberry Finn*—he read many times over.

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## Books mentioned
- *The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt* by William H. Harbaugh
- *The Pilgrams Progress*
- *My Brother Theodore Roosevelt*

biography