40 Strenuous Years

THE LETTERS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT, VOLS. I & II (1,549 pp.)--Edited by Elting E. Morison--Harvard University ($20).

"My Dear Mamma," wrote nine-year-old Theodore Roosevelt in 1868, "I have just received your letter! What an excitement. How nice to read it. What long letters you do write. I don't see how you can write them."

So begins the first two volumes of a projected eight-volume set of Theodore Roosevelt's own lengthy letters. Before long, the reader is apt to wonder if the ebullient T.R. was not born with a pen grasped firmly in hand. Certainly, few men in or out of public life have slapped down so many words on so many subjects. Upwards of 1,900 letters and telegrams are contained in these first two volumes alone, but by a conservative estimate they are only about 1 % of the number he wrote in his lifetime. And during the period 1868-1900, he was also grinding out eight books, innumerable articles, essays and speeches.

"Immense Fun." Somehow the astounding Roosevelt also found the time & energy to attend Harvard ("I am very glad I am not a Yale freshman; the hazing there is pretty bad. The fellows too seem to be a much more scrubby set than ours"), to marry twice and beget six children ("Nothing else . . . can take the place of family life"), to climb the Matterhorn ("I was anxious to go up it because ... a man . . . can fairly claim to have taken his degree as, at any rate, a subordinate kind of mountaineer"), to become a rancher in North Dakota ("These westerners have now pretty well accepted me ... as a representative stockman").

He managed to get elected to the New York legislature ("Too True! Too True! I have become a 'political hack' "), to make an unsuccessful race as the Republican candidate for mayor of New York, to serve successively as U.S. civil service commissioner and New York police commissioner, to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy ("The Secretary is away, and I am having immense fun running the Navy"), to go to Cuba in the Spanish-American War and lead the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill ("By the way, I then killed a Spaniard myself with the pistol . . . which was raked up from the Maine"), to return to the U.S. as a military hero and, finally, at the ripe old age of 40, to be elected governor of New York. ("Some belated Fenians came up to sound me as to what my attitude would be if they attempted an invasion of Canada. I explained . . . that I should promptly call out the militia and clap them all in jail.")

"Fifth Wheel." The best explanation of all this boundless energy is that Roosevelt, as much as any man, luxuriated in the mere fact that he was alive. Almost the only note of despondency that creeps into these volumes comes at the end, after Roosevelt had been elected Vice President. He wrote sadly: "The Vice President has no power and is really a fifth wheel to the coach. Also remember that it is not a stepping stone to anything except oblivion. I fear my bolt is shot."

Editor Morison and his staff are preparing six more hefty volumes, covering 19 more strenuous years, that will show how mistaken he was.

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