Founders - #156 Theodore Roosevelt

Starting point is 00:00:00 On the morning of April 11th, 1886, a young physician named Victor Stickney had come out of his office about noon, on his way home to lunch, when he saw the most bedraggled figure I'd ever seen come limping down the street. The man was covered with mud. His clothes were in shreds. He was all teeth and eyes. He was scratched, bruised, and hungry, but gritty and determined as a bulldog. As I approached him, he stopped me with a gesture, asking me whether I could direct him to a doctor's office. I was struck by the way he bit off his words and showed his teeth. I told him that I was the only practicing physician in the whole surrounding country. By George, he said emphatically, then you're exactly the man I want to see. My feet are blistered so badly that I can hardly walk. I want you to fix me up.

Starting point is 00:00:53 I took him into my office, and while I was bandaging his feet, which were in pretty bad shape, he told me the story. The story, one Theodore was to tell many times, and one that was to be told about him for years after he'd left the Badlands, was of his last and biggest adventure in the story, one Theodore was to tell many times, and one that was to be told about him for years after he'd left the Badlands, was of his last and biggest adventure in the West, and may be summarized briefly as follows. It has the ring of the adventure stories he had loved so much as a boy, but it also happened just as he said. Earlier in March, Theodore was informed by Seawall that a boat that they'd kept on the river had been stolen in the night by someone who had obviously taken off with it downstream.

Starting point is 00:01:31 They suspected the culprit was a man named Finnegan, who lived upriver with two cronies of equally bad reputation. few days, Seawall and Dow put together a makeshift boat, and after waiting for a blizzard to pass, the three of them took off in pursuit, pushing into the icy current on March 30th. It was a matter of principle, Theodore later said, to submit tamely and meekly to theft or to any other injury is to invite almost certain repetition of the offense. They were three days on the river before catching up with the thieves. Theodore had brought along some books to read and his camera, expecting there might be a magazine article in the adventure. Each man had his rifle.

Starting point is 00:02:17 The second night, the temperature dropped below zero. The next day, they spotted the missing boat, and going ashore, they found Finnegan and his partners, who surrendered without a fight. We simply crept noiselessly up and covered them with cocked rifles. From there, they spent another six days moving on down the river, making little headway now because of ice jams, and taking turns at night guarding the prisoners.

Starting point is 00:02:42 Food ran low, and the cold and biting winds continued. But not the least extraordinary part of the story is that during these same six days after catching the thieves, Theodore, in odd moments, read the whole of Anna Karenin. At a remote cow camp, Theodore was able to borrow a horse and ride another 15 miles to the main ranch, where he got supplies and hired a team, a wagon, and a driver. And then came the roughest part of the escapade. It was agreed that Seawall and Dow would continue downstream with the two boats and that he, Theodore, would go with the three captives over land, heading due south some 45 miles to Dickinson, where he could turn them over to the sheriff. The captives rode in the wagon with the driver. Theodore walked behind, keeping guard with his

Starting point is 00:03:33 trusty Winchester rifle. So by the time Dr. Stickney saw him, he had walked 45 miles in something less than two days with no sleep and had at last deposited his prisoners in jail. When Stickney asked why he had not simply shot or hanged the thieves when he first found them, and saved himself all the trouble, Theodore answered that the thought had never occurred to him. He impressed me and puzzled me, wrote Stickney, and when I went home to lunch an hour later, I told my wife that I had met the most peculiar and at the same time the most wonderful man I had ever come to know. I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability, and I could not understand why he was out there on the frontier. That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Mornings on Horseback, the story of an extraordinary family, a vanished way of life, and the unique child who became Theodore Roosevelt and is written by David McCullough.

Starting point is 00:04:27 Before I get into the book, and I'm going to start telling you where the author tells us why he actually wrote the book, I want to tell you why I'm reading the book. So Theodore Roosevelt has been a supporting character in a lot of the biographies that I've read for this podcast, especially recently. It started back on Founders No. 135 when I was reading the biography of Joseph Pulitzer. Theodore Roosevelt was at war of sorts with Pulitzer. Then when I read The House of Morgan, the biography of the Morgan family on Founders No. 139, he's the main character in that book. When I read The House of Morgan, that made me look for a book. I actually stumbled on a book called The Hour of Fate, and that was founders number 142.

Starting point is 00:05:15 And that podcast was all about the rivalry and the temporary partnership between J.P. Morgan and Teddy Roosevelt. And the author of that book does a great job of comparing and contrasting the two individuals. And though J.P. Morgan might be actually I wouldn't say he's more well-known, actually. Teddy Roosevelt's probably more famous. I mean, his face on Mount Rushmore, for God's sake. But I just found Teddy Roosevelt to be the far more interesting person. He lived a far more interesting life than J.P. Morgan did, in my opinion. And then finally, on Founders Number 145, I read the biography of William Randolph Hearst. And again, that's another person Teddy Roosevelt went to war with. And all of these books, even if he just appears for a brief time,

Starting point is 00:05:47 he makes an impression on you. And so that piqued my interest, and I knew I had to read a biography of him. I wanted to know more about this just crazy, eccentric character, one of the craziest lives in human history. Now, this is where, and the reason I chose, when you start researching, trying to find a biography on Teddy Roosevelt, I mean, there might be a hundred more. I can't even tell you how many I went through. The reason I chose this one is because David McCullough wrote one of my favorite books that I ever read.

Starting point is 00:06:15 And I covered it back all the way back on Founders Number 28, and it's The Wright Brothers. If you haven't read that book, it's just really essentially a book about resourcefulness. And you can read it, you know, in two or three days. David's books, at least these two, the two I've read so far, there's just not a lot of fluff in them. He tells amazing stories in just a few hundred pages. So let's go to the very beginning of the book where he's going to set the stage. Why, you know, why did he want to study Teddy Roosevelt? And he talks about seeing a play when he was around 10 years old back in 1943. And this is the impression. He says, the impression that lasted was a wondrously high-powered, comical, slightly loony.

Starting point is 00:06:52 That's a great description of Roosevelt, actually, after reading the book. Tremendously alive and appealing figure. Years later, I encountered another Theodore Roosevelt. Still the showman. Still in command of the stage. But also shrewd, complex, a man of many gifts and masks. Remember that part for later, the idea of concealing what was really going on in his life. And as amazing as much life as he fit into his 60 short years is the amount of pain and tragedy that he had to endure and that he usually endured in silence alone.

Starting point is 00:07:27 Just want to go back to that man of many gifts and masks. And it was what I read of his early life in particular that led me to this book. My intention was not to write a biography of him. What intrigued me was how he came to be. I was interested in knowing what was involved in the metamorphosis of the most conspicuous, animate wonder. What and who were involved in the forming of all that energy and persistence? The underlining theme would be the same as that of my earlier work. The creative effort, the testing and the struggle, the elements of chance and inspiration involved

Starting point is 00:08:06 in any great human achievement. And my interpretation of what McCullough is saying there is like, in other words, what happened to him? How did this person achieve such a life that he achieved? I want to know about his family. I want to know about his early life. And so this is also, I guess I'll tell you right up front, this is also, I made a mistake in the sense that I wanted like a complete life history of Theodore Roosevelt. That's not what this book is. This is still a very fantastic book. It's actually a very old book. It was first published in 1981. It won the National Book Award. Of course, McCullough is a great author. He's won the Pulitzer, I think two or three times, two times at least. But what McCullough did in this

Starting point is 00:08:43 book, and I didn't know until I received it, was he's going to focus on Teddy Roosevelt's life from the age of 10 until the age of 27. Now, in the epilogue of the book, McCullough does a great job of giving an overview of the rest of his achievements that he does after the age of 27, which is most of what he's able to accomplish. But I really appreciate McCullough's perspective. Reading this book gives you an idea of how he was able to do those things later in life. So let's go ahead and jump back into the book. Let's waste no time. I want to talk about the most important influence of his life. And that was his father. I didn't know this before I read the book, but he's actually Teddy Roosevelt Jr. So his father, the original Theodore Roosevelt, had the largest impact of any other single individual. And this is something that I really like this idea.

Starting point is 00:09:25 We came across before when I read the book, Stan Lee, he has his life motto. So Teddy Roosevelt had a life motto he gets from his dad, Stan Lee. I don't know how to pronounce it. It's the name of the book I read. It's like Excelsior. But to me, the translation is ever upward. So Teddy Roosevelt's motto in life is get action. And that comes from his father.

Starting point is 00:09:45 So this is a description of his actual father. And I would say a lot of the traits that his father had, he learned and adapted his own life. He says he hated idleness. Every hour must be accounted for. And one must also enjoy everything one did. Get action, he said. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

Starting point is 00:10:06 Deceit or cowardice was not to be tolerated. Courage he rewarded openly and sometimes with dramatic effect. And this is a description of Teddy's childhood. It was a family of paradoxes. Privileged and cushioned beyond most people's imagining. So what they're talking about there is Teddy's grandfather was he created a company in new york city he was they were extremely wealthy i think by the time he died his estate the grandfather's estate which they reference they call him cvs as initials um it would put in like today's dollars so he's not like robber bearing

Starting point is 00:10:42 wealthy but extremely wealthy somewhere in the range of 20 to the equivalent of 20 to 70 million dollars so teddy never had to worry about making money uh on his own he had uh he he didn't get all of that money there's a lot of siblings and it passes through multiple generations but he had a substantial income a very comfortable income so he could pursue other interests uh so that's what they're talking about, privilege and cushion. It's a family paradox. It's privilege and cushion beyond most people's imagining, yet little like the stereotype of the vapid, insular rich, uneducated in any usual formal fashion, but also inhibited by education.

Starting point is 00:11:19 So what they mean by that is they didn't send their kids to school. I think they did for like a few years, but mostly all their education came from reading books and pursuing their own interests. Teddy Roosevelt, I mentioned this in the Hour of Fate because it was surprising. I forgot what the exact circumstances were, but I think he was going out like campaigning for some political office at the time. And they would take these train rides. They'd be gone for weeks at a time. And they'd take train rides all across the country.

Starting point is 00:11:45 And he, he, he would bring books with him. And I think in that book, he read something like 40 books in six weeks. Uh, in this book, they talk about the fact that he read like 50 books in five weeks, the level of, and he wrote, he winds up writing dozens of books. I can't, again, I'm just so surprised. You read, when you sit down and document or outline everything that Teddy Roosevelt was able to accomplish in his life, it does not seem possible. And I guess I'm trying to convey that thought to you. I just don't understand how somebody could have all these experiences

Starting point is 00:12:23 and produce as much work as he did. So anyways, talking about, hey, they might not have sent their kids to formal school, but they're definitely not dumb. Okay, so it says they were uninhibited by education. They were ardent readers, insatiable askers of questions, chronically troubled, cursed, it would often seem, by one illness or mysterious disorder after another. That's true. Yet refusing to subject others to their troubles or to give in to despair. So I want to continue this idea of paradox. Even the birth of Theodore Roosevelt was a bit of a paradox. His father was a very wealthy Northeastern family. His mother came from a very wealthy Southern family, from Charleston, South Carolina.

Starting point is 00:13:03 And it's through the stories of her side of the family that Theodore starts to have this lifelong love adventure of the outdoors. It was completely different of like the office work or the factory work that was taking place in the Northeast at the time. So it says the stories were at once bizarre, scary, and always long ago and far away. They were always exciting. At night, with the onset, so one thing, main part of Theodore Roosevelt's childhood and early life is that he suffered a lot of health problems. The biggest health issue was that he was asthmatic and he'd have these debilitating asthma attacks. They were very scary. He'd had to sleep sitting up at night.

Starting point is 00:13:41 They would come out of nowhere. So during the time, they would tell him all these stories of his mother's family and previous ancestors. And that's where he's getting this love of adventure. So this is an attack of asthma. They could soothe and distract him as almost nothing else could. He says guns, violence, savage death, episodes that seem more like the stuff of fable or fantasy were all part of the world that his mother spun. So let's go back to his dad real quick. There's some quotes from Teddy's autobiography. I got to see if I'm going to read that book. I don't know. I downloaded another book. It's called, I don't know if it's his autobiography. It's called The Strenuous Life, which I might also read. But this is a quote from Teddy's autobiography. It talks about how important his dad was, and then also a mistake that his dad regrets that Teddy

Starting point is 00:14:29 writes in his own life. So it says, he, meaning his father, avoided the war, that's the Civil War, by hiring a substitute. He paid to have some other man go in his place, which was both legal and costly. His father regretted the decision to his dying day. He always afterward felt that he had done a very wrong thing and not having put forth every other feeling aside and joined in the absolute fighting forces. The decision had a profound effect on his older son and namesake, for whom it became the glaring single flaw in the life of an idolized father

Starting point is 00:15:04 and one he would feel forever compelled to compensate for. And in his autobiography, Teddy states that my father was the finest man that I ever knew. A little bit more of a description of Teddy as a child that he keeps with him for the rest of his life. He is brimming, full of mischief and has to be watched all the time. And even at the young age of 10 years old, he's already yearning for adventure. They call him T.D. I'm just going to keep calling him Teddy because it's too confusing for me. Teddy, whose hunger for adventure in any printed or spoken form was insatiable

Starting point is 00:15:37 and whose private musings on large matters of historic consequence were sometimes so out of proportion with his physical size and age as to be strangely amusing so yeah after he suffers a great tragedy tragedy he decides hey i'm not gonna i'm not gonna be a rancher i'm not gonna be a politician i'm actually gonna be a writer uh an historian and he winds up writing i think the first book he ever wrote was on like the war of the the naval uh the role the Navy played in the War of 1812. It's just really bizarre things for somebody in their early 20s to write a book about, but he did do that. It was from the heroes of my favorite stories he would explain as a grown man.

Starting point is 00:16:16 From hearing of the feats performed by my southern forefathers, that's his mother's side, and from knowing my father that I felt great admiration for men who were fearless and I had a great desire to be like them. And what he's referencing there is really just part of the human experience that the stories that we're exposed to, the ones that we gravitate to, they have an effect on us. They shape the future, our future desires, our future experiences that we actually go after. This is another example of him being ambitious from a very young age. Still, there runs a theme of the pleasure and pride in being the first to see or do something. An eagerness to set himself apart from others, to distinguish himself, to get out ahead of them,

Starting point is 00:16:58 or simply to be alone, absorbed in his private thoughts. So more about going back to his struggles with asthma. There's a doctor, an English physician, who writes a book called On Asthma. And there's some ideas that Teddy got from reading that book, that Teddy and his father got from reading that book. And Teddy really takes these ideas and then runs with it for the rest of his life. And the guy that wrote the book, his name is Salter. So it says, much of what Salter wrote on the importance of exercise reads as if it might have been the very text for all Theodore was to preach to his small son and the son himself would choose as his own lifelong creed.

Starting point is 00:17:33 Organs are made for action, not existence. They are made to work, not to be. And when they work well, then they can be well. It says, for a child as acutely sensitive in intelligence as he was, the impact of asthma could not have been anything but profound, affecting personality, outlook, self-regard, and the whole course of his young life. The asthmatic child knows he's an oddity, that somehow, for some reason, no one can explain, he is defective, different. Ailments 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 they're describing the effects of Teddy's asthma. 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. It's a really good thought to have and a good sentence and description of what's what's Teddy doesn't know at this time.

Starting point is 00:18:32 He's still a child. What's in his future? Unfortunately, he had learned at a very young 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. I think Teddy could be writing these words himself. 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 Teddy was to say, extremely tenacious of life. So let me stop there before

Starting point is 00:19:06 I tell you what he does to, like, how, what his approach is to solving this problem, the problem of asthma, right? So at the same time I'm reading this book, a friend of mine decided to read the book with me this week. So we've been going back and forth texting and sending, like, screenshots and pictures of passages that were very interesting. And he was able to summarize in just a, like, what's the main point, the main lesson of this book of the life of Teddy Roosevelt? And he says, was there a wasted minute in the life of Teddy Roosevelt? Question mark. And he answers his own question. No!

Starting point is 00:19:41 Exclamation point. And I think that's one lesson I'm going to carry forward. It's just like, I need to fill, my life can be a lot broader and richer in experiences if I use Teddy Roosevelt and the life of Teddy Roosevelt as inspiration moving forward, which I hope I do. So let's go back to this. His asthma is getting worse, but Teddy shows what it will be his lifelong trait of determination. Theodore, and so now this is his father talking to him. Theodore, you have the mind, but you do not have the body. And without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should.

Starting point is 00:20:16 He must build himself up by his own effort. You must make your body. It was a summons and the offer of a way, the one way to right his own balance. It's hard drudgery to make one's body, his father said, but I know you will do it. And with that, the sorry little specimen threw back his head and declared he would do it. And this is now Teddy's own internal interpretation of what his father the lesson his father just taught him suddenly as he told his friend he saw himself for what he was an affront to human shape boneless all speed no strength a pretender it was no good wishing to

Starting point is 00:20:57 appear like the heroes he worshipped he if if he made no effort to be like them, strength had to come first. One must be strong before everything else. So this is where he starts having that lifelong habit of strenuous exercise. He's always busy. He's always moving. The only time he's sitting still is when he's sitting down reading. So now he starts having a love of the outdoors. He starts riding horses.

Starting point is 00:21:21 He starts learning to hunt. So they're talking about how he hunts in this sentence. But really, this was his approach to all things in life. riding horses. He starts learning to hunt. So they're talking about how he hunts in this sentence. But really, this was his approach to all things in life. And it says he would charge off ruthlessly in chase of whatever object he had in view. I'm going to skip over this next part. I just thought it was really random. His father's obviously, you know, relatively wealthy, a good investor in New York. And so Alexander Graham Bell, who I read that fabulous book, it's called The Reluctant Genius or Reluctant Genius rather, actually goes and meets Teddy Roosevelt's dad and ask him for investment and Teddy Roosevelt's dad turns him down. So skip over that part. But this is a really important thing and something, again, that I

Starting point is 00:21:57 think is so instrumental. If you go back to the biography of Estee Lauder that I read, she talks about the special relationship she had with her uncle, who was a skin specialist, and that he taught her all the stuff he learned, which she then used to build her business. But in that book, she's like, do you understand how important it is to have somebody tell you that they believe in you?

Starting point is 00:22:19 And what that gave her, that boost of confidence that she could do this. And I think she was obviously, if you read her autobiography, she's definitely born with abundance of confidence. She was, she was a very gangster old lady. Um, but the same thing that was happening with her experience with her uncle is what's happening with Teddy and his father. His father told him explicitly that I believe in you. Not only is it's one thing to believe in, you know, a friend, a loved one, a child, but you got to tell them that. And I'm very glad that that that Theodore Roosevelt Sr.

Starting point is 00:22:51 did that to Theodore Roosevelt Jr. And so he's in this section. I'm reading a quote from a letter. It's one of the I think might be the last letter that his father writes him because Teddy is going off to Harvard. So, you know, we fast forward in his life. He's 18, 19 years old, something like that. And he says, as I saw the last of the train bearing you away, Theodore wrote, I realized what a luxury it was to have a boy in whom I could place perfect trust and confidence.

Starting point is 00:23:20 And this is more on the father and son relationship. This is right before his father dies. His father dies tragically at the age of 46. They did not see it coming. He was running for office. I forgot what exactly he was doing. And within a month, he's diagnosed. I think in hindsight, they believe it to be stomach cancer or some kind of intestinal blockage.

Starting point is 00:23:39 But it went from, you know, running from office and three months later being dead. And so this is what happens right before his father dies. They said goodbye to each other on January 2nd. He's going back to Harvard. And according to later entries in his new diary, Theodore told him, this is Theodore, the father, that he was the dearest of his children and had never caused him a moment's pain. And now his father's death is going to be a major turning point in his life. So this is his reaction to his father's death. It says, This is just devastating when you read this. His anguish spills across pages for weeks and months. With father gone, nothing seems to have any purpose.

Starting point is 00:24:52 Father was a shining example of the life he must aspire to. Father was the perfect example of all he himself was not. I'm sharing these parts with you because it's very important, and especially I think this is one of the main benefits of reading biographies. Theodore Roosevelt is one of the most accomplished people who ever lived. He made himself into that. But the same feelings that you and I have, whether it be joy, terror, sorrow, grief, self-doubt, everybody experiences this. The people that they write books on, they keep going. They don't stop because of this.

Starting point is 00:25:22 And you're about to hear Teddy Roosevelt saying, I'm nothing. I'm like a shell of a man compared to what the man my father was. It's very important to realize that, you know, again, he's not, that's what he feels at the moment. That's not what he really, like, I'm sure he believes it at that moment, but he keeps going forward. He keeps trying to make his father proud. So I think these parts are extremely important. Grief turned to shame and a sense of futility. He felt diminished by the memory of the man. Direct quote from his diary. Looking back on his life, it seems as if mine must be such a weak, useless one in comparison.

Starting point is 00:26:00 He was engulfed by self-doubt. How I wish I could ever do something to keep up his name, he would write in his diary. So this part is very interesting. How does he deal with the death of his father, the death of the most important person in his life, the overwhelming grief that he's experiencing? And he starts to deal with emotional pain through physical exertion. And this is something that he does for the rest of his life. His father's going to die.

Starting point is 00:26:27 I talked about this on the Hour of Fate. I'm going to talk to you about it here more in a minute. His mother and his wife die on the same day. I mean, the level of tragedy this guy had to endure is unbelievable. And he always, when this happens, he reverts to dealing with emotional pain through physical exertion. And there's just two sentences that give you an idea. It says, he loved to row in the hottest sun over the roughest water in the smallest boat.

Starting point is 00:26:54 And in the second sentence, they're going on this hike, and the doctor, the family doctor is saying, you know, be careful. He says, look out for Theodore. The doctor is said to advise their guide. They're up in Maine doing a bunch of hikes. He's not strong, but he's all grit. He'll kill himself before he'll even say he's tired. So not only does he throw himself into physical activity to try to deal with his grief, he goes back to Harvard. He's got two more years at Harvard after his father's death death excuse me uh to complete and this is where he talks a lot about his dad we see how he throws

Starting point is 00:27:31 himself into his life he talks also in his diaries or his journals about all the lessons that his father um taught him and this is after his father died it was really interesting that i always reference this thing i learned from henry clay frick but it's also been manifested and described in many of the other founders that we've covered on the podcast. But this idea about gentlemen, watch your costs, about, you know, making sure you're resourceful, being frugal, not letting small expenses compound to the detriment of your life, your business, everything else. His father had his own version of that. He says once as Theodore would later relate, his father had given him a brief lesson in economy. He's trying to teach his son, you know, you didn't have to work for this money. Your grandfather did.

Starting point is 00:28:07 But that doesn't mean you go out and waste it. Don't be, you know, you got to be frugal. You can't be silly. So he says the great trick was to keep the fraction constant, his father had said. If one could not increase the numerator, so think about revenue, then one must reduce the denominator expenses. He talks about that. I don't even think he's talking about it in a business sense, even though his father was running a business at the time. I think he meant in his own personal economy. He could hardly have been more energetic. He was a figure of incessant activity, of constant talk, constant hurry, a bee in a bottle. He rowed, meaning on the row team boat. He took boxing lessons and enrolled in dancing class.

Starting point is 00:28:45 He wrestled and went on long hikes. He was always ready to join anything. He was forever at it, said another friend. There was no one who possessed such an amazing array of interests. He joined the Rifle Club, the Art Club, the Glee Club. He was vice president of National History Society. This is all at Harvard, by the way. He helped start a finance club and was named to the editorial board of The Advocate, which is an undergraduate magazine.

Starting point is 00:29:10 During his senior year, he began to work on a book, his study of the naval side of the War of 1812. This is what a weird interest to have for such a young person, right? There was always something different about him. He was wholly constitutionally incapable of indifference. This is great writing by McCullough. This book, by the way, won the National Book Award back in the 80s. So it's spectacularly written. He was wholly constitutionally incapable of indifference.

Starting point is 00:29:39 He was the kind who spoke up in class. The strange, shrill manner of his speech persisted. He sort of sputtered as he spoke. His thoughts charging on faster than his mouth could handle them. This sentence was just hilarious because it's a description of how he ate chicken, but in my opinion, it's also could be a metaphor of how he lived his life. His friend remembered how he ate chicken as though he wanted to grind the bones. He was a rabid competitor in anything he attempted. He was constantly measuring his performance, measuring himself against others. Everybody was a rival, every activity, a contest,

Starting point is 00:30:11 a personal challenge. Later in that summer, he climbed some mountain, I can't pronounce, carrying a 45 pound weight in his pack and noted in his diary that both his cousin and his friend had given up in exhaustion long before reaching the top and they didn't have a 45-pound weight in his backpack. Theodore always thought he could do things better than anyone else. This is also criticism in his later life, that he was egotistical. But the impression is more of somebody who wants to prove, who must prove, that he could do things better than anyone else.

Starting point is 00:30:46 And again, going back into this deep-seated like what is motivating him think go back to what mccullough was saying it's like i i need to know what happened to this guy how did he do like how how is it possible that he accomplished what he did like what influenced that he said and then we we hear theodore in his own writing again this is on his diary we didn't think it was going to be published for other people to read of what's pushing him. Oh, how little worthy I am of such a father. I feel such a hopeless sense of inferiority to him. He's writing that. I loved him so.

Starting point is 00:31:19 He's writing that years after his father has died. It's also during college he gets diagnosed with a health disorder and we see his lifelong train of defiance. He also received extremely disquieting news from the college physician. He had gone for a routine physical examination and they told him that he had heart trouble. He was warned he must live a quiet life, choose a relatively sedentary occupation, he starts writing books. He's writing articles. But he also gets involved in

Starting point is 00:32:05 politics he joins the new york state assembly he's really young i think he's like 23 20 23 at the time something like that um and what i love is because i thought about the the you know last week i did that book uh most of it's just the writings it's an invent and wander the collected writings of of uh jeff bezos so most of it's written just by jeff bezos right but the introduction fairly long introduction that book is written by walter is Isaacson, who wrote a bunch of biographies, a number of which I've covered on the podcast, right? And one thing he said about that, you know, what did Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Ada Lovelace, book coming soon on her, probably next week or two. Steve Jobs, did I already say him? Benjamin Franklin, I forgot who

Starting point is 00:32:43 else he listed. Like, what did they all have in common? He's like, they never lost their childlike sense of wonder at this amazing world that we live in and this amazing experience that we call life, right? Teddy Roosevelt, same thing. So he goes up, he's got a new job, and he's in Albany. He says it was only when he reached Albany, however, that he realized what an extraordinary world he had entered.

Starting point is 00:33:00 A new legislative diary had begun, filled with a whole new cast of characters, some as closely observed as various rare birds in the boyhood field journals that he wrote there was much the same feeling of wonder and discovery um a little of as though as he as as a a little as though excuse me he were back on the nile nile river he took a trip when he was younger seeing fauna of unimaginable shapes and kinds and plumage i liked it i butchered that by stuttering my way through it so i apologize but um what they're talking about there is even his boy like his diaries is like he'd be looking at a field and you just think you see grass he would notice trees and shrubbery and different animals and he just had an amazing attention to detail that he would catalog. So the way he, same way he did that with wildlife throughout

Starting point is 00:33:47 his whole life, now he's doing it with politicians. And this is where, again, so far in the history of founders, we've seen him as an adversary. He's against these people that he feels corrupt, politicians and businessmen. And so this is, we see this, he's coming to this observation very early in life. He's writing about all the different politicians that now are his peers. And what does he come to the conclusion? Roughly a third of these he judged to be crooked and more about his approach. He plunged ahead, deferring to no one, making his presence felt. And yet he's 23. He's the youngest member of the assembly at the time. So he jumps right in. He gets a lot of press coverage because he's calling people out on their corruption. He doesn't know any better. It says, yet despite, and so anyways, the press is making fun of him. They make fun of how, like, he's all teeth. The way he talks is funny.

Starting point is 00:34:35 He's just like a weird character. So it says, yet despite all this, and this is his response. Yet despite all this, he left no doubt that he was there to accomplish something. He worked hard. He obviously cared and wanted to learn. You could see that he was there to accomplish something. He worked hard. He obviously cared and wanted to learn. You could see that here was an uncommon fellow. He was distinctly different. One of his friends, this guy named Spinney, he says they called him a walking interrogation point. Theodore would literally stand a man against the wall, boring in for half an hour. He was very

Starting point is 00:35:02 interested in all the information. Not only is he going to read a lot, but he's going to pump you for as much information as he could possibly get. So he says at breakfast, he would sit with the other members, sit talking and reading a stack of morning papers, going through the papers at tremendous speed. He threw each paper as he finished it onto the floor. And all this time, he would be taking part

Starting point is 00:35:22 in the running conversation of the table. Had anyone supposed that this inspection of his papers was superficial, he would have been sadly mistaken. Roosevelt saw everything and formed an opinion on everything. And this like zest for life, not wasting a single moment of life, I really just love about Theodore Roosevelt. And this is a great paragraph that illustrates this. He was a madman. So it talks about his friend and fellow politician. They're living at the same boarding house, right? And this is how this guy's name is Hunt. And this is how Hunt knows who's walking through the door without seeing him.

Starting point is 00:35:57 He and Theodore boarded at the same house. Hunt always knew 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 dude is literally running up the stairs that's a running through life that's how he approaches life it's hilarious and part of the reason um that he liked politics so much is because he really loved to fight and politics is like this he saw this one giant battle he relished the battle itself he loved to fight it was possibly the chief reason he loved politics that he needed politics he was never more pleased with himself than when he made a stout fight we

Starting point is 00:36:34 already know this because he had a fight with joe these are not you know these are formidable individuals he's not picking on people he's going after jp morgan joseph pulitzer william randolph hearst at the time that he's fighting them these are some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Experience, moreover, had already taught him a grudging respect for the rogues who fought against him, who, too, were fearless and forthright in their fashion. He wanted a formidable individual. He wanted somebody to measure himself up against. He says instead he preferred them to what he called the timid good men who stood on the sidelines. In a political fight, he fought tooth and claw. Years later, writing about his father's old friend, John Hay, Theodore made an acutely revealing observation, revealing of his own nature.

Starting point is 00:37:21 So what they're saying is, you know, he's talking about John Hay, but he's really talking about himself. The problem with Hay, not that he possesses this trait, but that what he saw that he did not like in others, he tried to avoid for himself. Okay. The problem with Hay, he said, was his unwillingness to face the rather intimate association, which is implied in a fight. One must never shrink from what was rough in life one must never recoil or flinch he wrote more in his approach to life at his worst he got what he called his caged wolf feeling to be confined to be hemmed in to have nothing to do was unbearable boredom was something he had to he had had to deal with so rarely in life that when he had to, he hardly knew how to respond. Okay, so now we got to the part of his life.

Starting point is 00:38:10 His father's already dead. He's already a politician. He meets the love of his life. He's absolutely in love. She's about to give birth to his daughter. And this is where he just goes through undeniable and unrelenting tragedy and despair. His mom and wife die on the same day again disease had struck and destroyed and changed everything the life of the family had seemed an unending tragic struggle

Starting point is 00:38:31 against one cursed disease after another potts disease asthma cancer and now typhoid and brights disease brights disease which i didn't know before is the chronic inflammation of the kidney kidneys the sole overwhelming lesson was the awful brevity of life, the sense that the precipice awaited not just somewhere off down the road, but at any moment. An asthmatic childhood had shown that life could be stifled, cut off, unless one fought back, and all of Papa's admonitions to get action, to seize the moment, had the implicit message that there was not much time after all. Father had died at 46.

Starting point is 00:39:13 Mother had only been 48. Alice, his wife, was 22. Her life had barely begun. Nothing lasts. Winter waits. And this next sentence is something I've never forgotten since the first time i read it on the day alice died theodore made a large x on the page in his diary and beneath that he wrote only the light has gone out of my life and now main part of the book is where he goes off he goes west goes to the badlands uh starts like a ranching business and is just seeking solitude seeking physical exertion that's where he's obviously uh i said at the beginning

Starting point is 00:39:53 of the podcast where he's walking what 45 miles no sleep over two days something like that um and so we just see you know this is where he's dealing with again even his autobiography he never mentions he i think it's like one sentence even his autobiography, he never mentions. I think it's like one sentence about his mom and nothing. He never mentions Alice or anything. And I'll talk more about why he might have omitted that. Because he felt like, you know, your troubles are your own. Don't make your troubles other people's.

Starting point is 00:40:20 And so he had to find a way to deal with this. And this is through his struggle feeling, you know, at the time he's like, I'm done with politics. He went to the convention in Chicago, I think, when he was 25 years old and winds up being his candidate that he was backing loses. And he just he's just think he's done. He thinks I'm going to go be a cattle rancher, a cowboy. I'll be a writer, historian. He's just lost. He's completely lost. And I think that is why this part of his life is when why mccullough set up the book that the way he did you know he had to go through just unbelievable struggle and despair and sadness and melancholy and figure out who the hell am i and what do i want my life to be like truly what what do i want out of life and so we go we i'm gonna just read some highlights about this time and it almost feels like i put like does he have a death wish here uh was he punishing himself in the badlands he's gonna know something himself um and so the reason i put that i put that is because he's in a bar or like a saloon and people are making fun of him because he's like this skinny guy with like big teeth he winds up gaining a lot of muscle, you know, doing all this physical activity.

Starting point is 00:41:26 But the guy has guns and, you know, they're in Montana somewhere. And this is what happens. He says when he stood up, the guy's making fun of him. So says Theodore stood up and in quiet business like fashion flattened an unknown drunken cowboy who had a gun in each hand, who with a gun in each hand who, with a gun in each hand, had decided to make a laughingstock of him because of his glasses. So the fact that he had really bad eyesight,

Starting point is 00:41:51 he would travel, you know, 20 pairs, something like that, of glasses. He was terrified of losing them because he couldn't see at all. But his idea is, like, you're very depressed. Who's going to start a fistfight with a guy with two guns in his hands? You know? And so we see that sometimes after, sometime that first year, meaning this is his escape to the badlands uh as bill seawall this is somebody's working with him also remember theodore could become very melancholy very much

Starting point is 00:42:15 down in spirits it made no difference what became of him he told seawall he had nothing to live for you have your child to live for i said said. Her aunt can take care of her a good deal better than I can, he said. She would never know anything about me anyway. She would just be as well off without me. Think about the devastation. What kind of mindset do you have to be experiencing? The depth of depression you have to be enduring to say something like that. He's not a bad father. He's a great father. His whole life. He winds up having five, I think, five more kids after this. But listen to that. She would just be well off without me. Well, I said, you won't always feel that way. You won't

Starting point is 00:42:54 always feel as you do now, and you won't always be willing to stay here and drive cattle. Whatever it was Theodore felt for the Badlands was quite beyond Seawall. Anybody who preferred such a place to the east, Seawall wrote, must have a depraved idea of life or hate himself or both. So saying anybody that actually wants to be here, instead of being in relative luxury of his life back east, must have a depraved idea of life

Starting point is 00:43:19 or hate himself or both. They describe what the Badlands looked like when it wasn't winter as hell if the flames had been extinguished this is a barren you know frontier landscape that he's in this is a very interesting line from his his biography because you know he's in a completely different experience he's out exposed to wolves and grizzly bears and just uh it gets to 40 below zero you could freeze to death it's a very very dangerous place and he makes up the point that like at first i was i acted like i was i had courage

Starting point is 00:43:51 and then by acting i actually developed it so he says long afterward he was to write there were all kinds of things in which i was afraid of at first ranging from grizzly bears to gunfighters but by acting as if i was not afraid, I gradually ceased to be afraid. Theodore was convinced that his own political career was finished, and he had decided that it was definitely as a writer that the world would hear from him. these writings we see a lot of like ranching what he was doing trying to raise cattle he winds up losing almost like a million dollars on uh uh this this business venture he's doing right now but we see that it was entirely different from the world of politics that he was living in office work back east that's also what he winds up liking about it but in this writing we also see the traits he's observing traits in other people's and so we see the traits that he values so it says he wrote of their courage their phenomenal physical endurance he liked their humor he's talking about cowboys

Starting point is 00:44:55 he liked their humor admired the unwritten code that ruled the cow camp meanness cowardice and dishonesty are not tolerated there's 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. 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. Okay, so a large part of the book is him being out west, being in nature, doing this, and this cathartic experience is working through all the mental anguish and troubles that he's experiencing from, you know, all the tragedy. He's still in

Starting point is 00:45:50 early 20s. The book ends when he comes back east. He's 27 years old and he's about to run for mayor of New York City. He actually loses that election. But what's very interesting to me is we see this this belief in himself. Again, in his diary, it's all self-doubt. I'm a shell of a man. I'm nothing. I'll never be the man my father was. And yet they're riding a train back east, and he already thinks he can be president.

Starting point is 00:46:15 So it says, on the train back, Theodore sat with his friend Arthur Packard and remarked to Packard that he thought now he could do his best work in a public and political way. Then responded Packard, you will become president of the United States. What impressed Packard was that Theodore seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion. Okay, so the book ends. He's 27. He's having that conversation on the train.

Starting point is 00:46:39 I'm going to be president. It doesn't happen for another 15 years. And obviously it has to take place because he's vice president of time and mckinley actually gets killed and that's that's where how theodore um becomes president obviously so this is the part where i was mentioning earlier which i found really interesting and while eventually read another biography that covers his later years because it's full of just you know he fits multiple lifetimes and what does he got 30 33 years left so let me go over this outline um and i'll close on this outline of his life which is really really fantastic with the

Starting point is 00:47:12 assassination of william mckinley in 1901 theodore became at 42 years old the youngest president in history and possibly the best prepared he had he had by then served six years as a reformed civil service commissioner two years as police commissioner of New York City, as assistant secretary of the Navy, as a colonel in the Rough Riders, as governor of New York, and as vice president. He was a well-to-do, aristocratic, big-city, Harvard-educated Republican with ancestral roots in the Deep South and a passionate following in the West, which taken all together made him something quite new under the sun. As president, he was picturesque, noisy, colorful in ways that amused and absorbed the press, worried the elders of his party, and delighted the country. To his admirers, he was the outstanding, incomparable symbol of virality in his time, a stream of fresh, pure, bracing air from the mountains to clear the fetid atmosphere of the national capital, the most striking figure in American life.

Starting point is 00:48:16 While to others, some of whom had once been his friends, he was that damn cowboy, a man drunk with himself, an excellent specimen of the genus Americanus egotisticus. But he was also a president with a phenomenal grasp of history, who spoke German and French and knew something of the world from having traveled abroad from the time he was a child. More important, he was as able an executive as ever occupied the office. He loved being president, loved the power for what he could accomplish with it. He settled the great coal strike of 1902 by entering the mediation as no president had done before. That's what the book The Hour of Fate is on. He initiated the first successful antitrust suit against a corporate monopoly, the giant Northern Securities Company.

Starting point is 00:49:07 And when his father's friend, J.P. Morgan, came to Washington to demand an explanation, such actions served only to harden his resolve. He took the Big Isthmus and built the Panama Canal and served as a peacemaker in the Russian-Japanese War, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. And he was openly proud of all his achievements. As president, the boy who adored hero stories built a new navy and sent a fleet of battleships around the world on goodwill missions. As president, the asthmatic child who craved the outdoors for whom the unspoiled natural world had literally meant life itself increased the area of national forest by some 40 million acres, established five national parks, 16 national monuments, including the Grand Canyon,

Starting point is 00:49:51 four national game refugees, 51 national bird sanctuaries, and made conservation a popular cause. As president, he made the White House a bully pulpit, preached righteousness, courage, love of country, the strenuous life, which everything considered might have been his greatest contribution. Once, when an old family friend asked how he felt the pulse of the country, Theodore's response was, I don't know the way the people do feel. I only know how they ought to feel. His devotion to the memory of his father, a feeling of his father's presence in his life, remained with him till the end. My father was the best man I ever knew, he would say. It was to him he felt he must be true. In his study, between small portraits of Abraham Lincoln

Starting point is 00:50:43 and Grant, he hung a large oil portrait of his father. Of his mother, Theodore was to say comparatively little. Of Alice Lee, this is his first wife, Theodore was to say nothing. Nor, supposedly, was her name ever spoken with the new family he and Edith had established. To judge by his autobiography, she never existed. Their romance, his first marriage, never happened. The one possible explanation to be found in his own writings is a comment in a letter to his sister concerning a mutual friend whose life had taken a tragic turn. Theodore writes, I hate to think of her suffering, but the only thing for her to do now is to treat the

Starting point is 00:51:25 past as past. The event as finished and out of her life. To dwell on it, and above all to keep talking of it with anyone, would be both weak and morbid. She should try not to think of it. This she cannot wholly avoid, but she can avoid speaking of it. She should show a brave and cheerful front to the world, whatever she feels, and henceforth she should never speak one word of the matter to anyone. His own brave and cheerful front was what the world knew him for, what the large proportion of his countrymen most loved him for. No one seemed to do so much or to enjoy what he did so thoroughly. Yet his favorite contemporary poet was Edwin Arlington Robinson, whose themes were loneliness and the burden of personal memory. The robust, quick-stepping, legendary T.R. was a

Starting point is 00:52:18 great deal more pensive and introspective. He dwelt more on the isolation and sadness inherent in human life than most people ever realized. Black care for all the phenomenal pace he maintained throughout his life clung to him more than he let on. He kept at his writing. In his public career, it is estimated he wrote 150,000 letters. He also wrote his own speeches and presidential messages, and more than 20 books dealing with history, literature, politics, and natural history. Judged by almost any criteria, his second marriage was an unequivocal success. The second marriage produced five children to whom their father was openly, passionately devoted. He read to them at night, told them ghost stories, joined in their games, led them on long morning excursions on horseback, exactly as his father had done.

Starting point is 00:53:12 To be with him was to have fun, remembered one of his cousins. If for no other reason than he so obviously was having a good time himself. I love all these children and have great fun with them and am touched by the way they feel I am their special friend, champion, and companion, he wrote. The letters he wrote his children from Cuba, the White House, Panama, whenever separated from them, were to become famous when published as a best-selling book the year of his death. He continued to ride, shoot, hike, spar, row, play tennis. His knowledge of large animals of North America probably surpassed that of anyone of his day. The last letter he wrote, like the first that we know of, had to do with birds. A book was about the only

Starting point is 00:54:00 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, the Irish Sagas, Bunyan, Scott, Cooper, The Letters of Abraham Lincoln, Huckleberry Finn, he read many times over. His health was not particularly good later in life, appearances to the contrary. He was dogged by all his old ailments, by stomach trouble, insomnia, chest colds, and by asthma from time to time. Poor eyesight was a lifelong handicap. Sailing off to fight in Cuba in 1898, he carried a dozen extra pair of glasses in his pockets and in the lining of his hat, and a blow suffered during a sparring match in the White House blinded him permanently in his left eye. He put on weight, and as time passed, he was bothered with rheumatism or gout. He did not know which. I am falling behind

Starting point is 00:55:00 physically, he told his son. When he died in his sleep in the early hours of January 6, 1919, he was 60 years old, yet he seemed much older. But by then, since leaving the White House, he had fallen out with his hand-picked successor, broken up the 1912 Republican National Convention, launched his own progressive Bull Moose Party, campaigned again for president, had been shot in the chest by a fanatic, lost the 1912 election, he had hunted big game in Africa, flown in a plane, led an exploring expedition in the Amazon jungles during which he contracted malaria, lost 50 pounds, and again nearly died, campaigned to get the country into the First World War,

Starting point is 00:55:47 and suffered the loss of his son Quentin, his youngest, who was killed in aerial combat behind German lines in 1918. Theodore was buried with a minimum of ceremony on a bitter cold day. Of the things said in his memory, among the simplest and best, is this by a friend since childhood. He was so alive at all points, and so gifted, with the rare faculty of living intensely and entirely,

Starting point is 00:56:18 in every moment as it passed. And that is the main lesson I'll take away from the life of Teddy Roosevelt. To be alive at all points. And so gifted with the rare faculty of living intensely and entirely in every moment. And that's where I'll leave it. For the full story, read the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 156 books down, 1,000 to go,

Starting point is 00:56:48 and I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #156 Theodore Roosevelt

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