Colonel Roosevelt and the White House Gang

By Earle Looker and Arthur Hayne Mitchell

When Theodore Roosevelt became president at age forty-two upon the assassination of William McKinley, he was the youngest President to have ever served then and now - and was father to six children, ranging in age from three to seventeen. During his term, watching the Roosevelt family became a national pastime. Each day, news of the First Family was consumed by newspaper readers. The best known Roosevelt child was, of course, the President himself. His pillow fights with his sons, sometimes while keeping the cabinet waiting, were notorious. One magazine described the phenomenon by saying people could no more ignore the Roosevelt stories than a small boy can turn his head away from a circus parade followed by a steam calliope.
Roosevelts children, along with some of their cousins and friends, came to be called the White House Gang. Roosevelt, certainly the most famous Gang member, was singularly able to encourage the positive qualities of his and other boys while leading the United States into the 20th Century. But the Gangs real leader was Roosevelts youngest child Quentin. They roller skated in the hallways, stilt-walked through high ceilinged rooms, spit-balled portraits and explored every possible space of the White House from roof to attic to basement. One of their favorite games was to stage attacks upon various government office buildings.

This book tells how Theodore Roosevelt handled his children, how he won their love and respect, and how he won them to his way of thinking. There ought to be an Amendment to the Constitution compelling every mother and father to read this book. It is a fascinating story, and if you read it and heed it, you will be a better parent. Your children will be happier, and you will be happier.

----Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People,
April 20, 1938

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504360777

Earle Looker

Arthur Hayne Mitchell is a writer, senior biodiversity, environmental and natural resources specialist, protected areas planner and manager, environmental policy specialist, conservation biologist and biological anthropologist with more than thirty years experience, including twenty-five working outside the United States in fifteen countries, primarily in Southeast and South Asia as well as East Africa and the Caribbean. Art Mitchell, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Yale University, lives in Fairfax, Virginia. Reginald Earle Looker volunteered to serve in France, prior to the official entry of America into WWI, as an ambulance driver with the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps (Norton-Harjes). During that time, he also worked as a freelance war correspondent for The Evening Post. After the war, Looker worked as an advertising executive, magazine editor, public relations consultant, ghost-writer and speech writer for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Looker was associate editor of Asia magazine and a contributing editor of Fortune magazine. In addition to The White House Gang, a 1929 New York Times bestseller, he wrote This Man Roosevelt; Colonel Roosevelt, Private Citizen; The American Way: Franklin Roosevelt in Action; Looking Forward and Government Not Politics (both ghost-written with Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Revolt (with his second wife Antonina Hansell Looker). During WW II, Looker headed the Psychological Warfare division of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), which was transferred under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of 1942. MIS was tasked with collecting, analyzing and disseminating intelligence. The OSS later became the CIA. He also served as a Lt. Colonel in World War II, Pacific Theater. Earle Looker died in 1976 at Toccoa, Stephens County, Georgia.

Book preview

COLONEL ROOSEVELT

AND THE WHITE

HOUSE GANG

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Teddy, Quentin and the Gang

Earle Looker and Arthur Hayne Mitchell

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Copyright © 2016 Arthur Hayne Mitchell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover: "We followed him in single file, mimicking his strenuous pace."

Pen and ink drawing by James Montgomery Flagg, from ‘The White House Gang’ (1929)

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6076-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6075-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6077-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016910154

Balboa Press rev. date: 07/15/2016

CONTENTS

Prologue

Preface to the White House Gang

Foreword to the 11th Edition of the White House Gang

PART 1: GANG CREATION

Chapter 1: Quentin

Chapter 2: An Inconvenient Necessity

Chapter 3: Gang Establishment

PART 2: GANG ADVENTURES

Chapter 4: TR, Q and the Gang

Chapter 5: Pirates of the Potomac

Chapter 6: Days of Chivalry

Chapter 7: The Sporting Chance

Chapter 8: The Education of the Spirit

Chapter 9: The Lion and the Unicorn

Chapter 10: The Battle of the Standard

Chapter 11: Concerning Collars

Chapter 12: The Virtue of a Name

Chapter 13: Owning the Earth

Chapter 14: A President at Play

Chapter 15: Esprit de Corps

Chapter 16: An Amiable Ambassador

Chapter 17: Assuming the Offensive

Chapter 18: Blood Brothers

PART 3: LADIES OF THE HOUSE

Chapter 19: Edith

Chapter 20: Alice

Chapter 21: Ethel

PART 4: WILDERNESS WARRIOR

Chapter 22: Wilderness Enthusiast

Chapter 23: Conservation Advocate

PART 5: GRATITUDE

Chapter 24: Then Came War

Chapter 25: Marching On

Further Reading

Other Books by Earle Looker

The White House Gang

This Man Roosevelt

Colonel Roosevelt, Private Citizen

The American Way: Franklin Roosevelt in Action

Government – Not Politics (ghost-written with Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

Looking Forward (ghost-written with Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

Revolt (with Antonina Hansell Looker)

An Acceptable Warrior (with Arthur Hayne Mitchell)

Other Books by Arthur Hayne Mitchell

Ecology of Hose’s Langur (Presbytis hosei) in Logged and

Unlogged Dipterocarp Forest of Northeast Borneo

An Acceptable Warrior (with Earle Looker)

River Myths and Legends of Bengal

Angels in Dhaka

Children’s Books (English and Bengali)

The Padma River Dolphins of Bangladesh

The Padma River Heritage of Bangladesh

What You Can Do About Recycling

To Be a Conservation Biologist

Bangladesh Biodiversity

Renewable Energy

Climate Change

For my daughter, Katharine Len Yee Mitchell, my sister, Katharine Earle Mitchell Nevins, my aunt, Katharine Earle Looker Hyde, and my great-grandmother,

Katharine Chamberlain Earle Looker,

and to the fond memory of Teddy Roosevelt,

my grandfather Earle Looker and their

White House playmates

"I play with the children almost every night and

some child is invariably fearfully damaged in the play;

but this does not seem to affect the ardor of their enjoyment."

~ Theodore Roosevelt

PROLOGUE

"I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President …

I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power …

I acted for the public welfare; I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition."

~ Theodore Roosevelt

"Those who hated him often did so for the same reason the many more loved him:

He called to mind America’s better days and Americans’ better selves."

~ H. W. Brands

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Awarded to Earle Looker

(Medal design by James Earle Fraser, 1920)

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,

or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,

is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally

treasonable to the American public."

~ Theodore Roosevelt

When Theodore Roosevelt became president at age forty-two upon the assassination of William McKinley, he was the youngest President to have ever served – then and now - and was father to six children, ranging in age from three to seventeen. During his term, watching the Roosevelt family became a national pastime. Each day, news of the First Family was consumed by newspaper readers. The best known Roosevelt child was, of course, the President himself. His pillow fights with his sons, sometimes while keeping the cabinet waiting, were notorious. One magazine described the phenomenon by saying people could no more ignore the Roosevelt stories "than a small boy can turn his head away from a circus parade followed by a steam calliope."

Roosevelt’s children, along with some of their cousins and friends, came to be called the White House Gang. Roosevelt, certainly the most famous Gang member, was singularly able to encourage the positive qualities of his and other boys while leading the United States into the 20th Century. But the Gang’s real leader was Roosevelt’s youngest child Quentin. They roller skated in the hallways, stilt-walked through high ceilinged rooms, spit-balled portraits and explored every possible space of the White House from roof to attic to basement. One of their favorite games was to stage attacks upon various government office buildings.

My grandfather and his friends were the core of the White House Gang, immortalized in a book by the same name and written by my grandfather in 1929. His book illustrated in sixteen short stories the character of a boy: unable to sit still, fidgeting, taking things apart, being annoyed by and annoying girls, pushing the limits – hopefully learning through mistakes.

My grandfather’s own father, Major Henry Brigham Looker, Chief Surveyor for the District of Columba, died suddenly at age forty-seven in early January 1905. He had been seriously ill for about three weeks, and the immediate cause of death was given as congestion of the brain. He had never enjoyed robust health since his service in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War as captain commanding Company H of the 1st Regiment, District of Columbia Volunteer Infantry. Thus, in this way, Theodore Roosevelt became my grandfather’s exceptional and willing surrogate father and was instrumental in shaping the thoughts and character of this fatherless boy.

I never knew my grandfather – only from stories – he died in 1976. We only met once at the train station in Alexandria, Virginia, when I was a boy, but I always admired him – a flawed genius, he excelled as a wordsmith with an interesting and varied career.

My contribution to his ‘New York Times’ best-selling original work, ‘The White House Gang’ (here as Part 2 in its entirety) was to supplement it with additional sections, edits, insert relevant quotes and chapter titles, change some names, places and circumstances. I penned the chapters in Creation of a Gang, Ladies of the House, Wilderness Warrior and Gratitude, but Gang Adventures is as it appeared verbatim in ‘The White House Gang’ (1929) as is the chapter Marching On.

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Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

My life’s work as a conservationist compelled me to create sections on Roosevelt’s pioneering work on conservation of natural resources and establishment of protected areas throughout the nation. I prepared that section to very briefly try and summarize the important and prolific work for conservation of our natural heritage that he accomplished during his presidency. Teddy Roosevelt’s contributions to the field of conservation were monumental; he has been aptly called the Wilderness Warrior. ¹

On a final but personally significant note, as a teenager I encountered TR’s eldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, one autumn day in 1970 while we were both browsing over the discount books at Saville Bookstore in Georgetown. No words were exchanged. She was 86, alert, fit and with an enquiring and piercing look, as if she knew something about me. I have absolutely no idea how I somehow intuitively knew who she was. While there was no conversation during this brief encounter, the connection was clear, strong, somehow comforting – and enough.

A.H.M.

Fairfax, Virginia

February 2016

PREFACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE GANG

To my mother, KATHARINE EARLE LOOKER, who lived with courage, simplicity, self-sacrifice and unswerving faith.

Appreciation and acknowledgements are easily written for small favors, but for great ones the matter is not so easily accomplished …

So, to Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt it seems impossible to express appreciation here, except by the simplest acknowledgement, since her most generous permission to reproduce mementos of Quentin’s boyhood in this book is but one of the many inspiring indications of her confidence in the White House Gang.

The rare privilege of revisiting all the old familiar haunts of the Gang, from the topmost point of vantage on the White House roof to the deepest, most mysterious recesses of the cellars and of walking again amid the memories of the private grounds.

Without the eager and sympathetic help of my Gang comrades this account of actual happenings would have been far less complete. To Charles P. Taft, 2nd, Cincinnati; Richard S. Chew, Boston; Bromley Seeley and Walker G. White, New York; Edward Stead, Baltimore, Gang members, and to the seniors of the White House Staff in Washington must be repeated my thanks for their recollections, comment and checking of incidents, places and personalities.

Even with all the aid of this interested kindness, this chronicle must remain incomplete, for at the end of the youthful years of the Gang came the World War. Gallantly fighting, Quentin left us, soon to be followed by his beloved father; all that had occurred before seemed to have been swept away … and so was lost the greater part of the story. Still, the spirit, the tones, the mutual sympathies of those early days will remain, forever with us. These impressions, however, are far more important than any punctilious record, though they are not of signal assistance in the preparation of an ordered narrative. Though the Gang remembers many events, their exact order is often forgotten and leaves to the record but one possible form … a history moving forward from one objective to another, simply, after the manner of all real experience.

Would that the prevailing conjecture proves true, that nothing thought, whispered, spoken or done, is ever lost – for then certain peals of joyous understanding laughter that gave the Gang great happiness, might repeat themselves to all of us. The echoes of it are still in our hearts. I can only try to reproduce as much of my feelings and impressions as I am able, strengthened by the most generous help I have received, for love of Theodore Roosevelt, Mrs. Roosevelt and Quentin.

E.L.

New York City, 1929

". . . Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,

To thee I send this written embassage,

To witness duty, not to show my wit.

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it …"

~ William Shakespeare, Twenty-Sixth Sonnet (ca. 1593)

FOREWORD TO THE 11TH EDITION OF THE WHITE HOUSE GANG

This book tells how Theodore Roosevelt handled his children, how he won their love and respect, and how he won them to his way of thinking. There ought to be an Amendment to the Constitution compelling every mother and father to read this book. It is a fascinating story, and if you read it and heed it, you will be a better parent. Your children will be happier, and you will be happier.

Dale Carnegie

(Author of "How to Win Friends and Influence People")

New York

April 20, 1938

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Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Collection

PART 1

GANG CREATION

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in that gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.. . .If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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Roosevelt family in 1903 with Ethel, TR, Ted,

Archie, Alice, Kermit, Edith and Quentin

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs collection

CHAPTER

1

Quentin

"When you play, play hard;

when you work, don’t play at all."

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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Library of Congress Prints and Photographs collection

Theodore Roosevelt enlisted in the Spanish-American War and was assigned to Colonel Leonard Wood’s First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, later known as the ‘Rough Riders’. After Wood’s promotion, Roosevelt took command, and on July 1st led the right wing of the famous attack on San Juan Hill. On 19 November 1897, six months before his father enlisted for the war, Quentin Roosevelt was born in Washington as TR’s youngest child.

In 1901, Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States after the assassination of William McKinley in September. Thus, at age forty-two, Roosevelt became the youngest United States President in history to date. Leading the country into the Progressive Era, he championed his ‘Square Deal’ domestic policies, promising the average citizen fairness, breaking trusts, regulating railroads and ensuring safer food and drugs. Making conservation a top priority, he established a network of new national parks, forests and monuments to preserve the nation’s natural heritage.

When he took office, he was father to six children, ranging in age from three to seventeen. The youngest, Quentin, became the darling of the nation during the seven-and-a-half years he lived in the White House. He was nicknamed Quentyquee and Quinikins by his father and Q by his friends. He shared Teddy’s physical, intellectual and linguistic characteristics. Like his father, Quentin was an eloquent speaker and a natural leader. Quentin’s behavior prompted his mother to call him a fine bad little boy.

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I love you very much. Here is a picture of the mule that carries, among other things, my bag of clothes. There are about twenty mules in the pack train. They all follow one another in single file up and down the mountain path and across the streams. An illustrated letter President Theodore Roosevelt wrote from Yellowstone National Park to 6-year-old Quentin, April 16, 1903. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site collection

Quentin developed a strong friendship with a group of mostly classmates that became known as the White House Gang. In one adventure, the Gang took mirrors and stood outside a federal building, reflecting sunlight into the windows and disrupting the secretaries’ work. Someone contacted the president, who arranged for a military personnel to go to the top of the building to signal the boys with flags: "Stop the mirrors. Return to the White House for you know what from you know who." The boys slipped the mirrors back into their pockets and hightailed it home for their presidential punishment. As much as the President enjoyed Quentin’s fun, he insisted that he couldn’t let the boys bring a stop to government work.

The press loved covering the antics of this little boy. Visitors to the Smithsonian Institute’s First Ladies exhibit can see a display of a young boy and pony in an elevator; this is Quentin. He was full of life and fun, not just because he was the indulged and much-loved baby of the family but because he was born into a family that enjoyed themselves. President Roosevelt was often described as a big kid who was known to have to change his clothes for State dinners because he had just engaged in a pillow fight with Quentin.

One comment, made twenty years after Q’s exploits in and about Washington, is certainly worth consideration. A well-known newspaper correspondent, very wise in the ways of the world, very keen, and as direct and impersonal as a surgeon in his diagnosis of personalities, said, "Just one remark – just one come-back – from Quentin, would reveal his attitude completely … They speak of Lincoln as a man for the ages. If that be accepted, then Quentin Roosevelt was a boy for the ages – a boy who was a man in the beginning, a man who was a boy at the end. No finer boy-man than Quentin, has come within the province of my knowledge …"

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Theodore Roosevelt writes to Quentin, June 12, 1904, describing a mother bird feeding her babies and himself feeding an elk at the zoo. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site collection

Quentin quickly became known for his humorous and sometimes philosophical remarks. To a reporter trying to trap the boy into giving information about his father, Quentin admitted, "I see him occasionally, but I know nothing of his family life." The family soon learned to keep him quiet during dinner when important guests were present.

When Quentin was eight, his parents were discussing "a really dreadful accident that had just happened: A young man in Georgetown took a young woman out in a canoe on the Potomac River. The canoe capsized and she drowned; whereupon the young man, when he got home, took what seemed to be a very cold-blooded method of notifying her parents by sending them a special delivery letter. When they were expressing their horror at his sending a letter, Quentin solemnly interrupted with Yes, he wasted ten cents." There was a moment’s eloquent silence, and his parents then tried to explain to Quentin what they were objecting to was not at all the young man’s spend-thrift attitude!

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Quentin, with Kermit’s assistance, once brought their pony, Algonquin, up the elevator to Archie’s second floor bedroom in the White House to cheer up their brother, Archie, who was confined to his bed with measles – by F. W. Brouard, White House Historical Association

When he was nine, Quentin was given three pet snakes, one of which was "a large friendly king snake. Quentin burst in on his father, who was discussing certain matters with the Attorney General and dumped the snakes in his lap. The king snake had just been making a resolute effort to devour one of the smaller snakes. TR said, I suggested that he go into the next room [and entertain four Congressmen who were] drearily waiting to talk to me".

TR added, "I thought that he and his snakes would probably enliven their waiting time. Quentin at once fell in with the suggestion and rushed up to the Congressmen with the assurance he would find kindred spirits there. They at first thought the snakes were wooden, but there was some perceptible recoil when they realized they were not. Then the king snake went up Quentin’s sleeve – it was three or four feet long – and we hesitated to drag him back because his scales rendered that difficult. The last I saw of Quentin, one Congressman was gingerly helping him off with his jacket, so as to let the snake crawl out of the upper end of the sleeve."

One day, Quentin’s older brother, Archie, was sick with the measles and restricted to his bedroom. So Quentin decided to cheer up his brother by bringing Archie’s beloved pony up the stairs to his bedroom for a visit. Such was routine in the life of Quentin Roosevelt. The President, who was away at the time, later wrote, "By the way I was immensely amused at the information that Charles, the footman, had brought Archie’s calico pony, Algonquin, upstairs in the elevator to see him."

Quentin had a colorful way of expressing himself. When he was ten he got his legs very badly sunburned. Looking at them, he said, "They look like a Turner sunset, don’t they". After a pause he added, "I won’t be caught again this way! quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore!’"

He regularly walked on stilts or roller skated in the East Room. He would hop on carriages incognito to ride around Washington. And he had no problem stating his viewpoint. When told the White House grounds were no place for stilts, he quipped, "I don’t see what good it does me for you to be President. You can’t do anything here! I wish I was back home!"

While TR was on an African safari, Quentin spent the summer of 1909 in Europe with his mother and several siblings. He had always been interested in mechanics, and in a letter to his friend, Ambler Blackford, son of Alexandria, Virginia’s Episcopal High School principal, he enthusiastically related his first sighting of an airplane – a portent of what was to come much later.

"We have had a wonderful time here and seen lots. We were at Rheims and saw all the aeroplanes flying, and saw Curtis who won the Gordon Bennett cup for swiftest flight. You don’t