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LIFE AND WORK OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL

 CHAPTER TWENTY

 ROOSEVELT  THE  AUTHOR

Literature His Profession—A Prolific Writer of History, Politics, Biography, Travel and Essays—Regular Contributor to the Magazines—His Versatility and Remarkable Output—A Master of Concise and Vigorous English—List of His Works.
In private life the vocation of Theodore Roosevelt was authorship. Literature was his profession from early days, and he practised it with the greatest success. He had many avocations, and entered with zeal into them all, but he was at all times essentially a writing man; and he has left his imprint indelibly on American literature.

Very early Mr. Roosevelt decided to use his pen. Though his fortune was enough to make it unnecessary to work merely for a living, he did tell friends when his family began to increase that he would have to write for money if he was to give his children the education he desired for them.

Almost from the time when he left college, and even during his Presidential term, essays, histories, biographies, and books of a narrative or descriptive character came from his facile pen with the regularity of the seasons, while numerous contributions to the magazines and reviews further attested to his literary activity. Within two years of his graduation from Harvard he published his first book, on the naval operations of the war between Great Britain and the United States, 1812-1815, which became at once, and still remains, the recognized authority for this period. His subsequent writings brought the American spirit before the world in its true light, for his pen was ever patriotic.

"When in 1884 he turned his back upon politics, shook the dust of New York from his feet, and buried himself in the North Dakota wilderness, he spent his evenings in his ranchhouse writing books. His "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" and his "Life of Thomas Hart Benton" were both written in North Dakota.
"Systemized His Mind"
During his first twenty years of worldly adventure his mind had become filled with a vast store of ideas—some of his very own and some not his own. At the age of 40 he began to reduce them to order—to edit them, as it were, for publication, casting out the dubious and outworn and reducing the rest to a connected system. The result was his famous address on "The Strenuous Life," delivered before the Hamilton Club in Chicago, April 10, 1899 (see Chapter 9).

The principles of this philosophy of strenuosity may be reduced for brevity's sake, to four cardinal propositions, which have been stated as follows:
1.	The goal of the human race is the complete mastery of the natural forces which work toward its destruction.
2.	The only way a man can earn the right to life is by taking part in that battle to the limit of his skill and strength.
3.	The only way a woman can earn the right to life is by furnishing warriors for the fray.
4.	The man who shirks that fray and seeks to live by preying upon the warriors or who opposes them in the field or seeks to turn them aside from the main battle by setting them at one another, is an enemy to the human race.

In 1897 Mr. Roosevelt said: "Literature is my profession. Any usefulness that I may have depends, in my view, upon my willingness to quit politics at any time."

His style was direct. He had not at all cultivated the flowers of rhetoric. He never appeared in his work to have written only for his own amusement.

And Roosevelt the author did for the sports of the wilds what John Burroughs has done for the life of the fields and woodlands—made them into intimate pictures of American life.
Roosevelt on Reading

Mr. Roosevelt was a voracious reader. Where and how he found the time to keep up his reading, no one pretends to know. Almost every time he met an author, either well-known or obscure, he proved in two minutes' conversation that he was familiar with the latter's literary output. This pleased the author, of course, who was "delighted" to send him copies of everything he had written. Being "one of them literary fellers" himself, every author who had come within range of Roosevelt insisted upon an introduction and attempted to bind the friendship by forwarding a copy of everything he had ever written.

"A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular time," said the Colonel in his autobiography, "but there are tens of thousands of interesting books and some of them are sealed to some men and some to others; and some stir the soul at some given point of a man's life and yet convey no message at other times.
The reader, the book lover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be. He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like. Yet at the same time he must avoid that most unpleasant of all the indications of puffed-up vanity which consists in treating mere individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter of pride. I happen to be devoted to 'Macbeth,' whereas I very seldom read 'Hamlet' (though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly and sincerely conscious that this is a demerit in me and not in 'Hamlet'; and yet it would not do me any good to pretend that I like 'Hamlet' as much as 'Macbeth' when, as a matter of fact, I don't. . . . I enjoy the ballad and I don't enjoy the drama; and therefore the ballad is better for me, and this fact is not altered by the other fact that my own shortcomings are to blame in the matter."
Diversity of Reading

When he was President he economized his time so that he could get some reading. Lawrence Abbott, president of The Outlook, once called on him at the White House. The President laid down the volume he was reading, face down, so he could pick it up without loss of time.

"What is it, Mr. President?" Mr. Abbott asked.

'' Ferrero 's ' Rome.'   Of course, you have read it ?"

"No, I don't know about it."

''Well, you ought to. I got it because of a favorable review I saw in The Outlook."

When the Colonel was campaigning in 1912 a correspondent for the Kansas City Star was on his train in Kansas. Between speeches, he says, the Colonel was busy with a bulky volume.    It was Sutherland's "The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct.''
His Work as a Critic
The words of Lord Morley were often applied to Mr. Roosevelt when he entered an active political life: "A man of letters temporarily called to other duties."

Allan F. Westcott speaks of him as follows: "Among his ventures in literature, his work as a critic is of course subordinate to his historical writings and his chronicles of the chase. Even the term 'critic of literature' is no doubt larger than his writings of the type would warrant, for review-writing does not always lift itself into criticism, and the material Mr. Roosevelt has considered has not always been literature in the stricter sense. Gathered together, however, his critical papers, signed and unsigned, which have appeared in the magazines during the last twenty years, are more numerous than one might suppose, and, in the light of their authorship, of more than ephemeral value."
Wrote on Many Subjects
A list of his works shows his versatile mind and wide range of literary interests, for an examination of the appended list, with descriptions, shows that history, politics, biography, sociology, economics, and criticism have occupied his attention and time. And, in spite of the liberality of this showing there are plentiful evidences that he worked carefully and conscientiously. There are few marks of haste or unpreparedness in his writings, while all that has come to us from his pen is stamped by the personality of the man—his aggressiveness, positive-ness, honesty, determination and "go."

His Published Works

The published works of Theodore Roosevelt were, in the order of their appearance, as follows:

1.	"The Naval War of 1812" (1882).

2.	"Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" (1885). 

3.	"Life of Thomas Hart Benton" (1887).

4.	"Life of Gouverneur Morris" (1887). 

5.	"Ranch Life and Hunting Trails" (1888).

6.	"Essays on Practical Politics" (1888). 

7.	"New York" in "Historic Towns" (1890). 

8.	"American Big Game Hunting" (1893).

9.	'' The Wilderness Hunter " (1893).

10.	"Hero Tales from American History" with Henry Cabot Lodge, (1895).

11.	"Winning of the West," four volumes (1889-1896), the most important of his works.

12.	"American Ideals and Other Essays (1897), a collection of magazine articles.

13.	"Trail and Campfire" (1897).

14.	"Big Game Hunting in the Rockies and on the Great Plains" (1899).

15.	"The Rough Riders" (1899).

16.	"Life of Oliver Cromwell" (1899).

17.	"The Strenuous Life"  (1900), a collection of essays and addresses

18.	."Good Hunting of Big Game in the West" (1907). 

19.	"Addresses and Presidential Messages, 1902-1904" (1904). 

20.	"Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter" (1906), besides portions of works like Volume VI in '' History of the Royal Navy of England, " and the "Deer and Antelope of North America" (1902), in "The Deer Family." '

21.	African Game Trails" (1910). 

22.	'The New Nationalism" (1910). 

23.	'Realizable Ideals" (the Earl Lectures), (1912). 

24.	'Conservation of  Womanhood and Childhood" (1912).

25.	'History as Literature, and Other Essays" (1913). 

26.	'Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography" (1913). 

27.	'Life History of African  Game Animals," two volumes (1914).

28.	'Through the Brazilian Wilderness" (1914). 'America and the World War" (1915).

29.	" A Booklover's Holidays in the Open" (1916).

30.	"Fear God and Take Your Own Part" (1916).

31.	"Foes of Our Own Household" (1917).

32.	"National Strength and International Duty," Stafford Little Lectures, Princeton University (1917).

33.	'' The Great Adventure,'' his last book, published just before Christmas, 1918, by Scribner's.

Among his many popular magazine articles and addresses are: "American Ideals," "True Americanism," "The Many Virtues and Practical Politics," "The College Graduate and Public Life," "Phases of State Legislation," "How Not to Help Our Poorer Brother," "The Monroe Doctrine," "Washington's Forgotten Maxim," "National Life and Character," "Social Evolution," " The Law of Civilization and Decay," " Expansion and Peace," "Latitude and Longitude of Reform," "Fellow Feeling a Political Factor," "Civic Helpfulness," "Character and Success.".
"Winning of the West"

The first two volumes of "Winning of the West," Mr. Roosevelt's historical work of the greatest dignity and value, appeared in 1889. The third volume was published in 1894. Thus it appeared that for many years before he became active in national affairs he had been a student of the development and expansion of the United States. The fourth volume of this history was published in 1896, and in 1898 he planned to complete a fifth volume if he had not been elected Governor of New York.

The historical subjects he dealt with were American, each in some peculiar way, treating either of the absorption of territory into the national domain or, as in the "History of New York City," describing the making of a metropolis out of many and diversified peoples seeking freedom of opportunity within the gates of the "promised land."

He published a volume of essays in 1897, ten years after his first, calling it "American Ideals; and Other
Essays, Social and Political." The book dealt with the problems of that hour and sounded the keynote of his moral preaching. He told the story of the raising of the Rough Riders and of their part in Cuba in 1899. The "Life of Oliver Cromwell" followed, and the world could read of one man of action through the eyes of another man of action. Then came the "Strenuous Life," "The Deer Family," "Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter" and other volumes, followed by "African Game Trails," many scenes of which were written in camp just after the hunting excursions described.
High Praise from Authority

This volume, which has since become well known, was described by a writer for the National Geographic Society as an "unusual contribution to science, geography, literature and adventure. Naturalists will prize the accurate descriptions of the huge beasts by a hunter naturalist. He is the first naturalist of much experience with American big game to study all the large species of Africa, so that his comparisons and observations form a particularly valuable contribution to knowledge."

There was in general in all that Mr. Roosevelt wrote a certain metallic conciseness of style and effect. This was particularly noticeable in his long messages to Congress. But the "effect of plain statements often repeated and enlivened by striking phrases here and there which came about by accident or design was never absent in his many messages and speeches."

It was in describing experiences out-of-doors or in referring to wild animal or bird life that he gave his best evidences of a keenly emotional nature. Yet during his leadership of the Progressives in 1912 his public speaking took on an emotional character of such a nature that some of his speeches will hardly be found to be surpassed for sheer eloquence in the history of American oratory. The peroration of his Carnegie Hall address, for instance, stands unique, surcharged by all the circumstances attending it and through its literary form with emotion electric in its nature and effect.
Great Gift of Phrase-Making
His gift of phrase making was an essential part in his picturesque Americanism. His phrases frequently became a common part of the common speech, and few of those accepted have as yet become obsolete. Without effort apparently he made famous "the strenuous life," the "larger good," "the square deal," "the predatory rich," "mollycoddles and weaklings," "undesirable citizens," "beaten to a frazzle," "civic righteousness," "deliberate and infamous mendacity," "the big stick" and "the hat in the ring."

"His many-sidedness was literally indescribable. It defied observation and the power of anecdote. There can be little question of the rank to which history will assign him. That he was a tremendous force neither his personal nor his political friends or enemies ever denied.

"By Americans he was considered to be essentially American whether in his relations with men, in his contact with all sides of life, in his forcefulness, in his readiness to meet emergencies, in his commonplaces and epigrams, in his criticism of his times, whether artistic or literary. His literary observations always revealed him as an American first and foremost."

 A Favorite Poem
This poem by Hamlin Garland was one of Colonel Roosevelt's favorites:
0	wild woods and rivers and untrod sweeps of sod,
1	exult that I know you,
I have felt you and worshipped you.
I cannot be robbed of the memory
Of horse and plain,
Of bird and flower,
Nor the song of the illimitable West Wind.