Teddy Roosevelt

Republican congressman from Ohio. He was fifteen years her senior, short and bald, and something of a bon vivant. Their White House wedding was the most talked-about social event of the Roosevelt years.

At the invitation of the first family, John Singer Sargent was a White

House guest for a week in the middle of February 1903, while he painted a portrait of the President. For Sargent, the foremost Anglo-American portraitist of his era, the experience was vexing in many respects.

Particularly, Sargent found the President's strong will daunting from the start. The choice of a suitable place to paint, where the lighting was good, tried Roosevelt's patience. No room on the first floor agreed with the artist. When they began climbing the staircase, Roosevelt told Sargent he did not think the artist knew what he wanted. Sargent replied that he did not think Roosevelt knew what was involved in posing for a portrait.

Roosevelt, who had just reached the landing, swung around, placing his hand on the newel and said, "Don't I!" Sargent saw his opportunity and told the

President not to move; this would be the pose and the location for the sittings. Still, over the next few days Sargent was frustrated by the

President's busy schedule, which limited their sessions to a half-hour after lunch. Sargent would have liked to have had more time. Nevertheless,

Roosevelt considered the portrait a complete success. He liked it immensely, and continued to favor it for the rest of his life. Commissioned by the federal government, Sargent's Roosevelt is the official White House portrait of the twenty-sixth President.

On an extended visit to the West in the spring of 1903, President Roosevelt sought the company of naturalists John Burroughs and John Muir. With

Burroughs, Roosevelt camped in Yellowstone Park for two weeks, and with

Muir he explored the wonders of the Yosemite Valley and had his picture taken in front of a giant sequoia tree in the Mariposa Grove. Roosevelt's visit was an opportunity for Muir to be able to impress upon the President the need for immediate preservation measures, especially for the giant forests. In 1908, Roosevelt paid tribute to Muir by designating Muir Woods, a redwood forest north of San Francisco, a national monument.

A hunting trip President Roosevelt made into the swamps of Mississippi in

1902 became legendary when he refused to shoot an exhausted black bear, which had been run down by a pack of hounds and roped to a tree. Although the incident was reported in the local press, Clifford K. Berryman, a staff artist for the Washington Post, made it memorable on November 16 with a small front-page cartoon titled "Drawing the Line in Mississippi."

Roosevelt is shown holding a rifle, but refusing to shoot the bedraggled bear. The bear, however, received no executive clemency; Roosevelt ordered someone else to put the creature out of its misery. Clifford Berryman elected to keep the bear alive in his cartoons, and it evolved, ever more cuddly, as a companion to Roosevelt, ultimately spawning the Teddy Bear craze.

The Restless Hunter , 1909 - 1919

Only once in American history had a President vacated the White House and then returned to it again as President. This had been Grover Cleveland's unique destiny in 1893. That this had occurred within recent memory, and to a politician in whose footsteps Roosevelt had followed as governor of New

York and finally as President, must have given Roosevelt reason to pause as he himself became a private citizen again in March 1909. He was only fifty years old, the youngest man to leave the executive office. Cleveland had been just eighteen months older when he temporarily yielded power to

Benjamin Harrison in 1889. For the record, Roosevelt claimed that he was through with politics. This was the only thing he could have said asWilliam Howard Taft, his successor, waited in the wings. Theodore Roosevelt had enjoyed being President as much as any person possibly could. Filling the post-White House vacuum would require something big and grand, and with that in mind, Roosevelt planned his immediate future. The prospect of a yearlong safari in Africa brightened for him what otherwise would have been the dreary prospect of retirement. It "will let me down to private life without that dull thud of which we hear so much," he wrote.

Aided by several British experts, Roosevelt oversaw every preparation: itinerary, gear and clothing, food and provisions, weapons, personnel, and expenses. He had been an avid naturalist and hunter since the days of his youth. Because he was genuinely interested in the African fauna, he arranged for his safari to be as scientific as possible, and enticed the

Smithsonian Institution to join the expedition by offering to contribute extensively to its fledgling collection of wildlife specimens. Roosevelt invited his son, Kermit, along for companionship, if the lad would be willing to interrupt his first year of studies at Harvard. Kermit needed no persuading.