Theodore Roosevelt and Children's Books

here is much talk these days of the lack of leisure in American life and fear of a corresponding lack of shared reading in the family. Yet fifty years ago, one of our most active and versatile presidents was an enthusiastic proponent of family reading. For Theodore Roosevelt, his own pleasure in books grew as he shared it with his family. His letters to his sons when they were away at school were filled with accounts of daily life at home, including the reading time with Archie and Quentin, "the little boys." Shortly before Christmas in 1904, he mentioned that he had finished reading The Last of the Mohicans to them and characteristically added, "They are as cunning as ever, and this reading to them in the evening gives me a chance to see them that I would not otherwise have, although sometimes it is rather hard to get time."* This was a president who had just won an election for his program of active interest in relations among nations in the western hemisphere and who was earning for himself the prestige and reputation for integrity which were to assure his successful mediation of the Russo-Japanese war and his receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Roosevelt choose Cooper for reading-aloud sessions, and the sturdy nationalism and action must have appealed to his taste, but he also delighted in the gay nonsense verses which he shared with the boys. He read some of Laura E. Richards' poems to them, including "How Does the President Take His Tea?" Archie and Quentin immediately christened themselves Punkey Doodle and Jollapin, from the chorus — and another bit of family folklore was added. It is natural that parental enthusiasm would have awakened responses in the children, and these were a delight to Roosevelt. He undoubtedly flattered his sons by assuming they were familiar with his allusions, as when he wrote to Kermit: "You remember Kenneth Grahame's account of how Harold went to the circus and sang the great spheral song of the circus? Well, yesterday Mother leaned out of her window and heard Archie, swinging under a magnolia tree, singing away to himself, 'I'm going to Sagamore, to Sagamore, to Sagamore. I'm going to Sagamore, oh, to Sagamore!' It was his spheral song of joy and thanksgiving."*

Roosevelt's allusions to shared reading were frequent, so the fun of books must have been enjoyed by all the family. To his sister-in-law, the President wrote to describe an Oyster Bay picnic which was attended by the German ambassador, Count Speck von Sternberg, "looking more like Hans Christian Andersen's little tin soldier than ever."* In the same letter, he relished his son Ted's description of a luncheon to which he had taken the younger boys who "had been altogether too much like a March Hare tea-party, as Archie, Nicholas and Oliver were not alive to the dignity of the occasion."* Even young Kermit delighted his father by remembering what he had read. As Roosevelt told it in a letter, Kermit and Ethel were having a Bible lesson and wondering why Joseph had told his dreams to his brothers, when Kermit decided, "Well, I guess he was simple, like Jane in the Golly wogs.

The Theodore Roosevelt House in New York commemorates another bit of the family lore growing from shared reading. In the case with a figurine of a cat is a note from the President's widow, telling how he had called Mrs. Ralph Cross Johnson, a prominent Washingtonian, "Aunt Jobiska," referring to Edward Lear's delightful nonsense poem, "The Pobble Who Has No Toes." Mrs. Roosevelt said she herself had seen the figurine of the "runcible cat" in a shop and "brought it home to send as a joke." The cat figures in the third stanza of the poem:

The Pobble swam fast and well,
And when boats or ships came near him,
He tinkledy-blinkledy-winkled a bell
So that all the world could hear him.
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried,
When they saw him nearing the further side,—
"He has gone to fish, for his Aunt Jobiska's
Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers." **

Roosevelt's own childhood reading had centered around some sternly moralistic stories like "Cast Away in the Cold" and "Grandfather's Struggle for a Homestead" from Our Young Folks magazine. He characterized them as " good healthy" ** stories . . . teaching manliness, decency and good conduct." He did not lose interest in the moralistic aspects of literature but fortunately his ebullient sense of humor tempered his taste. To his children, he expressed interest in their independent reading and shared his views with his sons when they wrote home from school about reading the classics. He had a prejudice against Dickens, although he admitted the universality of some of his characters. He compared Dickens to Bunyan and Thackeray, and concluded that "one fundamental difference between Thackeray and Dickens is that Thackeray was a gentleman and Dickens was not. But a man might do some mighty good work and not be a gentleman in any sense."*

He was concerned with selecting the right books for his children, and wrote to ask Ted whether he was ready yet for a good history of the American Revolution, suggesting Trevelyan's which he considered the best. He said he might send his own copy, but warned Ted to " be very careful of it, because he sent it to me himself."*

For a president who received many gifts of value, he was especially appreciative when Joel Chandler Harris sent one of his books to Ethel, and thanked him by saying." It is worth while being President when one's small daughter receives that kind of an autograph gift."* He recalled his own pleasure as a child in hearing some of the Brer Rabbit stories, but commended Harris even more as " an addition to the forces that tell for decency, and above all for the blotting out of sectional antagonism." Nevertheless, the animal stories had made a lasting impression on him, for he once wrote to Quentin about seeing a Brer Terrapin and Brer Rabbit when he was out riding, but " Brer Rabbit went lippity lippity lippity off into the bushes and Brer Terrapin drew in his head and legs till I passed."* Perhaps he had his rabbits a bit confused, though, for wouldn't it be Peter going "lippity lippity lippity " off into the bushes?

What we know of Roosevelt's interest in his children's reading comes mostly from his letters. It would indeed have been more of a joy to have heard this great man reading aloud, leaving to his children a heritage of service to his country and of greatness, but an important heritage of remembered pleasures in shared reading as well.

* Quotations are from Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Charles Scribner's Son's, 1919, and are printed with the permission of the publisher.

** From the Complete Nonsense Book by Edward Lear (Dodd, Mead & Company)

Peggy Sullivan has been a children's librarian in the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland for five years, and is now School Service Consultant there. She is the author of The O'Donnells (Follett, 1956) which is based on her mother's childhood. The idea came to her when she visited the Theodore Roosevelt House in New York but grew out of long interest in Theodore Roosevelt which was first aroused when, as a little girl, she heard her mother read aloud Earle Looker's The White House Gang (Revell).