num_pages: 581
description: Edith Kermit Roosevelt is at once the story of a remarkable political partnership and of a love affair that spanned almost half a century.Born in 1861, Edith Kermit Carow could not remember a time when the neighboring Roosevelt children were not part of her life. She was especially close to young Theodore, her childhood sweetheart, and they seemed destined for a life together. Then, at Harvard, Theodore fell in love with the captivating Alice Lee. He married her upon graduating in 1880, and Edith's world fell apart. The marriage, however, was as brief as it was idyllic. In 1884 Alice died after giving birth to a daughter and a grief-stricken Theodore fled to the Dakotas. Perhaps afraid of old emotions, he avoided Edith on his visits home. Yet, after a dramatic chance meeting, they became secretly engaged and were married in London in 1886. Thus began one of the happiest relationships in American politics.It was Edith who kept the financial accounts, supervised their several houses and five children (as well as her stepdaughter, the madcap "Princess Alice") and shrewdly advised her husband as he took each step of meteoric rise to the presidency. As First Lady she blossomed, dazzling Washington with the splendor of her social activities, restoring the White House to its eighteenth-century elegance, and gathering to TR's table the most important intellectuals of the day (who listened to TR, but talked to her). She consulted with her husband about political appointments, served as his secret ambassador, and kept a firm rein on her children, the notorious "White House Gang." By the time TR was elected to his second term in 1904, the Roosevelts were the most famous family in the world.The glare of publicity was no less bright when Edith became once more simply the mistress of Sagamore Hill, for TR's "retirement" from politics was turbulent and ultimately doomed. When her four sons went off to war in 1917, she resignedly said: "You can't bring up boys to be eagles and expect them to turn out sparrows."After Theodore's death in 1919, Edith restlessly traveled the world for two decades, campaigned against her cousin FDR in 1932, and survived a series of shattering personal tragedies. To the end she remained the American ideal of Victorian femininity. "Let us not wait too long to say it," wrote The New York Times on her eightieth birthday, "This is a great as well as beloved woman."As elegant and colorful as the era it skillfully recreates, Edith Kermit Roosevelt is a richly detailed portrait of a wife and mother who, in so deeply defining the role of First Lady, left her stamp on the White House as indelibly as her husband. Based on previously unpublished letters and diaries, this definitive biography is a valuable addition to Roosevelt scholarship and a major contribution to our understanding of the role women have played in American life.
language: English
title: Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady
titlecomplete: Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady
characters: Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Edith Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt
genres: Historical, Biography, American, Politics, Presidents, Nonfiction, Womens, American History, Biography Memoir, History
ratings_count: 303
publisher: CMG, NY