Speaker 1: History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Mental Flaws. In nineteen o five, a group of American
Speaker 1: politicians set off to the Far East. The diplomatic delegation
Speaker 1: included seven senators, more than twenty Congressman and Secretary of
Speaker 1: War William Howard Taft, But there was one member in
Speaker 1: particular who captivated the press. The twenty one year old
Speaker 1: woman had been acting up the whole trip, setting off
Speaker 1: firecrackers and shooting her revolver from the back of the
Speaker 1: train before they even left the country. But her biggest
Speaker 1: scandal happened aboard the steamship Manchuria. The young woman plunged
Speaker 1: into the ship's swimming tank, fully clothed in a white
Speaker 1: silk skirt and blouse. She had reportedly jumped on a
Speaker 1: dare one that she had proposed herself. It would have
Speaker 1: been scandalous behavior for any woman at that time, but
Speaker 1: this prankster wasn't just any woman. This was Alice Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: the oldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt. From Mental Flaws
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio, This is History Versus, a podcast
Speaker 1: about how your favorite historical figures faced off against their
Speaker 1: greatest foes. I'm your host Aaron McCarthy and for this round,
Speaker 1: repeating t R against his daughter, Alice, a constant source
Speaker 1: of stress for the twenty six President. Roosevelt once said,
Speaker 1: I can be President of the United States, or I
Speaker 1: can attend to Alice. So how did tr juggle running
Speaker 1: the country with raising his oldest daughter. We're about to
Speaker 1: find out. The Roosevelt family had all the elements of
Speaker 1: a happy, conventional household. Theodore Roosevelt married his second wife
Speaker 1: and childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Caro in Together they had
Speaker 1: five children, Theodore the Third or Ted Jr. Kermit, Ethel, Archibald,
Speaker 1: and Quentin. Growing up, the boys enjoyed boxing with their father,
Speaker 1: while Ethel stuck to more ladylike activities like needlework. And
Speaker 1: then there was Alice. Her brothers would tease her that
Speaker 1: they didn't have the same mom as her, and that
Speaker 1: like she found it very cruel and it was something
Speaker 1: she was really sensitive about. That's Holly Fry from stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class. And as she explains, Alice's
Speaker 1: relationship with Edith wasn't any smoother. They fall into use
Speaker 1: in some ways the classic kind of step mother step
Speaker 1: daughter roles that we have come to expect from Disney films,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that was sort of this forever
Speaker 1: cloud that hung over the household of his first wife, Alice.
Speaker 1: Before starting his life with Edith Teddy, Roosevelt had married
Speaker 1: Alice Hathaway Lee in eighteen eighty. The daughter of a banker,
Speaker 1: Alice Sr. Was known in Massachusetts social circles for her
Speaker 1: charm and beauty. On meeting her, tr wrote, as long
Speaker 1: as I live, I shall never forget how sweetly she
Speaker 1: looked and how prettily she agrees with me. Alice became
Speaker 1: pregnant in eight eight three and gave to a healthy
Speaker 1: baby girl named Alice Lee Roosevelt on February With a
Speaker 1: lovely Boston socialite for a mother and an ambitious New
Speaker 1: York politician for a father, Baby Alice should have had
Speaker 1: it all, and then the unthinkable happened. Shortly after the
Speaker 1: delivery Alice Senor fell Ill Teddy, who had been in
Speaker 1: Albany working on a law of the day of his
Speaker 1: daughter's birth, rushed home to New York City after receiving
Speaker 1: news of her condition. He held her in his arms
Speaker 1: as she passed in and out of consciousness. She had
Speaker 1: what was then known as Bright's disease. Alice Hathaway Roosevelt
Speaker 1: died on February at the age of twenty two. It
Speaker 1: was the second loss tr had sustained that day. Just
Speaker 1: hours earlier, his mother, Mitty Roosevelt, had succumbed to typhoid
Speaker 1: fever barely two days old. Alice's life was already embroiled
Speaker 1: in tragedy. If you put yourself in that position of
Speaker 1: losing apparent that you're very close to and your sins today,
Speaker 1: it's pretty me to understand that it completely changed his
Speaker 1: relationship with the world, not just his new child, but
Speaker 1: they were setting up this beautiful life that they had
Speaker 1: planned out, and now everywhere he went was the memory
Speaker 1: of his wife that had passed, and like that was
Speaker 1: a big part of why he kind of decided that
Speaker 1: he was gonna leave and go out with Just a
Speaker 1: few months after his daughter was born, tr left her
Speaker 1: with his sister Anna, who went by the nicknames Baby
Speaker 1: and By, and retreated to the Dakota bad Lands. He
Speaker 1: rarely inquired about Alice in the letters he mailed home.
Speaker 1: He returned briefly to New York for business when she
Speaker 1: was about five months old, and even in person, he
Speaker 1: had trouble acknowledging her. He called her Baby Lee because
Speaker 1: he couldn't bear to say her mother's name. But though
Speaker 1: it wasn't always a parent, Alice was loved. One of
Speaker 1: the first hints of fatherly affection from t R comes
Speaker 1: from a letter dated September. He wrote, I hope Mousey
Speaker 1: Kins will be very cunning. I shall dearly love her.
Speaker 1: But the most stable source of love in Baby Alice's
Speaker 1: life was Aunt Babie. That was one of those relationships
Speaker 1: that ended up really really setting the tone of Alice's
Speaker 1: life forever, because Baby became what she referred to as
Speaker 1: like her biggest influence as a child. You know, it's
Speaker 1: crazy to hear about how much influence Baby had on
Speaker 1: Alice but also on tr and how often she would
Speaker 1: just like drop everything to you know, help him make
Speaker 1: political connections or do whatever it was that he needed done.
Speaker 1: She was really his most trusted confidant for pretty much
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. Like he would go to
Speaker 1: her with personal decisions, with political decisions, with you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of thing that he was ruminating and get
Speaker 1: his sister's opinion, which is kind of interesting, Like there
Speaker 1: I feel like there are not that many instances in history,
Speaker 1: and then with as much power as him, who like
Speaker 1: the first order of business when their face to the
Speaker 1: decision is let me call my sister. Baby's influence on
Speaker 1: Teddy lasted throughout his career as president. He often referred
Speaker 1: to his sister's home as the other White House, and
Speaker 1: according to their niece Eleanor Roosevelt, he made few serious
Speaker 1: political decisions without talking with her first. Alice later remarked,
Speaker 1: if Auntie Bay had been a man, she would have
Speaker 1: been president, but she wasn't the only woman who mattered
Speaker 1: to t R. Almost two years after Alice Sr. Died,
Speaker 1: Edith kurmit Carow entered his life, or re entered it rather.
Speaker 1: The couple likely had a teenage romance, and Edith ran
Speaker 1: in the same social circles as Theodore. Edith was a
Speaker 1: natural choice for his next wife. Her potential as a
Speaker 1: stepmother was less of a concern for him. Alice had
Speaker 1: lived with Baby for the first three years of her life,
Speaker 1: and Tierra assumed things would stay that way even after
Speaker 1: he remarried, but Edith had other plans. Edith was consisted
Speaker 1: that child will become my child. She will come and
Speaker 1: live with us, and we will be one big family together.
Speaker 1: That which sounds really lovely, but it was fraught with sension.
Speaker 1: According to historian Edmund Morris, tr Edith and Baby came
Speaker 1: up with a plan to live together for a time
Speaker 1: at Sagamore Hill, the Roosevelt's famous Long Island estate, to
Speaker 1: ease Alice's transition to a new family. That family got
Speaker 1: even bigger with the birth of Theodore Junior. Edith wanted
Speaker 1: to be a good parent to her stepdaughter, but raising
Speaker 1: a headstrong child like Alice wasn't always easy. When Alice
Speaker 1: was a teenager, Edith, along with Teddy, proposed sending her
Speaker 1: to a conservative boarding school in New York City. According
Speaker 1: to historians Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Alice protested, saying,
Speaker 1: if you send me, I will humiliate you. I will
Speaker 1: do something that will shame you. I tell you I will.
Speaker 1: When she was older, Alice often spent time with Baby, and,
Speaker 1: as Kathleen Dalton writes in her book Theodore Roosevelt a
Speaker 1: strenuous life, she and Edith had very different ways of
Speaker 1: managing Alice. Baby was generous, rarely hesitating to give her
Speaker 1: niece whatever she wanted, while Edith believed children needed discipline.
Speaker 1: As Alice grew into a young woman, her resemblance to
Speaker 1: her mother became unmistakable, which made parenting her even harder
Speaker 1: for Edith. It brings my heart when I read that
Speaker 1: Edith a bad mouth Alice to her daughter Alice. It
Speaker 1: was kind of a question where that was very pretty,
Speaker 1: but she was also really stupid, like who looked say
Speaker 1: that to a child? There was also this problem where,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, theoter Roosevelt was out traveling a
Speaker 1: lot of the times, which the one person who really
Speaker 1: loved both of these women could not serve as any
Speaker 1: kind of butter or mediator. They were just kind of
Speaker 1: left to fight it out on their own. Tier also
Speaker 1: saw his late wife and his daughter. The distance that
Speaker 1: existed between them Analis was a baby, along with his
Speaker 1: refusal to talk about her mother, lingered throughout her childhood.
Speaker 1: She would later say, I think it is true to
Speaker 1: say that my father didn't want me to be a
Speaker 1: guilty burden. He obviously felt guilty about it. Otherwise he
Speaker 1: would have said at least once that I had another parent.
Speaker 1: The curious thing is that he never seemed to realize
Speaker 1: that I was perfectly aware of it and developing a
Speaker 1: resentment tears. Aloofness wasn't the only reason Alis didn't see
Speaker 1: more of her father. He was also hard at work
Speaker 1: pursuing a political career. He served as both governor of
Speaker 1: New York and Vice President of the United States while
Speaker 1: Alice was a teenager. Then, in one following William McKinley's assassination,
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president. The roosevelts, we're
Speaker 1: going to the White House. We'll be right back. At
Speaker 1: the start of his presidency, Tira was a father to
Speaker 1: six kids, ranging an age from three to seventeen. The
Speaker 1: nation hadn't seen a presidential family quite like the Roosevelt
Speaker 1: clan before. The children treated their new home as their
Speaker 1: personal playground, the rollers getting down the hardwood floors, venturing
Speaker 1: into crawl spaces, and throwing spitballs at a painting of
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson a crime. Tr put them on trial for
Speaker 1: he found them. T Roosevelt's sons, Quentin and Archie, remembers
Speaker 1: of what was called the White House Gang, which met
Speaker 1: in the building's attic. Tr was an honorary member in
Speaker 1: case the kids weren't enough of a handful on their own.
Speaker 1: Teddy and Edith also had a menagerie of pets to
Speaker 1: worry about. The family animals included, at one point or another,
Speaker 1: a lizard, a bear, a badger, a hyena, a one
Speaker 1: legged rooster, a pony, and guinea pigs. Here's the funny
Speaker 1: story about the pony, whose name was algon Quin. One day,
Speaker 1: when Archie was feeling ill, someone some sources say was
Speaker 1: Quentin and Tier's other son, Kermit, while others say it
Speaker 1: was footman Charles Reader decided to bring the animal up
Speaker 1: to his room to cheer him up. Reportedly, the horse
Speaker 1: was so fascinated by his reflection in the elevator mirror
Speaker 1: that they had trouble getting him out. His oldest son,
Speaker 1: ted almost had a nervous breakdown when he was a
Speaker 1: kid because he felt so much pressure. And his you know, son,
Speaker 1: Kermit was kind of a wild child, but in his
Speaker 1: own way, like he was the one that wanted to
Speaker 1: go to Africa with his dad and shoot things. And
Speaker 1: I think her stuff. Sister Ethel was probably the most
Speaker 1: chill of them all. She was like, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in the spotlight, wanted to be super helpful
Speaker 1: and then the two youngest boys, Archie and Clinton, sound
Speaker 1: a little bit like a very fun hell on wheels.
Speaker 1: They sound like a very fun sildren to read about.
Speaker 1: But maybe not with Even though she was the oldest,
Speaker 1: Alice got into the most trouble of them all. And
Speaker 1: so Alice in the meantime, she had already before the election,
Speaker 1: even started showing up in the press. You know, gossip
Speaker 1: magazines loved her because she was a handful. She was
Speaker 1: a smoker, which of course frowned upon, and at one
Speaker 1: point tr forbid her to smoke under his roof, so
Speaker 1: she would just go out on the roof of the
Speaker 1: White House. She's like, I'm not under your roof. I'm
Speaker 1: not breaking your role. Yeah, I'm technically abiding to the
Speaker 1: letter of the law. Um. She would play poker, and
Speaker 1: she would bet on horses, and she you know, would
Speaker 1: drink a lot, and she was photographed doing all these things.
Speaker 1: She would ride in cars with adults men with no chaperone,
Speaker 1: which of course was terribly scandalous. Um. She would also
Speaker 1: get in street races in her car in Washington, like
Speaker 1: in the nation's capital, she keep drag racing down the street.
Speaker 1: At one point she announced that she was turning pagans
Speaker 1: just to kind of rile up the family. Um. Her
Speaker 1: stepmother was very religious that she Alice would tell he
Speaker 1: did that she thought Christianity was a form of voodoo.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a teenager. The Roosevelt contern had some crazy
Speaker 1: sundry issues when it came to pets, but she would
Speaker 1: occasionally carry around the snake in her pocket that she
Speaker 1: named Emily Spinach. That is a great snake name. It is.
Speaker 1: It's good. I feel like that's also a good punk
Speaker 1: fan's name. So if any history rickly minded punk band,
Speaker 1: they're looking for an as a good a good one
Speaker 1: to spang Emily Spinach. The snake was named after Alice's
Speaker 1: an Emily, because it was as thin as she was.
Speaker 1: It was, also, in Alice's words, greenest spinach. So how
Speaker 1: did the public react? In a weird way? They kind
Speaker 1: of loved her. She was called Princess Alice and the press,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I think, you know, some of of
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt's appeal at the time was that he was, like, sure,
Speaker 1: he was a politician, but he was also this you know, rugged,
Speaker 1: kind of old school to use the phrase man's man
Speaker 1: like he did go out in the hunt, and he
Speaker 1: had no, no hesitation to go out into the wilderness
Speaker 1: by himself. And so she in some way seemed like
Speaker 1: the city extension of him. Right like that she was
Speaker 1: also she had her father's wildness, and so there was
Speaker 1: definitely some appeal in that. Like she started a trend
Speaker 1: in color uh popular colors at the time because she
Speaker 1: had she loved this particular shade of like a grayish blue,
Speaker 1: and it started to become Alice blue. And suddenly you
Speaker 1: saw Alice blue dresses, hats, accessories, everything. Alice Roosevelt was
Speaker 1: the original white House wild child. Newspapers never missed an
Speaker 1: opportunity for her name, whether in relation to a real
Speaker 1: event like the hundreds of parties she attended, or a
Speaker 1: piece of unsubstantiated gossip. Even the men who claimed to
Speaker 1: have proposed to her were considered newsworthy. The press couldn't
Speaker 1: get enough of Princess Alice, and they weren't the only ones.
Speaker 1: Musicians wrote waltz is inspired by her. Her likeness was
Speaker 1: put on postcards. Right now, we're listening to the song
Speaker 1: Alice Blue Gown. Her father, on the other hand, was
Speaker 1: less enamored of her behavior Tire often wrote posterity letters
Speaker 1: for historians to study, and his daughter, who frequently did
Speaker 1: things that threatened his reputation, was often on the receiving end.
Speaker 1: In one letter, he said, do you know how much
Speaker 1: talk there has been recently in the newspapers about your
Speaker 1: betting and courting notoriety with that unfortunate snake. Do try
Speaker 1: to remember that to court notoriety by bizarre actions is
Speaker 1: underbred and unladylike. She spent lots of money, so much that,
Speaker 1: according to Dalton, Edith once asked her, how would you
Speaker 1: like to have Archie give up college to pay your debts?
Speaker 1: The New York Times declared when she visited a horse race,
Speaker 1: she has as much an attraction as the thoroughbreds. Before
Speaker 1: the nineteen o four election, Alice said she got a
Speaker 1: terrible lecture from father and mother on the family and
Speaker 1: my extravagance and lack of morals. But Alice did make
Speaker 1: some attempts to please her family. She became engaged in politics,
Speaker 1: reading books about child labor, and going with her father
Speaker 1: to meet important officials. At home, she tried getting along
Speaker 1: with Edith and helped her with chores. But these streaks
Speaker 1: of good behavior and never lasted long no matter how
Speaker 1: she acted. Alice felt like an outcast among the Roosevelts,
Speaker 1: and that became a self fulfilling prophecy. Father doesn't care
Speaker 1: for me, that is to say, one eighth as much
Speaker 1: as he does the other children, she wrote in her
Speaker 1: diary in we are not in the least congenial. Why
Speaker 1: should he pay any attention to me or the things
Speaker 1: that I live for, except to look upon them with disapproval. Still,
Speaker 1: when a congressman's wife criticized Alice for her bumptious awkward manners,
Speaker 1: tr Dalton writes personally confronted his daughter's critic. But Alice
Speaker 1: was more similar to her father than she may have
Speaker 1: felt at times. They both shared strong convictions, sharp intelligence,
Speaker 1: and a passion for learning. Tire had a special fondness
Speaker 1: for his like minded daughter, but with such big personalities
Speaker 1: sharing the White House and the headlines, they were bound
Speaker 1: to clash. It's been said that tr always wanted to
Speaker 1: be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding,
Speaker 1: and the baby at every christening. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: that they did butt heads is because they both were
Speaker 1: kind of um spotlight grabbers. And she also felt like
Speaker 1: she was competing with his wife and her five other
Speaker 1: children for his attention when she kind of wanted more
Speaker 1: than she was getting um and I'm sure that is
Speaker 1: part of why she would do ridiculous things like margin
Speaker 1: to his office when he was beating with his of state. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it eventually reached the fever pitch where he kind
Speaker 1: of came up with an idea that would get her
Speaker 1: out of his hair for a little while, which is
Speaker 1: was making her a good will ambassador. After unsuccessful attempts
Speaker 1: to reign, Allison Tira could see that she needed an outlet.
Speaker 1: Sending hers as representative to important events had the added
Speaker 1: bonus of granting him peace and quiet at home. Her
Speaker 1: biggest job yet came in when she was twenty one.
Speaker 1: The US was organizing a good will trip to Asia,
Speaker 1: and she was to serve as a goodwill ambassador, with
Speaker 1: stops planned for Hawaii, Japan, China, in the Philippines. It
Speaker 1: was to be the largest political delegation from the United
Speaker 1: States to ever visit the area. The trip turned out
Speaker 1: to be historic in another way. Never before I had
Speaker 1: a first daughter been given a role of such importance,
Speaker 1: and Alice certainly made the most of it. She was
Speaker 1: very good at dealing with other people that were empowered.
Speaker 1: She was very good at at representing her father in
Speaker 1: so far as she completely supported him, and and it
Speaker 1: was very eloquent. She was well spoken, even though she
Speaker 1: always said she couldn't really like public speaking. She really liked,
Speaker 1: you know, meeting with people and discussing what he was
Speaker 1: doing with them. But the flip side is that she
Speaker 1: was traveling with Haft, who was allegedly the person that
Speaker 1: was going to be in charge of keeping her in line,
Speaker 1: which I don't know why anyone thought that would work.
Speaker 1: But also a group of congressmen, and so there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people on this trip and Alice kind
Speaker 1: of exploited every opportunity to party with all of them.
Speaker 1: The party and culminated with Alice's infamous plunge into the
Speaker 1: steamship's pool. She dared a congressman to do the same,
Speaker 1: and he did, which was considered completely scandalous, although she
Speaker 1: always reacted about by saying it would only have been
Speaker 1: really outrageous if I had taken off my clothes. We
Speaker 1: were both fully dressed. It was fine to make matters
Speaker 1: even more scandalous outlets reported that it was Washington playboy
Speaker 1: Nicholas Longworth she had course to jump in the pool
Speaker 1: with her. Though Alison Longworth did spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time together on that trip, she later admitted it had
Speaker 1: been a different congressman who accepted her dare. She also
Speaker 1: didn't really seem to care what people thought of her,
Speaker 1: and so she was willing to do almost anything in
Speaker 1: the interest of having fun and continuing to kind of
Speaker 1: court that image that she had of being, you know,
Speaker 1: TR's wild child daughter. Is there anything on record about
Speaker 1: how her father reacted to that little dip in the pool?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think about my father's reactions
Speaker 1: all the stuff that I did when I was a
Speaker 1: kid and still do, and theologist because my stupid kid
Speaker 1: and I am, that's in a very similar reaction. Oh
Speaker 1: stupid kid. You kind of wonder if he was just like,
Speaker 1: that's Alice, can't controller, can't do it all. Yeah, He's like,
Speaker 1: that's tasts problem right now. At this point, future President
Speaker 1: William Howard Taft was the country's Secretary of War. Japan
Speaker 1: and Russia were in an expensive conflict, and part of
Speaker 1: Taft's mission was to have a meeting with the Japanese
Speaker 1: Prime Minister. Babysitting should have been the least of his concerns.
Speaker 1: It had to have an age to like to measurably
Speaker 1: during that trip. I mean, I can't even imagine how
Speaker 1: stressful that I would have. Band Like, here is my
Speaker 1: drunken wild child. You're in charge of keeping track of her,
Speaker 1: and you have to do it while traveling with a
Speaker 1: bunch of men. She's going to flirt with and also
Speaker 1: make important political deals while you're not worrying about my
Speaker 1: wild child daughter. Yeah, exactly if you were to think
Speaker 1: about something similar happening in the modern instance, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's hard to come up with an equivalent of a
Speaker 1: president handing there this behaving child off to hear someone
Speaker 1: else and just be like, keep an eye on my kid,
Speaker 1: who's gonna carry does the whole way by the way
Speaker 1: that she's just gonna pull out on a whim and
Speaker 1: shoot it things, shoot at the sky. Yeah, I cannot
Speaker 1: imagine the stress the chaps felt at that time. I
Speaker 1: feel like he must have given up at a certain point. Again,
Speaker 1: just like her parents, Taft was probably like, I can
Speaker 1: only do so much here, my stupid kid. I think
Speaker 1: because she lost her mother so early, and because I'm
Speaker 1: sure the president realized that there was this gap in
Speaker 1: her life and that not only had she lost her mother,
Speaker 1: but he never of her mother. So I think that
Speaker 1: probably set into his willingness to just let her be
Speaker 1: the kids she was. He also valued the fact that
Speaker 1: she was smart as a whip and that she was independent,
Speaker 1: Like you liked that about her. It's why he liked
Speaker 1: his sister baby like that, she too was really smart
Speaker 1: and very independent. And so I mean he admires the
Speaker 1: very qualities that were becoming a pain in the neck
Speaker 1: for his life. So there's a juxtaposition there, um, And
Speaker 1: I mean that's something that ship fled to all his kids,
Speaker 1: which said similar things to his his son's you know,
Speaker 1: like whatever you do, like, do not lose your smartness.
Speaker 1: That's the most important part of you. You're very smart
Speaker 1: and clever. So I think while he was probably publicly going, hey,
Speaker 1: that's my stupid kid, he was also in his private
Speaker 1: library going but I'm kind of proud of that. Even
Speaker 1: when she appeared to be having too much of a
Speaker 1: good time, Alice never wasted an opportunity to gain political acumen.
Speaker 1: Her wild world tour, along with her adventures in the
Speaker 1: White House, shaped her into a woman that didn't just
Speaker 1: hob nob with political heavy hitters, but could hold her
Speaker 1: own against them. I mean, she was barging in on
Speaker 1: meetings that should have had like major security. Additionally, you know,
Speaker 1: when she's traveling with all these congressmen and other people
Speaker 1: that have you know, are high ranking within the political structure,
Speaker 1: and she's getting drunk with them, I could only imagine
Speaker 1: what she learned along the way. And she, I mean,
Speaker 1: to her credit, was very smart and she took in
Speaker 1: all that information and synthesized it into a pretty impressive
Speaker 1: knowledge of the workings of not just politics like how
Speaker 1: they appear on paper, but really how relationships among politicians worked.
Speaker 1: Political lessons weren't the only things Alice gained on her
Speaker 1: trip to Asia. She would go on to marry the
Speaker 1: man who newspapers falsely reported her jumping into the pool
Speaker 1: with Ohio State Senator Nicholas Longworth, who was responsible for
Speaker 1: the long Worth Act of nineteen o two, which regulated
Speaker 1: municipal bonds in Ohio. So six, she gets married to
Speaker 1: Nick Longworth, who was he He was first a lawyer
Speaker 1: and then he's now Ohio senator. He was also a
Speaker 1: notorious woman either. He was, like al was, a party person.
Speaker 1: He was super fun, He dressed really cute. He was
Speaker 1: adorable at charming, you know. For Alice, who was feeling
Speaker 1: pretty stifled in the White House, to have someone who
Speaker 1: was in politics and was in a position of power
Speaker 1: because he was also like yes, left party to her,
Speaker 1: that was wildly appealing. The Longworth personality isn't discussed as
Speaker 1: much as Alice's. He wasn't afraid to indulge in body behavior.
Speaker 1: For example, according to one story, when a member of
Speaker 1: the House ran his hand over long worth S bald
Speaker 1: head and said, nice and smooth, feels just like my
Speaker 1: wife's bottom, Longworth touched his head and replied, yes, so
Speaker 1: it does. He was also pretty open about the fact
Speaker 1: that he was a ladies man. I mean, he and
Speaker 1: Alice were kidred spirits in many regards. I think the
Speaker 1: one really good thing in their match, which had it problems,
Speaker 1: was that they sought each other, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like they understood the other person in ways that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people who were more concerned with
Speaker 1: propriety would never have understood. In nineteen o six, Alice
Speaker 1: Mary Nicholas Longworth in a lavish ceremony worthy of America's princess.
Speaker 1: She walked down the aisle on her father's arm, wearing
Speaker 1: lace from the dress her birth mother had worn to
Speaker 1: her wedding twenty six years earlier. She chose to have
Speaker 1: no bridesmaids waiting for her at the altar. Instead, she
Speaker 1: commanded the undivided attention of the one thousand guests in attendance.
Speaker 1: She cut the cake with the Military Aids sword. After
Speaker 1: the ceremony, Edith reportedly told her stepdaughter, I want you
Speaker 1: to know that I'm glad to see you go. You've
Speaker 1: never been anything but trouble. Lucky for her, Alice didn't
Speaker 1: take the comment personally and blamed it on the stress
Speaker 1: of the wedding. The first daughter was officially Mrs Alice Longworth,
Speaker 1: the wife of an important politician, But if anyone thought
Speaker 1: Mary life would change Alice's rambunctious ways, they did know
Speaker 1: her well enough. She continued getting into trouble well into adulthood.
Speaker 1: One day, when she was feeling bored in the Capital's
Speaker 1: gallery at the House of Representatives, she slipped attack on
Speaker 1: the chair of an unnamed gentleman. The New York Times
Speaker 1: reported that when he sat down, like the burst of
Speaker 1: a bubble on the fountain, like the bolts from the blue,
Speaker 1: like the ball from the cannon, he sprang into the
Speaker 1: ambient atmosphere, painfully, conscious he had come into close contact
Speaker 1: with something sharp. He seemed angry. He glared around, but
Speaker 1: the president's daughter was looking the other way. There's also
Speaker 1: the story of how she welcomed her father's successor by
Speaker 1: bearing a voodoo doll on the White House grounds before
Speaker 1: moving out. She was supposedly banned from the Taft White
Speaker 1: House after that. Later in life, she was quoted as saying,
Speaker 1: I'm amused, and I hope amusing. I've always believed in
Speaker 1: the adage that the secret to eternal youth is arrested development.
Speaker 1: Back in that day, in theory, a woman would get
Speaker 1: married and kind of settled down. And it didn't seem
Speaker 1: like there was any settling down for Alice. No, she
Speaker 1: stayed her shame self. She was never the like shy
Speaker 1: and retiring violet type. I think at that point, you
Speaker 1: know she had never lived a life like that. She didn't,
Speaker 1: But how would she even switch years to that? Because
Speaker 1: it wasn't anything you've ever known. You know, she had
Speaker 1: had had really a lot more freedom than those young
Speaker 1: women of the time, and just was not interested in
Speaker 1: giving that up. I don't think even if Alis was
Speaker 1: able to find ways to keep her inner child alive,
Speaker 1: she couldn't escape adulthood completely. I've been dealing with the
Speaker 1: reality of her marriage, and I talk about your marriage.
Speaker 1: It's not like the fairytale romance marriage where like he
Speaker 1: swept her off her feet and they, you know, lived
Speaker 1: happily ever after, devoted to one another. They understood each other,
Speaker 1: and so they were very much the stee people that
Speaker 1: they were before they ever said abouts. So they bought
Speaker 1: it fits because they were both pretty strong, lived and
Speaker 1: kind of outgoing, outrageous people. But there was also some
Speaker 1: infidelity on both sides, which we didn't really seem to mind.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were some arguments that were such things
Speaker 1: that the bottom line was that they kind of were like, well,
Speaker 1: this is how it works for us. Alice and Nicholas
Speaker 1: had the same problems that afflict many troubled marriages. Her
Speaker 1: husband's playboy lifestyle didn't end on his wedding day, and
Speaker 1: he carried out numerous affairs, but there was a bigger
Speaker 1: issue looming over their union politics. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: in Theodore Roosevelt vied to take the Republican presidential nomination
Speaker 1: away from incumbent President William Howard Taft, and tensions in
Speaker 1: the long Worth household reached their peak. Nicholas supported Taft. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Alice parted her father, and she actually went and appeared
Speaker 1: in her home district, her husband's home district of Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: with Hiram Johnson, who was her father's vice presidential running mate,
Speaker 1: instead of appearing with her husband on his campaign, which
Speaker 1: was kind of a slap in the face. Longworth lost
Speaker 1: that election, and as the political rift between her and
Speaker 1: Nicholas widened, Alice put less effort into maintaining their marriage.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before she started pursuing extramarital affairs of
Speaker 1: her own. Alice started an affair in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: with the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that
Speaker 1: was Senator William Bora of Idaho, and that relationship not
Speaker 1: only went on for a long time, but they got
Speaker 1: really pretty sloppy about concealing it, so it kind of
Speaker 1: became public knowledge. She got the nickname Aurora Laura Alice
Speaker 1: in gossip papers. I mean they would be seen together
Speaker 1: out on the town and they, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: freely seemed to be very deeply in love. If you
Speaker 1: read their letters, I mean, everybody would want someone to
Speaker 1: write about them the way they write about each other.
Speaker 1: And she actually had a daughter, Paulina born, which is
Speaker 1: recorded as Alice and Nicholas's child. It is very very
Speaker 1: highly likely that was in fact Laura's child, although Lalworth
Speaker 1: did not seem to care because he was absolutely devoted
Speaker 1: to Paulina. In her her very later life, in her nineties,
Speaker 1: a reporter asked her if she would get married again,
Speaker 1: if she could do it all over, and she said
Speaker 1: that she would not. She said, I might live with people,
Speaker 1: but not for long. I really wouldn't want to do
Speaker 1: anything pondering or noble or taking a position about someone again.
Speaker 1: But I might rather just spend the night with them
Speaker 1: or an afternoon or substating. In many ways, Alice was
Speaker 1: ahead of her time. There was no blueprint for free
Speaker 1: spirited women navigating public life in early twentieth century America,
Speaker 1: but there was another outspoken, strong lived woman in politics
Speaker 1: born the same year as Alice, who arguably succeeded where
Speaker 1: Alice struggled. Her cousin, Eleanor. Eleanor Roosevelt was the daughter
Speaker 1: of Elliott Bullock Roosevelt, Theodore, Roosevelt's younger brother. She lost
Speaker 1: both of her parents at a young age. Her mother
Speaker 1: died of diphtheria when she was just eight years old.
Speaker 1: Two years later, her father, an alcoholic, jumped from a
Speaker 1: window while suffering from alcohol withdrawal induced delirium, then had
Speaker 1: a seizure and died. She ended up spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time at Sagamore Hill with her uncle tr and
Speaker 1: it was there that she developed a lifelong rivalry with Alice.
Speaker 1: Eleanor would wed her uncle's fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Speaker 1: of the Hyde Park, Roosevelt's Alice would ways say that
Speaker 1: those weren't the real Roosevelt um Theodore, and Baby's regard
Speaker 1: for their niece likely fueled Alice's jealousy. Dalton explains that
Speaker 1: in Baby's eyes, personable, politically minded Eleanor was more roosevelt
Speaker 1: Ian than unpolished Alice. Tr would point to Eleanor's respectable
Speaker 1: conduct as an example for his daughter to aspire to that.
Speaker 1: Alice had no interest in being more like her cousin,
Speaker 1: and when FDR entered the White House she made those
Speaker 1: feelings especially clear. She would also really really garbage, unkind
Speaker 1: impressions of Eleanor at parties. I can't imagine being on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of someone with saus the sharp and
Speaker 1: unkind wit uh. And even late in her life, like
Speaker 1: when she had already come down a lot and said
Speaker 1: a lot of nice things about people that she used
Speaker 1: to be pretty unkind about, said, I'm probably bad about
Speaker 1: people who have no gold, fine and marvelous thoughts. That's
Speaker 1: so depressing. I could never stand a little pious family
Speaker 1: things that my sanctimonious kind of used to you. But
Speaker 1: they're all dead now. She held her dad in such
Speaker 1: high esteem and to some degree put him on a pedestal,
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people have over the years.
Speaker 1: But her devotion was utterly unwavering, to the point that
Speaker 1: basically there was Teddy Roosevelt and there was the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, and no one else could measure up.
Speaker 1: Alice lost her father in nineteen nine and her husband
Speaker 1: in nine. In nineteen fifty seven, her daughter Paulina overdosed
Speaker 1: from sleeping pills at age thirty one, leaving behind a
Speaker 1: ten year old daughter named Joanna. Alice fought for custody
Speaker 1: of her grandchild and one in many ways she kind
Speaker 1: of fulfilled a similar role that aunt By had done
Speaker 1: for her, making it a family tradition of really strong, independent,
Speaker 1: very outspoken women raising the next generation. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you have to wonder if maybe she had some more
Speaker 1: respect for Edith after that situation. I do think life's experience,
Speaker 1: and in particular her experience reading Paulina and then Joanna,
Speaker 1: really did shift how she thought about her relationship with
Speaker 1: Edith and how both of them handled it, even without
Speaker 1: the men in her life connecting her to that world.
Speaker 1: Alice lived the rest of her life in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And stayed involved in politics. She and Nick had moved
Speaker 1: it to a house at to Con Circle, and that
Speaker 1: home was the site of a lot of gathering and
Speaker 1: a lot of her true influence. We probably won't ever
Speaker 1: know because it wasn't documented. It was largely exerted in
Speaker 1: this social setting. Although she was certainly a local supporter
Speaker 1: of various politicians over the years, very vocal sporter of Mixon,
Speaker 1: she also came to be known as the other Washington
Speaker 1: Mondument because she was recognized as a significant figure in Washington,
Speaker 1: which automatically would become with an influence. Alice's later years
Speaker 1: were only slightly less exciting than her youth had been.
Speaker 1: She made friends with people across the political spectrum. Nixon
Speaker 1: would often call her up from the White House, and
Speaker 1: according to some friends, Alison Robert Kennedy had a thing
Speaker 1: for each other despite their forty year age gap, but
Speaker 1: she didn't extend her affections to just anyone. She notably
Speaker 1: refused to meet with Jimmy Carter, the last setting president
Speaker 1: in her lifetime. In his eulogy for Alice, Carter wrote,
Speaker 1: she had style, she had grace, and she had a
Speaker 1: sense of humor that can generations of political newcomers to
Speaker 1: Washington wondering which was worse to be skewered by her
Speaker 1: wit were to be ignored by her. Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Speaker 1: died on February and age. Decades after her death and
Speaker 1: more than a century since she last occupied the White House,
Speaker 1: her legacy as first daughter is more relevant than ever.
Speaker 1: She was the first in a long line of presidential
Speaker 1: children that hit the spotlight. You know, she was the first,
Speaker 1: the first first daughter who had like this, this sort
Speaker 1: of ambassador goodwill situation. She was really one of the
Speaker 1: first ones that became a focus of the press, and
Speaker 1: even quoted that focus. It was like, yes, of course,
Speaker 1: look at me in my ridiculous behavior. She kind of
Speaker 1: shifted the way we think about the leadership of our
Speaker 1: country and its family. I find that aspect of politics
Speaker 1: completely fascinating period, like the fact that once someone is
Speaker 1: in politics, we scrutinized their kids. They're distant relatives there,
Speaker 1: but that to mean he's a really interesting thing. And
Speaker 1: she was part of building that idea that that it
Speaker 1: was pressworthy to cover the doings of a of a
Speaker 1: child of the president. She also played a major part
Speaker 1: in shaping her father's legacy, even if he didn't always
Speaker 1: show her the affection she craved and didn't always approve
Speaker 1: of the way she acted. Tr could always count on
Speaker 1: having Alice in his corner because of how deeply she
Speaker 1: loved her father, and because she outlived him, of course,
Speaker 1: she really was able to find of help continue to
Speaker 1: bolster and shape his image as time went on, and
Speaker 1: ensure in many ways that the tr that we think
Speaker 1: about now is the TR we think about now? Like
Speaker 1: she continued to always speak of him and write about him,
Speaker 1: and only the most praising ways, even when she would
Speaker 1: say things like he always wanted to be the center
Speaker 1: of attention. So I guess the ultimate question is, if
Speaker 1: we're looking at t R versus Alice, who's the winner?
Speaker 1: Is there a winner? It just feels like a rare
Speaker 1: instance where they both sort of want Like he was
Speaker 1: able to continue as presidency, and he came out of it,
Speaker 1: you know, in many ways historically looking pretty good. She
Speaker 1: was able to live a very lovely life. She was
Speaker 1: very smart and ascute in terms of business as her
Speaker 1: husband had passed, and she was almost immediately thinking about
Speaker 1: way she could ensure that she had plenty of money
Speaker 1: to live on going forward. So she wrote her memoirs
Speaker 1: at that point and capitalized on that. And she likens
Speaker 1: her image to be on things like cold cream and
Speaker 1: cigarettes and other products. Um, yeah, they kind of posed
Speaker 1: ended up succeeding in life in ways that in some
Speaker 1: part we're due to each others behavior even as much
Speaker 1: as they So I'm gonna call it a win. Wind
Speaker 1: History Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. This episode
Speaker 1: was written by Michelle dead Check with research by me
Speaker 1: and additional research by Michael Salgarolo fact checking by Austin Thompson.
Speaker 1: Joe Wigan voiced Theodore Roosevelt in this episode. The executive
Speaker 1: producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show was edited by
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan and lowber Land Team Special thanks to Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt, check
Speaker 1: out our website at mental flush dot com, Slash History Versus.
Speaker 1: That's mental flus dot com. Slash h I S t
Speaker 1: O R y vs. History Versus is a production of
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