WEBVTT - TR Vs. Alice 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:05.800 History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:12.920 Mental Flaws. In nineteen o five, a group of American 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.759 politicians set off to the Far East. The diplomatic delegation 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:20.680 included seven senators, more than twenty Congressman and Secretary of 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:23.759 War William Howard Taft, But there was one member in 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:27.560 particular who captivated the press. The twenty one year old 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.080 woman had been acting up the whole trip, setting off 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:32.640 firecrackers and shooting her revolver from the back of the 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.960 train before they even left the country. But her biggest 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.919 scandal happened aboard the steamship Manchuria. The young woman plunged 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:42.840 into the ship's swimming tank, fully clothed in a white 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.120 silk skirt and blouse. She had reportedly jumped on a 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:50.360 dare one that she had proposed herself. It would have 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.559 been scandalous behavior for any woman at that time, but 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:57.880 this prankster wasn't just any woman. This was Alice Roosevelt, 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:09.240 the oldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt. From Mental Flaws 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:11.960 and I Heart Radio, This is History Versus, a podcast 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:14.679 about how your favorite historical figures faced off against their 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.119 greatest foes. I'm your host Aaron McCarthy and for this round, 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:21.600 repeating t R against his daughter, Alice, a constant source 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.880 of stress for the twenty six President. Roosevelt once said, 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:27.480 I can be President of the United States, or I 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.880 can attend to Alice. So how did tr juggle running 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.440 the country with raising his oldest daughter. We're about to 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:37.160 find out. The Roosevelt family had all the elements of 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:41.280 a happy, conventional household. Theodore Roosevelt married his second wife 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:46.560 and childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Caro in Together they had 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:52.080 five children, Theodore the Third or Ted Jr. Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.920 and Quentin. Growing up, the boys enjoyed boxing with their father, 0:01:56.320 --> 0:02:00.720 while Ethel stuck to more ladylike activities like needlework. And 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.480 then there was Alice. Her brothers would tease her that 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:06.400 they didn't have the same mom as her, and that 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:09.200 like she found it very cruel and it was something 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.320 she was really sensitive about. That's Holly Fry from stuff 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.200 you missed in history class. And as she explains, Alice's 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:19.799 relationship with Edith wasn't any smoother. They fall into use 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.600 in some ways the classic kind of step mother step 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.840 daughter roles that we have come to expect from Disney films, 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.040 and a lot of that was sort of this forever 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:36.680 cloud that hung over the household of his first wife, Alice. 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.360 Before starting his life with Edith Teddy, Roosevelt had married 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.160 Alice Hathaway Lee in eighteen eighty. The daughter of a banker, 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:47.160 Alice Sr. Was known in Massachusetts social circles for her 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:51.040 charm and beauty. On meeting her, tr wrote, as long 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.400 as I live, I shall never forget how sweetly she 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:58.160 looked and how prettily she agrees with me. Alice became 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.760 pregnant in eight eight three and gave to a healthy 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:05.880 baby girl named Alice Lee Roosevelt on February With a 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.720 lovely Boston socialite for a mother and an ambitious New 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.040 York politician for a father, Baby Alice should have had 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:16.480 it all, and then the unthinkable happened. Shortly after the 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:19.960 delivery Alice Senor fell Ill Teddy, who had been in 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:21.680 Albany working on a law of the day of his 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.079 daughter's birth, rushed home to New York City after receiving 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.120 news of her condition. He held her in his arms 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:30.840 as she passed in and out of consciousness. She had 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:35.600 what was then known as Bright's disease. Alice Hathaway Roosevelt 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:40.400 died on February at the age of twenty two. It 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.960 was the second loss tr had sustained that day. Just 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.160 hours earlier, his mother, Mitty Roosevelt, had succumbed to typhoid 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:52.400 fever barely two days old. Alice's life was already embroiled 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.360 in tragedy. If you put yourself in that position of 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:59.360 losing apparent that you're very close to and your sins today, 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:03.520 it's pretty me to understand that it completely changed his 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:07.440 relationship with the world, not just his new child, but 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:09.960 they were setting up this beautiful life that they had 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.800 planned out, and now everywhere he went was the memory 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:15.920 of his wife that had passed, and like that was 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.800 a big part of why he kind of decided that 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:23.000 he was gonna leave and go out with Just a 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.120 few months after his daughter was born, tr left her 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.640 with his sister Anna, who went by the nicknames Baby 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.400 and By, and retreated to the Dakota bad Lands. He 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.200 rarely inquired about Alice in the letters he mailed home. 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:38.080 He returned briefly to New York for business when she 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.200 was about five months old, and even in person, he 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:45.200 had trouble acknowledging her. He called her Baby Lee because 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.120 he couldn't bear to say her mother's name. But though 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.760 it wasn't always a parent, Alice was loved. One of 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:54.159 the first hints of fatherly affection from t R comes 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:58.640 from a letter dated September. He wrote, I hope Mousey 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.720 Kins will be very cunning. I shall dearly love her. 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.400 But the most stable source of love in Baby Alice's 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:09.640 life was Aunt Babie. That was one of those relationships 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:14.599 that ended up really really setting the tone of Alice's 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.560 life forever, because Baby became what she referred to as 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.360 like her biggest influence as a child. You know, it's 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.039 crazy to hear about how much influence Baby had on 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.960 Alice but also on tr and how often she would 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.840 just like drop everything to you know, help him make 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.880 political connections or do whatever it was that he needed done. 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:39.480 She was really his most trusted confidant for pretty much 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:41.159 the rest of his life. Like he would go to 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:45.000 her with personal decisions, with political decisions, with you know, 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.440 any kind of thing that he was ruminating and get 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.640 his sister's opinion, which is kind of interesting, Like there 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:55.560 I feel like there are not that many instances in history, 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.719 and then with as much power as him, who like 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.280 the first order of business when their face to the 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:06.520 decision is let me call my sister. Baby's influence on 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:10.360 Teddy lasted throughout his career as president. He often referred 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:12.240 to his sister's home as the other White House, and 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:15.440 according to their niece Eleanor Roosevelt, he made few serious 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:19.400 political decisions without talking with her first. Alice later remarked, 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:21.680 if Auntie Bay had been a man, she would have 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.239 been president, but she wasn't the only woman who mattered 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.400 to t R. Almost two years after Alice Sr. Died, 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.000 Edith kurmit Carow entered his life, or re entered it rather. 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.200 The couple likely had a teenage romance, and Edith ran 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.640 in the same social circles as Theodore. Edith was a 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.440 natural choice for his next wife. Her potential as a 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.880 stepmother was less of a concern for him. Alice had 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.080 lived with Baby for the first three years of her life, 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:49.880 and Tierra assumed things would stay that way even after 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:54.919 he remarried, but Edith had other plans. Edith was consisted 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.120 that child will become my child. She will come and 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.279 live with us, and we will be one big family together. 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:02.640 That which sounds really lovely, but it was fraught with sension. 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.360 According to historian Edmund Morris, tr Edith and Baby came 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.240 up with a plan to live together for a time 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.800 at Sagamore Hill, the Roosevelt's famous Long Island estate, to 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:16.760 ease Alice's transition to a new family. That family got 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:21.360 even bigger with the birth of Theodore Junior. Edith wanted 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.360 to be a good parent to her stepdaughter, but raising 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:27.160 a headstrong child like Alice wasn't always easy. When Alice 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.920 was a teenager, Edith, along with Teddy, proposed sending her 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.440 to a conservative boarding school in New York City. According 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:37.320 to historians Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Alice protested, saying, 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:40.600 if you send me, I will humiliate you. I will 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.200 do something that will shame you. I tell you I will. 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.120 When she was older, Alice often spent time with Baby, and, 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:49.880 as Kathleen Dalton writes in her book Theodore Roosevelt a 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.760 strenuous life, she and Edith had very different ways of 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:58.080 managing Alice. Baby was generous, rarely hesitating to give her 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:02.280 niece whatever she wanted, while Edith believed children needed discipline. 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:05.640 As Alice grew into a young woman, her resemblance to 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.760 her mother became unmistakable, which made parenting her even harder 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.600 for Edith. It brings my heart when I read that 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:17.080 Edith a bad mouth Alice to her daughter Alice. It 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:18.800 was kind of a question where that was very pretty, 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:21.200 but she was also really stupid, like who looked say 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.840 that to a child? There was also this problem where, 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:28.240 of course, you know, theoter Roosevelt was out traveling a 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:30.880 lot of the times, which the one person who really 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.920 loved both of these women could not serve as any 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:36.040 kind of butter or mediator. They were just kind of 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:39.320 left to fight it out on their own. Tier also 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:42.240 saw his late wife and his daughter. The distance that 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.040 existed between them Analis was a baby, along with his 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:48.760 refusal to talk about her mother, lingered throughout her childhood. 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.120 She would later say, I think it is true to 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:53.920 say that my father didn't want me to be a 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.360 guilty burden. He obviously felt guilty about it. Otherwise he 0:08:57.360 --> 0:08:59.600 would have said at least once that I had another parent. 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:02.880 The curious thing is that he never seemed to realize 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.000 that I was perfectly aware of it and developing a 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:09.520 resentment tears. Aloofness wasn't the only reason Alis didn't see 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:11.880 more of her father. He was also hard at work 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.800 pursuing a political career. He served as both governor of 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.040 New York and Vice President of the United States while 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:21.679 Alice was a teenager. Then, in one following William McKinley's assassination, 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:26.480 Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president. The roosevelts, we're 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:36.160 going to the White House. We'll be right back. At 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:38.280 the start of his presidency, Tira was a father to 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:42.040 six kids, ranging an age from three to seventeen. The 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.240 nation hadn't seen a presidential family quite like the Roosevelt 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.559 clan before. The children treated their new home as their 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:52.320 personal playground, the rollers getting down the hardwood floors, venturing 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.439 into crawl spaces, and throwing spitballs at a painting of 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.560 Andrew Jackson a crime. Tr put them on trial for 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:03.920 he found them. T Roosevelt's sons, Quentin and Archie, remembers 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:06.200 of what was called the White House Gang, which met 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:10.240 in the building's attic. Tr was an honorary member in 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:12.640 case the kids weren't enough of a handful on their own. 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.680 Teddy and Edith also had a menagerie of pets to 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:19.480 worry about. The family animals included, at one point or another, 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:23.079 a lizard, a bear, a badger, a hyena, a one 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.840 legged rooster, a pony, and guinea pigs. Here's the funny 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.280 story about the pony, whose name was algon Quin. One day, 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.280 when Archie was feeling ill, someone some sources say was 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.680 Quentin and Tier's other son, Kermit, while others say it 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.840 was footman Charles Reader decided to bring the animal up 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.960 to his room to cheer him up. Reportedly, the horse 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.960 was so fascinated by his reflection in the elevator mirror 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.199 that they had trouble getting him out. His oldest son, 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.280 ted almost had a nervous breakdown when he was a 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.920 kid because he felt so much pressure. And his you know, son, 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:56.440 Kermit was kind of a wild child, but in his 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:58.160 own way, like he was the one that wanted to 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:00.280 go to Africa with his dad and shoot things. And 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:03.840 I think her stuff. Sister Ethel was probably the most 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.080 chill of them all. She was like, I didn't want 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:08.040 to be in the spotlight, wanted to be super helpful 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:11.920 and then the two youngest boys, Archie and Clinton, sound 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:14.320 a little bit like a very fun hell on wheels. 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:16.960 They sound like a very fun sildren to read about. 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:21.840 But maybe not with Even though she was the oldest, 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.200 Alice got into the most trouble of them all. And 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:30.200 so Alice in the meantime, she had already before the election, 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:34.679 even started showing up in the press. You know, gossip 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.400 magazines loved her because she was a handful. She was 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:41.600 a smoker, which of course frowned upon, and at one 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:45.520 point tr forbid her to smoke under his roof, so 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:47.400 she would just go out on the roof of the 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.240 White House. She's like, I'm not under your roof. I'm 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:54.920 not breaking your role. Yeah, I'm technically abiding to the 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:58.280 letter of the law. Um. She would play poker, and 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.720 she would bet on horses, and she you know, would 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:05.680 drink a lot, and she was photographed doing all these things. 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.760 She would ride in cars with adults men with no chaperone, 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:14.840 which of course was terribly scandalous. Um. She would also 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:20.600 get in street races in her car in Washington, like 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.920 in the nation's capital, she keep drag racing down the street. 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.760 At one point she announced that she was turning pagans 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:31.439 just to kind of rile up the family. Um. Her 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:35.960 stepmother was very religious that she Alice would tell he 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:38.840 did that she thought Christianity was a form of voodoo. 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:44.520 Sounds like a teenager. The Roosevelt contern had some crazy 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.560 sundry issues when it came to pets, but she would 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:50.599 occasionally carry around the snake in her pocket that she 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:55.520 named Emily Spinach. That is a great snake name. It is. 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.160 It's good. I feel like that's also a good punk 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:01.160 fan's name. So if any history rickly minded punk band, 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:05.240 they're looking for an as a good a good one 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:09.199 to spang Emily Spinach. The snake was named after Alice's 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:11.440 an Emily, because it was as thin as she was. 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:17.600 It was, also, in Alice's words, greenest spinach. So how 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:22.439 did the public react? In a weird way? They kind 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:26.160 of loved her. She was called Princess Alice and the press, 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.160 and I mean, I think, you know, some of of 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:34.160 Teddy Roosevelt's appeal at the time was that he was, like, sure, 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.800 he was a politician, but he was also this you know, rugged, 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:40.520 kind of old school to use the phrase man's man 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:43.400 like he did go out in the hunt, and he 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:47.360 had no, no hesitation to go out into the wilderness 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:50.600 by himself. And so she in some way seemed like 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.280 the city extension of him. Right like that she was 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:57.200 also she had her father's wildness, and so there was 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:01.320 definitely some appeal in that. Like she started a trend 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.160 in color uh popular colors at the time because she 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.520 had she loved this particular shade of like a grayish blue, 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.320 and it started to become Alice blue. And suddenly you 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:18.360 saw Alice blue dresses, hats, accessories, everything. Alice Roosevelt was 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:22.560 the original white House wild child. Newspapers never missed an 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.400 opportunity for her name, whether in relation to a real 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.560 event like the hundreds of parties she attended, or a 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:32.120 piece of unsubstantiated gossip. Even the men who claimed to 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.560 have proposed to her were considered newsworthy. The press couldn't 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:38.640 get enough of Princess Alice, and they weren't the only ones. 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.360 Musicians wrote waltz is inspired by her. Her likeness was 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.440 put on postcards. Right now, we're listening to the song 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:51.440 Alice Blue Gown. Her father, on the other hand, was 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.880 less enamored of her behavior Tire often wrote posterity letters 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.240 for historians to study, and his daughter, who frequently did 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.720 things that threatened his reputation, was often on the receiving end. 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.160 In one letter, he said, do you know how much 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:09.360 talk there has been recently in the newspapers about your 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:14.640 betting and courting notoriety with that unfortunate snake. Do try 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:18.760 to remember that to court notoriety by bizarre actions is 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:24.800 underbred and unladylike. She spent lots of money, so much that, 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:27.600 according to Dalton, Edith once asked her, how would you 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:29.920 like to have Archie give up college to pay your debts? 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.400 The New York Times declared when she visited a horse race, 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:37.200 she has as much an attraction as the thoroughbreds. Before 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.560 the nineteen o four election, Alice said she got a 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.440 terrible lecture from father and mother on the family and 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:46.320 my extravagance and lack of morals. But Alice did make 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:50.080 some attempts to please her family. She became engaged in politics, 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:52.680 reading books about child labor, and going with her father 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.880 to meet important officials. At home, she tried getting along 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.120 with Edith and helped her with chores. But these streaks 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.560 of good behavior and never lasted long no matter how 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:05.480 she acted. Alice felt like an outcast among the Roosevelts, 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:09.800 and that became a self fulfilling prophecy. Father doesn't care 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:12.320 for me, that is to say, one eighth as much 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:14.480 as he does the other children, she wrote in her 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:19.080 diary in we are not in the least congenial. Why 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:21.440 should he pay any attention to me or the things 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:26.440 that I live for, except to look upon them with disapproval. Still, 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.520 when a congressman's wife criticized Alice for her bumptious awkward manners, 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:35.600 tr Dalton writes personally confronted his daughter's critic. But Alice 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:37.600 was more similar to her father than she may have 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.920 felt at times. They both shared strong convictions, sharp intelligence, 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.480 and a passion for learning. Tire had a special fondness 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.360 for his like minded daughter, but with such big personalities 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:51.520 sharing the White House and the headlines, they were bound 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.760 to clash. It's been said that tr always wanted to 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.000 be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.480 and the baby at every christening. One of the reasons 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.720 that they did butt heads is because they both were 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.320 kind of um spotlight grabbers. And she also felt like 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:11.960 she was competing with his wife and her five other 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:15.880 children for his attention when she kind of wanted more 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:18.800 than she was getting um and I'm sure that is 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.399 part of why she would do ridiculous things like margin 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.360 to his office when he was beating with his of state. Uh. 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.160 And it eventually reached the fever pitch where he kind 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.560 of came up with an idea that would get her 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.280 out of his hair for a little while, which is 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:37.600 was making her a good will ambassador. After unsuccessful attempts 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:41.120 to reign, Allison Tira could see that she needed an outlet. 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.440 Sending hers as representative to important events had the added 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:48.119 bonus of granting him peace and quiet at home. Her 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:51.160 biggest job yet came in when she was twenty one. 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.280 The US was organizing a good will trip to Asia, 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.760 and she was to serve as a goodwill ambassador, with 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.000 stops planned for Hawaii, Japan, China, in the Philippines. It 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:03.679 was to be the largest political delegation from the United 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:06.719 States to ever visit the area. The trip turned out 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:09.719 to be historic in another way. Never before I had 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:11.920 a first daughter been given a role of such importance, 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:15.439 and Alice certainly made the most of it. She was 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:19.320 very good at dealing with other people that were empowered. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.199 She was very good at at representing her father in 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:25.920 so far as she completely supported him, and and it 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:28.439 was very eloquent. She was well spoken, even though she 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:32.440 always said she couldn't really like public speaking. She really liked, 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.080 you know, meeting with people and discussing what he was 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:37.439 doing with them. But the flip side is that she 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.159 was traveling with Haft, who was allegedly the person that 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:43.080 was going to be in charge of keeping her in line, 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:45.080 which I don't know why anyone thought that would work. 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:50.160 But also a group of congressmen, and so there were 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:56.080 a lot of people on this trip and Alice kind 0:18:56.119 --> 0:19:00.520 of exploited every opportunity to party with all of them. 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:03.359 The party and culminated with Alice's infamous plunge into the 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:07.080 steamship's pool. She dared a congressman to do the same, 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:12.240 and he did, which was considered completely scandalous, although she 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:15.320 always reacted about by saying it would only have been 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.479 really outrageous if I had taken off my clothes. We 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:21.399 were both fully dressed. It was fine to make matters 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.479 even more scandalous outlets reported that it was Washington playboy 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:27.040 Nicholas Longworth she had course to jump in the pool 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.080 with her. Though Alison Longworth did spend a lot of 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:32.719 time together on that trip, she later admitted it had 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.119 been a different congressman who accepted her dare. She also 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:38.360 didn't really seem to care what people thought of her, 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:41.439 and so she was willing to do almost anything in 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.240 the interest of having fun and continuing to kind of 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:47.719 court that image that she had of being, you know, 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:53.200 TR's wild child daughter. Is there anything on record about 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:57.000 how her father reacted to that little dip in the pool? 0:19:57.359 --> 0:19:59.800 I mean, I think I think about my father's reactions 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:01.800 all the stuff that I did when I was a 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.280 kid and still do, and theologist because my stupid kid 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:11.560 and I am, that's in a very similar reaction. Oh 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.479 stupid kid. You kind of wonder if he was just like, 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:19.960 that's Alice, can't controller, can't do it all. Yeah, He's like, 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:26.399 that's tasts problem right now. At this point, future President 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:29.800 William Howard Taft was the country's Secretary of War. Japan 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.520 and Russia were in an expensive conflict, and part of 0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:34.680 Taft's mission was to have a meeting with the Japanese 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:38.320 Prime Minister. Babysitting should have been the least of his concerns. 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.840 It had to have an age to like to measurably 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:44.959 during that trip. I mean, I can't even imagine how 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:47.639 stressful that I would have. Band Like, here is my 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:52.840 drunken wild child. You're in charge of keeping track of her, 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:55.000 and you have to do it while traveling with a 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:57.720 bunch of men. She's going to flirt with and also 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:01.000 make important political deals while you're not worrying about my 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:05.840 wild child daughter. Yeah, exactly if you were to think 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.679 about something similar happening in the modern instance, right, Like, 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.520 it's hard to come up with an equivalent of a 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:18.679 president handing there this behaving child off to hear someone 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:20.880 else and just be like, keep an eye on my kid, 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:23.120 who's gonna carry does the whole way by the way 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:26.600 that she's just gonna pull out on a whim and 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:31.199 shoot it things, shoot at the sky. Yeah, I cannot 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.159 imagine the stress the chaps felt at that time. I 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.359 feel like he must have given up at a certain point. Again, 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:40.960 just like her parents, Taft was probably like, I can 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:47.080 only do so much here, my stupid kid. I think 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:51.120 because she lost her mother so early, and because I'm 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:56.280 sure the president realized that there was this gap in 0:21:56.359 --> 0:21:58.960 her life and that not only had she lost her mother, 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:02.639 but he never of her mother. So I think that 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:06.080 probably set into his willingness to just let her be 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:09.000 the kids she was. He also valued the fact that 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:12.520 she was smart as a whip and that she was independent, 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:15.040 Like you liked that about her. It's why he liked 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:18.720 his sister baby like that, she too was really smart 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:21.720 and very independent. And so I mean he admires the 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:24.200 very qualities that were becoming a pain in the neck 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:28.639 for his life. So there's a juxtaposition there, um, And 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:31.080 I mean that's something that ship fled to all his kids, 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:34.520 which said similar things to his his son's you know, 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:37.080 like whatever you do, like, do not lose your smartness. 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:39.080 That's the most important part of you. You're very smart 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:43.280 and clever. So I think while he was probably publicly going, hey, 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:45.800 that's my stupid kid, he was also in his private 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:49.040 library going but I'm kind of proud of that. Even 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:50.919 when she appeared to be having too much of a 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:54.760 good time, Alice never wasted an opportunity to gain political acumen. 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:57.760 Her wild world tour, along with her adventures in the 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:00.199 White House, shaped her into a woman that didn't just 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:02.639 hob nob with political heavy hitters, but could hold her 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:05.119 own against them. I mean, she was barging in on 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:10.080 meetings that should have had like major security. Additionally, you know, 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:14.159 when she's traveling with all these congressmen and other people 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:17.600 that have you know, are high ranking within the political structure, 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:20.480