Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady

by Sylvia Jukes Morris

Book Overview

Edith Kermit Carow grew up in New York City in the same circles as did Theodore Roosevelt. But only after TR's first wife died at age twenty-two did the childhood friends forge one of the most successful romantic and political partnerships in American history. Sylvia Jukes Morris's access to previously unpublished letters and diaries brings to full life her portrait of the Roosevelts and their times. During her years as First Lady (1901-09), Edith...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0698109945
• ISBN13: 9780698109940
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Coward McCann
• Length: 581 Pages
• Weight: 2.11 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Bio read

Loved this book, read it twice, very intimate, not just a bunch of political facts and dates, you really get to know Edith and the Roosevelts, loved it.

Great Biography

I agree with the other reviews who say there should be a movie about Edith Roosevelt. I didn't know much about her at all but the biography was well written and very informative. Everything about her would make for a great movie. Edith was an intellegent woman and possibly one of the best first ladies we ever had. She seemed very well organized and very efficient whether she was running her family household or the White House staff. I highly recommend reading this biography.

Captivating

During a recent visit to Sagamore Hill on Long Island (the home of the Roosevelts), this book caught my eye because it gave a such a different perspective of Roosevelt history. Though I am now only about 3/4 of the way through, I cannot say that I am at all disappointed. It reads like a novel and is extremely well written. I cannot put it down. While it is true that there are other books which better cover the details of TR's colorful political career (Sylvia J. Morris's husband's books accomplish this) and even TR's earlier family history (try "Mornings on Horseback" by David McCullough for this), this book is must for those interested in the story of Edith and her remarkable family. Also, the story does have a great deal of romance and some poignancy -- particularly in the death of TR's first wife, Alice Lee, and his troubled relationship with his daughter, Alice's namesake. I agree with one of the other reviewer's -- Edith's story would make a marvelous motion picture.

Why hasn't there been a movie made on her romance/marriage?

Her lifelong romance with Theodore Roosevelt is certainly the stuff that films (or at the very least, TV movies) are made of. She never stopped loving the brilliant, bellicose, captivating, exasperating "boy" she had fallen in love with at a very young age. She helped mold him into a man. How two strong-willed persons of such opposing personalities thrived in such a successful marriage is even more reason why their story in film would be interesting. If Edith, certainly one of the most private historical figures in our country's history, had not the burned thousands of letters from her "Teedie"/Theodore (wishing to keep their lifetime of thoughts and passions to themselves), their romance might be up there with John and Abigail. TR also destroyed most of the letters from "Edie"/Edith because of Edith's constant pleading to him to do so.What has survived through thousands of letters that friends and relatives did not destory and through Edith's 40+ years of private diaries (left to her daughter Ethel) is a portrait of a iron-willed, intelligent, passionate lady who survived many family crises and lived through enough U.S. political history for a couple of high school textbooks. She was often the mother AND the father of her large household of children and pets as TR would often leave to go on hunting trips, safaris, and political campaigns. She ran the household in every area mostly because she had to get control of the family finances. (TR almost had to sell Sagamore Hill before he married Edith because he had lost so much of his inheritance in the Badlands. His older sister helped him get through some lean financial years.) But, she knew that he would always return to her bed and to no one else's. She often looked down at her sisters-in-law, nieces, and female friends who had married "safely" and did not have a passionate, romantic partnership such as the one she shared with TR. In many ways she was as contradictory in her beliefs as her husband. She was certainly Victorian in her moral strictures, yet one of her closest confidants and friends in the later White House years was the not-so-in-the-closet homosexual chief military aide to her husband (and this gentleman, Archibald Butt, would later help many of the Titanic's passengers to safety before he perished).One of the most poignant chapters in the book deals with the sons getting ready to go off to fight in the Great War. Quentin, her baby, is eighteen and falling in love with the daughter of one of the anti-Roosevelts, the Whitneys. Edith and TR are concerned with their son falling in love with one of the "plutocrat" Whitneys. However, once they meet Flora they fall in love with her and take her into their family as one of their own. Quentin has to leave the safe environs of Sagamore Hill and the Long Island air training centre and be shipped off to Europe. The elder Roosevelts try to get passports for themselves to travel with Flora so that Flora can marry Quentin in Europe. They can

An excellent biography of Edith Kermit Roosevelt

An accurate, comprehensive, and entertaining biography of the great woman. Highly reccomended.