Theodore Roosevelt on the True Measure of Love and Happiness

Theodore Douglas Robinson was the son of Theodore Roosevelt’s sister Corinne, and was thus TR’s nephew. He was a student at Harvard University when, in 1902, it was announced that he would marry Helen Roosevelt, daughter of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s half-brother James R. Roosevelt, thus uniting the two great Roosevelt families three years before Franklin married Eleanor, with the same effect.

This is TR’s congratulatory letter to his nephew.  Typed letter signed, on White House letterhead, two pages, Washington, September 26, 1902, to Robinson, whom he addresses here as “Teddie”. In it, he expresses his belief in true love and the happiness it brings, and of the compromises that need to be made for a relationship to work. “I am delighted that your engagement is formally announced.  As you know, I not only like you, but believe in you, and for Helen I have a genuine fondness and admiration.  When I stayed in the house with her at the time of inauguration as Vice President I made up my mind that she was an unusually sweet and fine girl.  I congratulate you with all my heart, and I feel that she is to be congratulated also.

“I not only believe in love matches, but I thoroughly disbelieve in any other kind of match – at any rate until people have passed the age when they can expect to make love matches.  No other happiness in the world is so great or so enduring as that of two lovers who remain lovers after they are married, and who never forget the tenderness and affection, the respect and the forbearance, all of which each must at times show to the other.  May Heaven be with you both always. Your affectionate uncle, Theodore Roosevelt.

“P.S. – I send you this by typewriting because I am in bed on account of the after effects of the trolley car accident.”

A search of public sale records going back 40 years fails to turn up even one letter by an American president concerning love, that intangible necessity of life. Nor have we seen a more important, romantic and even poetic statement on the subject. This letter tells us a great deal about TR the man, and offers guidance of use to every man and woman.

That TR considered love and happiness so intertwined should come as a no surprise. He had a lifelong and close relationship with his wife and their affection was well known.  He also lost his first wife, Alice, whom he dearly loved and who died after giving birth to his daughter.  He was distraught at her death, noting in his diary that day, “The light has gone out of my life.”

The reference in the PS is to the following well known incident, in which the President nearly died. In Pittsfield, Mass., on the morning of September 3, 1902, a speeding street car crashed into the President’s horse drawn carriage as it crossed tracks at a somewhat blind angle, killing Secret Service Agent William J. Craig, the agency’s first fatality in the line of duty, and injuring Roosevelt and his aide George Cortelyou. This injury would follow Roosevelt for the rest of his life, even affecting his trip to the Amazon Basin.  Roosevelt, a rugged outdoorsman who fought to overcome childhood weaknesses, fought to retain a physical strength that this injury would impact.  This incident is referred to in every complete biography of him and is a major point of reference in stories of his trip to Brazil.