Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Kelly  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please, tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers, to listen too.  Alice Lee Roosevelt was born on February 12, 1884, in Manhattan, to Theodore Roosevelt, then a New York State Assemblyman and Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, a socialite from a wealthy Boston banking family. Just two days after baby Alice was born, her mother died of kidney disease. Tragically, her grandmother, Theodore's mother, died just hours earlier of typhoid fever. A distraught Theodore was in no shape to care for a newborn. He headed west to his Dakota ranch, leaving little Alice, who he referred to at the time as Baby Lee, in the care of his sister Anna, known to Alice as Auntie Bye. Alice lived with her Auntie Bye in Manhattan for several years, until her father remarried, to Edith Kermit Carow, who had been his childhood friend, and teenage sweetheart. It was Edith who decided that Alice should live with them at Sagamore Hill, near Oyster Bay on the North Shore of Long Island, rather than remaining with Auntie Bye. Soon, their home was filled with Alice's younger half siblings, Theodore, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald and Quentin. The growing family bounced around following TR's political career, as he served on the US Civil Service Commission, as police commissioner of New York City, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and finally as governor of New York, for which they moved to the Executive Mansion in Albany. After just two years as governor, Theodore Roosevelt was nominated for the vice presidency in 1900, running on the ticket of incumbent President William McKinley, whose previous vice president, Garret Hobart, had died in office in 1899. Just six months into McKinley's second term, he was assassinated, making the 42 year old Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. 17 year old first daughter, Alice quickly captured the country's attention. Alice's formal introduction to society, her Debutante Ball was held in the East Room of the White House on January 3, 1902, with 600 guests dancing to the music of the United States Marine Band. What the public really loved, though, wasn't debutante Alice, but rather teenage rebel Alice. As one of the first celebrities of the 20th century, Alice delighted in shocking people, by carrying a garter snake in her purse, saying in an interview that she named the snake, Emily Spinach because it was,  "as green as spinach and as thin as my Aunt Emily." Princess Alice, as the press called her, chewed gum, played poker, and joined her younger siblings in sledding down the White House stairs. She also, shockingly for a woman, smoked. When her father told her she couldn't smoke under his roof, she climbed on the roof of the White House, to smoke on top of the roof instead. At one point, TR quipped, "I can either manage Alice or the country. I can't do both." Alice became so famous that songs were written about her, postcards with her picture were collected by fans, and the gray blue color of her eyes became known as Alice blue. Eventually, Theodore Roosevelt decided instead of trying to change Alice, he should take advantage of her popularity. He sent her to Puerto Rico in 1903, later telling her, "You were of real service down there, and your presence was accepted as a great compliment." Such was TR's faith in Alice's abilities that he sent her in 1905 with the Peace Delegation to Asia, along with Secretary of War William Taft. Over four months, they traveled to Hawaii, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, and the Philippines. Alice received so many gifts in Asia, that her friend, Willard D. Straight, called her "Alice in Plunderland." Also on the trip was Congressman Nicholas Longworth, from Cincinnati, Ohio. Just over a month after they returned from Asia, Alice and Nick announced their engagement. They were married in the White House on February 17, 1906, with the press coverage reaching a fever pitch about the festivities. The New York Times effused, "Miss Roosevelt looked as pretty as she ever did in her life, and that is saying a good deal." Once they were married, Alice left the White House, but she never left politics. In 1908, Taft, whom Alice had accompanied to Asia, was elected president as Roosevelt's chosen successor. By 1912, though, TR was upset with Taft's conservatism, and challenged him for the Republican nomination. When Taft won the nomination, Roosevelt ran against him, representing the progressive Bull Moose Party, and putting Alice in the uncomfortable position in the middle of her father and her husband, who was friends with fellow Ohioan, Taft. Theodore Roosevelt died at age 60, on January 6, 1919. Later that year, Alice led the opposition against the United States joining the League of Nations. In November, 1919, she threw a party to celebrate the Senate voting down the Treaty of Versailles. She later remembered, "We were jubilant, too elated to mind the reservationists, and by we, I mean the irreconcilables who are against any league, no matter how safeguarded with reservations." In 1925, Nicholas Longworth became speaker of the House of Representatives, and the gatherings that Alice threw in their home were the place to be in DC. Also in 1925, on February 14, the anniversary of her mother's death, Alice gave birth to her only child, a daughter, she named Paulina. Although Nick Longworth raised Paulina as his daughter, her father was actually Senator William E. Borah of Idaho, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Alice's longtime lover. Nicholas Longworth died at age 61, on April 9, 1931. Alice never remarried.

In 1932, when Alice's distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president, her first cousin, Eleanor became first lady. Alice had deep political disagreements with her Democratic relatives, and she used her syndicated newspaper column to argue strenuously against the New Deal. Alice, an autodidact known for her quick wit, once described Franklin as, "one third mush and two thirds Eleanor." In 1957 when Paulina died, Alice took custody of Paulina's only child, Alice's granddaughter, Joanna, whom she doted on. Throughout the decades, it was at gatherings at Alice's Dupont Circle home, that political deals were struck. Alice invited those whose company she enjoyed, and she famously had a pillow embroidered with the quote, "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me." Alice twice survived breast cancer, undergoing her first mastectomy in 1956, and her second in 1970, after which she called herself, "Washington's only topless octogenarian." Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth, by then known as "Washington's Other Monument," died on February 20, 1980, just a week after her 96th birthday, having outlived all of her half siblings. She is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC. As an elderly Alice recalled, "All I've really done is to have a good time. I've covered a lot of territory. I'm amused, and I hope amusing." Joining me now is Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane, Professor of US History and the Lowman Walton Chair of Theodore Roosevelt Studies at Dickinson State University in North Dakota, author of several books on Theodore Roosevelt, and host of "The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast."

Hi, Mike, thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  13:32  
Thanks for having me on Kelly.

Kelly  13:34  
Yes, I am thrilled to be talking about Alice Roosevelt Longworth. I want to start with hearing a little bit about this tragedy that sort of introduces her life. It's at the very beginning of her life. Her mom and her grandma both die. And that's really important and formative in understanding who she is and who she became. So could you talk a little bit about that and the the influence of that event on Theodore Roosevelt and his relationship with Alice? 

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  14:04  
Yeah, it's a big moment conceived in tragedy as you say. Her mother died of Bright's disease which is a kidney disorder and the childbirth is what effectively led to her death, which of course is a lot for a child to live with as they get older. So there's certainly a mental trauma there as well, and Theodore Roosevelt didn't handle the death very well. I mean, obviously we can we can refer back to his diary which he writes a big X in on the day that she died, February 14. You know, "The light of my life has gone out forever," is what he writes, but that is only really the tip of the iceberg cuz he doesn't really refer to Alice Hathaway Lee much after her death. Alice Hathaway Lee is of course Alice Roosevelt Longworth's mother. And so that is another trauma that you know, baby Alice has to endure for the rest of her life. Her father doesn't talk much about her mother and really, Alice is raised by Theodore's second wife, Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, who is the First Lady and TR's wife after 1886. So, so really, she's raised by her stepmother and her stepmother, Edith, encourages, and I think, insists, in fact that Alice referred to her as "Mother." So there's a lot going on in this like psychological drama here. And it's not as simple as just, she didn't know her mother. She was really raised by another woman entirely. And Theodore never talked about his first wife at all.

Kelly  15:32  
So this time period in which Alice is growing up and coming of age. This is the the time period that you talked about on your own podcast, of course, the Gilded Age in the Progressive Era. Could you talk a little bit about this moment in American history, what it's like what sorts of things Alice is responding to and then rebelling against as she is coming of age?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  15:57  
Yeah, that's a good way to set the scene. So the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a term that refers to the let's say, the 1860s to the 1920s. And for me, it's a real transformative moment in American history, but it's often overlooked as well. We talk about the Civil War an awful lot, and World War II, but everything in between gets a little muddied. And what's happening in that period is, well, economic reformation, basically, you know, the end of the agrarian America and the rise of an industrial America, which sounds like it's just an economic story. But really, the growth of the factory and mass production, transforms the everyday lives of all Americans. And for young women growing up in this time, the industrialization of America is coupled with the first real sexual revolution in the US and that, that means that gender roles are changing, and Alice is at the forefront of this, you know. She, she has a debutante she doesn't, she's coming out, you know, a debutante ball. And she but she also pushes back against this a lot. So she does things like she smoked cigarettes, for example, which is seen as uncouth and unladylike. And actually her whole life, she's pushed pushing back against the gender norms of her time, which we would see as being quite traditional now. But back then, you know, her sort of her style, her smoking, her attitude, was generally seen as a radical departure for a lady of her time, especially a lady of her standing, she comes from a rich New York family, and women were supposed to act in a certain state. And she didn't. 

Kelly  17:36  
I also want to understand then the the politics, so the politics of Alice throughout her life, and she lives a long time are, you know, it's difficult to understand, I think, for a modern listener, a modern American; but understanding a little bit more about Theodore Roosevelt's politics, I think will will help set the stage. So, you know, for me thinking about this now thinking, "How could you be a progressive Republican? That makes no sense," but that's what Theodore Roosevelt was. Could you talk a little bit about what, what the politics of Theodore Roosevelt are, what it means to be a progressive Republican at that time, that the kinds of things that are shaping the way Alice really continues to think about politics throughout her long life? 

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  18:20  
Of course, yeah, and I think that that's something that we that I'll hold off on, but I'll just kind of foreshadow a small bit to say that I don't know if Alice's politics were actually like her father's politics, because she, she has a much longer life. And, you know, he lives into the 1980s. But TR's ideas about progressivism really stem from civil service reform, which is like the least sexy subject in American politics. Like if you're not a fan of American politics, I probably just put you to sleep and I apologize for that. But civil service reform was basically getting rid of the spoils system, which was a patronage based system in the federal government and in, you know, municipal and state governments, whereby the people who won elections doled out jobs to those that were their clients, right their supporters, their their boosters, and it's, you know, in big cities, it's things like bosses giving out jobs to party faithful. Roosevelt wanted to get rid of that. And that was that sort of led to a bigger idea in his mind and his philosophy about government, which was that it should be efficient and transparent. And that would later turned into ideas about, you know, the the rights of, of consumers, the rights of consumers against predatory companies, but also, you know, bad hygiene and unlawfully marketed goods, things that we would see now as being the bedrock of consumer rights. So and then, after his presidency, he starts to get more radical, so his progressivism changes as well. It starts off with this idea about good government and civil service reform and anti- corruption. It turns into  you know, kind of not I wouldn't say anti- corporate, but at least more regulated corporate practices. And then by 1912, it's women's suffrage, universal health care, even inheritance taxes that are, you know, that today would be seen as being far left, he was advocating in 1912. So, Alice, where she falls in that spectrum is definitely to the right of all of that, you know. Yes, she believes in efficiency and good government, but she certainly doesn't believe in some of the more radical, progressive era, you know, like as in when he runs for the progressive, the Bull Moose candidate in 1912. I wouldn't think she's very much on side with that at all. In fact, when you see Alice Roosevelt Longworth in later years, she is a diehard anti-communist, and anti-UN, anti- FDR and anti- big government politico, and she is a heavyweight in Washington. Her ideas have real power. And she represents what we could we would refer to as this sort of the anti- New Deal Republican wing of the party.

Kelly  21:03  
So you mentioned that Alice had this coming out ball. It's at the White House, then she later has her wedding at the White House as well. She and the rest of TR's kids didn't really have any chance to prepare for being in the White House, because they you know, he ascends to the presidency when William McKinley is killed. Could you talk a little bit about sort of them in the White House? What's this, like? This is, you know, very different than now I think like the idea of Alice smoking on the roof of the White House. Like that, obviously, is not a thing that could happen  now, if you're a kid in the White House, you know. So what it's like for them, how this is really formative then not just in her life, but in the lives of her half siblings as well?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  21:47  
I mean, the White House absolutely transforms the Roosevelt family. And I wouldn't say all of them necessarily, but it certainly transforms Alice. I mean, she becomes a national celebrity. She is in much the same way we can think about White House families or the royalty today, she is scrutinized in the press, I mean, not not always in a bad way. I mean, her style becomes iconic. There's even a color named after Alice Roosevelt. There's Alice blue, and she embraces that she sees it as a great opportunity for her to advance her ideas and to advance her own celebrity in the same way that her father had. Her brothers and sisters, she's got five other brothers and sisters, there's Ted who is her oldest brother, the youngest to her. Kermit, Archie, Ethel, and Quentin. The younger two, Archie and Quentin are what would be called the White House Gang. They're young boys at that time. They get up to all sorts of high jinks in the White House, including running into the president's office during working hours to harass their father. And they're very lively, you know, sort of element of the White House at that stage. Kermit and Ted, the older brothers are away at Groton, the boarding school. And so they're not really a part of that, that calamity that's going on between the younger groups, the younger set, and then Alice who's sort of stealing the hearts and minds of the American public, but it does transform the presidency because the children become their own sort of their own sort of part of the administration. And they give a very humanizing effect to TR's administration, you know, whereas like McKinley was 20 years older and liked to garden. Roosevelt has this lively and youthful White House that probably hadn't been seen really since, probably since Lincoln's time.

Kelly  23:39  
So then I just mentioned Alice's wedding. So she gets married to Nick Longworth, who is a congressman from Ohio, from Cincinnati. And they get married after this long trip to Asia, where Alice is like the belle of the ball for all of Asia. Could you talk a little bit about because that trip is important, not just for her, although certainly for her, but also for foreign relations?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  24:04  
Yeah, the trip itself was it came at a quite difficult time between the US and Japan in terms of their relationship. The United States had mediated the war between Russia and Japan in 1905, and Theodore Roosevelt was really at the heart of that. He earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation of the war, which ended that. It was quite a bloody war and one that threatened the global order. After Japan walked away with territorial gains taken from the Russians, it then turned to the United States as a competitor in the Pacific sphere. And so the worry was during Roosevelt's time, and it would probably be realized decades later in World War II, the worry was that Japan would overstep its sphere of influence and go beyond just what you know, was, like, say, for example, Korea, and Manchuria, which were its key interests. Roosevelt worried that Japan would go beyond that and start to colonize more of the Pacific, which in fact, it would do in time. And so he sent William Howard Taft, who then was the Secretary of War, and Princess Alice, as his daughter was known at the time, on basically a peace mission over to Japan, to discuss the matter of overseas aggrandizement, you know, to try and limit the extent to which Japan would colonize the Pacific. And what they agreed basically was that the United States had a stake in the Pacific with its colonies in the Philippines, and that Japan had a reasonable stake on Korea and Manchuria. But beyond that, you know, that that was not really something that that Roosevelt was willing to take up. So there was this, this sort of scare and Taft and Alice, their mission was to try and stop that scare with Japan. And they had some success. I mean, the problem is historians will often conflate that mission with the eventual Japanese aggrandizement in the Pacific that would happen before World War II. And the reality is, is the two are very loosely connected. And there was no treaty signed, it was only an informal agreement and some notes that were signed by the two parties, and nothing was signed by the president or by the emperor. So you know, this was a an important trip in terms of like, making sure the relationship didn't deteriorate any further, but beyond that, it didn't have much significance.

Kelly  26:26  
So then Alice comes back from Asia and she gets married to Nick Longworth, and this is such an interesting marriage. They they're really sort of like an early power couple, in a way. I think that the most interesting moment in their marriage, though, probably comes for me, at least in 1912, when TR is running as a third party candidate against Taft. So TR is done as the president. Taft becomes president with his blessing and then, you know, doesn't live up to what TR was hoping. And in 1912, then he's running as a third party candidate. And Nick is sort of on the other side of things. Could you talk some about the 1912 election? And you know what that's like for Alice sort of torn between her father and her husband and how that plays out?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  27:17  
Sure, of course, well, the big thing to remember about Nick Longworth is that he's from Ohio. He's from Cincinnati, and Taft is from Ohio as well, and from the same city as you know, so there's a there's a proximity there, of  politics. There's a closeness and actually, ideologically speaking, Taft and Longworth, they're very close. In fact, Longworth is closer in in political ideology to Taft than he ever is to Theodore Roosevelt. So there's that. Alice Longworth, when 1912 happens, she knows that her father is going to lose, or at least she predicts that her father is going to lose. And that allows her to kind of keep some distance, but also to warmly embrace her father on a personal level. She doesn't really go to bat for TR in that election. And women at that time as well had reduced roles and reduced agency in politics. They couldn't vote themselves, their endorsements were not saught out. So so Alice was not really a major player. Privately, she talked a lot to her, her father about how he should campaign, what he should campaign on, but also about his chances. She wasn't, you know, really, she wasn't really thinking that he was going to walk away with this election. In later years, Alice would play a much bigger role in politics, certainly by the 1920s. That's when her political influence really takes off. But in 1912, her husband, she has to stand by him, and he's standing by Taft.

Kelly  28:45  
And then, of course, Nick becomes Speaker of the House. And so we get this interesting moment in history where she is married to the Speaker of the House, but having an affair with the Chair of the I think the Senate Foreign Services Committee, and, you know, seems to have a lot of influence in Washington all over the place. That also does not seem like something that could happen now without being a huge scandal. Could you talk a little bit about how her influence grows both on her own but also through these men that she is associated with?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  29:18  
Sure. Well, I think we have to start with Alice and Nick's relationship. So they are a power couple. And like many power couples, they have their they almost lead separate separate lives. You know, Nick is a philanderer who apparently was majestical when playing the violin, and drank copiously, but yet looked dapper all the time and never slurred his words. So he's a unique character in his own right. Alice Longworth, she, yeah, she does kick off a relationship with Bill Borah, who is the senator from Idaho, and and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He and her really spark off their relationship in the early 1920s, and as a result of Alice's role in defeating the Treaty of Versailles. So let me start off with that because politically speaking, that is her most significant accomplishment. And it earns her her first nickname, in fact, and I'll explain what that is. But when Woodrow Wilson brings the Treaty of Versailles back to the United States, he really needs to get a coalition of Democrats and Republicans on board, because there's this group of senators that are hell bent on defeating the treaty, and they're known as the irreconcilables and it's about 12, some Democrats, but mostly Republican and largely Roosevelt Republicans like Bill Borah and others as well. And these are irreconcilables will not vote for the treaty, no matter what. Right because it forces the United States to get involved in a global government, they're saying, the League of Nations. The the moderate Republicans aren't able to find common ground with the Democrats and so the treaty never happens. But behind the scenes, what's happening is that Alice Roosevelt Longworth is keeping the irreconcilables on point. She is the political whip for that group. And that's where she really grows fond of Bill Borah. And after that, she goes to visit the Senate viewing gallery. She's she's there all the time watching Borah, she writes love letters to him. Dr. Stacy Cordery of Iowa State University wrote a great book called "Alice," in which she transcribed these letters in the coded letters in which Alice wrote, you know, writes her love for Borah. And it's, it's certain that her child, which we expect it to be her child and Nick Longworth's child is actually Bill Borah's child, and we've got confirmation of that from letters and from other other sources as well. So yeah, it's a pretty scandalous it's a pretty scandalous relationship. And it is a pretty powerful relationship as well. I mean, these two people are responsible for much of the legislation of the 1920s. Alice Roosevelt, Longworth invited senators and Congress people into her home into her parlor. She was often seen playing cards with President Harding and others who she didn't have nice words for she called him a slob. But she was a powerful character, and alongside her is the Speaker of the House, her husband, Nick Longworth, who, who they were leading separate lives, but yet politically, were almost in lockstep.

Kelly  32:30  
So you have worked with these oral histories where people are reminiscing about Theodore Roosevelt, about their lives, that you know that so it's a lot of the members of the Theodore Roosevelt clan. Can you talk a little bit about what we learned about Alice from these oral histories? What kind of person she is what kind of speaker she is. I've listened to a tiny sliver and I don't even know how you can make out half the words she's saying. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  32:59  
Well, that's the first thing that we learn. We learn about her accent. She sounds like Katharine Hepburn on like times to speed. She speaks very quickly. And she has this unique New York accent and it's almost like a mix of a New York accent, and a Victorian English accent. But she tells amazing stories. I mean, she's a natural, she's a gifted storyteller. Interestingly, her cousin Eleanor used to write a column and she thought that she could do the same, but Alice Longworth on the page is not the same as Alice Longworth speaking. She had this real knack for running through stories like like a comedian, you know, like there's a build up a crescendo, and then the punch line, when she talks about political scandals in Washington in great depth. In fact, this is stuff that she probably shouldn't be talking about, she knows she shouldn't be talking about. And she even says, on the recordings, how naughty she is for talking about sex scandals in DC with her friends in the 40s and 50s. She talks about Joe McCarthy and her first meeting Joe McCarthy and how she was an anti-communist, but she thought he was utterly insane. And she was more of a Nixon anti communist, who they were quite close to. She talks about Nixon a little bit, really. She she chronicles, her entire life in Washington from the 1920s up to the 1980s when she passes away, and she talks a lot about Sagamore Hill as well, growing up in Sagamore Hill and Long Island, what that was like, the food that they had, the games that they played. So it's a real it's a great insight into the life of the Roosevelt family through one of its leading ladies.

Kelly  34:40  
You just mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt. I want to talk a little bit about their relationship. Eleanor and Alice are first cousins. So they I believe were born in the same year. They grew up together, but they had this very interesting relationship throughout their lives, or at least you know, until Eleanor dies. Could you talk a little bit about that very odd relationship?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  34:42  
Sure. I mean they're both privileged because they're Roosevelts and they have money, to an extent though. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, because her father Theodore, was a success and quite grounded, she grows up one way, and Eleanor's father, Elliot, who is TR's is brother, you know, he has a real troubled life. I mean, it's it. Most people expect that Elliot had some sort of epilepsy or some impairment that led to his abuse of alcohol and opium as well. He was a drug addict and an alcohol abuser and he dies quite early in his life. And that affects Eleanor completely. She is she's raised by her grandparents, in many regards, and also by the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, that is the TR clan. She's she's always at Oyster Bay, but she's in a disadvantage compared to Alice growing up, and it takes a while for her to kind of come into her own whereas Alice has that Roosevelt confidence really from day one. And Alice and Eleanor they they're sort of secondary relationships outside of the family reflect that as well. So Eleanor is seen as the poor relation, and Alice refers to her like that as well. And also Alice refers to Franklin Roosevelt who's a cousin as well as FD as feather duster, you know, is not really a man's man but uh, you know, a little bit of a lightweight. And she she almost sees it fitting that Eleanor and Franklin, wind up together that they suit each other for for various reasons. But, but really, the their relationship deteriorates in the 1920s when Franklin Roosevelt runs for vice president, not 1920 It's a year after Theodore Roosevelt has died. And many of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts see Franklin Roosevelt's run as vice president as just using the Roosevelt name in order to seek high office. He didn't have any national fame at that stage. He you know, he hadn't been governor of New York. He's really a nobody politically that at that moment. And that starts a rift between the two parts of the family that gets exacerbated in 1926 when Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is going to run for governor and Eleanor and Franklin are going to come out against him. And Eleanor famously drives a car in the shape of a teapot around New York campaigning against her cousin, Ted Jr. The teapot was a reference to the Teapot Dome affair, which had embroiled the Harding administration in which Ted Jr was implicated, but not guilty of anything in, so but it tanks his run for governor and he never runs for high office, he loses and he never runs for high office again. Eleanor, on the other hand, of course, would become first lady and she would help her husband Franklin, become governor in New York and then eventually President of the United States. But Alice when Franklin was president would torment him. I mean, you know, she would do things like she was obviously anti- Franklin, more so than anyone else in the family. She was really against the New Deal. She was even against TR's foreign policy. She didn't think she was a leading member of the America First Committee. So I'll give you another example. When FDR took the United States off the gold standard in the 30s as a means of fixing the trade imbalances, and the currency crisis, Alice shows up to the White House in her typical Alice blue evening gown dripping in gold. She's got gold barrettes in her hair, gold earrings, gold necklaces, gold bracelets, and this was her protest of Franklin taking them off taking the country off the gold standard. She would do much more beyond that. She would she would cause so much problems when she arrived at the White House that she was no longer invited. Really by the end of the 1930s Alice Roosevelt Longworth was persona non grata in the Franklin Roosevelt White House, and she's one of the only Roosevelts to never really make up with Franklin before he died. She deeply disliked American intervention in World War II. As I said she was a member of the America First Committee. And she just she never thought much of Franklin's foreign or domestic policies. Even other family members like Edith, her stepmother or her other brothers and sisters who might not have liked Franklin, like Ted Jr. obviously didn't like Franklin. But by the time the war came around, they they they all said we have to get behind Franklin as president. Alice never did that. She never really buried the hatchet with her cousin.

She was of course later welcomed back into the White House by lots and lots of administrations. You mentioned earlier, she was friends with Nixon. She was friends with Kennedy. She was friends with Johnson. Could you talk a little bit about just sort of her her ongoing influence in Washington even after her husband dies, her lover dies, like, you know, she but she remains she outlives basically everybody and remains really influential?

Yeah, so she lives 40 years after her husband and her lover passed away. And she is still a major, a major player in Washington. Time Magazine referred to her as one of the Grand Dames of America and that term wouldn't be acceptable nowadays, of course, but I think you can get a sense of what the magazine meant at the time. She was a leading figure and her name carried some weight, not just being a Roosevelt, but obviously her connections to Borah and Nick Longworth. And in the 1950s, she was a she was good friends with the Taft family, who was of course, a leading Republican family still at that time and, and she worked with Robert Taft quite a bit on his policies. She was involved with several labor leaders in the 1950s. And in the 1960s, she befriended John F. Kennedy. She she thought that John F. Kennedy was really the, I suppose the, the successor to Theodore Roosevelt. She saw his foreign policy, his youthfulness, and also his his plans to reduce taxes as very akin to what Theodore Roosevelt was was all about. She would also become great friends with Richard Nixon, as I mentioned. She wrote to him quite a bit, but when the Watergate scandal happened, she was really disappointed, I suppose, and surprised at just how deep his transgressions ran. And she never talked to him again, after the news of Watergate came out. I think she probably she died in 1981. I think she would have been delighted with the Reagan Revolution. Although Ronald Reagan doesn't spend a lot of time fawning over Theodore Roosevelt, interestingly enough. But but the other really great connection is with Lyndon Johnson. She didn't obviously like the Great Society, it was too much like the New Deal for her. But she did like Lyndon Johnson's conservation policies in support of things like Theodore Roosevelt Island, which Lyndon Johnson would dedicate to her father. It's the national memorial for Theodore Roosevelt in Washington. And it's in the Potomac. It's an 88 acre island and Alice and Lyndon Johnson are both there, at that ceremony, celebrating the legacy of her father.

Kelly  42:21  
So there are obviously a million things we could talk about about Alice because she lived a very long very full life. Is there anything else you think that we should mention?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  42:31  
I forgot to mention her nickname that she got after 1920. So she had two nicknames. In 1920, after she torpedoed the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, people called her "The Colonel of the Battalion of Death," which I think is, you know, gives you a sense of her determination and her resolve. The other nickname that she got, presumably because she was around for so long, was "The Other Washington Monument," which I love as well. I mean, it's a it's a testament to her steadfastness and her her love of politics that never abated throughout her life. But I would just say if anyone's thinking about reading more about Alice Roosevelt Longworth, I would definitely try and get your hands on the recordings, but check out Stacy Cordery's book, "Alice." It is the most comprehensive book on the subject, a wonderful biography and and I think you'll get a better sense of the woman that she was by reading that.

Kelly  43:27  
And how can listeners find out more about you and your work and your podcast?

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  43:33  
Well, my podcast is called "The Gilded Age and Progressive Era." It's released, episodes are released fortnightly, and you can find out more about the recordings. You can find the transcripts in a book entitled, "Remembering Theodore Roosevelt," which is about the reminiscences of his contemporaries, including three hours of audio recording of Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

Kelly  43:54  
Excellent. Mike, thank you so much for joining me. I have loved learning more about Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane  44:02  
Thanks again for having me.

Teddy  44:29  
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