“I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”
Theodore Roosevelt
In this political season, we will be inundated with information about the candidates’ families and miscellaneous relatives. Our modern media dissects every action of the potential crop, even while their parents and more well behaved siblings plead for privacy for at least the younger members of the family and try to diminish the importance of bad acts by the older ones. Every remark, bit of gossip, and scandal will be dissected as a reflection on the potential office holding relative.
There is nothing new about this interest, but the ones who captured the public imagination even during White House years seldom maintained their share of the limelight long after their departure. That kind of fame belongs to only one child who managed to be a star from her childhood to her death: Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
She was the oldest child of Theodore Roosevelt, and the half sister to five younger siblings, but Alice was the one who enjoyed shocking people, a characteristic which remained over her long life. The media loved this presidential wild child. They dubbed her Princess Alice, and the attractive young woman was the source of songs, poems, even a color (Alice Blue).
When her father banned her from smoking in the White House, she went to the roof to puff away. She bragged about setting speed records in her friend’s roadster, as they drove around the Northeast unchaperoned. While representing her father on an official government junket to the Far East, she literally made a splash by jumping into the ship’s pool fully dressed. Hardly scandalous these days, but her antics were quite newsworthy at the turn of the century.
She was a lifelong Republican who flirted with Democrats at her salons and even helped her cousin Franklin by referring to his opponent Dewey as, “That little man on the wedding cake”. She became noted for her acidic remarks and quips to the extent that many were attributed to her that she claimed never to have said, though her most famous was embroidered on a pillow in her home: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.”
Through her marriage and widowhood she remained in Washington where she became known as “The Other Washington Monument”. Her last public appearance was in 1976 for the bicentennial. Alice died in 1980, at the age of 96. About her own lifelong notoriety she said, “I’ve always believed in the adage that the secret of eternal youth is arrested development.”
So in the future when you hear what any of the potential political relatives might be up to, be aware that they have some amazing shoes to fill if they ever hope to top Alice. Even Ruth Cleveland only got a candy bar.
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