I came across this piece the other day. It is a February 1917 advertisement for Metropolitan Magazine advising subscribers, and potential subscribers, to get their accounts up-to-date before the subscription rates go up. What drew my eye was the line near the bottom admonishing: “Don’t Forget! THEODORE ROOSEVELT writes EXCLUSIVELY for the METROPOLITAN.”

Metropolitan Magazine advertisement, Brooklyn Daily Eagle Sunday 18 February 1917

It is often lost on us that Roosevelt first-and-foremost saw himself as a writer, and not just in a theoretical sense; he relied on his writing to pay the bills, maintain a large house, and provide for a wife, six kids and growing brood of grandchildren. That said he also appreciated the power that a regular writing gig offered him in getting his views out, especially after losing the bully pulpit. Roosevelt began at The Outlook just days after leaving the White House in 1909 and by the mid-1910s was producing a monthly column for the Metropolitan. Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack London and John Reed were just a few of the other contributors to what the publishers called “the livest magazine in America.”

This February 1917 advert emphasized Roosevelt’s exclusivity to the Metropolitan but actually he did not stay with the magazine much longer. Events relating to the Great War were now moving so quickly that the monthly format was no longer practical for Roosevelt. In late summer the Kansas City Star began to woo the Colonel and in early October he published the first of his weekly editorials about the war for that newspaper, with a focus on what he saw as Woodrow Wilson’s poor response to the conflict. He stayed with the Star until the end of his life fifteen months later.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

The 9 June 1945 New York Times captured the wedding of Theodora Roosevelt.

We are having our first snow day of the year here in Brooklyn. I got the call last night that our college was closed today. I can hear the snow trucks clearing the roads as I type this. It’s a nice little pause after the push that has been the first ten days of the semester. I intend to write 750 words today on the Roosevelt Sr. book. An interesting bit came through my email alerts the other day: this New York Times article about the June 1945 wedding of Theodora Roosevelt, daughter of Archie and granddaughter of Theodore, to artist Thomas C. Keogh. Ms. Roosevelt was a June bride but the story is more interesting than that; the wedding came just one month after V-E Day and less than a year after the death of her uncle, Ted Roosevelt. Theodora was not a war bride per se–Keogh was born in San Fransisco–but the marriage fit into the trend of quick matrimony coming as the war winded down. That is of course what led to the Baby Boom. It is interesting how this phenomenon took place after the Second World War but less so after the First. Perhaps a reason so many GIs in Europe took local brides is that the Americans had such a huge presence in England in those years prior to the D-Day invasion. So pressing was the issue that Congress eventually passed the War Brides Act in December 1945. There is a story here somewhere.

I did not know who Theodora Roosevelt was until reading this the other day. A little digging shows that she and Keogh divorced in the mid-1960s and that she remarried twice. Theodora Keogh died in 2008. This 2011 Paris Review article informs us that she was Alice’s favorite niece. Following in the great Roosevelt literary tradition Theodora was also a prolific author, in her case a novelist who authored no less than nine books. She was a quite striking woman who had the quick smile and natural grace that some in her extended family exuded with such ease.