February 17, 1906: Alice Roosevelt Marries Nicholas Longworth

Left to right: Nicholas Longworth,

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt

February 17, 1906: Alice Roosevelt marries Nicholas Longworth III. It is the social event of the season in Washington, D.C. She is 21. He is 35. She is the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States. He is a Congressman representing Cincinnati and its Ohio suburbs. The wedding is held at the White House.

Alice Lee Roosevelt, was born on February 12, 1884 -- into tragedy. Unknown at the time, her mother, formerly Alice Lee, had Bright's disease, a kidney disorder that is treatable now, but was a death sentence then. To make matters worse, Martha "Mittie" Roosevelt, Theodore's mother, had typhoid fever. Then a State legislator in New York, Theodore got an express train from Albany down to Manhattan, and, on February 14, saw first his mother, then his wife, die.

Theodore could not bear to hear his wife's name, but his daughter already had the name. Instead of changing it, he called her "Baby Lee." Unable to process his grief, he handed his daughter off to his sister, Anna Cowles, a.k.a. "Auntie Bye," and went west, to a ranch in the Dakota Territory.

In 1886, Theodore married Edith Carow, and took Alice back. Thereafter, he only used the name "Alice" in reference to his daughter. He didn't even mention his 1st wife in his autobiography. Although Alice adored her Auntie Bye, at first, she did not get along with her stepmother. Once she grew up, they became closer.

Theodore and Edith had another girl, Ethel; and 4 boys, all boisterous and hard to handle, like their father: Theodore Jr. (the future President was, himself, originally "Theodore Roosevelt Jr."), Kermit, Archie and Quentin.

But none was as hard to handle as Alice. When Theodore was Governor of New York, he and Ethel told Alice they would send her to a conservative school for girls in New York City. In response, Alice wrote, "If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will." The parents backed down.

Once her father became President, she became the social star of the nation's capital. But she scandalized herself and her father. She smoked cigarettes in public, rode in cars with men, stayed out late partying, kept a pet snake in the White House (among her father's several exotic pets there), and was seen placing bets with a bookie. On a trip to Japan in 1905, accompanying Secretary of War (and her father's eventual successor) William Howard Taft, she jumped into the ship's pool, fully clothed.

Owen Wister, author of Western novels, was once a guest at White House. Three times, Alice interrupted his conversation with the President. Once she left, Wister reported, the President said, "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both." It was a rare statement of humility for this most energetic and self-assured of Presidents.

Representative Nicholas Longworth was also on that cruise. Shortly thereafter, they were engaged. There were over 1,000 guests at the wedding. Despite Alice's comment that "Father wants to be the bride at every wedding, and the corpse at every funeral" -- in other words, always the center of attention -- he behaved himself. So did she. So did Nick.

The honeymoon took them to Cuba, then to Cincinnati for a visit with the Longworth family; then on to Europe, where they had dinners with King Edward VII of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Premier Georges Clemenceau of France. They settled at 2009 Massachusetts Avenue NW, in Washington's Embassy Row neighborhood.

Alice became Washington's foremost hostess, though she seemed not to get along with any of the later Presidents, not even Taft or the later Republicans. She was happy to work for her father's bid to return to the White House in 1912, not liking Taft, and especially Taft's wife, Helen, a.k.a. Nellie, of whom she once had a voodoo doll made.

If anybody thought that marriage would calm either half of the couple down, they were wrong. Nick continued to be one of Washington's top playboys, even after becoming Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1925. That same year, Alice gave birth to her only child, Paulina. One of the worst-kept secrets in Washington was her affair with one of the Republican titans of the U.S. Senate, William E. Borah of Idaho. Paulina looked a lot like him (especially since he was bald). Alice said she had originally wanted to name her daughter "Deborah," as in "de Borah." And according to one family friend, "everybody called her 'Aurora Borah Alice.'"

Nick died in 1931, of pneumonia, at age 61. In 1933, a new House Office Building opened. In 1962, it was named the Longworth House Office Building. This may, however, have been a tribute to Alice as much as to Nick.

Alice famously said, "If you can't say anything nice about anybody, come and sit next to me." In 1940, she didn't like either Presidential nominee. When columnist and cousin Joseph Alsop claimed that there was grass-roots support for Republican nominee Wendell Willkie, she said, "Yes, the grass roots of 10,000 country clubs." But she voted for him, anyway, rather than another cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, saying, "I'd rather vote for Hitler than vote for Franklin for a third term."

In 1944, the Republicans nominated Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York to run against FDR, but Alice noticed his pencil-thin mustache, and said, "He looks like the little man on the wedding cake." True to her Party, she voted for Dewey against FDR in 1944, and against Harry Truman in 1948, but he lost both times. She liked the Kennedys, but voted for Richard Nixon in 1960. The one time she voted Democratic was in 1964, for Lyndon Johnson, because she thought Barry Goldwater was "too mean." Even for her.

She encouraged Nixon to return to politics, and supported him in 1968 and 1972. In 1971, there was another wedding of a Presidential daughter at the White House, Tricia Nixon to Christopher Cox, and Alice Longworth was invited. She died in 1980.

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February 17, 1906 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. The Stanley Cup Playoffs were about to be played, and the Ottawa Hockey Club, the predecessor to the original Ottawa Senators, beat Queen's University of Kingston, Ontario, 2 games to none, to win the Cup.

And in English soccer, Woolwich Arsenal, the team I would one day support, beat Lancashire team Blackburn Rovers, 3-2 at the Manor Ground in Plumstead, then in Kent, now in South-East London.