Alice Roosevelt: A formidable First Daughter

The charismatic Theodore Roosevelt, our nation's 26th president, was often heard to say: "I can be president of the United States or I can attend to Alice. I cannot possibly do both."Princess Alice," as the nation called her, was the oldest of Roosevelt's six children. During her late teens, a period coinciding with her father's presidency, she was a handful -- independent, impetuous, stubborn and often disobedient. As Alice herself put it, "I tried to be conspicuous."

With graceful prose, commanding diction and psychological acuity, author Stacy Cordery, a history professor at Monmouth College in Illinois, follows the fortunes of Alice Roosevelt Longworth in this absorbing and rigorously researched biography, "Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker."

Her powerful opening paragraph draws us immediately into the Roosevelt drama:

"An appalling double tragedy overshadowed the joy that should have surrounded Alice Lee Roosevelt's entrance to the world on February 12, 1884. The popular, young New York assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt lost his beautiful wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, and his beloved mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, on Valentine's Day 1884. He gave the infant her mother's name, a wet nurse, a temporary home, and then relegated her to an afterthought."

In addition to prompting our concern for the motherless Alice, Cordery's opening awakens in us a curiosity about Theodore Roosevelt, the man who would become the pivotal influence in Alice's life. Although rebellious teen and strict parent clashed, Alice came to worship her father, agreeing with and promoting all he stood for. For his part, Roosevelt came to appreciate his daughter's sharp intellect and tremendous vitality, particularly when she employed both in the service of his causes.

Some three years after the death of Alice's mother, Theodore Roosevelt married again and with this second wife produced four sons and another daughter. Cordery notes that, "Alice grew up a virtual orphan in a clannish family. She was plagued by self-doubt and a haunting sense that she never compared favorably to her siblings."

But a lavish debutante ball, the first ever to be held at the White House, marked Alice's ascent to national (even international) prominence. Relentless press coverage kept her in the limelight. Cordery quotes from a Ladies' Home Journal article that described Alice as "warm-hearted, impulsive and demonstrative; gracefully slender; an excellent horsewoman; in short the typical American girl of good health and sane ideas." Healthy, perhaps, but hardly sane. In the months following her "coming out," Alice smoked in public, smuggled live snakes and miniature bottles of liquor into genteel dinner parties, and frequently played poker until dawn.

When looking for a husband, however, Alice conformed to convention. Attracted to his political ambition and "slashing wit," Alice married Nicholas Longworth, a wealthy and utterly charming congressman from Ohio, in a White House ceremony on Feb. 17, 1906. But the joy of the occasion did not carry over into the marriage. Mistrust, adultery (on both sides) and Longworth's alcoholism would plague their union.

Alice embarked on a lifelong intellectual journey, taking on the study of human evolution, biology, astronomy and poetry. She also became Washington's style-setter, famous for her Alice Longworth Picture Hat and signature string of pearls.

By the end of World War I, Alice had fallen in love with the remarkable William Borah -- a U.S. senator from Idaho and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The two worked closely together at keeping the United States out of President Wilson's League of Nations. Says Cordery: "They began by valuing each other as intellectual companions, comrades-in-arms, fellow progressive Republicans, and individuals devoted to shared causes. But before the League fight ended, they were lovers."

In 1925 at age 41, Alice gave birth to a baby girl, Paulina. Longworth either genuinely believed the baby to be his or shrewdly made a show of it. Alice played along -- a puzzling duplicity, given her own bitter feelings about the secrecy surrounding her origins.

Cordery lends valuable but cautious psychological insights to all the climactic events in Alice's life -- disappointments, weddings and the deaths of family members and friends. Most important, she takes a woman most remembered for her one-liners and, for the record, details her considerable contributions to U.S. politics and discourse.

Katherine Bailey also reviews for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She lives in Bloomington.