and went to Africa to hunt big game.
Big game hunting was bully.
Every time a lion or an elephant went crashing down into the jungle underbrush, under the impact of a wellplaced mushroom bullety
the papers lit up with headlines;
when he talked with the Kaiser on horseback
the world was not ignorant of what he said, or when he lectured the Nationalists at Cairo telling them that this was a white man’s world.
He went to Brazil where he travelled through the Matto Grosso in a dugout over waters infested with the tiny maneating fish, the piranha,
shot tapirs,
jaguars,
specimens of the whitelipped peccary.
He ran the rapids of the River of Doubt
down to the Amazon frontiers where he arrived sick, an infected abscess in his leg, stretched out under an awning in a dugout with a tame trumpeterbird beside him.
Back in the States he fought his last fight when he came out for the republican nomination in 1912 a progressive, champion of the Square Deal, crusader for the Plain People; the Bull Moose bolted out from under the Taft steamroller and formed the Progressive Party for righteousness’ sake at the Chicago Colosseum while the delegates who were going to restore democratic government rocked with tears in their eyes as they sang
On ward Christian so old gers
March ing as to war
Perhaps the River of Doubt had been too much for a man of his age; perhaps things weren’t so bully any more; T.R. lost his voice during the triangular campaign. In Duluth a maniac shot him in the chest, his life was saved only by the thick bundle of manuscript of the speech he was going to deliver. T.R. delivered the speech with the bullet still in him, heard the scared applause, felt the plain people praying for his recovery but the spell was broken somehow.
The Democrats swept in, the world war drowned out the righteous voice of the Happy Warrior in the roar of exploding lyddite.
Wilson wouldn’t let T.R. lead a division, this was no amateur’s war (perhaps the regulars remembered the round robin at Santiago). All he could do was write magazine articles against the Huns, send his sons; Quentin was killed.
It wasn’t the bully amateur’s world any more. Nobody knew that on armistice day, Theodore Roosevelt, happy amateur warrior with the grinning teeth, the shaking forefinger, naturalist, explorer, magazinewriter, Sundayschool teacher, cowpuncher, moralist, politician, righteous orator with a short memory, fond of denouncing liars (the Ananias Club) and having pillowfights with his children, was taken to the Roosevelt hospital gravely ill with inflammatory rheumatism.
Things weren’t bully any more;
T.R. had grit;
he bore the pain, the obscurity, the sense of being forgotten as he had borne the grilling portages when he was exploring the River of Doubt, the heat, the fetid jungle mud, the infected abscess in his leg,
and died quietly in his sleep
at Sagamore Hill
on January 6, 1919
and left on the shoulders of his sons
the white man’s burden.
The Camera Eye (33)
11,000 registered harlots said the Red Cross Publicity Man infest the streets of Marseilles
the Ford stalled three times in the Rue de Rivoli in Fontainebleau we had our café au lait in bed the Forest was so achingly red yellow novemberbrown under the tiny lavender rain beyond the road climbed through dovecolored hills the air smelt of apples
Nevers (Dumas nom de dieu) Athos Porthos and d’Artagnan had ordered a bisque at the inn we wound down slowly into red Macon that smelt of wineless and the vintage fais ce que voudras saute Bourgignon in the Rhone valley the first straw-colored sunlight streaked the white road with shadows of skeleton poplars at every stop we drank wine strong as beefsteaks rich as the palace of François Premier bouquet of the last sleetlashed roses we didn’t cross the river to Lyon where Jean-Jacques suffered from greensickness as a youngster the landscapes of Provence were all out of the Gallic Wars the towns were dictionaries of latin roots Orange Tarascon Arles where Van Gogh cut off his ears the convoy became less of a conducted tour we stopped to play craps in the estaminets boys we’re going south to drink the red wine the popes loved best to eat fat meals in oliveoil and garlic bound south cêpes provençale the north wind was shrilling over the plains of the Camargue hustling us into Marseilles where the eleven thousand were dandling themselves in the fogged mirrors of the promenoir at the Apollo
oysters and vin de Cassis petite fille tellement brune tête de lune qui amait les veentair sports in the end they were all slot machines undressed as Phocean figurines posted with their legs apart around the scummy edges of the oldest port
the Riviera was a letdown but there was a candy-colored church with a pointed steeple on every hill beyond San Remo Porto Maurizio blue seltzerbottles standing in the cinzanocolored sunlight beside a glass of VERMOUTH TORINO Savona was set for the Merchant of Venice painted by Veronese Ponte Decimo in Ponte Decimo ambulances were parked in a moonlit square of bleak stone workingpeople’s houses hoarfrost covered everything in the little bar the Successful Story Writer taught us to drink cognac and maraschino half and half
havanuzzerone
it turned out he was not writing what he felt he wanted to be writing What can you tell them at home about the war? it turned out he was not wanting what he wrote he wanted to be feeling cognac and maraschino was no longer young (It made us damn sore we greedy for what we felt we wanted tell ’em all they lied see new towns go to Genoa) havanuzzerone? it turned out that he wished he was a naked brown shepherd boy sitting on a hillside playing a flute in the sunlight
going to Genoa was easy enough the streetcar went there Genoa the new town we’d never seen full of marble doges and breakneck stairs marble lions in the moonlight Genoa was the ancient ducal city burning? all the marble palaces and the square stone houses and the campaniles topping hills had one marble wall on fire
bonfire under the moon
the bars were full of Britishers overdressed civilians strolling under porticoes outside the harbor under the Genoa moon the sea was on fire the member of His Majesty’s Intelligence Service said it was a Yankee tanker had struck a mine? been torpedoed? why don’t they scuttle her?
Genoa eyes flared with the light of the burning tanker Genoa what are you looking for? the flare in the blood under the moon down the midnight streets in boys’ and girls’ face Genoa eyes the question in their eyes
through the crumbling stone courts under the Genoa moon up and down the breakneck stairs eyes on fire under the moon round the next corner full in your face the flare of the bonfire on the sea
11,000 registered harlots said the Red Cross Publicity Man infest the streets of Marseilles
Joe Williams
It was a lousy trip. Joe was worried all the time about Del and about not making good and the deckcrew was a bunch of soreheads. The engines kept breaking down. The Higginbotham was built like a cheesebox and so slow there were days when they didn’t make more’n thirty or forty miles against moderate head winds. The only good times he had was taking boxing lessons from the second engineer, a fellow named Glen Hardwick. He was a little wiry guy, who was a pretty good amateur boxer, though he must have been forty years old. By the time they got to Bordeaux Joe was able to give him a good workout. He was heavier and had a better reach and Glen said he’d a straight natural right that would take him far as a lightweight.