geekyAlice Lee Roosevelt Longworth was the oldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt and the only child of Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee. She was born in the Roosevelt family home at 6 West 57th St. in New York City on February 12, 1884. Her mother died two days after her birth, from kidney failure. Eleven hours earlier that day, Theodore's mother Martha Stewart "Mittie" Bulloch died of typhoid fever.
Theodore Roosevelt was so distraught by his the death of his wife and his mother on the same day. He almost never spoke of Alice again, and would not allow her to be mentioned in his presence. He even omitted her name from his autobiography. He referred to his daughter Alice as "Baby Lee". Theodore Roosevelt left his life in New York and headed west where he spent two years traveling and living on his ranch in North Dakota. He left baby Alice in the care of his sister Anna, known as "Bamie" of "Bye". Bamie had a significant influence on young Alice. Alice would later write of her: "If auntie Bye had been a man, she would have been president." Bamie looked after Alice until Theodore Roosevelt married Edith Kermit Carow.
Alice was raised by her father and stepmother Edith. Theodore and Edith had five children together: Theodore III (Ted), Kermit, Ethel, Archibald (Archie), and Quentin. Bamie married and moved to London for a time. As Alice grew up, she became more independent and came into conflict with her father and stepmother. During some of these times, Bamie was a stabilizing influence. Alice often visited Bamie when Theodore and Edith found her behavior challenging.
After Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919, there were tensions in the relationship between young Alice and her stepmother. Despite this, Edith cared for Alice when Alice came down with a mild form of polio in one leg, causing its muscles to grow shorter than in the other leg. Edith forced Alice to wear uncomfortable leg braces and shoes. Alice grew up with almost no trace of the disability.
Alice grew up to be a beautiful young woman, who was independent, outgoing and self-confident. When her father was governor of New York, he and his wife proposed that Alice attend a conservative school for girls in New York City. A rebellious Alice wrote, "If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will."
In her autobiography Crowded Hours, Alice wrote positively about Edith Carow, stating "That I was the child of another marriage was a simple fact and made a situation that had to be coped with, and Mother coped with it with a fairness and charm and intelligence which she has to a greater degree than almost any one else I know."
When her father became President in 1901 following the assassination of President William McKinley, Jr. in Buffalo, Alice became an instant celebrity. She was only 17, and at her social debut in 1902 she wore a blue gown that become known as "Alice blue", sparking a color trend in women's clothing. Alice appeared jealous that her father's new duties meant that he spent significantly less time with her, as she longed for more of his attention. Alice enjoyed a reputation as a rule-breaker at a time when women were under great pressure to conform. The media noticed many of her exploits. She smoked cigarettes in public, rode in cars with men, stayed out late partying, kept a pet snake in the White House named Emily Spinach (named Emily for her spinster aunt and Spinach for its green color) and was seen placing bets with a bookie.
In 1905, Alice, traveled with her father's Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, as part of the American delegation to Japan, Hawaii, China, the Philippines, and Korea. It was a large diplomatic mission, composed of 23 congressmen (including Alice's future husband Nicholas Longworth), seven senators, and a number of other diplomats and officials. Alice was frequently in the headlines, meeting with the Emperor Meiji of Japan and the Empress Dowager Cixi of China, as well as attending sumo wrestling matches. During the cruise to Japan, Alice jumped into the ship's pool fully clothed, and coaxed Congressman Longworth to join her in the water. The press facetiously called this part of Alice's life "Alice in Plunder Land". She brought back a large quantity of silk from China and would wear a beautiful strand of costly pearls given to her by the Cuban government for the rest of her life.
Once, when a White House visitor commented to President Roosevelt about Alice's frequent interruptions to the Oval Office, Theodore Roosevelt told his friend, author Owen Wister, "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both."
It was Alice Roosevelt who famously said about her father, "he wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening."
In December 1905, after returning to Washington from their diplomatic travels, Alice became engaged to Nicholas Longworth III, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Cincinnati, Ohio. He would eventually become Speaker of the House. Longworth was 14 years her senior and had a reputation as a Washington, D.C., playboy. Their wedding took place in February 1906 and was the social event of the season. It was attended by more than a thousand guests with many thousands gathered outside hoping for a glimpse of the bride. She wore a blue wedding dress and cut the wedding cake with a sword (borrowed from a military aide attending the reception). Immediately after the wedding, the couple left for a honeymoon that included a voyage to Cuba and a visit to the Longworths in Cincinnati. This was followed by travels to England and continental Europe, a trip that included dinners with King Edward, Kaiser Wilhelm, Clemenceau, Whitelaw Reid, Lord Curzon, and William Jennings Bryan. When the returned, they bought a house at 2009 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C.
When it came time for the Roosevelt family to move out of the White House, Alice buried a Voodoo doll of the new First Lady, Nellie Taft, in the front yard. At many White House social activities, Alice frequently mocked the First Lady. Later, the Taft White House banned her from her former residence. (During Woodrow Wilson's administration Alice was also banned in 1916 for telling a bawdy joke at Wilson's expense).
Following the split between Roosevelt and Taft, Alice publicly supported her father's 1912 Bull Moose presidential candidacy, while her husband stayed loyal to Taft. During the campaign, she appeared on stage with her father's vice presidential candidate, Hiram Johnson, in Longworth's own district. Longworth later lost his seat by about 105 votes and Alice joked that she was worth at least 100 votes. He was elected again in 1914 and stayed in the House for the rest of his life.
Alice's campaign against her husband caused a rift in her marriage. It was later discovered that during their marriage, Alice carried on numerous affairs. She had a long, ongoing affair with Senator William Borah of Idaho. Her diary suggests that Borah was the father of Alice's daughter, Paulina Longworth, born in 1925.
Following the death of her husband in 1931, Alice and her daughter continued to live near Dupont Circle on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington's Embassy Row. When asked to run for her late husband's seat, she declined. She returned to Cincinnati for the burial of her husband, and later for the social debut of her daughter. When asked if she would be buried in Cincinnati, Alice said that to do so "would be a fate worse than death itself."
During the Great Depression, when she found herself in financial difficulty, Alice appeared in tobacco advertisements to raise money. She also published her autobiography, Crowded Hours. The book sold well and received rave reviews. Alice maintained her stature in Washington, D.C., socially and politically, earning her the nickname "the other Washington Monument". She served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention on more than one occasion, but turned down offers to address the convention.
Alice remained a Republican even when Franklin Roosevelt was President. Writing in the Ladies' Home Journal in October 1932, she said of FDR, "Politically, his branch of the family and ours have always been in different camps, and the same surname is about all we have in common. I am a Republican.I am going to vote for Hoover. If I were not a Republican, I would still vote for Mr. Hoover this time." During the 1940 Presidential campaign, she publicly proclaimed that she'd "rather vote for Hitler than vote for Franklin for a third term." But she was never very complimentary to Republican candidates either. She said that Thomas Dewey, the 1944 opponent of her cousin Franklin, looked like "the little man on the wedding cake."
Paulina Longworth married Alexander McCormick Sturm, with whom she had a daughter, Joanna, born in July 1946. Alexander died in 1951. Paulina died in 1957 from an overdose of sleeping pills. Alice obtained custody of her granddaughter, Joanna, whom she raised. Alice doted on her granddaughter, and the two maintained a very close relationship.
Although Alice did not support John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, she became very enamored of the Kennedy family. She developed a close, although sometimes strained, friendship with Robert Kennedy. She voted for President Lyndon Johnson over Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 because she said that she believed Goldwater was too mean.
Alice developed a genuine friendship with Richard Nixon when he was vice president, and when he returned to California after Eisenhower's second term, she kept in touch with him. She encouraged Nixon to reenter politics after his defeat in 1960, a loyalty that Nixon remembered as president. Nixon invited Alice to his first formal White House dinner and to the 1971 wedding of his daughter Tricia Nixon.
In her later years Alice Roosevelt had a number of heath problems. In 1955, she fell and suffered a broken hip. In 1956, she suffered from breast cancer, and successfully underwent a mastectomy. She was found to have cancer in the other breast in 1970, requiring a second mastectomy. She later referred to herself as the only "topless octogenarian" in Washington. In 1960, she was diagnosed with emphysema as a result of many years of heavy smoking.
Her friendship with Nixon ended at the conclusion of the Watergate Scandal. She remained cordial with Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, but declined an invitation to meet Jimmy Carter. Her last public appearance, televised nationwide on PBS, was on the 1976 bicentennial of the United States, attended by Queen Elizabeth.
After many years of ill health, Alice died in her Embassy Row house on February 20, 1980 at age 96 from emphysema and pneumonia. She is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.