Copy of letter from California lawyer regarding Jim Gillis—Roosevelt’s attack upon Dr. Long, the naturalist, and newspaper clippings regarding it.
A letter has arrived from a lawyer resident in Sonora, California, which gratifies me because it speaks well of Jim Gillis, and because it proves to me that Jim remained, to the end, the same Jim whom I last looked upon thirty-nine years ago. I will insert it here.
Dear Sir:—
Your acquaintance with me is about the same as mine with the President, I know him but he does not know me that I know of, or at least the chances are about 1 in 80,000,000 that he would not remember me, having never met me personally.
However, I am a native of Tuolumne County, for 45 years, at least that is what I am told, for the first few years of my stay here were a little hazy. Perhaps it was owing to the fact that I was under the care of a nurse and allowed a milk diet.
Now laying alleged jokes aside, I simply want to tell you in an old-fashioned way that Jim Gillis, of Jackass Hill, passed over the Great Divide.
If “Jim” wasn’tⒶtextual note a mighty good man, I would not take the pains to let you know this. He has enjoyed the peculiar habit of being strictly honest. Told truths about himself and his friends, when perhaps a lie would have been better appreciated. On all occasions looked Dame Nature square in the face. But he is gone, and I know that you will be sorry to hear it.
He had a letter from you once, and it was the prize of his heartⒺexplanatory note. He did not wear it out, as might an ordinary autograph fiend have done, but it was exhibited only to rare old cronies. About the greatest compliment he could offer, was to show one that letter of Mark Twain’s.
Now, I send this in good faith, without any design to creep into your acquaintance by the back door. But in honor to “Jim.”
Very kindly,
Crittenden HamptonⒺexplanatory note.
[begin page 62] President Roosevelt has been having a scrap with the Rev. Dr. Long, who is a naturalist equipped with a pleasant and entertaining penⒺexplanatory note. Mr. Long is not a heavy-weight like John BurroughsⒺexplanatory note, and has never intimated, as John has seemed to intimate, that he knows more about an animal than the animal knows about itself. Mr. Long’s books are very popular, particularly among the young people. He tells many amusing and interesting things about the wild creatures of the forest, and he does not speak from hearsay, but from observation. He tells what he has seen the animal do, not what it isⒶtextual note reported to have done. If he misinterprets the actions of the animals and infers from them intellectual qualities of a higher order than they perhaps possess, is that a crime? I think not—although the President of the United States thinks it is. I think it is far from being a crime. Ninety-six per cent of our newspapers, and 98 per centⒶtextual note of our eighty million citizens, believe that the President is possessed of high intellectual qualities. Is that a crime? I do not think so. I think it is merely stupidity, and stupidity is not a crime. The other day the President allowed the affairs of the universe to stand unmolested during thirty minutes, while he got himself interviewed for the Outlook, and launched a devastating assault upon poor obscure little Mr. Long, and made a noise over him the like of which has not been heard on the planet since the hostile fleets opened upon each other with two thousand shells a minute, in the Japan Sea. What had Mr. Long been doing? He had merely been telling how he had found a deer whose breast had just been fatally torn by a wolf; and how he had also seen a wild bird mend its broken legⒺexplanatory note by smart devices invented by itself and successfully consummated without anybody else’s help. No doubt these were extraordinary incidents, but what of that? Does their unusualness make them incredible? Indeed it does not. Wild creatures often do extraordinary things. Look at Mr. Roosevelt’s own performances. Did he not fling the faithful Bowen out of office, and whitewash and deodorize the mephitic LoomisⒺexplanatory note? Didn’t he promulgate the illegal Order 78Ⓔexplanatory note? Hasn’t he tunneled so many subways under the ConstitutionⒺexplanatory note that the transportation-facilitiesⒶtextual note through that document are only rivaled, not surpassed, by those now enjoyed by the City of New York? Didn’t he send a bouquet and a broken heart to lay upon the corpse of Mr. QuayⒺexplanatory note? Hasn’t he tacitly claimed, some dozens of times, that he is the only person in America who knows how to speak the truth—quite ignoring me, and other professionals? Hasn’t he kept up such a continual thundering from our Olympus about foot-ballⒶtextual note and base ballⒶtextual note, and molly-coddlesⒺexplanatory note, and all sorts of little nursery matters, that we have come to stand in fear that the first time an exigency of real importance shall arise, our thunders will not be able to attract the world’s notice or exert any valuable influence upon ourselves?Ⓐtextual note And so on, and so on—the list of unpresidential things, things hitherto deemed impossible, wholly impossible, measurelessly impossible for a president of the United States to do—is much too long for invoicing here. When a president can do these extraordinary things, why can’t he allow a poor little unoffending bird to work a marvelous surgical operation without finding fault with it? That surgical operation is impossible, at first glance, but it is not any more impossible than is Order 78. It is not easy to believe that either of them happened; but we all know that Order 78 happened, therefore we are justified in believing in the bird’s surgery. Order 78 should make it easy for us to believe in anything that can be charged against a bird. I [begin page 63] should think that if a person were offered his choice as between risking his character upon the bird-story or upon the authorship of Order 78, he ought not to have any difficulty about which of the two to choose. I should think that a judicious person would rather father all the lies that have ever been told about the animal world than have it found out that he invented Order 78. Perhaps it is a marvelous thing for a bird to mend its broken leg; but is it half as marvelous, as extraordinary, as incredible, as that the autocrat over a nation of eighty millions should come down from his summit in the clouds to destroy a wee little naturalist who was engaged in the harmless business of amusing a nursery? Is it as extraordinary as the spectacle of a president of the United States attacking a private citizen without offering anything describable as evidence that he is qualified for the office of critic—and then refusing to listen to the man’s defenceⒶtextual note, andⒶtextual note following this uncourteous attack by backing out of the dispute upon the plea that it would not be consonant with the dignity of his great office to further notice such a person?
The President is badly worsted in the scrap, and I think he is wise in backing out of it. There was no respectable way out, and I think it was plainly best for him to accept and confess defeat, in silence. And he would be safe in any course he might pursue, whatever that course might be, for the newspapers would praise it, and admire it, and the nation would applaud. It is long since the head of any nation has been so blindly and unreasoningly worshiped as is President Roosevelt by this nation to-day. If he should die now, he would be mourned as no ruler has been mourned save Nero.
I wish to copy here a part of this pitiable fight, of the dates May 22 and May 28, and I wish I could be here fifty years hence and listen while some sane person should read these notes, and get him to tell me how they impress him. I feel quite sure that in that day the mention of Theodore’s name willⒶtextual note excite laughter—laughter at the eighty millions as well as at himself.
ROOSEVELT ONLY A GAMEKILLER—LONG
Stamford Naturalist Strikes Back at Criticism of His Nature Books.
ASSERTS IT WAS ANIMUS
Dogmatic Utterances Without a Shred of Positive Evidence—Attacks the President’s Own Writings.
Special to The New York Times.
STAMFORD, Conn., May 22.—The Rev. Dr. William J. Long to-day gave out an interview in reply to President Roosevelt’s criticism of his nature books. He intimates that the President is angry because he dared to criticise his method of slaughtering game promiscuously. He also says the President is taking up cudgels in behalf of John Burroughs, the naturalist, with whom Dr. Long carried on a bitter controversy in magazines and newspapers a few years ago. Burroughs and President Roosevelt are close friends.
[begin page 64]“A Man Named Roosevelt.”
“I have no desire for a controversy with the President of the United States,” said Dr. Long. “I have a profound respect for that office, which is not modified or changed in the least by any man occupying the office. The point is that a man named Roosevelt has gone out of his way to make a violent attack upon me and my books. Ordinarily, I would ignore such an attack. If you read the article, even carelessly, you will see it is personal and venomous in spirit, while its literary style makes it fit for the waste basket.
“The title of this article is ‘Roosevelt on the Nature Fakirs.’ The first thing I notice about the article is that it is itself a fake. Mr. Roosevelt has frequently declared, in the midst of his endless personal squabbles, that the President must not enter into a personal controversy. In the present case, this alleged interview is one of the transparent modesties behind which he conceals his colossal vanity.
“Mr. Roosevelt arranged this interview, and, as I am informed by the magazine, revised the proofs, from the gross personal flattery at the beginning to the unfounded charge at the endⒺexplanatory note. In concealing himself behind an alleged interview, and using his position to attack a man of whose spirit he knows nothing, his article seems to me not only venomous but a little cowardly—just as when he hides behind a tree and kills three bull elks in succession, leaving their carcasses to rot in the woods. That in itself is incomprehensible to sportsmen. But what jars you altogether is the preaching which follows on the heroism and high moral qualities developed by hunting.
“The next thing manifest in the article, even to the most casual reader, is the personal animosity. He devotes three-quarters of his attack to me, and, as I am the only one whose books are used in the public schools—which, by the way, he considers an outrage—the whole weight of his attack falls upon one man.
The Motive Behind It.
“Now, the reasons for this are perfectly plain. Some years ago a violent attack was made upon me and my books by one of Mr. Roosevelt’s friends. That attack was met, and every honest argument it contained was frankly answeredⒺexplanatory note. But that was not enough. Mr. Roosevelt, with that love of peace which characterizes him, immediately jumped into the conflict, and in the preface to his last book he goes far out of his way for the sake of repeating his friend’s attackⒺexplanatory note.
“Then, again, a short time ago I wrote a series of articles which attempted to look at human life from the animal’s standpoint, and in one of these I considered the subject of hunting. In this article it seemed to a simple mind, without prejudice, as if the promiscuous slaughter of game which, as Roosevelt claimed, develops heroism and manly virtue, was in reality a sort of brutal thoughtlessnessⒺexplanatory note.
“Mr. Roosevelt has never forgiven the poor animal who dared to criticise his hunting, and twice to my knowledge has declared to his associates that he would ‘get even’ and would even ‘do me up.’
“The magazine article is the fulfillment of his declaration. Hence we can understand its spirit perfectly. As for the argument of the article, it is precisely like its predecessors—a series of dogmatic utterances and denials, without a shred of positive evidence to support them. He calls for evidence, but forgets the fact that his predecessors, in their attacks, did the same thing, and that the evidence was [begin page 65] instantly produced. They took the most improbable thing I ever wrote—a story of a woodcock setting its own broken leg in a clay cast—and called this a gross deception, verging on lunacy, and demanded that I produce evidence or witnessesⒶtextual note. I at once published a record of five cases, with the sworn testimony of eight witnessesⒺexplanatory note.
Lynx and White Wolf.
“Mr. Roosevelt, in the same spirit, makes attacks upon certain statements concerning the Canada lynxⒺexplanatory note and the great white wolf of the north, declaring positively that certain things recorded of them never happened.”
Dr. Long, opening one of Mr. Roosevelt’s books, continued:
“Now see what Mr. Roosevelt himself says: ‘Wolves show an infinite variety in spite and temper.’ Again: ‘The differences between related animals are literally inexplicableⒺexplanatory note.’ It seems almost unkind to point out that Mr. Roosevelt never saw either the Canada lynx or the white wolf in their own woods. What he knows about lynxes and wolves he has learned in chasing different animals in different parts of the country, with a pack of savage dogs to help him understand their individual peculiarities.
“The one thing he declares to be a mathematical impossibility is that a huge wolf should kill a small deer by bitingⒶtextual note into the deer’s chestⒺexplanatory note. Now, those who have ever dressed a deer have noticed that the lower part of the chest narrows to a wedge shape, and when the shoulder-blades slide forward or back—as they do easily, the blades not being attached to the skeleton—it leaves a narrow part of the chest exposed, and it would be the simplest thing in the world for any large animal to get in a deadly bite.”Ⓐtextual note
Dr. Long then takes up the assertion of the President that a wolf could not kill a deer by biting into the deer’s chest, and explains how the shifting shoulder blades allow a soft cartilage to be unprotected. He says he has seen deer which have been killed this way, and Indian guides have confirmed this.
“So much for the mathematical possibility. Now for facts. I once came upon a small deer lying in the snow, still living, but bleeding from tooth wounds in the under side of its chest. From the deer the tracks of a large wolf led off into the woods. It had probably heard or smelled me, and had slunk away within a few moments of the time I found its victim. More than this, the Indian with whom I explored the interior of Newfoundland tells me he has twice seen a huge white wolf kill caribou fawns this way. That this is an unusual method of killing goes without saying, but that it is both possible and probable remains a fact, despite Mr. Roosevelt’s denial. It is a pity that animals and men do not conform their habits to the President’s dictates, but the fact is they don’t.
“There are several other points in the article worthy of attention, and in two or three of them Mr. Roosevelt lays himself open to attack by the utter absurdity of his dogmatic assertions. I shall answer these fully in a special article on the subject.”
Quotes His Records.
Dr. Long opened in succession two of Mr. Roosevelt’s books, and quoted a dozen records from Mr. Roosevelt’s own “nature books.”
“It seems,” continued Dr. Long, “almost impossible that such a variety of atrocious records could be found by scores in these books, but such is the fact. I [begin page 66] suggest that one who would understand Mr. Roosevelt’s attack read Roosevelt’s ‘Wilderness Hunter,’ and then read ‘Wild Ways,’ which he condemnsⒺexplanatory note. Mr. Roosevelt will then understand perfectly why he has no sympathy with any brand of nature study except his own.
“In a word, Mr. Roosevelt is not a naturalist, but a gamekiller. Of the real spirit of animal life, of their habits as discovered by quiet watching with no desire to kill, he knows nothing, and never will learn until he goes into the woods, leaving his pack of dogs, his rifle, his prejudice, and his present disposition behind him.”
LONG ASKS APOLOGY FROM THE PRESIDENTⒺexplanatory note.
Demands That He Retract “Fakir” Statements or Prove Them.
Stamford, Conn., May 28.—Dr. William J. Long to-dayⒶtextual note made public an open letter he has written President Roosevelt, which adds an interesting chapter to their “nature fakir” controversy. In part it is as follows:
“Stamford, Conn, May 28, 1907.
His Excellency, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States:
Dear Sir: The issue between you and me is no longer one of animals, but of men; it is not chiefly a matter of natural history, but of truth and personal honor. As President of the United States you have gone out of your way publicly to injure a private citizen who was attending strictly to his own business. As a man you have accused of falsehood another man whose ideas of truth and honor are quite as high as your own.
If I have spoken falsely, if in any book or word of mine I have intentionally deceived any child or man regarding animal life, I promise publicly to retract every such word and never to write another animal book. On the other hand, if I show to any disinterested person that you have accused me falsely you must publicly withdraw your accusation and apologize. As a man and as President no other honorable course is open to you.”
Dr. Long submits an affidavitⒺexplanatory note to sustain the truth of the story President Roosevelt calls a mathematical impossibility, and then he continues:
“You cannot at this stage, Mr. Roosevelt, take refuge behind the Presidential office and be silent. You have forfeited your right to that silence by breaking it, by coming out in public to attack a private citizen. If your talk of a square deal is not all a sham, if your frequent moral preaching is not all hypocrisy, I call upon you as President and as a man to come out and admit the error and injustice of your charge in the same open and public way in which you made it. Very sincerely yours,
W. J. Long.”
SECY. LOEB CALLS IT A “DRAW.”
The President Will Not Reply to the Rev. Dr. Long’s Retort.
(Special to The World.)
WASHINGTON, May 28.—Private Secretary LoebⒺexplanatory note is willing to call the match a draw, it seems.
[begin page 67] The Rev. Dr. Long’s retort on the President was shown to Mr. Loeb to-nightⒶtextual note by a representative of The World, who asked him to show it to Mr. Roosevelt. Mr. Loeb declined to do so, saying:
“The President will pay no further attention to Dr. LongⒺexplanatory note.”
Nor will the President appoint anyone to investigate the truthfulness of S. J. (Sporting Judge) Hepidan, the educated Sioux Indian, who is Dr. Long’s second and who swears he saw a horse a wolf had killed by tearing its breast to the heart.
He had a letter from you once, and it was the prize of his heart] Only two letters to Gillis are known to survive, dated 26 January 1870 and 2 July 1871. (There are photocopies of both in the Mark Twain Papers, but the current location of the manuscripts is not known.) The earlier letter is probably the one that Gillis enjoyed showing to his “rare old cronies”: Steve Gillis made it available to Paine for his volume of Mark Twain’s Letters, and the manuscript was evidently so worn that it had to be repaired ( L4 , 35–39, 428–29, 601–2, 674–75). In it, Clemens told Gillis of his upcoming marriage to “Miss Olivia L. Langdon” and reminisced about his winter with the Gillises, recalling the day he heard the “Jumping Frog” tale that made him famous (SLC 1865):
You remember the one gleam of jollity that shot across our dismal sojourn in the rain & mud of Angel’s Camp—I mean that day we sat around the tavern stove & heard that chap tell about the frog & how they filled him with shot. And you remember how we quoted from the yarn & laughed over it, out there on the hillside while you & dear old Stoker panned & washed. I jotted the story down in my note-book that day, & would have been glad to get ten or fifteen dollars for it—I was just that blind. But then we were so hard up. I published that story, & it became widely known in America, India, China, England,—& the reputation it made for me has paid me thousands & thousands of dollars since.
The letter concluded with a teasing allusion to the incident of the sour plums: “P. S. California plums are good, Jim—particularly when they are stewed” ( L4 , 35–36; see AutoMT2 , 46–49).
Crittenden Hampton] Hampton (1862–1948) was born in Tuolumne County, California, and was a teacher in nearby Inyo County before relocating to Sonora, the Tuolumne County seat, where he was an attorney and notary. He was also a Mason and a member of the American Bar Association ( California Death Index 1940–97, and California Great Registers 1866–98, records for Crittenden Hampton). Clemens dictated the following reply (CSoM):
Tuxedo Park. | May 27, 1907.
Dear Mr. Hampton:—
I dictated a long and admiring and affectionate chapter about Jim Gillis, yesterday, and some day or other, in the by and by, it will appear in my Autobiography. It will then be seen that I, and perhaps not another person in the world, knew Jim Gillis for what he was, namely: a man with a fine, and I may say even wonderful imagination, and that he was also a born humorist of the first order. Of course Jim must have known that he was a humorist, but I am quite sure that he never once suspected that his place was in the top rank of the guild.
I thank you very much for your letter.
Sincerely yours,
S L. Clemens
Rev. Dr. Long, who is a naturalist equipped with a pleasant and entertaining pen] William Joseph Long (1866?–1952) earned degrees from Harvard College (1892), Andover Theological Seminary (1895), and the University of Heidelberg (1897). From 1899 to 1903 he was pastor of the First Congregational Church in Stamford, Connecticut. He was also an avid outdoorsman who made frequent visits to the northern woods to observe wildlife, often accompanied by his wife and children. Although he wrote many literary and historical works, as well as children’s fiction, he was best known for his nature and animal studies, which portrayed the natural world as a source of moral wisdom, free from the corrupting influence of human civilization. The first of these, Ways of Wood Folk, was issued in 1899, and by 1907 he had published many more (Lutts 1990, 55–60, 161–62, 182, 185, 205–6). Clemens owned at least three of his books: Beasts of the Field (1901), Fowls of the Air (1902 copy, first published in 1901), and School of the Woods (1902) (Gribben 1980, 1:419).
a heavy-weight like John Burroughs] Burroughs (1837–1921) grew up on a farm in upstate New York and for a time worked as a schoolteacher. In 1863 he took a job with the U.S. Treasury Department and moved to Washington, D.C., where he became a lifelong friend of Walt Whitman’s. A veteran nature writer, he published his first collection of essays in 1871, Wake Robin, which was praised for its vivid descriptions of birds. Burroughs ultimately wrote more than two dozen nature studies that combined accurate description with eloquent commentary and expressed his conviction that animals acted solely on instinct, not on acquired knowledge. Clemens owned at least three of his books: Birds and Bees (1887), Songs of Nature (1901), and Bird and Bough (1906); he mentions Burroughs again in the Autobiographical Dictation of 19 August 1907 (Gribben 1980, 1:116–17). The “scrap” began in March 1903, when Burroughs published an article in the Atlantic Monthly attacking Long’s claim that animals teach their young (see the note at 64.28–30). Roosevelt, who had long admired Burroughs, shared his view that Long was a deliberate fraud whose nature writings were idealized interpretations. He invited Burroughs on a trip to Yellowstone National Park, and the two men became fast friends. The Atlantic Monthly article set off a prolonged controversy, carried on by Burroughs, Long, and other naturalists in the Century Magazine, the North American Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Monthly, and Everybody’s Magazine. Roosevelt refrained from public comment on the subject until 1905, when he dedicated his book Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter to Burroughs (see the note at 64.31–33; Lutts 1990, 4–9, 37, 40–43, 50–55, 60–73, 222 nn. 28–29, 31–32, 34–35; for more on Roosevelt’s hunting see the ADs of 18 and 21 Oct 1907).
got himself interviewed for the Outlook . . . wild bird mend its broken leg] The interview was published in Everybody’s Magazine, not in the Outlook, a weekly journal (see the note at 64.9–16). Roosevelt first took aim at Jack London for claiming in White Fang that a bulldog could fend off a wolf, and that a lynx could kill one: “This is about as sensible as to describe a tom cat tearing in pieces a thirty-pound fighting bull terrier.” Then he focused his attack on Long, objecting in particular to his description of a wolf killing a caribou fawn with a bite to the heart. The interview did not include a mention of Long’s controversial essay “Animal Surgery,” in which he described a bird who made itself a cast for a broken leg (see the notes at 65.1–4, 65.6–7, and 65.17–18). Clemens likens the “noise” Roosevelt made to the historic Battle of Tsushima, fought on 27–28 May 1905, in which Japanese battleships destroyed two-thirds of the Russian fleet (see AutoMT2 , 525 n. 134.38–135.1).
Did he not fling the faithful Bowen out of office, and . . . deodorize the mephitic Loomis] In early 1905 Herbert Wolcott Bowen (1856–1927), a career diplomat who was appointed minister to Venezuela in 1901, accused Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Loomis (1861–1948), the former minister, of having engaged in improper financial transactions in connection with asphalt interests in Venezuela. Roosevelt, who believed in Loomis’s innocence, launched an official inquiry. At its conclusion, in June 1905, Loomis was exonerated, and Roosevelt dismissed Bowen from office for “circulating unfounded charges” (“The Progress of the World” and “Record of Current Events,” American Monthly Review of Reviews 32 [July 1905]: 18, 19).
Didn’t he promulgate the illegal Order 78] Roosevelt’s Executive Order 78 added advanced age to the list of disabilities that qualified Civil War veterans for a pension. It went into effect on 13 April 1904, and was projected to cost as much as $15 million. Many considered the act unconstitutional, and criticized Roosevelt for exceeding his power in order to win votes from veterans (see AutoMT2 , 615–16 nn. 371.42–372.15, 372.29).
Hasn’t he tunneled so many subways under the Constitution] Roosevelt expanded the power of his office by issuing more than a thousand executive orders, far more than any of his predecessors. He explained in his autobiography:
I declined to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific authorization to do it. My belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. (Roosevelt 1922, 357)
Didn’t he send a bouquet and a broken heart to lay upon the corpse of Mr. Quay] Matthew Stanley Quay (1833–1904), a Republican politician from Pennsylvania, was an exceptional tactician and organizer. In 1885 he was elected state treasurer and became a member of the Republican National Committee, becoming the political “boss” of his state. In 1887–99 and 1901–4 he served in the U.S. Senate. He was indicted for misuse of state funds in 1898, but was acquitted the following year. When he died in May 1904, Roosevelt sent his widow a “wreath of American beauty roses and white peonies, with maiden hair fern interwoven,” and added a message of “profound sympathy, official and personal,” praising Quay as a “stanch and loyal friend” (“A Curious Collocation,” New York Times, 1 June 1904, 8; “Last Rites for Senator Quay,” Chicago Tribune, 1 June 1904, 7).
foot-ball and base ball, and molly-coddles] In 1905 the alarmingly high number of injuries (and even fatalities) among college football players prompted Roosevelt to summon the coaches of several universities to discuss reforming the game. Harvard—for whose team Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., played—was among the schools that appointed a committee to investigate and make recommendations. In February 1907, shortly before its report was delivered, Roosevelt commented on the issue in a speech to the students:
As I emphatically disbelieve in seeing Harvard or any other college turn out mollycoddles instead of vigorous men, I may add that I do not in the least object to a sport because it is rough. Rowing, baseball, lacrosse, track and field games, hockey, football are all of them good. Moreover, it is to my mind simple nonsense, a mere confession of weakness, to desire to abolish a game because tendencies show themselves, or practices grow up which prove that the game ought to be reformed. (“No Mollycoddles, Says Roosevelt,” New York Times, 24 Feb 1907, 1)
The report suggested new rules that would discourage unsportsmanlike behavior and allow plays like the forward pass which favored “speed and skill” over “brute force.” Harvard President Charles William Eliot approved the adoption of these reforms, which he agreed would make football less dangerous, but maintained that it was still an “undesirable game for gentlemen to play or multitudes of people to witness” (“Roosevelt in New Crusade,” Chicago Tribune, 10 Oct 1905, 1; “The New Game of Football,” New York Times, 30 Sept 1906, SM5; Washington Post: “If Not Football, What,” 1 Jan 1906, 8; “Football Too Fierce,” 7 Mar 1907, 9; John J. Miller 2012).
The title of this article is ‘Roosevelt on the Nature Fakirs.’ . . . unfounded charge at the end] The article, in Everybody’s Magazine for June 1907, was by Edward B. Clark of the Chicago Evening Post, who spent an evening at the White House conversing with the president (Lutts 1990, 101–2). Roosevelt wrote to Burroughs in March 1907, “I finally proved unable to contain myself, and gave an interview or statement, to a very fine fellow, in which I sailed into Long and Jack London and one or two other of the more preposterous writers of ‘unnatural history’ ” (quoted in Lutts 1990, 101). The “Editor’s Note” introducing the interview explained that Roosevelt was especially concerned about the use of Long’s books in the classroom:
It is about time to call a halt upon misrepresentative nature studies. Utterly preposterous details of wild life are placed before school children in the guise of truth. Wholly false beliefs have been almost standardized. Only by an authoritative protest can the fraud be exposed. At this juncture it is fitting that the President should come forward. From every point of view he is the person in the United States best equipped for the task, and we are fortunate in being able to fire the first gun, so to speak, with a charge of Mr. Roosevelt’s vigorous, clear-cut, earnest English. (Clark 1907, 770)
The article begins with a quotation from the chief of the U.S. Biological Survey: “Theodore Roosevelt is the world’s authority on the big game mammals of North America. His writings are fuller and his observations are more complete and accurate than those of any other man who has given the subject study.” At the conclusion of the interview, Roosevelt said that it was “startling to think of any school authorities accepting” Long’s story about a “caribou school”: “If the child mind is fed with stories that are false to nature, the children will go to the haunts of the animal only to meet with disappointment. The result will be disbelief, and the death of interest. The men who misinterpret nature and replace fact with fiction, undo the work of those who in the love of nature interpret it aright” (Clark 1907, 770, 774).
a violent attack was made upon me . . . every honest argument it contained was frankly answered] In his March 1903 article, “Real and Sham Natural History,” Burroughs called Long’s School of the Woods “ridiculous,” objecting especially to his claim that an animal’s survival did not depend upon instinct but upon parental training. Long was understandably offended by the personal nature of Burroughs’s criticism: “Mr. Long’s book reads like that of a man who has really never been to the woods, but who sits in his study and cooks up these yarns from things he has read in Forest and Stream, or in other sporting journals. Of real observation there is hardly a vestige in his book; of deliberate trifling with natural history there is no end” (Burroughs 1903, 303, 306). Long “answered” Burroughs’s attack in the May 1903 issue of the North American Review, where he argued that nature study was not science, but a world of “suggestion and freedom and inspiration”: “In a word, the difference between Nature and Science is the . . . difference between the woman who cherishes her old-fashioned flower-garden and the professor who lectures on Botany in a college class-room.” He claimed that for “over twenty years, I have gone every season deep into the woods; have lived alone with the animals for months at a time. . . . I have gone fifty miles out of my course to interview some famous old Indian or hunter, and ask for his verification or denial of my own observations.” He also defended the stories Burroughs had found unbelievable, giving specific examples of young animals who learned from their parents (Long 1903b, 688–89, 691–92).
Roosevelt . . . goes far out of his way for the sake of repeating his friend’s attack] Roosevelt’s Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, published in October 1905, included a dedication to Burroughs:
I wish to express my hearty appreciation of your warfare against the sham nature-writers—those whom you have called “the yellow journalists of the woods.” . . . It is unpardonable for any observer of nature to write fiction and then publish it as truth, and he who exposes and wars against such action is entitled to respect and support. You in your own person have illustrated what can be done by the lover of nature who has trained himself to keen observation, who describes accurately what is thus observed, and who, finally, possesses the additional gift of writing with charm and interest. (“To John Burroughs,” in Roosevelt 1905)
a short time ago I wrote a series of articles . . . a sort of brutal thoughtlessness] Long’s articles were published in Brier-Patch Philosophy by “Peter Rabbit” (1906). The chapter entitled “Heroes Who Hunt Rabbits” is a scathing rebuke of those who slaughtered animals for entertainment and promoted such sport as a way to develop courage. Roosevelt was not named, but was clearly recognizable as one of the men described by Long, who were “killing mother bears with young, or collecting numerous heads of game unfit to eat, or killing more deer and ducks than they can use,” and then urging “all honest men to spare and protect the diminishing wild animals” (Long 1906, 170–71).
the most improbable thing I ever wrote—a story of a woodcock . . . eight witnesses] Long’s article “Animal Surgery” appeared in the Outlook in September 1903 and was reprinted as “A Woodcock Genius” in A Little Brother to the Bear, and Other Animal Stories (Long 1903a, 101–6, 1903c). Early in 1904, it elicited several indignant letters to Science magazine. In the issue of 14 May, Long defended himself in an article entitled “Science, Nature and Criticism,” which included the evidence and testimony he mentions here (Long 1904; see also Lutts 1990, 76–82).
Mr. Roosevelt . . . certain statements concerning the Canada lynx] Roosevelt pointed out “all kinds of absurdities” in the story “Upweekis the Shadow,” from Beasts of the Field (Long 1901). In particular, he was incredulous of Long’s claim that a “number of lynxes gathered around the nearly eaten carcass of a caribou, while a menagerie of smaller beasts, including a pine marten, circulates freely among them,” and rejected as implausible his account of a lynx that stalked him “hour after hour through the wilderness” (Clark 1907, 773).
Dr. Long, opening one of Mr. Roosevelt’s books . . . literally inexplicable] The quotations are from “Wolves and Wolf-Hounds,” chapter 8 of Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches, first published in 1893 and widely reprinted (Roosevelt 1893a).
mathematical impossibility is that a huge wolf should kill . . . by biting into the deer’s chest] “The Way of the Wolf,” a chapter in Long’s Northern Trails, included a brief mention of a caribou fawn that was killed by “one quick snap of the old wolf’s teeth just behind the fore legs,” which “pierced the heart more surely than a hunter’s bullet” (Long 1905, 85–86). Long was so incensed by Roosevelt’s accusation that when he reprinted the story in 1907, in Wayeeses the White Wolf, he devoted a large part of his preface to a defense of his story, explaining that since it
would surely be read by many children, I had to make the death scene as free as possible from bloody and repulsive details.
As I knew from my own observation and from the testimony of my Indians that wolves sometimes kill in this way, cleanly and quickly, I accordingly used it as the least repulsive method consistent with strict truth. (Long 1907, x–xi)
read Roosevelt’s ‘Wilderness Hunter,’ and then read ‘Wild Ways,’ which he condemns] The Wilderness Hunter (1893b) and Long’s Wilderness Ways (1900).
LONG ASKS APOLOGY FROM THE PRESIDENT] Clemens’s source for this article, containing Long’s letter to the president of 28 May 1907, has not been identified. Long sent copies of his letter to newspapers throughout the country; it appeared in full or part in at least five New York newspapers (the Times, Sun, Tribune, World, andEvening Telegram), but none of these versions matches the one that Hobby transcribed into the autobiography (Lutts 1990, 110–11).
Dr. Long submits an affidavit] Long’s letter, much of which is omitted from this partial account, included a “signed and witnessed statement of an educated Sioux Indian,” Stephen Jones Hepidan, who was “fitting himself to be a teacher and missionary among his own people,” and spoke “solely in the interest of truth and justice.” Hepidan certified that he and “three or four others” of his tribe had seen two horses killed by wolf bites to the chest (“Long Offers Proof,” New York Times, 29 May 1907, 6).
Private Secretary Loeb] William Loeb, Jr. (1866–1937), secretary to President Roosevelt from 1901 to 1909.
The President will pay no further attention to Dr. Long] Long persisted in his campaign to defend his honor: on 2 June 1907 he was interviewed in a Sunday feature article in the New York Times, “ ‘I Propose to Smoke Roosevelt Out’—Dr. Long: Clergyman Whom the President Has Aroused Proves to Be a Real Fighter When His Honor Is Questioned” (SM2). Once again he claimed that Roosevelt was no better than “a man of the stone age who sallied forth with his club to brain some beast and drag it home to display before his wives.” Burroughs retaliated a week later in an interview of his own, published in the Times under the headline “John Burroughs Supports the President: Veteran Naturalist Analyses Dr. Long’s Animal Stories and Declares Them Impossible—Instances of Errors, Inaccuracies, Gullibility, and Absurdity” (9 June 1907, SM2). Roosevelt did not keep his resolve to “pay no further attention” to the matter. In the September issue of Everybody’s Magazine he published “ ‘Nature Fakers,’ ” which characterized Long as “the most reckless and least responsible” of those writers who were guilty of “deliberate invention, deliberate perversion of fact” (Roosevelt 1907, 428). In October Long was still fighting back, but his career as a nature writer was coming to a close, and by the end of 1908 his books were no longer ubiquitous in the classroom (“Roosevelt, Only Nature Faker—Long,” New York Times, 8 Oct 1907, 10; “Long Calls Killing She Bear Butchery,” Boston Herald, 23 Oct 1907, 2; see Lutts 1990, 127–37).
Source documents.
Times Facsimile of the New York Times (the original clipping that Hobby transcribed is now lost), 23 May 1907, 6: ‘ROOSEVELT . . . behind him.” ’ (63.26–66.8).World Facsimile of the New York World (the original clipping that Hobby transcribed is now lost), 29 May 1907, 2: ‘SECY. LOEB . . . the heart.’ (66.40–67.7).
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 2037–49, made from Hobby’s notes, Times, and World and revised.
The original letter from Crittenden Hampton (61.18–39) does not survive, so TS1, as revised by Clemens, is the unique source for his letter as well as the dictated portion of the text. Likewise, because the actual clippings from the New York Times and World that Hobby transcribed in TS1 do not survive, the present text is based on the original newspapers. The source for the second article transcribed in TS1, “Long Asks Apology from the President” (66.9–39), has not been identified. Presumably it was a newspaper of 29 May 1907, the day that similar stories appeared in at least four other New York newspapers, and others throughout the country. The present text follows TS1. There is an authorial direction, apparently inscribed by Lyon, on the second leaf of TS1: ‘Not to be used for fifty years’.