Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Born into Darkness and Light

Alice was born on February 12, 1884. Two days later her mother, Alice Hathaway Lee, died. Her grandmother Mittie had died a few hours earlier that same day. In T.R.'s diary, the entry for that day, under a large X, reads simply: "The light has gone out of my life."

After her mother's death, baby Alice was raised by her aunt Anna "Bamie" Roosevelt while her grieving father went west to the Dakota Badlands. When Theodore married Edith Kermit Carow in 1886, Alice, nearly three, joined their household. She grew up alongside five half-siblings. Her relationship with her stepmother was often complicated.

The White House Years: Princess Alice and 'Alice Blue'

When Theodore Roosevelt became President in September 1901, Alice was 17. She was arguably the first celebrity First Daughter of the new century, and she did not play the part quietly. She wore daring fashions. She smoked cigarettes, famously on the White House roof after her father banned smoking under his roof. She took to motorcars at a time when few women did, and she spoke her mind on politics. Newspapers called her "Princess Alice" and competed to cover her.

She favored a pale blue-gray, wore it in her gowns, and the shade was soon sold everywhere as "Alice blue." A decade after she left the White House, the color still inspired "Alice Blue Gown," the hit of the 1919 Broadway musical Irene.

The best-known line about her comes secondhand. Owen Wister reported in 1930 that when a friend asked Roosevelt why he didn't look after Alice more, the President said: "I can be President of the United States—or—I can attend to Alice."

Across Asia, 1905

In the summer of 1905, while her father was brokering peace between Russia and Japan, Alice joined Secretary of War William Howard Taft's mission to Asia. The party of about eighty included members of Congress. Officially Alice was a guest. In practice she was an unofficial emissary, and the Theodore Roosevelt Center calls her the first First Daughter to act as a goodwill ambassador.

She lunched with Emperor Meiji in Tokyo, was received by the Empress Dowager Cixi at Peking's Summer Palace, and dined with Korea's Emperor Gojong. Mrs. Francis Newlands, a senator's wife, served as her chaperone.

One member of the party was Nicholas Longworth, a congressman from Ohio. Their romance blossomed on the trip, and the engagement was announced that December.

Marriage, Cincinnati, and the Politics of Wit

On February 17, 1906, Alice married Nicholas Longworth in the East Room of the White House. Gifts poured in from around the world:

• a Gobelin tapestry from the French Republic
• a diamond bracelet from Kaiser Wilhelm II, set, as Alice recalled, with a miniature of the Kaiser himself
• a dower chest of silks, embroideries and carvings from China's Empress Dowager
• a mosaic table from the King of Italy
• a gift from Pope Pius X
• a pearl necklace from Cuba, reported at $25,000

"No other American girl," one newspaper declared, "has received wedding presents so numerous, valuable or interesting." One headline crowed, "MISS ROOSEVELT COULD OPEN A MUSEUM WITH THESE PRESENTS." Alice complained of "fantastic exaggeration."

Cincinnati, Nick's home, never appealed to her. Even as a congressman's wife she kept Washington talking. At the Patterson ball in April 1912, one columnist reported, Mrs. Longworth "delighted her friends with an exhibition of her pretty skill in the turkey trot."

Biographer Stacy Cordery titled a chapter with a line from their courtship: "To Bask in the Rays of Your Reflected Glory." Nick served as Speaker of the House from 1925 to 1931. The marriage lasted twenty-five years, until his death in 1931, and it was often strained. Her only child, Paulina, was born in 1925.

The Oracle of Washington

Alice Roosevelt Longworth lived from 1884 to 1980, a span of 96 years. She was a formidable presence for every president from her father's day to Jimmy Carter's.

She had a political life of her own. After World War I she worked to keep the United States out of the League of Nations, backing the treaty's opponents in the Senate. In the 1930s she became one of the sharpest critics of her cousin Franklin's New Deal.

Her drawing room became Washington's unofficial salon, and she became known as "the other Washington Monument." Politicians and journalists came to hear what she thought. The motto on her sitting-room pillow comes in several versions. The earliest in print reads: "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."

The Living Monument

As the Roosevelt era passed into history, Alice remained a living link to her father's White House. She outlived him by 61 years, and she outlived all her siblings. Her opinions never lost their edge.