Alice Roosevelt Longworth
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Alice Roosevelt, taken about 1900. A striking beauty, her outspokeness and antics won the hearts of the American people who nicknamed her "Princess Alice" |
Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth (
February 12,
1884 –
February 20,
1980) was a child of
Theodore Roosevelt, also known as
TR and
Teddy, the 26th
President of the United States, and his first wife,
Alice Hathaway Lee. She was Lee's only child.
Alice led an unconventional and sometimes controversial life, and despite her love and admiration for her legendary father, she proved to be almost nothing like him. She spurned
Christianity, was not faithful in her marriage, once considered accepting the offer to be "an honorary homosexual" in the late 1960s, temporarily became a
Democrat during the
Kennedy and
Johnson administrations, and proudly boasted in a
60 Minutes interview that she was a "
hedonist."
Alice Lee Roosevelt was born at the
Roosevelt family home on 6 West 57th St. in
New York City. Two days after her birth, in the same house, both her mother,
Alice, a
Boston banking heiress, and her paternal grandmother,
Martha, died; the former of undiagnosed
Bright's disease, the latter from
typhoid. Her father, then a New York state legislator, was so distraught with the loss that the only way he could deal with this tragedy was to try not to even think about his deceased spouse. While he wrote a short tribute to her in his diary and made a couple of references to her in the months after her death, from the next year on, Roosevelt tried never to speak of her again. He refused to have her name mentioned in his presence and even omitted her name from his autobiography. Even his daughter was seldom referred to by her name calling her "Baby Lee." (the use of any name other than Alice was a practice she continued late in life, preferring to be called "Mrs. L"). Grief-stricken, Roosevelt left his infant daughter Alice in the care of his sister
Bamie, (also known as "Bye").
Theodore Roosevelt's sister, and the only aunt with whom she had a long-term relationship,
Bamie Roosevelt, would be the one strong stabilizing influence on her. She would take Alice under her watchful care until TR married
Edith Kermit Carow, at which time she would come under her step-mother's wing and during much of Alice's childhood, Bamie would be a remote figure who eventually would marry and move to London for at time. Aunty "Bye", Bamie would provide the needed structure and stability, on and off again, as Alice became more and more independent, and her father and step-mother would come into conflict with that independence and rebellious nature. Late in life, when Alice spoke of her beloved Auntie Bye in and series of interviews lasting over five years with Michael Teague, she told him that, "There is always someone in every family who keeps it together. In ours, it was Auntie Bye."
Increasingly, Alice's parents would send her off to visit Bamie when they couldn't handle her. Likewise it would be Alice's Lee grandparents (on her mother's side) in Boston, with whom Alice would spend summers and holiday periods, including Thanksgiving, who would give her the undivided attention she could seldom find in her father's home to the point of spoiling her as only grandparents can. They would provide an unconditional love and constancy of affection that Alice would miss in her father's home with her step-mother Edith. In the weeks after his wife's death, her father embarked on a journey of personal discovery to the violent
Old West, an experience that largely allowed him to rise above his childhood illnesses and physical limitations and so influenced his life that it would substantially contribute to the succession of personal accomplishments that led him to the White House in September 1901.
After returning east, and running for and losing the election to mayor of
New York City,Theodore Roosevelt went to London where he married a childhood friend,
Edith Kermit Carow, by whom he would have five more children. There were strains in the relationship between
TR and his daughter, and he had very little interaction with her during her earliest years, leaving the work to other people, such as his sister Bamie, Alice's maternal grandparents and even his second wife, Edith. Alice was continually shuffled about from one house to another, even as a teenager, and she later said she often felt like he loved her "one-sixth" as much as the other children. There were also tensions in the relationship between young Alice and her stepmother, who had known her husband's previous wife and made it clear that she regarded her predecessor as a beautiful but insipid, childlike fool. As Alice Longworth later recalled, her stepmother once angrily told her that if Alice's mother, Alice Lee Roosevelt had lived, she would have bored her father to death. Despite these strains, it would be Edith, the demanding step-mother, who would save Alice from a life possibly in a wheelchair or on crutches when Alice came down with a mild form of
polio and one leg and its muscles grew shorter than the other. By Edith's uncompromising regimen of nightly forced wearing of torturous leg braces and shoes, even over Alice's sobs, Edith insured that Alice would grow up with almost no trace of the disability. Alice would be able to run up stairs, touch her nose with her toe well into her 80s because of a step-mother she didn't always appreciate and who didn't like her either.
Alice, always spoiled with gifts, matured into young womanhood and, in the course, became known as a great beauty like her mother. However the years of separation between her and her father, combined with the continued tension between her and her stepmother, and the lack of attention by her ever-occupied father, molded a young woman who was as independent and outgoing as she was self-confident and calculating. When her father was governor of New York, Edith and her father proposed that Alice attend a quite conservative school for girls in New York City. Pulling out all the stops, Alice wrote, "If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will."
When her father took office following the assassination of President
William McKinley (an event that "filled (me) with an extreme rapture"), Alice became an instant celebrity and fashion icon. While proud of her father's accomplishment, she also was painfully aware that his new duties would afford her even less of his time and getting more of his attention was something she really longed for. She was known as a rule-breaker in an era when women were under great pressure to conform. Among her exploits that garnered national attention were smoking a cigarette in public, driving a car with boys in it, and staying out all hours of the night partying, keeping a pet snake named Emily Spinach (Emily as in her spinster aunt and Spinach as in garter snake green) in the White House, and being seen, placing bets with a bookie. This was simply not the sort of demeanor expected of a turn-of- the-century American President's daughter.
Alice, along with her father's Secretary of War,
William Howard Taft, led the largest diplomatic mission in U.S. history up until that time, including 35 U.S. Congressmen (future husband
Nicholas Longworth included) and other diplomats to
Japan. She made headlines wherever she went, being photographed with the
Emperor of Japan and the
Empress Dowager Cixi of
China, as well as attending
sumo wrestling matches. In the cruise to Japan, she made a splash by jumping into the ship's pool with all her clothes on. The press dubbed Alice's part in this government-sponsored trip to Asia "Alice in Plunder Land." She brought back enough silk from China for a lifetime of beautiful dresses and would wear the beautiful strand of costly pearls given her by the Cuban government the rest of her life. See photos. This diplomatic junket, and Alice's ability to keep the press at bay by becoming the center of attention, contributed to her father's successfully concluding the
Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 that ended the
Russo-Japanese War, which eventually made her father the first-ever
Nobel Peace Prize winner in American history.
Once, a
White House visitor commented on Alice's frequent interruptions to the
Oval Office, often because of her political advice. The exhausted President commented to his friend, author
Owen Wister, after the third interuption to their conversation and after threatening to throw Alice 'out the window', "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both."
Alice was the center of attention in the social context of her father's presidency, especially at her wedding, but she had to be very competitive to get noticed when he was around. She said of his love of attention, that he "wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening."
For her husband, Alice chose
Nicholas Longworth, a
U.S. House of Representatives member from
Cincinnati, Ohio, who ultimately would rise to become
Speaker of the House. Their 1906 wedding is considered by some the biggest social event in White House history.
A scion of a socially prominent Ohio family and a brother-in-law of a French count, Nick had a reputation as a Washington, D.C. playboy, and the two made an awkward couple. The couple had a daughter,
Paulina Longworth (1925-1957). Alice and Nick shared an interest in Republican politics and power. Of the two, Alice was known as taking the more hard-line Republican position, while Longworth was more affable. Alice publicly supported her father's 1912
Bull Moose presidential candidacy, while Nick stayed loyal to his mentor, President Taft. She once appeared on stage with her father's vice presidential candidate,
Hiram Johnson, in Nick's own district. He later lost by about 105 votes, and she joked that she was worth at least 100 votes (meaning she was the reason he lost) but he was elected again in 1914 and stayed in the House for the rest of his life. Nick would be reelected and become
Speaker of the House of Representatives. At that time, the Longworths moved to their 2009 Massachusetts Avenue home in Washington. Alice would live there all her life.The site and building is now the headquarters of the
Washington Legal Foundation.
During their marriage Longworth carried on numerous affairs; Alice responded by using every opportunity to make disparaging remarks about his home district of
Cincinnati, Ohio, which she mockingly called "Cincinasty," calling its residents "ignorant savages," and worse.
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Alice and her husband, Ohio Congressman Nicholas Longworth on the US Capital steps in 1926 |
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.[
1] At many White House social activities such as dinners, Alice frequently mocked the
First Lady, rendering Mrs. Taft rather uncomfortable in Alice's presence who was some twenty years her junior. Mrs. Taft offended Alice by offering her an invitation to the
White House, upon receiving the invitation, Alice asked, "Me? Who walked the halls of the White House for so many years." Later, the Taft White House would mark her first ban from her former residence. During the administration of
Woodrow Wilson (from which she was banned in 1916 for a bawdy joke at Wilson's expense), Alice worked endlessly against the entry of the United States into the
League of Nations. Her Washington society dinners and reception lobbying is credited with helping to derail America's membership in the League of Nations.
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Alice on her 43rd birthday in 1927 with her daughter Paulina, age 2 |
With great relief, Alice welcomed the presidency of
Warren G. Harding, although her feelings toward the Hardings was slightly lower than those she felt toward Cincinnati. Mrs. Longworth felt that Harding was a crass man, barely educated, and ill-suited for the job, but they were on good terms (and she would become close to his vice president,
Calvin Coolidge). She also recognized that Harding's election dimmed the prospects of her own husband's possible ascendancy in the new administration, although she was pleased that Harding was a Republican and had appointed her father's friend and political ally,
Henry Cabot Lodge to his cabinet. Her feelings toward First Lady
Florence Harding grew more strained during the Hardings' years in Washington. Alice felt that she had lost her best friend,
Evalyn Walsh McLean, to Florence, and the relationship between Alice and the President's wife grew bitter.
Following the death of her husband in 1931, Alice Longworth and her daughter continued to live near
Dupont Circle on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington's
Embassy Row. When asked if she would run for her late husband's seat, she declined. She did not like public speaking, seldom spoke at public receptions, and abhorred physical contact with the public and the "press of the flesh" that came so easily to her father; in short, campaigning did not suit her. Her final visits to Cincinnati were in order to fulfill obligations, not for pleasure. One such trip was made for the burial of her husband, another for the social debut of her daughter. When asked if she would be buried in Cincinnati, Mrs. Longworth said that to do so "would be a fate worse than death itself."
With the
Great Depression affecting even the Longworth fortune, Mrs. L decided to appear in
tobacco advertisements and a campaign that was credited with making smoking common in
Hollywood movies, and thus, popular nationwide. She made thousands and secured her financial status in the years following her husband's death. She also published an autobiography,
Crowded Hours, a take off on her father's depiction of his day at the Battle of San Juan Hill, during the
Spanish-American War as his "crowded hour." The book sold well despite its less than fascinating story. It would always be difficult for her to capture the excitement of her life ion the printed page form until late in her life when a series of interviews was published in book form called
Conversations with Mrs. L.The widow Longworth maintained her stature in the community, socially and politically, garnering her the nickname "the other Washington Monument". Mrs. Longworth served as a delegate to
Republican National Convention on more than one occasion, declining to address the Convention.
Alice's wit was legendary in Washington, DC; and that wit could have a deadly political effect on friend and foe alike. When columnist and cousin
Joseph Alsop claimed that there was grass-roots support for Republican presidential candidate,
Wendell Willkie, the Republican hope to defeat F.D.R. in 1940, Alice said yes, "the grass roots of 10,000 country clubs."
When Alice demolished
Thomas Dewey, the 1944 opponent of her cousin Franklin, by comparing the pencil-line mustached Republican to "the little man on the wedding cake." The image stuck and helped Governor Dewey lose two consecutive presidential elections.
Paulina Longworth married
Alexander McCormick Sturm, with whom she had a daughter,
Joanna (b. July 1946). Sturm died in 1951. Following the death of her daughter in 1957 (by an overdose of sleeping pills, for many years suspected of being a suicide, although Alice never agreed with that assessment), Alice Longworth fought for and won the custody of her granddaughter
Joanna Sturm, whom she raised. Not very long before Paulina's death, she and Alice had discussed the care of Joanna in the event of Paulina's death. Though Alice never fully agreed with the idea of a suicide, she did comment once that she felt Paulina was attempting to get even with her after years of a bitter relationship. Upon Paulina's death, she removed all pictures of her daughter from the home and refused to speak of her again, simply ignoring the fact she ever existed. In an article in American Heritage Magazine in 1969, Joanna was described as a "highly attractive and intellectual twenty-two-year-old" and was called "a notable contributor to Mrs. Longworth's youthfulness....The bonds between them are twin cables of devotion and a healthy respect for each other's tongue. 'Mrs. L.,' says a friend, 'has been a wonderful father and mother to Joanna: mostly father.'"
Unlike her relationship with her daughter, Mrs. Longworth doted on her granddaughter and the two were very close. Upon Paulina's death, her cousin
Eleanor Roosevelt sent condolences and the two mended their broken relationship based on their obvious political differences.
From an early age, Alice was interested in politics. When her aunt Bamie was incapcitated by advancing age and illness, Alice stepped into her place as an unofficial political advisor to her father. Alice strongly advised her father against challenging the renomination of William Howard Taft on the Republican 1912 ticket. While her political instincts were highly developed, she was not at all accommodating politically. In fact, she took a hard line view of the democrats and was on the decidedly conservative wing of the Republican party in her youth. She was active in supporting her half-brother, Ted Roosevelt in his attempt to become governor of New York in 1924. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president in 1932, Alice took pains to publicly oppose his candidacy, writing in the Ladies' Home Journal October 1932, she said of FDR, "He is my father's fourth cousin once removed. . . . 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."
Alice developed a genuine friendship with
Richard Nixon when he was vice-president, and when he returned to California after Eisenhower's 2nd term, Alice continued to maintain an active relationship with him and did not consider his political career over. She encouraged Nixon to re-enter politics and continued to invite him to her famous dinners. Not forgetting this kindness, when Nixon became President, he invited Alice to his first formal White House dinner. She was invited to the wedding of his daughter Tricia Nixon in 1971.
In old age, however, Alice would flirt with the democrats and even supported
John F. Kennedy and had an affectionate although sometimes strained friendship with
Bobby Kennedy in whom she found a relatively thin skin, personally. When she privately made fun of his scaling the newly named Mt. Kennedy in Canada, he was not amused. She even admitted to voting for President
Lyndon Johnson over Senator
Barry Goldwater in 1964 because she believed Goldwater was too mean.
Following the attempt on her father
Theodore Roosevelt's life in 1912, Alice became a constant critic of the media's shadowing of famous people. Throughout her life, newspapers published celebrity's daily itineraries. These itineraries included a minute-by-minute analysis that was often accurate. These unwanted timelines were the predecessor to the modern-day
paparazzi intrusions on celebrity's lives and just as dangerous. This controversial practice aided assassins and other deranged people who used the newspaper timelines accuracy to tragic effect. This included the assassinations of presidents
Abraham Lincoln,
James Garfield,
William McKinley, and
John F. Kennedy. Alice remained a privacy advocate by spotlighting other attempts (notable ones included the 1933 attempt on her cousin Franklin that killed Chicago Mayor
Anton Cermak, the 1972 attempt on
George Wallace and the murder of
John Lennon).
In the late 1960s, a thief used a newspaper to learn exactly when Alice's house would be empty. He ransacked it, stealing her jewelry. This burglary affected her deeply. Though returned later, Alice carried her most valued jewelry in her purse each time she left the house ever after, including the costly pearl necklace giver her by the government of Cuba when she married and which can be seen wearing in photos all her life. She also planted and trained poison ivy to grow up the façade of her Washington house as a deterrent to future would-be burglars. When
Sirhan Sirhan killed her close friend
Bobby Kennedy in 1968, she publicly spoke most strongly, appearing on
60 Minutes, in her only televised interview.
Alice would not live to see this practice end. Not until the uproar caused by
John Hinckley's shooting of
Ronald Reagan in 1981, did this practice finally cease, the year after her death.
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Eleanor Roosevelt, Alice, and Mrs. Winston Churchill at Quebec, Canada for conference (September 11, 1944) |
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Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House Monroe (later) Blue Room with painting of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr |
Alice had spent much of her young life being considered the most famous woman in the world and photographers often asked presidents to step aside so they could get a picture of her alone. She continued to compete for public attention with her cousin
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt even after Eleanor became First Lady upon the election of Eleanor's husband and their cousin,
Franklin Roosevelt. Eleanor, like Alice, attracted much attention upon reaching the White House. For a time, Alice and Eleanor were competing newspaper columnists both beginning in 1936, with Alice's
"Capitol Comment" column being overwhelmingly less popular than Eleanor's
"My Day". Initially, Alice's column was far more popular than Eleanor's but Eleanor's finally outdistanced Alice's by 2 to 1. Alice found that her clever and world-famous witticisms did not translate so well into print and she quickly lost interest. After numerous dull prints, Mrs. L. was paid a handsome sum to cancel the column.The relationship between the two cousins was at best strained and often contentious. They grew up together, and her father, "TR," often scolded Alice for not being more like her prim and proper "cousin Eleanor". When Eleanor was called more attractive because of her height and eyes, their childhood years marked the beginning of Alice's rivalry and lifelong obsession with Eleanor. Tensions between the two was further heightened when their aunt
Corinne Robinson commented that "Eleanor was more like Theodore than any of his own children." Alice later agreed that "Cousin Eleanor" was much more like her father than she was, an assessment Eleanor, herself agreed with. As adults, Alice and Eleanor often spent time together, invited each other to dinners and other social functions, suggesting they didn't let politics completely interfere with family affairs. As soon as they reached the political forefront though, fierce competition began between the two. Mrs. Longworth especially enjoyed antagonizing Eleanor and often imitated her among
Republican social circles. As an adult, Eleanor's son,
Elliott would confide that of all the people in her life, Eleanor's cousin Alice, was the only one who could reduce his mother to tears and that she was never able to not feel intimidated by her. Some historians believe the reason for this is because the two had such similar personalities that mirrored one another. Eleanor saw Alice's own personality as her own and the same is true with Alice. Alice seemed to take delight in poking fun at her cousin and was always ready to do her famous imitation of the first lady, an amusing one that even Eleanor, herself, could laugh at. It was Mrs. L. who facilitated the affair between FDR and
Lucy Page Mercer.
As many obvious differences that there may have been between Alice and Eleanor, there were many similarities.
*Both born in 1884.
*They led highly unconventional and controversial lives.
*Each had deeply insecure personalities.
*They were envious of one another.
*Both were orphaned or semi-orphaned before age ten.
*Both had very unstable childhoods.
*Both adored their fathers.
*Both were married to cheating men.
*Both were unfaithful in her marriage.
*Each were extremely unattentive as mothers.
*Both were highly competitive by nature.
*Both thrived on attention.
*Each were unskilled mothers.
*Doting grandmothers.
*Both were banned from the
White House due to disparaging remarks made on its occupants.
*Both adored
Theodore Roosevelt.
*Each were notorious for holding grudges and being vindictive.
*Known for their famous witticisms.
*Both were conditioned to favor
African-Americans, something very unusual during their lifetime.
*Was the
Grande Dame of her respective party until her death.
*Preferred to be called by the first letter of their last name: "Mrs. R." and "Mrs. L."
*Interestingly, both women's husbands were with other women they had affairs with at the time of their deaths.
*Strangely, both women died on a
Wednesday.While they had quite similar origins, it would be how they dealt with these origins that would be so different. Alice's effect on Washington politics was as an insider, uncomfortable with dealing with the public, while her cousin Eleanor was able to rise above childhood insecurity to become an outspoken public advocate for her various public cause including
civil rights and the
United Nations to which she would become the first American delegate.
When Franklin was elected president, Alice loved to joke about it. She said that the pastor at Franklin's church was so thrilled that he put up a sign that read, "The president's church," adding that an anonymous person put up a smaller sign beneath it that read, "formerly God's." Later, Alice was asked what she thought of her cousin
FDR being elected to a third term in office and Mrs. L commented, "I'd rather vote for
Hitler than to vote for
Franklin one more time." This comment deeply offended Mr. Roosevelt and Alice was banned from the
White House for the remainder of their tenure. To this day, Alice remains the person who was most banned from the White House in its history, but only partly because of the ban from her cousins.
On a train ride, Alice informed Eleanor that "No matter how much our politics may differ, there is still a tribal feeling between us." Both Alice and Eleanor agreed that the media often played up the tension between them two. Alice was also quick to come to Eleanor's defense. Once when a reporter was about to recite
Edith Roosevelt's much quoted ugly duckling line, Alice sharply reprimanded him, saying that Eleanor had turned into, "Not a swan, something much better than a swan!"
On the death of
Paulina Sturm, Eleanor sent Alice some spring flowers and an endearing letter. Alice, so heartbroken about Paulina's death took five months to send a response to Eleanor. In her reply, Alice demanded that Eleanor visit her in
Washington and that she meet her younger first cousin twice removed,
Joanna Sturm. This was a request that Eleanor made good upon, though still intimidated by Alice. Alice was among the mourners at Eleanor's funeral in
Hyde Park in November 1962.
Alice continued to remember her cousin and close friend, Eleanor Roosevelt long after Eleanor's death. In moments of senility, Mrs. Longworth would sometimes ask spontaneously, "Where's Eleanor, what's Eleanor doing?"
Alice was a lifelong
Republican, like her father. This changed when she became close to the Kennedy family and Lyndon Johnson, voting Democratic in 1964 and in the 1968 Democratic primary for Bobby Kennedy. After Bobby was murdered, she supported
Richard Nixon. Her friendship ended when Nixon quoted her father's diary at his resignation, saying "Only if you've been to the lowest valley can you know how great it is to be on the highest mountain top," and other things TR said when Alice's mother died. At this point, Nixon infuriated Alice, who literally spat curse words at her television screen as she watched him compare his loss - due to criminal behavior- to her young father's loss of her mother and grandmother on the same day due to illness.
She remained cordial with Nixon's successor,
Gerald Ford, but a minor lack of social grace on the part of
Jimmy Carter caused her to decline to ever meet the last sitting president in her lifetime.
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Alice christening the sub named after her father, the USS Theodore Roosevelt in 1969 |
In 1965, as her chauffeur and one of her best friends, Turner, was driving Mrs. L. to an appointment, he pulled out in front of a
taxi causing the driver to get out and ask the chaffeur,"What do you think you're doing you black son of a bitch?" Although the driver took the insult calmly, Mrs. L. did not and told the taxi driver, "He's taking me to my destination, you white son of a bitch!"
In 1958, Mrs. L. was found to be suffering from
breast cancer and successfully underwent a
mastectomy and was again later found to have cancer that required a second mastectomy. Taking the medical procedures in stride, she referred to herself as the only "topless octogenarian" in Washington. After these surgeries, Mrs. L.'s health was not as strong as it once had been but she continued a rigorous schedule and maintained her social rounds. After many years of ill health, Alice finally died in her Embassy Row home in 1980 of
emphysema,
pneumonia,
cardiac arrest and a number of other extended illnesses at the age of 96. Alice Roosevelt Longworth is buried in
Rock Creek Cemetery,
Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C.
When the last one of the Rahl children was born in Hale, Michigan in 1906, Jennie,the oldest child, insisted she be named Alice Roosevelt Rahl, because she was born on the same day the President's daughter was married.
Of her quotable quotes, her most famous found its way to a pillow on her settee: "If you haven't anything nice to say, come sit by me." To Senator
Joseph McCarthy she stated that the garbage men, taxi drivers and street sweepers in her neighborhood could call her by her first name, but that he could not. She also informed President
Lyndon B. Johnson that she wore wide brim hats so he couldn't kiss her. When a well-known Washington senator was discovered to have been having an affair with a young woman less than half his age, Mrs. Longworth quipped, "You can't make a soufflé rise twice."
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Alice Lee Roosevelt Mother
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Theodore Roosevelt Alice's Father
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Edith Carow Roosevelt Alice's Step-mother
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Nicholas Longworth Alice's Husband
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Eleanor Roosevelt Alice's cousin and friend
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Paulina Longworth Alice's Daughter
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Joanna Sturm Alice's Grand Daughter and companion
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Martha Roosevelt Grandmother
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Bamie Roosevelt - Auntie Bye, Theodore's talented sister and stability figure in Alice's life
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Washington Legal Foundation - the organization that occupies the former Longworth site in Washington, DC.
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New York Times Book Review of "Conversations with Mrs. L" in August 1981*
Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt: Alice Roosevelt Longworth*
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