Our heroine ended the year 1915 and began 1916 with a heavy heart. “This has been one of the most terrible years the world has ever seen, both for trouble around the world with disaster and for private sorrows.” Kate Roosevelt had just attended a lecture at the Colony Club that brought to light the tragic effect the war in Europe was having on families. She noted in her diary that there were more than 2,000 children in France left fatherless. To add to the tally of children in the world left fatherless in 1915, there were two little boys in New York City who were near and dear to her. Shippen and Langdon Geer, Jr. had recently lost their father in his own battle with a deadly blood infection.
Dorothy Roosevelt Geer
Her daughter Dorothy Roosevelt Geer’s husband, Langdon had passed away in June, leaving her a young widow and never having the opportunity to welcome his second son into the world.
Edward Shippen Geer
Edward Shippen Geer was born in the Fall of 1915. Losing spouses at a young age seemed to run the Roosevelt family. Kate Roosevelt was widowed in 1886 when her husband, the great organ-inventor Hilborne died of a lung infection just three years after their wedding and two years after his daughter, Dorothy was born.
Alice Lee Roosevelt
Cousin Theodore Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice Lee died of Bright’s Disease just days after giving birth to baby Alice and the future president of the United States noted in his diary that the light had gone out of his life.
Letters from Sagamore Hill
So it was not surprising to learn that when thirty year-old Dorothy met the same fate, Cousin Teddy picked up a pen and in true Roosevelt rigor, urged her to be strong for the sake of the “children born and unborn.”
The home front at the Roosevelt-Geer household was an uncertain and sad one on the eve of 1916 and so was that of the country’s. War was in the air in the form of German planes flying over France and England. Although America had not been affected by the war on her own shores, citizens had an inkling of what was on the horizon, a wave coming from Europe that was soon to sweep over the country and the well-read Kate Roosevelt was ready to ride it out.
From here on in, her diary was filled with clippings and photos of war-torn Europe and knowledgeable comments on the leadership of all countries involved, especially those at the helm in the United States.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
In the first week of January, 1916 she wrote, “Senator Henry Cabot Lodge urges private sea-faring vessels be armed for defense.” He would be proven right in the upcoming year with the tragic sinking of the passenger ship the Lusitaniaby a German U-Boat. Given his gift of foretelling the future and his history with the Roosevelt Family I was quite sure that whatever the senator said was as good as gold as far as Kate was concerned. Lodge graduated from Harvard with Theodore Roosevelt and was a fixture at many a family function. In the book, Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Michael Teague, Roosevelt’s daughter said, “Cabot Lodge loomed large in our lives. I remember him from earliest childhood. We used to call him “Pinky” and he had a charming wife called Nanny. Cabot always had a slight feline quality. He purred with just the faintest suspicion of a snarl. And he had a quality of detached intellectual superiority, which some found disconcerting. The Boston Brahmin bit. He came from people who had read books for generations and he was hideously aware of it. He was the type of person who knew exactly what to laugh at and what not to. Spontaneity was not one of his virtues.” Sounds like he fit right in with some of the more the restrained Roosevelts. Born without the gene of quiet restraint, Alice Roosevelt, did not exactly fit the bill, nor did her cousin Kate Roosevelt whose cutting comments were many times off- the -cuff and more than spontaneous.
President Woodrow Wilson
A strong advocate of the United States entering World War One, the senator from Massachusetts was at the same time an ardent and outspoken opponent of President Woodrow Wilson. Henry Cabot Lodge let his guard down when he confided his innermost feelings to long-time friend, Theodore Roosevelt, “I never expected to hate anyone in politics as much as I hate Woodrow Wilson.”
A Fokker Airship
Whatever Henry Cabot Lodge’s opinion of the president, things were escalating in Europe. According to Kate Roosevelt’s diary “The war in the heavens is over the French Front. A Fokker Plane was wrecked and a German Zeppelin was brought down in a fight with a French `aero plane’ near Alsace.”
Scene of Zeppelin Crash, France, 1916
Looking up the term Fokker I found out that it was an armed, synchronized plane used by the Imperial German Flying Corps that unfortunately held tactical advantage over the poorly-armed allied aircraft. By the end of 1915 there were fifteen Zeppelins in commission.
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Developed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in hopes to sell it to the German Army, Zeppelins formed the world’s first airline, German Airship Transportation Company.
Dorothy Roosevelt Geer
Battles overseas and personal struggles for Dorothy Roosevelt Geer were the topics of Kate Roosevelt’s diary as the new year began. “The baby, Shippen is back with his mother, but he disturbed her very much!” I was wondering where the infant had been banished to, but the next day I was relieved to find him safe and sound, tucked into his nursery watched over lovingly by Emily, his baby nurse with three year-old Langdon “sleeping in his own single room” just down the hall.
I couldn’t help but wonder who I felt more sorry for, the 2,000 little ones left fatherless in France or the two little boys in New York City left to be raised by their young widowed mother, Dorothy Roosevelt Geer and their grandmother, the demanding Dowager, Kate Shippen Roosevelt.
Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears every Thursday.
Photo One:
Langdon and Shippen Geer with their cousins, the Steinways at Long Pond
Photo courtesy: Sam Chapin
Photo Two:
Dorothy Roosevelt Geer
courtesy: Noel Siefert
Photo Three:
Edward Shippen Geer
courtesy: Sam Chapin
Photo Four:
Alice Lee Roosevelt, Theodore’s first wife
Library of Congress
Photo Five:
Letters from Sagamore Hill
courtesy: Noel Siefert
Photo Six:
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
by John Singer Sargent
National Portrait Gallery
Photo Seven:
President Woodrow Wilson
Library of Congress
Photo Eight:
A Fokker Airship
wiki
Photo Nine:
Scene of Zeppelin Crash, France, 1916
wiki
Photo Ten:
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Photo Eleven:
Dorothy Roosevelt Geer
courtesy Noel Siefert
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