Of all Roosevelt's admirers, perhaps the person most closely attached to the collection was Miss Nora E. Chordingly, its custodian from 1927 until her death three years ago. Miss Cordingly revered Roosevelt's memory and was eager to help anyone interested in him. She was also quick to defend him. Once John Mason Brown, drama critic for the New York Evening Post, wrote an article which seemed to Miss Cordingly to imply she took as an insult to Roosevelt, wore a wig. Stung by what she took as an insult to Roosevelt, she wrote Brown, demanding that he name his authority. Brown diplomatically suggested that her interpretation had been mistaken, explaining that he had been referring to a wig once worn by Ed Wynn in impersonating Roosevelt. In closing, he chided her gently for her mistake.
College Relations Stormy
If his public life was far from calm, his undergraduate career was at least as filled with contention. In his relations with Harvard, he seemed incapable of remaining in the background. From the time he first came to college in 1876, he assumed an immediate and intense dislike for President Eliot, and he vigorously attacked Eliot's revolutionary innovation, the elective system. Roosevelt really did not try to attract attention, but his red whiskers and eccentric manners marked him for Cambridge notoriety.
In the classroom he was an enthusiastic, if sometimes overbearing, student. He sinned in the eyes of his classmates by taking to great an interest in his instructor's words, and often compounded the in by taking issue with them, which "seemed barbaric to young men who considered college mere exposure to thought, and who had no serious apprehension of contaminations," as a biographer explained.
In his major, this habit was particularly pronounced. Once, when Roosevelt had been overly enthusiastic, Professor Nathaniel S. Shaler '62, exclaimed, "See here, Roosevelt, let me talk, I'm running this Course."
Also, his interest in studies declined in direct proportion to his attraction toward a comely young girl named Alice Hathaway Lee, of Chestnut Hill, Mass. He finally married her, but not until she had inadvertently caused the Procellian Club no little embarrassment.
First Lady in Pore
It was Roosevelt's doing, rather than hers, that Miss Lee has the distinction of being the first woman over admitted into the Porcellian clubhouse. The incident, which almost cost Roosevelt his membership, came after a walk through the Yard in the spring of 1879. Halfway through the Yard, Roosevelt noticed it was time for lunch, and promptly took her to the club, where, amidst scandalized whispers, they had luncheon.
Roosevelt had no official connection with the University for the next 15 years, but in 1895, he was prominent enough as a Police Commissioner of New York City to be named to the Board of Overseers. Even then, his interest could not be called intense. He once described his first meeting to a friend, "I felt like a bull dog who had strayed into a symposium of perfectly clean, white Persian cats."
Almost Harvard's President
The University began to occupy his mind, however, as his presidential term was running out in 1908. While he prepared to leave the Presidency, Roosevelt began to look around for an occupation suited to the dignity of an ex-President. He did not want to serve as a figurehead for some corporation, not did he particularly wish to make a living writing, although he was soon to classify himself, as a "semi-retired literary gentleman." President Eliot had resigned on October 26, 1908 and the Corporation was shopping around for a successor to Eliot. Roosevelt's name received immediate consideration. Many of the Faculty, especially William James were eager to pick Roosevelt, but most of the alumni, basically conservative, opposed him. Henry Lee Higgenson expressed their common opinion when he said. "We need a man of Judgement, and is judgement over to be found coupled with tusch enormous energy?" Roosevelt was eliminated, and Lowell selected. During the rest of his life, Roosevelt retained only a perfunctory interest in his duties as an alumnus.
Roosevelt's life was so varied and his interest so extensive that the associations was faced with a tremendous task in recording it with Justices. There were no precedents for Miss Cordingly, the custodian, to follow in her attempts to arrange the huge mass of material in some sort of order. As a result of the detailed minute in the library, the cataloguing system was both individualistic and complicated. Miss Cordingly's death left the library personnel confused as to the library's details, partly because the catalogue had become somewhat disorganized in its move from New York, partly because of its individualistic nature.
Library Problems
The library now finds itself with a custodian with undefined functions books that are beginning to show signs of wear, and--because of its continued increase in size--a collection that has overflowed the space originally assigned it. For this reason, the library staff has had to resort to expedients in handling the collection. Maintenance as a separate library-within-a-library has proved inefficient, but the association has successfully opposed any effort to integrate the collection with the rest of the American History holdings, and led by Hagedorn, has campaigned for a separate library similar to Widener's Classics Library.
Open conflict has so far been avoided because the University has made no attempt to revise the collection or its handling. President necessities, however, point toward some sort of integration in the near future it the collection is to fulfill its pledge to be available "for scholarly research by sincerely interested persons."