town called alice
Or, handbag snakes, black magic, and other fun times with Alice Roosevelt.
Hello, friends!
I’ve had this dirtbag on my list for many months now and have just not gotten around to writing her profile yet for some reason. If she knew I’d been running this newsletter for almost three years and hadn’t covered her yet, she’d be royally pissed at me, and I shudder to think of the scathing one-liner she would leak in the press about me. So it’s high time to give the queen her due:
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, The Chaos Nepo Baby America Deserved
Alice Roosevelt was born in 1884 to then-New York State Congressman Theodore Roosevelt and his wife, also named Alice. The story starts off as a real bummer, unfortunately: both Mama Alice and Theodore Roosevelt’s mother died within 48 hours of Alice being born.
This—as I’m sure you can imagine—was not ideal for Theodore Roosevelt’s ability to be a good, well-adjusted parent. He left Baby Alice to be raised by his sister Anna and then went off on his own doing his own Teddy Roosevelt thing, by which I mean roughriding, Battle of San Juan Hill, soft speaking, big stick, etc.
(This is not a Teddy Roosevelt-themed newsletter. 10th grade US History was a long time ago.)
Roosevelt got remarried to Edith Kermit Carow after a few years and brought Baby Alice back home to be raised by her new stepmother. Edith, Teddy, and Alice fought all the time as she got older, which I can’t really blame her for. If you dropped me off at a relative’s house for three years, got remarried to Kermit the Frog, and refused to call me by my name because it reminded you of your dead first wife, I would also probably be sorta hard to handle about it.
In Which I’m Not Exactly Suggesting Theodore Roosevelt Was a Secret Assassin, But
Alice’s father was becoming more and more important in American politics, becoming appointed replacement vice president to William McKinley in March 1901 after the previous vice president dropped dead of a heart attack. Then, President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in September 1901, as famously reported in the Stephen Sondheim musical Assassins.
It didn’t occur to me until writing this newsletter that maybe Theodore Roosevelt was hiring a bunch of anarchist assassins to dismantle the American government so he could become the least-elected president of all time. No reputable historian has ever proposed this, but as with Bess of Hardwick’s increasingly rich and incredibly dead four husbands, all I’m saying is, it makes me wonder.
Anyway. The White House was in shambles, and Alice Roosevelt, being a 17-year-old teenage dirtbag, was stoked as shit about it. She described her father’s inauguration as an event of “sheer rapture,” which does seem like a funny way to describe the sudden death of both the president and the vice president within like six months, but then, look at her hats. Does she seem like the kind of girl who’s going to take advice from the PR team and give a dignified statement?
Emily Spinach Goes to Washington
Alice and her five half-siblings all moved into the White House, and as her father’s two-and-a-half presidential terms went on, she settled into her two-and-a-half terms of being America’s chaos child. Hence the famous quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “I can either run the country or I can control Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.”
I know we fought a whole war to not have a monarchy in America, whatever. Alice Roosevelt is my queen. Between 1901 and 1909, Alice was in the press basically all the time for one wacky out-of-pocket life decision after the next, and I’m here for it. I am forced to provide her antics in thematically grouped lists, because there are so many of them I can’t just rattle them off the way I usually do.
Weird Antics Part A: White House Black Magic
She had a pet snake, named Emily Spinach, which she brought with her everywhere in her handbag.
She used to sneak out at night and smoke cigarettes on the roof of the White House.
She hid tacks on the chairs of Congressmen she didn’t like and then when they yelled in pain she pointedly averted her eyes, like a Gilded Age Three Stooges sketch.
She drag raced in a White House car up and down the streets of Washington.
Did I mention the snake’s name was EMILY SPINACH.
She showed up at parties during Prohibition with tiny bottles of liquor hidden inside her elbow-length gloves.
She got banned from the White House twice: once for actively trying to put a black-magic hex on Woodrow Wilson, and once for burying a voodoo doll of William Howard Taft’s wife Nellie in the front yard.
Weird Antics Part B: Becoming the World’s Problem
She crossed the country on a boxcar train and shot off fireworks from the caboose, firing her pistol at telephone poles like some kind of 1906 lady Western star.
She jumped off a boat into a swimming pool while fully dressed during a diplomatic trip to Japan.
She used to call the tabloid press and give them tips about what scandalous thing she was gonna do next, so she could get the cash reward for the “anonymous tip.”
The newspapers reported that she held an orgy with hundreds of guests and danced naked on the table in front of the whole crowd, which wasn’t true but the fact that someone thought it could have been tells you everything.
Weird Antics Part C: Royal Dirtbag Wedding
She got married to Congressman Nicholas Longworth III on the White House lawn, invited thousands of people to the wedding, and cut the wedding cake with a sword.
When she went wedding dress shopping in New York, it caused such a scene that riots broke out and the police had to get involved.
Americans were so excited about her wedding that they sent gifts to the White House, including—apparently—huge quantities of turnips?
In order to be sure that nobody could copy the pattern of her wedding dress, she had all the seamstresses burn the looms used to make the weave.
LOOK AT HER GODDAMN TIARA. SHE DESERVES IT.
Real Housewives of the Sixty-Second US Congress
The Roosevelts left the White House in 1909, and Alice and her husband Nicholas carried on going to high-society parties, drinking too much, and gradually learning to resent each other. Both Longworth and Alice had billions of affairs, and when Alice gave birth to her only daughter Paulina in 1925, literally everybody knew that it was her lover Senator William Borah’s child, not Longworth’s.
We do not do political scandals like this anymore, goddammit. George Santos was finally bringing this unhinged energy back to the Congressional floor and we got rid of him. I want a President’s Daughter/Senator/Congressman/Congressman’s Mistress love child romantic quadrilateral scandal on the front page of every newspaper in America and I don’t feel like I’m asking for too much
Things got so tense between husband and wife that in Longworth’s 1912 re-election campaign, Alice was out on the campaign trail actively supporting the opposing party. Longworth lost the election by just 105 votes, and Alice gleefully told the press “I was responsible for at least 100.”
My good bitch, this is the level of pettiness I hope we all aspire to.
Big Hat Messy Bitch Society
After that, the life of Alice Roosevelt Longworth is sort of a series of tragedies and dirtbaggy sidetrips, which I both hate and love for her. Her husband died in 1931, and her lover passed away in 1940. Alice’s daughter Paulina tragically died of an overdose in 1957, and Alice stepped in to raise her granddaughter. I have no doubt he was the most badass grandma of the 20th century.
Alice remained active in politics for the rest of her life, by which I mean she made friends with presidents, kept making sure she was invited to the best parties, and incessantly talked shit about Eleanor Roosevelt, including doing mean impressions of her at parties. She was BFFs with Richard Nixon, which is the only part of her story that I do not love.
Alice’s story ends by her becoming my favorite kind of historical figure of all time: the sassy nonagenarian who sashayed around town wearing big hats and talking shit about people.
Until her death in 1980 at the age of 96, she was the same incredible cross between Andy Cohen, Kim Kardashian, and Dorothy Parker that she’d been at 17. Into her old age, she was cross-stitching bitchy sayings onto pillows, like “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then come sit by me.”
This line from her obituary really sums her up for me:
The biggest criticism leveled at Mrs. Longworth by many, including members of her family, was that such a keen mind was never put to anything useful, that she lived a totally self-centered pleasure-bent noncontributing life. Such criticism never bothered Mrs. Longworth.
“You say ‘totally self-centered pleasure-bent noncontributing life” like it’s a bad thing,’ this bitch said to the Washington Post.
Rest in peace, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. You are a legend whose nonsense we should all aspire to.
That’s all for this week, my friends. Until next time, be well, and if your pet has a name half as incredible as Emily Spinach please let me know in the comments because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since the moment I learned it,
-Allison
Fantastic. She sounds like quite the character, but perhaps a woman best appreciated at a distance. And she's be easy to spot in those hats.
Random pet name stories.
Years ago I was living at a hostel for Catholic students and I had a cat called Satan. Our chaplain, a priest whose sense of humour came with a healthy disrespect for Church authority (his favourite movie was Life of Brian) , was quite fond of the cat and could be heard calling "here, Satan, here puss puss".
I later had a cat called Hades. He ended up adopting a kitten who utterly worshipped him and used to sleep cuddled up beside him. Kitten got named Faust.
I think this might your best Dirtbag yet. I knew that Alice was a little crazy, but I had no idea it was this glorious. She seems like she would have been great to party with but a headache if you were involved with her in any serious way. I imagine her entering a room like a hurricane, causing as much chaos as possible and then sitting back and enjoying it. Thank you so much Allison for the little pieces of joy you deliver to my inbox, I look forward to reading them every time.