Good Reads:Mornings on Horseback 1 '09

I have just finished reading Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough.  It’s a remarkable book about the youth of Theodore Roosevelt and the family and friends who shaped his character.  It is about 400 pages long plus another 100 + pages of prologue and Footnotes It gives a fascinating insight into the lifestyle and mores of wealthy Victorians.

It begins in a time before telephones and radios or TV.  People of means would spend their evening reading, and socializing with one another.  They were prolific letter writers, and were constantly dashing off pages to their friends and relatives about almost every positive detail of their lives.  Even children as young as five or six regularly wrote letters.  The tone of these letters is one of constant love and optimism.  People openly wrote of their affection for one another in long flowery passages which would seem infantile and gushy by today’s standards.   Nor is there ever a hint of any strong negative feelings the writer might be having.  They might, for example, express concern that someone was ill, but would never express their prolonged grief or despair over a loved one one’s death, or a relatives decline into alcoholism.  Nor would they ever mention negative happening like the loss of a fortune.  Life it seems was to be appreciated for the goodness and joy it brought.  Any other aspect one was simply supposed to put up and shut up about. 

The amazing thing is how many of these letters have been preserved.   (Most of the text for this book was drawn from letters written by the family to one another).   When one considers that a letter might be handed off to a passing stranger who would volunteer to take it to a town 70 miles away, or that it might take two to three months to be delivered if the recipient was traveling, it is amazing some of the letters ever reached their destination, much less were kept and preserved intact for us to read.   If I have learned anything from this book it is the power of the positive influence that family members can have on future generation if they take the time to communicate with them.

About eighteen years old Theodore Roosevelt (top left) with brother Elliott, sister Corinne and family friend Edith (who would later become his second wife).