The River of Doubt by Candice Millard - Anchor Books (2005)
Of the forty-three presidents of the United States, we most easily recall those who proved themselves adept at flitting between the public and private spheres of their lives. The men who float to the surface of our murky historical bog—Abraham Lincoln, George Washington,Thomas Jefferson—could more accurately be described as sets of conjoined twins that diverge like two sides of a single coin. The mythical public personas overshadow and outlive the enigmatic private individuals. Thomas-Jefferson-the-flawed-mortal-man is incinerated by the blinding brilliance of Thomas-Jefferson-the-‘Yeoman-Farmer.’ Despite the controversy surrounding his election, Andrew Jackson resides in our collective memory as a war hero, an unflinching democrat, and a true ‘man of the people.’ The most successful American presidents burst through their physical limitations to become immortal concepts—theories of governance containing inherent values and alterations of the American Dream. Hence, we are left with ‘Jeffersonian’ democracy—rooted in the agrarian ideal of a new Eden—or ‘Jacksonian’ democracy—personified in the figure of an aggressive, renegade outlaw. In times of peace and war we can resurrect our former leaders by dusting off the mythical reductions of personality which result from the merging of a person and an idea. It is significant, that despite the cool objectivity championed by democratic ideals, our early Heads of State articulated their thoughts—and themselves—in the bombastic rhetoric of myth and providence. In the twenty-first century, it can be easy to undervalue the importance of terms like ‘Manifest Destiny,’ ‘Chosen People,’ and ‘Garden of the World.’ But in the early days of American Independence, when large parts of the New World remained enticingly ‘unclaimed,’ the figureheads of American democracy were as much characters and allegories as they were real men. With every presidential election, the citizens of the embryonic nation redefined what it meant to be an ‘American Man.’ Theodore Roosevelt was no exception.
In her bestselling biography The River of Doubt, Candice Millard does not attempt to gloss over Roosevelt’s life and distill his explosive personality from a handful of sporadic policy decisions. Instead, she takes a single journey and magnifies every detail to emphasize the correlation between Roosevelt’s public persona and his private ambitions. In the process, Millard portrays Roosevelt as perhaps the most honest and unaffected American president of his time. As he hacks his way through the strangling vines of South America, Roosevelt comes to occupy his own mythical shoes. He is not just a wealthy, soft-bellied politician who dons the guise of a cowboy to strut across the American stage. He does not purchase his masculine bravado. I will be the first to admit that I approached Millard’s remarkable account with the expectation that Roosevelt would be carried through the South American jungle on the backs of native Amazonians. I opened this book with the jaded pessimism of one who assumed Roosevelt’s earlier African safari involved a lot of careful corralling and pre-tranquilized prey. In fact, Millard’s meticulous documentation suggests that Roosevelt’s most debilitating insecurity was that his genuine interests and concerns would be seen as fake and ephemeral. By the author’s account, Roosevelt was actually more masculine and adventurous than his showy Rough Rider persona. Roosevelt was afraid that if he didn’t prove—beyond a doubt—that he was a true American hero, he would become an American joke. Writes Millard,
Though he had done great things during his two presidential terms—from negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War to making possible the construction of the Panama Canal—Roosevelt felt that he had not had an opportunity for greatness. ‘Of course a man has to take advantage of his opportunities, but the opportunities have to come,’ he told an audience in Cambridge, England, in the spring of 1910.
Roosevelt was born into New York high society. A sickly, feeble child, he could have easily spent his life in drawing rooms and social clubs, polishing elbows with the Manhattan elite and stuffing his park-side apartment with priceless works of art. From a young age, Roosevelt scorned this comfortable, effeminate lifestyle in favor of ‘strenuous activity.’ According to Millard,
Perhaps even more striking than the peaks and valleys of Roosevelt’s life was the clear relationship between those extremes—the ex-president’s habit of seeking solace from heartbreak and frustration by striking out on even more difficult and unfamiliar terrain, and finding redemption by pushing himself to his outermost limits. When confronted with sadness or setbacks that were beyond his power to overcome, Roosevelt instinctively sought out still greater tests, losing himself in punishing physical hardship and danger.
This form of self-flagellation will be familiar to any modern adrenaline-junkie. Following his embarrassing electoral defeat in 1912, Roosevelt was in desperate need of a harrowing adventure. When Father John Augustine Zahm—an ambitious priest with somewhat contradictory theological and scientific interests—suggested an exploration of the Amazon river basin, the former president must have felt the irresistible pull of destiny. The proposed expedition had all the ingredients to satisfy Roosevelt’s appetite. The ex-president had long been fascinated by the natural world and had himself contributed a sizable collection of plants and animals to the American Museum of Natural History. As the Age of Exploration came to a close, Roosevelt was also anxious to see his name stamped on the map of the world—to infiltrate and lay claim to an ‘undiscovered’ swath of land. He knew that if he were able to successfully navigate an unexplored tributary of the Amazon, he could cement his legacy in historical records and botanical encyclopedias alike. There was also the strategic position of South America to consider, and Roosevelt’s controversial dealings in Panama had already committed him to a lifelong pursuit of commercial and political alliances with America’s Southern neighbors. And then there was the mystery and the danger and the exotic thrill of the Amazon, where petty grievances and political humiliation could be forgotten in the endless fight for survival. When describing the deadly allure of the Amazon, Millard uses a vocabulary that clarifies Roosevelt’s fascination,
Far from its outward appearance, the rain forest was not a garden of easy abundance, but precisely the opposite. Its quiet, shaded halls of leafy opulence were not a sanctuary but, rather, the greatest natural battlefield anywhere on the planet, hosting an unremitting and remorseless fight for survival that occupied every single one of its inhabitants, every minute of every day. Though frequently impossible for a casual observer to discern, every inch of space was alive—from the black, teeming soil under Roosevelt’s boots to the top of the canopy far above his head—and everything was connected. A long, linked mat of fungi under the soil consumed the dead and fed the living, completing an ever-changing cycle of remarkable life and commonplace death which had throbbed without pause for millions of years—and of which Roosevelt and his men, knowingly or not, had now become a part.
For reclusive readers like myself, whose idea of ‘adventure’ involves trying a new flavor of tea, this fertile scene is the stuff of nightmares. But for a restless man whose personal ambitions were frequently frustrated by condescending politicians and endless governmental debates, this was the perfect opportunity to show the world that he possessed ‘true grit’—that he was a real macho cowboy and not just another frivolous pawn in American politics. For a man who unapologetically itched for war, who fantasized about his accomplishments in the hyperbolic language of myth and legend, the Amazon would be the setting of his crowning achievement. The place where he would become something more than a man. The place where ‘Rooseveltian’ democracy would be born and immortalized. To conquer the River of Doubt—a geographical feature whose very name hung heavy with mystique—would be to redeem an embarrassed and emasculated president confronting the insecurities of middle-age.
Millard’s depiction of the Amazon rain forest is wonderfully anthropomorphized. The Amazon is a living, breathing adversary bent on breaking and consuming its human invaders. Although the forest appears to Roosevelt’s team to be eerily empty, it is in fact covered by camouflaged masters of trickery and deceit. Almost as impressive as her nuanced portrayal of Roosevelt and his men is Millard’s sweeping panorama of jungle life. A large section of The River of Doubt is taken up by a detailed description of the incredible array of environmental adaptations on display in the Amazon. From a caterpillar whose markings make it appear exactly like the triangular head of a deadly viper, to the three-toed sloth whose branch-gripping claws are so specialized that the females cannot pick up their young, the Amazon provides an incomparable lesson in natural selection. In this section, Millard makes the most of her background as a writer and editor for National Geographic. In just one of an endless strain of fascinating paragraphs she writes,
Rarely in the rain forest do animals or insects allow themselves to be seen, and any that do generally do so with ulterior motives. In a world of endless, life-or-death competition, the need to hide from potential predators and deceive sophisticated prey is a fundamental requirement of longevity, and it has produced a staggering range of specialized attributes and behavior aimed at manipulating—or erasing entirely—any visible form that an enemy or victim might see. So refined is the specialization of life in the rain forest that every inch of the jungle, and each part of the cycle of day and night, has plant, animal, and insect specialists that have adapted to exploit the unique appearance-altering potential it offers.
Perhaps the most touching—and rehabilitating—chapter of Millard’s account is the one in which Roosevelt realizes he will likely die on the banks of the Amazon. Racked by malaria and dysentery, with an infection in his leg and supplies dangerously low, Roosevelt finally proves himself to be the hero of his imagination. He does not break down and reveal an internal coward. He does not insist on special treatment. Faced with almost inevitable death, Roosevelt does not cast aside his cowboy persona. At the crucial moment, Roosevelt refuses to be just another malleable political puppet—an aristocrat wearing the costume of a common man. In typical cinematic fashion, he resolved to ‘leave [his] bones in South America.’
Lying on his small, rusted cot, the injured ex-president talked about the dangers that they faced with or without their canoes. Then, without a trace of self-pity or fear, Roosevelt informed his friend and his son of the conclusions he had reached. ‘Boys, I realize that some of us are not going to finish this journey…you can get out. I will stop here.’
When Theodore Roosevelt eventually emerged from the jungle, he was a wasted version of his former self. He returned to the United States triumphant—having accomplished his goal to navigate the River of Doubt and make his contribution to the Age of Exploration—but he never regained his strength and his health deteriorated quickly. Although many Americans found his story too incredible to believe, those who travelled alongside him were adamant that his narrative was accurate. Moreover, they persistently claimed that the ex-president was every bit the hero he strove to emulate. Through scrupulous research, and by drawing from the personal accounts of multiple members of the expedition including Roosevelt himself, Candice Millard confirms that Theodore Roosevelt was a rare exception to the presidential rule. In The River of Doubt, man and myth are arguably indistinguishable, and the real Roosevelt outshines his idealized public persona.
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