The Story of Alice Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt's "Wild Child"

(Image credit: Frances Benjamin Johnston/Wikimedia Commons)

Generally, we would expect the children of a renowned political figure to be prim, proper, and all in all, an upstanding individual. But that was not the case with Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.

She was described by her father as a "wild animal that had been put into good clothes". She smoked in public, even on the roof of the White House. She drank and swore like a sailor. She danced with all sorts of men, which at the time, was considered scandalous since women only did that with their fiancé. And she slept with many different men as well.

She was definitely uncontrollable, as her father once quipped, "I can either run the country or attend to Alice, I cannot possibly do both." It was said that in the span of 15 months, she had attended 407 dinners, 350 balls, and 300 parties. She brought a pet snake named Emily Spinach, wrapped around her arm, to those parties.

When she was only two days old, her mother Alice Lee and her grandmother, Teddy Roosevelt's mother, died on the same day. It crushed Teddy Roosevelt, who left Alice to the care of his older sister, Bamie. Later on, Teddy would marry his childhood sweetheart Edith Carow. But he was distant toward Alice and would often ignore her, because she reminded him of her mother.

It's no wonder why Alice turned out the way she did. She grew up without a mother, a guilt-ridden neglectful father, and a cold stepmother. Her life had been miserable from the day she was born. But instead of wallowing in her own misery and misfortune, she took the reins on her own life, and broke every convention in society at the time. So, despite her antics, through her wit and humor, she won the hearts of the American people.

This is the story of Alice Lee Roosevelt.