‘One of the most notable books of the end of the century’

When Theodore Roosevelt read Charles Pearson's National Life and Character, in early 1894, he was enjoying life. Working for the Civil Service Commission in Washington, he was proud of American progress and confident about the nation's future prospects, lavishly depicted at White City, the great World Exhibition in Chicago, which he had visited just the year before – ‘the most beautiful architectural exhibit the world has ever seen’, he wrote to his literary friend, James Brander Matthews.

When not at the office, Roosevelt spent time reading, riding, rowing on the river, romping with his children, taking tea, playing tennis and attending dinner parties. He enjoyed a close circle of friends. ‘Cabot and I ride together when we get a chance’, he wrote to his sister Anna at the beginning of 1893, ‘and this morning Willie Phillips joined me in taking the children for a wild scramble’. William Hallett Phillips shared Roosevelt's interest in conservation and was instrumental in the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, while Henry Cabot Lodge, newly elected Republican Senator for Massachusetts, had been Roosevelt's intimate since Harvard College days.

Like Roosevelt, Lodge was a bookish aristocrat, who had taken up boxing, riding and hunting to develop his courage and physique.