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because he was so much in love with her.
    Lovestruck
    Alice was also responsible to some degree for his diminished interest in ornithology. TR wrote a letter in 1879 to his close friend and Harvard classmate Henry Davis Minot to tell him about his new romance and that he had not done any collecting of specimens to think of that year. That was a startling admission from TR, who had been addicted to natural history since his very young days. And he did things that were out of the ordinary even for him.
    TR attended club meetings rarely after he met Alice. Occasionally, he took her with him. At one Hasty Pudding gathering he pointed Alice out to a group of people and vowed that he was going to marry her, even though, he said, “She won’t have me.”
    He turned the staid old Porcellian Club on its ears when he ushered Alice in for lunch. That was reportedly the first time any member had brought a woman into the club.

According to historian David McCullough, Henry Davis Minot was TR’s only close friend at Harvard. (See McCullough’s book, Mornings on Horseback.) Minot dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year, ostensibly due to a nervous breakdown, but actually because of the lack of morality he perceived in the student body. He became a railroad executive and died in a train wreck on November 14, 1890, at age thirty-one.
    It was unorthodox, but TR specialized in doing things that had never been done. Red tape, bureaucracy, tradition, anti-female rules … nothing stood in the way of love—or much of anything else—as far as TR was concerned. When he wanted something, he went after it. He kept up the pursuit; she continued to put him off.
    Love Grows
    In June 1879, TR proposed to Alice. She procrastinated for months. Finally, at the beginning of 1880, she agreed to marry him. He spent February 13, 1880, with the Lee family at their home in Chestnut Hill. The next day the couple announced their engagement.
    A July 4, 1880, entry in TR’s diary showed that his love was growing day by day. He wrote, “Not one thing is ever hidden between us. No matter how long I live I know my love for her will only grow deeper and tenderer day by day; and she always will be mistress over all that I have.”
    TR returned to Cambridge to announce their engagement. One of the first people TR told was Henry Minot.
    He sent a letter to his old friend and asked him to keep the engagement secret—which TR could not do himself. He said, “I write to you to announce my engagement to Miss Alice Lee; but do not speak of it till Monday. I have been in love with her for nearly two years now, and have made everything subordinate to winning her; so you can perhaps understand a change in my ideas as regards science, etc.” He could not wait for the wedding.

First Marriage
    The wedding day finally arrived. TR and Alice Hathaway Lee were married either at the Unitarian Church in Brookline, Massachusetts, or at the Lee’s home, depending on conflicting historical accounts. In any case, they married on October 27, 1880—his twenty-second birthday.
    Among the guests was TR’s childhood friend Edith Carow, who would also attend his second wedding a few years later—as his second wife.
    TR’s wedding to Alice was the greatest birthday present he could have received, but the joy was short lived. The happy couple moved to New York City to take up residence as he started his career. They lived happily there—but not forever after. It started well, however.

The conflict in the wedding site is indicative of the reportage of many of the events in TR’s life: different people saw and/or heard events differently, remember different dates, etc. That is true of historical events in general—and explains why there may be a few differences in facts between this book and other sources.
    A Short Honeymoon
    Alice and TR spent their first night together in Springfield, Massachusetts, then honeymooned for two weeks at the Roosevelt home at Oyster Bay, Long