KERMIT’S BROODING temperament and early taste for alcohol were character traits that Roosevelt had seen in his only brother, Elliott, who had died at the age of thirty-four from complications related to alcoholism and morphine addiction. In childhood, Elliott had been as charming and lighthearted as his older brother had been awkward and serious. He had been the stronger, taller, more athletic of the two Roosevelt boys, but as he had approached adolescence, Elliott had begun to lose his footing, developing, as one biographer put it, “an inclination toward poetic introspection” and a desire for
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