chapter 1

Loss of Imperial Will

Equipped with unobscured intent

He smiles with lions at the gate,

Acknowledging the compliment

Like one familiar with his fate.

the kiss that theodore roosevelt longed for did not materialize when he stepped ashore in Khartoum on 14 March 1910. Instead, he had to return the salute of Sir Rudolf Anton Karl von Slatin Pasha, G.C.V.O., K.C.M.G., C.B., inspector-general of the Sudan, and pass an honor guard of askaris into the palace garden, where the elite of Anglo-Sudanese society awaited him amid the silver paraphernalia of afternoon tea. He was informed that Edith's train from Cairo was delayed, and that she and Ethel would not arrive for another couple of hours. In the meantime, Slatin would not hear of the Colonel checking in to a hotel. A suite for his party had been readied in the palace, and a private yacht was standing by for sightseeing during his stay.

What Roosevelt wanted to see, more than anything but Edith's face, was Omdurman. The battlefield, where General Kitchener's Twenty-first Lancers had staged the last great cavalry charge of the nineteenth century, lay only ten miles away. Kitchener had been on his mind in recent days, if only because HMS Dal, the boat that had brought him north from Gondokoro, had been the triumphant commander's flagship. On its boards, twelve years before, Kitchener had proclaimed British control over the entire Nile Valley, from Uganda to the Mediterranean.

The success of that dominion-or condominium, as the Foreign Office called it, as a sop to Sudanese, Egyptian, and Turkish sensibilities- was palpable in Khartoum's tranquil, orange-blossom-scented air. Rebuilt by Kitchener from the ruins o...