Nicholas Longworth

Longworth was the son of Nicholas Longworth II and Susan Walker. The Longworth family was an old, prominent, and wealthy family which dominated Cincinnati, Ohio. He had two younger sisters, Anna and Clara. Nicholas Longworth II was the son of Joseph Longworth and grandson of winemaker Nicholas Longworth I, both distinguished citizens of Cincinnati. Nicholas Longworth III attended the Franklin School, a school for boys in Cincinnati, and then went on to attend Harvard College (Class of 1891), where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Alpha chapter) and the Porcellian Club. He was a talented, but not necessarily an industrious student; one friend wrote about him: "His good head made it easy for him to get perfectly respectable marks without doing much of any work." After receiving his bachelor's degree from Harvard, he attended Harvard Law School for one year, but transferred to and received his law degree from Cincinnati Law School in 1894. Longworth was a violinist, and on their first visit to Bayreuth, his wife Alice Lee Roosevelt reported that "Nick was really a musician and cared deeply for music...." Later she observed that "In Washington, Nick never had much time to play his violin, and in those days there were very few people to play with him. In Cincinnati there were the orchestra, the College of Music, and the Conservatory to draw on, and soon we were having musical parties, at least once, and often two or three times a week. ... We would all have dinner first, the musicians and a few others who cared for music, and afterwards lose no time getting started, by about nine at the latest. From then on music and yet more music until midnight and usually long after." In a letter to Longworth's sister Clara, Leopold Stokowski wrote "Your brother had a rare understanding of music. He penetrated directly into the spirit of music. It was his natural element." ==Professional life and entry into politics==

seated outside the United States Capitol while watching a performance by Arizonan Native Americans, 1926. Representative Charles Manly Stedman and presents a congressional birthday cake with eighty-five candles along with fellow congressmen in front of the United States Capitol, January 30, 1926. between the Democratic and Republican teams of the House of Representatives at Griffith Stadium, Mrs. Longworth seated below, May 3, 1928. Charles Francis Adams III on the White House lawn, June 27, 1929. Longworth began a law practice in Cincinnati after being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1894. His political career began with a position on the city's Board of Education in 1898. As the protégé of Republican boss George B. Cox, Longworth was elected to the Ohio General Assembly, serving in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1899 and 1900, then in the State Senate from 1901 to 1903. In 1902 he was instrumental in writing and passing the Longworth Act, a bill regulating the issuance of municipal bonds, which has been labeled "one of the most successful laws in Ohio's history." Longworth was elected to the United States House of Representatives from the First Congressional District of Ohio which included the city of Cincinnati and the surrounding counties. Longworth, a bachelor when he entered Congress, married Alice Lee Roosevelt, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, on February 17, 1906, in a White House wedding that received widespread public attention In 1925, Roosevelt gave birth to a daughter named Paulina Longworth, who was conceived from her affair with Senator William Borah. One family friend said of Paulina, "everybody called her 'Aurora Borah Alice. Biographers and historians have concluded that though Longworth was delighted with Paulina's birth and doted on her, he almost certainly knew that Borah was her father. Longworth also had affairs, but the couple remained married, though Alice's support for the progressive movement while Longworth sided with the conservative wing of the Republican Party caused a political rift between them. Throughout his political career, Longworth championed issues regarding foreign affairs and the protective tariff. As the progressive Republicans pulled apart from the conservatives in 1910–12, Longworth sided with the conservatives. When they bolted from the party in the 1912 election to support Theodore Roosevelt and establish their own party, Longworth, along with many of Roosevelt's closest political allies, remained firmly behind Republican standard-bearer President William Howard Taft. Longworth agreed more with Taft than Roosevelt on critical issues like an independent judiciary and support for business. As a result of the Republican Party rift, Longworth and his wife Alice found themselves on opposite sides of the divide in the fall campaign. She actively supported her father's third-party presidential candidacy, even though her husband was running for reelection on the Republican ticket. ==Majority leader and Speaker of the House==

Longworth returned to Congress in 1915, after defeating Bowdle in an election rematch, and served until his death in 1931. He became House Majority Leader in 1923, and rose to speaker in 1925, ==Final days and death==

Longworth served as speaker until the end of the 71st Congress on March 4, 1931, and was speaker-presumptive for the upcoming 72nd Congress at the time of his death (as he had won reelection in November 1930 and as at the time Republicans retained a narrow 3-seat House majority). He died unexpectedly from pneumonia on April 9 while visiting his friend Dwight Filley Davis (of Davis Cup fame), and Daniel J. Duckett in Aiken, South Carolina. His body was subsequently interred at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. At a memorial service held at the Library of Congress on May 3, 1931, his old friends Efrem Zimbalist and Harold Bauer played Brahms's D minor sonata. ==Character==

Donald C. Bacon described Longworth as "Debonair and aristocratic, given to wearing spats and carrying a gold-headed cane. He was perpetually cheerful, quick with a joke or witty retort, and unfailingly friendly. He seemed never to have a care and made hard decisions with such ease and detachment that some people wondered if anything at all really mattered to him." One particular famous retort is attributed to Longworth. One day, while he was lounging in a chair at the Capitol, another member of the House ran his hand over Longworth's bald pate and commented, "Nice and smooth. Feels just like my wife's bottom." Longworth felt his own head and said: "Yes, so it does." Journalist Frank R. Kent of The Baltimore Sun wrote of him: ==See also==