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Title: Anglo-American Memories

Author: George W. Smalley

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[Illustration: George Smalley]




  ANGLO-AMERICAN
  MEMORIES

  BY

  GEORGE W. SMALLEY, M.A.

  AUTHOR OF "STUDIES OF MEN,"
  "LIFE OF SIR SYDNEY WATERLOW," ETC.



  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1911




  Copyright, 1911
  BY
  GEORGE W. SMALLEY



  The Knickerbocker Press, New York




PREFACE

These Memories were written in the first instance for Americans and
have appeared week by week each Sunday in the _New York Tribune_.
This may be evident enough from the way in which some subjects are
dealt with.  But they must stand in great part as they were written
since the book is published both in London and New York.

They are, in some slight degree, autobiographical, but only so far as
is necessary to explain my relations with those men and women of whom
I have written, or with the great journal, the _New York Tribune_, I
so long served.  But they are mainly concerned with men of
exceptional mark and position in America and Europe whom I have met,
and with events of which I had some personal knowledge.  There is no
attempt at a consecutive story.

LONDON, December, 1910.




Contents


CHAPTER I

New England in 1850--Daniel Webster


CHAPTER II

Massachusetts Puritanism--The Yale Class of 1853


CHAPTER III

Yale Professors--Harvard Law School


CHAPTER IV

How Massachusetts in 1854 Surrendered the Fugitive Slave Anthony Burns


CHAPTER V

The American Defoe, Richard Henry Dana, Jr


CHAPTER VI

A Visit to Ralph Waldo Emerson


CHAPTER VII

Emerson in England--English Traits--Emerson and Matthew Arnold


CHAPTER VIII

A Group of Boston Lawyers--Mr. Olney and Venezuela


CHAPTER IX

Wendell Phillips


CHAPTER X

Wendell Phillips and the Boston Mobs


CHAPTER XI

Wendell Phillips--Governor Andrew--Phillips's Conversion


CHAPTER XII

William Lloyd Garrison--A Critical View


CHAPTER XIII

Charles Sumner--A Private View


CHAPTER XIV

Experiences as Journalist during the Civil War


CHAPTER XV

Civil War--General McClellan--General Hooker


CHAPTER XVI

Civil War--Personal Incidents at Antietam


CHAPTER XVII

A Fragment of Unwritten Military History


CHAPTER XVIII

The New York Draft Riots in 1863--Notes on Journalism


CHAPTER XIX

How The Prussians after Sadowa Came Home to Berlin


CHAPTER XX

A Talk with Count Bismarck in 1866


CHAPTER XXI

American Diplomacy in England


CHAPTER XXII

Two Unaccredited Ambassadors


CHAPTER XXIII

Some Account of a Revolution in International Journalism


CHAPTER XXIV

Holt White's Story of Sedan and How it Reached the "New York Tribune"


CHAPTER XXV

Great Examples of War Correspondence


CHAPTER XXVI

A Parenthesis


CHAPTER XXVII

"Civil War?"--Incidents in the 'Eighties--Sir George Trevelyan--Lord
Barrymore


CHAPTER XXVIII

Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Alaska Boundary


CHAPTER XXIX

Annexing Canada--Lady Aberdeen--Lady Minto


CHAPTER XXX

Two Governors-General, Lord Minto and Lord Grey


CHAPTER XXXI

Lord Kitchener--Personal Traits and Incidents


CHAPTER XXXII

Sir George Lewis--King's Solicitor and Friend--A Social Force


CHAPTER XXXIII

Mr. Mills--A Personal Appreciation and a Few Anecdotes


CHAPTER XXXIV

Lord Randolph Churchill--Being Mostly Personal Impressions


CHAPTER XXXV

Lord Glenesk and "The Morning Post"


CHAPTER XXXVI

Queen Victoria at Balmoral--King Edward at Dunrobin--Admiral Sir
Hedworth Lambton--Other Anecdotes


CHAPTER XXXVII

Famous Englishmen Not in Politics


CHAPTER XXXVIII

Lord St. Helier--American and English Methods--Mr. Benjamin


CHAPTER XXXIX

Mrs. Jeune, Lady Jeune, and Lady St. Helier


CHAPTER XL

Lord and Lady Arthur Russell and the "Salon" in England


CHAPTER XLI

The Archbishop of Canterbury--Queen Alexandra


CHAPTER XLII

A Scottish Legend


CHAPTER XLIII

A Personal Reminiscence of the Late Emperor Frederick


CHAPTER XLIV

I. Edward the Seventh as Prince of Wales--Personal Incidents

II. Prince of Wales and King of England--The Personal Side

III. As King--Some Personal and Social Incidents and Impressions


Index




ANGLO-AMERICAN MEMORIES




{1}

ANGLO-AMERICAN MEMORIES



CHAPTER I

NEW ENGLAND IN 1850--DANIEL WEBSTER

My memories begin with that New England of fifty years ago and more
which has pretty well passed out of existence.  I knew all or nearly
all the men who made that generation famous: Everett; Charles Sumner,
"the whitest soul I ever knew," said Emerson; Wendell Phillips;
Garrison; Andrew, the greatest of the great "War Governors"; Emerson;
Wendell Holmes; Theodore Parker; Lowell, and many more; and of all I
shall presently have something to say.  Earlier than any of them
comes the Reverend Dr. Emmons, a forgotten name, for a long time
pastor of the little church in the little town of Franklin, where I
was born, in Norfolk County, in that State of Massachusetts on which
Daniel Webster pronounced the only possible eulogy: "I shall enter on
no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none.  There she is.
Behold her, and judge for yourselves.  {2} There is her history; the
world knows it by heart."  Whether the world knows it by heart may be
a question.  We are perhaps a little too apt to assume that things
American loom as large to other eyes as to our own.  But whether the
world knows Massachusetts by heart or not, we know it; and the rest
does not much matter.  Every son of hers will add for himself "God
bless her."

Dr. Emmons was of the austere school of Calvinists, descending more
directly from the still more austere school of Jonathan Edwards.  I
cannot have been more than three or four years old when I last saw
him, but I see him still: tall, slight, bent, wasted; long grey locks
floating loosely about his head; his face the face of an ascetic, yet
kindly, and I still feel the gentle touch of the old man's hand as it
rested on my baby head.  And I see the imprint of his venerable feet,
which it was his habit to rest on the painted wainscotting of his
small, scantily furnished study.

My father was first his colleague, then his successor; then was
called, as the phrase is, to the Second Congregational Church in
Worcester; whence he passed many years later to the First
Presbyterian Church in Troy, N.Y., where he died.  Worcester was at
that time--1840 to 1860--a charming example of the thriving New
England village which had grown to be a town with pleasant, quiet
streets--even Main Street, its chief thoroughfare, was quiet--and
pleasant houses of colonial and later styles standing in pleasant
grounds.  A beautiful simplicity of life {3} prevailed, and a high
standard; without pretence, not without dignity.  The town had given,
and was to give, not a few Governors to the Commonwealth: Governor
Lincoln, Governor Davis ("Honest John"), another Lieutenant-Governor
Davis, and two Governor Washburns: to the first of whom we lived next
door in Pearl Street; in the shadow of the Episcopal Church of which
the Rev. Dr. Huntington, translated afterward to Grace Church in New
York and widely known, was rector.  Later I read law for a year in
the office of Governor Washburn's partner: afterward that Senator
Hoar who in learning and capacity stood second to few in Washington,
and in character to none.

Twenty years ago, my mind filled with these images of almost rural
charm, I went back on a visit to Worcester.  It had grown to be a
city of near one hundred thousand people, and unrecognizable.  The
charm had vanished.  The roar of traffic was to be heard everywhere;
surface cars raced through the streets; blazing gilt signs with
strange and often foreign names emblazoned on them in gigantic
letters, plastering and half hiding the fronts of the buildings;
mostly new.  It might have been a section of New York--at any rate it
was given over to the fierce competition of business.  Of the
tranquillity which once brooded over the town, no trace was left.  I
suppose it all means prosperity, in which I rejoice; but it was not
my Worcester.

If it be still, as we used affectionately to call it, the Heart of
the Commonwealth, then I suppose {4} the Commonwealth also has
changed; for better or for worse, according to your point of view.
Boston certainly has changed, and as certainly for the worse.  Where
is the old Boston we all loved?  What has become of those historic
streets which the great men of more than one great generation trod?
Where is the dignity, the quaint, old-fashioned beauty, the stamp of
distinction, the leisureliness of life, the atmosphere which Winthrop
and Endicott, John Hancock and Otis, Everett and Andrew, once
breathed?  The only Boston they knew is to-day a city of tumult and
uproar, amid which the State House and the Common and the Old South
Church and State Street itself seem anachronisms and untimely
survivals of other and holier days.

In the old Worcester--and, for aught I know, in the new--far up on
Elm Street as it climbs the hill and pushes toward the open country,
stood Governor Lincoln's house--square, white, well back from the
street; a fence enclosing the broad lawn, steps and an arched iron
gateway in the centre.  To me ever memorable because there I first
saw Daniel Webster.  He had come to Worcester campaigning for Taylor,
whose nomination for the Presidency, over his own head, he had at
first declared "unfit to be made."  He arrived in the dusk of
evening, and drove in Governor Lincoln's open landau to the house.  A
multitude waiting to greet him filled the street.  Webster descended
from the carriage, went up the three steps from the sidewalk to the
gateway, {5} turned, and faced the cheering crowd.  The rays from the
lighted lantern in the centre of the arch fell full on his face.  I
do not remember whether I thought then, but I have often thought
since of what Emerson said:

"If Webster were revealed to me on a dark night by a flash of
lightning, I should be at a loss to know whether an angel or a demon
stood before me."

That night, at any rate, there was a touch of the demon.  His
advocacy of the successful soldier was an act of renunciation.  The
leadership of the Whig party belonged to him and not to Zachary
Taylor; or if not to Webster, it belonged to Henry Clay.  He had not
forgiven his successful soldier-rival.  He never forgave him.  Nor
could he all at once put to sleep for another four years his
honourable ambition.  His eyes blazed with a fire not all celestial.
The grave aspect of the man and grave courtesy of his greeting to the
people before him only half hid the resentment which fed their inward
fire.  But he stood a pillar of state--

  ... deep on his front engraven
  Deliberation sat and public care.


A colossal figure.  We boys in Massachusetts were all brought up to
worship Webster, and worship him we did; till the Fall came, and the
seventh of March speech turned reverence into righteous wrath.

{6}

There was a certain likeness in feature between Mr. Webster and Mr.
Gladstone.  The eyes in both were dark, deep set, and wide apart,
beneath heavily overhanging brows.  In both the flame was volcanic.
The features in both were chiselled strongly, the lines clear cut,
the contour of the face and the air of command much the same in the
great American and the great Englishman; but Mr. Gladstone had,
before the political disasters of his later years had angered him, a
benignity which Webster lacked.  In stature, in massiveness of frame,
in presence, in that power which springs from repose and from the
forces of reserve, there was no comparison.  Webster had all this,
and Gladstone had not.  I have before me as I write a private
photograph of Mr. Gladstone, from the camera of a lady who had
something more than technical skill, who had a sympathetic insight
into character and an art-sense.  Among the hundreds of photographs
of the Tory-Liberal, the Protectionist-Free Trader, the
Imperialist-Home Ruler, this is the finest and truest I have seen.
But it is one which brings out his unlikeness to Webster far more
clearly than those resemblances I have noted.  If those resemblances
have not before been remarked, there are, I imagine, few men living
who have seen both men in the full splendour of their heroic mould.

The records of those later days are full not only of admiring
friendship for Webster, but also of that bitterness which his
apostasy--for so we thought it--begot.  Even friends turned against
{7} him after his support of the Fugitive Slave Law.  As for his
enemies, there was no limit to their language.  A single unpublished
incident will show what the feeling was.  At a meeting of the
Abolitionists in the Boston Melodeon, Charles Lenox Remond, a negro,
in the course of a diatribe against the white race, called Washington
a scoundrel.  Wendell Phillips, who was on the platform, intervened:

"No, Charles, don't say that.  Don't call Washington a scoundrel.
The great Virginian held slaves, but he was a great Virginian still,
and a great American.  It is not a fit word to use.  It is not
descriptive.

"Besides, if you call Washington a scoundrel, how are you going to
describe Webster?"

Besides, again, the Fugitive Slave Law wrought the redemption of
Massachusetts; and we owe that redemption to Webster, indirectly.  It
was the rendition of Anthony Burns, in 1854, two years after
Webster's death, which completed the conversion of the Bay State from
the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery faith.  But what I can tell of
the unwritten history of those black days must be for another time.

Whatever Webster's faults, and whatever resentment he aroused in
1850, he remained, and will long remain, the foremost citizen of
Massachusetts in that generation.  Go to his opponents if you want
testimony for that.  Ask Wendell Phillips, and he answers in one of
his finest sentences, pouring scorn on the men who took up, {8} so
late as 1861, Webster's mission to crush anti-slavery agitation:


    It was Webster who announced from the steps of the Revere House
    that he would put down this agitation.  The great statesman,
    discredited and defeated, sleeps at Marshfield by the solemn
    waves of the Atlantic.  _Contempsi Catiline gladios; non tuos
    pertimescam_.  The half-omnipotence of Webster we defied; who
    heeds this pedlar's empty speech?


Ask Theodore Parker, who delivered in the Music Hall of Boston a
discourse on Webster's death; half-invective, more than
half-panegyric, whether he would or no.  It was, I think, Parker who
said of him that four American masterpieces in four different kinds
were Webster's.  The ablest argument ever heard in the Supreme Court
of the United States, that in the Dartmouth College case, was his.
His was the noblest platform speech of his time at the dedication of
Bunker Hill Monument.  His the most persuasive address to an American
jury, in the White murder case at Salem, with its tremendous epigram,
"There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is
confession."  His, finally, the profoundest exposition of
constitutional law, the reply to Hayne in the United States Senate.
All these were Webster's, and to Webster alone could any such tribute
be paid.

When I heard Webster in Faneuil Hall, where he was perhaps at his
best and most at home, it seemed to me it mattered little what he
said.  {9} The authority of the man was what told.  Before he had
uttered a word he had possession of the minds of the three thousand
people who stood--for we were all standing--waiting for the words we
knew would be words of wisdom.

Twice I have seen a similar effect by very different artists.  Once
by Rachel at the Boston Theatre, as Camille in Corneille's _Horace_,
when the mere apparition of that white-robed figure and the first
rays from those deep-burning eyes laid a spell on the audience.  Not
once, but many times, by Aimée Declée, at the Princess's Theatre in
London and at the Gymnase in Paris.  Of her I shall have something to
say by and by, but I name her now because she had that rarest of
gifts, the power of gathering an audience into her two small hands
while still, silent and motionless; and thereafter never letting them
go.  In her it was perhaps a magnetic force of emotion, for she was
the greatest of emotional actresses.  In Webster it was the
domination of an irresistible personality, with an unmatched
intellectual supremacy, and the prestige of an unequalled career.

Whatever it was, we all bowed to it.  We were there to take orders
from him, to think his thoughts, to do as he would have us.  He might
have talked nonsense.  We should not have thought it was nonsense.
He might have reversed his policy.  We should have held him
consistent.  We should have followed him, believing the road was the
same we had always travelled together.  He was still the man whom
Massachusetts delighted to {10} honour.  The forces of the whole
State were at his disposal, as they had been for thirty years.

He stood upon the platform an august, a majestic figure, from which
the blue coat and buff trousers and the glitter of gilt buttons did
not detract.  Once, and only once, have I found myself under the sway
of an individuality more masterful than Webster's, much later in
life, so that the test was more decisive; but it was not Mr.
Gladstone's.




{11}

CHAPTER II

MASSACHUSETTS PURITANISM--THE YALE CLASS OF 1853

Massachusetts was in those days, that is, in the middle of the last
century, in the bonds of that inherited and unrelaxing Puritanism
which was her strength and her weakness.  Darwin had not spoken.  The
effort to reconcile science and theology--not religion--had only
begun.  Agassiz's was still the voice most trusted, and he, with all
his scientific genius and knowledge, was on the side of the angels.
The demand for evidence had not yet overcome the assertion of
ecclesiastical authority in matters of belief.  The spiritual
ascendancy of the New England minister was little, if at all,
impaired, and his political ascendancy had still to be reckoned with.
There were, I suppose, no two places in the world so much under the
dominion of one form or another of priestly rule as the six New
England States and Scotland; and therefore no two between which
spiritual and political resemblances were so close.

There were, however, influences which while less visible were
sometimes more potent.  The pastor was the figurehead of a
Congregational Church; or, to use Phillips's simile, he was the {12}
walking-beam which the observer might think the propelling force of
the steamboat.  "But," said Phillips, "there's always a fanatic down
in the hold, feeding the fires."  The fanatics were the deacons.
They often had in them the spirit of persecution.  They encroached
upon, and sometimes usurped, the rightful authority of the true head
of the Church, the pastor, in matters of faith and matters of conduct
alike.  They constituted themselves the guardians of the morals of
the flock, the pastor and his family included.  My father was a man
whose mind ran strongly toward Liberalism.  He had nothing of the
inquisitor about him.  But his deacons were possessed with a
school-mastering demon.  They had the vigilance of the detective
policeman and a deep sense of responsibility to their Creator for the
behaviour of their fellow-men.  Good and conscientious citizens all
of them, but indisposed to believe that men who held other opinions
than theirs might also be good.  Their individual consciences were to
be the guide of life to the rest of the world.  If they had not the
ferocity of Mucklewraith they had his intolerance.  They would have
made absence from divine service a statutory offence, as the earlier
Puritans did.  Two services each Sunday, a Sunday-school in between,
and prayer-meetings on Wednesdays--all these must be punctually
attended by us children, and were.

When a decision had to be taken about my going to college, I wished
to be sent to Harvard, {13} as every Massachusetts boy naturally
would.  But Harvard was a Unitarian college, and the deacons
persuaded my father that the welfare of my immortal soul would be
imperilled if I was taught Greek and Latin by professors who did not
believe in a Trinitarian God.  This spirit of theological
partisanship prevailed and I was sent to Yale.  At that admirable
seat of learning there was no danger of laxity or heresy.  The
strictest Presbyterianism was taught relentlessly and the strictest
discipline enforced.  Chapel morning and evening, three or perhaps
four services on Sunday--in all let us say some eighteen separate
compulsory attendances on religious exercises each week.  Would it be
wonderful if a boy who had undergone all this for four years should
consider that he had earned the right to relaxation in after days?

None the less willingly do I acknowledge my debt to Yale, a debt
which would have been heavier had I been more industrious.  The
President of the University in our time was the Reverend Dr.
Wolseley--learned, austere, kindly, but remote.  We boys saw little
of him except on a pedestal or in the pulpit.  When he bade the class
farewell, he made us a friendly little speech and proposed a toast:
"The Class of 1853.  I drink their healths in water.  May their names
not be writ in water."  Nor were they.  Perhaps no class contained so
many members who have filled larger spaces for a longer time in the
public eye and the public press.

{14}

There was Stedman, the poet and poet critic.  He left poems which
will live forever, but no such body of poetical achievement as he
might have produced had not circumstances obliged him to devote to
business and to editorial work abilities superior to either.  He is
not remembered pre-eminently as a poet of patriotism, but the only
poem of Stedman's included in Emerson's Parnassus is his "John Brown
of Osawatomie," written--was it not for _The Tribune_?--in November,
1859, while Brown lay in his Virginian jail waiting to be hanged.
Stedman, his genius flowering in a prophetic insight, warned them;
but his "Virginians, don't do it" rang unavailingly through the land;
and his

        ...Old Brown,
        Osawatomie Brown,
  May trouble you more than ever when you've nailed
            his coffin down

never reached the Virginian mind till Northern regiments sang their
way through Southern States to the tune of "John Brown's Body."
Stedman's range was wide.  He set perhaps most value on his _Lyrics
and Idylls_.  That was the title he gave to the volume of poems
published in London in 1879; selected by himself for his English
readers.  His American friends will like to be reminded that the
first third of the volume is given to "American Lyrics and Idylls,"
including "Old Brown," and that tender monody on Horace {15} Greeley
which no _Tribune_ reader can have forgotten.

There was Charlton Lewis, an Admirable Crichton in his
versatility,--if the serious meaning of that name has survived Mr.
Barrie's travesty of it on the stage.  We knew him at Yale as a
mathematician who played with the toughest problems proposed to us by
mathematical tutors and professors; whose very names I forget.  We
knew him afterward as lawyer, insurance expert, Latin lexicographer,
journalist, financier, and editor of _Harper's Book of Facts_, the
best of all books of facts; but now, or when I last inquired, out of
print and not easily procurable.  He understood cards also.  Playing
whist, which I think was forbidden in college, he dealt to his
partner and two adversaries the usual miscellaneous hand; and to
himself, by way of jest, all thirteen trumps.  When the enemy
remonstrated Lewis answered: "If you will specify any other order in
which it is mathematically more probable that the hands would be
distributed, I will admit that this is not the product of chance."
An answer to which there was no answer.  He delighted in puzzling
minds less acute and less scientific than his own.  Few men have had
a more serviceable brain than his, or known better how to use it; and
his power of work knew no limit.

There was Mr. Justice Shiras of the United States Supreme Court.
There was Fred Davies, a dignitary of the Church--in whom
professional decorum never extinguished a natural sense of {16} fun
and good-fellowship.  There was, and happily still is, Andrew White,
historian, writer of books, President of Cornell University,
Ambassador, and, in a forgetful moment, one of President Cleveland's
commission to determine the boundary line between a British colony
and a foreign state; neither of whom had asked him to draw it.  There
was Isaac Bromley, one of the world's jesters who make life amusing
to everybody but themselves; whom all his colleagues on _The Tribune_
valued for qualities which were his own and not ours.  Not the least
of the many eulogies which death brought him was the testimony of
those who knew him best, that his humour was good-humoured.

The most casual reader must have noticed how various are the talents
and characters among the hundred and six graduates of 1853.  There
are many more.  There is Wayne MacVeagh, the most delightful of
companions, counsel in great causes all his life, Attorney-General of
the United States, Ambassador to Rome, one of the men who paid least
respect to social conventionalities, yet in Washington a central
figure in society.  But neither law nor society gave full scope for
the restless energy of his mind.  During all the later years I have
known MacVeagh he has been a thinker, serious, daring, too often
unsound.  His reading has been largely among books dealing with those
new social problems which vex the minds of men, often needlessly, and
disturb clear brains.  Novelties interested him; and the drift of his
thoughts was toward radical reconstruction {17} and toward one form
or another of socialism.  He espoused new opinions with vehemence;
and sometimes reverted with vehemence to the old.  We met again in
London some five and twenty years ago.  MacVeagh delivered to a
little company at lunch a brief but reasoned and rather passionate
discourse against our diplomatic service in Europe.  When I suggested
that we had none, he retorted:

"But we have Ministers and Legations and though some of our Ministers
are good and able men, they are wasted.  No Minister is needed.  All
the business of the United States in Europe could be done and ought
to be done by Consuls, and all the Legations ought to be abolished,
and the Ministers recalled."

I forget just how long it was after this outburst that MacVeagh was
appointed Minister to Constantinople; and accepted and served; with
credit and distinction, and afterward more efficiently still as
Ambassador to Rome.

He had a pretty wit in conversation, and a power of repartee before
which many an antagonist went down.  A celebrated American _causeur_
once attacked him as a Democrat.  "Yes," answered MacVeagh, "I am a
Democrat and know it.  You are a Democrat and don't know it.  You
have just been made President of a great railroad corporation.  The
stock sells to-day at a hundred and twenty; but before you have been
President three years, you will have brought it within reach of the
humblest citizen."

{18}

An unfulfilled prophecy, but that is what makes prophecy so useful as
an instrument of debate.  Only time can prove it false.

These men and many more gave distinction to the class.  Randall
Gibson, of Louisiana, afterward Confederate General and United States
Senator, cannot be omitted from the briefest catalogue.  He was one
of a small band of Southerners at Yale.  When you came to know him
you understood what the South means by the word gentleman; and by its
application of the title to the best of its own people, or to the
ruling class in the South as a whole.  Already, of course, and even
in this younger brood, the clash of interests and sentiments, the
"prologue to the omen coming on," the strained relations between
South and North, were visible, and vexatious enough in social
intercourse.  Randall Gibson was saturated with Southern ideas, and
perhaps had the prejudices of his race, but he kept them to himself
or did not impart them to us of the North.  He lived in the upper
air, yet he looked down on nobody.  There was no more popular man,
yet no man who held himself so completely aloof from the
familiarities common enough as between classmates.

In after life, from the havoc of war and other causes, he suffered
much and bore disaster with courage.  He was a man with reference to
whom it is possible, and was always possible, to use the much-abused
word chivalrous, with the certainty it could not be misunderstood.
When he died {19} there passed away a beautiful example of a type
common in literature, rare in life, rarest of all in this generation,
the grand seigneur.

There was lately an Englishman, Earl Spencer, whom Randall Gibson
resembled: slightly in appearance, closely in those essential traits
which go to the making of character.  The same urbanity; the same
considerateness to others; the same loyalty of nature; the same
shining courage; the same unfailing effort to conform to high ideals.
Both men had the pride of race and of descent.  In both it turned to
fine effects.  I have known Lord Spencer to submit--I may be forgiven
this distant allusion--to what can only be called an extortion rather
than engage in a legal controversy he thought undignified, yet out of
which he would have come victorious.  I have known Randall Gibson to
accept the verdict of fate, the award of undeserved adversity, rather
than defend himself when his success might have exposed his comrades
to censure.  The world may call it in both of them quixotic, but the
world would be a much better place to live in if quixotry of this
sort were commoner than it is.  Neither of these two men railed
against the world, or complained of its ethical standard.  All they
did was to have each a standard of his own and to govern their own
lives accordingly.




{20}

CHAPTER III

YALE PROFESSORS--HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

The three Yale professors whose names after all these years stand out
most clearly to me are Thacher, Hadley, and Porter.  Professor
Thacher taught Latin.  They used to say he knew Tacitus by
heart--perhaps only a boyish emphasis upon his knowledge of the
language and literature.  He was, at any rate, a good Latinist, and a
good teacher.  What was perhaps more rare, he was a genial companion,
to whom the distance between professor and pupil was not impassable.
He won our sympathies because he gave us his; and our admiration, and
almost our affection, went with our sympathies.  He was one of the
few college dignitaries upon whom the student feels himself
privileged to look back as a friend; for on his side the spirit of
friendly kindness governed the relations between us.

Of Professor Hadley's Hellenism we expressed our admiration by saying
he dreamed in Greek.  To us, so long as we were in his hands, Greek
was the language of the gods.  The modern heresies touching the place
of Greek in a liberal education had at that time not been heard of,
or had taken no hold upon the minds of either teacher or pupil.  {21}
We learnt Greek, so far as we learnt it, in the same unquestioning
spirit as we read the Bible; so far as we read it.  Hadley taught us
something more than grammar and prosody.  He taught us to look at the
world through Greek eyes and to think Greek thoughts.  To him the
Greek language and literature were not dead but alive, and he sought
to make them live again in his pupils.  I don't say that he always
succeeded; or often, but at least we perceived his aim, and we
listened with delight to the roll of Homer's hexameters from his
flexible lips.  For the time being he was a Greek.  To this illusion
his dark eyes and olive skin and the soft full tones of his voice
contributed.  Some of his enthusiasms, if not much of his learning,
imparted themselves to us.  If we presently forgot what we learned,
the influence remained.  "I do not ask," said Sainte-Beuve, "that a
man shall know Latin or Greek.  All I ask is that he shall have known
it."  A sentence in which there is a whole philosophy of education; a
philosophy which the universities that have abolished Greek out of
their compulsory courses forgot to take into account.

Professor Porter's mission was to implant in our young minds some
conception of Moral Philosophy and of Rhetoric.  He taught
persuasively, sometimes eloquently, and always with a clearness of
thought and purpose which made him intelligible to the dullest and
instructive.  He had another means of appeal to his students.  He was
human and sympathetic.  We looked {22} upon our professors as, for
the most part, beings far removed from us; exalted by their position
and virtues above us, and above mankind in general; a sort of
demigods who had descended to earth for the good of its inhabitants,
to whom, however, they were not of kin.  We never thought that of
Professor Porter.  He had a magical smile; it was the magic of
kindness.  We fancied that the Faculty dealt with the students in a
spirit of strict justice; from their point of view if not always from
ours.  They were a High Court of Justice which laid down the law and
enforced penalties out of proportion to the offence.  It was law, and
the administration of it was inexorable.  Not so Porter.  He was
never a hanging judge.  I know it because I owed to him the privilege
of remaining at Yale to the end of my four years.  I have quite
forgotten what crime I committed, but it was one for which, according
to the strict code by which the undergraduates were governed,
expulsion was the proper sentence; or perhaps only suspension, which
in my case would have meant the same thing.  But Professor Porter
intervened.  There were mitigating circumstances.  These he pressed
upon his colleagues, and I believe he even made himself answerable
for my good behaviour thereafter.  I stayed on, and if I did not
profit as I ought to have profited by the opportunity I owed to him,
I was at least grateful to him, and still am.

Professor Porter became later President of Yale: one on the roll of
Chief Magistrates of the {23} University to whom not Yale only but
the country is, and for two hundred years has been, indebted.  He
ruled wisely, fine administrative qualities reinforcing his scholarly
distinction.  He was beloved, and his name is for ever a part of the
history of this great college.

Looking back on those days and on the Professors I have known since,
at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and one or two other American
universities, one thing impresses me beyond all others.  It is the
spirit of devotion in those men; of devotion to learning, to letters,
to their colleges, and to their country.  Many of them were, and many
in these days are, men who had before them other and far more
profitable careers.  They might have won much wider fame and made a
great deal more money.  They have been content with the appreciation
of their own world, and with salaries which, I believe, never exceed
six thousand dollars, and are commonly much less.  When English
critics, albeit in a friendly spirit, have commented--in private, not
in public--on the American love of money-making, I have made this
answer, pointing to the absolute unselfishness of one of the highest
types of American citizen, all over the land, and to their conception
of what is best in American life.  I have always added that though
others may speak of their renunciation as a sacrifice, they never do.
So far as I know them, they are content and more than content; they
rejoice in their work and in the modest circumstances which alone
their income permits.  {24} Now and then we hear of some brilliant
scholar as having refused a lucrative post in order to go on teaching
and studying.  There are many more whom we never hear of publicly, to
all of whom the country owes a debt of gratitude if nothing else,
which it does not always pay.  But here in England if you state the
facts you will find them accepted, and welcomed as the best answer to
the reproach of money-ambitions--a reproach based on conspicuous
exceptions to the general American rule of thrift and simplicity.

After graduating at Yale, and after a year in Mr. Hoar's office at
Worcester, I went to the Harvard Law School.  Harvard was as much a
Unitarian university as ever, but perhaps it was considered that law
was a safeguard against loose theology, or perhaps the old reasons
were no longer omnipotent.  I attempt no comparisons between Yale and
Harvard.  There is no kind of likeness between undergraduate and
post-graduate life.  During four years at Yale the discipline had
been rigid.  At the Law School in Cambridge I cannot remember that we
were under any restraint whatever.  In New Haven we lived either in
the college dormitories or in houses approved by the Faculty; and I
am not sure that in my time we did not all sleep within the college
limits, insanitary and uncomfortable as many of the buildings then
were.  But the law student in Cambridge lived where he would and as
he would.  He went to chapel or not, week-days and Sundays alike, to
suit himself.  {25} Not even attendance at the law lectures was
compulsory.  It seems to have been held that students had come to the
school upon serious business, and that their own interest and the
success of their future careers would be enough to ensure their
presence.  It was not always so.  The very freedom which ought to
have put men on their honour sometimes became a temptation.  And
Boston was a temptation; as it was, and must always be, to
undergraduates and graduates alike.

The years were drawing on--it was now 1854--and the sectional
antagonism of which there had been evidence enough at Yale was
increasing.  We were older, and the crisis was nearer.  There was a
kind of Law School Parliament in which all things were put to the
issue of debate, and the air often grew hot.  Angry words were
exchanged between Southerners and Northerners.  The rooted belief of
the Southerner, or of many Southerners, that they had a monopoly of
courage, was sometimes expressed.  More than once challenges were
talked of, though I believe none was actually sent.  There was a
choleric young gentleman from Missouri who put himself forward as
champion of slavery, and there was an attempt to deny to us of the
North the right to express our opinions on our own soil, which did
not succeed.  The Missourian was the exception.  Of the Southerners
in general at Harvard I should say what I have said of those at Yale:
if they felt themselves of a superior race they accepted the
obligations of superiority, and treated their {26} inferiors with an
amiable condescension for which we were not always grateful.

These were not matters of which the authorities of Dane Law School
took notice.  Their business was to teach Law.  Judge Parker was a
real lawyer, who afterwards revised the General Statutes of
Massachusetts into something like coherence and the symmetry of a
Code.  He handled the law in a scientific spirit, without emphasis,
not without dry humour, and had ever a luminous method of exposition
which grew more luminous as the subjects grew more abstruse.  His
colleague, Mr. Theophilus Parsons, was, I think, what is called a
case lawyer, to whom the _chose jugée_ was as sacred as it was more
recently to the anti-Dreyfusards.  There are always, and I suppose
always will be, lawyers to whom decisions are more than principles.
Parsons was one of these, while Parker's aim was to present to the
student the entire body of law as a homogeneous whole, organic,
capable of abstract treatment, capable of being set forth in the dry
light of reason.  Whether it was the difference in the men or in
their methods I know not, but there can be no doubt that Judge
Parker's lectures were better attended and more devoutly listened to
by the students, and that his system bore fruit.  For it created a
habit of mind, and under his teaching a legal mind was formed, and
became a better instrument for use at the Bar.

The Bar of Massachusetts was at that time in a period of splendour,
as it had been for generations.  {27} Webster was gone, and there was
no second Webster; he was the leader not only of the Massachusetts
Bar but of the American Bar.  But Rufus Choate was still in his
prime, whose eccentricities of manner and of speech could not
disguise forensic abilities of almost the first order.  Sydney
Bartlett, his rival, was as sound as Choate was showy.  But Choate
also was sound, though he had a spirit of adventure which carried him
too far, and a rhetoric not seldom flamboyant.  Some of his phrases
are historical, as of a witness who sought to palliate his dishonesty
by declaring that he never disclosed his iniquitous scheme.  "A
soliloquy of fraud," retorted Choate.  I heard one of his brethren at
the Bar say to him as he came into court: "I suppose you will give us
a great sensation to-day, Mr. Choate."  "No," answered Choate, "it is
too great a case for sensation."  And he tried it all day with
sedateness.  Chief Justice Shaw disliked him, or disliked his
methods, and sometimes showed his dislike, overruling him rather
roughly.  The great judge was not an Apollo, and there came a day
when Mr. Choate, smarting under judicial censure, remarked in an
audible aside to his associate counsel: "The Chief Justice suggests
to me an Indian idol.  We feel that he is great and we see that he is
ugly."  But amenities like that were unusual.

General Butler, afterward too famous at New Orleans and Fort Fisher,
yet after that the Democratic Governor of Whig Massachusetts, had a
none too savoury renown at the Bar.  Yet it was {28} said of him by
an opponent: "If you try your case fairly, Butler will try his side
of it fairly; but if you play tricks he can play more tricks than you
can."  His sense of humour was his own, sometimes effective and
sometimes not.  Defending a railway against an action by a farmer
whose waggon had been run over by a train, and who alleged that the
look-out sign was not, as required by law, in letters five inches
long, Butler made him admit he had not looked at the sign.  "Then,"
said Butler to the jury, "it could not have availed had the sign been
in letters of living light--five inches long."

The best contrast to Butler was Richard H. Dana, as good a lawyer, or
better, and with the best traditions of a high-minded Bar, pursued in
the best spirit.  But I will leave Dana till I come to the Burns case.




{29}

CHAPTER IV

  HOW MASSACHUSETTS IN 1854 SURRENDERED THE
  FUGITIVE SLAVE ANTHONY BURNS

It was in May, 1854, that Anthony Burns of Virginia was arrested in
Boston as a fugitive slave and brought before Judge Loring, United
States Commissioner under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  I am not
going to re-tell the familiar story of his so-called trial and of the
surrender of Burns to Colonel Suttle, also of Virginia.  The actual
military rank held by Suttle I do not know, but I call him Colonel on
general principles; or on the principle announced by the late Max
O'Rell in his book on America; with its population of sixty millions;
"_la plupart des colonels_."  But I will tell what I saw; and what
sort of impression the event made at the time upon an eye-witness who
belonged to the dominant and most conservative party in the State;
the Whig party.

The arrest of Burns made a stir in the old Commonwealth comparable to
none other which had occurred down to that time.  From Worcester,
where I was then reading more or less law with Mr. Hoar, I went to
Boston to look on at these proceedings.  I went from no particular
feeling of sympathy with Burns, nor yet mainly from {30} abhorrence
of that subservience to slaveholders in which, until after Webster's
Seventh of March speech in 1850, Massachusetts had been steeped.  I
went from curiosity.  I wanted to see how the legal side of it was
managed.  For though the popular dislike of such proceedings, which
neither the Shadrach nor the Sims case had fully roused, was then
slumbering, the State had, so long ago as 1843, passed a law
forbidding any judge or other officer holding a commission from the
State to take any part in the rendition of any person claimed as a
fugitive slave under the old Act of Congress of 1793.  Yet here was a
Massachusetts Judge of Probate sitting as United States Commissioner
and doing the work which in the South itself was done by bloodhounds,
and by the basest of mankind.  I thought I should like to see how
such a man looked while engaged upon that task; the more so as he
bore a good Massachusetts name; and what kind of a trial a fugitive
slave was to have on Massachusetts soil.

Burns was seized on a Wednesday evening, May 24th.  He appeared
before Judge Loring at nine o'clock Thursday morning, handcuffed,
between two policemen.  It was obviously intended that the "trial"
should begin and end that same morning.  Burns had been allowed to
see nobody.  He had no counsel.  When Robert Morris, a coloured
lawyer, tried to speak to him the policemen drove him away.  By
chance, Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jr., and another lawyer of repute, {31}
Mr. C. M. Ellis, heard of what was going on, and went to the
court-room.  Dana intervened, not as counsel, for he had no standing
as counsel, but as _amicus curiæ_, and asked that the hearing be
postponed and that Burns be allowed to consult friends and counsel.
The black man sat there "stupefied and terrified," as Dana said,
incapable of thought or action.  After repeated protests by Dana and
Ellis, Judge Loring put off the hearing till Saturday.  But Burns was
still kept in secret confinement.  When Wendell Phillips asked to see
him to arrange that he should have counsel, the United States Marshal
refused.  Phillips went to Cambridge to see Judge Loring, and Judge
Loring gave him an order of admission to the cell.  But he said to
Phillips--this Judge-Commissioner said of the cause he was about to
try judicially--

"Mr. Phillips, the case is so clear that I do not think you will be
justified in placing any obstacle in the way of this man's going
back, _as he probably will!_"

A remark without precedent or successor in Massachusetts
jurisprudence, which, before and since, has ever borne an honourable
renown for judicial impartiality.

When I went to the Court House on the Saturday it had become a
fortress.  There were United States Marshals and their deputies,
police in great numbers, and United States Marines.  The chain had
not then been hung about the building nor had Chief Justice Shaw yet
crawled beneath it.  I was allowed to enter the building, and to {32}
go upstairs to the corridor on the first floor, out of which opened
the door of the court-room where Burns was being tried, not for his
life, but for freedom which was more than life.  There I was stopped.
The police officer at the door would listen to nothing.  The
court-room, free by law and by custom to all citizens, was closed by
order, as I understood, not of the Commissioner who was holding his
slave-court, but by the United States Marshal, who was responsible
for the custody of Burns and alarmed by the state of public opinion.
While I argued with the police, there came up a smart young officer
of United States Marines.  He asked what it was all about.  I said I
was a law student and wished to enter.  "Admit him," said the officer
of United States Marines.  He waited till he saw his order obeyed and
the police stand aside from the door; then bowed to me and went his
way.  So it happened that it was to an officer of an armed force of
the United States that I was indebted for the privilege of entering a
Massachusetts court-room while a public trial was going on.

Inside they were taking testimony.  Mr. Dana and Mr. Ellis were now
acting as counsel for Burns, who still seemed "stupefied and
terrified."  The testimony was only interesting because it concerned
the liberty of a human being.  Judge Loring sat upon the bench with,
at last, an anxious look as if he had begun to realize the storm that
was raging outside, and the revolt of Massachusetts against this
business of slave-catching {33} by Massachusetts judges.  I spoke for
a moment with Mr. Dana and then with one or two of the anti-slavery
leaders who sat listening to the proceedings.  That sealed my fate.
When I returned after the adjournment I was again refused admission,
and ordered to leave the Court House.  When I told the Deputy Marshal
I had as much right there as he had and would take no orders from
him, he threatened me with arrest.  But of this he presently thought
better, and finding all protest useless, I went away.

Of the "trial," therefore, I saw and heard little.  But of the
Faneuil Hall meeting called to protest against the surrender I saw
much, though not of the sequel to it in Court Square.  Most of the
Abolitionist leaders were there, but the Abolitionists at that time
would have been lost in the great spaces of Faneuil Hall.  The three
thousand men who crowded it were the "solid men of Boston," who by
this time had begun to think they did not care to see a Virginian
slave-holder crack his whip about their ears.  The Puritan temper was
up.  The spirit of Otis and Hancock and Sam Adams burned once more in
the hearts of living men.  The cheers were incessant; cheers for men
who a few days before had been almost outcasts--far outside at any
rate, the sacred sphere in which the men of State Street and Beacon
Street dwelt.  Theodore Parker, who spoke first from a gallery, was
cheered, and Phillips was cheered.  As the evening drew on, it was
evident that violent {34} counsels were likely to prevail.  Already
there had been, all over the city, talk of a rescue.  Parker, ever
prone to extreme views, was for it, and made a speech for which he
was indicted but of course never tried.  The indictment was but a
piece of vindictive annoyance.  But evidently nothing had been
prepared, or, if it had been, these leaders had not been taken into
the confidence of the men who meant real business.

Toward the end some one--name unknown--moved that the meeting adjourn
to the Revere House to groan Suttle.  Parker, who was not chairman,
put the motion and declared it carried, as beyond doubt it was, and
with wild shouts the vast audience, too closely packed to move
quickly, set their faces to the door and began streaming slowly out.
Phillips, who was against this plan and against any violence not
efficiently organized, came forward on the platform.  The few
sentences he uttered have never, I think, been re ported or printed,
but I can hear them still.  At the first note of that clarion voice
the surging throng stopped and turned.  Said Phillips:

"Let us remember where we are and what we are going to do.  You have
said that you will vindicate the fame of Massachusetts.  Let me tell
you that you will never do it by going to the Revere House to-night
to attempt the impossible feat of insulting a kidnapper.  The zeal
that won't keep till to-morrow never will free a slave."

In that single moment, he had recovered his control of the audience.
The movement to the {35} doors had stopped.  Every one waited for
what was coming.  Phillips was at his best.  He was master of himself
and of those before him.  The words of entreaty were words of
command.  He stood and spoke as one having authority.

But just then came a voice from the other end of the hall.  It
belonged to Mr. Charles L. Swift, the vehement young editor of a
weekly paper called _The Commonwealth_, and it announced that a mob
of negroes had attacked the Court House, which had been turned into a
gaol, and wanted help to rescue Burns.  That dissolved the spell.
Faces were again turned to the door.  The shouts which Phillips had
silenced broke loose once more; and the three thousand citizens of
Boston had become a mob.  It was all to no purpose.  The hall was
long in emptying itself: and long before those who were really in
earnest could reach the Court House, the ill-advised and ill-planned
attack had been made and failed.  Colonel Higginson, who, I believe,
devised it and led it, had not at that time any experience in
measures of war.  He had plenty of courage of the hot-headed
kind--the kind not then needed.  Perhaps Alcott who, after the rush
had been made with no success, marched coolly up the steps leading to
the door defended by armed police and troops, umbrella in hand, was
as much a hero as anybody.  But it was all over, I gathered in a few
minutes, and the only casualty was the death of a Marshal's deputy,
James Batchelder.  I had got away from Faneuil Hall as soon as I
could, and the distance {36} to the Court House is short, but I
arrived too late to see anything but an empty square and that open
doorway with a phalanx of defenders inside.

Burns was not rescued.  He was surrendered, and no man who saw it
ever forgot that shameful spectacle, nor doubted that it was the
rendition of Anthony Burns which completed the conversion of the Old
Bay State from the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery faith.  Webster
had held the Puritan conscience in chains for a generation.  It
revolted, no doubt, at the Seventh of March speech; it was stirred by
the Shadrach and Sims cases; but the final emancipation of the State
from its long thraldom to the slave power coincided with the
surrender of Burns to Suttle.  On that Saturday, men saw for
themselves, and for the first time, what fugitive slave-hunting in
Massachusetts really meant, and what degree of degradation it brought.

The Court House in chains; the Chief Justice stooping to pass beneath
them; the streets and squares crowded with State Militia, guarding
the entrance to every street on the route; United States Marines in
hollow square with Burns and the United States Marshals in the
centre; United States troops preceding and United States artillery
following.  It was fitting that it should be so.  The State and the
United States were partners in the crime, equal offenders against the
moral law, or against the higher law, which till then had been the
heritage of the Puritan {37} Commonwealth, and had sometimes been
heard of even in Washington.  They shared in the guilt and shared in
the infamy.  Both have since amply atoned for their sin, but nothing,
not even a Four Years' Civil War for Union and Freedom, not even the
blood of heroes and martyrs, will ever quite wash out from the memory
of those who saw it the humiliations of that day.  It blistered and
burnt and left a scar for ever.  This procession took its course in
broad daylight down State Street on its way to Long Wharf, where a
United States revenue cutter waited to embark the kidnapped
slave--kidnapped by process of law--and his master, Suttle.  The
steps of the Merchants' Exchange were thronged with Lawrences and
Fays and Lorings who had been foremost in trying to crush the
anti-slavery agitation.  But when this column drew near, these
friends and servants of the slave-owner and of the cotton trade
suddenly remembered that they were men before they were merchants;
and men of Massachusetts at that.  They broke into groans and cries
of execration, and the troops marched past them to the music of
hisses and curses.  All this I saw and heard.  The re-enslavement of
Burns was the liberation of Massachusetts.  The next time I saw
troops in the streets of Boston was in April, 1861, when the Sixth
Massachusetts Regiment, answering to the call of President Lincoln,
started for Washington via Baltimore, with results known to the world.

{38}

One more incident.  On the Sunday Theodore Parker preached in the
Music Hall, then the largest hall in Boston, what he called a sermon
on these events.  But Parker's sermons were very often like those of
Cromwell's colonels; you heard in them the clash of arms, and in this
more than in most.  He never cared deeply about measuring his words,
and he believed in speaking the truth about men as well as things
with extreme plainness.  On this Sunday he was in his finest Old
Testament mood; the messenger of the wrath of the Almighty.  He flung
open his Bible with the gesture of a man who draws a sword, and in
tones that rang like a cry of battle, thundered out his text:

"Exodus xx. 15. 'Thou shalt not steal.'"

The text was itself a sermon.  It was the custom in this Music Hall
church to applaud when you felt like it, or even to hiss.  A deep
murmur, which presently swelled into a roar of applause, greeted the
text.  The face of the preacher was aflame; so were his words as he
told the story of this awful week and set in the clear light of truth
the acts and words of the Massachusetts Judge who had brought
disgrace upon Massachusetts.  When he came to the attack on the Court
House, the abortive attempt to rescue Burns, and the death of the
Marshal's deputy killed at his post, he burst out:

"Edward Greely Loring, I charge _you_ with the murder of James
Batchelder.  _You_ fired the shot that made his wife a widow and his
children {39} orphans.  Yours is the guilt.  The penalty a righteous
God will exact for that life he will demand from you."

To say that, he left his pulpit, which was but a desk on the Music
Hall platform, stepped a little to one side, and stood full in view
of the great company which had gathered to hear him on this peaceful
Sabbath morning; a fair target for another shot had any hearer been
minded to try one.  You think that a fanciful suggestion?  Then you
little know the fierceness of the feelings which in those days raged
in Boston.  They presently grew fiercer, and reached a climax in 1860
and the early winter of 1861; when men on both sides for many months
went armed, and were quite ready to use their arms; and when Phillips
and Garrison were in daily peril of their lives from assassination
and, less frequently but more deadly, from mobs.

Among all that devoted band there was no braver soul than Parker's.
He was by profession and training a scholar, a theologian, a man of
books and letters, with a rare knowledge of languages and literature,
and the best collection of German ballads in America; shelves full of
them in his library at the top of his house.  But by temperament he
was a fighter; as befitted the grandson of that Captain John Parker
who commanded the minute men at Lexington, April 19th, 1775.  He
wrote much, preached often and well, and for twenty years was a great
force in Boston and elsewhere.  A fiery little man, with {40} a ruddy
face and great dome of a head, spectacles over his pale blue eyes,
the love of God and of his fellow-men in his heart; and by them
beloved.




{41}

CHAPTER V

THE AMERICAN DEFOE, RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., to whose intervention in the Burns case we
owe it that Judge Loring was compelled to grant Burns something in
the nature of a trial, was a man whom Massachusetts may well be
content to remember as one of her representatives for all time.  By
descent, and in himself, he was a chosen son of that chosen people.
His father, Richard Henry, his grandfather, Francis, his
great-grandfather, Richard, were all jurists, all patriots, all men
of letters.  Take one step more, and you come to Daniel, then to
Richard again, who, if not quite a voyager to New England in the
_Mayflower_, is heard of as a resident in Cambridge in 1640.  Six
Danas--nay, five, since our Dana survived his father but three
years--span two centuries and a half: from father to son as they took
their march down these eventful years, an unbroken line, a race of
gentlemen.

It used to be made a reproach to the Dana of whom I write that he was
a gentleman.  Beyond doubt he deserved the reproach.  When a
candidate for Congress in 1868 in the Essex district against Ben
Butler that eminent warrior called {42} him a kid-gloved aristocrat.
"Not even gloved has my hand ever touched his," answered Dana in the
heat of a redhot campaign.  Butler's rancour lasted to the end, as we
shall see.

This, of course, is no biography of Dana.  I am writing of what I saw
and heard; or not much more.  I dealt with the Burns case as a record
of personal impressions.  But let me quote as an example of Dana's
method of statement his account of Burns's arrest.  He said to Judge
Loring:


    Burns was arrested suddenly, on a false pretence, coming home at
    nightfall from his day's work, and hurried into custody, among
    strange men, in a strange place, and suddenly, whether claimed
    rightfully or claimed wrongfully, he saw he was claimed as a
    slave, and his condition burst upon him in a flood of terror.
    This was at night.  You saw him, sir, the next day, and you
    remember the state he was then in.  You remember his stupefied
    and terrified condition.  You remember his hesitation, his timid
    glance about the room, even when looking in the mild face of
    justice.  How little your kind words reassured him.


That is the same hand which wrote _Two Years Before the Mast_--the
touch of Defoe, with Defoe's direct simplicity of method and power of
getting the effect he wanted by the simplest means; the last word in
art, in all arts.  Dana was incapable of rhetorical extravagance or
of insincerity of any kind.  His _Two Years Before the Mast_ is as
much a classic in England as at home.  One proof of it is the number
of pirated editions, before there was an international copyright law.
He wrote to me once: "I hear there is a cheap English edition of {43}
the book which has had, because of its cheapness, a great
circulation.  Published, I think, in Hull.  Could you send me a copy
as a curiosity?"  I sent it; a little fat volume with a red cloth
cover, much gilt, very closely printed, and sold at a shilling, long
before the days of cheap books.  It had sold by scores of thousands.
It is a book always in print, in one edition or another.  Copyright
profited Dana no more in America than in England, or not for a long
time.  Bryant, to whom Dana's father sent the manuscript, hawked it
about from one publisher to another in vain, till finally he sold it
outright to Harpers for two hundred and fifty dollars, copyright and
all.  In my copy, with the imprint of James R. Osgood & Co., Boston,
is a Preface dated 1869, in which Dana says: "After twenty-eight
years the copyright of this book has reverted to me"; and so he
presents the first "author's edition" to the public.  My copy was a
gift from Dana; it is among the treasures I possess and care for
most, with this inscription in Dana's clear, quiet handwriting:


    My dear Smalley,--Will you accept this volume from me and believe
    me ever truly yours,

    RICH'D H. DANA, JR.

    _Boston, Feb._ 17, 1876.


My real acquaintance with Dana had begun ten years before, when, in
June or July, 1866, we crossed the Atlantic together in what was then
the crack ship of the Cunard line, the _China_, the first {44} screw
that carried the Cunard flag, capable of fourteen knots.  The
Cunarders then sailed from Boston, touched at Halifax, and thence
steamed to Queenstown direct, and so on to Liverpool.  Halifax was an
experience; it took us, with all the Cunard seamanship, and there was
none better, four hours to get alongside the pier, the currents
running I know not how many miles an hour.

The _China_ belonged to the old school; of all new schools the Cunard
people, now foremost in everything, had at that time an abhorrence.
The saloon aft and tapering to a point, racks over the table filled
with table glass, long benches for seats, cabins crowded and dimly
lighted with one smoking and smelling oil lamp in a triangular glass
case between two cabins; sanitary arrangements unspeakable.  I, on my
first Atlantic voyage, thought it all the height of luxury; and so it
was, for that time.  The modern comforts and splendours of sea life
date from 1889 with the White Star _Teutonic_, launched in that year,
first of the "floating palaces."  The _China_ made her way from
Halifax to Queenstown through a continuous fog at undiminished speed.
The captain, for an exception among the Cunard captains of those
days, regarded a passenger as a human being, and not merely as a
parcel to be safely carried from port to port and dumped safely on
the wharf, intermediate sufferings of no account.  He would answer a
question.  I asked him, with the audacity of a novice, whether it was
safe to steam day and night through a fog at full speed.

{45}

"Safe, good God, no."

"Then why do you do it?"

"Why?  I will tell you why.  First, we have got to get to Queenstown
and Liverpool.  Second, fogs don't last for ever, and the faster we
go the sooner we shall get out of this one.  And third, if there's a
collision, the vessel going at the greatest speed has the best
chance."

So antedating by many years the famous saying of another Cunard
captain, summoned to the bridge when a collision seemed imminent,
finding the engines reversed, and instantly ordering "full speed
ahead"; remarking to the first officer who had reversed the engines:
"If there's any running down to be done on this voyage, I propose to
do it."  But there was none.

When I told Dana of my talk with the _China's_ captain, that
experienced seaman and author of _The Seaman's Manual_ observed: "I
like a captain to have the courage of his opinions, but not to tell
his passengers.  Keep it to yourself."  And I have kept it for forty
years; the captain and ship are gone to Davy Jones's locker.  Nothing
happened, but something very nearly happened.  There had been no
chance of an observation since leaving Halifax, and we made the Irish
coast rather suddenly, some miles further north than we expected,
came near enough to hear the breakers, and swung to the south in
safety.

His mind full of sea lore and of sea romance as well, Dana was the
most delightful of companions on shipboard.  Beneath an exterior
which people {46} thought cold, he had a great kindliness of nature.
He made no professions; his acts spoke for him.  He gave freely of
the riches of his mind.  He knew England and the ways of the English,
and was full of illustrative stories; among them was one of his first
visit to the House of Commons.


    I heard that night one of the best speeches to which I ever
    listened: fluent, rich in facts, sound in argument; well phrased
    and well delivered.  I said to myself, "That man must carry the
    House with him."  When he sat down a member rose on the opposite
    side and spoke for perhaps ten minutes.  He stumbled along,
    hesitated, grew confused, his sentences without beginning or end;
    nothing but a knowledge of the subject and a great sincerity to
    recommend him.

    But it was perfectly evident that the first speech had no weight
    with the House, and that the second convinced everybody.  The
    first speaker was Whiteside, a brilliant Irishman and
    Solicitor-General; the second a county member whose name I never
    knew.  The House thought Whiteside merely an advocate and his
    speech forensic.  His opponent was a man whom everybody trusted.
    It was character that carried the day.  And you will find it
    generally does with the English.


Dana brought to the study of the law a philosophic mind, and to the
trial of causes in court a power of lucid exposition invaluable alike
with the Bench and with a jury.  The law was to him a body of
symmetrical doctrine.  He referred everything to principles, the only
real foundation for anything.  He stood very high at the Bar, for he
had learning and would take immense pains, and when he brought a case
into court it {47} was a work of art.  Moreover, he brought a
conscience with it.  And he was one of the lawyers, none too
numerous, to whom even Chief Justice Shaw listened.  Out of many
anecdotes I have heard from him I will choose one.

He had defended in the United States Circuit Court a man indicted for
aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave.  "The case against him,"
said Dana, "was perfectly clear; there was really no defence; he had
beyond a doubt committed the crime of helping rescue a man from
slavery.  I looked for a conviction as a matter of course.  But after
the judge had charged the jury, hour after hour went by and still
they stayed out.  The judge sent for them and asked if they required
any further guidance in law or in fact.  The foreman said 'No'; but
they could not agree, and finally were discharged.

"Some years later," said Dana, "as I stood on the steps of the Parker
House, a man came up to me and said, 'You don't remember me, Mr.
Dana?'  I did not, and he went on:

"'Well, Mr. Dana, I expect you remember trying that case where a man
named Tucker was indicted for aiding and abetting in the escape of a
fugitive slave.  I was on the jury in that case.'

"At this I instantly recalled the facts, and said: 'Since you were on
that jury, I wish you would tell me what I have always wanted to
know--why they disagreed.'

"'Well, Mr. Dana, I don't mind telling you we {48} stood eleven to
one for conviction, and that one obstinate man wouldn't budge.
Perhaps you remember it was proved on the trial that the negro was
got away from Boston, taken to Concord, New Hampshire, and there was
handed over to a man who drove him in a sleigh across the border into
Canada.'

"'Oh, yes, I remember that.'

"'Well, Mr. Dana, I was the man who drove him in the sleigh across
the border into Canada.'"

I knew something of the preposterous charge against Dana, that in
editing Wheaton's _International Law_ he had appropriated the labours
of a dull predecessor, Mr. William Beach Lawrence.  When President
Grant nominated Dana Minister to England in succession to that
General Schenck who is still quoted as an authority on poker, the
Lawrence charge was pressed before the Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations.  It was an _ex parte_ hearing, and Dana had no opportunity
to defend himself.  Whether that or the unsleeping malignity of
General Butler did him the more harm I know not, but President Grant,
as his honourable habit was, stood by his nominee; and the Senate
rejected Dana by thirty-one votes to seventeen.  The matter naturally
attracted attention in England, and there were comments, none too
just.  I wrote a letter to _The Times_, of which Mr. Delane was then
editor.  A long letter, something over a column, but Delane published
it next morning in his best type, first striking out a number of
censorious sentences about Butler {49} and Zach Chandler and other
eminent persons who had engineered Dana's defeat.  In my wish to do
justice to Dana and upon his enemies I had not remembered that I was
writing in an English newspaper, and had no business to be rebuking
Americans to an English audience.  When I read my letter and noted
Delane's excisions I saw how wrong I had been, and I wrote to Delane
to thank him for suppressing all those ferocities.  There came in
reply such a note as only Delane would have written.

"It is the first time anybody ever thanked me for using a blue pencil
on a correspondent's letter.  Thank _you_."

This was in 1876.  Dana's letter to me on my letter about him was
characteristic.  I think I might print it, but it is with other
papers in New York.  He was grateful and kindly, but also critical.
He was always capable of looking at his own case as if it were a
third person's; his mind detached from everything that was personal
to himself.  He thought the legal points might have been pressed.
But the public, especially the English public, will not have too much
law.  I suppose the Beach-Lawrence suit and the Minister-to-England
business troubled Dana more than anything else in his career.  He
ought, of course, to have been Minister.  He would have been such a
Minister as Charles Francis Adams was, or as Phelps was, two of the
American Ministers whom the English liked best; out of the half-dozen
who have held in this country a {50} pre-eminent position among
Ministers and Ambassadors, including the present Ambassador and his
two immediate predecessors, Hay and Choate.  That brilliant list
ought to have been enriched with Dana's name; but it was not to be.

Dana came abroad again in 1878, and I saw him once more.  He spent
his time chiefly in Paris and Rome, and died in Rome, January 7th,
1882.  He lies near Keats and Shelley in the Protestant cemetery at
Porte Pià; and there is a monument.  In Boston he is remembered;
whether he is remembered elsewhere I have no means of knowing.  But
we cannot, in whatever part of America, we cannot afford to forget a
man who had all the American virtues in one of the heroic ages of
America.




{51}

CHAPTER VI

A VISIT TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Among the students at Harvard Law School in 1855 was William Emerson,
from Staten Island, New York, nephew of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He
asked me one day if I would like to know his uncle.  I answered that
his uncle was the one man whom I most wished to meet, and, with a
word of surprise at my fervour, he offered to arrange it.

In these days his surprise may not readily be understood.  Emerson
has long since taken his place among the Immortals.  But at that time
his place was still uncertain.  The number of his followers was
limited; or, as Carlyle said, fourteen years earlier, "Not the great
reading public, but only the small thinking public have any questions
to ask concerning him."  The growth of the thinking mind toward
Emerson had, during those fourteen years, been considerable, but it
was still, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, only the Remnant to whom
Emerson was a prophet or an inspiration.  To the majority he was a
riddle, and there were not a few of the solid men of Boston who
thought him a child of the Devil.  The Whigism of Massachusetts had
its religious {52} side.  To be a good Whig and one of the elect you
must be an orthodox Unitarian.

The days when Unitarianism was to be a fashionable religion in Boston
were still distant.  Emerson was not even a Unitarian; he was an
Emersonian.  He not only thought for himself, but announced his
thought from the housetops; and to think for oneself was, in those
conservative days, a dangerous pastime.  He came of a race of
preachers on both sides, an academic race, six generations of them.
For some three years he was himself a preacher, but presently found
he could no longer administer the Holy Communion to his congregation,
and therefore resumed his place as a layman.  The platform superseded
the pulpit.  His sermons became lectures and essays.  He said
himself, "My pulpit is the lyceum platform."  He became a
transcendentalist, as his enemies said, a name he repudiated,
preferring to call the transcendental journal he edited _The Dial_.
It was no less an offence to Boston when Emerson's intellectual
independence led him into the company of the Abolitionists, though he
never wholly identified himself with that rebellious band.  His first
series of Essays had been published as long ago as 1841, in America,
and in the same year in England with a rather patronizing Preface by
Carlyle.  The second series appeared in 1840, and the _Poems_ in 1846.

In the 'fifties, therefore, Emerson's ideas had had time to become
known to those who liked them least.  I fell into deep disgrace with
a Boston {53} uncle, a lawyer whose office I afterward entered, first
as student and then as practitioner, when he heard that I had read
Emerson.  There was, moreover, an accomplished young lady who asked
me if it was true that I believed in Emerson, and then desired to be
told what in fact Emerson believed and taught; one of those appalling
questions which women sometimes put lightheartedly.  I answered as
briefly as I could, and she retorted "I think it perfectly horrid."
And if that friendship did not come to an end it grew cold, which I
then thought a misfortune, and perhaps still do.  But society was
then intolerant of anything which menaced its foundations, or was
thought to.  Rightly, I suppose.  Since all societies in all ages
have wished to live, and not die.

In the Law School we did not discuss Emerson; we ignored him.  I can
think of no student at that time who had come under his influence.
They were busy with the law; what was a prophet to them?  If he had
readers they kept their reading to themselves.  The nephew himself
was more a nephew than a disciple.  He told me I should find his
uncle delightful to know.  Presently, to my delight, he brought me an
invitation to Concord for Saturday to Monday.  We walked the thirteen
miles from Cambridge to Emerson's home, arriving in the middle of
Saturday afternoon.  Photographs have long since made the house
familiar, whether in its original state, or after the fire in 1872,
and the restoration of it by his fellow townsmen of Concord, and
their {54} honourable gift of it to him.  A broad gateway led to it
from the road, pine trees standing sentinel on either side.  Square,
with a sloping roof, a porch in the centre, two windows on either
side, two stories in height; simple almost to bareness, devoid of
architectural pretence, but well proportioned.  There was, I think,
an ell which ran back from the main building.  Inside, your first
impression was of spaciousness; the hall and rooms of good size, not
very high, and furnished with an eye mainly to comfort; and an easy
staircase.

We were taken first into a parlour in the rear of the library which
filled one side of the house.  Emerson's greeting was something more
than courteous--friendly, with a little element of surprise; for
though he had long been used to pilgrimages and visits from admiring
strangers, to whom his house was a Mecca, there was, perhaps, a
novelty in the coming of a law student.  A pleasant light, and a
strong light, in his fine blue eyes, yet they looked at you in an
inquiring, penetrating way as if it was their duty to give an account
of you; impartial but sympathetic.  You could perceive he was
predisposed to think well of people.  I had seen Emerson on the
platform, but there his attitude was Hebraic: inspired and apostolic.
This was the private Emerson, the citizen of Concord, and first of
all the host; intent before all things on hospitality.  The tall,
twisted figure bent toward us, the grasp of the hand was a welcome;
the strong face had in it the sunshine of kindliness; the firm lips
{55} relaxing into a smile.  Delicacy went with his strength, and
with the manliness of the man was blended something I can only call
feminine, because it was exquisite.  Distinction in every line and
tone; a man apart from other men.  Free from all pretence; of
pretence he had no need; he was absolutely himself, and that was all
you wanted.  There was at first something in his manner you might
call shyness or uncertainty, as of a nature which might be
embarrassed in unfamiliar company but would go gaily to the stake.

I suppose I am collecting the impressions of this and many later
meetings with Emerson, but I cannot distinguish between them, and it
does not matter.  What was, however, peculiar to this visit was
Emerson's almost anxious sense of his duties as host; which seemed
not duties, but the inevitable expression of a loving nature.  When
he heard that we had walked from Cambridge he said we must be tired
and hungry and thirsty.  We were to sit down there and then, we were
to eat and drink.  The philosopher bustled gently about, seeking wine
and food in the cupboards, and presently putting on the table a
decanter of Madeira and a dish of plum cake.  He was solicitous that
we should partake of both; and to that end set us the example,
saying: "I have not walked thirteen miles, but I think I can manage
to keep you company at the table."  Then he bethought himself that he
seldom touched wine; "and indeed I sometimes neither eat nor drink
from breakfast to supper."  He began at {56} once with questionings
about the law school and our way of life and study.

Then to our rooms, plain, pleasant rooms, and then tea in the
library.  Among the books he seemed more at home than anywhere else;
they had been his lifelong friends, for whom he had an affection.  He
asked again about law and the law school.  "A noble study," he said,
"one to which you may well devote a great part of your life and mind.
As you have chosen it for your profession I am sure you will master
it; a man must know his trade or he will do nothing.  But law is not
everything.  It does not perhaps make a demand upon all the resources
of the intellect, nor enlarge a man's nature."  Which was almost a
paraphrase of Burke's famous sentence on the wall in his eulogy on
Mr. Grenville:


    One of the first and noblest of human sciences; a science which
    does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all
    the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt,
    except in persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize
    the mind exactly in the same proportion.


Then Emerson, who seemed always to be seeking the final word, and to
condense the whole of his thought into a sentence, added:

"Keep your mind open.  Read Plato."

Those half-dozen words he uttered in the resonant tones of the
platform; tones which came when he was deeply stirred and desired to
stir his audience.  They vibrated through the room as {57} they
vibrated through a great hall; tones which were meant to find their
way, and did find their way, to the hearts of his hearers; an appeal
to the emotions, to the conscience, to whatever there was in these
thousands, or in the single individual, sympathetic to the speaker.
I have never forgotten them.  If I have not followed Emerson's advice
as he meant it, or in full, I have followed it to a certain extent;
desultorily, inadequately; and certainly with no settled purpose to
become a Platonist, or even an Emersonian.  But it had an effect and
the effect has been permanent.

One other great thinker, Pascal, has given the same counsel; not in
words, but by his perpetual example.  You cannot read Pascal without
seeing that he never states one side of a case, but always two sides.
Even in matters of faith he keeps an open mind.  In matters of
science it is equally open; and in all other matters.  To this day,
it is disputed whether Pascal was a believer.  He himself believed
that he was, but he was a pupil of Montaigne, and Montaigne's motto,
"Que sçais-je?" is inwoven in every sentence of Pascal's speculations
upon matters of faith; and upon all _les choses de l'esprit_.  So I
put these two influences, Pascal and Emerson, side by side.

If this were the place, a parallel might be drawn.  The Church, and
for good cause, held Pascal for an enemy; and the Puritanism of New
England, as well as orthodoxy in Old England and elsewhere, held
Emerson for an enemy; also {58} with good cause.  Yet were they two
of the most devout souls of all time.  Why should the churches of
France and of New England array against themselves the two finest
minds of those two communities, centuries apart?  Pascal's voice
comes softly down the intervening generations--"Keep your mind
open"--and Emerson's is the clear echo of Pascal's, as Pascal's was
of Montaigne.  Emerson, too, sat for a time at the feet of Montaigne,
chose him as one of his "Representative Men," and said of Montaigne's
Essays: "It seems to me as if I had myself written the book in some
former life."  Pascal had already said: "Ce n'est pas dans Montaigne
mais dans moi que je trouve tout ce que j'y vois."

Emerson had other stimulating suggestions ready; his talk overflowed
with them, yet was never didactic.  It was as if the suggestions
presented themselves first to him and then to you; as if he shared
his thoughts with you; so far was he from the method of the pulpit.
Some errand called him away.  He took down a volume and put it into
my hand, saying: "Some day I hope you will learn to value this
writer.  He has much to say, and he says it in almost the best
English of his century.  He is a Greek born out of due time"--a
remark he has somewhere made about Winckelmann.  It was Landor; a
volume of the _Imaginary Conversations_.  I read a dialogue there and
then.  I have read him ever since.  I do not suppose anybody cares
what I have read or not read.  But I wish to give you Emerson's {59}
opinion; the advice he thought best for a boy studying law; and the
effect of it upon the boy.

For he would not talk of what he thought unsuited to us two, or to
me.  In a reminiscence or two of his tour in England in 1846 or 1847
he mentioned a visit to Coleridge.  I had read the _Table Talk_ and
the _Biographia Literaria_, and I asked Emerson to tell me what he
and Coleridge had discussed.  "No," he said, "it would not interest
you."  In the same way next morning when he took me to Walden through
the woods, he began upon trees and squirrels and other forest-lore;
then stopped and asked: "But do you know about trees and animals?  Do
they interest you?"  I had to confess they did not; upon which he
began again on books and matters of literature; and upon Thoreau.  Of
Thoreau he did not seem to care to say very much.  But he showed me
the lake, and where Thoreau lived, and what he related of him, though
his appreciation was critical, was touched with the kindness habitual
to him.  I had read the _Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers_--or
perhaps read it later--and _Walden_, which is thinner, and I had
heard, then or since, that some of Thoreau's admirers accused Emerson
of borrowing from him.  But there was not much to borrow; nor, for
Emerson, anything.  The friendship between the two men was close and
lasted long, but if there were any question of borrowing or lending
in the books of either, the debt was not on Emerson's side.

Now and then as we walked in the forest, or {60} through the streets,
we met a farmer or other resident of Concord, and it was pleasant to
see their greetings to their great townsman.  On the heights he trod
no other set foot, but in the daily business and intercourse of life
he was each man's friend, and each was his.  One of them told me--it
was Rockwood Hoar, afterward Judge of the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts and United States Attorney-General--that half the
affairs of Concord were on Emerson's shoulders.  He was the chosen
adviser, peacemaker, arbitrator between these hard-headed, practical
people of Concord; the man to whom they went with their troubles; the
man whose decision in difficult disputes was accepted without demur.
"I don't suppose," said Mr. Hoar, "that Emerson ever opened a law
book or the Revised Statutes.  But he had a native shrewdness, an eye
for the points of a case, a sense of equity, and a willingness to
take pains which made him an ideal referee."  I once told an eminent
Whig who had been abusing Emerson as a mere visionary, that his
neighbours, who knew him best, trusted him in this way.  "They are
welcome to him," growled the eminent Whig.

He also was welcome to them.  He was the possession and pride of
Concord; beloved by the people among whom he lived his life.  I
suppose his lines about the embattled farmers who fired the shot
heard round the world, are better known and have thrilled more hearts
than any others he ever wrote.  They seemed to be always on {61}
Concord lips.  Yes, but Emerson himself had fired another shot heard
round the world; or round so much of it as speaks the English, or
Anglo-American, tongue.  So when misfortune befell him and his house
was half burnt, and his health failed, they besought him to go abroad
for rest; and while he was gone they rebuilt his house for him in the
exact similitude of the old.  He was gone a year, all but two months,
with his daughter Ellen, the true child of her father and his most
faithful and helpful friend.  When Emerson returned, Concord turned
out to greet him, built a triumphal arch beneath which he had,
perhaps reluctantly, to pass; and so reinstalled him in his old-new
home.

This, of course, was long after the time of which I am writing; in
1872-3.  But when he came to England, he knew that his friends in
Concord were rebuilding his house.  He could not speak of it without
emotion.  His state of health was such that emotion was hurtful to
him, and his daughter used to ask us not to refer to the house.  But
whether we did or not, Emerson brooded over it, and was better and
happier in the thought of his friends' friendship for him.




{62}

CHAPTER VII

  EMERSON IN ENGLAND--ENGLISH TRAITS--EMERSON
  AND MATTHEW ARNOLD

Emerson's last visit to England was made in 1873, after his health
had failed.  He had been in Egypt and on the Continent, hoping to
recover the freshness of his mental powers; but that was not to be.
In London he and his daughter Ellen, who gave to her father a loving
devotion without limits, lived in apartments in Down Street,
Piccadilly.  It was only too evident that, even after ten months of
rest and travel, he was an invalid in mind.  He could not recollect
names--a failing common in advanced age, of course, but Emerson was
only in his seventieth year and was to live ten years more.  He
resorted to all kinds of paraphrases and circumlocutions.  "One of
the men who seemed to me the most sincere and clear-minded I have met
was--you know whom I mean, I met him at your house, the biologist,
the champion of Darwin--with what lucid energy he talked to us."
When I mentioned Huxley's name, Emerson said, "Yes, how could I
forget him?"  But presently the name had to be given to him again.
The power of association {63} between people or things and the names
of them had been lost.  He was always, said the critics, a little
_déconsu_; sentences, they insisted, succeeded each other without
much obvious connection, or without the copula which would have
brought them into their true relation.

The truth is, he gave his reader credit for a little imaginative
power.  He took him into partnership.  He was mindful of Voltaire's
pungent epigram: "_L'art d'être ennuyeux, c'est l'art de tout,
dire_."  He had his own theory of style and of diction.  His
temperament left him no choice.  If his quickness of transition from
one subject to another, or from one thought to another, left some of
his readers toiling after him in vain, they were not the readers for
whom he wrote.  Why should they read him if he wrote a language to
them unknown?

The interview between Huxley and himself to which Emerson referred
was at breakfast; for breakfasts were then given almost as often as
luncheons are now.  There were a dozen or so people to meet him; men
and women.  I introduced each of them as they arrived.  In each case
they had been asked to make Emerson's acquaintance, but to some of
them Emerson was an unknown name; or, if not wholly unknown, called
up in their minds no clear image of the man or knowledge of his
life's work.  "Tell me who he is."  "Tell me what he has done."  "Is
he English or American?"  But I suppose there never has been a time
when a knowledge of {64} literature, or of great spiritual
influences, has been an indispensable passport to social position.
Nor was it because Emerson was an American that he was unfamiliar to
these delightful and, in many ways, accomplished women.

Years afterward, in 1888, I was engaged to lunch on the day when news
of Matthew Arnold's death had come.  Arnold had been so good a friend
to me that I did not like going on this first moment to such an
entertainment, but I thought the talk would turn on Arnold, and I
went.  My hostess was a woman renowned in the world, or in her world,
for great qualities, known to everybody, and I should have thought
knowing everybody who had, as Arnold had, a place both in letters and
in society.  I referred to his sudden death.  "Ah, yes," she
answered, "an American, was he not?"  That may be set off against the
unacquaintance of these other ladies with Emerson.

What Emerson cared for was to meet the men and women who stood in
some spiritual or intellectual relation to him; or who were his
disciples.  Mr. Alexander Ireland, in his biographical sketch of
Emerson, quotes an illustrative story.  It was in Edinburgh, this
same year, and Dr. William Smith, President of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Association, was driving him about that wonderful city.
Dr. Smith had told him of "a worthy tradesman in Nicholas Street who
is his enthusiastic admirer."  When Emerson heard of it, he proposed
to call on him.  They stopped at the {65} "worthy tradesman's," and
Dr. Smith went into the shop and said: "Mr. ----, Mr. Emerson is at
the door and will be glad to see you for a few minutes."  "The five
minutes were well spent," adds Dr. Smith; and the disciple was happy
for the rest of his life.  It was characteristic of Emerson, and of
Emerson as an American.  Very likely he did not quite understand how
immense is the gulf which in this country separates the man who
stands behind a counter from the man who stands in front of the
counter.  If he had understood, he would not have cared.  What he
cared for was the point of contact, and of discipleship.  It was the
master who sought his pupil, because he was his pupil.

During Emerson's too brief stay in London I called often in Down
Street.  Miss Ellen was anxious to protect her father against the
pressure from many quarters for public addresses, and to decline as
many private invitations as possible.  At Oxford it was the same, but
neither in Oxford nor London did Emerson lecture except briefly at
Mr. Thomas Hughes's Working-men's College.  Between him and Tom
Hughes--he was never called anything else--there was not very much in
common except sterling qualities of character.  Hughes was a good and
amiable Philistine, English to the tips of his fingers, who wrote one
book, _Tom Brown's Schooldays_, which is immortal, and half a dozen
others that are dead or were never really alive.  But Hughes was one
of our friends in the black days when we had few in England, {66}
working-men excepted; and Emerson was too good a patriot to forget
that; and too much a lover of manliness in men not to like one who
had that supreme trait in a high degree, as Hughes had.  So he made
the exception in his favour, for the Working-men's College was an
institution of high usefulness, in which Hughes's heart was bound up.
As for society, Emerson was an invalid, and able on that ground to
decline invitations without offence.  He had studied English society,
as one form of English life, when here in 1848; and was content with
that experience.  "I do not care for classes," he said.

The nineteenth century produced two supremely good books on American
and on English civilization: Tocqueville's _De la Démocratic en
Amérique_ and Emerson's _English Traits_, published in 1856.
Tocqueville's book, published in 1835, remains the best book on the
United States for the student who cares to get down to the foundation
of things; who cares more for ideas, tendencies, and principles than
for details.  Of Emerson's the same thing may be said, yet no two
treatises could be more unlike than those of the Frenchman and the
American.

But all I wish now to point out is the effect of _English Traits_
upon the English themselves.  Roughly speaking, it puzzled them.  It
is one of the truest books ever written.  Yet to the English
themselves its truth has never appeared quite true.  On Emerson, as
thinker, poet, philosopher, all kinds of judgments have been formed
{67} in England, and expressed, in some cases, with vehemence.  He
has always had an audience and a following here; and always enemies.
But the book they least understand is the book about themselves.
Looking into the egregious Allibone for an apt quotation concerning
the _Traits_ I find none, but instead a remark by Allibone himself
that "Mr. Emerson's writings have excited considerable interest on
both sides of the Atlantic!"  The space given to Emerson in the
_Dictionary of English Literature_ is less than a column, though
fourteen columns are not thought too many for Longfellow; nor are
they.  In the Supplement Emerson gets a little more attention; still
grudgingly given.

Allibone does not matter, and the perplexity of the Philistine
struggling with a book he cannot understand does not matter.  But let
us go at once to the best of English critics; to Matthew Arnold.
Alas! we fare no better.  Arnold's Discourse on Emerson has been
resented by Emersonians as an elaborate disparagement of their
Master.  It is not that.  Arnold was incapable of disparagement, and
while he denies to Emerson many gifts which his readers find in him,
his appreciation is still sympathetic, and he lifts himself to own
from time to time Emerson's real greatness.  He thinks the _Essays_
"the most important work done in prose in our language" during the
last century--"more important than Carlyle's."  But he puts aside the
_English Traits_ because, compared with Montaigne, La Bruyère, {68}
Addison (!), the _Traits_ will not stand the comparison.

"Emerson's observation has not the disinterested quality of the
observation of these masters.  It is the observation of a man
systematically benevolent, as Hawthorne's observation in _Our Old
Home_ is the work of a man chagrined."

And Arnold explains that Emerson's systematic benevolence comes from
his persistent optimism.  The book is too good-natured to be
scientific.  Yet, oddly enough--or perhaps not oddly--the criticism
of the English Philistine is the exact opposite of Arnold's.  The man
in the street, if he has read the _English Traits_, complains that
the criticism of things English is too relentless; that Emerson
always has the scalpel and the probe in hand; that the inquiry is not
critical but anatomical; and the atmosphere that of the dissecting
room.  He is appalled when he sees the most cherished beliefs of
centuries and blended races put under the microscope, and when
Character, Aristocracy, Plutocracy, the Church, Religion itself are
made to take off their masks and yield up their secrets.  They are
not conciliated even when Emerson sums up the English as "the best of
actual races."  What care they for comparisons with other races, or
for the opinion of other races, or of transatlantic critics upon
England and the English and the institutions of this little island?
Emerson's criticism is chemical, it resolves things into their
elements, their primordial atoms.  No doubt, but neither the Throne
nor {69} the Church is shaken, nor a single Act of Parliament
repealed.

Arnold, recalling the influences which wrought upon him as a student
at Oxford "amid the last enchantments of the Middle Ages," said to an
American audience in Emerson's "own delightful town," Boston:

"He was your Newman, your man of soul and genius visible to you in
the flesh, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for your
heart and imagination.  That is surely the most potent of all
influences!  Nothing can come up to it."

And that is the influence which descended beneficially upon us of a
past or passing generation, to whom it was given to see Emerson and
to hear him.  As I think it all over, I begin to doubt whether to
have heard Emerson on the platform did not bring you a sense of
greater intimacy than to have known him even in his Concord home.

There was a time, during Theodore Parker's illness and absence, when
Emerson and Wendell Phillips used to take his place at stated
intervals--in both cases, I think, once a month.  Before the great
audience of the Music Hall, Emerson had precisely the same manner as
with a few hundred people.  He hardly seemed to be aware of his
audience.  He stood there behind Parker's desk, towering above it,
his slight figure adjusting itself to whatever attitude suited his
mood for the moment; never quite erect; the body never quite
straight; the hands fumbling with his {70} manuscript; turning over a
dozen leaves at a time; turning back again another dozen, as if it
scarce mattered in what order he read.  Often he skipped; the large
quarto pages were turned by the score and there was no return.  His
mind seemed to be carrying on processes of thought quite independent
of those he had inscribed on his manuscript.  He felt his way with
his hearers; and his unconsciousness of their presence was therefore
apparent only.  Between them and him there was the flow of invisible,
mysterious currents, whether of sympathy or antipathy.  In Mr.
Gladstone's fine image, they gave back to him in vapour what he
poured out in a flood upon them.  But that, of course, was far more
completely true of an orator like Mr. Gladstone than of a lecturer
like Emerson who read his discourse.  But it was true in a measure of
Emerson also.

But Emerson was an orator too.  He was not always above the arts of
the orator.  He could, and did, calculate his effects; observing the
while whether they told or not.  He delighted in a crescendo.  His
voice rose and fell and rose again; and he had unsuspected depths of
resonant tone.  At one moment clear and cold, then vibrating with
emotion, in which the whole force of the man seemed to seek
expression; then sometimes at the very end becoming prophetic,
appealing, menacing; till the sentences came as if from the Judgment
seat.  He once read Allingham's poem, "The Talisman," as the
peroration of his address in the Music Hall.  I never heard anything
like {71} it--like the wild, strange melody of his voice, which had
in it the intonations and cadences which give to many Slavic airs,
and most of all to the Hungarian Czardas, though that is dance music,
a magic charm.

I have spoken of the prejudice against Emerson which prevailed in
Boston and elsewhere.  It was most vehement in society.  That
worshipful company, which is necessarily a minority and prides itself
on being a minority, likes to set its own standards and expects the
rest of the world, so far as it comes in contact with these social
law-givers, to conform to these standards.  They soon became aware
that to no standard but his own did Emerson ever conform; save so far
as civility and kindness bade him.  He gave way readily enough in
little things.  It is a sign of greatness to hold little things of
little account; an aphorism by no means universally accepted.

However, it was not Emerson's manners to which society objected, or
could ever object.  He had the manners of a king, without the demands
of a king.  He was a republican king.  He stood for equality, in the
sense that he looked down on no man.  The society view is different.
Society exists in order to look down on all who are not within its
sacred circle.  They must be inferior because they are outside.  But
its objection to Emerson lay deeper.  It recognized in him the
natural enemy of privilege and prerogative.  There were distinguished
members of this distinguished body who regarded a man who took {72}
the liberty of examining the substructure on which all societies are
built as an anarchist.  They were afraid of him.  They thought it
safer to exclude him.  By and by, they compromised.  Is not, or was
not, Boston the Home of Culture?  So, as Emerson's fame grew, the
exclusion policy was seen to be feeble.  But when the closed doors
were opened, what was the astonishment of these excellent persons to
discover that Emerson did not seem to care whether they were open or
closed.  He had his own life to live, and lived it, serenely aloof.

Nothing dies so hard as a prejudice.  I have one of my own which
lives in spite of my affection for Emerson, and my many debts to him,
and my gratitude that he gave me a little of his friendship.  I mean
that on a too young mind he had, or might have, an influence not
entirely for good.  He set his ideals so high that, as you looked up
to him and them, your feet sometimes went astray, or stumbled.  He
taught you, though he may not have meant it, to underrate precision
of knowledge, and the value of details.  When the things of the
spirit and the spiritual life mattered so much, how could it be worth
while to know all the tenses of Greek verbs or to be aware of the
rudiments of toe in the palæontological horse?  There are sentences
and pages in _The Conduct of Life_ and elsewhere which refute this
view, and I do not press it.  But I know the effect, not of this or
that essay, but of Emerson's attitude toward education, and his
philosophic indifference {73} to all but what is highest in thought.
And I think even to-day I would not put his books into the hands of a
boy who had not settled views about learning, and a conviction of the
invincible necessity of an accurate method.




{74}

CHAPTER VIII

A GROUP OF BOSTON LAWYERS--MR. OLNEY AND VENEZUELA

A name still remembered in Massachusetts is that of Judge Thomas of
the Supreme Court, the court of highest jurisdiction in that State,
and one of the few State courts whose decisions have always been
cited with respect in the Supreme Court of the United States.  It was
recruited largely from the Suffolk Bar.  The Boston Bar was known as
the Suffolk Bar, the name of the county.  But, of course, other parts
of the State supplied judges, and Worcester County was one.  Judge
Thomas lived and practised law in the town of Worcester.  He
practised politics also, of a very energetic kind, being a good
platform speaker and a good organizer.  There used to be a story that
one morning, in the heat of an exciting campaign, Thomas knelt at
family prayers and began his invocation to the Almighty:
"Fellow-citizens and Whigs of Worcester County."

However that may be, he was a successful lawyer, a successful judge,
and had attractive qualities not always to be found at the Bar.  I
{75} will tell you in a moment in what way he connects himself
permanently with national and international history.  I came to know
about it because it was before Judge Thomas that I tried, at _nisi
prius_, and lost, my first case in the Supreme Court.  When the jury
had delivered their wrongful verdict, and been sent about their
business, Judge Thomas called me up and spoke to me with a kindness I
have never forgotten.  He thought I had tried my case well, told me I
should do well at the Bar, and offered, very generously, to help me
if he could.  After a time he resigned his seat on the Bench and went
into practice in Boston.  A little later I called on him and asked
whether he had room for a junior in his office.  "There would have
been room if you had applied earlier," said Judge Thomas.  "But I
have just been told by my daughter that she has engaged herself to a
young lawyer, and he is to have the place I should otherwise have
been glad to offer you."

The name of that young lawyer was Richard Olney.  It fell to my lot
to see something of him in Washington forty years later, when he was
Secretary of State under President Cleveland.  I saw him for some
weeks, during the height of the Venezuela crisis, almost daily.
Whether I shall ever be allowed to tell the whole story of what went
on during those weeks I do not know.  If I were Mr. Olney I would
give my assent to the publishing of a complete statement.  I say that
because, in my judgment, we owe it to Mr. Olney--and among Americans
to him {76} only--that a way out of the difficulty in which President
Cleveland's Message had landed us was ultimately found.  I know how
it was found, and except Mr. Olney himself, I don't think any other
American knows.  I am aware of the explanations which Mr. Cleveland
published in _The Century Magazine_, and I think them models of
unintentional disingenuousness.  Moreover, I had means of knowing
what was said and done on this side, in England, in the Foreign
Office and elsewhere, during those dangerous weeks; and I know why
the settlement was postponed till next summer, when the American
people, at white heat during December, 1895, and January, 1896, had
cooled off and forgotten there was any crisis at all.

But if I never had a chance of saying more, I wish to say now that
Mr. Olney did a great service to his country, and to both countries;
one of the greatest ever done by any man in his position, or in
almost any position.  I think Mr. Cleveland became aware that he had
acted rashly and with no full knowledge of the history of that
boundary-line between British Guiana and Venezuela which he announced
to the world his intention to re-draw to suit himself, with menace of
war to Great Britain.  I don't forget Mr. Olney's share in the
dispatch of July, 1895, which began the trouble.  He and Mr.
Cleveland concocted that extraordinary document between them at Gray
Gables.  I suppose he knew also of Mr. Cleveland's Message to
Congress, December 12th, and perhaps approved of it--indeed, he must
{77} have approved of it or resigned.  He must also have been
responsible for the second dispatch calling upon Lord Salisbury to
send an answer to the July dispatch before the meeting of Congress in
December; a demand perhaps unprecedented as between two Powers of the
first rank.  I know, too, that some of Mr. Olney's language gave
offence.  Lord Salisbury thought him rude; an impression due mainly
to the different uses made of the English language in Washington and
in London, and to the non-existence in Washington, at that time, of
that diplomatic freemasonry, in both speech and act, and of those
diplomatic conventionalities which prevail in other important
capitals of the world.

All that--and there is more--only emphasizes the delicacy with which
Mr. Olney subsequently handled the dispute which Mr. Cleveland had
envenomed.  A new period in the negotiations began.  I shall venture
to say, even though Mr. Olney, out of loyalty to his President might
refuse to admit it, that with the New Year of 1896 the conduct of the
negotiations passed into his hands.  That he reported to the
President what was going on I don't doubt.  But a new spirit
prevailed.  The tone which had been so offensive in the original
dispatch, and still more in the Message to Congress, was dropped.
Mr. Olney had a wonderful flexibility of mind.  When he saw that one
set of tactics had failed, he was quick to try another, and not only
to try another but to recognize the need of a wholly new departure.
{78} He was equally quick in invention, in devising expedients, in
looking at facts with a fresh pair of eyes.  A trained diplomatist he
was not, but in this emergency he showed the qualities of a trained
diplomatist; the resource, the tact, the fertility, and the power of
divining what was in his adversary's mind.

Lord Salisbury's was not an easy mind to divine.  He had the gift of
silence, and to a still more remarkable degree the gift of enveloping
his thought in that language of diplomacy which, as I said, was not
at that time a language very well understood in America.  But Mr.
Olney guessed pretty accurately at Lord Salisbury's purpose, and they
carried on their exchange of views without very great friction.  The
truth is, both were bent on finding a solution.  The point in which
Lord Salisbury had the advantage was patience.  Mr. Olney was under
some pressure.  Lord Salisbury was not.  Americans will, I think, do
well to bear in mind that, after Prince Bismarck's death, Lord
Salisbury was regarded throughout Europe as a higher authority, with
a more commanding influence, than any Foreign Minister then in power.
He had immense experience, immense knowledge, an immense power of
work, and fine natural gifts perfected by long practice.  There were
not many Ministers who transacted great affairs with Lord Salisbury
on even terms.  But Mr. Olney was one of them.

I find myself, however, going further than I meant to.  I meant no
more than to put on {79} record, before it is too late, the testimony
of an eye-witness, and my belief that, but for Mr. Olney, there might
have been a very different ending to the quarrel upon which President
Cleveland entered in his over-confident, clumsy way.  I have departed
from the order of time in these "Memories."  I must often depart from
it; I cannot begin a story and leave it half told because the end
belongs to later years.

Mr. Olney has made so great a name and place for himself at the Bar,
as well as in the State Department, that no testimony or tribute can
be of much importance to him.  But it is important to me to offer it.
A debt of gratitude may be easily borne, often much too easily; but
if it can never be repaid it can be acknowledged, and I acknowledge
mine to Mr. Olney at the same time that I remind others of what they
also owe him.

I do not regret having had to give way to Mr. Olney in Judge Thomas's
office.  If I had been admitted into that coveted place, I should
have stayed in Boston and at the Bar, and perhaps have had a
prosperous professional life.  But I should not have had the kind of
experience which has made life interesting to me in so many various
ways, and which I am now trying to make interesting to others.

Mr. Rockwood Hoar, afterward Attorney-General of the United States,
whose name I have mentioned earlier, was counsel for the other side
in my Supreme Court case.  If my client had {80} had a good defence,
which perhaps he had not, a novice at the Bar had little chance
against a man with the learning and force of Mr. Hoar.  He had,
however, a spirit of scrupulous fairness.  No man ever suspected
Rockwood Hoar of unworthy devices.  He was too able to need them and
too honest to use them.  But he tried experiments, as every lawyer
does.  He put a question to a witness which I thought innocent
enough, but a friendly lawyer who sat near called to me in a stage
whisper, "Object."  So I objected, not the least knowing why.  The
judge looked to Mr. Hoar.  "Surely," said Mr. Hoar, "my friend will
not press his objection."  Not knowing what else to say, I said I
would withdraw the objection if Mr. Hoar would say he thought the
question competent.  The judge smiled, and Mr. Hoar smiled at my
ingenuousness, and said, "Well, I will ask the witness another
question."

Mr. Horace Gray was at that time reporter to the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts.  After he had become a judge of the Supreme Court of
the United States I used to meet him in Washington.  One day he said
to me:

"You used to practise law in Boston."

"Yes."

"I think we must have met.  I must have seen you in court.  You tried
a case in the Supreme Court before Judge Thomas.  Stop a moment.  I
can tell you the name of the case.  You argued it afterward before
the full bench.  It was Krebs _v._ Oliver."

{81}

And it was.  Forty years had passed.  Mr. Justice Gray had what may
be called a memory.  He had much else: an inexhaustible knowledge of
case law; a power of dealing readily with complex matters; a fast
hold of principles; an industry without limit; the cordial respect of
his fellow judges; and a pleasant house in Washington whereof the
hostess was one of Washington's favourites.  And he had a stature of
somewhere between six and seven feet, with a smiling face and massive
head to crown this huge frame.  He is gone.  I wish he were not.

Of the many members of this brilliant Suffolk Bar there was one of a
very unusual kind of brilliancy.  The brilliancy of invariable
success was his.  I believe it to be literally true that during many
years he never lost a case which depended on the verdict of a jury.
At the Bar, of course, as elsewhere, nothing succeeds like success,
and Mr. Durant's practice was very large.  I have noticed that
clients, as a rule, would rather win their cases than lose them.  How
did he do it?  Nobody ever knew.  His beaten rivals, or perhaps their
clients, sometimes hinted at things nobody ever ventured to assert,
since there was not a scintilla of evidence to justify insinuations.

There was probably no secret save what lay on the surface.  Mr.
Durant was a good lawyer who prepared his cases with a thoroughness
that left no point in doubt, and no scrap of evidence unexamined.  He
knew to a nicety what would {82} tell with a jury and what would not.
He was not a man on whom it was possible to spring a surprise.  His
cross-examinations, without being showy, were deadly.  As a
speaker--orator he was not--he had no other conspicuous merit than
clearness; the art of marshalling facts to fit his own theory of the
case.  When he rose the jury were predisposed to believe.

He had a way of turning to the jury whenever during the trial he had
made a point, brought out a telling fact, or wrung an admission from
an incautious witness.  It was as if from the beginning he took the
jury into partnership; it was a matter in which he and they were
alike interested, and the only interest of either was to discover the
truth.  They said of him what was said by a juryman of another famous
advocate: "It's no credit to him to win his causes.  He is always on
the right side."  When Mr. Durant sat down the jury were convinced
that he, too, was on the right side, and their verdict was but the
formal and legal ratification of the moral view, and, as they
believed, of their own conscientious conviction.

Hypnotism?  I think not.  The thing was not much heard of in those
days.  It is quite possible that Mr. Durant used discrimination and
never took a cause into court in which he did not feel sure of a
verdict, but many a lawyer is sure of a verdict he does not get.
There remains a residuum of mystery which has never been explained,
and is probably inexplicable.  Mr. Durant's {83} presence explained
something.  He had a powerful head, chiselled features, black hair,
which he wore rather long, an olive complexion, and eyes which
flashed the lightnings of wrath and scorn and irony; then suddenly
the soft rays of sweetness and persuasion for the jury.  He looked
like an actor.  He was an actor.  He understood dramatic values, and
there was no art of the stage he did not employ upon a hostile or
unwilling witness.  He could coax, intimidate, terrify; and his
questions cut like knives.

He had a stage name, like so many other actors.  His real name was
Smith, which perhaps was not generally known.  But one day in court
he was tormenting a reluctant witness who had been Jones and was now
Robinson.  "Mr. Jones," cried Durant--"I beg your pardon, Mr.
Robinson."  "Yes, Mr. Smith," retorted the witness--"I beg your
pardon, Mr. Durant."  That cross-examination came quickly to an end.
But I believe Mr. Durant's prestige continued while he remained at
the Bar; then having amassed a fortune, he abandoned the law and took
to preaching.  Whether he had the same success in saving souls as in
winning causes I never heard.




{84}

CHAPTER IX

WENDELL PHILLIPS

It was in the winter of 1860-61 that the Massachusetts allies of the
Southern Slave Power made their last effort.  Spite of Webster's
death, with whom died the brains of the party and its vital force,
these men were still powerful in Boston.  The surrender of Anthony
Burns in May, 1854, the birth of the Republican Party at Worcester in
July of the same year, the election of Mr. Henry Wilson as Governor,
the cowardly assault in the United States Senate on Charles Sumner by
Mr. Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, in 1856--these events had
indeed stirred the people of Massachusetts into revolt against the
Slave Party in this Free State.

But there had come a lull.  There were still hopes that a conflict
between North and South might be averted and that politics might do
the work of arms.  Mr. Franklin Pierce was President, but Mr. Banks
had been elected Speaker of the House of Representatives at the first
session of the Thirty-fourth Congress in December, 1855.  Mr. Blaine
said that marked an epoch, and he described it in his brilliant {85}
_Twenty Years of Congress_ as "a distinctive victory of the Free
States over the consolidated power of the Slave States."

But the Republicans were slow in coming to power, and their
nomination of General Frémont in 1856 sowed distrust among the
sounder men of the party.  Mr. Buchanan's election seemed to confirm
the ascendency of the South, and the mind of Boston, or at any rate
of State Street, reverted to commercial politics.  The Abolitionists
were as much under a cloud as ever.  From 1857 to 1860 things seemed
to be going backward.  The Harper's Ferry business alarmed the
ingrained conservatism of Boston, and though the hanging of John
Brown shocked a good many merchants and bankers, they could not
understand, and were far from approving, Brown's scheme or Brown's
methods.  The state of feeling in Boston was, in short, confused, and
the emotions of 1854 had gone to sleep.

The crisis came in December, 1860.  The Abolitionists tried to hold
an Anti-Slavery Convention in Tremont Temple, on the anniversary of
the hanging of John Brown or the day after.  They do not seem to have
expected trouble; at any rate, they took no sufficient precautions to
keep the peace and keep control of their own meeting.  A "broadcloth
mob"--the phrase long since became classic in Boston--occupied the
hall in force, captured the platform peacefully, elbowed the
Abolitionists off it, appointed their own chairman, Mr. Richard S.
Fay, and passed {86} their own resolutions.  "Broadcloth," said
Phillips, "does not make a gentleman."  The Convention was summoned
to consider "How shall American slavery be abolished?"  The John
Brown anniversary was thought a suitable day for the discussion of
that question, but Brown's death was referred to simply as "too
glorious to need defence or eulogy."  When Mr. Fay, the ringleader of
the mob, thinking his work done, had departed, Mr. Frank Sanborn, the
lawful chairman, resumed his place, and would have held the lawfully
summoned meeting.  Then the mob leaders, Mr. Murray Howe now at their
head, made a fresh attack.  The police sided with them and the Mayor
cleared the hall.

There is a little confusion of dates.  Brown was, in fact, hanged
December 2nd, the fateful day of Austerlitz and of the Third
Napoleon's _coup d'état_.  But these events in Boston occurred, I
think, on the 3rd.  The men who had been driven out of Tremont Temple
by the mob, of which the Mayor finally took command, reassembled in
the evening, very quietly, in a little hall in Belknap Street, on
what was impolitely known as Nigger Hill, not far from the rather
aristocratic Mount Vernon Street.  Wendell Phillips, to an audience
of perhaps three or four hundred--all the place would hold--made an
unreported speech, red-hot with wrath.  A little more than a year
before, November 1st, 1859, a fortnight after Brown's attempt and
while he lay in prison waiting to be hanged, Phillips had spoken in
{87} Brooklyn, and announced that the lesson of the hour was
insurrection.  But he weakened the force of that counsel by adding
that the age of bullets was over; it was an insurrection of thought;
like that of the last thirty years; he still had in mind.  Now, here
in Boston, and not for the first time nor for the last, he was face
to face with forces which were not intellectual nor moral, but forces
of violence.  Phillips could not readily shake off the influences of
his whole public life.  He still believed in "moral suasion."  He was
presently to learn that moralities and the counsels of peace were a
poor defence against men prepared to back their opinions with
revolvers.  But even after the hanging of Brown, at his grave in
North Elba, Phillips could say: "I do not believe slavery will go
down in blood.  Ours is the age of thought."

Perhaps the meeting of December, 1860, marks the beginning of his
conversion, but by no means its completion.  He had long been used to
mobs and mob law.  But now the lesson was being pressed home.

A memorable evening to me, because from it came my acquaintance with
Phillips, whom I had never met.  Under the spell, I suppose, of his
passionate eloquence, I went home and wrote him a letter.  I
explained that I was a Whig that my family and friends were Whigs,
that I belonged in a hostile camp, but that I thought there ought to
be free speech in Boston, and I would do what I could for that cause
and for him if he would say what.  I was, as most young, {88} or old,
men of Massachusetts then were, against slavery, especially in
Massachusetts, but not an Abolitionist.

The next day, about noon, the door of my law office in State Street
opened, and Phillips walked in.  Without a word of preface he said:

"You wrote me a letter?"

"Yes."

"Will you come and see me at my house this evening, and we will have
a talk?  This morning I have not a moment."

Again I said yes, and the door closed and he was gone.  Often as I
had seen Phillips on the platform it seemed to me I had never seen
him till then.  A clear, strong, dry north light came in at the
windows and illuminated his face and figure.  He had the bearing of a
man to whom authority and sweetness of nature belonged in like
degree.  He has been called a thousand times the Apollo of the
platform.  An Apollo he was not except in graceful dignity and
demeanour.  It his masculine beauty appeared to derive from Greece,
it had become Græco-Roman, and finally borrowed its blonde colouring
from some Scandinavian Balder.

So careless was he of mere conventionality that while he stood in the
doorway, or just inside, the soft light grey felt hat he wore, since
known as a Homburg hat, remained on his head.  When I reminded him of
it long after, he said with a laugh:

"Well, you did not ask me to sit down."

{89}

"No, you gave me no time."

I mention it because, with his hat on and his hand on the door, his
manner and bearing were of a grave courtesy like none other.  And in
this transitory attitude, just on the wing, there was a serene
leisureliness as if to hurry were unknown to him.  His eye took in
everything in these ten seconds.  There was not a word beyond what I
have repeated; a purely business call to make an appointment.  But I
knew when he had gone that another influence had come into my life,
stronger for the time than all others.

I went in the evening, as I had been bidden, to the little house in
Essex Street where Phillips chose to live, as if to measure the
breadth of the gulf that he had put between himself and the world
into which he had been born; a world of easy circumstances if not
wealth, and bound together by a hundred social ties nearly all of
which he had broken.  Phillips had what at that time would be called
wealth, for which he had other uses than mere expense on comfort.  A
narrow door opened into a narrow hall out of which climbed narrow
stairs, with a narrow landing half-way up where the stairs turned,
and at the top a still narrower passage to the door of the parlour.
Inside, the same impression of restricted space; a room perhaps
sixteen feet by fourteen, and plainly furnished; a worn carpet on the
floor, a large shabby sofa at the end nearest the door opposite the
fire-place.  Phillips was sitting on the sofa.  He rose and held out
his {90} hand: "It's very good of you to come.  I am afraid I was
abrupt this morning."  Then he plunged almost at once into the
situation, with a forecast of what he thought likely to happen.  "Not
much, if anything, till the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in
January.  That, I dare say, they will try to break up.  Lincoln has
been elected President and Andrew Governor.  You know what I think of
Lincoln.  But Andrew I know well, and I do not believe mob law will
be allowed to rule while Andrew is Governor."  He had already
described Andrew in Tremont Temple: "For the first time within my
memory we have got a man for Governor of Massachusetts, a frank,
true, whole-souled, honest MAN."  Alas!  Andrew was to disappoint him
bitterly in this one matter of free speech, though in no other.

"But you are to speak in another fortnight at the Music Hall," I
said.  "Do you think they will let you alone then?"

"Why," said Phillips, "that's on a Sunday"; as if that would matter
to men whose passions, interests, animosities, all led them to
silence the orator whom they thought, honestly enough from their
point of view, a public danger.  He asked me if I had heard anything.
I had not, but when Phillips told me he was going to speak on "Mobs
and Education" I answered, "But that's a challenge."

"They can take it as they like," he replied, quite softly and coolly,
adding: "If you hear anything perhaps you'll let me know."

{91}

Our talk lasted late, turned on some personal matters, then drifted
far away to national issues, and much else.  I thought Phillips, if
anything, more eloquent in talk than in oratory, yet with never a
sentence which had in it the ring of the platform.  He was direct,
simple, persuasive, and luminous.  His frankness surprised me, but he
told me afterward he had made inquiries and thought it safe to be
frank.  No doubt he saw that mine was a sincere devotion, and perhaps
he was aware of the enchantments he wove about whom he would.  At any
rate, he gave me his confidence from the start.

During the next fortnight I saw many men among my Whig acquaintances.
They made no secret of their purpose to break up that Sunday meeting
at the Music Hall.  Soon these rumours became public.  When the
subject of Phillips's discourse was announced, the rumours spread and
grew more menacing.  The police felt themselves called on to take
notice of what was likely to happen.  Phillips, long used to dealing
with mobs, seemed to think the police superfluous.  Some of us who
had looked into the matter well knew they were not.  Seeing Phillips
from day to day, I asked him again and again to promise his friends
one thing, viz. that he would put himself and leave himself in their
hands.  He still thought we were making too much of a slight danger,
but finally he promised.  There had been mobs in Boston before this,
where the police and the mob had acted together.  They so acted {92}
when Richard S. Fay and Amos Lawrence, and Murray Howe and their
friends broke up the Anti-Slavery Convention in Tremont Temple on the
morning of December 3rd--this same month.  And it was that mob from
which Phillips was to take his text on this Sunday.  A piquant
situation, if it had not been something much more serious, with all
the materials of a great tragedy.

This time the mob leaders, whoever they were, had changed their
tactics.  They did not propose to capture the Music Hall or prevent
Phillips from speaking.  He was to be dealt with outside.  None the
less did the police and Phillips's friends, unaware of details, take
measures to guard the interior.  The police were in force in the
lobbies and passages and at the exterior approaches to the platform;
but out of sight.  Scores of them were in the building, and a much
larger force in waiting hard by.  The platform, which ran from one
side of the hall to the other at the south end, was garrisoned by
Phillips's friends, armed.  The enemy also were armed, and no man
could say what that Sabbath morning might bring forth.  Naturally, we
did not know of the decision of the mob leaders, all in broadcloth,
to postpone their assault till the meeting was over.  We expected
trouble inside, and were ready for it.  I said as little as possible
to Phillips of what I thought likely to happen.  I well knew that if
he were told there was any peril in freedom of speech, his speech
would be freer than ever.

{93}

He always believed in personalities, saying:

"In such a cause as ours you must at all hazards rouse attention.
Men whose minds are made up against you will listen to a personal
attack when they will listen to nothing else.  If I denounce the sin
they go to sleep, but when I denounce the sinner they wake up."

There was to be no going to sleep on this eventful Sunday.  The
speech on "Mobs and Education" is perhaps the most personal, and the
most merciless, of all Phillips's speeches.  The Tremont Temple
rioters had delivered themselves into his hands.  He knew every man
among them and the joint in every armour.  Many of them were there on
Sunday.  You saw the arrow leave the platform and sink deep in the
quivering flesh.  The cheers were soon mingled with hisses.  The air
grew hot.  But the majority were there to hear and the hisses were
silenced.  There were passes of burning eloquence, of pathos, of
invective that tore its way through all defences.

"I have used strong words.  But I was born in Boston, and the good
name of the old town is bound up with every fibre of my heart.  I
dare not trust myself to describe the insolence of men who undertake
to dictate to you and me what we shall say in these grand old
streets."

Thus spoke the aristocrat, the Bostonian proud of Boston and of his
own descent from six or seven generations of the Boston Phillipses;
an aristocracy equal to the best.  His contempt for the Fays and the
rest of the "cotton clerks" was {94} largely a contempt for the
plebeian.  Plebeians, to the Boston mind, most of them were.  Fay is
pilloried for ever in this speech; and others are pilloried.

I will quote one passage, not from Phillips, but a passage from
Edward Everett on free speech which Phillips himself quoted toward
the end of his discourse.  I quote it because Phillips used often to
say that American oratory had few finer examples to show:


    I seem to hear a voice from the tombs of departing ages, from the
    sepulchres of nations that died before the sight.  They exhort
    us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust.  They implore
    us, by the long trials of struggling humanity, by the awful
    secrets of the prison house where the sons of Freedom have been
    immured, by the noble heads which have been brought to the block,
    by the eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench
    the light that is rising on the world.  Greece cries to us by the
    convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes, and Rome
    pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.


It is not often that a great orator opens his heart to us about the
merits of a rival, or whispers to us any one of the secrets of his
own or another's eloquence.  I cannot remember whether Phillips ever
paid to Everett in public the tribute I have often known him pay in
private.  If he had lived in an age when issues were less vital, or
less deadly, he might have found in Everett a model.  But Everett has
no passion, and passion is an element in almost all Phillips's
speeches.  And passion, of quite another kind, fierce, vindictive,
murderous, he was to meet in another ten minutes.




{95}

CHAPTER X

WENDELL PHILLIPS AND THE BOSTON MOBS

Phillips's speech had been all through one to stir deep resentment.
The atmosphere of the Music Hall was seething with fierce passion,
and it seemed likely enough there would be a rush for the platform
when he had finished.  If it had come it would have been met.  The
little band of armed men who concerned themselves about his safety
never left his side.  But there was no rush.  The plans of the enemy
were of a different kind.  The audience passed quietly out of the
hall.  A police officer came to tell us that there would be trouble
outside.  A mob--of course a broadcloth mob--had assembled.  What the
mob intended only the leaders of it knew, but he assured us that the
police were strong enough to deal with it.  But he said Mr.
Phillips's friends should go with him when he left the hall, and keep
with him.

There were, I think, not more than half a dozen of us who were
armed--Le Barnes, Hinton, Redpath, Charles Pollen, and one or two
others.  We told Phillips what he was likely to meet, and that we
should walk next to him.  When we got to the outer door we found the
police disputing with {96} the mob the narrow passage, perhaps fifty
yards long, from the hall to Winter Street.  It was slow work
thrusting these disturbers out, because Winter Street was crowded
with the main body of rioters, and there was no room for more.  But
the police knew their business, and meant to do it, and did it.
Inside the passage there was not space enough for an effective
attack, even had not the police been too strong.  But it took us, I
judge, some fifteen minutes to make our way from the hall door to the
street.

During this space of time the mob in Winter Street roared at us.
They seemed to think we were afraid to go on, and they flung at
Phillips such insults as hatred and anger supplied them with--coward,
traitor, and so on: with threats besides.  Phillips met it all with a
smiling face.  His hand was on my arm, so that if there had been any
nervousness I should have been aware of it.  But the pressure of the
hand was firm and steady.  He was as cool--to use Mr. Rufus Choate's
similitude--as a couple of summer mornings.  The police who had been
a rear-guard, satisfied they were not needed there, had gone to the
front.

At first the mob gave little heed to the police.  They expected the
police, as in Tremont Temple, December 3rd, to be on their side.  But
this time an officer had command who knew only his duty as policeman.
No politics but to keep the peace and protect peaceful citizens.  The
officer was Deputy Chief Ham.  I have since seen a great deal of
police work in many parts of the world; {97} in New York, London,
Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere; nowhere any better handling of a
dangerous mob than this by Deputy Chief Ham.  His force was none too
large, but his mastery over the mob was never in doubt.  In their
hand-to-hand struggles in the little passageway the police showed
what they were made of.  Of Phillips's friends the number had
increased as we passed from the platform, but if we had been alone we
should have been swallowed up, or we should have been driven almost
at once to use our revolvers.  But the police were an impregnable
wall.

Once out in Winter Street, they formed in a solid square, Phillips
and his friends in the centre.  The square was never broken.  The mob
were many thousands strong.  There were wild rushes, there was the
tremendous pressure of great masses of men, but against it all the
police held good.  Down Winter Street to Washington Street, along
Washington Street to Essex Street, and in Essex Street to the door of
Phillips's house, the mob kept us company, oozing and surging slowly
on, reviling and cursing all the way.  They thought they would have a
chance at the house, but the Deputy Chief had taken possession there
in advance, and when the door opened we passed comfortably in between
the police lines.  It had taken us an hour or more from the hall to
the house.  The distance is a short half-mile.

It had been a murderous mob.  Phillips's life was aimed at and had
been in imminent danger during that hour.  The spirit of murder was
{98} abroad.  The police warned us.  They thought the peril over for
the moment, but none the less remained on duty near the house.  Men
were stopped and asked to state their business.  When I returned in
the afternoon an officer came up to me but recognized me, nodded, and
I went in.  I found Phillips as cool as usual, the usual sunshine in
his blue eyes.  I told him what I had heard from the police, and that
I thought his house ought to be garrisoned for the night.

"But who will undertake that?"

"Your friends know there is danger and will gladly come."

He seemed a little sceptical and asked:

"Will you come?"

"Certainly."  I explained to him our plans.  He went into the back
parlour and brought out an ugly-looking pike.  "It was John Brown's,"
he said.  No weapon could be more unfit for use in a narrow hall or
on winding stairs.  It might have a moral effect.  It was agreed that
three of us whose names are above, should camp out that night in the
parlour.  When we arrived about ten o'clock we found the table laid,
with food and drink for a much larger army.  The night passed without
alarm, as did following nights, but neither our vigilance nor that of
the police relaxed.

During these days, and long after, Phillips walked the streets of
Boston with his hand on his revolver.  I was sometimes with him.  I
said one day:

{99}

"I am more afraid now they will try insult than injury."

"Don't trouble about that.  I can see over my shoulder, and before a
man can touch me I shall shoot."

He was a quick and good shot, as I found out next summer, when I used
to stay with him in Milton, and we practised at a target.

But the memorable 21st of January drew on, when the annual meeting of
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was to be held in Tremont
Temple.  Rumours again filled the air, and something more than
rumours.  I have already said I had friends in the other camp.  One
of them came to me to beg me to let it alone.  "I care nothing about
Phillips," he said, "but you are my friend and I must tell you what I
know, though I am betraying my own party."  "Then don't tell it."
But he insisted.

His story came to this: That, knowing we had organized in December
for defence, they had organized for attack.  A group of men
outnumbering ours would go to the Temple on the 21st, well led and
well armed.  Under the new Mayor, Wightman, a more subservient tool
of the mob than his predecessor, Lincoln, the police would no longer
be allowed to protect the Abolitionists.  This hostile band would
wait on events a little, but if Phillips and his friends were in the
same mood as at the Music Hall, they would be driven out of the
Temple.  "What do you mean by driven out?"  He answered, gravely, "It
would be truer to say {100} carried out.  We are determined to put
down this mad agitation.  They will not leave the Temple alive."

My friend spoke in perfect good faith, but it is needless to say I
did not believe him.  I told him so.

"Your friends talk, but they will not act.  They well know that if
they murder Phillips they will be hanged for it."

"But will you not advise Phillips to stay away, or at least to be
moderate?"

"No, I will not.  If I did, it would be useless."

"But if you tell him what I say?"

"He would disbelieve it, as I do."

Our talk ended.  I thanked him, but said his friends would find us
ready; that I should, of course, consider what he had said
confidential, but it would not alter our purpose.  He wished me to
tell Phillips, mentioning no names, and I might tell any of our party
who could be trusted.  Evidently he hoped they would be more
impressed than I was.  I did tell Phillips, who said, "You seem to
have queer friends."  I said something also to the two men who were
to be stationed at the ends of the platform where the steps were,
leading to the platform from the body of the hall, the two most
dangerous points.  The only change they made in their plans was to
double the number of these outposts.

From morning, when the Convention assembled till the noon recess, and
then all through the afternoon the Temple was a scene of confusion,
disorder, {101} uproar; rioting even, but of no violence.  The deep
gallery opposite the platform was thronged by the rioters.  The
formal business of organization once over, they broke in upon every
speech.  Nobody was heard.  Phillips, with all his tact in dealing
with such gangs, could do little.  Now and then a sentence rang
clear.  A message had gone from the Temple to the State House, where
Governor Andrew sat waiting, and watching the course of events.  An
answer had come back by word of mouth, and had been misunderstood, as
oral messages commonly are.

In a lull, Phillips's voice was heard in a direct appeal to the
gallery mob: "We have a message from the Governor.  The State Militia
is on its way to the Temple and will sweep that rabble where it
belongs--into the calaboose."  The rabble thought it over for a while
in silence, but began again.  When the adjournment came Phillips said
to me: "I am going to Governor Andrew.  Come."

We found Governor Andrew in his room at the golden-domed State House
of Massachusetts.  He greeted us cordially and listened while
Phillips stated his case.  Phillips urged that the Anti-Slavery
Society had a right to meet, a right to transact business, a right to
the free use of that free speech which was a right attaching to
citizenship in Massachusetts; and a right to be protected when that
right was denied.  Primarily, he said, it was the business of the
police to keep order and give protection, but the police, acting
under the {102} orders of Mayor Wightman, refused to do their plain
duty.

"Therefore," said Phillips, "I come to the Governor of the State to
safeguard citizens of the State in the exercise of their rights."

Said Governor Andrew:

"Mr. Phillips, what do you wish me to do?"

"Send a sufficient force of troops to Tremont Temple to put down the
rioters and protect law-abiding citizens in the legal exercise of
their legal rights."

The Governor sat behind a table on which lay a copy of the Revised
Statutes of Massachusetts.  He opened it, handed it to us, and said:

"If you wish me, as Governor, to act, show me the statute which gives
me the power."

But Phillips was not to be turned aside.  He answered, in tones
slightly less cool than before:

"Free speech is a common law right.  The power to which I appeal is a
common law power, inherent in the Governor as the Chief Magistrate of
the State."

But Andrew said again:

"Show me the statute."

And again:

"Show me the statute."

And from that he was not to be moved.  Seeing that his mind was made
up, Phillips turned away abruptly, saying to me, "Come," and we
departed.  As we went downstairs Phillips said:

"I will never again speak to Andrew as long as I live."

{103}

And we went back to the Temple, knowing at last we had nothing to
depend on but ourselves and our revolvers.

Again during the interval my friend came to me.  He said: "You will
be allowed to hold your meeting this afternoon, though not without
interruption.  But the attack I have warned you of will be made this
evening, and I once more beseech you to stay away."  He knew, of
course, it was impossible.  What took place after that in the
councils of the rioters I know not.  I have always supposed that my
friend, a man well known in Boston, went to the Mayor and laid the
case before him.  I do not know.  What is known is that before the
hour when the Society was to assemble in the evening, the Mayor
closed the Temple.  His decision was not imparted to us.  Phillips
and I drove to the Temple, and only on arriving heard what the Mayor
had done.  He was a weak Mayor, disloyal, incompetent.  But he had
perhaps prevented a tragedy.  I think Governor Andrew, aware of the
probable course of events in the South and at Washington, desired to
avoid anything like a conflict in Massachusetts.  He said as much to
me afterward.  That was his excuse.




{104}

CHAPTER XI

WENDELL PHILLIPS--GOVERNOR ANDREW--PHILLIPS'S CONVERSION

There was one clear reason for the deadly hatred of the pro-slavery
faction in Boston to Phillips.  He was the real leader of the
Anti-Slavery Party.  If he could be silenced, the voices of the rest
mattered little.  During twenty years Garrison's influence had been
declining, and Phillips had come steadily to the front.  For the last
ten years he had stood alone.  It was his voice which rang through
the land.  His were the counsels which governed the Abolitionist
band.  His speeches were something more than eloquent; they were full
of knowledge, of hard thinking; and the rhetorical splendour only
lighted up a closely reasoned argument.  What Emerson said of
speeches and writings in general was absolutely true of Phillips's
oratory; the effect of it was mathematically measurable by the depth
of thought.  He spoke all over the North.  The Conservatives had no
match for him; therefore he was to be put down by other means.

Passions ran, I think, higher in Boston during those winter months of
1860-1, and the early {105} spring, than before or since.  Thanks to
the pro-slavery faction on one side and the Abolitionists on the
other, Massachusetts was within measurable distance of civil war
within her own borders.  After Fort Sumter and Baltimore, these
passions found an outlet elsewhere.  For a time, the two Northern
factions merged into one people.  But during all the years that have
passed since I have known nothing quite like the state of feeling
which prevailed that winter.  The solid men of Boston thought they
saw the fabric of society dissolving and their business and wealth
and authority perishing with it.  The solid world was to exist no
more.  Naturally, they fought for their lives and all the rest of it,
and fought hard.  Their hatreds were savage.  Their methods were
savage.  We seemed to be getting back to the primitive days when men
stood face to face, and the issue of battle became a personal combat.
The Lawrences and their friends were generally a little stout for the
business of battle, but the allies whom they brought with them to
Tremont Temple and the Music Hall and the streets were good fighting
material.  During all this time the Abolitionists were, as they had
been, a minority and on the defensive.

But this was the state of things which Governor Andrew had in mind
when he challenged Phillips to show him the statute.  He did not want
to make the State of Massachusetts a party to this conflict within
itself.  If to keep order in the streets or to keep a platform open
to Phillips he were obliged to move, he meant to have the law {106}
with him.  No refinements, no Judge-made law, no generalizations--for
the common law after an Atlantic voyage and a hundred years' sleep is
nothing--but a statute, printed, legible, peremptory, binding alike
upon Governor and citizens.  There was no such statute.  If anybody
had happened to think of it, no doubt there would have been, but
there was not.

Therefore the Governor sat still.  He was of such a bulk that it
seemed as if, while he sat still, nothing could move.  He was, in
size and build, not wholly unlike Gambetta, though he had two eyes,
both blue, as against the one black, fiery orb of the Genoese; and
curling light brown hair instead of the black lion's mane which
floated to Gambetta's shoulders; and a face in which sweetness
counted for as much as strength.  Like Gambetta, he was well served
by those about him.  He knew accurately what was going on, and all
that was going on.  He told me afterward he did not know on what
information we acted, but he was astonished we knew so much about
what the enemy intended.  When I reminded him that my associations
were mostly with the other side, he reflected a moment and said:
"Yes, that explains a good deal."  I did not think it necessary to
add that, after Tremont Temple, we were on good terms with the police
also; since Phillips's appeal to Andrew had been based on the
alliance between the police and the Lawrence mob; an alliance which
had in truth existed, at that time.

But the winter wore on.  Twice after the {107} discourse on Mobs and
Education, Phillips spoke in the Music Hall--January 20th, 1861, on
Disunion, and February 17th, on Progress.  Both times the mob
supplied part of his audience inside and part of his escort outside.
No violence was attempted.  The police were too strong, and the
example of Deputy Chief Ham had proved they were in earnest.  If
there was any violence, it was in Phillips's speeches and language.
He was never more provocative.  His forecast of the situation was
influenced by his wishes and theories.  All his life he had been
preaching disunion as the one remedy for the slave.  Disunion seemed
now at last within reach, and at all costs he would do what he could
to promote it.  Indeed, he thought it already accomplished.  Within
six weeks after Lincoln's election South Carolina had replied by an
ordinance of secession.  Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia had followed,
and all over the South United States forts and arsenals had been
seized by State troops.  What was Phillips's comment?

"The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.  The covenant with death
is annulled; the agreement with hell is broken in pieces.  The chain
which has held the slave system since 1787 is parted."

He pronounced a eulogy on the Southern State which had led the way:

"South Carolina, bankrupt, alone, with a hundred thousand more slaves
than whites, four blacks to three whites within her borders, flings
her gauntlet at the feet of twenty-four millions of people--in
defence of an idea."

{108}

A month later he was in the same mood.  It was a trait of
Phillips--not a good one--that he attacked most mercilessly the men
who hated slavery as much as he did, but could not go as far as he
did.  In this February speech there is a long lampoon on Dana;
counsel for the slave in all the fugitive slave cases, but never
denying--what lawyer ever did deny?--that there was a constitutional
obligation to return fugitives.  It is human nature, but not the best
side of it.

Such a reproach came ill from a man who denounced the Constitution as
a covenant with death because of the compromises with slavery
imbedded in the great instrument of 1787.  Of these compromises the
rendition of fugitive slaves was one.  Phillips himself could not
deny it.  The difference between him and Dana was that Dana would bow
to the law and Phillips would not.  Dana would do what he could by
legal means to rescue the fugitive.  He defended him in the courts.
Phillips would have defended him in the streets.  Both men were
needful to the time.  The Abolitionists were very far from disdaining
the use of legal weapons.  When Theodore Parker had been indicted and
the Court, at the instance of his counsel, quashed the indictment on
purely technical grounds, Parker exulted.  "It is a triumph for the
right.  We have broken their sword."

There came, however, the moment when Phillips had to cast in his lot,
for good or evil, with either North or South.  He hesitated long.  He
thought and thought.  He talked with his friends, with the {109} man
in the street, with the men who had lately mobbed him.  One morning
he came into my office.  His sunny face was clouded.  He looked
anxious, almost ill.  He had to make the most momentous decision of
his life; and he could not yet make up his mind.  He said:

"I came to talk to you because I know you are against me.  What I
have said to you before makes no impression.  You still think I ought
to renounce my past, thirty years of it, belie my pledges, disown
every profession of faith, bless those whom I have cursed, start
afresh with a new set of political principles, and admit my life has
been a mistake."

"Certainly not the last," I said, "and as for the others, are you not
taking a rhetorical view, a platform view?  But I will go further.  I
don't think it matters much what you sacrifice--consistency,
principles, or anything.  They belong to the past.  They have nothing
to do with to-day.  The war is upon us.  You must either support it
or oppose it.  If you oppose it, you fling away your position and all
your influence.  You will never be listened to again."

And so on.  He sat silent, unmoved.  Nothing I could say, nothing
anybody could say, would move him.  All his life long he had thought
for himself; in a minority of one.  It had to be so now.  We talked
on.  Finally, I said: "I will tell you what I once heard a negro say:
'When my massa and somebody else quarrel I'm on the somebody else's
side.'  Don't you think the negro knows?  Do you really doubt that a
war between {110} the Slave Power and the North, be the result what
it may, must end in Freedom?"  I am not sure that I ever did hear a
negro say that, but I hoped that Phillips would open his mind to the
negro if not to me.  And I think he did.  I trust this little
artifice of debate was not very wrong.  I had to urge what I could,
but I knew Phillips would decide for himself.  He left saying, "I
will see you again to-night."  I went to his house.  When I opened
the door of the parlour, there lay Phillips on the sofa, asleep.  Ten
minutes later he awoke; lay silent for another minute, then said:

"We shall not have to discuss these things any more.  I am going to
speak next Sunday at the Music Hall for the War and the Union."

And he began at once to consider how he should announce his
conversion.  Having gone over, he took his whole heart with him.  No
compromise, no transition, not one word to retract, not a hint of
apology or explanation.  Yesterday an Abolitionist to whom the
Constitution was a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.
To-day a soldier for the Union.  Presently he said:

"It will be the most important speech of my life.  I don't often
write, as you know, but I shall write this and will read it to you
when it is finished."

Two days later he sent for me again and these were the first
sentences I heard:

"Many times this winter, here and elsewhere, I have counselled
peace--urged as well as I knew how the expediency of acknowledging a
Southern Confederacy and the peaceful separation of these {111}
thirty-four States.  One of the journals announces to you that I come
here this morning to retract those opinions.  No not one of them."

I said: "Mr. Phillips, you will never get beyond that.  They will not
listen."

"Then they will be the last sentences I shall ever utter in public.
But do you listen."

And he went on, in his finest platform manner and voice:

"No, not one of them.  I need them all; every word I have spoken this
winter; every act of twenty-five years of my life, to make the
welcome I give this War hearty and hot."

He knew what he was about.  When it became known he was to speak for
the Union, Charles Pollen came to me and asked whether I thought
Phillips would like the Music Hall platform hung with the American
flag.  "Yes," said Phillips, "deck the altar for the victim."  And
decked it was--a forest of flags; and the flags told the story, long
before Phillips opened his mouth.  There was not a note of
remonstrance as he announced his refusal to retract.  And again he
went on:

"Civil war is a momentous evil.  It needs the soundest, most solemn
justification.  I rejoice before God to-day for every word I have
spoken counselling peace, but I rejoice also, and still more deeply,
that now, for the first time in my Anti-Slavery life, I speak beneath
the Stars and Stripes, and welcome the tread of Massachusetts men
marshalled for war."

I never saw such a scene.  The audience sprang {112} up and cheered
and cheered and cheered.  The hall was a furnace seven times heated.
The only unmoved man was Phillips.  He waited and once more went on:

"No matter what the past has been or said, to-day the slave asks God
for a sight of this banner and counts it the pledge of his
redemption.  Hitherto it may have meant what you thought or what I
thought: to-day it represents sovereignty and justice.  Massachusetts
has been sleeping on her arms since '83.  The first cannon shot
brings her to her feet with the war-cry of the Revolution on her
lips."

And so on to the end.  It was a nobler speech even than in the
printed report, for that came from his manuscript and often he put
his manuscript aside and let himself go.  The inspiration of the
moment was more than any written words.  When it was over there was
again a mob outside; a mob that would have carried the orator
shoulder-high to Essex Street.  The honest, strong face of the Deputy
Chief of Police wore a broad smile.  He had done his duty.  His
responsibilities were ended.  He, too, had fought his fight.
Phillips took it all coolly.  It was such a triumph as comes to a man
once in his career, and once only--the finest hour in Phillips's
life.  He never reached a greater height of oratory, nor an equal
height of devotion.  For his triumph was over himself.




{113}

CHAPTER XII

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON--A CRITICAL VIEW

In explaining why Wendell Phillips was the target for every shot in
the winter of 1860-1, I said it was because he was the real leader of
the anti-slavery party during all the later and more critical years
of the long struggle for freedom.  No doubt, Garrison at one time
held the first place among the Abolitionists.  He was the first of
them in time, or one of the first.  He had had the good fortune to be
mobbed and led through the streets of Boston with a rope about his
body.  He had founded a weekly paper, _The Liberator_.  Georgia had
offered five thousand dollars reward for his arrest.  He had
unflinching courage and needed it all in the 'thirties and later.
But he had very moderate abilities.  His force was a moral force.  He
had convictions and would go any length rather than surrender any one
of them.  But he had almost no other of those gifts and capacities
which make a leader.  He had no organizing power.  He was not a good
writer.  He was not a good speaker.  He could not hold an audience.
He could not keep the attention of the public which he had won in the
beginning.  He did not attract to the {114} Abolitionist ranks the
ablest of the men who were ready to make a fight against slavery.
They did not care to serve under Garrison; under a leader who could
not lead.  They went into politics.

So it happened that the Abolitionists had become a dwindling force.
If Phillips had not appeared on the scene, with his wonderful
oratory, his natural authority on the platform and off, his brilliant
love of battle, his temperament, at once commanding and sympathetic,
his persuasive charm--the Abolitionists would have been wellnigh
forgotten.  He had all the moral force of Garrison, and the
intellectual force which Garrison had not.

Phillips himself would never allow this to be said if he could help
it.  He recognized Garrison as leader, and was perfectly loyal to
him.  So far as he could, he imposed his own view on the public.  It
was so abroad as well as at home.  When Garrison came to London a
meeting was held in St. James's Hall in his honour.  Mr. Bright spoke
and others spoke, hailing the worn-out champion as the herald of
American Emancipation, which perhaps he was.  Boston, which has
periods of generous penitence, gave him thirty thousand dollars,
others than Bostonians paying part of the money, and accepted a
bronze statue and put it up--I forget where.  It has ever since been
the fashion to recognize Garrison as the moral educator of the North
on the slavery question; the schoolmaster of his period.  Very
possibly my liking for Phillips warped my opinion at the time.  But
now, after all these years, I think myself {115} impartial.  I had a
knowledge of the situation.  If it is a wrong view, why was Phillips
and not Garrison the shining mark at which the pro-slavery people
aimed in those critical years from 1854 to 1861?  No other theory
will explain that.

When I used to express an impatient opinion of Garrison, and of
Phillips's submission to him, I was rebuked for it.  Said Phillips:

"You are unjust and you do not know the facts, or you do not make
allowance for them.  Like other young men, you are of to-day.
Garrison's work had been done before you were old enough to know
anything about it, and he is for all time.  I don't say there would
have been no Abolitionist movement but for Garrison, since Abolition
was in the air, and the anti-slavery fight had to be fought.  It
would have been fought in a different way without him, and perhaps
later.  You underrate the moral forces and Garrison's capacity as a
leader.  He was a leader, and is.  Intellectual gifts do not make a
leader.  The soldier whom other soldiers follow into the breach, and
to death, need not be a great captain, nor understand the art of war.
What he understands is the art of getting himself killed, and of
inducing the men behind him to do the same.  Garrison took his life
in his hand.  For many years he was leader of a forlorn hope.  He
held extreme views.  He had to hold them.  He drove men away from the
Abolitionist camp.  They were better elsewhere.  He was not a
politician, but politics were not what we wanted, nor what the cause
wanted.  {116} What it wanted was inspiration, and that is what it
got from Garrison."

I have put this in quotation marks, but I do not mean that Phillips
said it all at once, nor perhaps in these words.  But the passage
reproduces as accurately as I can the substance of what I have heard
him say in many talks about Garrison.  I do not expect anybody to
accept my view against Phillips's.  But I must give my own, right or
wrong.  I saw something of Garrison, publicly and privately.  I had
no dislike for him, but neither had I any enthusiasm.  As I recall
the impressions of those days, it seems to me that I have never known
a man of so much renown as Garrison with so slight an equipment for
the business of leadership, or even of apostleship.  When I try to
sum him up, I am embarrassed by the want of material.  After all,
what did he say or do?

Borrowing from Isaiah a phrase of condensed passion, Garrison had
called the Constitution a covenant with death and an agreement with
hell.  Without Isaiah's help, he produced the only other phrase
which, out of all his writings and speakings has kept a place in the
general memory: "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not
retreat a single inch, and I will be heard."  That was his pledge in
the first number of _The Liberator_.  It was finely said, and well he
kept it; so long as it mattered what he kept.  I have often heard him
speak.  I cannot recall one single effort of anything that could be
thought oratory.  He was a tiresome speaker.  Of rhetoric, or of that
art {117} which goes to the making of good speeches, he had no trace
or tinge.  Between him and his audiences there was no give and take.
He just stood up on the platform and hammered away.

He was a fanatic, pure and simple.  He had a message to deliver, and
he delivered it as a gramophone delivers its messages.  He was what
they call a record.  If he impressed his hearers, as he sometimes
did, it was by the passionate fervour of his beliefs, and of his
animosities.  He was at white heat.  More often he wearied them.
They got up and went away.  I suppose people read _The Liberator_.
Dr. Johnson said you could write anything if you set yourself to it
doggedly, and so it is of reading.  But the average reader feels
himself entitled to a little help from the writer, and from Garrison
he got none.

This, however, was in the early days of journalism--it was ten years
before Horace Greeley founded _The New York Tribune_ that _The
Liberator_ was born.  A newspaper was then a newspaper, whether it
had any news or not; and even when its editorials were written, as
the elder Bennett said _The New York Herald_ editorials were written,
for men who could not read.  The printed page had an authority
because it was printed; an authority which hardly survived Prince
Bismarck's epigram on the newspaper: "Just printer's ink on paper."
_The Liberator_ was violent, bitter, prolix, and dull.  But the
Puritan preachers were all this, yet men sat contentedly for hours
beneath their intolerable outpourings, as do the Scotch to this day.
Carlyle {118} had heard Irving preach for hours on end.  I have
sometimes had to sit under the Scottish preachers, when staying at a
highly ecclesiastical house.  On these occasions I used to dream that
I was reading _The Liberator_ or listening to Garrison in the Boston
Melodeon.  The a priori method was common to both, and the absence of
accurate knowledge.  They did not master their subjects, nor their
trade.

As to what Garrison did, I am quite willing to accept the history of
his time as it is commonly told.  I take all that for granted; all
his services to the anti-slavery cause; and, with all drawbacks, they
were great.  Still, I do not think they explain his immense fame.  He
was a Captain in the army of the Lord, if you like, but a Captain who
won no battles.  There was one final victory, based on a long series
of defeats; a victory in which he had a share, though not a great
share.  Perhaps a better Saint than Captain, but in Rome's long
catalogue of the canonized how many first-rate names are there?  You
can become a saint quite cheaply if you know how.  There are fifty or
more huge volumes of the _Acta Sanctorum_, mostly lies, yet extremely
interesting as examples of the use to which the human imagination can
be put for ecclesiastical purposes.  A Benedictine labour, ere yet
science had shaken the foundations of clerical fairy tales by its
demand for evidence.  The acutest minds accepted them.  So late as
the nineteenth century they were still accepted.  After his
"conversion," Newman, perhaps the {119} finest mind of his time,
swallowed whole all the fictions to which the Church of Rome had
given the imprimatur of infallibility.  Garrison's exploits are less
legendary, but are they much more substantial?  His fame rests on
generalities.

To look at, he was neither soldier nor saint.  He had not, on the one
hand, the air of command, nor, on the other, the sweetness or
benignity we expect from one of the heavenly host.  His face was both
angry and weak.  His attitude on the platform was half apologetic and
half passionate.  His speech at times was almost shrewish.  It was
never authoritative though always self-complacent.  So was the
expression of his face, with its smile which tried to be amiable and
succeeded in being self-conscious.  There was no fire in his pale
eyes; if there had been, his spectacles would have dulled it.  He
stooped, and his most vehement appeals--they were often extremely
vehement came to you sideways.  It was an unlucky effect, for there
was nothing shifty or crooked in the man's nature.  But he had a rôle
to play--Isaiah, if you like--and played it as well as his means
would allow.

It was the indomitable honesty of the man which gave him such
authority as he had.  That is not a bad eulogy in itself.  Bad or
good, nothing I can say will diminish his reputation, nor do I wish
it should.  When a legend has once grown up about a man it keeps on
growing.  It has been decreed that Dickens shall be a great novelist,
and Gladstone a great statesman, and Browning a great {120} poet, and
Herbert Spencer a great philosopher.  Each of these men was great in
other ways, but the legend is invincible.  So, no doubt, with
Garrison.  He will remain the Liberator of the Slave.  By the time
the cold analysis of History reverses that verdict, personal
partialities will have ceased to count.




{121}

CHAPTER XIII

CHARLES SUMNER--A PRIVATE VIEW

The anti-slavery leaders who emerged about the same time from the
groups of mediocrities enveloping them were Wendell Phillips and
Charles Sumner.  So essentially was Sumner an idealist that he might
naturally have cast in his lot with those who preferred ideals to
party politics, but other influences finally prevailed and he
embarked on that career which, in due time, made him the leader of
the anti-slavery forces to whom freedom seemed possible by political
methods.  On the whole, even among that group of men which included
Andrew, I think Sumner must be put first.  His province was larger;
the range of his activities greater; and there were more moments than
one when he was the most conspicuous figure in American public life.
Of his scholarship, his legal attainments, his multifarious and
accurate knowledge, his immense powers of work, everybody has heard.
I do not enter upon that.  The Sumner I shall speak of is the Sumner
I knew.

In the account, first published in _The New York Tribune_, of my
first meeting with Bismarck, in 1866, I said that I had heard much
from Bismarck which {122} I could not repeat.  On my return, I saw
Sumner.  Almost instantly he asked what it was Bismarck had told me
which I could not repeat in print.  The question was embarrassing
enough, and I answered rather slowly:

"Mr. Sumner, much of what Count Bismarck said that seemed to me
confidential related to diplomatic and international matters, and you
are Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.  It would
not have been said to you."

Sumner reflected a moment, then answered:

"I suppose you are right.  I won't ask you about anything which you
think you ought not to repeat.  But you must consider that,
notwithstanding all that Bismarck has accomplished, he is still an
unknown force.  My own belief is that the future of Germany lies in
his hands.  The man who could defy the public opinion of Europe in
that business with Denmark, who could defy the public opinion and
Parliament of Prussia, who could govern four years without a Budget
or a majority, who could make war without supplies, and without his
country behind him, and his King only a convert at the last moment to
his policy--that man, though he has put Austria under his feet and
Prussia in Austria's place at the head of Germany, is, in my
judgment, only at the beginning of his career.  He is the one
supremely interesting figure in Europe at this moment.  I have never
met him; probably may never meet him.  But it is important to me to
know all I can about him.  Violate no confidence, but tell me what
you can.  {123} I will make no use of it except to inform my own
mind.  When I have to deal with Count Bismarck, I want to be able to
picture to myself what manner of man he is.  In diplomacy, a
knowledge of men is half the battle."

This long speech was characteristic of Sumner.  He was seldom brief
or simple.  His mind overflowed.  In private, as in public, he was
oratorical.  The sentences, as they came from his lips, seemed to
have passed through a mould.  He spoke with a model before him.  The
most sincere of men he was never content to be himself and nobody
else.  In the murmur of the flowing periods he often uttered, you
heard echoes of Cicero, of Bossuet, of Burke.  Perhaps it was true of
him--as Emerson said, not of him--that his library overloaded his
wit.  He moved as if in armour; a mixed but apt metaphor.  The chair
in which he sat was a platform, and his one listener was an audience.
He neglected, in his private talk, none of the arts of the
rhetorician.  Whoever has heard Sumner in the Senate or in Faneuil
Hall must remember the imposing presence of the man; his stature: and
the leonine head with its waving black mane which every moment he
tossed from his forehead, only to have it fall again half over his
eyes.  The strong features stood out sharply, the eyes were alight,
the lips moulded into plastic form the most stubborn sentences, and
the whole blended into one expression after another at the will of
the speaker; each expression the visible image of his thought.  He
was so intent on bending his audience {124} to his will that he used
without stint every weapon at his command.

In private, all this was a little overwhelming.  As it comes back to
me in memory, my view of it is probably more critical than it was
while I sat and looked and listened.  But it still seems to me
extremely fine.  In England--the country of all others where
simplicity counts for most--Sumner was thought emphatic; and the
English do not like emphasis, but they liked Sumner.  He was first
here as a young man, in 1838 and 1840, when he was still in the late
'thirties; and these mannerisms were presumably less mannered, or
less aggressive.  But the men and women whom Sumner then came to know
were men and women who dwelt on the heights.  I suppose the average
of serious culture at that time in that class was at least as high as
it is now.  They liked a man with a full mind.  Sumner had that; and
he poured it out in a flood.

Macaulay had taught his set, or the several sets to which he more or
less belonged, to endure conversation which took the form of
monologue and rivalled the laborious accuracy of a cyclopædia.
People suffered under him.  Lady Holland and Hayward and Lord
Melbourne and others rebelled, but there were not many who rebelled.
Sumner's path had therefore been made plain, nor was he dogmatic in
Macaulay's way.  He was human and his enthusiasms were human, and he
was sympathetic.

But when Sumner, in 1869, made his indirect {125} Claims speech in
the Senate, seeking to induce the Government to demand from England
indirect damages for the depredations of the Alabama, his popularity
in this country came to a sudden end.  His best friends were those
who resented this speech most hotly; and Mr. Bright most of all.  To
Mr. Bright I once undertook to defend Sumner or to explain him, for I
thought he had been misunderstood.  But Mr. Bright would not have it.
"The only defence is silence," he exclaimed, and he was the more
angry when I said: "That will do for an epigram."  And we never
referred to it again.

So far as I could, I satisfied Sumner's interest about Bismarck, whom
I had seen at short range, and with whom, on the evening in question,
I had spent some three hours alone.  Sumner asked question after
question, with one definite object; he wanted to understand the man
himself.  Once or twice he put a searching interrogatory on matters
of diplomacy, or on the relations between the King and his great
Minister, which had to be answered with reserve.  He showed an
astonishing knowledge of purely Prussian politics and even of
Prussian politicians.  He asked if it was true that Loewe and the
other Liberals had owned they were wrong in opposing Bismarck, and
when I said yes, exclaimed: "Then they showed more good sense than I
expected."

I spent some days with Mr. Sumner in his house in Lafayette Square,
in Washington, now part of a Washington hotel.  A plainly furnished
house, {126} hardly a home; chiefly remarkable for its books and for
Sumner.  He was a kindly host, anxious that his guest should make the
most of his visit, and see the men he wanted to see.  I wanted to ask
him why he had, on a former visit, advised me not to see Lincoln; but
I did not.  But Lincoln was now dead and among the giants who
survived him Sumner was the most attractive personality.

He became more attractive still some years later, in 1872, when he
came to Europe for the rest which his long warfare, first with
President Johnson and then with President Grant, had made imperative.
He came first to London, staying--or, as the English perversely say,
stopping--at Penton's Hotel, St. James's Street; then a hostelry of
repute, now extinct.  He had a large suite of rooms on the ground
floor at the back; gloomy, and intensely respectable.  I dined with
him the night of his arrival.  "I don't know what kind of a dinner
they will give us," said Sumner, "but you shall have a bottle of
Chateau Lafitte of 1847, and the rest will matter less."  He loved
good Bordeaux, as all good men do; and his talk flowed like old
wine--a full, pure stream, with both flavour and bouquet; and not
much of the best claret has both.

It is not possible to repeat much of Sumner's talk, for it was mostly
personal and intimate.  But I asked him whether he still felt the
effects of those coward blows which Preston Brooks had dealt him from
behind as he sat imprisoned in his chair in the Senate.  He was not
sure.  He {127} doubted whether he had ever completely recovered,
though it was now some sixteen years since that particular piece of
South Carolina chivalry had been perpetrated.  He thought everything
had been done for him which could be done.  What he told me may or
may not have been printed.  I do not know.  When the moxa was to be
applied to his spine, Dr. Charcot proposed to give him an anæsthetic.
"But," said Sumner, "does not the effect you seek to produce--the
counter-irritation--depend more or less on the pain the patient would
endure without the anæsthetic?"  "Yes," Charcot admitted,
reluctantly, "it probably does."  "Then let us go ahead without
ether," said Sumner; and they did.  I understood the treatment
consisted in laying along the spine cotton-wool soaked in oil and
setting fire to it.  When, after two or three days, the burn is
partly healed, the operation is renewed, and the pain, of course,
more severe.  But no ether was administered.  After his first attack
of angina pectoris, "the pain," said Sumner, "which I endured in a
single second from one of those spasms was more than all I ever
suffered from all the applications of the moxa."

We went together from London by way of Boulogne to Paris, staying two
nights at Boulogne at one of the beach hotels.  Sumner was like a
boy; his sixty-one years sat lightly on him and his interests were as
fresh as I had ever known them.  He loved the sea and the sea air; an
air so much more exhilarating on the southern coast of the {128}
Channel than the northern.  He was amused to hear that the customs
authorities had passed all our luggage--his and mine--because I had
told them he was a Senator; and still more amused later when the
Dover customs on our return had shown him the same indulgence as "The
Honourable Charles Sumner"--honourable denoting in England not
political distinction, but membership of a family the head of which
is a peer.  In Paris, as in London, we had rambled about the
book-shops.  "I dare say," remarked Sumner, "you thought from my
books at home that I cared nothing for books as books; or for
bindings.  But you will see."  And he proceeded to buy a certain
number of so-called fine bindings: which, alas, were not so fine as
they ought to have been.

Less than two years after his last months in Europe, he died.  I have
still much to say about him, and there are many letters of his to me
which I hope to print; but they are not here and I must end.  When I
remember what has been said so often of Sumner by men who did not
know him or did not like him, I may be allowed to end with a tribute
of affection.  I thought him, and I shall ever think him, one of the
most lovable of men; more than loyal to his friends, delighting in
kindnesses to them; of an implacable honesty, sincerity, devotion to
duty and to high ideals; an American to whom America has paid high
honour, but never yet enough.




{129}

CHAPTER XIV

EXPERIENCES AS JOURNALIST DURING THE CIVIL WAR

My obligations to Wendell Phillips are mixed, and one of them was an
introduction to _The Tribune_.  In the autumn of 1861 I wanted two
things: a holiday, and a chance to see something of the war and the
negro question at short range.  At that time, Mr. Charles A. Dana was
managing editor of _The Tribune_, with Mr. Sydney Howard Gay as his
first lieutenant.  Phillips gave me a letter to Mr. Gay, the result
of which was that Mr. Dana asked me to go to South Carolina for _The
Tribune_.

A word about Mr. Dana.  He had the reputation at that time of being
what the cabman called that Mr. John Forster who was, among other
things, the friend and biographer of Dickens--"a harbitrary gent."  I
suppose Mr. Dana was arbitrary; in the sense that every commanding
officer must be arbitrary.  But my relations with him, or my service
under him, lasted some months, during the whole of which period I
found him considerate and kindly.  He liked, I think, to assign a man
to duty and judge him by the result; which meant that the man was
left free to work out his {130} own salvation; or damnation, as the
case might be.

I was, of course, perfectly new to the business of journalism and,
equally of course, made many mistakes.  But Mr. Dana was not the kind
of manager who fastened on this mistake or that as an occasion for
chastising the offender.  He judged a man's work as a whole.  In the
office, I am told, he sometimes thought it needful to speak plainly
in order to enforce a steady discipline.  He had been known to walk
into the room of one of the departmental editors, in full view and
hearing of the whole staff, and remark: "Mr. X, you were
disgracefully beaten this morning," in the tone in which he might
have said it was a fine day.  But the next morning Mr. X was not
beaten; nor the next.

Very possibly, between me and Mr. Dana's wrath, if I roused it, stood
Mr. Gay; a man of soft manners and heart.  I cannot remember that,
directly or indirectly, any reprimand ever came to me from Mr. Dana.
From Mr. Greeley there came more than one; all well deserved.  With
the business of managing the paper Mr. Greeley did not much concern
himself.  With the results he sometimes did, and when _The Tribune_
did not contain what he thought it ought to contain, he was apt to
make remarks on the omission.  While I was at Port Royal in South
Carolina there was a skirmish at Williamston in North Carolina, a
hundred miles away.  Mr. Greeley thought I ought to have been at
Williamston.  Very likely I ought.  {131} But Lord Curzon had not at
that time announced his memorable definition of enterprising
journalism; "an intelligent anticipation of events that never occur."
That epigram, delivered in the House of Commons, may be supplemented
by an axiom.  The business of a war correspondent is to be, not where
he is ordered, but where he is wanted.

In the early days of the Civil War--or, for that matter, in the late
days--the American Press had little of the authority it has since
acquired.  The heads of great departments of Government still held
themselves responsible primarily to the President.  Berths on
battleships were not then at the disposal of the first journalists
who wanted one.  When I asked Commodore Steadman of the _Bienville_
to take me to Port Royal he politely told me it was against the naval
regulations to allow a civilian on board a ship of war.  When I asked
him who had a dispensing power in such matters, he said: "If the
Secretary of the Navy should order me to receive you as a guest, I
should do so with pleasure."  I thanked him and with the courage of
which ignorance is the mother, telegraphed Mr. Welles.  No answer.  I
telegraphed again, saying it was the wish of Mr. Dana that I should
go to South Carolina on the _Bienville_.  The effect of Mr. Dana's
name was magical, and this time an answer came; that Commodore
Steadman had orders to give me a berth.  I suppose the journalists of
to-day will hardly understand how there could have been a difficulty.
But there were to be many difficulties.  Commodore {132} Steadman was
as good as his word, and better; and a kind host.

Admiral Dupont had captured the Port Royal forts by the time I
arrived.  A finer example of the old type of naval officer than
Admiral Dupont our naval service never had.  Captain Raymond Rodgers
was his flag captain; another example not less fine.  General W. T.
Sherman was in command of the land forces.  The winter passed slowly
away.  There was not much to do except study the negro question;
which was perhaps more attractive when studied at a distance.
General Butler, bringing the mind of a lawyer to bear on the problems
of war, and desiring a legal excuse for annexing the personal
property of the enemy had announced that the negroes were "contraband
of war."  For him, the maxim that laws are silent amid arms did not
hold good.  He liked to make laws the servant of arms.  The negroes
naturally came soon to be known as contrabands.  There were some
months during which they were called hardly anything else.  I called
them so in my letters.  It was characteristic of Phillips that, after
a time, he wrote to me to suggest that Butler's phrase had done its
work and that the negro was a negro: a man entitled to freedom on
other grounds.

But it was long before the word passed out of use.  Butler had chosen
the psychological moment.  The "contrabands"--with Mr. Phillips's
permission--who crowded the camps were mostly from the cotton and
rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia.  If you were not
already {133} a convinced Abolitionist, they were not likely to
convert you.  But it was becoming daily clearer that the negro had a
military value; not at Port Royal, however, where he was only a
burden.  It was not an eventful winter at Port Royal.  There were
expeditions by land and sea, and there was the taking of Fort
Pulaski, which I saw, but I was glad to return to New York in the
spring; and then to join General Frémont in the Shenandoah Valley.
The name of that commander was still one of promise.  Except the
name, there was not much else for the purposes of war, but he had a
charm of manner and a touch of romance and a staff on which one or
two foreign adventurers had places and did weird things.  "General"
Cluseret was one; an impostor who afterward found a congenial home in
the Paris Commune, with other impostors.  That campaign came to
nought, and when General Pope, in July, 1862, was put in command of
the Army of Virginia, I found my way to the headquarters of that
redoubtable warrior.

With him, in command of the Third Army Corps, was General McDowell.
I don't know why one's memory chooses trivialities as proper objects
of its activity, but it sometimes does.  One of the most vivid among
the impressions of those days is the stout figure of General McDowell
on his horse, which he sat ill, his uniform awry, his sword pushed
behind him as far as it would go, his strapless trousers ending
abruptly halfway between knee and ankle; then a space of bare flesh,
{134} and then some inches of white stocking, and then a shoe.  But
he had military gifts if not a military air.  He was talking with
General Pope, whose unhappy proclamation about his headquarters in
the saddle had already been issued.  Unlike McDowell, Pope looked a
better soldier than he was.  His six weeks' generalship on the
Rappahannock ended with the Second Bull Run, which there was now no
Billy Russell to describe in words that blistered yet were honest
words; and with Chantilly.  The West suited Pope better than the
East, and to the West he returned.  In these six weeks he had made
nothing but mistakes and achieved only defeats.

Personally, General Pope was pleasant to deal with.  It was while he
commanded the Army of Virginia that Mr. Stanton, then Secretary of
War, or perhaps General Halleck, issued orders for the expulsion of
all correspondents from the armies in the field.  General Pope sent
for me and told me of the order.  Impressed at that time with the
sternness of War Office rule, I answered meekly that I supposed I
must go.  Said General Pope, "This is not an official interview.  I
imagine you needn't go till you get the order."  A battle was thought
to be imminent; any respite was welcome.  I thanked him, went back to
my tent, took what I most needed, and rode off to an outpost where I
had a friend.  The official notification may have been sent to my
tent but never reached me.  And so it happened that I saw such
fighting as there was on the Rappahannock, and at the Second {135}
Bull Run, better called Manassas.  Interesting to a student of war;
not inspiriting to a patriot; and not now to be described even in the
briefest way.  My only aim is to give the reader of to-day some faint
notion of what a war correspondent's life in those days was like.

One incident I may note, as an example of what may happen to a
general who neglects the most elementary rules and precautions of
war.  At the end of a day's march, at sundown but the heavens still
light, General Pope bethought himself that he should like to see what
the country ahead of him looked like.  With his staff and a bodyguard
of some sixty sabres he rode up a low hill with a broad crest, open
ground about it for a hundred yards, and beyond that in front a
thick, far-spreading forest line.  General Pope and his staff
dismounted.  The cavalry were ordered to dismount and loosen their
saddle-girths.  Just as this operation had been completed there came
from the wood beyond the open ground a rifle volley.  As we stood
between the sunset and the enemy we were a pretty fair target.  There
was no time for orders.  Everybody scrambled into his saddle as best
he could and away we went.

But the firing woke up the advance guard of our army, and they also
began firing.  It soon appeared that General Pope had unwittingly
passed outside his own lines, so that, as we rode away from the fire
of the Rebels we rode into the fire of our own troops.  It was hot
enough but luckily did not last long.  The hill partly protected
{136} us from the sharpshooters in grey, and our fire was silenced
after a moment.  But the horses were well frightened.  It was
impossible to pull up.  We scattered and the horses went on for a
mile or so.  I never before so much respected the intelligence of
that animal.  There was nothing to do but sit down in the saddle, but
the horses never made a mistake at full speed over an unknown
country, stiff with fences and brooks, and nobody came to grief; nor,
which seems more wonderful, was anybody hit by the bullets.  A good
many remarks were made which hit General Pope.




{137}

CHAPTER XV

CIVIL WAR--GENERAL McCLELLAN--GENERAL HOOKER

The failure of Pope's campaign and his retreat upon the Capital
demoralized his army and demoralized Washington to an extent which
few remember.  The degree of the demoralization may, however, be
measured by the reappointment of General McClellan to the command of
the Army of the Potomac and of Virginia.  In the absence of any
general whose name inspired confidence, General McClellan was thought
a synonym of safety, or, at any rate, of caution, and he had not
wholly lost the confidence of his men.  He was not expected to enter
upon large operations.

An engagement near Washington was, however, thought probable.  On a
hint from a friendly official I rode out one afternoon from
Washington to the army headquarters, expecting to be away at most a
day or two.  My luggage consisted of a mackintosh and a tooth-brush.
I was absent six weeks.  But this was not so tragic as it sounds, for
Maryland was a country in which, even with a war afoot, it was
possible to buy things.  In the interval, I had seen two battles;
South Mountain {138} and Antietam, which came as near to being real
war as could be expected under General McClellan.

Correspondents were not now allowed with the army in the field any
more than in General Pope's time.  We were contraband.  But so long
as we yielded nominally to the inhibition of the War Office nobody
seemed to care.  The War Office was then named Edwin M. Stanton.  To
this day I have never been able to understand how Mr. Stanton--a man
all energy, directness of mind and purpose, scorning compromise and
half measures and scorning those who practised them--came to assent
to the replacing of General McClellan at the head of the Army of the
Potomac.  But he did, and at first General McClellan seemed to
justify the new hopes newly placed in him.  He might have sat still,
but after providing for the defence of Washington he moved out upon
an aggressive-defensive campaign.  General Lee had entered Maryland
and McClellan went in search of him.  He moved slowly, but he moved.
His soldiers, so far as I could judge, believed in him in spite of
his disasters in the Peninsula.  His generals, I think, did not.  I
saw and talked with some of them, for I found myself making this
campaign as a volunteer aide-de-camp to General Sedgwick.  I had met
General Sedgwick before, and when I had to consider how I was to get
leave to go with the troops I went to General Sedgwick and told him
my difficulty.  "Come along with me," he said.  That was all the
appointment I had.  It would not have been {139} possible in a
European army, but in the armies of the Union many things were
possible.  And it was quite sufficient to take me outside of Mr.
Stanton's order about correspondents.  I was not a correspondent; I
was one of General Sedgwick's aids.  His kindness to me was a service
for which I could never be too grateful.

It was a still greater service because General Sedgwick belonged in
the category of fighting generals, who were none too popular with the
general commanding, since he, mixing politics with war, believed in
half-beating the enemy.  Sedgwick, so far as I know, had no politics.
Certainly he had none in the field.  He was there to fight, not to
build bridges over which the Rebels might come back into the Union.
It had become known that General Lee had entered Maryland, to enable
her people "to throw off a foreign yoke."  He was not, as it turned
out, a welcome guest.  Maryland would have been much obliged to him
if he had stayed on the other side of the Potomac.  McClellan, taking
time to think things over, and perhaps not liking to be considered a
foreign yoke, advanced toward Frederick, Lee's headquarters for the
moment, at the breakneck pace of six or seven miles a day.  I suppose
McClellan must have known that Lee wanted Harpers Ferry.  But even
after Lee's general order had come into his possession, with specific
directions for the movement of each division, McClellan hesitated and
finally took the wrong road.

Hence the battle of South Mountain; a {140} picturesque performance;
part of which I watched by the side of General McClellan himself.  At
the moment he was quite alone; his staff away carrying orders; an
officer now and then returning only to be sent off again at once.
The general presently saw that a stranger was standing near him and
asked a question or two.  I offered him my field glasses, but he said
he could see very well and declined them.

There was in his appearance something prepossessing if not
commanding: something rather scholarly than warlike; amiable,
well-bred, cold, and yet almost sympathetic.  His troops were slowly
forcing their way up the steep mountain side upon which we looked.
It was, in fact, from a military point of view, a very critical
moment, but this general commanding had a singular air of detachment;
almost that of a disinterested spectator: or of a general watching
manoeuvres.  The business of war seemed to be to him merely what Iago
calls "the bookish theoric"; and he himself "a great arithmetician."
He had the face of a man of thought.  Napoleonic, said his idolaters,
who called him the young Napoleon: not considering dates, or not
aware that when Napoleon planned and won his great Italian campaign,
a masterpiece of war, he was twenty-seven.  When McClellan planned
and lost his Peninsula campaign, he was thirty-seven.  But there he
stood; an interesting figure; as if stargazing.  Compact,
square-chested, his face well moulded.  That he was directing the
assault of {141} the forces struggling up yonder hill no human being
could have guessed.  Whether his tailor had been too stingy in the
material of his uniform, or Nature too lavish in the contents of it,
he was uncomfortable; he and his clothes did not seem made for each
other.  There were wrinkles.  There was a missing button; nor was he
a well set-up figure.  It may well enough have been because of his
military career, but I thought an air of indecision hung about him.
Men had died by hundreds and were yet to die because he could not
make up his mind, nor push an attack home.  They were dying now, as
he looked on; they lay dying and dead on the opposite slope; for when
he had at last made up his mind he had made it up wrong.  The battle
of South Mountain was a victory in a sense, but it need never have
been fought.  A position which might have been turned had been
forced, and the road to Antietam lay open.

Again it was like McClellan, on approaching Sharpsburg and the
battleground of Antietam, to halt and think it over.  If he had
struck at once, he would have found Lee's army divided and the path
weakly held.  But McClellan had it not in him to do anything at once,
or to do it once for all.  The armies faced each other idly all that
day.  In the afternoon I heard that a flank movement on the enemy's
left was to be tried under General Hooker.  So I rode over and joined
that general's command.  It was well known that Hooker would fight if
he was allowed.  He was already called {142} "Fighting Joe"; a
well-earned sobriquet.  He put his troops in motion about four
o'clock that afternoon, himself at the head as usual, doing his own
reconnoitring.  I rode with the staff, not one of whom I knew.
Nobody took the trouble to ask who I was or why I was there.  For
aught they knew I might have been a Rebel spy.

General Hooker had his own way of doing things.  This was what might
be called a reconnaissance in force; two brigades in line pushing
steadily forward; a force of cavalry in advance, two divisions
following.  By the time we came in touch with Lee's left, it was
dusk.  We could see the flashes of the Rebel rifles which drove
Hooker's cavalry back upon the infantry division.  Hooker played the
game of war as the youngest member of a football team plays football.
He had to the full that joy of battle which McClellan never had at
all; and showed it.

Between the man by whose side I had stood two days before at South
Mountain, and the man near whom I now rode, the contrast was
complete.  McClellan was not a general; he was a Council of War, and
it is a military axiom that councils of war never fight.  He surveyed
the field of battle beneath him at Turner's Gap as a chess-player
surveys the board.  At the naval battle of Santiago, as the Spanish
ships were sinking, our bluejackets began to cheer.  Said Admiral
Philip: "Don't cheer, boys.  They are dying over there."  If
everything else about Philip should be forgotten, that will be
remembered; and he will be loved {143} for it; for this one touch of
human feeling for a human enemy amid the hell of war.  But for the
pawns and pieces the chess-player sends to slaughter he has no
regrets.  I don't say McClellan had none for the men whom his
mistaken strategy drove to death.  All I say is that as I looked at
him I saw no sign of it.  A general, we are told, can no more afford
to have feelings amid a battle than a surgeon with the knife in his
hand can feel for his patient.  It may be.  But Napoleon, who is
always cited as the highest example of indifference to the lives of
men, is perhaps the best example to the contrary.  He would sacrifice
a brigade without scruple for a purpose; never one single armed man
without a purpose.  He had men enough to consume for victory; never
one to squander.  He was an economist of human life, though for
purely military reasons.  It is awful to reflect how many thousands
of Americans in these early Civil War days were sent to death
uselessly by the ignorance of their commanders; or as in McClellan's
case by his irresolution, and his incapacity for the handling of
troops in the field.

General Hooker's was a face which lighted up when the battle began.
The man seemed transformed.  He rode carelessly on the march, but sat
straight up in his saddle as the martial music of the bullets
whistled past him.  He was a leader of men, and his men would have
followed him and did follow him wherever he led.  Hesitation, delay,
he hated them.  "If they had let us start earlier {144} we might have
finished to-night," he muttered.  But night was upon us, and even
Hooker could not fight an unknown force on unknown ground in the
dark.  It was nine o'clock when we went into camp; Union and Rebel
lines so close that the pickets got mixed and captured each other.
"Camp" is a figure of speech.  We lay down on the ground as we were.
I slept with my horse's bridle round my arm.  At four o'clock next
morning, with the earliest light of a coming dawn and as soon as a
man could see the sights on his rifle, the battle began.




{145}

CHAPTER XVI

CIVIL WAR--PERSONAL INCIDENTS AT ANTIETAM

General Hooker was about the first man in the saddle.  The pickets
had begun sniping long before dawn.  My bivouac was within sight of
his tent.  "The old man," said one of his staff, "would have liked to
be with the pickets."  No doubt.  He would have liked to be anywhere
in the field where the chance of a bullet coming his way was
greatest.  Kinglake has a passage which might have been written for
Hooker.  That accomplished historian of war remarks that the reasons
against fighting a battle are always stronger than the reasons for
fighting.  If it were to be decided on the balance of arguments, no
battle would ever be begun.  But there are Generals who have in them
an overmastering impulse of battle; it is in the blood; temperament
prevails over argument, and they are the men who carry on war.
Hooker was one of them.  He loved fighting for fighting's sake, and
with the apostles of peace at any price he had not an atom of
sympathy.  He would have thought Herbert Spencer something less than
a man, as he was; and Mr. Carnegie, if he had been anything then but
the {146} boy he has never outgrown, a worthy disciple of an unworthy
master.

No, I am not keeping you waiting for the story of Antietam, for I am
not going to re-tell it.  But General Hooker, on that day a hero, has
had hard measure since, and I like to do him what justice I can.  I
liked the man.  My acquaintance with him began that morning.  To hear
him issue an order was like the sound of the first cannon shot.  He
gathered up brigades and divisions in his hand, and sent them
straight against the enemy.  That is not at all a piece of rhetoric.
It is a literal statement of the literal fact.  His men loved him and
dreaded him.  Early in the morning he had scattered his staff to the
winds, and was riding alone, on the firing line.  Looking about him
for an officer, he saw me and said, "Who are you?"  I told him.
"Will you take an order for me?"  "Certainly."  There was a regiment
which seemed wavering, and had fallen a little back.  "Tell the
colonel of that regiment to take his men to the front and keep them
there."  I gave the order.  Again the question:

"Who are you?"

"The order is General Hooker's."

"It must come to me from a staff officer or from my brigade
commander."

"Very good.  I will report to General Hooker that you decline to
obey."

"Oh, for God's sake don't do that!  The Rebels are too many for us
but I had rather face them than Hooker."

{147}

And on went his regiment.  I returned to Hooker and reported.  "Yes,"
said he, "I see, but don't let the next man talk so much"; and I was
sent off again.

I was with Hooker when he was wounded, about nine o'clock.  He was,
as he always was, the finest target in the field and a natural mark
for the Rebel sharpshooters.  It was easy to see that they followed
him, and their bullets followed him, wherever he rode.  I pointed
that out to him.  He replied with an explosion of curses and
contempt.  He did not believe he could be hit.  No Rebel bullet was
to find its billet in him.  He was tall and sat high in his saddle.
He was of course in uniform--no khaki in those days, but bright blue,
and gilt buttons and all the rest of it; his high-coloured face
itself a mark, and he rode a white horse.  Not long after I had
spoken, a bullet struck him in the foot.  It was the best bullet
those troublesome gentlemen in grey fired that morning.  He swayed in
the saddle and fell, or would have fallen if he had not been caught.
Then they carried to the rear the hope of the Union arms for that
day; and for other days to follow.

I saw him again about four in the afternoon.  I had been asked to see
him by one or two of General McClellan's staff who knew I had been
with General Hooker in the morning.  I have said long since what the
errand was they wished to lay upon me, or what I supposed it to be.
General Wilson explained to me, on the publication of that {148}
article, that I had mistaken the meaning of the men I talked with;
that the officers who asked me to go never designed that I should
suggest to Hooker to take command of the army, but only to find out
whether he could resume the command of his own corps; and perhaps of
another; not waiting for orders, apparently.  It does not much
matter, for I, of course, declined to carry any such message as I
thought was proposed to me.  It was for the officers themselves, if
for anybody, to carry it.  If they had any such purpose in mind, it
was mutiny; patriotic but unmilitary.  Well might they lose patience
when they saw the promise of a shattered rebellion fade before their
eyes.  But that day was not yet, happily, since a premature victory
over the South would have left great questions unsettled.  This
scheme, or dream, was none the less interesting because it showed, as
I thought, what McClellan's own officers thought of his generalship
on that fateful day; and possibly of something besides his
generalship.

But I went to the little square red-brick house where Hooker had been
taken, and was allowed to see him.  It needed no questions.  He was
too evidently done for; till that day and many days to come had
passed.  He was suffering great pain.  I told him I had come by
request of some of General McClellan's staff to ask how he was.

"You can see for yourself," he answered faintly.  "The pain is bad
enough, but what I hate to think is that it was a Rebel bullet which
did it."

His courage was indomitable; his contempt for {149} the Rebels not
one whit abated.  He asked for the latest news from the field of
battle.  I told him it was no longer a field of battle; that
McClellan was resting on his arms; that he would not use his
reserves; and that there was every prospect that Lee would escape
with his beaten army across the Potomac.  He raged at the thought.

"Unless,"--I added.

"You need not go on," retorted Hooker.  "You must see I cannot move."

It tortured him to think that his morning's work was half thrown
away; and that McClellan, with some fourteen thousand fresh troops,
was content to see the sun go down on an indecisive day.  Into his
face, white with the pain which tore at him, came heat and colour and
the anger of an indignant soul.  The surgeon shook his head, and I
said good-bye.

I rode back to headquarters; only to find that the decision had been
taken or perhaps that McClellan was incapable of any decision; his
mind halting, as usual, between two opinions; and the negative in the
end prevailing over the positive.  He had an irresistible impulse to
do nothing he could leave undone.  I asked for General Sedgwick.  He
had been badly wounded--I think thrice wounded, but had fought on
till the third--and been carried off the field.  Nobody could tell me
where he was.  I saw him once again.  A Rebel bullet laid him low at
Spottsylvania.  One of the best generals we had: a man of utterly
transparent honesty, simplicity, and truth of {150} character;
trusted, beloved, ardently followed by his men; a commander who had
done great things and was capable of greater.

Since it was too late to get anything through to New York that night,
I wasted some hours in one camp and another.  Perhaps they were not
wasted.  I heard everywhere a chorus of execration.  McClellan's name
was hardly mentioned without a curse.  Not a soldier in the ranks who
did not believe it had been possible to drive Lee into and over the
Potomac.

At nine o'clock in the evening I started for Frederick, thirty miles
away.  My horse had two bullets in him, and I had to commandeer
another from a colleague, who objected but yielded.  I reached
Frederick at three in the morning, sleeping in the saddle a good part
of the way, as I had been up since four o'clock of the morning
before.  The telegraph office was closed, and nobody knew where the
telegraph clerk lived.  I thought it odd that in time of war, and
after an important battle, the Government at Washington should have
kept open no means of communication with the general commanding; but
so it was.  Frederick was the nearest and, so far as I knew, the only
available telegraph office.  There was no field telegraph.  The wires
were not down, but the operator was sleeping peacefully elsewhere.

He reappeared about seven.  I asked him if he would take a message.
After some demur he promised to try to get a short one through.  I
sat down on a log by the door and began to write, {151} giving him
sheet after sheet till a column or more had gone, as I supposed, to
New York.  _The Tribune_ had been notified that a message was coming.
But neither my private notice to _The Tribune_ nor my story of the
battle was sent to New York.  It was sent to the War Office at
Washington, and such was the disorder then prevailing that it was the
first news, or perhaps only the first coherent account, of the battle
which reached the War Office and the President.  They kept it to
themselves during all that day.  At night, in time for next morning's
paper, it was released, wired on, and duly appeared in Saturday's
_Tribune_.

I never doubted that when my telegram had once been sent I should
find a train to Baltimore.  There was none.  I saw one official after
another.  Nobody knew, or nobody would say, when a train would leave.
It might go at any moment, or not at all.  I tried in vain for a
special.  There could be no special without military warrant.  I
wired the War Office and got no answer.  It was trying work, for what
I had hoped was to reach New York in time for Saturday morning's
paper.  Finally, I was allowed to travel by a mixed train which
arrived in Baltimore some ten minutes before the Washington express
for New York came in.

That is all the margin there was.  The cars were lighted by oil
lamps, dimly burning, one at each end of the car, hung near the
ceiling.  I had to choose between the chance of wiring a long and as
yet unwritten dispatch from Baltimore, {152} and going myself by
train.  The first word at the telegraph office settled it.  They
would promise nothing.

So by the light of the one dim oil lamp, above my head, standing, I
began a narrative of the battle of Antietam.  I wrote with a pencil.
It must have been about nine o'clock when I began.  I ended as the
train rolled into Jersey City by daylight.  The office knew that a
dispatch was coming, the compositors were waiting, and at six o'clock
the worst piece of manuscript the oldest of them had ever seen was
put into their hands.  But they were good men, and there were
proof-readers of genius, and somewhere near the uptown breakfast
hour, _The Tribune_ issued an extra with six columns about Antietam.




{153}

CHAPTER XVII

A FRAGMENT OF UNWRITTEN MILITARY HISTORY

By this time--September, 1862--Mr. Dana had retired from _The
Tribune_ and Mr. Sydney Howard Gay had become managing editor in Mr.
Dana's place.  The natural gift of command which belonged to Mr. Dana
had not descended upon Mr. Gay; it never does descend; but he was
capable of a quick decision, and when, having returned that morning
from Antietam, I saw him in the afternoon, he was in a
managing-editor state of mind.  With much firm kindness of manner he
suggested that I should start that evening to rejoin the army.  I
said yes, because, in my inexperience and in my artless awe of my
superior officer, I did not know what else to say.  And I took the
night train to Washington.

With the discomforts of the night railway service between New York
and Washington I had already made acquaintance.  They were
considerable, but less than they are now.  There was then no
overheated Pullman car; there was no overbearing coloured porter to
patronize you, and to brush the dust from other people's clothes into
your face, and to heat the furnace--by which I {154} mean the
steam-heated car--seven times hotter; there was no promiscuous
dormitory.  When Lord Charles Beresford was last in Washington, four
or five years ago, he told me one afternoon he was going to New York
by the midnight train.  When I suggested that the day service was
less unpleasant than the night, he answered: "Oh, it doesn't matter
to me.  I can sleep on a clothes-line."  There spoke the sailor lad
of whom there are still traces in the great admiral of to-day.  I
have never tried the clothes-line, but I had lately been sleeping for
many nights together on the sacred soil of Virginia, or the perhaps
less sacred soil of Maryland, thinking myself lucky if I could borrow
two rails from a Virginia fence to sleep between.  I am not sure
whether I liked the stiff seats of the old-fashioned coach much
better, but I am quite sure I should prefer the open air and the
sacred soil and the Virginia rails to the "luxurious" stuffiness of
the modern sleeping car.  The only real luxury I know of in American
railway travel is the private car.

However, I might as well have stayed in New York, for I was soon
invalided back again with a camp fever, and then remained in the
office to write war "editorials," and others.

But I was to make one more journey to the field, and once more to see
General Hooker.  General McClellan, thinking it over for a month and
more after Antietam, had finally crossed the Potomac, dawdled about a
little, and been ordered to Trenton, Hew Jersey, well out of the way
of {155} further mischief.  General Burnside had succeeded McClellan;
had fought and lost the battle of Fredericksburg, with the maximum of
incompetency, in December, 1862; had McClellanized till January 25th,
and had then yielded up the command of the unhappy Army of the
Potomac to General Hooker.  Fighting Joe spent some three months in
getting his army into good fighting order; then tried his luck
against Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville.  Luck in the
shape of a bullet, whether Union or Rebel took Jackson out of his
way; but Lee, perhaps for the first time, showed the greater
qualities of generalship, and Hooker, at the end of a three days
battle, was defeated; the Union forces recrossing the Rappahannock on
the night of May 4th, 1863.

I must apologize for restating, even in the briefest form, facts
which everybody knows.  I do it because, soon after Chancellorsville,
I was sent again to the Army of the Potomac on a mission of inquiry.
It was almost the blackest period of the war; the darkness before
dawn; a dawn which was to come from the West as well as from the
East.  The army was demoralized; so was public opinion; so, I think,
were the military authorities in Washington; and nobody knew where to
look for a commanding officer.  There remained not one in whom the
President or the Army of the Potomac had faith.  They were groping
for a General, and groping so far as the East was concerned, in the
dark.  My business was to throw such as light as I could on the
causes {156} of Hooker's defeat, and to find out, if I could, whom
the Army of the Potomac wanted as leader.  And I was given to
understand that the results of my inquiry would be published in _The
Tribune_.

They never were.  I spent rather more than a week with the army, at
one headquarters or another.  General Hooker, to whom I of course
presented myself in the first instance, very kindly asked me to be
his guest, but that was impossible.  I could not be the guest of the
man whom I was to investigate.  I told Hooker my errand.  As General
commanding, he had the right to order me out of the lines, which
would have brought my mission to an end.  Instead, he offered me all
facilities consistent with his duty.  "If I am to be investigated,"
he said, rather grimly, "it might as well be by you as anybody."
Indeed; he had a kindness for me and had offered me, or tried to
offer, after Antietam, a place on his staff; which military
regulations did not permit.  It was not necessary to tell him I had
every wish he might come well out of the examination.  But I had.

So I went about to one general and another and from one corps to
another, and talked with men of all ranks and of no rank.  I knew
General Sedgwick best and went to him first.  He was a man of action
rather than words, and was reluctant to talk.  Besides, his share in
the battle had been greater than anybody's but Hooker himself.  He
told me what his orders had been, and how he had tried to carry them
out.  Up to a certain point, he had been successful.  He had crossed
the Rappahannock {157} in the early morning of May 3rd, carried the
heights near Fredericksburg by noon, advanced toward Chancellor's
with intent to turn Lee's rear, till he brought up against an
immovable Rebel force late in the afternoon.  He held his position
all night and during most of the next day, the 4th.  Then Lee, who
was at his best, brought up more troops, and forced Sedgwick back
across the river at night.  He had lost five thousand men.

From what Sedgwick told me and from what others told me, I gathered
that this was the critical point of the battle.  If Hooker could
either have kept these Rebel reinforcements busy elsewhere, or have
strengthened Sedgwick earlier in the day, the Rebel lines would have
been broken or turned, and the battle won.  But he was outmanoeuvred
by Lee, here and elsewhere.

That is Chancellorsville in a nutshell.  Hooker was, I suppose,
overweighted with the command of an army of a hundred and twenty
thousand men.  As a corps commander and for fighting purposes, he had
no equal.  But he was pitted against a General whom European critics
have praised till they seem inclined to put him on a level with
Hannibal or Moltke, where he certainly does not belong.  But he was
good enough in these May days of 1863 to defeat General Hooker.

There have been stories in print to which I refer because they have
been in print.  It was said of General Hooker, as it was said of a
greater General in this Civil War, that he drank.  Lincoln's {158}
wish to send a barrel of Grant's whisky to every other General in the
Union armies had not then been expressed.  But, in the first place,
having heard this rumour before I left New York, I asked everybody
likely to know, and not one witness could testify to having seen
General Hooker the worse for whisky.  There is, in the second place,
a statement that while Hooker was standing, on the morning of the
3rd, near Chancellor's Inn, the porch was struck by a cannon shot,
and a beam fell on Hooker's head.  He was not disabled, but the
working power of his brain, at high pressure night and day for some
sixty hours, may well have been impaired.  One story may be set off
against the other.

Rightly or wrongly, the Army of the Potomac had lost confidence in
General Hooker.  It had also lost confidence in itself.  It was a
beaten army and the soul had gone out of it.  On both points, the
evidence was overwhelming.  There could be no doubt that I must
report to Mr. Gay that the demoralization was complete.  When I set
myself to discover a remedy--in other words a possible successor to
General Hooker--I was at a loss.  General Sedgwick's officers and men
believed in him, but the army as a whole thought he was in his right
place as a corps commander.  Other names were mentioned and put
aside.  There was no reason why officers high in rank should talk
freely to me.  There was every reason they should not talk freely to
the representative of _The Tribune_, if _The Tribune_ was to publish
an {159} account of the state of public opinion in the army with
reference to a new commander.  I endeavoured to make it clear that
all statements on this matter would be treated as confidential.
Still, as you may imagine, there were difficulties.

If one man was named more often than another, it was General Meade.
I was urged by a number of officers--mostly staff officers--as I had
been at Antietam in connection with General Hooker, to see General
Meade and lay before him what my friends declared to be the wish of
the army, or of a great part of the army.  They wanted him to succeed
General Hooker.  It did not seem desirable to pledge myself to
anything, but I did see General Meade.  I had met him but once
before.  He was just mounting his horse, and proposed that we should
ride together.  Explaining that, though I came on no mission and with
no authority, I had been asked to lay certain matters before him, I
gave him such an account as I could of what my friends thought the
army wanted.  When he saw what was coming, he turned as if to
interrupt.  "I don't know that I ought to listen to you," he said.
But I asked him to consider that I was a civilian, that I was in no
sense an ambassador, that I brought no proposals, that he was asked
to take no step whatever not even to say anything, but only to hear
what others thought.  Upon that, I was allowed to go on.  I said my
say.  From beginning to end, General Meade listened with an impassive
face.  He did not interrupt.  He never asked a question.  He never
made a {160} comment.  When I had finished I had not the least notion
what impression my narrative had made on him; nor whether it had made
any impression.  He was a model of military discretion.  Then we
talked a little about other things.  I said good-bye, rode away, and
never again saw General Meade.  But Gettysburg was the vindication of
my friends' judgment.

Thinking I had done all I could, I said good-bye to General Hooker,
who asked no questions, went back to New York, made a full oral
report to Mr. Gay, and asked him whether I was to write a statement
for publication.  He considered a while, then said:

"No, it is a case where the truth can do only harm.  It is not for
the public interest that the public should know the army is
demoralized, or know that Hooker must go, or know that no successor
to him can yet be named.  Write an editorial, keep to generalities,
and forget most of what you have told me."

I obeyed orders.  But the orders were given forty-odd years ago.
Such interest as the matter has is now historical, and so, for the
first time, I make public a part, and only a part, of what I learned
in that month of May, 1863, on the banks of the Rappahannock.




{161}

CHAPTER XVIII

THE NEW YORK DRAFT RIOTS IN 1863--NOTES ON JOURNALISM

One more battle I saw, known as the Draft Riots of 1863.  I arrived
in New York on the Monday evening, and journeyed south through the
city by the light of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in flames; a
stray negro or two hanging to a lamp-post here and there.  This was
the flank movement of the Rebellion; an attempt not only to prevent
the enforcement of the draft, which President Lincoln had too long
delayed, but to compel the Unionist forces to return northward for
the defence of their homes.  A mad scheme, yet for near four days New
York was in possession of the mob.  I never understood why, since a
couple of good regiments would at any moment have restored order, as
the event showed.  For want of them New York had to defend itself,
and did it rather clumsily, enduring needless disasters and losses
both of property and life.

_The Tribune_ office was marked for destruction but was armed and
garrisoned and only once did the mob effect an entrance.  Then they
swept into the counting-house on the ground floor and {162} made a
bonfire of such papers as they found.  For a moment there was danger,
but the police came up from the Spruce Street station, the rioters
fled and the fire was put out.  Upstairs in the editorial rooms we
knew nothing about it till it was all over.  Afterward a better watch
was kept.  Friends of _The Tribune_ volunteered, and there was no
lack of men; nor were the police again careless.

Another rush was stopped by the police in the square.  As I sat at my
window looking on the City Hall I saw this Rebel effort.  But the
police broke the solid mass of rioters as cleverly as it could have
been done in Paris, where such matters are understood better than
anywhere else in the world.  Once scattered, these ruffians became
easy victims.  The police did not spare them.  I not only saw, but
heard.  I heard the tap, tap, of the police clubs on the heads of the
fugitives.  At each tap a man went down; and he did not always get up
again.  The street was strewn with the slain.

While these incidents were occurring an effort was made to keep Mr.
Greeley away from the office; partly because he was a man of peace,
and we thought scenes of violence would be unpleasant to him; partly
because he was in danger both in the office and as he came and went.
But he would listen to no appeal.  The post of danger was the Post of
duty, and he stood by the ship.  Mr. Greeley's passion for peace
sometimes carried him far but never showed itself in an ignoble
regard for his personal safety.

Sydney Howard Gay's successor in the {163} managing editorship of
_The Tribune_ was Mr. John Russell Young, who brought with him a new
life and freshness, and something not very far removed from a genius
for journalism: if in the profession of journalism there be room for
genius.  There is room, at any rate, for originality and for
bird's-eye views of things, and for an outlook upon the world which
leaves no important point uncovered.  There is room for courage and
for quickness of perception and for an intuitive knowledge of what is
news and what is not.  All these qualities Mr. Young had.  That the
end of his relation with _The Tribune_ was less happy than the
beginning offers no reason, to my mind, for denying him the tribute
which is his due.

It seems hard to believe that in 1866, in the early summer, the first
news of the Austro-Prussian war came to us in New York by ship.  But
so it was.  Mr. Young walked into my room one morning with a slip of
paper in his hand from the news bureau at, I think, Quarantine,
announcing the Prussian declaration of war, June 18th, and the
advance of the Prussian forces.  I should like you to take the first
steamer to Europe, remarked Mr. Young, and walked out again.  It was
a Monday.  The next steamer was the Cunarder _China_, from Boston to
Liverpool via Queenstown, on the Wednesday.  I sailed accordingly,
and on reaching Queenstown was met by a telegram announcing the
Austrian defeat at Sadowa, or, as the Prussians prefer to call it,
Königgrätz, July 3rd.  The war was over.  There were other {164}
military operations, but an armistice was agreed to July 22nd, and
the preliminaries of peace were signed at Nikolsburg, July 26th.

On the following day, July 27th, 1866, the laying of the new Atlantic
cable, the first by which messages from the public were transmitted,
was successfully completed by the _Great Eastern_, and on the 28th a
friendly message from the Queen was sent to the President of the
United States.  The President was Mr. Andrew Johnson, and it took him
two days to reply.  It would have made a difference to us in America
if the war news of May and June could have reached us by cable.  Even
such grave events as Austria's demand for the demobilization of the
Prussian Army, so far back as April, and the proceedings in the
Federal Diet at Frankfort in June, made no great impression on
American opinion.  I suppose we were already in that state of
patriotic isolation when events in Europe seemed to us like events in
an ancient world.  The Austro-Prussian conflict was not much more to
masses of Americans than the Peloponnesian War.  Nor, in truth, did
news from abroad by mail ever present itself with the suddenness and
authority it derived from the cable.  It came by mail in masses.  It
came by cable with the peremptory brevity which arrested attention.
The home telegraph was diffuse.  It was the cable which first taught
us to condense.  A dispatch from London was not, in the beginning,
much more than a flash of lightning; and went into print as it came,
without being {165} "written up"; and was ten times the more
effective.

I had gone on from London to Berlin, and it was in Berlin that the
news came of a break in the peace negotiations and the sudden arrest
of the homeward march of the Prussian troops which had begun August
1st.  I sent a dispatch to _The Tribune_ announcing this, and hinting
at the renewal of hostilities as a possible consequence.  The news
came from a source which was a guarantee of its truth; and true it
was.  But the diplomatic difficulty was soon adjusted and again the
Prussian columns flowed steadily northward.  This message, which for
the moment was sufficiently startling, was, I think, the first news
dispatch which went by cable.  It ran to near one hundred words, and
the cost of it was just short of £100, or $500.  The rate from London
to New York was then twenty shillings a word.  We wasted no words at
that price.

Mr. Weaver was then manager of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company,
a man who thought it good policy to coerce the public.  He understood
much about cable business; not much about human nature.  He
considered himself, and for the time being he was, at the head of a
monopoly.  People who desired to send messages by cable to America
must do so upon his terms or not at all.  It never seemed to occur to
him that there might be such a thing as a prohibitory rate, or that a
business could not be developed to the greatest advantage by driving
away customers.  He was {166} quite happy if he could wring an extra
sovereign from the sender.  He thought it a good stroke to compel
each sender of a message to add the word "London" to his signature.
It was another twenty shillings in the treasury of the company.

Mr. Weaver enacted many vexatious restrictive laws the discredit of
which fell in great measure upon Mr. Cyrus Field and other directors
of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company.  It was Mr. Weaver's
business to make rules.  It was the business of the public to obey
them.  At that time there was between the public and the
Anglo-American company no direct intercourse.  We were obliged to
hand in our messages over the counter of one of the two inland
telegraph companies, which between them had a monopoly; the British
and Magnetic and the Electric.  Mr. Weaver sat in solitary state in
Telegraph Street.  You approached his office as you would approach a
shrine; a temple of some far-off deity.  During the next few years I
had often to discuss matters with Mr. Weaver, whose regulations
embarrassed and delayed Press messages.  He was opposed to all
concessions to the Press.  He framed a code under which Press
messages at a reduced rate were dealt with as he chose.  He would
give us no assurance as to when he would begin or when complete the
transmission of such messages.  He would interrupt the transmission
of them in a purely arbitrary way, so that the first half of a
message might reach New York for next {167} morning's paper and the
last half for the day after.

At last there came a crisis.  I had filed an account of the
Oxford-Harvard four-oared race from Putney to Mortlake, a column and
a half long, in good time for next day's _Tribune_.  It did not
appear till the day following.  I had gone with it myself to the
City, and handed in my dispatch over the counter of the British and
Magnetic office in Threadneedle Street.  The office of the
Anglo-American was but two minutes distant.  My inquiries about the
delay were met with civil evasions.  The Anglo- people said they sent
on the dispatch as soon as they got it.  The British and Magnetic
people said it had been forwarded to the Anglo- "in the ordinary
course of business."  Under that specious phrase lurked the mischief.
It came out after much pressure that, in the ordinary course of
business and by a rule of the Magnetic Company, every dispatch for
the cable must be copied before it was sent on to the Anglo-.  The
staff in attendance when I committed my message to the Magnetic
consisted of a boy at the counter.  It was his duty to copy the
dispatch when not otherwise engaged.  He completed his copy early the
next morning.  This was finally admitted.  I then saw Mr. Weaver and
put all I had to say into two sentences.  First, the delayed dispatch
would not be paid for, since it was the Anglo- which made itself
responsible for the delay by refusing to receive the message direct
from the sender.  Second, unless this rule was abolished {168} I
would notify _The Tribune_ that it was useless to forward messages
from London, and advise the editor to direct their discontinuance.

Then came a curious thing.  Mr. Weaver having reflected on this
ultimatum for some thirty seconds, said:

"Mr. Smalley, I will agree to your proposal on one condition--that
you tell nobody you are allowed to hand in your messages to us.  We
do not intend to alter our rule.  We make an exception in your case."

I do not suppose Mr. Weaver was aware that he was giving me a great
advantage or that he meant to give it.  But, although the copying
regulation of the Magnetic was abolished, direct access to the Anglo-
was a great security and a great saving of precious time.  It was to
mean in the following year of 1870 that dispatches could be sent
through to New York as filed, and in time for the regular morning
issue, which otherwise would have arrived, in whole or in part, late.
It was one among several causes to which was due the success of _The
Tribune_ in the early months of the Franco-German War.  The fact did
not become known in the world of journalism till some time in the
late autumn of 1870.  In February, 1870, the British Government had
taken over the inland telegraphs, and with them the duty of receiving
transatlantic dispatches.  The Government could have enforced the old
rule had it chosen, but it did not choose.  The executive officer of
the Post Office was Mr. Scudamore, secretary to the {169}
Postmaster-General, who had no good-will to the Press and none to me.
Probably he knew nothing about the matter.  But since 1870 the cable
offices have all been thrown open, or special offices opened for the
receipt of messages, and you may now file cable messages for America
in any Post Office or any cable office.  The English postal telegraph
service is wonderfully good--far better than any telegraph service in
America--but I should never file a Press message in a postal office
if within reach of a cable office.

All this is highly technical and I suppose of no interest to anybody
but journalists and telegraph managers.  But there are other
experiences which I hope may be found worth reading by a less select
audience.




{170}

CHAPTER XIX

HOW THE PRUSSIANS AFTER SADOWA CAME HOME TO BERLIN

There is much more to say on this subject of cabling which I touched
on, perhaps prematurely, in the last chapter, but it can wait till
certain incidents in Berlin have been described.  Ever memorable to
me was this visit to Berlin in 1866, and for two things.  I saw
something of the two greatest forces in Prussia, or two of the three
greatest: the Prussian army and Count Bismarck.  The third, whom I
saw, but only saw, was the King; whom his grandson has since
rechristened William the Great.  The Seven Weeks' War was just over.
There were Generals of the army who expected to enter Vienna in
triumph, as, four and a half years later, the German armies were to
enter Paris.  But Count Bismarck had vetoed this project; by no means
desiring to leave an indelible scar of defeat and humiliation on a
kindred German capital.  He wished, and the King wished, that in the
future, and in the near future, Berlin and Vienna should be friends.
In the interest of that wise policy the purely military ambitions of
these Generals, the Red Prince perhaps among them, who were soldiers
and nothing {171} else, were repressed.  A consolation was allowed
them in the shape of a triumphal re-entry into Berlin.

So on the 20th and 21st of September the garrison of Berlin and
Potsdam, fifty thousand strong, but dividing their strength between
the two days, marched through the Brandenburger Gate, and up the
Unter den Linden to the Opera Platz.  By good luck I had rooms in the
Hotel du Nord, then the best hotel in Berlin, midway in the great
avenue of Berlin; and being on the second floor I could look well
over the trees and along almost the whole stretch of this fine
street, a hundred yards wide.

It was such a spectacle as presents itself but seldom to the human
eye, German or other.  All things considered, it cannot often have
been surpassed.  The whole world was looking on.  For here was
Prussia, but three months ago a second-class European Power, which
had suddenly stepped into the front rank.  So dazzling was her rise
that the Emperor Napoleon, looking out of the Tuileries windows upon
a transformed Central Europe, was already demanding "compensation"
for Sadowa, and demanding vainly.  The leadership of Germany had
passed in a night from Austria to Prussia.  The Germanic
Confederation had been dissolved and the North German Confederation,
with Prussia the all-powerful head of it, had come into existence.
With the refusal of Count Bismarck to listen to the demands of
Napoleon, Prussia stood out in Central Europe as the German {172}
State which at last was to resist all attempts from beyond the Rhine
to impose the will of a French ruler upon the German people.  It was
a Declaration of Independence; and of something more than
independence.

When the head of that great column of victorious troops emerged from
the great Gate, what Berlin saw was the instrument by which these
vast changes had been brought about.  There were men of prophetic
mind who saw in it the instrument of greater changes yet to be.  But
sufficient for the day was the glory thereof.  All Berlin was in the
streets; or in this one street; or in the windows and on the
housetops of the Unter den Linden.  As they cheered I did not think
the volume of sound comparable to what one hears in London on great
days of public rejoicing.  There was rejoicing, of course, and there
was enthusiasm, but it was of the grave German kind; none the less
deep for being less resonant.  I cannot remember being much impressed
by these demonstrations, nor by the flags and other decorations.  The
Prussian flag, with its black and red, was a less cheerful piece of
bunting than the Tricolour or the Union Jack.  The Germans have,
nevertheless, ideas of ornament and of art values; perhaps mid-way
between the French, who are supreme in such matters, and the English,
who have no ideas at all except to hang out all the flags they
possess and trust to luck for harmony and effect.  None the less was
the Unter den Linden garlanded with banners, and the better houses or
larger buildings {173} were glowing with colour and contrasts.  But
the military display was the important thing, and it was magnificent.

The King came first, riding a little in front of his headquarters
staff and of the Generals who were in his suite.  Whether he might be
called William the Great or not, he was on that day a kingly figure.
The officers with him numbered, I should think, perhaps a hundred and
fifty, mostly well mounted, in uniforms which, whatever they might be
singly, were splendid in the mass.  They were perhaps too splendid.
One would have liked to see these men in the clothes in which they
had marched and fought; with the stains of war upon them.  But that,
I suppose, would have been abhorrent to the German mind, and
especially to the German military mind, with its deep devotion to
etiquette and its worship of routine and all forms of military
technique.  But the echoes of Austrian battlefields had not yet sunk
into silence, and we knew well enough that these were no holiday
warriors.

They rode slowly.  When the King and his staff had passed there came
a surprise.  The procession seemed for one moment to have come to an
end.  There was an open space of perhaps fifty yards.  In the centre
of it rode three men The three were: Von Roon, Minister of War;
Moltke; and between them Bismarck in a white uniform as Major of
Cuirassiers.  It was when they came into view that the cheering rose
highest.  The King was popular and the greeting of his {174} people
had been cordial.  But the three men behind him were the real heroes.
Von Roon had organized the forces of Prussia; Moltke had guided them
to victory; Bismarck had planned and brought on the war.  The Carnot
of Prussia; the soldier of all soldiers of Prussia next after the
great Frederick; the brain and will and directing force of Prussia,
these three; and in all Europe no other three comparable to them,
singly or together.

So here they rode, these Three by themselves; apart, as if all that
had gone before and all that was to come after were there in homage
to them.  The King and his headquarters staff were but the
advance-guard to these Three.  The five-and-twenty thousand troops
who followed were but their rear-guard.  These servants and priceless
possessions of the State were encompassed about by all that was
brilliant and all that was useful in the State themselves excepted.
They bore themselves as befitted their services and their places,
with a dignity, a serene disregard of everything but their duty,
which belong to real greatness.  Berlin hailed them with cheers of a
kind which had been given to no other.  I do not know that any of the
three was precisely what might be called Popular.  Popularity was not
what Von Roon or Moltke or Bismarck had sought.  But Berlin knew, and
Prussia knew, that but for these three there would have been no day
of victory for the Fatherland.

The troops came past in the formation known {175} as company front,
and as the Prussian companies were a hundred strong or more, the
effect was admirable.  Berlin was thronged with soldiers for days
after this, and the individual Prussian soldier was not then a very
imposing object.  He was well set up, but he and his uniform were not
always on good terms; in short, he was too often slovenly or
slouching.  He had, moreover, a stiffness of bearing which reminded
you of Heine's bitter account of him in earlier days; that "he looked
as if he had swallowed the ramrod with which he had been thrashed."
But in the mass you saw nothing slovenly, and the stiffness perhaps
helped his officers to dress that company front in a straight line
across the broad street.  The front was, in fact, perfection, and so
was the marching, and as these bodies of drilled men moved up the
Linden they looked like what they had proved themselves,
irresistible.  They swept on with a movement as of some great natural
force.  Regiment after regiment swung past.  There was never a break
or halt.  The machine was in its best working order.  The men carried
their heads high, crowned with victory.  And so the tide of war
poured through this peaceful street.

The Prussian uniform was not a brilliant one.  In point of mere
costume these troops were not comparable to many others.  The
Austrians were far more smartly dressed; and the English, and the
French.  But this blue and red looked workmanlike, while as for
ornament--well, what ornament was needed beyond the word Sadowa,
which {176} might have been, but was not, embroidered on the collars
of their tunics?  You saw also that this was a citizen army: the
German people were in these ranks, as the Prussian people.  The words
have since become almost convertible, though there are millions of
Germans who will not agree to that.

The regimental officers were well enough mounted and, so far as one
could judge from a parade like this, were good horsemen.  They sat
well down in their saddles.  A good seat and good hands go together,
or ought to go together, but do not always, and the hands seemed
heavy if a horse turned restive.  But another thing became clear as
you looked.  The officers were of the elect.  The Prussian
aristocracy was in the saddle.  There has never been a time since the
Great Elector of Brandenburg when it was not in the saddle, actually
and figuratively.  To adopt Bismarck's phrase at a much later day, in
a great speech at Jena, this country of Prussia has never been ruled
from below.  It was not in 1866.  Nor have the Junkers and the
nobility of Prussia ever failed to pay with their persons when the
need arose.  In that murderous cavalry charge at Mars-la-Tour, the
ranks were crowded with the sons of Princes, and Dukes, and Counts,
and all the rest; they rode, no small part of them, to death, and
knew they were riding to death, but no thought of rank or riches
stayed them, nor did any one falter.

It is impossible not to think of these later things as the memories
of these September days in 1866 come back.  I looked on then at the
beginnings {177} of what was foreordained to happen.  This was the
army, these were the very men who were to close about Sedan in that
other September of 1870.  Long after that I was to see them again in
the Opera Platz and Unter den Linden when the King who now rides with
his grave gallantry of bearing at their head was to be buried, on one
of the coldest and perhaps the blackest day Berlin ever saw.  The
splendour had departed.  The triumph of 1866 had given way to
mourning and gloom.  And on the architrave of the Brandenburg Thor,
draped and shrouded, like all Berlin, in black, stood out in white
letters the last greeting of Berlin to its old-time King, "Vale,
Senex Imperator."




{178}

CHAPTER XX

A TALK WITH COUNT BISMARCK IN 1866

I

By one of those pieces of good fortune which descend only upon the
undeserving, I came to know Count Bismarck before I left Berlin.  I
was advised to present my letter at the Landtag, and as the Count was
said to be in the House, I sent it in.  He came out to the
ante-chamber where I was waiting, and there for the first time I
looked into the pale blue eyes whence had flashed the lightnings that
had riven the power of Austria on the field of Sadowa.  Now they had
a kindly and welcoming look in them.  But, said Count Bismarck:

"I have not a moment.  A debate is on, and I am to speak at once.
Come to my house in the Wilhelmstrasse at half-past ten to-night, and
we can have a talk.  Meantime you might like to hear the debate."

And he called to an official to take me into the Chamber, shook hands
again, and away he went.  I heard his speech, marvelled at the sight
of a Parliamentary chief in full military uniform; marvelled at the
tone of authority, which also was {179} military; marvelled again at
the brevity and directness of the orator who took no thought of
rhetoric and hardly cared to convince, but rather to command.  It was
the oratory of the master of many legends.  True, the four years'
conflict between him and the Prussian Parliament was over, but true
also that on both Parliament and Minister that conflict had left a
mark.  In his voice there was still a challenge, and in the silence
of the Chamber still something sullen.  He had won.  They had lost in
a struggle upon which, as Herr Loewe told me, they ought never to
have entered; would never have entered had they known.  Loewe and his
party of so-called Liberals confessed themselves not only beaten but
wholly in the wrong.

At half-past ten I rang at the outer door--which was more like a
gate--of the palace in the Wilhelmstrasse.  It was opened by a
soldier who asked my name, and when he heard it told me I was
expected and asked me to follow him.  I was taken upstairs to a large
empty room on the first floor.  In a moment out came Count Bismarck's
famous _adlatus_, Herr Lothar Bücher.  The Count was engaged with the
Minister of War but if I could wait would see me presently.  I waited
ten minutes.  Again the door to the left opened, and forth came Von
Roon, the mighty organizer of war, himself of course a soldier since
in Prussia everybody who counted in affairs of State was a soldier,
and still is.  You had need to visit Berlin in those warlike days to
understand {180} what was meant by the phrase that Prussia was a
camp.  Then you had need to visit it again in time of peace to
understand that whether in peace or war Prussia was still a camp, and
as much in peace as in war.  What it is now I cannot say.  I have not
been in Berlin these last fifteen years, but between 1866 and 1893 I
was there many times, and every time it was a camp.  The garrison of
Berlin and Potsdam was never, I think, less than 40,000 men.  The
streets of Berlin were always thronged with officers, and on the
broad sidewalks of the Unter den Linden or the Friedrichstrasse there
was scarce room for anybody else.  The youngest lieutenant wanted all
of it to himself.  To each other these officers were civility itself
but the civilian had no rights they were bound to respect.

I had already seen something of this all-pervading military spirit
and military supremacy, and sat reflecting on it in this great
_salon_ where I waited for Count Bismarck to be at leisure.  When
Herr von Roon came out he recognized me, I suppose, as a stranger,
and, civilian though I was, gave me the greeting he thought due to
Count Bismarck's guest, which I returned.  There was almost a halt as
he strode past; his face was turned to me, and I could read in it the
stern record of a long conflict; of vast responsibilities and years
of unceasing toil; a rugged face enough but the light of victory in
his eye.  He, too, had fought and won.  Curiously enough, among the
men I met at that time in Berlin, the man who, {181} Bismarck
excepted, seemed to have most of the statesman in him, with the
statesman's civic virtues and traits, was this Minister of War.  Not
because he was Minister in the sense in which an English Secretary of
State for War is Minister.  The English War Minister is never a
soldier; he is a Parliamentary chief, and his authority over the army
denotes the supremacy of Parliament over the whole military hierarchy
from commander-in-chief down to the drummer boy.

But of Parliamentary supremacy there had been for these last four
years in Prussia none whatever.  The Minister of War was not
responsible to Parliament; he never has been; he is not now.  He was
then responsible to the King of Prussia, as he is now to the German
Emperor.  When, in May, 1863, the Chamber protested to the King that
the attitude of the Ministry to Parliament was arbitrary and
unconstitutional (as it was), the King made answer that the Ministry
possessed his confidence, and sent the Parliament about its business.
That is, he prorogued Parliament, announced that he would govern for
the present without a Parliament; and as matters did not mend and the
Chamber again in December refused to vote a war budget, the King
dissolved it.  Parliamentary government existed at that time in
Prussia under the constitution, but in name only.

These reflections were cut short by the reopening of the door, and
Count Bismarck entered.  {182} Still in uniform, nor did I ever see
him except in uniform, whether in public or private, till I visited
him in his home at Friedrichsruh in 1893, where he wore a black
frock-coat and black trousers, crowned, when he went out, by a soft,
broad-brimmed grey felt hat, quite shapeless.  He had, more than any
man I ever met, the manner of the _grand seigneur_, in which
distinction of bearing and a grave, even gentle, courtesy went
together.  He was sorry, he said, to have kept me waiting, "but the
business of the State, you know, comes first, and though one crisis
is over another succeeds, and we know not yet what the end is to be."
This I understood to refer not to Austria, for the Treaty of Prague
had been signed in August, but to France, where the Emperor was
brooding over his lost prestige and lost hold on Southern Germany,
and was meditating demands which might compensate him for the loss of
the power of meddling with matters which were none of his business.

As he said this we walked into his private room, or cabinet, the very
centre of the spider's web; a comfortable, plain, workmanlike little
room; a writing-desk the chief piece of furniture, large enough to
fill the whole of the further corner; a sideboard opposite, a small
table with ash trays, a few chairs, and that was all.  The curtains
were drawn; the room, German fashion, seemed a trifle close, and as
if old Frederick William's Tobacco Parliament had been held here all
these last hundred and fifty years or more.  There was a rug in the
centre which had to do duty for {183} the carpet which in Germany, as
elsewhere on the Continent, never covers the whole floor.

As we were sitting down, the Count behind his desk, a door opened,
opposite to the one by which we had entered, and there appeared a
lady whom I had never seen; the Countess Bismarck.  When she saw me
she said to her husband:

"You have not been in bed for three nights.  I hope you don't mean to
sit up again."

Of course I rose, saying, "At any rate, he shall not sit up for me."
But the Count laughed, came out from behind his desk, took me by the
shoulders, thrust me down into the chair again, all with an air of
kindly authority not easy to describe, and said:

"Sit where you are.  I want to talk to you."

As I thought it over afterward I supposed Count Bismarck had some
object in mind other than the pleasure of my conversation.  He knew
that I was the representative of _The Tribune_; my letter to him had
stated that.  He knew what the position and power of _The Tribune_
were, and especially of its influence with the Germans in America.
And it seemed to me that, in view of the relations between the
Germans at home and the Germans beyond the seas, he thought it might
be worth while that his view of the situation should be put before
the Germans in America, and before the Americans also, in an
authentic though not an authoritative way.  Count Bismarck did not
say that.  It was my conjecture, {184} upon which I acted to a
certain extent as I will explain more fully by and by.

Countess Bismarck looked on at this performance which she plainly did
not like, but presently smiled and said to her husband: "Well, if you
will sit up you must have something to drink," went to the sideboard,
mixed a brandy and soda, took it to him, put the glass to his lips,
and stood by him to see that he drank the whole, which he did with no
visible reluctance.  He handed the empty tumbler to his wife and
thanked her.  She put her arm about him, kissed him, looked at me
reproachfully but amiably, and vanished.  A truly domestic, truly
German, altogether charming little scene.

Many years later, after Count Bismarck had become Prince Bismarck and
a greater figure in Germany than the world had seen, I met Princess
Bismarck again at a dinner in Homburg given by Mr. William Walter
Phelps, American Minister at Berlin.  Mr. Phelps had long been a
friend of the Bismarck family and on easy terms with the head of that
family, who liked and respected him.  It was a case of sympathy
between opposites.  No contrast could be more complete than the
contrast between Prince Bismarck and Mr. Phelps; but their relations
were, as so often happens, all the more friendly for that reason.  I
was presented to the Princess, and after dinner inquired whether she
remembered this midnight incident in the Wilhelmstrasse.  She asked
me to describe it, and I told her what had happened.  She had wholly
{185} forgotten it.  I asked her if I might some day narrate the
story.  "I don't see why you shouldn't," she answered.  Years after
that I again saw the Princess at Friedrichsruh, and she asked whether
I had ever repeated my tale.  I said no, but that I still meant to
avail myself of her permission, as I now do.

The Princess thought, I imagine, she would like to see the Prince
portrayed in this intimate way and in this relation to his wife.  Her
life had always been lived in and for his.  She knew well what the
world thought; to the world he was always the Iron Chancellor.  But
in private life he was the affectionate loyal husband to whom one
woman had devoted all she had--all her love, truth, worship--an
adoration which perhaps not many men have deserved or received from
any woman.

There is much in Bismarck's _Love Letters_--which are hardly love
letters--about his wife and much in other Bismarck books, notably in
Sidney Whitman's _Personal Reminiscences_, the best of them all.  The
Princess will ever live as an amiable figure, and if she had not been
that would still live as the wife of the one great German of his
time; as the woman who had known how to captivate a fancy once
supposed to be wayward, and to make it and him her own.  The quality
which distinguished her was sweetness or nature, which she never lost
during a life harassed by many solicitudes and vexed by illness.



{186}

II

The Countess von Bismarck having departed out of the little room, the
King's Minister plunged at once into his subject, which was nothing
less than the history of the last four years during which he had
ruled over Prussia.  Much of what he said I repeated in _The Tribune_
no very long time after.  All that he said, or all that I could
remember, I put down in writing that night before I slept.  It
contained, however, so much that obviously was not meant for print
and could never be printed that, after using as much as I thought
could properly be published, I destroyed my manuscript.  I had said
to Count Bismarck as I left that he knew he had been talking to a
journalist and yet had said many things he could not wish made known
to the public.  He laughed and answered: "Well, it is your business
to distinguish."

It is, therefore, still my business to distinguish.  I may perhaps
say a little more than I could while both the Emperor and the Prince
were alive, but not much.  For, in truth, I have never quite
understood why confidences cease to be confidences because those who
imparted them or those whom they concern are dead.  A man who quits
this world leaves his reputation, if he has any, behind him.
Indiscretions may affect his memory as they might have affected his
living fame.  In this case they would exalt Count Bismarck's fame;
but it might be at the expense of others whom he had {187} no desire
to belittle.  So I keep for the most part to generalities.

Of the King he spoke with astonishing freedom, yet never a word to
injure the sovereign whom he served.  I will quote once more a
sentence I have repeated before now:

"You are a Republican, and you cannot fully understand the loyalty I
cherish to a King to whose ancestors my ancestors have been loyal for
hundreds of years."

Yet it comes to this--and of this truth History has long since taken
account--that between Count Bismarck and his august master there was
a long-continuing conflict.  If the King had won there would have
been no Austro-Prussian War, nor any Franco-German War, nor any
German Confederation, nor any Germany as we know Germany to-day.
When, therefore, the present German Emperor puts forward his
grandfather as the author of these changes, he is making for his
grandfather a false claim.  While he was still Prince William of
Prussia he said:

"Whenever I hear a great event in my grandfather's reign discussed I
never hear his name mentioned, but always Bismarck's.  When I come to
the throne it is my name you will hear as the author of the policies
and deeds of my reign."

William the Second has kept that pledge, but that is no reason why he
should try to rewrite the history of his grandfather's time or to rob
Prince Bismarck of the renown which belongs to him and {188} which
the world awards him.  Powerful as he is, he is not powerful enough
for that.

This is a digression, but it will serve to bring out the main fact
that there was a contest between the King and Bismarck in 1866, and
that not the King but Bismarck came out triumphant.  In the long war
with Parliament the King and his Minister were together, and the King
was as loyal to his Minister as the Minister was to the King.  But
when the critical moment came it still has to be said that Bismarck's
was the seeing eye and the deciding voice, and his, not the King's,
was the directing mind.

Over the heads of the Parliament and people of Prussia, and against
the wish of the King, who only at the last moment and by one last
argument had been persuaded to consent, did Bismarck pursue his way.

"It was not," said Bismarck, "till I had convinced the King that his
honour as a soldier was involved that he would agree to the war with
Austria.  No political argument moved him.  The vision of a united
Germany with himself at the head of a German Confederation did not
dazzle him.

"'Austria is my brother,' he said; 'the war would be fratricidal.
The Emperor and I are bound together by many ties, by many interests;
above all by affection and by loyalty.  I should think it treacherous
to attack a sovereign who has given me many proofs of good-will and
to I have given pledges.  Nothing will induce to do it.'"

{189}

"Yet," continued Bismarck, "he had allowed me to take step after
step, each one of which led inevitably to war.  In the long conflict
with the Parliament he was with me.  Only by his support was that
conflict maintained or victory possible.  No money was voted for four
years.  We laid hands on the public revenues, but the Government had
to be carried on in part by money supplied out of that Royal Treasure
Fund which for generations the Kings of Prussia have hoarded for
kingly purposes.  The preparations for war were nourished from the
same source.  The war with Denmark was paid for to a certain extent
out of the same royal purse.  The Landtag never assented to the
Schleswig-Holstein enterprise nor would vote a solitary thaler to
carry it on.  Before that, when I became Minister, in September,
1862, my first act was to announce to the Chamber that I proposed to
govern without a budget.  The Chamber protested against that as
unconstitutional, which of course it was.  Six months later the
Chamber invited the King to dismiss his Ministers.  He replied that
his Ministers had his confidence, and a week later instead of
dismissing us announced that he proposed to govern without a
Parliament.

"All this time I was preparing for war with Austria after Denmark.
The King must have known what it all meant, but he did not stay his
hand nor withdraw his confidence from us.  After the peace with
Denmark there was no longer any reason for military preparations
except Austria.  {190} But the King still allowed me to go on.  In
January, 1865, the Parliament again rejected the public budget.  The
King rejoined by seizing on the public revenues in the name of the
State.  The public knew nothing of what I had in mind.  The
Parliament knew nothing.  If it had been possible to take Parliament
into my confidence the budget would have been voted.  The Liberals
have admitted that.  But to take Parliament into my confidence would
have been to take Austria into my confidence.  It could not be.  It
was necessary to strike suddenly; to strike before Austria could
assemble her reserves, or take advantage of her immense resources, or
bring into line all the discordant races of that great Empire.

"How much did I tell the King?  Well, as much as was necessary for
the time being.  The great struggle with His Majesty was put off till
the moment of conflict was near; till it was necessary to throw off
the mask.  Besides, you must consider that I had to deal not only
with the King but with the various Court influences which surrounded
him.  They were almost all hostile to me.  Many of them were very
powerful with the King.  I might spend six weeks in coaxing him to
assent to a particular measure.  When he had promised, in would come
some Grand Duchess and in half an hour undo my six weeks' work."

I interrupt the flow of this speech to remark that, long after this,
Prince Bismarck repeated to the same complaint about grand ducal
interventions.  They never ceased.  They were never {191} relaxed.
There was no conciliating these great personages.  They had policies
and purposes of their own, which were never those of Germany but
always of some German principality with which their personal
interests were bound up.  There is nothing so selfish as a
second-class Royalty; a Serenity with a dukedom which a
pocket-handkerchief would cover.

Bismarck continued:

"In the end Austria played my game for me.  She demanded in April,
1866, the demobilization of the Prussian forces, which had begun to
put themselves on a war footing in March.  Then I knew the Lord had
delivered her into our hands.  I laid the demand before the King,
saying: 'I do not know whether Your Majesty is prepared to surrender
the command of your army to your brother of Austria.'  He took fire
at once.  Then it was that he felt his honour as a soldier was
attacked.  From that moment the difficulty was to restrain him.  We
were not quite ready.  It would have been dangerous to declare war at
once.  It was dangerous, perhaps, to let the moment of the King's
anger pass, lest counsels of peace should again prevail.  But one
risk or the other had to be taken, and I chose the latter.  Two
months later, June 18th, war was declared, and the King issued a
manifesto to his people which was everything that could be wished.
All the rest was in the hands of the God of Battles."

Then a pause and a piercing glance, then on he went:

{192}

"After Königgrätz there were the same difficulties.  The King could
not at first understand why this career of victory was to be
interrupted.  He was King no longer.  He was Field Marshal,
commanding the forces of Prussia.  He had won a great battle.  The
power of Austria was broken.  Vienna lay at his mercy.  Germany was
waiting to know whether Austria or Prussia was to be her future
master--well, no, not master, but which of the two was to be the
chief State in Germany and the true leader of the German people.
What other sign of supremacy could be so visible, so convincing, as
the Prussian armies in Vienna, Prussian troops encamped in the
Prater, the Danube bridled and bridged by us Prussians?  When an
enemy's capital lay at the victor's mercy, why should he not enter
it?  What great soldier ever refrained?

"Thus," said Bismarck, "spoke the King.  I ventured to remind His
Majesty of his reluctance to make war on the Emperor of Austria, and
to ask whether, now that he was vanquished, he wished him to be
humiliated also.  That seemed to touch him.  We talked long.  He was
surrounded by generals and princes who urged him on, but in the end
he came round to my view which had been his own view before the war.
So here we are in Berlin and not in Vienna, and please God we shall
all be friends again, and some day there will be one Germany and not
two, or twenty, or fifty, as in times past and to-day.  The fruits of
our triumph are yet to gather."

{193}

Twice during this discourse I had risen to go, but Bismarck said:
"No, I have not finished."  The third time, it was long past one
o'clock, and I said: "If I don't go now Countess Bismarck will never
let me see you again."  This amused him, and he remarked: "I suppose
you think I am getting sleepy!"  But sleepy he was not.  He had
talked for near two hours with unquenchable energy and freshness, and
with a force of speech in which no man was his rival.




{194}

CHAPTER XXI

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN ENGLAND

I

The Ministers and Ambassadors who have represented the United States
in England have an interest individually and as a body.  So long a
line of men, mostly distinguished, is almost a dynasty.  Some of them
are totally forgotten.  Some are remembered faintly.  Some have left
a lasting impression.  I have known a round dozen of them.  The
public memory is short.  If I say that to Mr. Charles Francis Adams
it was permitted to do a greater service to his country abroad than
to any American since Franklin--or since his grandfather, John Adams,
who might perhaps as a diplomatist be ranked above Franklin--if I say
this, there are Americans to whom it will seem doubtful.  But since
Adams's greater service consisted in a just menace of war to England
if she let loose the Alexandra, the current histories, written in
days when every act of hostility to England was applauded, right or
wrong, have done him justice.  He was right, a thousand times right,
and we cannot remember it too often.

{195}

But what Americans ought also to remember is this, that when Mr.
Adams flung his glove in Lord Russell's face it was done neither from
temper nor impulse.  It was the considered act of a Minister who had
weighed all the chances, who had made up his mind that open war was
better than covert hostility, and that it belonged to him to accept
the responsibility.  Whether Mr. Seward would have backed up his
Minister may be a question, had the Minister's "This means war" been
met by Lord Russell with "Then war it is."  But the British
Government knew--even Lord Palmerston knew--they were in the wrong;
and they gave way.  But they gave way only because Mr. Adams had put
the alternative of war before them.  It was very far from being his
only service or his only triumph, but it was the greatest of all.

It is not too much to say that the diplomatic fortunes of the United
States were in the hands of the American Minister to Great Britain
from 1861 to 1863; and, indeed, to the end of the Civil War.  A weak
man, or an incompetent Minister, would have brought us to the dust.
Adams, of course, was neither.  He was a match for anybody in his
business as Minister.  He had the intellectual qualities and he had
the personal qualities.  Moreover, he was an Adams.  He belonged to
the governing classes, to one of the few great American families in
whom the traditions and gifts of government are hereditary.  The
philosopher who divided the population of Massachusetts into {196}
men, women, and Adamses made a strictly scientific distribution.  The
Adamses were of that minority which, under one name or another and in
all countries alike, governs.  It governs none the less when it sees
fit to allow the democracy to believe itself all-powerful than when
it takes command as an aristocracy.

I knew Mr. Adams.  Mr. R. H. Dana, Jr., who smoothed so many paths
for me, gave me a letter to him.  This was in 1867.  The days of
tumult and conflict were over.  His great work was done, but he
remained Minister till 1868.  The legation was then in Portland
Place.  Mr. Moran was Secretary of Legation; an excellent official
whose service in that position in London lasted seventeen years, and
was finally rewarded by promotion to Lisbon as Minister.  He was a
good watchdog.  A secretary, of whatever rank, has to be that.  Like
Horatius, he has to keep the bridge, albeit, against his own
countrymen.  They are the Volscians.  When I asked to see Mr. Adams
Mr. Moran very properly wished to know why, and when I produced Mr.
Dana's letter Mr. Moran seemed to think it was addressed to him, and
not till I had explained that it was Mr. Dana's, who was Mr. Adams's
friend, and that I had no other business than to present this letter,
did Mr. Moran's vigilance relax.  We became friends afterwards.

When I saw the Minister he departed a little from his official
manner, greeted me kindly, and said: "You have brought me a very
strong letter.  What can I do for you?"  When I thanked him {197} and
said I wanted nothing, he relaxed a little further, laughed a little,
and observed that most of his countrymen who called at the legation
had an object.  He talked with a singular precision; his was a mind
of precision, like the modern rifle, equally good at short range and
long if you adjust the sights.  But good as was his talk, what
impressed you most was the silent power of the man; the force in
reserve, the solidity and the delicate temper of the metal.

I dwell a moment on the relations between travelling Americans and
their legation or embassy--which to the untravelled may seem
unimportant--because, now as much as ever and perhaps more than ever,
the duties of a Minister, of an Ambassador, of the embassy, are so
often misunderstood by that portion of the public from America which
is intent on immediate admission to Buckingham Palace.  I have known
many secretaries since Mr. Moran's time.  They have been, as a rule,
willing and competent, really desirous to be of service to their
countrymen.

There is no other embassy than the American on which such demands are
made as on ours in London and in Paris, and to some extent in other
capitals.  These demands are addressed first of all to the Ambassador
or Ambassadress.  I will take a single instance.  There is each year
a large number of Americans who desire to be presented at Court, and
who think it the duty of the Ambassador to arrange for their
presentation.  Many of these applications are sent by {198} letter
well in advance of their coming.  There are hundreds of such
applications--literally hundreds; four or five hundred this year from
American ladies who thought themselves, and were, worthy to appear
before the King and Queen at one of the three Courts presently to be
held.  The number of presentations which the Ambassadress is entitled
to make at each of the three Courts is four.  That is a rule, an
ordinance of the King who has the sole authority in such matters.
Sometimes, in some special case, upon reason assigned, the rule is
relaxed and a presentation may be made outside of it.  But all such
requests are rigidly scrutinized and the margin is very narrow.  The
exceptions are units.

In these circumstances, with four hundred candidates for four
presentations, what is an unhappy Ambassadress to do?  The American,
used to the easy ways prevailing at the White House, supposes they
must be equally easy at Buckingham Palace; or that, upon a word from
the American Ambassador, in these days of pleasant Anglo-American
relations, all doors will fly open.  If they do not, each one of the
four hundred regards hers, as a case for exceptional favour.  She has
come three thousand or four or six thousand miles in order to lend
the distinction of her republican presence to these royal functions.
What is an Ambassador for if not to give effect to these good
intentions?  The Lord Chamberlain stands at the door with a drawn
sword, but is an American Ambassador to be intimidated by a mere
officer of the Royal {199} Household?  It is in vain to answer that
even a King has a right to say whom he can receive and whom he
cannot.  _Le charbonnier est maître chez soi_, but not, they think,
the King of England.

The perplexities arising out of this American eagerness to witness
these royal splendours are innumerable.  The resentment arising out
of inevitable refusals is a burden which every Ambassador has to
bear; and every secretary too.  Grievances are of many kinds.  It is
not so many years since an American Minister was asked by
cable--almost ordered--by a distinguished fellow-countryman to engage
lodgings for him in London.  It is not many more since an eminent
statesman, arriving after Levees and Drawing-rooms were over, desired
a secretary to arrange that he and his family should take tea with
the Queen at Windsor Castle.

These are cases occurring not in musical comedy but in actual life.
There are others, relating not to royalty but to society, and to
various forms of English life.  But it is already only too evident
that the diplomatic duties of an Ambassador are not his only
anxieties.  The others, so far as I know anything about them, have
always been borne cheerfully.  Everything has been done for the
American in London that could be done.  He is taken care of to an
extent that the Briton abroad never is, nor ever expects to be.  But
to all human effort there is a limit.



{200}

II

MR. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

Since Mr. Adams's retirement in 1868 we have had three Ambassadors
whose ability as diplomatists entitles them to places in the front
rank.  If you take account of other kinds of ability and of
Ministers, there are more than three.  Mr. Motley was a brilliant
historian whose "Rise of the Dutch Republic" and "History of the
United Netherlands" gave him a lasting European reputation and added
distinction to American literature.  But neither his six years of
service as Minister to Austria, 1861-7, nor his year and a half in
England, 1869-70, proved him a great diplomatist.

Austria was not then, and is not now, of the first importance from an
American point of view.  We respect her wise old Emperor.  We do not,
I think, agree with Mr. Gladstone in saying you can nowhere put your
finger on the map and say, "Here Austrian rule has been beneficent."
She never was a model to us and is not now.  But since we like
courage, and clear-sighted decision, and the recognition of facts,
and like the men who have these gifts, we have not joined very
heartily in the European outcry against the Austrian annexation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina.  We are a world-power for certain purposes
only.  We stand aloof from purely European complications.  They are,
as a rule, no affair of ours.  We learned to our cost, or possibly
our mortification, not very {201} long ago, that Austria, "effete" or
not, was capable of giving us a lesson in diplomacy; or, at least, in
diplomatic etiquette; by which we, or our late President, may or may
not have profited.

Mr. Motley, though he wrote excellent dispatches and made no
diplomatic or social mistakes in that difficult Austrian capital, had
not the smooth temper or the patient arts which are essential to
success at critical moments.  He was impetuous, explosive,
rhetorical; prone to interpret his instructions in the light of his
own wishes or convictions.  Socially he was a force, even in Vienna,
because of his personal charm, his distinction of appearance and of
manner.  Socially speaking, he was an aristocrat.  He was the first
American Minister in London to establish himself in a house suitable
to the dignity of the post, Lord Yarborough's, in Arlington Street.
He was known to be Count Bismarck's friend.  That of itself gave him
a kind of celebrity, for Count Bismarck was then a comparatively
unfamiliar personage in England, where the outlook of the average man
on the Continental horizon is not wide.

One of the first questions Count Bismarck asked me when I first
talked with him in the Wilhelmstrasse in 1866 was whether I knew
Motley.

"Yes."

"Are you going to Vienna?"

"Yes."

"Then of course you will see Motley.  Be sure you give him a message
from me--a warm message.  I have never forgotten our university days
{202} together at Göttingen; our friendship.  He knows that, but tell
him again.  And tell him I hope to see him in Berlin before he goes
home."

As he spoke, there came into the eyes of the Iron Chancellor a look I
had not seen before.  The steel-blue softened into the blue of the
skies; after rain, as the Chinese say.  His friendship for Motley was
an affectionate friendship.  Later, I talked with Motley about
Bismarck and of course delivered my message.

"Yes," said Motley, "we were boys together at Göttingen.  His was a
different life from mine.  I dare say you have heard the stories
about young Bismarck's exploits.  In those matters he was like most
students of his time and of his class.  The Prussian Junker is a
being by himself.  But we became friends, and friends we have
remained.  We don't meet often, but the friendship has never died out
nor decayed."

Another thing made Motley far otherwise popular in England; his
passionate Americanism.  Mr. Price Collier is of opinion that
Englishmen do not like Americans.  I do not agree with Mr. Collier,
but, whether they do or not, they like an American to be an American.
They liked Mr. Motley because his patriotism burst forth in all
companies and at all times.  It made him, or tended to make him,
reluctant to compromise on any question where the interests of his
country were concerned.  But compromise is of the essence of
diplomacy; most of all as between the greatest Powers of the World.
If nobody ever yielded {203} anything, negotiations could end only in
surrender or in war; the two things which it is the business of
diplomacy to avoid.  Nothing Motley ever did in diplomacy was of such
service to his country as his two letters to _The Times_, early in
the Civil War, and his memorable outburst in the Athenæum Club.  To
write the letters he violated the unwritten law of diplomacy, for he
was then Minister to Austria.  To make the Athenæum speech--for it
was nothing less--he departed from the other unwritten law which
makes a club neutral ground, and makes anything like an oration
impossible.

But Motley had among other qualities the quality of courage.  His
invective in the Athenæum against the very classes among whose
representatives he stood was magnificent, and it came very near being
war, or a declaration of war.  He would keep no terms with the men
who were enemies of his country in such a crisis as that.  If it had
been anybody but Motley who thundered against the ignorance and
prejudice of the Confederate allies who then gave the tone to English
society, I imagine the Committee of the Club might have taken notice.
But Motley fascinated while he rebuked.  When he had done denouncing
them as renegades to English ideas and enemies to liberty, they liked
him the better.  I can think of no incident so like this as
Plimsoll's defiance of the House of Commons, when he rushed into the
middle of the floor and charged his fellow-members with sacrificing
the lives of English {204} sailors to the cupidity of English
ship-owners, and so compelled the House to adopt the load-line.

History has taken note of Plimsoll's exploit.  Motley's may never
appear in pages which aim at historical dignity.  But to this day,
when near half a century has passed, Motley's is still remembered;
still spoken of; still admired.  There are men living who heard him.
The English do not entirely like being reminded of their mistakes
about us at that period, but they bear no malice against the man
whose admonition did much to bring them to their senses.  On the
contrary, through all these forty-odd years, you might have heard
Motley spoken of with admiring good-will.

Before all things, he loved his own country.  Next to his own
country, _longo intervallo_, he loved England, and it may be doubted
whether we have ever sent a Minister, or anybody else to England whom
the English themselves have loved as they loved Motley.  His deep
blue eyes shine starlike across all that interval of years.  He
carried his head high.  His stature was well above the usual stature
of men.  In all companies he was conspicuous for beauty and for his
bearing.  And from the confusion and forgetfulness of that crowded
period he still emerges, a living force, a brilliant memory; an
American, as Dean Stanley said of him, "in whom the aspirations of
America and the ancient culture of Europe were united."

There is supposed to be still a mystery about his recall by President
Grant.  But it is an open-air {205} mystery.  Grant struck at Sumner
through Motley.  Any weapon was thought good enough to beat Sumner
with.  Motley was his friend, Sumner had made him Minister.  It was
deemed possible to humiliate Sumner and to teach him a lesson.  The
interests of the country were not allowed to stand in the way of this
high purpose, and so Motley went.  Or rather, he did not go.  Asked
to resign in July, 1870, he disregarded that request.  Grant
hesitated; or perhaps Mr. Fish, then Secretary of State, hesitated.
But in November of the same year, Motley was recalled; an act without
precedent and happily never repeated.  No charges were made.  There
were none to make.  Motley's diplomatic record, his personal
character, were spotless.  The childish scandal started at Vienna
never had a rag of evidence to support it; nor anything behind it but
anonymous personal animosity.  His departure from England left no
stain upon anybody except upon President Grant, and upon such
officers and Ministers of his as stooped to be the instruments of his
ill-will.



III

TWO MINISTERS AND TWO AMBASSADORS

Mr. Lowell may be compared with Mr. Motley as an example of our
American method of appointing Ministers who not only are not--for
they could not be--trained diplomats, but whose character is
essentially undiplomatic.  Mr. Motley was, however, so much more a
man of the world {206} than Mr. Lowell that they cannot be bracketed.
There is a similarity but no identity.  Until Lowell came to London
he was a recluse.  Motley had never been that.  Lowell had been a
professor in Harvard University.  Motley, though a student and
historian, was not what the English call "Donnish," whereas Lowell
had often the air of lecturing the company, as if a company of
pupils.  Delightful as his talk was, the touch of the pedagogue was
there.  Indeed, it may be doubted whether life in a university, which
is a world by itself, is ever a good training for diplomacy.  An
Ambassador ought to be a man of the world--it is perhaps the first
and highest of his qualifications--but not a man of a world.  A
thorough knowledge of the Greek aorist or of the proceedings of
Antigonus in Asia Minor is not needed in the conduct of delicate
negotiations; nor did Lowell find his familiarity with Spanish
literature of much use at the Foreign Office, or in that larger
foreign office known as English Society.

Society was to Lowell in the beginning of his English experiences a
stumbling-block; and to the end he only too often made a misstep.  He
was liked all the same.  The English are a people who can make
allowances, nor do they expect a non-Englishman to be cast in an
English mould.  They recognized his positive merits.  They did not
dwell on what they thought defects.  I suppose I have before now told
what I always thought a characteristic saying of an English host, as
Lowell drove away from his door:

{207}

"I need not tell you how much I like Lowell and how delighted I am to
have him here as often as he will come.  But from the moment he
enters my house till he is gone I am in a panic."

The panic into which this genial host fell was due to Lowell's
fighting spirit; surely not the spirit of a diplomatist.  To that and
to a passion for accuracy which he allowed to become pedantic and
aggressive.  He left behind him a path strewn with victims; a renown
for brilliancy; a just repute for many amiable and delightful traits.
But the qualities essential to a Minister were not among them.

Mr. E. J. Phelps, who came after him, was a lawyer, and a lawyer may
perhaps be expected to be more combative than a professor; but it was
not so.  Mr. Phelps took Mr. Lowell's house in Lowndes Square; a
respectable dwelling in a very good square, but by no means an ideal
legation.  When Mr. Phelps became its tenant the atmosphere changed;
the climate was a softer climate.  The amelioration was due, in part,
to Mrs. Phelps, who was beloved.  Mrs. Lowell had been an invalid.
Her husband used to say: "My wife has no acquaintance and I have no
invention"--as an excuse for social shortcomings.  But Mrs. Phelps
knew a great many people and charmed those whom she knew.

It is doubtful whether an abler man than Mr. Phelps ever came from
the United States to London as Minister.  He was hailed at once as a
brother by his brethren of the Bar; and they put {208} him on a level
with their best.  His simplicity of character, his humour, his
truthfulness, were evident to everybody.  Intellectually he was
anybody's equal.  As Minister he had, like all his predecessors, his
trade to learn.  But he soon learned what was essential; learned
diplomacy as if it were a new cause he had to master for a great
trial.  His mind was judicial.  He ought to have been Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States.

With the promise of a nomination to that great post in his pocket, he
went home; but he returned.  The will of Mr. Pat Collins, of
Boston--hating Phelps because he would not, as Minister, be the
instrument of Irish ill-will to England--had proved stronger than the
will or the word of the President.  Mr. Cleveland's surrender, no
doubt under strong political pressure, deprived us of Mr. Phelps's
services as Chief Justice and he became a law lecturer at Yale.  He
was a jurist who would have adorned either place.  He was also an
orator who leaped into fame by a single speech, at the farewell
dinner given him in London; although, indeed, his speech at a dinner
of welcome on his arrival was scarcely less felicitous.  "A
masterpiece of oratory dignified, eloquent, and pathetic," said Lord
Rosebery, a judge of oratory if there be one.

We have sent to England so many different kinds of Ministers and
Ambassadors that they must be praised--and, happily, most of them can
be praised--with discrimination, and also with brevity, for I cannot
go on for ever writing on a {209} single topic.  I pass to Mr. Hay.
The mansion Mr. Hay leased in Carlton House Terrace was, like all
those on the south side of that short street looking on St. James's
Park, adequate and even imposing.  It was like unto the larger one on
the corner, formerly Lord Ardilaun's, now Lord Ridley's.  When Mr.
Blaine entered it one evening at a concert he said to the friend who
was with him: "This is the first really palatial house to which you
have brought me."  Not a palace, but palatial.

Mr. Hay knew as well as any American then living, or better, what a
part social influences could be made to play in diplomatic life.  He
played that part with distinction.  He was born for it.  He had
cultivated his natural gifts in half a dozen European capitals.  He
had such a knowledge of England and the English people that it has
always seemed a pity he did not write a book about them.  But he left
a record as Ambassador which tells the story.  He was a man who
carried his point without a collision.  He loved England and was
beloved.  When President McKinley sent for him to come home and be
Secretary of State Hay said: "I am a soldier and must obey orders.
But all my fun in life is over."

As it turned out it was not over.  A still greater career opened
before him, and he was the first American Secretary of State to make
an imaginative use of his opportunities, and a great name in Europe
and Asia alike.  He was the first American Secretary of State to take
the lead in a {210} world-embracing policy; to unite the European
Powers in support of it; to extract a binding pledge even from
Russia; to bring Japan, not very willingly, into this charmed circle;
and to lay the foundations of American influence in China broad and
deep.  We often talk of America as a world-power.  We have a right
to, and whatever be the more recent, and perhaps in some cases rather
doubtful, extensions of our authority, we owe what is best and most
lasting in our position abroad to Hay.

None of all this could Hay foresee when he quitted London for
Washington.  What he knew was that he was relinquishing a place for
which he had proved his fitness, and embarking upon the unknown.
This sorrow at leaving England was genuine, and the sorrow of his
English friends, and--if ever there be such a thing as a general
sorrow--of the English public, was not less.

The late Queen said of Hay: "He is the most interesting of all the
Ambassadors I have known."  If the authority for this is wanted, it
was said by the Queen to Lord Pauncefote, then British Ambassador to
the United States; and Lord Pauncefote repeated it to me, with leave
to repeat it to others, as I now do; by no means for the first time.

To Mr. Hay succeeded Mr. Choate.  I hope it will be taken as a
compliment if I say Mr. Choate was better liked the longer he stayed.
He had, when he arrived, a frankness of speech which is sometimes
called American; and is, no doubt, characteristic of certain
individual Americans.  {211} There is in Mr. Henry James's
_Bostonians_ an American banker settled in England to whom his son,
provoked by a remark of the father to a noble lord who was his guest,
observes:

"Well, father, you have lived here a long time, and you have learned
some of the things they say, but you haven't learnt the things they
don't say."

It is inevitable.  In new social circumstances, time is of the
essence.  It is no reproach to Mr. Choate that he found it so.  He
had, and has, an exuberant wit; one somewhat contemptuous of
conventions and established forms.  He poured it out in floods.  He
gave free scope to its caprices.  When it had become chastened by
experience, the English delighted in it; as we Americans have long
delighted in it.  But time was needed on both sides.  The English and
Mr. Choate had to become accustomed to each other.  In the end they
did.  A beautiful harmony grew up, and before Mr. Choate went home he
was an accepted figure in the society which at first had sometimes a
questioning spirit.  He, too, lived as an Ambassador ought to live;
and in Carlton House Terrace, like Mr. Hay.  From the beginning the
Foreign Office had found in him, in Bismarck's phrase, a man with
whom it was possible to do business.  For he had a kind of
preternatural rapidity in mastering great affairs, and a marked skill
in the composition of public addresses.




{212}

CHAPTER XXII

TWO UNACCREDITED AMBASSADORS

They were both from Boston.  In the days when they first became known
in England and began their work of conciliation as between England
and the United States, Boston was still Boston, and New York had only
begun to be New York.  The latter statement may be challenged, but
the very men who take most pride in the New York of to-day ought to
be the first to accept it.  For Manhattan was not then the magnet, as
London has always been, which drew to itself whatever was best from
other parts of the land.  Boston was still the Athens of America.
There were excellent names elsewhere and at least one man of genius
who owed neither birth nor culture to Boston; but the capital of
Massachusetts was none the less the literary capital of the United
States.  Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, Agassiz, R. H. Dana,
Jr., were all living and all in the fulness of their powers.
Theodore Parker, the greatest force in the American pulpit, was just
dead.  Chief Justice Shaw had been for thirty years the head of the
judiciary of his own state and a revered authority throughout the
Union.  {213} Wendell Phillips had no rival as an orator.  Harvard
was the first of American colleges.  The ideas of New England, which
were the ideas of Boston, had spread and taken root, and new
commonwealths in the West were nourished on them; nay, these ideas
and these conceptions of law and social order were the foundation
stones on which new States were built.  No theologian had arisen to
dim the fame--a great yet sombre fame--of Jonathan Edwards.  Daniel
Webster, "disappointed, defeated, slept by the solemn waves of the
Atlantic," but you cannot think of Boston or of Massachusetts without
him; nor did the disasters of his last years much lessen the homage
paid him at death or his immense influence on the political thought
of the whole country.

If the intellectual pre-eminence of Boston in those days was somewhat
grudgingly admitted by New York, it was incontestable.  New York
presently redressed the balance, not so much by her own creative
efforts as by drawing much of what there was best in Boston to the
banks of the Hudson.  I believe Mr. Howells's migration at a later
period was thought to be the decisive sign; one of many.  Commercial
influences prevailed over the purer influences of literature.  The
publisher took command.  But I apprehend that Mr. Howells did not
forsake the Charles for the Hudson without many regrets.  The
atmosphere was not the same.  Old Abernethy used to say: "If you live
in the best air in the world, leave it and go to the second best."
Unconsciously, {214} perhaps, Mr. Howells obeyed that medical
prescription.  He went to the second best.

Did he find a Tavern Club in New York?  Over the _noctes coenæque_ of
that pleasant company in Boston Mr. Howells used to preside, with a
genial charm all his own.  It was so long ago that I may be forgiven
if I remember in print one of those evenings which owed so much to
his presiding genius.  He spoke and was the cause of speaking in
others.  He had the tact which drew from others more than they
supposed they had to give.  He gently compelled the most reluctant of
guests from their chairs.  There was a brief eulogy on the victim.
It was Mr. Howells's art to paint a portrait so vivid, albeit
flattering, it needed no name to be recognized.  "If," said he, "you
were in any doubt of his identity, you will recognize him by the look
of determined unconsciousness on his face."

I reckon it among the highest of Mr. Howells's many services that he
has been at times an interpreter between England and America, and in
more senses than one.  There is a sense in which every American
writer who reaches an English audience is an interpreter, or, better
still, an Ambassador, the business of an Ambassador being to keep the
peace.  For when Lord Dufferin was complimented on his diplomatic
fame he answered: "Ah, that is all a mistake.  So long as we succeed
you never hear of us.  It is when we have failed that the world
begins to know of our existence."

That, however, is a _malàpropos_ anecdote, and {215} tells the other
way; but in such papers as these there must be anecdotes.  Mr.
Howells was not a silent Ambassador, and he would not have been an
Ambassador had he been silent.  His books spoke for him.  The English
thought, and still think, that his writings had some qualities which
it does not suit the parent stock to consider distinctively American.
They liked the reserve, the simplicity, the continual though implicit
reference to English literature.  It was partly because of the homage
he paid to the great masters that they presently came to accept him
also as a master.  They were quite aware that his homage was
sometimes reluctant.  When it went further and, as in his unlucky
criticism of the greatest of English masters in fiction, became a
caricature, they resented it but they bore no malice.  How can you
bear malice against a writer with so much sweetness of nature as Mr.
Howells?

Besides, what he has written about England is sympathetic; and is
thought sympathetic by the English.  If it be also at times critical,
the English accept the criticism as it is meant.  Nothing is truer
about them than their indifference to criticism.  They regard Mr.
Howells's essays as so many studies, and these studies as
interpretative.  What he has lately been writing of provincial towns
is almost a revelation to the Londoner, who himself is sometimes
called provincial, and does not mind.

Another Bostonian, Mr. Henry James, took a longer flight still; all
the way from Boston to {216} London and so to Paris and Italy, in all
of which he is equally at home.  It was, I think, Colonel Higginson
who, in his patriotic impatience of the expatriated American, winged
a shaft at Mr. James, and at those who called him cosmopolitan.  "In
order to be truly cosmopolitan," said this eminent colonel, "a man
ought to know something of his own country."  To which Mr. James has
lately made the best possible reply by a book on his own country
which is an appreciation like no other of recent days.  And I will
say this, that if Colonel Higginson supposes an American or a Russian
or a Japanese can win favour with the English by trying to be English
he is profoundly mistaken.  The English like an American to be an
American.  If he is a writer, they like his writings to be American.

Who are the American authors most popular in England?  I will take
the dead only.  They are Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow,
Holmes, Dana, and Walt Whitman; others, perhaps, but if there are
others they are all like these I have named, American to the
finger-tips, American in thought, in language, in method; nay, if you
like, in accent.  That is why they are relished in England.  I do not
include Poe.  He is better understood in France than in England; his
genius is perhaps more Gallic than Saxon.  So much so that when the
American Ambassador delivered a discourse at the celebration in
London of Poe's centennial, it was as if he had spoken on a topic
remote from the minds of this English people.  They read {217} him
because he was American Ambassador, or because he was Mr. Whitelaw
Reid, and for his graceful mastery of the topic and of the English
language.  But to them he seemed to be announcing a discovery.

When Mr. Henry James adopted his new manner--the manner in which all
his books since _The Awkward Age_ have been produced--his English
readers turned away from him, or many of them did.  The change
coincided, or nearly so, with his change from pen and ink to
dictation; a perilous experiment.  But, whatever else may be said of
it, Mr. James has gradually won back his English public.  To them the
matter is more than the manner, as in Mr. Meredith's case also.  The
American is now thought a more distinguished writer than before.  I
use the word distinguished as he uses it, meaning that he has more
distinction as a writer and turns out more distinguished work.  They
are no longer repelled by his colloquialisms, by his Gallicisms, by
his obscurities, by his involutions of structure, or by the
labyrinthine length of his sentences.  Through all these, they now
perceive, pierces the true genius of the man.  Therefore is he
another Ambassador, another of those Americans who, from having
become known abroad, have added lustre to the fame of their own
country where, in European estimation, it most needs lustre, namely,
in the domain of letters.

By the time the New Yorker of to-day has read thus far, if he has
read, it may have become clear {218} to him how great a part of all
the renown in literature we have abroad comes to us from Boston.  All
the American writers best known here and most read, Whitman excepted,
are of Boston, or of the State of which Boston is, or was, the final
expression.  If another exception were to be made it would be
Lincoln, whose greatest pieces of prose, and most of all the
Gettysburg address, are well known to Englishmen who know anything of
America.  If what Dr. Jonson said in the preface to his dictionary,
"The chief glory of every people arises from its authors," be true,
then what do we Americans not owe to Boston?  Supposing, that is, we
care for the judgment of a foreign nation, which Browning declared to
be like the judgment of posterity.

For some of these Bostonians London has a personal affection.
Emerson is beloved.  Lowell was an immense favourite; a favourite
notwithstanding his combativeness in a society which prefers
toleration to excursions on the warpath.  Holmes during his visits
here was idolized, and as the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table he is
idolized, and quoted day in and day out.  Of Longfellow's Poems in
the pre-copyright days more copies were sold than of Tennyson, and
when he was here the English thought him almost one of themselves.
Dana's _Two Years Before the Mast_ is the one story of the sea which,
among many rivals, seems likely to be immortal in England, and is,
meantime, the one which in circulation year after year far exceeds
all others.  And Dana was one of those {219} Americans on whom the
English found an English birthmark.

There was a time when Mr. James and Mr. Howells used to be bracketed,
as if they hunted in couples; which was not a discriminating view,
though a popular view.  It expressed itself in the jingle about
"Howells and James Young Men," of which the music-hall was the proper
home; and there it related to a firm in Regent Street, now extinct.
But it was sung by the daughters of a house where Mr. James was a
guest, and almost in his hearing, to the horror of its mistress.  To
all popularity there are penalties.  But the popularity of Mr. James
is perennial.




{220}

CHAPTER XXIII

SOME ACCOUNT OF A REVOLUTION IN INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM

I

Returning to New York in the early autumn of 1866 and spending the
winter in _The Tribune_ office, I was again sent abroad the following
year, this time under an agreement to remain till 1870.  I was to go
as the exponent of a new theory of American journalism in Europe, a
theory based on the belief that the cable had altered all the
conditions of international news gathering and that a new system had
to be created.  I had been long enough in London and on the Continent
to be convinced that London must become the distributing centre of
European news for America.  I talked it over with Mr. Young on my
return.  Mr. Young had a mind open to new ideas and he was unusually
quick in deciding.  But this suggestion struck him at first as a
proposal to impair the authority of the managing editorship.  He
thought, naturally, there ought to be but one executive head, and
that a European manager, no matter how strictly subordinated to {221}
his chief in New York, would, at such a distance, acquire too much
independence.  The proposal, moreover, was far-reaching and had no
precedent; not that the want of a precedent troubled Mr. Young much.
He had spent much of his time as managing editor of _The Tribune_ in
disregarding precedents and laying down laws of his own.  But this
scheme, he presently saw, would never have been thought of had not
submarine telegraphy taken a practicable shape, nor would such a
scheme have been of much practical use so long as news went by mail.
Nor could it be tried till a great many details had been thought out.

Under the old system, each _Tribune_ correspondent reported directly
to New York.  Had that system remained unaltered, the triumphs of
American journalism in Europe would have been impossible.  That all
the European representatives of this paper should report to London
instead of New York might seem no very great matter, but in truth it
was vital.  When it had once been decided to establish a _Tribune_
office in London, a revolution had taken place.  There was to be a
responsible agent in charge.  He was to organize a new
administration.  He was to appoint and dismiss other agents all over
the Continent.  He was--subject, of course, to orders from New
York--to transmit news to New York.

He was to be the telephone between Europe and the managing editor in
New York.  But he was to relieve the New York office of its
supervision over the European staff.  What St. Petersburg {222} and
Vienna, Berlin and Paris, had to say to New York was to be said
through London.  There would be an economy of time.  Orders could be
sent from London and results received much more quickly than from New
York.  In an emergency as was presently to be shown, the difference
was enormous.  The notion of the centrality of London, of its unity
as a news bureau, was perfectly simple.

But it took years for that one simple notion to get itself completely
accepted and acted upon.  I will give one illustration.  When the
fatal days of July, 1870, were upon us I thought I saw a great
opportunity.  _The Tribune_ alone had an organization in Europe
competent for the work of supplying war news.  But as I did not know
how much news New York wanted, I cabled a question to the editor then
temporarily in charge.  The answer came back that I was to go to
Berlin.  It would have been a fatal step.  I should have come under
German military rule, and cabling from Berlin at that time and much
later was a slow and uncertain business.  Nor could the plans I had
in mind have been carried out from Berlin.  There would have been a
censorship upon every dispatch, and censorship means not merely
mutilation to suit a bureaucratic ideal, but delay.  Berlin,
moreover, was remote, while London is on the road to New York, and
spite of the cable the delay from that cause also would have been
injurious.  In short, I disobeyed the New York order.  I explained,
of course, but I pointed out that an {223} unfettered discretion was
essential to success, and I asked to be allowed a free hand or to be
relieved.  I was given the free hand.

These methods have since become so familiar that there is little need
to explain them, but at that time they were not merely novel but were
derided by journalists of great experience.  Mr. James Gordon Bennett
was one of those who scoffed at them, and presently was one of those
who followed them and made a large use of them, greatly to his own
profit and to that of the considerable news organization he
controlled.  But at first he said nothing would induce him to set up
in London a rival office to New York.  Now, every important journal
in the United States has offices in London, and subsidiary offices in
Paris and often in other European capitals.  But the authority of New
York or Chicago remains what it was.

The idea once accepted, somebody had then to be appointed to London.
Mr. Young asked me to go.  I declined.  I liked leader-writing much
better than news-collecting.  I thought the power of influencing
opinion through the editorial columns of _The Tribune_ the most
enviable of all powers.  The London scheme, moreover, was an
experiment and I did not think I had had enough experience with news
to justify my undertaking so large a business.  But Mr. Young pressed
it, saying it was my scheme and I ought to put it in operation.  He
might, had he chosen, have issued an order and I should have had no
choice but to obey or resign; {224} but that was not his way.  He
trusted to persuasion; he treated his subordinates as, for some
purposes, his equals, and he did not care for unwilling service.  He
was a past master in the art of stating a case and in the use of
personal influence.  In the end he convinced me not only that I ought
to go, but that I wanted to go, and I gave in, still with misgivings
but not without a certain enthusiasm at the prospect of doing a new
thing in journalism.  It was like Young to say, as he did at parting:
"Remember, I don't care about methods.  You will use your own
methods.  What I want is results."

The incredulity with which _The Tribune_ experiment was first
received gave way slowly, but it gave way.  I suppose it was the news
service of _The Tribune_ in the Franco-German War in 1870 which
finally convinced the most sceptical.  So I will pass to that,
stopping only to explain one other matter.

It was in 1870 also that the first international newspaper alliance
was formed.  The papers which formed it were _The Tribune_ of New
York and _The Daily News_ of London.  I saw at the beginning that it
was desirable to be in a position to know what news would go to New
York through Reuter and The Associated Press.  That knowledge was
only to be had inside of a London newspaper office, and it was with
that view chiefly that I first made a proposal to _The Daily News_.
I suppose I chose that paper because I knew its editor and manager.
I did not think it likely {225} that _The Daily News_ service from
the battlefields would, at first, add much to our own; nor did it.
But I went to Mr.--afterward Sir John--Robinson with an offer to
exchange news, whether by telegraph or mail, on equal terms; we to
give them everything we had and they to do the like by us.  The offer
was very coldly received.  Mr. Robinson could see no advantage to his
paper from such an agreement.  I told him what we were doing and
intending to do.  Still he was incredulous and he finally said No.  I
told him I did not mean that either paper should narrow its
operations at the seat of war in expectation of help from the other,
nor that either should credit the other with its news.  It was to be
a war partnership and each would put all its forces in the field.
But he would not have it.

It was Mr. Frank Hill, then editor of _The Daily News_, who came to
the rescue.  The news department was none of his but he had an
all-embracing intelligence, and when he heard what the offer was he
pressed it upon his colleague and finally secured its acceptance.
The credit for whatever benefit inured to _The Daily News_ from this
partnership was therefore due originally to Mr. Frank Hill and not to
Mr. Robinson.

It remains true that Mr. Robinson was a very distinguished journalist
and that his work at a later period of the war was of a high order.
If he had done nothing but secure the services of Mr. Archibald
Forbes he would have earned a lasting renown as manager.  But before
Forbes's {226} work had begun to tell, _The Daily News_, receiving
and publishing _The Tribune_ dispatches as its own--as it had an
absolute right to do under our agreement--had won a great reputation
for its war news.  Sir John Robinson is dead but I published a
statement on this subject while he was living, which was brought to
his attention.  I said then, as I say now, that _The Daily News_ owed
to _The Tribune_ almost the whole of the war news by which its
reputation was at first acquired.  This period lasted down to the
surrender of Metz; perhaps later.  My statement was never disputed.
It may still be found in _Harper's Magazine_, where the facts are set
forth much more fully than here, and it was this article in
_Harper's_ which Sir John Robinson read.  We had ceased to be on good
terms.  I forget why.  He grumbled a little at the publication of the
story, though without reason, but he attempted no denial and no
denial was possible.

The matter was much discussed at the time in the American Press and
there were many criticisms, based on an absolute ignorance of the
real arrangement between the two papers.  Further confusion grew out
of the fact that one of _The Tribune's_ war correspondents had a
contract with _The Pall Mall Gazette_, then owned by Mr. George Smith
and edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood, one of the great journalists
of his time.  This contract left him free to deal with us but not
with any London paper.  It followed, therefore, that some of _The
Tribune_ dispatches appeared in _The Daily {227} News_ and some in
_The Pall Mall Gazette_.  Our New York friends could not understand
this tri-partite agreement; but then it was not necessary they
should; and their comments were much more amusing than they would
have been if they had known the truth.  The mind moves with great
freedom when unhampered by facts.



II

"American methods," said certain English journalists, seeking to
account for _The Tribune's_ successes in the Franco-German War.  The
phrase, whether meant as eulogy or criticism, was, at any rate,
explanatory, for we had had four years of Civil War experience, from
1861 to 1865, while the English, unless we reckon the Indian Mutiny,
had to go back to the Crimean War in 1854 for precedents in war
correspondence.  Moreover, the one great triumph of English
journalism in the Crimea was not a triumph of method.  It was a
triumph due to the genius and courage of one man, Dr. Russell, who
exposed through _The Times_ the murderous mistakes of army
organization and army administration, and so forced the War Office
and the Horse Guards to set their houses in order.  It was a great
public service; perhaps the greatest which any journalist in the
field ever performed.  But it was not exactly journalism.  It had
little or nothing to do with that speed and accuracy in the
collection and transmission of news which, after all, must be the
{228} chief business of a correspondent.  It has never been imitated.
It never will be till another Russell appears to rescue another
British army in another Crimea.  That great exploit was not primarily
journalistic but personal.

I do not suppose it occurred to any of the many able newspaper
managers in London that in dealing with a European war they would
find a rival in an American journal.  They knew there was an Atlantic
cable but probably thought, if they thought about it at all, that the
cable tolls would be prohibitive, for, as we shall see in a moment,
they had not yet grasped the idea that the telegraph is only a
quicker post.  Putting the question of cost aside, it does not matter
how a piece of news or a dispatch or a letter is transmitted; whether
by rail or by steamship or by wire.  What matters is that it should
get there.  To-day this is a truism.  Forty years ago it was a
paradox; in Europe if not in America.  There had been great
achievements in the transmission of news long before the telegraph
was invented.  It may be doubted whether they were not, some of them,
greater than those due to the telegraph.  But so far as the use of
the telegraph is concerned we are dealing with the beginnings.  The
year 1870 is a year of transition if not of revolution.  I think we
are entitled to remember with satisfaction that in telegraphic news
enterprise, even in Europe, it was an American journal which led the
way, and that _The Tribune_ was that journal.

In forming their war plans the managers of {229} English journals, as
I was saying, left American journals out of account.  Perhaps they
knew, in a dim kind of way, that _The Tribune_ had an office in
London.  But the office had been there for three years and no other
American journal had yet followed _The Tribune's_ example.  Important
dispatches had been sent from this London office to the New York
office by cable, but the London managers, if aware of the existence
of the cable and of _The Tribune_ office in London, had not
co-ordinated these two pieces of knowledge.  The area of all possible
competition in war was news confined, in their view, to Fleet Street
and Printing House Square.

They sat content, true Britons as they were, in their belief in their
own supremacy; a supremacy often challenged, never overthrown.  _The
Times_ was still _The Times_.  _The Morning Post_ was still a
threepenny paper.  _The Daily Telegraph_ was still the organ of the
small shopkeeper.  _The Daily News_ was the mouthpiece of
Nonconformist Liberalism, with no great pretensions to any other sort
of authority.  The evening journalism was not supposed to be eager
for news, except news of that peculiar description which offers its
readers an afternoon sensation and is unaccountably omitted from the
next morning's papers.  The news journalism was yet to be born.  _The
Daily Mail_ had never been heard of.  Lord Northcliffe, the man who
has done more than all others of his time toward the creation of a
new journalism in England, and who is almost more a statesman {230}
than a journalist, was then just two years old.

Moreover, the outbreak of war was unexpected.  Lord Granville was
then Foreign Secretary and of an unshaken optimism.  Lord Hammond,
Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office, had announced a
fortnight before that never since he had held a place in that office
had the sky been so free from clouds.  M. Émile Ollivier has lately
retold with skill in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ how the war was
brought on, but there is nothing in his elaborate special pleading to
show that any reasonable man ought to have expected the French
Emperor, or even M. Ollivier himself, to follow the unreasonable,
mad, arrogant policy they did follow.  Nor can Downing Street or
Fleet Street or Printing House Square be blamed for not being aware
that the conduct of affairs in France was in the control of men who
would play into Bismarck's hands.  For, let M. Ollivier say what he
will, Bismarck's opportunity would not have come had not France,
after Prussia had withdrawn Prince Leopold's candidature for the
throne of Spain, demanded a guarantee that it should never be renewed
or never be supported by Prussia.  Never had events moved so quickly.
Prince Leopold was first heard of July 4th, 1870.  On the 12th he
renounced his claim.  On the 13th Benedetti laid before the King of
Prussia at Ems the demand of France for guarantees.  On the 14th Earl
Granville woke from his deep dream of peace and strove to bring
France and Prussia to terms.  On the {231} 15th the Emperor declared
war; the Chamber approving by an overwhelming majority.

There are in journalism two ways of dealing with a war crisis of this
kind.  One way is to send into the field everybody you can lay hands
on to cover, _tant bien que mal_, as many points as possible, and so
take your chance of what may turn up.  The other is to choose the
best two men available and send one to the headquarters of each army.
I preferred the latter, perhaps because there was a difficulty in
finding good men, and there were but two from whom I expected much
good.  These were Mr. Holt White, an Englishman, and M. Méjanel, a
Frenchman.  Mr. White was ordered to join the Prussians and M.
Méjanel to accompany his own countrymen.  The same instructions were
given to both; very simple but I believe at that time quite novel in
England.  Each was to find his way to the front, or wherever a battle
was most likely to be fought.  They were to telegraph to London as
fully as possible all accounts of preliminary engagements.  If they
had the good luck to witness an important battle they were not to
telegraph, but, unless for some very peremptory reason, to start at
once for London, writing their accounts on the way or on arrival.  If
they could telegraph a summary first, so much the better; but there
must be no delay.  The essential thing was to arrive in London at the
earliest moment.  They were to provide beforehand for a substitute,
or more than one, who would take up their work during their absence.

{232}

These instructions were based on the improbability that any single
correspondent could anticipate any very important news which
Governments, the news agencies, and the Rothschilds would all three
endeavour to send first.  I reverse the order in which a Minister
once said to me news of war or of high politics usually arrived.
Such news, he said, comes to the Rothschilds first, next to the
Press, and to the Government last of all.  Besides, the mere fact
never contents the public.  It wants the full story.  There was never
much chance of sending the full story by wire from the battlefield or
from any town hard by; nor, indeed, from any capital; even from a
neutral capital.  Only when once in London was a correspondent master
of the situation.

Mr. Holt White carried out his instructions with an energy, a
courage, an intelligence to which no tribute can be too high.  In the
first instance he witnessed the battle--not an important one except
that it was the first--of Spicheren, and wired a column or so to
London.  It was I believe, the first battle story of any length ever
sent by wire from the Continent to London.  English journalism, as I
said above, had not yet regarded the telegraph as anything but a
means of transmitting results.  The full account was to come by mail.
I had told Mr. Robinson I meant to use the telegraph in this new way,
but he was not ready to believe it could be done.  So when I carried
Mr. White's account to _The Daily News_ office, after cabling a
rewritten copy to New York, {233} I took with me the original
telegraph forms as well as the second copy.  The dispatch as
telegraphed by Mr. White was slightly condensed, had been carelessly
handled, and was not in good shape for the printers.  I handed my
copy to Mr. Robinson.  He looked at it with undisguised suspicion.

"It is your handwriting," he said.

I admitted that.

"And the battle was fought only yesterday."

"Yes."

"It could not have come by post."

"No."

"Well, how then?"

"By wire."

"A dispatch of that length!  It is unheard of."

But I thought this had gone far enough and showed him the telegraph
forms.  Still he said:

"Do you expect me to print this to-morrow in _The Daily News_?"

"Print it or not as you choose.  It will certainly appear in _The
Tribune_.  I have done as I agreed in bringing you the dispatch.
You, of course, will do as you think best about publishing it."

I repeat this because it indicates better than I could otherwise the
journalistic state of mind at that time in respect of Continental
telegrams.  Mr. Robinson was at the head of his profession, yet this
was his reception of this piece of news.  In the end Mr. Frank Hill,
the editor, was called into consultation.  He had no hesitation and,
as before, finally brought his colleague to reason.  {234} The
telegram duly appeared next morning in _The Daily News_, heralded by
a leading article in which the telegram was rewritten, its importance
pointed out, the celerity of its dispatch and arrival dwelt on, and
so the readers of _The Daily News_ had every opportunity to admire
the enterprise of that journal.

This was very far from being Mr. Holt White's most brilliant exploit,
but it was his first.  He had not the luck to see the battle of
Worth, the earliest of the grave disasters of the French.  No
journalist had.  That great engagement and the defeat of Marshal
MacMahon were foreseen by nobody, the Germans themselves excepted,
and there exists no account of the battle in the newspapers of the
day, save such as came by hearsay; or, much later, the official
reports.  But when the bare facts were known they were thought
prophetic, and the military critics of Pall Mall and Whitehall said
gravely: "This is the beginning of the end."




{235}

CHAPTER XXIV

  HOLT WHITE'S STORY OF SEDAN AND HOW IT
  REACHED THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE

I pass over the interval between Worth and Sedan, crowded as it was
with events, stopping only to remark that _The Tribune_ was indebted
to an American writer on _The Daily News_ for its account of
Gravelotte, but not to _The Daily News_ except for the opportunity of
buying that account, at a high price.  There was an entangling
alliance which forbade _The Daily News_ to hand it over to _The
Tribune_, but did not prevent the correspondent of that paper from
selling it.  I am not sure whether the name of the writer is known
but in the circumstances it is not for me to disclose it.  The
narrative was, of course, cabled to _The Tribune_ at once.
Gravelotte was fought on the 18th of August.  The account of the
battle reached New York, I think, on the 21st.  It was, at any rate,
the first, and for some time the only narrative published.  The
defeated French called it the battle of Rézonville, and under that
name was this description first printed.  From a military point of
view the account had no great value, but it was picturesquely written
and in those {236} difficult days anything from the field was eagerly
read.

Greater days were at hand.  The battle of Sedan was fought on
Thursday, September 1st, 1870, followed by the surrender of the town,
the army, and the Emperor Napoleon on the day following.  The news of
the catastrophe was not known in London till Saturday morning at ten
o'clock, and then only in the briefest form; the mere fact and not
much more; through the general Press agency; I suppose Reuter's.  Mr.
Robinson wired me and I went to _The Daily News_ office.  But the
bare news was of no great use for my purposes.  I went back to _The
Tribune_ office in Pall Mall wondering what I was to do, and still
more what _The Tribune_ correspondent in the field were doing.  I had
not long to wait.  A dispatch arrived from Mr. Holt white saying he
should be in London that afternoon, and at five o'clock he walked
into the office.

Seldom have I been so glad to see any man's face as I was to see his,
but there was hardly so much as a greeting between us.  I asked first:

"Is your dispatch ready?"

"Not a word of it written."

"Will you sit down at once and begin?"

"I cannot.  I am dead tired, and have had no food since daybreak.  I
must eat and sleep before I can write."

He looked it; a mere wreck of a correspondent, haggard, ragged,
dirty, incapable of the effort which nevertheless had to be made.  It
was no {237} time to consider anybody's feelings.  A continent was
waiting for the news locked up in that one man's brain, and somehow
or other the lock must be forced, the news told, and the waiting
continent supplied with what it wanted.  Incidentally, it was such an
opportunity for _The Tribune_ as seldom had come to any newspaper.
It was necessary to use a little authority.  I said to Mr. Holt White:

"You shall have something to eat, but sleep you cannot till you have
done your dispatch.  That must be in New York to-morrow morning."

So we went over to the Pall Mall Restaurant, which was then in the
building now replaced by the Oceanic House, the headquarters of the
International Marine Navigation Company; if that be its name.  Food
and drink refreshed him.  We were back in _The Tribune_ office not
long after six and work began.

Mr. Holt White wrote one of the worst hands ever seen, so I said to
him I would copy as he wrote and my copy would go to the cable
operators.  Bad or good, mine was a hand they were familiar with.  We
sat opposite each other at the same table, and I copied sheet by
sheet till there was enough to give the cable a start, then took it
to the Anglo-American cable office in Telegraph Street.  I went
myself for two reasons: first to make sure it was delivered, and
second to make sure it went without interruption.  The latter,
indeed, was a point of which it was impossible, under the Weaver
régime, to make sure.  But I {238} could at least hand in the message
over the counter.  Many a message have I trusted myself and nobody
else with, and many a letter have I posted with my own hands;
everything, in fact, of importance ever since I had anything to do
with journalism.  It is often inconvenient but I have found it a good
rule.

I dwell on these details.  Few things in American journalism, the
Civil War excepted, have made more stir than this exploit of Mr. Holt
White.  But the full credit which belongs to him he has never had.
Consider what he had done.  He had been all through the battle; he
had been in the saddle all day from four o'clock in the morning till
nightfall.  The battle over, he started for London.  He rode with his
life in his hand.  He had to pass the lines of three armies, the
Prussians who refused him a permit, the French outposts to the north
of Sedan, and the Belgians, who made a pretence of guarding their
frontier and the neutrality of Belgian territory.  He could not
explain how he managed it.  When he reached Brussels he thought it
might be possible to write there and to wire his account from
Brussels to London.  But at the chief telegraph office in Brussels
the official in charge told him flatly he would accept no dispatch
relating to the war.  The issue of the battle was unknown in
Brussels.  Anything handed in for transmission to London or elsewhere
would be submitted first of all to the censor; and in Brussels, as
elsewhere, the censorship is a heart-rending business; delay
inevitable; and there was {239} no time for delay.  It was, as I
explained in an earlier chapter, one reason why all correspondents
were directed to come straight to London where the censorship did not
exist.  Mr. Holt White was soon satisfied that it was useless to try
to telegraph from Brussels, and he came on by train to Calais, missed
the Calais boat, caught a later one, which did not connect with the
Dover-London service, and, once at Dover, chartered a special train
to London and so at last arrived.

I asked him if any other correspondent had come with him.  He thought
not; at any rate, no one whom he knew as correspondent and, of
course, no one came by the special train.  Still, there was no
certainty.  It was already two days since the sun had gone down on
the beaten French in sedan.  There was nothing to do except to hurry
on the dispatch to New York.

With indomitable courage White wrote on.  After a time I asked him if
he would rest a little before finishing.

"No," he said, "if I stop I shall go to sleep, and if I go to sleep I
shall not wake."

The man's pluck was a splendid thing to see.  His answer was like the
answer of an Atlantic captain who, in the old days when there was no
telephone and designers had not learned how to make the captain's
cabin the nerve centre of the ship, had been for three days and
nights on the bridge.  I asked him how he lived through it.  He said
it was rather trying to the knees.

"But did you never sit down?"

{240}

"Oh, if I had sat down I should have gone to sleep."

There are heroisms of that kind in the routine of life, professional
and other, and even in the profession of journalism of which the
newspaper reader in the morning over his coffee and rolls never
thinks.  But they are real and without them, and without the loyalty
and devotion of such men, there might sometimes be nothing for the
man with his coffee and rolls to read.

White sat at his table till midnight and later.  It was nearer two
o'clock than one before the last of his message was filed in
Telegraph Street.  Whether by Mr. Weaver's intervention or not I
cannot say, but there was a delay on the wires.  The delay, I was
afterwards told, was on the Newfoundland land lines to New York.  It
may be so.  It was a message six columns long and not all of it
appeared in _The Tribune_ that next Sunday morning though all of it
had been filed in ample time; two o'clock in the morning in London
being only nine o'clock of the evening before in New York.

No matter.  It was a clear, coherent, vivid battle story, and it was
the only one.  No morning paper in London had any account of the
battle till the Tuesday following; and all New York accounts, _The
Tribune_ excepted, were from the London Press or Press agencies.  It
is not worth while to recall the comments of _The Tribune's_ rivals.
They were angry, naturally enough, and they resorted to conjectures
which might as well {241} have been left unexpressed.  It is enough
to explain further that Mr. Holt White's narrative did not appear in
_The Daily News_ because he had an agreement with _The Pall Mall
Gazette_.  Part of this account, therefore, was printed in an
abridged form in _The Pall Mall_ of Monday, for which it was written
separately.  _The Pall Mall_ is an evening paper, and when that was
cabled to New York and found to be obviously from the same source as
_The Tribune's_ the guesses grew wild.  But the plain truth is now
told, and is simple enough.

Mr. Holt White was a journalist but not at that time a journalist of
any exceptional reputation or position.  This, I think, was the first
very considerable thing he had done.  I am sorry to have to add that
it was also the last.  He was a man to whom, after such an
achievement as this, a long repose became necessary.  He rejoined the
Prussian headquarters, spent the winter at Versailles, and during all
those months did practically nothing.  Of his great gifts and
capacities he made no further use, even down to the end of his life,
and the end came early.  But he is entitled to be remembered as a man
who at one supreme moment accomplished one of the most brilliant
exploits in the history of journalism.  Let us judge him by his best,
and, so judged, his name must take its place with those of Russell,
McGahan, Forbes, Steevens, and others of that rank if there are any
others.

One more remark, to remind you how alien from {242} the mind of the
British journalist at that time was the free use of the telegraph,
which in America had become a thing of every day.  When White sat
down to write he said to me: "I suppose I am to condense as much as
possible?"

"No, write fully."

"But it is going by cable."

"Yes."

"It will be some columns long."

"The longer the better."

He thought a little, then said:

"I still don't quite understand."

"Then please put the cable out of your mind, and write exactly as if
you were writing for a London paper and the printer's devil waiting."
And he did.




{243}

CHAPTER XXV

GREAT EXAMPLES OF WAR CORRESPONDENCE

But Sedan from the Prussian point of view was one thing; from the
French it might be, and must be, quite another.  M. Méjanel, had
things gone otherwise, might have been expected to give us the French
version, but since he was with the French headquarters in Sedan he
was presumably a prisoner of war, and nothing was to be hoped for
from him.  Mr. Holt White, fresh from the field, thought there was
little or no chance.  No one except Mr. White had got through from
either army.  The English papers of Monday morning were a blank
except for a few rather ragged telegrams.  Mr. Robinson at _The Daily
News_, had nothing.  There was a lull.  I am speaking of war news
proper, for there was, of course, the one great event of Saturday in
Paris, and there was no certainty whence the next flash of light, or
lightning, would come.  Sedan had been fought on Thursday, and it was
now Monday afternoon.

While I sat in _The Tribune_ office in Pall Mall brooding on these
difficulties and almost despairing of further good fortune the door
opened, and in walked Méjanel.  He had not telegraphed.  {244} He had
a Gallic indifference to time and to the technique of journalism.  He
had just come as soon as he could.  An angel from heaven would have
been less welcome.

"Were you in Sedan during the battle?"

"Yes, and outside with the army."

"Were you taken prisoner?"

"Yes."

"You were released?"

"Well, I forget whether I was released or whether I escaped."

To escape meant that he had taken his chance of being shot by a
Prussian sentry, and also of being rearrested and tried by court
martial should he fall again into Prussian hands.  Released,
therefore, seemed the better word of the two.

"Have you written your account?"

"No.  I had no means of writing while a prisoner, and I have since
been doing my best to get to London."

As in White's case, there was time enough.  Méjanel had an English
side to him--his mother was English--and that half of him was
imperturbable.  Neither the danger he had passed nor the task that
lay before him, all inexperienced as he was, shook his nerves.  He
was quite ready to sit down and write at once.  As in White's case, I
copied sheet by sheet.  Méjanel's English was here and there at fault
but was, on the whole, good.  What was more important, his memory was
precise; he knew how to tell his story clearly, and he gave us a
picture of the battle-horrors {245} from within the beleaguered town
or from within the French defence, which he made the reader see as he
himself had seen them.  He wrote on till he had filled four columns,
modestly wondering as he wrote whether he was not too diffuse;
wondering that it should be thought worth cabling; wondering whether
his English was good enough; and wondering whether the military part
of it was not all nonsense.  Reassured on all these points, he wrote
fluently and joyfully, at midnight laying down his pen with the
remark: "_Enfin, j'ai vidé mon sac_."

M. Méjanel's dispatch appeared in _The Tribune_ complete on Tuesday
morning.  Neither Mr. Weaver nor the Newfoundland lines were out of
order this time.  _The Tribune_, had, therefore, within less than
three days of the first coming of the news of the battle of Sedan,
given to the American public complete accounts--ten columns
altogether--of the battle from the Prussian side and from the French
side; a unique performance.

Nor was this all.  The revolution in Paris and the declaration of the
Republic, September 4th, were dealt with not less fully, and of
course by cable.  During four days the number of words cabled was a
little over sixteen thousand, at a cost of as many dollars.  If we
never rose again to quite those heights it was because never again
was there such a quick sequence of great events.  But for a long time
the daily average was high, and not long after this _The Daily News_
service {246} became efficient, and, as I have said before, _The
Tribune_ in the end profited by it.

Before, however, the full advantage of that accrued came the
surrender of Metz, October 27th, and the remarkable narrative,
including a visit to Metz, published simultaneously by _The Daily
News_ and _The Tribune_.  It was supposed in London that Mr.
Archibald Forbes was the author of this narrative, and it was
reckoned among his best performances.  _The Daily News_ never thought
it worth while to state the truth; nor was it bound to make any
statement.  The real author was Mr. Gustav Müller, a correspondent in
the employment of _The Tribune_.  As in the other cases I have
described, Mr. Gustav Müller came to London and wrote his account in
_The Tribune_ office.  It was cabled forthwith to New York, and a
copy handed to _The Daily News_.  It was the first to be published in
London, and the first to be published in New York.  So far as London
is concerned, it is enough to say that _The Times_ on the following
morning copied it from _The Daily News_, crediting it to _The Daily
News_, with a deserved compliment, and saying:

"We congratulate our contemporary on the energy and enterprise of its
correspondent."

Still, Mr. Robinson did not think it needful to explain that it was
in fact a _Tribune_ dispatch, and that it was a _Tribune_
correspondent who had wrung from _The Times_ this testimony.

The tale has a tragic end.  For a long time I thought it a tragedy of
death.  I sent Mr. Gustav {247} Müller back to the field at once,
with a large sum of money.  I never heard from him again.  Inquiries
in every possible quarter brought no tidings of him.  It seemed plain
that he had fallen in battle or had been murdered and robbed by some
of the bands that hang on the outskirts of every army.  Some years
after I told the whole story in _Harper's Magazine_, leaving the
mystery unexplained otherwise than by conjecture.  When, lo! it
appeared that Mr. Gustav Müller had not fallen by a French bullet or
a brigand's knife, but was alive in New York and ready to submit to
an interview.  If he were truly reported, he seemed to think his
conduct in no need of defence.  He had changed his mind, and instead
of returning to the field had gone home.  Why he never wrote to me or
communicated in any way with _The Tribune_ he omitted to say.

As I have stripped one leaf from Mr. Forbes's laurels, I will add
that two of the most brilliant news exploits in all the history of
war journalism are to be credited to him.  One was his night ride of
110 miles alone through a hostile country, after the British victory
of Ulundi, July 4th, 1879.  Lord Chelmsford, commanding the British
forces, had refused Forbes leave to start and given orders for his
arrest.  He risked the British bullets and the Zulu assegais, and got
through.  The other was at the Shipka Pass, in August, 1877.  It was
the crisis of the Russo-Turkish War.  General Gourko was holding the
Pass.  Suleiman Pacha day after day was flinging his whole force
against {248} the Russian entrenchments.  The world was waiting.  No
news came.  The Russians and Turks were not people who concerned
themselves much about public opinion.  Forbes was at Bucharest.
Tired of expecting messages from the scene, he rode to the Pass, made
his way through the Turks and into the Russian lines, stayed in the
trenches till he had satisfied himself--and he was a competent
judge--that Suleiman's effort was spent and that Gourko could hold
his own, and then made his way out again, hoping to reach Bucharest
in time for a dispatch that night to_ The Daily News_.  At or near
Tirnova he was stopped by the Russians and taken before the Czar.

The Czar, like the rest of the world, was without news.  He had sent
one aide-de-camp after another to the Pass; not one had returned.
Forbes used to say that the Czar treated him very well.  He asked if
it was true that Forbes had been with General Gourko, and, when told
it was, desired that the exact situation should be explained to him.
Forbes set it forth with that military clearness and precision which
made his work in the field invaluable.  The Czar asked him if he
could draw a plan.  He drew it.  All sorts of questions were put to
him.  He answered all.  He was asked for his opinion.

"I told His Imperial Majesty that I had been a soldier, that I had
had much experience of battles as a correspondent, and that I had no
doubt General Gourko would hold the Pass."

The interview lasted an hour or more.

{249}

"At the end I besought His Majesty's permission to continue my
journey, saying I thought nothing was known in Europe, and that it
was for the interest of Russia that the facts which I had had the
honour to lay before His Imperial Majesty should be made public.  The
Czar thanked me for the information I had given, declared himself
convinced it was true and my judgment well founded, and dismissed me."

So Forbes rode on, arriving at Bucharest, the first point from which
it was possible to telegraph, at eight o'clock in the evening.  It
was Forbes himself who told me the story:

"I had been in the saddle or in the trenches and under fire for three
days and nights, without sleep and with little food.  When I walked
into the hotel at Bucharest I was a beaten man.  I felt as if I could
not keep awake or sit in my chair, much less write.  Yet it was an
opportunity which does not come twice in a man's life.  I had, and
nobody else had, the news for which all Europe was hungering; the
most momentous news since Sedan; but not one word written, and not an
ounce of strength left."

"Well, what did you do?"

The answer was curious indeed.

"I called the waiter and told him to bring me a pint of champagne,
unopened.  I uncorked it, put the neck of the bottle into my mouth
before the gas had time to escape, and drank the whole of the wine.
Then I sat up and wrote the four {250} columns which appeared next
morning in _The Daily News_."

I remember that narrative well.  There was not in it from beginning
to end a trace of fatigue or confusion.  It was a bulletin of war,
written with masterly ease, with the most admirable freshness and
force.  Nothing better of the kind was ever done.  It rang from one
end of Europe to the other, and across the Atlantic.  The Hour and
the Man in this case had come together, and if Forbes had done
nothing else this would entitle him to the immortality which is his.

All the same, the pint of champagne was a hazardous experiment.
Forbes knew it but, as he said, it was that or nothing.  The next man
who tries it ought to be very sure that he has both the intellectual
elasticity Forbes had, and his physique.




{251}

CHAPTER XXVI

A PARENTHESIS

To what I have said of journalism I need not add much.  I remained in
London as the representative of _The New York Tribune_, and in charge
of its European affairs from 1867 to 1895; returning then to New York
and Washington for _The Times_, till 1905.

When _The Tribune_ began publishing a Sunday edition, one other
innovation upon the established practice followed.  I sent each week,
by cable, a column containing a summary view of what seemed most
important during the week.  It was not a summary of news and it was
not a leading article but a compromise between the two.  It was, at
any rate, the first of its kind, and I was allowed to put it in such
shape as I thought best, since then, the American demand for what are
called "Sunday cables" has grown, the despatches to all the great
journals of the United States have increased in number, in length, in
variety, and in daring.  All I claim for mine is that it was the
first.  I do not know whether any work in journalism has in it the
elements of permanency.  Probably not.  Journalism is an expression
of the {252} governing forces of the day, and day by day changes as
the forces change and the days change.  But should a history of
international journalism be written, the historian will perhaps
remember that as agent of _The Tribune_ I set up in London that
European news-bureau which all other great American journals after
some years copied; that I was in charge of it during the
Franco-German War; and that the success of _The Tribune_ during that
war was due to the system already described, which I had established
three years before.

The years that follow are full of miscellaneous interests.  The
Memories, some of which are reprinted in this volume, are not
primarily historical, though I hope they are accurate.  They are
impressions.  They cannot be presented as a sequence, and as each
chapter, or group of chapters, deals with a separate subject, I
republish most of them in the order in which they were written and
printed, or otherwise as may seem convenient.  I pass now to an
incident of the Irish "War," and then to a diplomatic experiment in
the history of those long contentious relations between Canada and
the United States which have so often imperilled the friendship
between England and the United States.




{253}

CHAPTER XXVII

  "CIVIL WAR?"--INCIDENTS IN THE 'EIGHTIES--SIR
  GEORGE TREVELYAN--LORD BARRYMORE

The streets of London were red one day in November, 1909, with
placards proclaiming:

"The Lords declare Civil War!"

I suppose the Radicals thought it paid to force the note.  Mr.
Winston Churchill was their bandmaster for the moment.  There is no
more effective political rhetorician, provided you accept that
fallacy about the folly of the people against which the warning of
Mr. Lincoln passes unheeded.

But there was, at least on one side, a state of feeling in the
country comparable to nothing I can remember except the feeling which
prevailed during the Home Rule crisis, and far stronger now than
then.  In that crisis also the Lords came to the rescue of the
Kingdom, which they saved from disintegration and ruin.  Ruin for the
moment it would have been; only to be finally averted by the
reconquest of Ireland.  Even to the spectator those were stirring
days.  England and Ireland from 1881 onward had become the Wild West.
The revolver was the real safeguard of personal {254} liberty.  I
don't think it will be quite like that now, but it does seem as if
the bitterness of contention and the personalities of politics would
go further now than then; perhaps have already gone further.

I was in Ireland for a fortnight during one of the worst periods, but
there were times when London was as disturbed and distressful as
Ireland itself.  Those were years of dynamite in England, when, as
Lord Randolph Churchill said, the railway stations were flying about
our ears, and when London Bridge came near being blown up, and when
Englishmen in high place were targets.  From the Prime Minister down
to his youngest colleague, no man was safe without a guard of
detectives; and not then.  Mr. Gladstone, whose courage was high,
shook off his escort whenever he could.  Other Ministers paid more
respect to a very real danger.  Sir George Trevelyan, who was
appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1882, submitted sensibly to
the precautions the Home Office and Scotland Yard thought needful.
One afternoon I met Trevelyan in a Bond Street shop.  We left the
shop together.  Two quite innocent-looking men were outside the door.
"I hope you don't mind," said Trevelyan.  "I am obliged to let them
follow me."  They were Scotland Yard detectives.  As we walked down
the street they were within earshot all the way, their vigilance
unrelaxing.  Whether they thought their ward in greater or less
danger because I was with him I cannot say.  We parted at the corner
of Piccadilly.  {255} In both streets the throng on the sidewalk was
dense, but through it these men made their way without violence,
without haste, but never for an instant allowing themselves to be
separated from the Chief Secretary by so much as an arm's length.  He
walked in peril not only real but imminent.  Two days before his
appointment as Chief Secretary his predecessor, Lord Frederick
Cavendish, and Mr. Burke, permanent Under Secretary, had been
murdered.  To accept that inheritance of probable assassination was a
gallant act, quite characteristic of Sir George Trevelyan.  But I do
not imagine that he or his friends ever while he held that office
forgot what had happened in Phoenix Park.

Not many evenings later I met Sir George Trevelyan at dinner.  If he
had not been famous as a writer and Member of Parliament and Irish
Secretary and much else, he might well have been famous as a
diner-out.  He had the art of conversation.  His uncle's influence
had left him, in this respect, untouched.  Where Macaulay discoursed
and reeled off dreary pages of encyclopædic knowledge, Trevelyan
talked lightly and well; claiming no monopoly, preaching no sermon,
wearying no company too well bred to show itself bored.  He had a
felicity of allusion which was so wholly free from pedantry as to
seem almost accidental.  His voice, like Browning's, was strident and
his laugh sometimes boisterous; but this was in moments of excitement.

On this particular evening there was something {256} besides his
inspiriting talk which drew the attention of the company.  So long as
the ladies were at table he talked with his wonted energy.  When the
dining-room door had closed on the last of these departing angels
Trevelyan sank into his chair with a sigh, drew a revolver from the
breast pocket of his coat, laid it on the table and said to his host:

"Pray forgive me, but if you knew how tired I am of carrying this
thing about!"

On Sir George Trevelyan as on others the Irish Secretaryship left its
mark.  A year of office aged him as if it were ten.  He came out worn
and grey: not yet forty-five years old.  The tragedy was in one
particular a tragi-comedy.  Half his moustache had turned white; the
other half black as before.  And I suppose it shook his nerve more or
less and was perhaps responsible for that fickleness of purpose or of
view which led him first to oppose and then to adopt Mr. Gladstone's
policy of Home Rule.

I saw one side of the Irish question during a visit to Lord
Barrymore, then Mr. Smith-Barry, and his beautiful American wife, at
Fota Island, near Queenstown.  Mr. William O'Brien had launched
shortly before this his New Tipperary scheme, of which one main
object was to ruin Mr. Smith-Barry who owned the old Tipperary.
Assassination was then only a political incident or instrument.  Mr.
Smith-Barry, moreover, was hated not only as a landowner but for
having organized the one efficient defence against the {257}
spoliation of the landlords which down to that time had been
discovered.  He had formed a company and raised a large sum of money
among his English friends, he himself being the largest contributor.
So he held the O'Brien cohorts at bay; at what money cost and at what
personal risk few men knew.  But I apprehend that but for Mr.
Smith-Barry the Plan of Campaign and New Tipperary would have
succeeded and the South of Ireland been handed over to the Land
League.

One night as I was on my way from my room to the drawing-room, on the
other side of the hall, I saw by the front door a big man in a blue
cavalry cloak and cap, who had just entered.  He was laying aside his
cloak as I passed, and took out of their holsters first one and then
another navy revolver, both seven-shooters.  I said, too flippantly:

"You take good care of yourself."

He turned on me sharply, with a questioning look of keen eyes under
heavy eyebrows:

"Are you a friend of Smith-Barry?"

"I should hardly be staying in his house if I were not."

"Then I will tell you how you can best prove your friendship.  Get
him to carry what I carry."

"Is he in danger?"

"Danger?  There's a detective at this moment behind every tree about
the house, and even so we don't know what may happen.  We hope he is
safe here at home, but he goes about unarmed, and it is known he is
unarmed, and no man who {258} does that can be sure of his life.  We
have tried our best to make him take care of himself.  He will not.
Now do you try."

This sudden outburst, this appeal, this flash of light upon the scene
were all impressive.  The big man, it turned out, was the Chief
Constable of the county.  He knew whereof he spoke.  I promised to do
what I could and I talked with Mr. Smith-Barry.

He was a man equally remarkable for courage and for coolness, but in
matters affecting his personal safety he did not use the judgment for
which in other matters he was distinguished.  He could not be
persuaded that anybody would think it worth while to kill him.  He
knew well enough that the shooting of landlords had become a popular
pastime, but he could not, or would not, understand why he himself
should be shot.

"I am on good terms with my tenants; my rents are fair rents; I evict
nobody.  What have they to gain by shooting me?"

But it was not from his own tenants that trouble was expected.  It
was not because Mr. Smith-Barry was not a good landlord, but because
he was the leader of the landlords in the South of Ireland, and the
most formidable opponent of the League that his life was threatened.
"It may be so," he said: "but I think I will go on as I am."  And
from that nobody could move him.

Now, as it happened, shortly before I left London I had met one of
the chief officials in the Home Office who said to me:

{259}

"You are going to Ireland."

"Yes, but how do you know?"

"Never mind how I know.  What I want to say to you is, Take a
revolver with you."

I was on the point of making a light answer, but stopped.  If you get
a hint of that kind from a man who rules over the Criminal Department
of the Home Office and the police generally, you accept it and do as
you are told.  I had a revolver with me, therefore, and when the time
came to go back to London I left it in its case on Mr. Smith-Barry's
writing-table, with a letter asking him to accept it from me and once
more begging him to carry it if only that it might be known that he
carried it, or if only out of his friendship to me.  This prevailed.
He wrote me that he still thought we made a needless fuss about it,
but he could not refuse the gift and he could not refuse to carry it.
No letter ever pleased me more.  I have never again seen my friend
the Chief Constable, but I have never forgotten him, and I think of
him now as a fine impersonation of that authority of the law which,
in those turbulent days, he asserted and successfully maintained
against great odds.




{260}

CHAPTER XXVIII

SIR WILFRID LAURIER AND THE ALASKA BOUNDARY

I

The name of Empire-builder is used freely of late, perhaps too
freely.  It is so great a name that it ought to be kept for the great
men, for the real builders and creators; for Clive, for Rhodes, and
their like.  There is another class, somewhat more numerous, but not
much, who keep together the great Imperial patrimony which others
have handed down to them.  They might perhaps be called Wardens of
Empire, of whom Sir Wilfred Laurier may stand for an example.

My memories of Sir Wilfrid Laurier go back to those years when the
Alaska boundary dispute between Canada and the United States
approached its crisis.  Lord Minto was then Governor-General of
Canada; Mr. McKinley was President of the United States; Mr. Hay was
the American Secretary of State.  There was strong feeling on both
sides.  It appeared later that it was stronger in Canada than in the
United States, but in both countries there was hot blood and in both
the controversy turned in part upon gold.  We were {261} carrying on
under a _modus vivendi_; a state of things which tended to
tranquillize the minds of men.  But the _modus vivendi_ did not cover
the whole of the Alaskan territory then in dispute, and there was
anxiety both at Washington and Ottawa.

I went to Ottawa on a visit, spent a week at Government House, and
there first came to know Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had been Prime
Minister of the Dominion since 1896.  First impressions are best and
I set down my first impressions, though they do not much differ from
the last, and though, in one way, they were wholly deceptive and
misleading.

For Sir Wilfrid came so softly into the drawing-room at Government
House that you would never have thought him a leader of men.  He had
something of the ecclesiastic about him, and something of the
diplomatist.  The first perhaps suggested itself because he was a
Roman Catholic, and to that faith all my Puritan prejudices were
alien.  As I think it over, I know of no fact in the current history
of the British Empire more significant than the fact that the
greatest Dominion of this great British and Protestant Power should
have been governed for thirteen years by a Roman Catholic and a
Frenchman.  That is Catholicism in its broadest sense, and not in the
sense of mere loyalty to a Pope and to a particular Church.  Taking
the population of Canada as something over six millions to-day,
nearly one half are Roman Catholics.  The other half are implacable
Protestants.  How are they to live together in amity?  But they {262}
do, and one of the reasons of this amity is Sir Wilfrid Laurier.  If
he were a leader of men in the military sense, or as Chatham was a
leader, one of two things would have happened.  Quebec and Ontario
would have quarrelled, or Sir Wilfrid would have ceased to be Prime
Minister.  Booted and spurred and in the saddle--not so is Canada to
be ruled, nor are the conflicting interests and sentiments of the
eastern and western sections of the great Dominion so to be
harmonized.  But the smooth subtlety of the priest and the suavity of
the diplomatist are means of conciliation.  Thus, I imagine, has Sir
Wilfrid worked.

Thus does he present himself to the company at Government House.  He
glides into the room.  He is not humble; far from it, but his is
perhaps the pride which apes humility.  Sweetness enters with him,
and light, if I may once more unite rather overworked substantives
which have come down to us from Swift.  He does light up the room as
he enters, and the faces of those who are already in it.  His coming
is a delight to everybody and now we know what is before us.

His manner as he receives and returns the greetings of his friends is
distinctly French.  After all the guests have arrived and the
Governor-General and Lady Minto have entered the room, Sir Wilfrid's
homage to the representative of the sovereign and to Lady Minto has
an essentially Parisian elegance.  Nobody would mistake him for an
Englishman by birth or race.  He is English politically and
officially; none more loyal to {263} the King of England and England
herself than he; but personally he is French; taller, however, than
the average Frenchman, and of a larger frame.  The head is well set,
the forehead broad and high, a soft light in the eyes till something
is said which sets them burning, the mouth firm, and the whole face,
in contour and expression, quite as much that of the man of thought
as action.  There are not many men of whom another man uses the word
charm but Sir Wilfrid is one; and women use it of him more freely
still.

He talked easily and well.  He speaks English and French with equal
fluency, with finish also, and is never at a loss for an idiomatic
phrase.  Yet the English is not quite the English heard to-day in
London, nor is his French Parisian.  The Canadians have, in addition
to many other kinds, the patriotism of language.  Quebec has its own
French, the French of the eighteenth century or of Touraine to-day;
and Toronto its own English, also now and then slightly archaic.  Yet
in Toronto dwells, and has long dwelt, the first of living writers of
living English.  I mean Mr. Goldwin Smith; the fires of his
intellectual youth still, at eighty-three, unquenched, and by another
paradox the English author of the best political history of the
United States.  Canada does not like his Canadian views, but they
remain his views, just as he, for all his Canadian residence remains
English.[1]  Perhaps it is part of Sir Wilfrid's diplomacy that he
practises both these varieties of French and English speech.  He
takes liberties {264} with each language, as a man who is master of
both is entitled to, and in each his soft tones are persuasive.


[1] Mr. Smith died, June, 1910.


Nothing seemed to come amiss to him.  The social topics of Ottawa
have not quite the same range as in London, but to the people of
Ottawa they are not less engrossing.  Even scandal was not unknown in
those days, and gossip floated about, and sometimes politics came to
the top, as they will anywhere when they are not too trivial, and
even when they are.  Ottawa was, at any rate, with its fifty thousand
people and its lumber trade, the capital of Sir Wilfrid's kingdom.
Parliament was sitting in that finely placed Parliament House
crowning the cliff on the river, and all Canada was there, in the
substantial persons of its delegates and Ministers.  Before I left I
came to know all, or nearly all, the Ministers.  Lunching one day
with Sir Wilfrid at the Rideau Club, I found myself in a group of a
dozen or more political personages, all, I think, in office.  They
struck me as able men with a gift of businesslike talk.  But there
were not two Sir Wilfrid Lauriers.  The long reign of Sir John
Macdonald had not proved fertile in new men.  Sir John was a sort of
Canadian Diaz, and had done for the Dominion not what the President
of the great Central American Republic had done for Mexico, but a
service not less personal and individual.  Both had been dictators.
Both had known how to use the forms of representative government in
such a way as to consolidate and perpetuate arbitrary personal {265}
power, and for something like the same period.  In a way, Sir Wilfrid
has done a similar thing, only you never could think a Minister of
these endearing manners arbitrary.  There is a more important
difference still.  Sir John Macdonald had organized political
corruption into a system.  Sir Wilfrid is free from any such
imputation as that.  Charges have been heard against some of his
Ministers; never against Sir Wilfrid.

It was perhaps by accident that we began to discuss the Alaska
boundary; or perhaps not by accident.  I do not know.  Thinking the
matter over afterward, it seemed possible enough that Sir Wilfrid had
shaped events in his own mind from the first.  He may have been glad
of an opportunity to communicate with Washington indirectly and
unofficially, or desirous that the President should know what was in
his mind and learn it otherwise than via London.  He was very anxious
as well he might be.  I had lately been in Washington and knew pretty
well the views of the President and of Mr. Hay.  I had made two or
three visits to Ottawa before the Alaska conversations with Sir
Wilfrid took place.  In the interval Mr. McKinley had ceased to be
President.  He had been murdered by a foreigner with an
unpronounceable name, and while the murderer was waiting in his cell
to be executed the American women, suffragists of the militant kind,
had sent him, to quote an American writer, "flowers, jellies, books,
and sympathy."  The discipline of the prison did not forbid these
gifts.  Mr. Roosevelt {266} had become President.  Mr. Hay remained
Secretary of State, perhaps with a hand less free than he had under
Mr. McKinley, who was aware that he himself was not master of all
subjects or perhaps of any subject not essentially American.

When the moment came Sir Wilfrid began casually enough, in a way that
would have allowed him to stop whenever he chose.  But he went on,
and after a talk at Government House one day asked me to call on him
at Parliament House on the morrow.

There again the talk continued, and it was followed by one still
longer when Sir Wilfrid came back to Government House next day with
papers and maps.  Over these we spent some hours.  There were few
details in all the complicated Alaska business which were not
familiar to him; and of the whole question he had a grasp which made
details almost unimportant.  His view struck me as reasoned,
detached, with a settled purpose behind it.  He was quite ready for
compromise.  I never knew a statesman anywhere who was not, with the
possible exception of the ninety-two statesmen who compose the United
States Senate.  For myself, I had to look two ways.  I was obliged,
that is, to understand both points of view, the Canadian and the
American, for I was then the representative of _The Times_ in the
United States.

When we had gone over the whole matter I said to Sir Wilfrid that I
thought I understood his opinions and the policy he desired to
follow.  But what was I to do?  Not a word of what he had {267} said
to me could have been intended for print, nor can it be printed now,
even after all these years and after the settlement.  But some object
he must have had, and I asked him if I was at liberty to draw any
inference from these interviews.  I was leaving Ottawa the next day.

"Are you going to Washington?"

"Yes."

"Shall you see the President or Mr. Hay?"

"Both."

"Well, if you think anything you have heard here likely to interest
the President or Mr. Hay, I don't see why you should not discuss the
matter with them as you have with me, if they choose."

The story of what happened at Washington I reserve for another
chapter.  But Sir Wilfrid's way of dealing with the subject on this
occasion may perhaps stand for an example of what I have called his
diplomatic manner.  He was not over-solicitous about precedents or
formalities.  He was quite ready to avail himself of such
opportunities as chance offered him, and of such instruments as came
in his way.  His absolute good faith was beyond question.  If his
suggestions, or rather the frank statement of his own view and of
what he was ready to do had proved acceptable at Washington, he would
have put them into official shape, and there would presently have
been a dispatch from the Foreign Office to the State Department, and
history would have been differently written.  Why this did not happen
will appear when the Washington end of the story is told.



{268}

II

Leaving Ottawa the day after the last of these conversations with the
Canadian Prime Minister, I went to Washington.  There I saw both the
President and Mr. Hay.  I said, of course, I had no authority to bind
Sir Wilfrid Laurier to anything, but I had a strong impression and
this impression I laid before them.  As a matter of convenience I had
drawn up a memorandum, of which I had sent Sir Wilfrid Laurier a
copy.  When Mr. Hay asked me whether I had any notes of my
conversations with the Canadian Prime Minister I handed him this
memorandum; rather a long document.  He wished it read to him, and it
was.  Then we talked it over.  Mr. Hay said:

"I suppose you will see the President.  I shall see him also, but I
think it will be better you should make your statement to him
separately."

My belief is that both of them would have been disposed to consider
the Canadian Prime Minister's attitude a reasonable one, and if an
official proposal in that sense had been made, and if it had rested
with the President to say yes or no, he would have accepted it.  But
acceptance involved a treaty, and what was the use of agreeing to a
treaty which had to run the gauntlet of the United States
Senate--"the graveyard of treaties"?  The Senate at that time was in
one of its most irreconcilable moods.  In truth, the President had
found himself more than once in collision with the Senate, and the
moment was not propitious.  Certain {269} Senators, moreover, had
fixed opinions as to the proper disposition of this Alaska dispute,
and from these opinions it was known they would not depart.  At
another time, when I hope to have something to say about Mr.
Roosevelt, I may add a little, though not much, to this brief
account.  It can never be treated except with great reserve.

I had told Sir Wilfrid when I said good-bye that I feared the Senate
would prove an invincible obstacle to an agreement.  I saw the
President several times, and the whole matter was gone into.  After
my last conversation with him, which did not end till past one
o'clock in the morning, I wrote Sir Wilfrid that I saw no chance at
present of carrying the matter further.  He answered very kindly but
regretfully, and so all this ended; without result for the time
being.  I add only that the sagacity of the Canadian, the
statesmanlike sagacity, impressed the President and Mr. Hay alike.
If it had been possible to lay the whole story before the Senate, it
might have impressed that body also.

But Jefferson's phrase about government by newspapers applies, or
part of it applies, to the Senate, or shall I say to part of the
Senate?  Whatever is known to the Senate soon becomes known to the
newspapers.  A single illustration will suffice.  The Senate
transacts executive business in secret session.  The galleries are
cleared; the Press gallery as well as the others.  But within an hour
of the close of an executive session a full abstract of its
proceedings is in the hands of the {270} Press agents.  Besides, I
had no authority to repeat what Sir Wilfrid had said to anybody but
the President and Mr. Hay.  Sir Wilfrid is a man so free from
official pedantry or even conventionalities that I think it likely he
would have agreed to an informal communication to the Senate, but he
was not asked.  There was no occasion to ask him.  The objections
were too evident.  Mr. Hay said: "Anything I favour the Senate will
oppose."

Of the President some very leading Senators were not less suspicious.
There was to be no agreement until the Senate could dictate terms.
The subsequent agreement for an Alaska Boundary Commission was a
Senate agreement.  It did not provide for arbitration.  If it had,
the Senate would have rejected it.  It was not supposed that a
tribunal composed of three members from each side would reach a
decision.  All men now know that if it did it was because the Lord
Chief Justice of England conceived it to be his duty to vote in
accordance with the facts and the law.  He had not laid aside his
judicial character when he became a Commissioner.

As it was Lord Alverstone's vote which turned the scale in favour of
the United States, the Canadians attacked him with bitterness.  He
made one reply, and one only, and even this had no direct reference
to Canada.  Speaking at a dinner in London he said: "If when any kind
of arbitration is set up they don't want a decision based on the law
and the evidence, they must not put a {271} British judge on the
commission."  Writing as an American I think it due to Lord
Alverstone to say that nothing ever did more to convince Americans of
British fairness than his act.  It was his act also that put to rest
a controversy which, in the opinion of Canadian statesmen and
American statesmen alike, contained elements of the gravest danger to
peace.  If he had done nothing else he would take his place in
history as a great Lord Chief Justice.

The Briton is so constituted that it is probable he admires Lord
Alverstone, formerly Richard and then Sir Richard Webster, almost as
much for his renown in sport as for his professional eminence, of
which to be Tubman and then Postman in the Court of Exchequer was one
part.  He was, and is, an athlete, and used to win running races, and
perhaps still could, being now only sixty-seven years of age.  You
used always to hear him spoken of as "Dick Webster."  At Cambridge
University he had such eminence in the study of mathematics as
entitled him to be thirty-fifth Wrangler; and in the more humane
letters so much proficiency as made him third-class classic.  In the
Schools, that is, he was less energetic than on the track.

But success at the Bar does not depend on the Differential Calculus
or on Latin and Greek.  Within ten years after being called he was
Q.C., and having found a seat in Parliament, became Attorney-General
in Lord Salisbury's Government in 1885-6.  Within seventeen years he
had reached the highest unjudicial place in his profession.  {272} He
held the same office three times; then was made Master of the Rolls;
the judge who in point of dignity comes next after the Lord
Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice, and finally, in 1900, Lord
Chief Justice of England.  During his service at the Bar he had been
a great patent lawyer; with an income which rumour put at £30,000, or
$150,000; for this country perhaps the maximum, outside of the
parliamentary Bar.  Such is a bare outline of the career, in all
respects distinguished, honourable, stainless, of the man on whom
Canada poured out criticisms which did not stop short of
vituperation.  They need no answer.  If they did, it is not my place
to answer them.  Not one human being in England believed Lord
Alverstone capable of the dishonesty which the Canadian papers
imputed to him.

I am afraid I must add that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was one of Lord
Alverstone's critics.  The feeling throughout Canada was so strong
that he had perhaps no choice, or no choice but between that and
either resignation or defeat.  No pilot could weather that storm.
The feeling of Canada was emotional.  What he said, he said as Prime
Minister.  Yet whether as Prime Minister or as Sir Wilfrid Laurier he
must have rejoiced in the settlement; even though it were at the
expense of Canadian claims.  I do not think Canada had any valid
claims, or had a case which before any impartial tribunal could have
been maintained.  But whether she had or not, it was for her interest
to see them once for all swept away and peace {273} and good feeling
established between her and her neighbour.

Our Canadian friends must have been aware at the time that they stood
alone.  In their attacks on Lord Alverstone they had no backing in
England.  No English newspaper ever suggested that Lord Alverstone
had voted otherwise than according to his conscience.  England knew
him to be incorruptible and unassailable, and laughed at the
suggestion that he did not understand the Canadian claims.  It was
because he understood them that he decided against them.

The English, it is true, have thought themselves unlucky in
arbitrations, and have fallen into the habit of expecting an adverse
decision from an arbitration tribunal.  The Geneva tribunal instilled
into them that reluctant expectation.  But as this was not an
arbitration but simply a Commission for determining the true boundary
line of Alaska, they accepted in a sporting spirit the judgment of
their own Lord Chief Justice.  How could they do otherwise?  On the
constitution of the tribunal, and on the claims of Senator Lodge and
Senator Turner to be impartial, they had remarks to make.  On the
other hand, were the Canadian members impartial?

There can be no harm now in saying that Sir Wilfrid looked upon the
Alaskan situation with gloomy forebodings.  So did everybody on both
sides of the border; everybody who understood the situation and would
give himself the trouble to think, and had a sense of responsibility.
In the {274} disputed belt of territory, Alaskan territory which the
United States claimed and Canada claimed, gold might at any moment be
discovered.  There would come a rush from both sides.  We all know
what the gold-miners are--a rough lot, not always recognizing any law
but the law of the strongest and the most covetous.  They make laws
for themselves, and even those they do not keep.  Many of them are
desperate, many ruined, many outlaws; many have no other hope than in
finding gold somewhere and getting it anyhow.  They are all armed.
Revolvers are the arbitrators whose decisions they respect.  In the
presence of new-found gold, what are boundaries or titles or
international relations?  Inevitably they would cross the border into
the debatable land, Canadians and Americans alike.  What would the
flag mean to bankrupt gamblers who saw once more the hope of riches?
There would be disputes.  There would be collisions.  At any moment a
shot might be fired, and then what?  The risk was awful.

This, I have no doubt, was the risk Sir Wilfrid had in mind.  It
meant nothing less than the possibility of war between Great Britain
and the United States.  Gold once discovered, the possibility became
a probability.  Could a Canadian statesman, could an American
statesman, think of that hazard and not be willing to do much, or
even to concede much, in order to avert it?  Yet of all the men of
both nationalities with whom, then and after, I have talked about
Alaska, Sir Wilfrid alone had a clear view of the danger, and he
alone {275} was willing to do what was absolutely necessary to make
war impossible.  For that reason he stands forth a great patriot, a
great Canadian, a great Englishman.  World-wide as is his fame he
deserves a greater.  It is not yet possible to do him full justice.
It may never be.  But his views and proposals and large wisdom, as
they were set forth in these conversations, put him, in my opinion,
in the very front rank of statesmen of his time.  The impression they
made on the President and Mr. Hay was profound.  They too were
statesmen but their hands were tied.

It is further to be borne in mind that the North-western border was
in a ferment.  That great belt of powerful States conterminous with
Canada had long nursed its grievances.  The Alaska question did not
stand alone.  It never has.  There were questions of duties, of
tariffs, of lumber rights, of the rights of lake and canal
navigation, of fisheries, Atlantic and Pacific, and many
others--thirteen specific subjects in all.  They had once been all
but settled.  The High Commissioners in the last conference at
Washington had come to terms on all but Alaska when, in an unlucky
moment, Lord Herschell, believing he could force the hand of the
Americans, put forth an ultimatum out of a blue sky.  It must be all
or none.  There must be no settlement which does not include Alaska.
Lord Herschell had been thought of a contentious mind all through.
Americans bore with that, but to an ultimatum, an agreement at the
mouth of a gun, we would not submit.  So {276} the whole went off.
What was the result?  There came a time when Sir Wilfrid himself had
to announce that there would be no more pilgrimages to Washington.
Nor have there been.




{277}

CHAPTER XXIX

ANNEXING CANADA--LADY ABERDEEN--LADY MINTO

The first person from whom I heard of the American immigration into
Canada was Sir Wilfrid Laurier.  He told me it had begun quietly, a
few American farmers drifting across the border in search of better
and cheaper land than could be had at home.  There was no sound of
drum or trumpet.  These men had nothing to do with the talk of
annexation.  They had no political object.  Their object was
agricultural; only that and nothing more.  It is possible enough that
the reputed riches of the North-west province of Canada had something
to do with the policy, if it can be called a policy, of the American
annexationists, desiring to fire the hearts of the farmers in
Illinois and Minnesota who saw the yield of their wheat lands
diminishing yearly.  It seems never to have occurred to the
politicians that the farmers were quite capable of looking after
their own interests, and that it was cheaper to buy land than to make
war for it.

The movement had, at the time of this conversation in 1902, been
going on for years.  Beginning by scores, it had risen to hundreds
yearly, then {278} thousands.  Sir Wilfrid computed that there were
altogether some fifty or sixty thousand American settlers in the
Canadian North-west, and that the yearly exodus from "the States" had
reached six thousand.

"But does not that raise or threaten to raise a political issue?"

"Oh, it is much too soon to think of that."

Nevertheless, I imagine Sir Wilfrid did think of it, and it may have
been present to Lord Grey's mind when he launched his memorable
declaration at the Waldorf Hotel two years later.  Now, the number of
Americans who are moving northward and acquiring Canadian soil is
computed at a hundred thousand yearly or more.  The political
difficulty, if there were one, would seem to be met by the Canadian
law allowing aliens to hold land but requiring them to become
Canadians at the end of three years.  I am told there is such a law
but I do not know.

In truth, the political difficulty has never outgrown manageable
limits.  There has always been more or less "tall talk" about
annexing Canada.  Eloquent phrases have been heard--"One continent,
one flag," or "the Stars and Stripes from the Gulf of Mexico to the
Arctic Circle."  But no party has taken up this cry.  One newspaper
in New York, _The Sun_, did for a time preach annexation.  _The Sun_
is a journal which does not disdain sensations, and has taught its
readers to expect them, and from time to time fulfils the
expectations it excites.  The editor at that time was {279} Mr. Paul
Dana, son of the Mr. Charles A. Dana who made _The Sun_ a powerful
journal.  Mr. Paul Dana started a society to promote the acquisition
of Canada.  The capital of the society was $125,000, or £25,000.
That was the sum which Mr. Paul Dana and his friends thought
sufficient, or were able to raise, if they did raise it, to sever
from the British Empire a Dominion larger than the United States
without Alaska, capable, in military opinion, of self-defence, but,
in any case, with the military and naval power of Great Britain
behind it.  Mr. Paul Dana, however, did not pursue matters to the
bitter end.  He has ceased to be editor of _The Sun_ and Canada
remains British.  I do not know whether his annexation society is
still in existence.  But the American appetite for Canada, never
keen, has grown duller still.  Men's minds turn to other things.  The
Philippines and Hawaii and Porto Rico and the defence of the Pacific
Coast are more than enough to occupy our attention.  The Senate
itself has grown tractable, and on the chief points of difference an
agreement has been reached where five years ago no agreement seemed
possible.

Two years after Sir Wilfrid Launer became Prime Minister the somewhat
agitated and perhaps agitating Governor-Generalship of Lord Aberdeen
came to an end.  I suppose the cause of the troubled waters on which
that particular ship of State was tossed was not to be found wholly
or mainly in Lord Aberdeen himself, but in the multitudinous energies
of Lady Aberdeen.  Her {280} convictions were strong, her zeal was
continuous, her certainty of being in the right was a certainty she
shared with her sex, or with all those women who think public affairs
their proper sphere.  She had many admirable qualities and a courage
which shrank from no adventure merely because it was an adventure.

Her zeal in the cause of Home Rule for Ireland is well known.  It had
been shown in Dublin.  It was shown now at Ottawa.  It crossed the
border and hung out a flag in Chicago.  In the Chicago Exhibition,
or, as it was officially called, the "World's Columbian Exposition,"
in 1893, there was, among other attractions, an Irish village.  This
village Lady Aberdeen took under her patronage, and over it she
hoisted an Irish flag of the kind in which the Home Rule heart
rejoices; a flag with the Harp but without the Crown.  If Lady
Aberdeen had done this as a private individual it could hardly have
been allowed to pass.  But she did it as wife of the Governor-General
of the Dominion of Canada.  There were official remonstrances and the
flag was lowered.  Against an indiscretion of that kind may be set
many useful and charitable enterprises, begun or encouraged by this
lady in Ottawa and all over Canada.  She is kindly remembered there,
and her visits to Canada since Lord Aberdeen ceased to be
Governor-General have been welcomed.  But there are many stories of
her crusading spirit besides the one I have told, and I suppose the
Canadians really like to live a more peaceful life {281} than they
were allowed to when Lady Aberdeen ruled over them.

Lord Minto succeeded Lord Aberdeen.  Sir Wilfrid Laurier was Prime
Minister during the whole of Lord Minto's term, and Mr. Chamberlain
was Secretary for the Colonies down to the last year.  I suppose it
may be remarked that seldom have three great officials worked in a
harmony more complete than did these three.  It can hardly be
necessary to say anything of Mr. Chamberlain except this; that his
masterfulness never made itself felt in Canada in such a way as to
weaken, but always in such a way as to strengthen, the tie between
the Motherland and the Colony.  His Imperialism took account of the
Dominion as well as of the Empire; it took equal account for all
purposes.  It was under this strong hand that Canada felt her
independence, perhaps for the first time, completely safeguarded.

Between Lord Minto and Sir Wilfrid Laurier there was on all subjects
an understanding.  That is not the same thing as saying they never
differed, which would be absurd.  But they had before them the same
high objects, and they pretty well agreed as to the means of
attaining them.  The relations between Government House and
Parliament House, where the Prime Minister had his headquarters, were
cordial, frank, unrestrained, and delightful.  That there should be
relations of that kind between the representative of the Crown and
the representative of the Dominion is of equal advantage to the Crown
and to the {282} Dominion.  They have not always existed, but there
seems every reason to believe they will exist in the future, as they
did in Lord Minto's time, and as they do now that Lord Grey speaks
for the Sovereign and Sir Wilfrid Laurier is still the trusted Prime
Minister of a Dominion which has grown too great to be called a
Colony.

As I have mentioned Lady Aberdeen, I may say a word, though for a
different reason, about Lady Minto, who for six years was the idol of
Ottawa and of the whole Dominion.  If ever there was an example of
tact and felicity in the discharge of the duties that fall to the
wife of a Governor-General, Lady Minto was that example.  What need
be added except that the statement is not a compliment but a
testimony?  The Canadian Press has paid its tribute and there are
other tributes.  One is that in Quebec and Toronto, the capital of
the French Roman Catholic province and the capital of the British
Protestant province, Lady Minto was equally popular and equally
beloved.  In a very literal but strictly correct and conventional
sense it may be said that she was a power in the Dominion.  The
receptions at Government House were very interesting; perhaps
sometimes curious as an example of democracy undergoing a social
evolution.  In all the Commonwealths beyond the seas the same
process, I presume, may be studied.  When Lady Carrington issued
three thousand invitations to a reception at Government House in
Sydney the limit had perhaps been reached for the time.

{283}

There can be no such throng at Government House in Ottawa because it
is not large enough; perhaps is not quite large enough for the
dignity of the Dominion in these days of its amazing growth and
ever-increasing importance.  But Ottawa, though a flourishing city,
is not a great city.  It is a compromise capital; the middle term in
which the rivalries of Quebec on the one hand and Toronto on the
other found a means of peace on neutral and central ground.




{284}

CHAPTER XXX

TWO GOVERNORS-GENERAL--LORD MINTO AND LORD GREY

Lord Minto has now passed from the great post of Governor-General of
the Dominion to the still greater Viceroyalty of India.  But I
apprehend it will be long before his reign in Canada is forgotten.
Possibly the Canadians might not use, and may not like, the word
reign.  They are a susceptible as well as a great people.  They are
jealous of their liberties, which are in no danger, and of the word
American, to which they have some claim, over-shadowed though it be
by their greater neighbour on the South.  I have seen more instances
than one of Canadian sensitiveness, of which I will take the
simplest.  Having to pay for a purchase in an Ottawa shop I asked the
shopkeeper whether he would take an American banknote.  He answered
with a flushed face:

"We consider our money as much American as yours.  We have the same
right as you to the name American."

"By all means.  But what do you call our money?"

"United States bills."

"And what do you call me?"

{285}

But to that simple question he had no answer ready.  And I rather
imagine the time has come, or is coming, when the Canadian may be as
proud of the name which identifies him with the northern half of the
continent as we are of the adjective we have to share, more or less,
with others.  I never heard of a Mexican calling himself an American,
but I believe the Latin races to the South do; and forget sometimes
to put South before it.  Lord Minto was Governor-General while Mr.
Chamberlain was Colonial Secretary, a period of transition, of
Imperial transition, to which Mr. Chamberlain led the way.  Nobody
has ever forgotten his adjuration to all Englishmen to think
imperially.  As I remember Canada during several visits, she was at
that time more inclined to think independently.  Not that any party
in the Dominion meditated a secession from the Empire, but there was
a pretty distinct notion, and claim, of colonial autonomy.  Canada
came first, as Canada, and not as a part of the Empire.  The moment
when Imperial considerations first became dominant in the Canadian
mind was moment of the Boer War.

There it is that Lord Minto's name becomes indissolubly allied with
the Dominion.  His share in that great transaction of the Canadian
contingent to South Africa has never, I think, been fully understood
by the British public.  Nor would it ever be if the matter were left
to him.  He was never a man to advertise himself or his deeds.  I
dare say he will not like my telling the story, {286} though I shall
tell it only as it was told to me, and the teller had nothing to do
with Government House.

It was for a while doubtful whether Canada would send troops.  There
was, I am told, an uncertain feeling about the militia organization,
then on a different footing from the present.  There were awkward
stories of corruption and inefficiency.  It was doubted whether a
force officered and equipped in conditions then existing would do
credit to the Dominion.  There were hesitations on other grounds.
But when finally a levy was voted, Lord Minto, who had taken no part
in the discussion and could take none, availed himself of his
authority as Governor-General and of his experience as a soldier, and
gave his personal attention to the organization of the contingent.
It was stated to me much more strongly than that, and my informant
seemed to doubt whether Lord Minto did not exceed, or at least
strain, his prerogatives as representative of the Crown.  If he did,
so much the better.  The English have ever liked a servant in high
place who was not afraid of responsibilities.  But for my purpose it
is enough to say that Lord Minto took an active part in these
momentous preparations.  I think no officer was appointed without his
sanction, no contract for supplies entered into which he did not
approve, no arrangement of any kind made but upon his initiative or
with his express consent.

The result was that the Canadian forces reached Africa a body of
soldiers fit for the field, {287} not as a mere aggregation of men
food for powder.  England knows, and all the world knows, what
service they did.  There were no better troops of the kind, perhaps
not many of any kind better adapted for the work they had to do and
for coping with such an enemy as the Boers.  They did more than their
contract called for in the field.  They builded better than they
knew.  They made it plain to all men that the country which had sent
such troops as these many thousands of miles beyond the seas to the
relief of the Imperial forces of Great Britain was itself an integral
and indispensable part of the Empire.

Whereas, if they had failed or only half succeeded, they would have
done little good to the British arms in South Africa and none at all
to the Imperialism of which Canada to-day is a bulwark.  And if this
is a true account, as I believe it to be, of the way in which these
two great results were brought about, the credit of them belongs more
to Lord Minto than to any other man.

I do not offer this as an explanation of the regard in which Lord
Minto was held.  It could not be an explanation, because it was not
generally known.  There were other reasons, at the top of which I
should put his common sense, his sincerity, and, of course, that
devotion to duty which every Governor-General is presumed to possess,
which in him was conspicuous.  Everybody liked him, nobody doubted
him.  He made the interests of Canada his own.  He traversed that
vast territory from end to end again and again.  He held a {288}
Court not in Ottawa only, but in Quebec, in Halifax, in Toronto, and
in that Far North where Canada touches Alaska and the chief harvest
of the soil is gold.  His five years' term came to an end but the
Colonial Office and Parliament House and the people of Canada wished
him to stay on, and so the five years became six.  A period on which
to look back with pride.

Canada is again fortunate in her Governor-General, and in his
relations with those who mould public opinion on the American side of
the border.  I imagine it may not be known in England how he first
conquered the respect and good-will of the Americans.  It was at a
dinner of some five hundred or six hundred people at the Waldorf
Hotel in New York.  In the course of his short speech Lord Grey
referred, with a plainness unusual in those exalted regions, to what
had been said in times past about the possible absorption of Canada
by the United States.

"But now," observed the Governor-General, "there is no more reason
for discussing the annexation of Canada by the United States than for
discussing the annexation of the United States by Canada."

It was a straight hit from the shoulder, but the audience rose to it
and cheered him as I had heard no Englishman cheered in New York
before that time.  He became in a moment a great figure, filling the
public eye.  He delivered his tremendous sentence with simplicity and
good humour.  There was nothing like defiance or menace.  {289}
Everybody saw that he felt himself on a level with his hearers.  He
spoke as Governor-General of the Dominion to the people of the United
States, _d'égal à égal_.  He spoke as an Englishman to Americans.
Mr. Price Collier may say, if he chooses, that English and Americans
do not like each other, but I will ask him what other two
nationalities have the same, or anything like the same, points of
contact and of sympathy?  There stood Lord Grey, just an Englishman,
holding out his hand to his American cousins.  If the hand happened
for that moment to be clenched it was none the less a greeting, and
was understood as such.  You could not look into his face without
seeing in it the spirit of kinship and of friendship.  Lord Grey is
pre-eminently one of those men who think the best relations between
men or between communities must spring from frankness.  He wanted to
clear the ground, and he did clear it.  If he had asked anybody's
advice he would certainly have been advised not to say what he did.
He preferred to trust to his own instincts, and they proved to be
true instincts.  The danger was that a freedom of speech which would
be accepted from his lips might be resented when read in cold print.
But it was not.

No American will have forgotten Lord Grey's gift of his portrait of
Franklin to Philadelphia.  That endeared him to us still further.  It
was a prize of war which he surrendered, taken in the War of the
Revolution by General Sir Charles Grey.  It used to hang near the
ceiling in one of {290} the reception rooms of Howick House,
Northumberland.  I saw it there some time before the gift and Lord
Grey told me its history, but did not tell me he meant to give it
back to America.  I believe he did ask whether I thought Philadelphia
would care to have it again, a question to which I could not but say
yes.  Yet it might almost be thought of the family, with a good deal
more than a hundred years of possession behind it.  But in this
country a hundred years do not count so much as elsewhere.  The
English have long since got into the habit of reckoning by centuries.

When Lord Grey went to Washington the President asked me to bring him
to the White House.  Mrs. Roosevelt had a reception that evening and
I said with her permission I would bring him then.  "Very good," said
the President, "and mind you bring him to me as soon as you come."  I
did as I was told.  The President greeted him, as he did everybody,
warmly, but in a way that made Lord Grey understand he was welcome.
Within thirty seconds they were deep in political economy, a matter
of which Lord Grey had made a profounder study than the President.
For the Englishman had not, like Bacon and Mr. Roosevelt, taken all
knowledge to be his province, and was able to master his subjects.
More than once I had occasion to see something of his familiarity
with difficult subjects--once at dinner when the late Mr. Beit, the
South African magnate, sat on his right, and the two discussed
financial and political questions.  Mr. Beit had made a great {291}
fortune in South Africa, and Lord Grey had not.  The Chartered
Company had not then proved a mine of wealth to its administrator.
But the minds of the two were at one.  The knowledge of each was
immense.  The power of grappling with great subjects was common to
both.  Perhaps Lord Grey sometimes took an imaginative view, but the
feet of the capitalist were planted on the solid earth.

The President and the Governor-General became friends at once,
neither of the two being the kind of man to whom friendship requires
length of years to come into being.  It is, of course, for the
interests of both Canada and the United States that relations of
sympathetic good-will should exist between the rulers of each.  A few
hours before their meeting the President knew nothing about Lord
Grey.  Even to Mr. Roosevelt's omniscience there are limits.  But he
desired to know, and when he had heard a little of Lord Grey's
history, said joyfully: "All right; we have subjects in common and
ideas too."  So the doors of the White House opened wide to the
Governor-General, and Lord Grey was the President's guest, and the
impression in Canada was a good impression.




{292}

CHAPTER XXXI

LORD KITCHENER--PERSONAL TRAITS AND INCIDENTS

It does not appear that Lord Kitchener's refusal to accept the
Mediterranean post to which he was assigned has impaired his
popularity or diminished the general confidence in him.  Possibly
even official confidence survives, in a degree.  The tone of the
Prime Minister's replies to questions about the refusal may denote
resentment but hardly censure.  So I think I may still venture to
reprint sundry personal reminiscences which were written before this
collision between the great soldier and the Prime Minister--or was it
the War Minister?--had occurred.

"The greatest chief-of-staff living," said the Germans of Lord
Kitchener; possibly with a reservation in favour of themselves.  They
would not go beyond that limited panegyric.  The remark was made by a
German officer, high in rank, not long after the Boer war, and it was
Paardeberg which rankled in his German mind and would not suffer him
to award to the English general a great power of leadership in the
field.  But I believe German opinion on that battle has {293} since
undergone revision.  Whether it has or not Lord Kitchener's military
renown can easily take care of itself; nor is it his soldiership
which I am going to discuss.  I happen to have met him now and then,
and what else I have to say about him is personal.  I hope not too
personal.

It was on a journey from London to Alderbrook, Mr. Ralli's beautiful
place in Sussex, that I first saw Lord Kitchener.  We were a week-end
party and went down together in a saloon carriage.  The figure which
next to Lord Kitchener's stands out clearest is the late Lord
Glenesk's still in the vigour of his versatile powers and
accomplishments and attractions.  The occasion was the more
interesting because Lord Kitchener had then lately returned from
Egypt, and from that victorious campaign which he, and he alone, had
planned and carried through from beginning to end in strict
fulfilment of the scheme framed before the actual preparations for it
had been begun.  This also might induce our German military friends
to reconsider that chief-of-staff opinion above quoted.

It was known that this second hero of Khartoum--Gordon being the
first--was to travel by this train.  It was an express, and there was
no stop before Guildford.  But consider the enthusiasm of the British
people when they have a real hero.  The stations through which the
train thundered at forty miles an hour were crowded with people.
They could not get so much as a glimpse of their idol, but they stood
and cheered and waved their hats to the train and the invisible
hero-traveller.  {294}

When we reached Guildford six or seven thousand people thronged that
station.  They hurrahed for "Kitchener," and as the cries for
"Kitchener" met with no response, they were raised again and again.
Lord Kitchener sat in a corner, buried in a rough grey overcoat,
silent and bored.  He had no taste for "ovations" and triumphal
greetings.  Lord Glenesk told him he really must show himself and
acknowledge these salutations.  So Lord Kitchener rose, with an ill
grace, walked to one of the open doors of the saloon, raised his hand
with a swift military jerk to his bowler, and retreated.  The tumult
increased but he would not show himself a second time.  The cheers
rolled on without effect.  The idol would not be idolized.  It was
not ill-temper but indifference.  He was in mufti and it was the
soldier the multitude demanded to see.  In truth, Lord Kitchener's
appearance at the moment was not military.  It was remarked by his
fellow-passengers that he showed to little advantage in his grey
clothes, none too well fitting.  When evening came he was another
man, just as unmistakably the soldier as if in full uniform.

He was at that time brooding over his Gordon College scheme for
Khartoum.  He wanted £100,000, and he doubted whether he should get
it.  In vain his friends urged him to make his appeal.

"No," said Lord Kitchener, "nothing less than £100,000 will be of any
use.  It is a large sum.  I should not like to fail, and if they gave
{295} me only part of the amount I should have to return it."

He was told that his name would be enough.  It was the psychological
moment.  Delay would only injure his chances.  Lord Glenesk offered
him £1000 across the dinner table, and other sums were offered there
and then, and the support of two powerful newspapers was promised.
Still he hesitated, and still he repeated, "I should not like to
fail."  At last one of the company said:

"Well, Lord Kitchener, if you had doubted about your campaign as you
do about this you would never have got to Khartoum."

His face hardened and his reply was characteristic of the man:

"Perhaps not; but then I could depend on myself and now I have to
depend on the British public."

But he did ask for the money and got all and more than all he wanted
with no difficulty whatever.  It appeared that the British public
also was to be depended on.

The United States Government was at this time in some perplexity
about the Philippines, where matters were not going well.  Lord
Kitchener asked what we were going to do about it and how we meant to
govern the 1200 islands.  He seemed to think they were giving us more
trouble than they ought.  I explained that the business of annexing
territory on the other side of the globe was a new one to us, that
down to within a few years the American Republic was self-contained,
{296} that we had therefore no machinery for the purpose, no civil or
military servants intended or trained for distant duties, no
traditions, no experience of any kind, and no men.  Whoever went to
the Philippines had to learn his business from the beginning, and the
business was a very difficult one.

Lord Kitchener listened to all this, thought a moment, looked across
the table, and said: "I should like to govern them for you."  And
although it was not said seriously and could not be, it was evident
that Lord Kitchener would very well have liked to take over a job of
that kind had it been possible.  His mind turned readily to
executive, administrative, and creative work.  The task of reducing
eight or nine millions of Filipinos and other races to order was one
for which he was fitted.

Not long after that, an American who had already once been Civil
Governor of the Philippines for a short time resumed that post and
held it for two years.  He won the confidence of the people.  Out of
chaos he brought order.  He set up an administrative system.  He
treated the natives justly.  He brought them to co-operate with their
rulers.  When he left, he left behind him a Government incomparably
better than the islands had ever known.  Life, liberty, property, all
civil and personal rights, were protected.  Progress had begun.
Trade and commerce had begun to flourish and have continued to
flourish so far as tariff conditions permit.  Loyalty, a sentiment
{297} never before known, though a plant of slow growth, prevails.
Rebellions are at an end.  The name of the American who accomplished
all this, or laid the foundations of it all within two years, is
Taft.  He is now President of the United States.

The last time I saw Lord Kitchener was at a house in one of the
Southern counties, in 1902.  He was then on his way to take up the
commandership-in-chief of India.  He drove over to luncheon from
another house some sixteen miles away.  Luncheon, usually at 1
o'clock, had been put off till 1.30 because of the distance he and
his friends had to drive; a great concession.  But the roads were
heavy and they arrived just before 2.  Lord Kitchener said to me as
we were going in: "Look at me.  I really cannot sit down to lunch in
all this dirt."  I suggested that he should come to my room.  He did,
and after spending ten minutes on his toilet emerged looking not much
less the South African campaigner than when he began.

He said: "You don't seem to approve."

"Oh, I was only wondering what you had been doing for ten minutes.
But late as we are there is one thing you must see."

And I took him to the hall where stand those two figures in
damascened armour inlaid with gold, Anne de Montmorenci and the
Constable de Bourbon, whom a Herbert of the sixteenth century had
taken prisoners.  They woke the soldier in this dusty traveller.

{298}

"If I were a Frenchman I think I should try to get them back."

"It has been tried.  One of their descendants offered £20,000 for the
pair, but you see they are still here."

We found the rest of the company at table, where a place next his
hostess was waiting for him.  If you had seen Lord Kitchener for the
first time you would have felt that his toilet did not much matter.
The man's personality was the thing.  There are many men who produce
an impression of power, but with this man it was military power.  You
could not take him for anything but a soldier.  Not at all the
soldier as he presents himself to the youthful imagination.  He was
not in uniform; no English soldier ever is except on duty or on
occasions of ceremony.  But it is possible to be a soldier without
gold lace or gilt buttons, and to appear to be.  The carriage of his
head, rising out of square shoulders, announced him a soldier; so did
his pale grey-blue, steel-blue eyes, and the air of command; a quite
unconscious air for the simplicity of his bearing was as remarkable
as anything about him.  It has been said he is not a natural leader
of men, not a man whom other men follow in the field just because
they cannot help it; that he does not "inspire" his soldiers.  I
doubt it; but even were it so he is a man whose orders other men must
obey when they are sent.  His pale steel-blue eyes have in them the
hard light of the desert.  I believe, in fact, the light of the
desert, which we consider a poetic thing, injured {299} his eyes.
But there is in them that far-off look as of one whose sight has
ranged over great spaces for great intervals of time.  The races of
South-eastern Europe and of Central Asia have it.  There has been
seen in London a beautiful girl who has it; gazing out, from the
graceful movement of the waltz, on a distant horizon much beyond the
walls of a ballroom.

Yet as Lord Kitchener sits there talking at luncheon the hardness of
the face softens.  The merciless eyes grow kindly and human; you may
forget, if you like, the frontal attack at Paardeberg and the
corpse-strewn plains of Omdurman, and remember only that an English
gentleman who has made a study of the science of war sits there,
devoting himself to the entertainment of two English ladies.  It is a
picture which has a charm of its own.  And it is a Kitchener of whom
you hear none too often.  That is why you hear of him in these social
circumstances from me.  Most men have a human side to them.  Even
"K." has, and sometimes allows it to be seen.

He had a human side when he departed without leave from the Military
Academy at Woolwich to take a look for himself at what was going on
near the French frontier in July or August 1870, when the Prussians
were giving their French neighbours a lesson in the art of war that
seemed to young Kitchener a lesson likely to be more profitable than
those of Woolwich; so he went.  It was a grave breach of discipline.
I never heard how the matter was settled but it {300} did not keep
Kitchener out of the army for he entered the Royal Engineers the next
year.  But I imagine we all like him the better for such an adventure.




{301}

CHAPTER XXXII

  SIR GEORGE LEWIS--KING'S SOLICITOR AND FRIEND
  A SOCIAL FORCE

Lord Russel said of him:

"What is most remarkable in Lewis is not his knowledge of the law,
which is very great, nor his skill in the conduct of difficult
causes, in which he is unrivalled, nor his tact, nor his genius for
compromise.  It is his courage."

That was said not long after the Parnell trial, in which Lord
Russell--then Sir Charles Russell and afterwards Lord Chief Justice
of England--who had long been at the head of the English Bar of his
own time, proved himself the equal of any advocate of any time.  Yet
he must divide the honours of that trial with Sir George Lewis.  The
profession, or the two professions of barrister and solicitor,
divided them if the public did not.  The public has almost never the
means of judging.  The work of preparing a great cause is carried on
in the solicitor's office.  The barrister takes it up ready made and
the way in which he handles his material is seen of all men.  But no
barrister badly briefed could make much of a complicated case.  In no
trial was this truer than in the Parnell trial.  Parnell was perhaps
the greatest political {302} leader of his time, and the least
scrupulous.  He had a black record, and the men behind him a blacker.
Not even Sir George Lewis could wash it all white, but without him
the judgment would have gone far more heavily against the Irish
dictator.  And if ever there was a case in which Lord Russell's
eulogy on Sir George Lewis was to the point it was the Parnell case.
It needed all his courage in handling facts to save his client from a
condemnation which would have carried with it his banishment from
public life.  Mr. Gladstone marked his sense of the service done by
making Mr. George Lewis Sir George Lewis.  The knighthood some years
later became a baronetcy, the late King, I believe, suggesting it.

For the late King, while Prince of Wales, had stood to the great
solicitor in the relation of client, and this business connection had
become one of friendship.  They were much together at Homburg, where
both spent three or four weeks each year for many years.  Homburg is
a place where the houses are of glass and everything is known.  The
Prince gave his dinners at Ritter's or at the Kursaal in the open
air.  If he went afterward to play whist--for these were ante-bridge
days--at Mr. Lewis's rooms, that was known.  Nor is publicity, so far
as Prince and King are concerned, much less in England, and when Mr.
Lewis dined at Marlborough House, or was present at a levee at St.
James's Palace, or was a guest at Sandringham, all these things were
of common knowledge.  And since the English are a very loyal people,
who {303} had a strong personal attachment to their late King, the
confidence and liking the King showed him won for Sir George the
confidence and liking of others.

This great and eventful career has lasted more than fifty years, and
with the end of 1909 Sir George Lewis, being seventy-six years old,
retired from business, leaving his son, Mr. George Lewis, and his
other partner, Mr. Reginald Poole, both for many years his
associates, to be his successors.  Both are widely known as learned
and skilful in the law; both have been trained in Sir George's
methods; and the new firm is still, like the old, known as Lewis &
Lewis, and they are still of Ely Place, Holborn.

It is characteristic of old days and ways in London that Sir George
Lewis was born in one of the three houses now occupied by the firm.
His father was a solicitor before him; a man of repute and ability,
yet none the less is this vast business the creation of the son.
There are in London many firms of solicitors known the world over;
the Messrs. Freshfield, for example, solicitors to the Bank of
England.  But there is seldom or never a fame due to one man.  It is
due to combined action, to organization, to concentration upon one
kind of business.  The firm of Lewis & Lewis knew no limitations.
The public thought of Sir George Lewis as the man to whom the conduct
of great causes was habitually entrusted; sometimes criminal,
sometimes social, often divorce cases, often those causes in which
the honour of a great name {304} or a great family is involved.
True, but the business of Messrs. Lewis & Lewis was first of all a
great commercial business.  Sir George's permanent clients were among
the city firms famous in finance, or in banking or in industry.  That
was the backbone of the business and continues to be.

The first case in which Mr. Lewis made himself known to the public
arose out of the failure of Overend, Gurney & Co., then one of the
leading houses in the City of London.  He fought that case
single-handed against barristers of renown; a bold thing for a
solicitor to do, and perhaps without precedent.  He did the same
thing in the Bravo murder case, and held his own, and more than his
own, against Attorney-General and Solicitor-General.  No doubt, had
he chosen, he might have gone to the Bar and become distinguished at
the Bar, but not so had he chosen to model his life.  He never could
have played the part he has, had he done that.  For the dividing line
between solicitor and barrister in England is just as clearly drawn
as ever.  You may be one or the other; you cannot be both; you may
pass from one to the other, but you must elect between the two.

I ask myself sometimes what London society would be to-day had there
been no Sir George Lewis.  It certainly would not be what it is.
There have been many, many _causes célèbres_ in which his name has
figured in open court, or in the still more open newspapers.  But
they are as {305} one to a hundred of those which have never been
tried, and never supplied material for legal proceedings or for
printed scandal.  The simple truth is that Sir George Lewis, though
the most successful of solicitors in contested causes, has made fame
and fortune by keeping cases out of court and out of print.  He
carried the art of compromise to its highest point.  He saw that
alike in the interests of his clients and of the public, and in his
own interest also, the greatest service he could do was to prevent
litigation.  On that he has acted consistently for fifty years.

Of how many lawyers can anything like that be said?  Sir George Lewis
stands alone.  The money results of his policy are splendid.  His
renown is splendid But the misery he has soothed and the social
disruptions and disturbances and far-reaching disasters he has
prevented are a tribute more splendid still.  And perhaps never has
the value of his advice been so evident as when it has been rejected.

In the matter which shook London society perhaps more than any other
of recent years, Sir George Lewis on one side, and a brilliant young
solicitor, Mr. Charles Russell, son of the late Lord Chief Justice,
on the other, had come to an agreement.  The instrument they had
drawn jointly was ready for signature.  So quietly had all this
distressing business been transacted that, had the instrument been
signed then and there, the world would never have heard there had
been a disagreement till it learned there had been a settlement.
{306} But outside influences intervened.  One of the two signatures
was withheld.  Then scandal broke loose and the sewers of London
overflowed all winter.  There were reproaches, recriminations,
divisions; all London taking one side or the other.  Then in the
spring the same instrument, word for word, was signed.  The
solicitors had never wavered nor perhaps ever doubted that since they
were agreed their clients must ultimately agree.  It is a typical
example of Sir George Lewis's methods.  But the mischief that had
been done by intruders could not be undone.

Sleeping for half a century, or for only years and months, in the
black japanned tin boxes which line the walls in Ely Place and in his
safes were papers enough to compromise half London and scandalize the
other half.  Sir George, reflecting some years ago on this state of
things, looked through the collection and then burnt the whole.  That
is the best possible answer to the foolish story that he intended
writing his memoirs.  His sense of professional etiquette and his
sense of honour may both be judged in the light of these flaming
documents.  It had been necessary, of course, to preserve some of
these papers for a time, on the chance of their being needed again.
But think of the relief with which hundreds and hundreds of people
heard of the burning!  It is almost as if the tragedies of which all
record was thus destroyed had never happened.[1]


[1] I have since asked Sir George himself about this conflagration
story.  He answered: "Yes, it is true, but there are things
here"--touching his forehead--"which I can neither burn nor forget."


{307}

Sir George Lewis could coerce as well as coax.  He could use threats,
but never a threat he was not ready to fulfil.  By and by his
character came to be so well understood that a letter from Ely Place
became almost a summons to surrender.  But always on reasonable
terms.  With all that, he had a kindness of heart to which thousands
of people can testify.  I suppose no lawyer ever did so much for
clients without fee or reward.  If you were his friend, if you were
of a profession, if you came to him with a letter from some friend,
if you came to him in poverty with a case of oppression, he would
take infinite pains for you and no fee.  He had all sorts of
out-of-the-way knowledge; copyright law, for one, on which he was an
authority, and in which few solicitors are authorities.  There is
this link between copyright in books and in plays and theatrical
contracts; the contract is commonly drawn by the publisher or
manager, who is a man of business; and the author or actor, who is
not, is expected to accept it.  It was this solicitor's pleasure to
redress that balance.

He was a law reformer.  Again unlike most successful men who are apt
to be content with things as they are.  The letters he wrote to _The
Times_ on such matters as the creation of a Court of Criminal Appeal,
alteration in the law of divorce, the administration of Justice, and
other high legal questions show him a great scientific lawyer, with a
mastery of principles.  He has essentially a legal mind, and he wrote
with a luminous precision and force not always characteristic of the
legal mind.  And he had what every {308} judge on the bench ought to
have, and a few of the greatest really have, an unerring perception
of such facts as are essential, and a power of dismissing all the
rest.  Sir George Jessel had that; one of the greatest judges.
Students of ethnology may remark with interest that both were Jews.
When such a man quits the stage it is an irreparable loss to his
friends, to his clients, and to the world generally.  The feeling is
more than regret, for ties are broken which never existed before and
will never exist again.  Sir George Lewis's position was unique
because his personality is unique.  So will his fame be.  Reputation
in the law is for the most part transitory.  But this will endure.




{309}

CHAPTER XXXIII

MR. MILLS--A PERSONAL APPRECIATION AND A FEW ANECDOTES

I recross the Atlantic for a moment.  There died lately in California
a man known on both sides of the ocean, known in more worlds than
two, one of the strongest and certainly one of the most amiable
figures in the world of business, Mr. Darius Ogden Mills.

Of late years, since Mr. Reid has been Ambassador, Mr. Mills had
become a figure in London.  He interested Englishmen because he was a
new type, or, rather, because he was individual; because he was Mr.
Mills.  Type implies a plurality; and not only was there but one
Mills, there was none other to whom you could compare him.
Englishmen have formed a notion of their own about Americans of the
class to which, in respect of his wealth, Mr. Mills belonged; and a
high notion.  They have seen much, for example, of Mr. Pierpont
Morgan, and they seemed inclined to suppose all great financiers to
be, in manner as in fact, masterful, dominating, huge in physique,
born rulers of other men.  They had never seen much, if anything, of
Mr. Harriman, who hid away his great qualities beneath a personality
{310} almost insignificant in appearance save for the ample head and
burning eyes.

Mr. Mills was perceived to be like neither of these, nor like any
third.  He was much more like an Oxford professor; like the late Rev.
Mark Pattison, rector of Lincoln, the Casaubon of George Eliot's
novel.  Mr. Mills had the gentleness, the refinement, the distinction
of the scholar.  It must have been born with him.  He went to no
college.  He had little college learning.  He had lived in rough
times and among rough men; had twice crossed the continent on foot
and in the saddle, with a cloud of Red Indians ever on the horizon,
and had lived in San Francisco during those stormy years when Bret
Harte's heroes, gamblers, and ruffians set up their turbulent rule.
But there was a light in Mr. Mills's pale blue eyes which kept those
gentlemen at a distance.  This delicately-featured face ended in a
jaw which was an index of a character not to be trifled with.

Upon all this London remarked with some surprise, and then with great
respect and liking.  They liked his simplicity of manner as much as
his sagacity of speech, and his silence almost as much as his
conversation.  An American who was an American to the finger-tips but
never waved the flag; a man of affairs who seemed in the world only a
man of the world; a millionaire in whose pockets the jingle of the
dollar was never heard; such was the rare picture Mr. Mills
presented.  He won their sympathies because he never tried to.  These
islanders like a man who is just {311} himself, yet is absolutely
free from self-assertion.  They gave him first their respect, then
their regard, and finally their affection.

I have seen all these feelings shown in the Metropolitan Club in New
York in an unusual way.  Mr. Mills used to come into the card-room of
an afternoon.  There would be two or three or more rubbers of bridge
going on.  Bridge is a passion, but men would stop in the middle of a
rubber and ask Mr. Mills if he would not take a hand or make up a new
rubber.  Bridge being not only a passion but the selfish game it
is--necessarily so, like business--the tribute was a remarkable one.
If he declined, somebody would remember suddenly he had an engagement
and beg Mr. Mills as a favour to take his place.  As he moved about
in the club men rose and walked across the room to greet him, a thing
less rare in New York but unknown in London, where a club has been
defined as a place in which a man may cut his best friend and no
offence taken.  The general ceremoniousness of club life in New York
would close all the clubhouses in London.  So would the despotism of
New York club committees.

Men listened to him or waited for him to speak in a way which
suggested not only a desire for an opinion but an attachment to the
man.  He himself was one of the best listeners ever known.  When he
spoke it was briefly.  He could say what he wanted to in a sentence
or a few sentences.  In this he was like another and a greater Oxford
Don--I suppose the greatest of his time--Jowett, {312} the Master of
Balliol.  Both sat long silent while others were talking and both
seemed to use, and Jowett certainly did use, the interval in
fashioning his thoughts into epigrams.  Jowett's epigrams often
stung, and were meant to sting, for he thought presumption and
ignorance ought to be punished.  Perhaps Mr. Mills did but he did not
think he had been appointed to punish them.

A group of men in the club were one day discussing great fortunes and
the men who owned them.  Everybody thought and spoke in millions and
tens of millions.  Finally some one appealed to the only silent man
in the company.

"What do you say, Mr. Mills?"

"I say that in all these cases, or almost all, I think it safe to
divide the figures by two."

"In your own case also?"

"Above all in my case."

We travelled up together once by the night express to the Adirondacks
on a visit to Mr. Reid's camp, arriving at the station at six in the
morning; then driving to the lake; then in a boat to the camp, which
could not be reached otherwise.  After his long night journey he was
fresh and alert and not the least tired, and he talked freely.  He
even discussed business, and presently remarked:

"I have been a little anxious about money matters and was not sure I
could get away from New York."

"But why?"

"Oh, but my bank balances are much larger than I like them to be."

{313}

I made the obvious and rather foolish answer that there were plenty
of people who would be willing to relieve him from this anxiety, to
which he retorted:

"You know nothing about it.  I am not speaking of myself.  But a man
in my position has his duties as trustee for others to consider.
Whether I get three per cent or four per cent for my money may not
much matter, though I prefer five, but to many of those for whom I
act it does matter, and to them I am under an obligation I must
fulfil.  No man who is not or has not been in business can have any
notion of the ramifications and complications of business.  But it's
worth your while to consider that."

It was the longest speech I had ever heard him make, and the didactic
touch at the end was equally new.  It was not his way to lecture
people.  He held strong, considered opinions on many subjects, but
thought it no part of his duty to impress them on the world, though
his sure judgment was at the service of his friends.  His fame and
wealth and position had come to him from what he had done, not by
sermonizing or rhetoric.  Men trusted him.  There was perhaps no man
more generally trusted.  It is nothing to say he never betrayed a
trust.  He discharged it to the utmost measure of his ability.  The
money which others had put into his hands had to earn as much as
money could earn.  Three per cent on deposits would seem to an
Englishman affluence, but Mr. Mills appeared to think he was unfair
to his clients to be content, {314} even temporarily, with three when
it could be invested to earn more.

At the camp he talked more freely than elsewhere.  The air was tonic;
the life suited him.  In the Adirondacks you do get back into closer
relations with Nature and on more intimate terms with the great
natural forces about you.  This is true in spite of the luxurious
simplicity of the camps.  But Mr. Mills was always happy where his
daughter was.  I may not dwell on such a matter but her devotion to
him was the light of his life.  He came to London to be with her.
She returned to America to be with him.  If his duties and
responsibilities had permitted, his visits here would have been
longer and more frequent.

Once while I was sitting with him in his office in Broad Street his
lawyer came in with a contract for him to sign.  Mr. Mills hardly
glanced at it, took up his pen to sign, stopped, and said to the
lawyer:

"I suppose it is all right?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Mills.  I think you will find your interests protected
in every way."

"That is not what I mean.  I want to know whether you have drawn this
agreement so as to leave Mr. A a profit large enough to ensure his
doing his best.  He must have his fair share."

A business view, perhaps, and for aught I know common in the business
world, but I had never happened to hear it put quite like that, nor
have I since.

With that may be compared another saying.  A little company, all men
of business but me, were {315} discussing business methods.  One or
two of them stated rather crudely what are sometimes called the
methods of Wall Street.  "There is no sentiment in business," said
one.  "A man who thinks of others' interests will soon have none of
his own to consider," remarked a second.  And a third, whose career
was strewn with wrecks, declared: "Of course you have to crush those
who stand in your way."  Said Mr. Mills:

"I have done pretty well in business but I never crushed anybody."

The Mills hotels were an expression of his sentiment toward the
society amid which he lived; to the environment which had given him
his later opportunities.  He wanted to enlarge the opportunities of
other men, to sweeten their lives a little, to enable them to do more
for themselves.  His scheme was derided and was a success from the
start, and the success has grown greater ever since.  The success was
due to the patience with which he thought out his plans.  The
afternoon before I sailed from New York, in 1906, I met Mr. Mills in
his victoria at the door of the Metropolitan Club.  "Come for a drive
in the park," he said, and we went.  He began at once to talk about
his new hotel.  We drove for two hours and during nearly all that
time he discussed plans, estimates, details, methods of economical
working, organization, the effect on the tenants, and a hundred other
matters relating to the building, equipment, and operation of the
hotel soon to be erected.

He had all the facts and figures in his mind.  He {316} talked with
an enthusiasm he rarely showed.  His heart was in it.

To the last his energies seemed inexhaustible; and his interests.  He
arrived one afternoon at Dorchester House at five o'clock from New
York.  There was a large dinner at 8.30, then a ball which he did not
leave till toward one in the morning.  I met him again at tea next
day and he told me he had been at the White City since nine that
morning, and when I suggested that he had gone about that marvellous
but very fatiguing show in a chair, he said: "Oh, no, on my legs."
Nor did he seem tired nor mind the prospect of another large dinner
that night.  He was then eighty-two years old.  Pneumonia had
attacked him winter after winter, but he always rallied and would
take no better care of himself than before.

In that slight, erect figure Nature had packed powers of endurance
which bigger frames had not.  Everything was reduced to its essence.
There was nothing superfluous and nothing wanting.  The features were
sculptured.  It was the face of a man who had a real distinction of
nature; who had benignity and judgment and acute perceptions all in
equal measure.  They bore the stamp of an impregnable integrity, as
his life did.  Unlike qualities in him melted into harmony and a
rounded whole.  For with his unyielding firmness and strength and
uncompromising convictions and invincible sense of justice went a
loving kindness which made him the most lovable of men.  That was Mr.
Mills.




{317}

CHAPTER XXXIV

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL--BEING MOSTLY PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS

I venture on an anecdote or two, which I have told elsewhere but
imperfectly, those whom it concerns being now dead or retired.  They
were three; Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Mr.
Archibald Forbes; all at that moment in the splendour, the blinding
splendour, of their gifts and powers.  It was after luncheon.  The
ladies had gone.  Lord Randolph had been Secretary of State for
India, and Forbes, like Lord Randolph, had lately been in India, and
the talk turned upon India.  All three were men who spoke their
minds; not at all an uncommon practice in this country, where men
dissent freely, and even bluntly, from the expressed opinion of
others, and no offence taken.  Lord Randolph and Forbes differed
sharply.  Neither stood in awe of the other, or of any man.  Forbes
would make a statement.  Lord Randolph would answer:

"I know you have been in India but from what you say I shouldn't
suppose you knew where it was."

{318}

Lord Randolph would go on to point out what he thought Forbes's
mistakes; then Forbes:

"Yes, you have ruled India but the real India is a sealed book to
you."

And so on.  Presently they discussed the Indian Civil Service and Mr.
Chamberlain came to the front.  In the new Civil Service lay, he
thought, the hope of India.  Appointments were no longer jobbed.  A
new class of men were brought into the service by examination, well
taught, well trained, competent, and drawn from the whole people of
England.  Lord Randolph listened impatiently, interrupted now and
then, but on the whole listened.  When Mr. Chamberlain had finished
Lord Randolph burst out:

"I have heard that before.  No greater nonsense was ever talked.
What is the Indian Civil Service; or rather, what was it?  A boy of
twenty went out as a clerk.  From Calcutta he was sent up country,
nominally in charge of a bureau, really to govern a district.  He did
govern it.  He had passed no examination.  Very likely he couldn't
tell you the date of the battle of Plassey or the lineage of a native
Prince.  He had no mathematics, no Latin, and probably couldn't
spell.  But he had character.  He knew how to govern because he came
of a governing class.  And he was a gentleman."

"Whereas now"--looking steadily at Chamberlain--"instead of gentlemen
you get men from--Birmingham and God knows where."

Chamberlain, who seldom declined any {319} contest to which he was
invited, sat cool and smiling while Lord Randolph launched his
shafts.  When he had emptied his quiver the member for Birmingham,
still cool and smiling, observed that he thought it was time for us
to join the ladies; and we did.  Instantly the sky cleared.  India
was forgotten.  The two combatants walked upstairs arm in arm, and
the storm was as if it had never been.

The little scene in which Lord Randolph Churchill was the chief actor
brings that vivid personality once again vividly to mind.  Indeed, it
is never long absent from the general memory.  He has left a mark on
the public life of this country which will last as long as anything
lasts.  And he has left a portrait of himself in the memory of all
who really knew him.  Besides which, he has left a son who does not
allow us long to forget his existence or his relation to the affairs
of the moment.  A great authority was quoted quite lately as saying,
"Winston is an abler man even than his father."  I asked him whether
he said it.  "No, I said cleverer, not abler," which seemed a very
just distinction.

I have not really much to add to the account of Lord Randolph which I
wrote in January, 1895, upon his death.  I adhere to all I then said.
The estimate seems to me fair, if not complete.  The years that have
passed take nothing from Lord Randolph's fame.  If anything, they add
to it.  And for this reason: his conception of the political future
of his country was a true conception.  {320} To him the year 1884,
with its revolutionary enlargement of the suffrage, was the turning
point of modern English history.  The middle classes vacated the
throne they had occupied since 1832.  The working classes succeeded
to their inheritance.  Their power has steadily grown.  They are
two-thirds of the electorate to-day.  They have, it is true, but 30
out of 670 Members of Parliament, but these figures are in no respect
representative of their real authority.  They and the Irish
Nationalists hold the balance of power in the House of Commons.  They
returned fewer members to the House this year than in 1906, but that
was because of an arrangement between them and the Liberals--for
value received.  And no man doubts that the power of the Labour Party
will hereafter increase and not decrease.  For the first time in the
history of England they openly proclaim their purpose to legislate
and to influence legislation in the interest of a single class and
not in the interest of all classes and of the country as a whole.
Their excuse is that they are a majority.  But the day when a
majority takes no account of the minority, or thinks a minority has
no rights which the majority is bound to respect is a black day in
the history of any country.

But this, in substance if not in detail is what Lord Randolph foresaw
and announced; and he was the only man to foresee it.  He did not
disdain, as Mr. Gladstone did, to look ahead, to form to himself some
conception of what the future of England was to be with this rising
tide of Democracy.  {321} His conception, as I said, was a true
conception, and the political genius of the man was never more
clearly visible than in this forecast, and in the means he proposed
to himself and to his party for dealing with a situation absolutely
new.

Lord Randolph's Dartford speech in 1886 will therefore remain a
monument to his sagacity.  It was a speech which may be read to-day
with profit and admiration.  So may that at Birmingham, of which
"Trust the People" is the motto.  I will go farther.  If I wanted a
body of political doctrine to put into the hands of an American
student of English politics I would as soon offer him Lord Randolph's
speeches as any other.  There is no complete collection but there are
the two volumes edited by Mr. Louis Jennings and published by Messrs.
Longmans in 1889.  They cover a period of only nine years, 1880-8,
but they are a handbook to the political life of England for a
generation.  Lord Randolph had this rare merit--rare in this
country--he dealt habitually with principles, and his treatment of
political questions was not empirical but scientific.  And he was
absolutely fearless.

He was fearless alike in public and private, and he looked his own
fortunes in the face whether they presented themselves to him with
the promise of good or of ill.  He knew he was a doomed man.  He cast
his own horoscope shortly before he flung that fatal card upon the
table which lost him the game in his long contest with Lord
Salisbury.  He said:

"I shall be five years in office or in opposition.  {322} Then I
shall be five years Prime Minister.  Then I shall die."

And he was right as to the length of his life though a perverse fate
and his one fatal miscalculation, "I forgot Goschen," falsified the
rest of his prediction.  Mr. Winston Churchill queries this saying
but I am inclined to think it authentic.

Many of these matters I used to hear Lord Randolph discuss in
private, and even now I suppose they must remain private though the
impression his talks left may fairly be described.  I listened to his
views on finance--long before he was Finance Minister--through nearly
the whole of a long summer afternoon.  We were at Cliveden.  That
beautiful possession had not then passed into Mr. Astor's hands.  It
still belonged to the Duke of Westminster, and had been lent by him
to the Duchess of Marlborough--widow of that seventh Duke of
Marlborough who was Viceroy of Ireland--and Lord Randolph's mother.
The Duchess was a woman who may always be adduced in support of the
theory that qualities of mind and character descend from mother to
son.  She was a woman of great natural shrewdness and force, with an
insight into the true nature of such things as interested her; and
the one thing that interested her above all others was her second
son, Lord Randolph.

"Come for a drive after lunch," said Lord Randolph, and we went in a
dog-cart to Burnham Beeches and Taplow and elsewhere for many miles
and hours through the woods which are one {323} of the glories of
that delightful country.  It was a perfect afternoon.  You were not
the least disposed to ask with Lowell, "What is so rare as a day in
June?"  Rather:

  In the afternoon they came unto a land
  In which it seemed always afternoon.


And always June.  That is one of the enchantments of this versatile
climate.  When in a good mood you think it will be always good.  And
the enchantments in and about Cliveden were many and to-day are many
more.

To all of them Lord Randolph seemed for the moment insensible.  His
mind was upon Finance, and upon Finance he discoursed during the
better part of three hours.  To the sunlight and the flower-strewn
hedges and the far-stretching forests he paid no more attention than
he did to his driving.  The horse took his own pace, and being a
well-trained animal showed a sensible preference for his own side of
the road.

Lord Randolph's talk was not much more than thinking aloud.  His
financial opinions which became afterward, like those of all
Chancellors of the Exchequer, rigid, were in process of formation.
Now and then he asked a question about the Treasury in America but
for the most part his monologue was a soliloquy.  I know few things
more instructive than to see a mind like his at work.  He thought as
he talked on, but the sentences fell from his lips clean-cut and
finished.  He {324} was not announcing conclusions nor laying down
laws.  Finance was then comparatively new to him.  He would take up
any idea or view as it occurred to him, hold it before him, look at
it from all sides, and either drop it or put it on a shelf till he
could see how it fitted with the next.  I said as he pressed a
proposal--I have forgotten what:

"You break with all tradition."

"What do you suppose I am here for?  Have you ever known me to adopt
an opinion because somebody else had adopted it?"

And in truth I had not, nor had any one.  Part of his charm lay in
his independence; and a large part.  He was fettered by no
restrictions nor overborne by any authority.  Once only, as he told
me at another time, did he find himself "in the presence of a
superior being," Mr. Gladstone, to wit.  "I could argue, but before
the man himself I bent."  But I have related that story in the paper
referred to above.  Yet we find Lord Randolph telling Prince
Bismarck, who asked him whether the English people would exchange Mr.
Gladstone for General Caprivi:

"The English people would cheerfully give you Mr. Gladstone for
nothing but you would find him an expensive present."

Of Prince Bismarck, however, Lord Randolph seems not to have received
the same impression he did of Mr. Gladstone, high as is the tribute
he pays him.  There had been a little friction.  In 1888, in Berlin,
Prince Bismarck had refused to see {325} Lord Randolph, or to meet
him at lunch at Count Herbert's, and he calls the great Chancellor a
_grincheux_ old creature who kept away because Lord Randolph had used
all his influence "to prevent Lord Salisbury from being towed in his
wake."  But at Kissingen, in 1893--Lord Randolph, alas, being no
longer in a position to influence, nor Prince Bismarck, alas, any
longer Chancellor of the Empire he had created--there was a meeting.
Lord Randolph wrote an account of it to his mother, and the letter, a
most picturesque letter, is given in the _Life_.  Lord Randolph felt
the fascination the Prince could exercise when he chose, and pays due
tribute to him.  But it is admiration, not awe, he feels in the great
German's presence.  In truth, Lord Randolph had said savage things of
Prince Bismarck in days past, as well as of Mr. Gladstone.  "If you
want to sup with him you must have a long spoon."

The domestic and personal side of Lord Randolph had a fascination
quite other than that of his political life.  Simplicity was one note
of it; that and the absolute freedom from affectation which is
natural to a man whose courage is equal to every demand.  I began
meaning to be domestic and personal but I shrink from saying most of
the things I should like to.  Two summers in succession he had an old
Elizabethan house near Egham, known as Great Forsters; the house
still encompassed by a moat, mostly dry.  I had always thought him at
his best in his own home, where, whoever might be his guest, he
recognized {326} his obligations as host, and his manner softened and
the lawlessness of his tongue was restrained.

This impression grew stronger with these visits.  It happened that
two of their guests, his and Lady Randolph's, were attractive to both
of them as well as to the rest of the world.  The two were the
beautiful Duchess of Leinster and Sir Henry Drummond Wolff.  The
Duchess of Leinster was at that time in the full splendour of her
loveliness.  I had never seen her except at a ball or dinner or on
some other social occasion, in the glory of a toilet and of her
shoulders and diamonds, when she was perhaps the most resplendent
object to be seen in London.  At Great Forsters she went about during
the day in the simplest of gowns.  She was less dazzling but not less
charming.  As for Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, he and Lord Randolph set
each other off.  Their intimacy was both political and personal.  If
I may use such a word of two men, I should say they were on
affectionate terms.  Both of them were capable of cynicism but that
only made their affection the more striking.  There were no ties of
blood but as you looked on this little group and listened to their
talk, which was both easy and brilliant, you felt as if you were
present at a family gathering.



II

Lord Randolph Churchill despised two things which (I am told) are
much respected in the {327} United States; public opinion and money.
Of course, in public life he had to take account of public opinion
and he was a very good judge of it, and in 1886 he taught his party
to take account of it.  But what I mean is that, while he admitted
and asserted the necessity of calculating forces as the first
business of a statesman, he was never subservient to that majority
which he sought to make his own.  He was not frightened by names and
he did not shrink from unpopularity.  He told Prince Bismarck at
Kissingen that nobody in England cared a rap what the papers said,
which meant that he (Lord Randolph) did not care a rap.  Yet at
opportune moments he used the Press with skill.  Or, if I ought not
to say used, he availed himself adroitly of the Press to serve his
own purpose.  His midnight journey to _The Times_ office in Printing
House Square in order to tell Mr. Buckle that he had resigned from
Lord Salisbury's Ministry and that his resignation had been accepted
is a case in point.  It is just conceivable that Mr. Buckle took, or
might have taken, a more lenient view of Lord Randolph's _coup de
tête_ from having the exclusive news of it.  It is, at any rate,
conceivable that the resigning Minister imagined, or hoped, a
friendly opinion would be expressed.

I will give a very different instance which came to my knowledge
directly.  At the time of the great dock strike which disordered and
threatened to destroy all the waterside industries of the port of
London, Cardinal Manning sided with the {328} strikers.  He was a
prelate who often mixed politics with his religion or, to put it more
charitably, with his ecclesiastical polity.  He went to the East End
and made a speech at the strikers' meeting, undeterred by the fact
that they were threatening violence, and he wound up by giving £25 to
the cause of these enemies of public order.

All this came out in next morning's papers.  Toward noon I went to
see Lord Randolph.  He was full of the subject and his sympathies
with the men were evident.  He had read Cardinal Manning's speech
and, with certain reservations, approved of it.

"Do you think he ought to have given money to encourage disorder?"

"What do you mean by encouraging disorder?  The men are out of work.
They and their wives are starving.  I would gladly give £25 myself if
I had it."

Nevertheless, I suppose no act of Cardinal Manning, nothing he did in
his extremely variegated career, brought upon him more or better
deserved censure in the Press than the countenance he gave to this
very dangerous industrial rebellion.  The censure upon Lord Randolph
would surely have been not less severe.  But what cared he?  Lord
Randolph, I ought to add, had been during a great part of his too
short political life the friend and champion of the working men.  He
believed them to be the necessary support of the Conservative Party
without which, as the event proved, that party could win no great
{329} victory at the polls.  He believed them to be, as a body, like
the majority of the English people, irrespective of party,
essentially Conservative.  He was ready to do what he could to
lighten and brighten their sometimes dreary lot.  It was not only as
a politician that he interested himself in their fortunes.  He had a
man's sympathy with other men less fortunate than himself.

Less fortunate, but perhaps not always much less.  For what I said
above about Lord Randolph's indifference to money was true during
nearly all his life, and was shown in many ways to his own hurt.  He
had the usual younger son's portion, and in this country of
magnificent estates the younger son's portion is of the most modest
description.  Not otherwise than by reserving the great bulk of the
family wealth to eldest sons, one after the other, can these
magnificent estates be kept together and kept magnificent.  But Lord
Randolph's tastes and ambitions were nowise in proportion to the
slenderness of his income.  The present Mr. Winston Churchill in his
most admirable _Life_ of his father has made some reference to two
occasions in which questions of money became critical.  He has said
so much that I think I may say a little more.

The first was in anticipation of his marriage.  Mr. Jerome had the
ideas of the average American father about settlements.  Lord
Randolph's ideas on that subject were English.  There was a collision
between the two.  The wooer had already announced to his father, the
seventh Duke of {330} Marlborough, his attachment to Miss Jerome and
the Duke had agreed provisionally to the engagement.  Mr. Jerome had
agreed, but his views about money threatened to break off the
negotiations.  At the end--they had lasted seven months--Lord
Randolph "refused utterly to agree to any settlement which contained
even technical provisions to which he objected."  He delivered to Mr.
Jerome what his biographer rightly calls an ultimatum.  He was "ready
to earn a living in England or out of it" without Mr. Jerome's help,
and in this the girl agreed with him.  Mr. Jerome capitulated.
Perhaps the difference between them was more a matter of form than
anything.  The terms of the final agreement are not stated in the
_Life_.  They have often been stated in London where everything on
every subject of human interest is known, and where it was always
understood that Mr. Jerome agreed to settle £2000 a year on his
daughter and son-in-law, with remainder to the children, duly secured
by a mortage on the University Club house in Madison Square.  But
what I ask you to notice is the readiness of Lord Randolph to fling
away an income far larger than he had ever had unless it came to him
on such terms as he thought right and unless his English views were
accepted by this American father.

The other instance relates to South Africa.  When he went to
Mashonaland, in 1891, he borrowed £5000 from a good and staunch
friend whom I should like to name--well, why should I not?  I mean
Lord Rothschild, whose kindnesses {331} to men of every degree and of
all religions and races have been innumerable.  If ever a great
fortune paid, in the long-ago phrase of Mr. Chamberlain, a ransom,
his has paid it; not compulsory but from true good-will to men.  Lord
Randolph invested the £5000 in Rand gold mining shares on the advice
of that American engineer of genius, Mr. Perkins, who inferred from
the dip of the gold-bearing reefs the direction and depth at which
they could be overtaken by shafts sunk far south of the actual gold
area.  The world knows the result and is the richer by hundreds of
millions for the vision which pierced the outer crest of the earth
and saw the treasures hidden below.  Mr. Perkins was, in fact, the
engineer whom Lord Rothschild had sent to South Africa with Lord
Randolph.  They had gone through Mashonaland together vainly, and the
ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer now invested his £5000 in Rand shares.
But values of that nature require time and being in want of money he
sold two-fifths of his investment.  The remainder he held till his
death when it was disposed of for something over £70,000.  A
comfortable fortune to leave?  Yes, comfortable enough to pay the
debts of the estate.  That was one form which his contempt for money
took.  He lived on the principal.  It is no matter of censure.  He
was born and built that way.  The strain of frugality in the first
Duke of Marlborough had worn itself out.

My last meeting with Lord Randolph was at Tring, Lord Rothschild's
place in Buckinghamshire.  {332} He was already in the grip of the
illness which was to destroy him; nervous, irritable, restless in
manner, haggard to look at, and his speech uncertain.  I don't like
to think of it and I mention it only for the sake of the contrast.
For now and again the old brilliancy reappeared, and the old charm.
He had both in a measure given to few men.  Wilful as he was, with a
freedom of speech which overpassed the usual social limits, he had
also when he chose the graces and gifts which made him beloved of men
and of women.  No man made more enemies; but in this world--by which
I mean this world of England and other worlds where the English
people have built new civilizations--it is not enmities which count
but friendships.

Whether you saw him in the House of Commons, leading it as no man had
ever led it, or at a dinner, or on the platform, or, if you like, on
the Turf or in other places which the Puritan thinks of the devil, he
had the same ascendancy.  He said once to Lord Rosebery that to both
of them their titles had been helpful in public life.  No doubt, but
something besides a title descends or may descend, to him who bears
it.  Not every son of a duke has upon him the stamp of the patrician.
That is what Lord Randolph had.  An imperious temper, an intellectual
disdain of natures from which intellects had been omitted, moods of
black despair late in life, but all through life the set resolve to
win his battles without much thought of the cost--all these he had,
and no one {333} of them nor all of them broke or impaired the spell
he laid upon those about him.

Narrow means never stinted his generosity.  Uncertain health never
stilled his passion for work.  I never went into his library that I
did not find him busy.  I have seen him at dinner turn away from the
distinguished woman who passed for the most amusing of talkers to
devote himself to a neglected stranger.  When he quarrelled with the
Prince of Wales (King Edward) and went into a kind of social exile
for seven years, while he was quite aware of the price he was paying,
he never dreamed of surrender.  When Lord Salisbury, not choosing to
remember or perhaps not able to remember his services and his
capacities, passed him over in 1891 for the last time, and gave the
leadership of the House of Commons to his nephew, Mr. Balfour, he
writes to his wife: "All confirms me in my decision to have done with
politics and try to make a little money for the boys and for
ourselves."  On his release from party obligations he sought others,
and his sister, Lady Tweedmouth, between whom and himself there was
on both sides a devoted attachment, persuaded him to see something of
men from whom he had held aloof.  Mr. Gladstone was among these, and
I end with Mr. Gladstone's remark about Lord Randolph:

"He was the courtliest man I ever met."




{334}

CHAPTER XXXV

LORD GLENESK AND "THE MORNING POST"

The owning or leasing of several houses is an English habit which is
no longer confined to great landowners who have inherited their
possessions.  Many men whose success in life is their own adopt the
custom.  Among many instances I will take one, for other reasons than
house-owning, the late Lord Glenesk, who had at one time a lease of
Invercauld, the fine place belonging to the Farquharson family.
There, as later at Glenmuich, he liked to gather friends about him
and there was each year a succession of parties.  In the beginning
Mr. Borthwick, he became successively Sir Algernon Borthwick and Lord
Glenesk.  His name and his wife's connect themselves with many social
memories in Scotland, in London, where the house in Piccadilly was
long a brilliant centre, and in Cannes where they occupied in winter
the Chateau St. Michel at the Californie end of the town in beautiful
grounds touching on the sea.  They had also for some years that
square red brick house in Hampstead on the edge of the heath, with a
little land and a brick wall about it, and there they entertained of
a Sunday during part of the season.  Both had the {335} art of
hospitality and the secret of social life, by which I mean the secret
of translating mere hospitality into happiness for others.

Mr. Borthwick acquired _The Morning Post_ in 1876.  It was then a
threepenny paper--six cents on each of six days of the week.  No
Englishman had ever then thought of a Sunday edition of a daily
paper; nor has since.  There are Sunday papers in London, of which
one, _The Observer_, is a supremely able journal, but they are
published one and all on Sundays only.  When _The Morning Post_
passed into the hands of its late proprietor the penny paper had
already made its appearance, though not the halfpenny.  The future,
it was thought, belonged to the penny, but _The Morning Post_ like
_The Times_ was supposed to appeal to a special class.  It was the
organ of the fashionable world.  You went to it for all that
fashionable intelligence now supplied, more or less completely by all
papers.  It was the one newspaper which lay on the table of every
drawing-room in Mayfair and Belgravia and in every country house
throughout the kingdom.  Till Borthwick became editor it was
respectable, decorous, conventional, and dull.  It had little news
except what came to it through Reuter and other news agencies.  There
were flashes of vivacity when young Borthwick went to Paris, a city
he understood, and sent home sparkling letters which were the most
readable things in the paper and always seemed a little out of place.
It was an organ of Conservatism, but the kind of Conservatism
expounded {336} in its editorial columns was more orthodox than
inspiring.  It had a moderate circulation and its net yearly profits
were not far from thirty thousand dollars.

When Mr. Borthwick came into control of this property--not at first,
but not very long after--he conceived the notion of turning it into a
penny paper.  It was he who told me the story.  He had originality
and he had courage but he was also a man who sought advice in great
enterprises and he talked this scheme over with many men of
experience far greater than his own.  He said to me later:

"One and all they advised me against it.  One and all they thought it
spelled ruin; or, if not ruin, a great risk to a valuable though not
great property and the certainty of loss.  They told me I should
inevitably forfeit the support of the classes to whom _The Post_ had
always appealed and that I should not gain new subscribers from other
classes in numbers sufficient to make good these losses.  I should
lose not only readers but advertisers, for the advertisers in _The
Post_ were largely the West End tradespeople who desired to reach
their West End patrons.  I should lose the political authority which
was based on the support of the privileged classes.  In short, a
penny _Morning Post_ was inconceivable and unthinkable from any point
of view whatever."

To all of which Borthwick listened.  He considered every argument and
objection and protest laid before him.  But he was one of those men
who {337} regarded the opinions of other men not as authoritative but
as the material for forming his own opinion, and he summed the whole
story up in a sentence:

"Every journalist and every man of business whom I consulted was
opposed to the change and I finally took my decision to make _The
Morning Post_ a penny paper in the face of a unanimous remonstrance
by friends and experts of all kinds."

When Borthwick told me this some years had passed since the change
had been made.  He said:

"In the first year the profits of the paper doubled.  In the second
they reached £20,000.  By the fifth the amount was £30,000."

And so it went on until the annual net income of _The Morning Post_
was £60,000--ten times what it had been at the price of threepence.
It continued to be the organ of the classes; not, however, refusing
to accept that Tory Democracy of which Lord Randolph Churchill was
the inventor, upon which Toryism, Conservatism, and Unionism have
ever since thriven.  Neither Mayfair nor Belgravia nor the country
houses ever tried to do without it.  The advertisers continued to
advertise.  It became, moreover, the organ of the better class of
servants; butlers, ladies' maids, footmen, and the multitude of
menials who sought places in the best houses.

In other respects also the paper was revolutionized.  It became a
newspaper.  The day of the humdrum was over.  It had special news
services and capable men to conduct them.  {338} Borthwick was a
patient man impatient of dulness.  He gathered about him good
journalists and good writers; not always the same thing.  You now
began to read the news and letters and leaders from some other motive
than a sense of duty.  They were readable.  The hand of the master
left its mark on every column.

Nor did the demands of journalism exhaust Sir Algernon Borthwick's
energies.  He went into politics and into Parliament, sitting for a
vast constituency in South Kensington.  Lady Borthwick's help in this
political and election business was invaluable.  That very
accomplished lady brought to bear upon the voters of South Kensington
a kind of influence to which they had been unaccustomed, a social
influence.  Their wives took part in the game, neither having nor
desiring votes but able to affect the course of events as much as if
the ballot had been theirs, and more.  Lady Borthwick had 2500 names
on her visiting list, and they were more than names.  Each name stood
for an individual whom Lady Borthwick knew, and whose value she knew.
The beautiful white drawing-room at No. 139 Piccadilly was in those
days a little more thronged of an afternoon or evening than it had
been, but was never crowded.  Some of the best music in London was to
be heard there at tea-time.  The dinners were carefully studied.
Dances and evening parties had a slightly political flavour but were
none the less successful.  There is, I suppose, no place where more
than in London their gentle {339} influences have a more soothing
effect upon an electorate.

If any reader reflects on the true nature of the exploit which
Borthwick accomplished he will perhaps agree that the man capable of
it must have had a high order of genius.  If it was not creative in
the sense that Lord Northcliffe's is creative, it was perfectly
adapted to the circumstances and the time.  It has not perhaps been
quite adequately recognized.  Lord Glenesk was so much a figure in
society that when his name was mentioned men who knew only the
surface of things saw in him the ornament of a ballroom.  He was
that, and he was so very much more that this ballroom part of his
life is hardly even incidental.  He would dance night after night.
In the day-time his mind applied itself to some of the stiffest
problems of a very difficult profession.  He told me one morning he
had not been in bed for three nights.  The only answer I could make
was that I did not know he ever went to bed.  But I knew that after
sleepless nights he spent days of necessary hard work at the office,
and that he brought to each matter he dealt with the freshness of a
fresh mind.  It was late in life before he began to know the meaning
of the word tired.

Take him for all in all, I should name Lord Glenesk as one of the
three great men I have known in English journalism.  And whether in
or out of journalism he had a kindliness, a charm, a sweet authority
in the affairs of life which do not belong to all successful men.

{340}

By and by there appeared in Lady Borthwick's drawing-rooms a fresh
flower of a girl whose presence at her mother's afternoon concerts
and then at evening parties was a little in advance of her coming
out.  Miss Lilias Borthwick is now the Countess Bathurst and I
believe has, when she chooses to exercise it, full control over _The
Morning Post_; of which Mr. Fabian Ware is the present editor, a
young journalist who has made himself a name in his profession.  Lady
Bathurst is, like her mother, one of those women who possess better
means of making their wishes and character felt than by clamouring
for votes.  There are cases where womanly charm may be the companion
of settled opinions and convictions and clear purposes, to which _The
Morning Post_ of to-day is a witness.

One factor in the success of the paper was Oliver Borthwick, the son
of Lord Glenesk.  Journalism attracted him; he entered his father's
office early; his aptitudes for the business showed themselves at
once, and before many years he was managing editor.  He had an
inquiring, inventive mind.  He kept his Conservatism for politics,
and applied to the conduct of _The Morning Post_ the most original
and even radical and sometimes daring methods.  He understood details
and thought no detail beneath the notice of a manager.  He liked to
do things which the old hands in the office pronounced impossible,
among them that paged index to the contents of the paper which he
first believed and then proved to be practicable.  All {341} this did
not stand in the way of broad conceptions and great schemes for which
his father gave him a free hand.  Lord Glenesk asked me one day if
Oliver had told me of his newest plan.  I said no.  "Well, you had
better ask him about it.  I shall not interfere, though it is going
to cost a lot of money"; and he named a sum which ran into many
figures.  Those were the relations which existed between father and
son.  But there came a day when they existed no longer.  Oliver
Borthwick's joy in his work was such that he never spared himself and
he died at thirty-two, his father still living.  The only gift he
lacked was the gift of adapting his work to his strength.  He
overworked recklessly; he could not do otherwise.  He would spare
everybody but himself.  And so to-day, instead of being an ornament
of his profession and of social life, Oliver Borthwick is only a
memory and a lasting regret.

Since the foregoing was written Mr. Reginald Lucas has published his
_Lord Glenesk and The Morning Post_, an agreeable and informing book.
This is not the place to comment on it but I should like to add to
what I have said above of Lord Glenesk a passage from a signed review
by me in _The Morning Post_:


"As I think of the man whom I knew, the importance of the things he
did, great and brilliant as they were, seems to me less than the
importance of the man himself.  If I could, I should like to describe
not what he did but what he was.  {342} I should say that his
friendships, to which I have already referred, were part not only of
his life but of himself.  The range of them would show that.
Political friendships came to him in his position as a matter of
course.  But friendships non-political were more numerous and more
remarkable still.  The late Queen's regard for him was a strong one.
Early in life he was the friend of that astonishing Frenchwoman,
Elizabeth Rachel Felix, more commonly known as Rachel, perhaps the
greatest tragedian of all time, in almost the full flower of her
genius at seventeen.  Later in life he was the friend, the very
helpful and trusted friend, of Madame Sarah Bernhardt.  He early
conceived and retained to the end an affection for the French
Emperor.  I need not go on with the catalogue but there are many
friends, not to be named, who were under obligations to him for
kindnesses and whom he seems to have liked because he had helped
them.  All through life that was true.  He gave freely, generously,
delicately.  _Nihil humani_ was his motto or one of his mottoes.
There must have been many.  A life so varied as his does not move to
the music of a single air on a single string.

"Not the briefest, and not even the most public, notice of Lord
Glenesk can omit all reference to the happiness of his private life.
Even the few lines above may show what part his wife had in his
happiness, and he in hers.  Of his daughter, Lady Bathurst, Mr. Lucas
has told us something with due reserve; enough to give his readers at
{343} least a hint of the affection between her and her father and
why it was on both sides so deep, and is on hers so abiding.  Oliver
was to all the world a beloved and brilliant figure, and when the
time came his father's right hand; then finally relieving him of his
executive cares.  Then at thirty-two came the end, and then the
father at seventy-five takes up the burden once more, but not for
long.

"Mr. Lucas tells us that President Roosevelt's 'manner of receiving
Oliver was particularly flattering.'  I hope it may interest his
friends if I enlarge that a little.  Oliver told me when he came to
Washington that he had the usual introduction from the British
Ambassador, which is indispensable, and asked me what he had better
do.  He wished something more than a formal interview as one of the
many whom it was the President's habit to receive in line, bestowing
a few cordial but conventional words on each.  I saw the President
that afternoon, told him something of Oliver's position and of Oliver
himself.  He answered, 'Bring him to lunch to-morrow.'  At lunch the
President put him next to himself and the two talked together during
and after this meal.  Then Oliver and I walked away.  He said, 'The
President is a great natural force,' a phrase which recalls Lord
Morley's later remark that the two greatest natural phenomena he had
seen in the United States were Niagara and President Roosevelt.  The
day following I again saw the President, who perhaps will for once
allow himself to be quoted.  He said: 'Your friend {344} Oliver
Borthwick is a very young man, but a man.'  Then a pause; then, 'And
what charm he has.  It is long since I have met any newcomer whom I
have liked better.'"




{345}

CHAPTER XXXVI

  QUEEN VICTORIA AT BALMORAL--KING EDWARD AT
  DUNROBIN--ADMIRAL SIR HEDWORTH LAMBTON--OTHER
  ANECDOTES

Invercauld, of which Lord Glenesk was long tenant, lies near
Balmoral; a name famous the world over as the Highland home of Queen
Victoria and then of the late King.  A castle on which the very
German taste of the very German husband of the great Queen has left
its mark.  It is no more a fine castle than Buckingham Palace is a
fine palace.  It stands, however, in a beautiful country and some of
the best drives within easy reach are those on the Invercauld
property.  They are private but all gates swing open to Kings and
Queens.

The privacy was one thing the Queen liked.  So long as she was in the
Highlands the loyalty of her subjects was expected to manifest itself
by ignoring her presence.  If you saw the Sovereign approaching you
effaced yourself.  You slipped behind a tree or looked over the hedge
or retied your shoelaces.  You might do anything except be aware of
this august lady's presence and recognize it by the usual salute and
the bared head {346} as she went by.  The Queen was ever, as her son
was, insistent upon etiquette.  No form of ceremony must be
neglected.  But at Balmoral the etiquette consisted in the absence of
all form or ceremony outdoors.  You were expected to know this, and
if you did not know it but stood at attention with lifted hat this
mark of homage would not be well received.  I once heard a stranger
who had offended in this way say that the look upon the Queen's face
as she passed was a lesson not to be forgotten.

Her Majesty drove quietly about in a pony carriage with perhaps the
ever faithful John Brown in attendance to lay a shawl about her
shoulders or take one off, as he judged best.  You might see him do
as much as that in the publicity of Hyde Park in London.  It was
partly in the simplicity of this Highland life that the Queen found
repose.  Her Majesty would sometimes stop at Invercauld House for
tea, apparently as one neighbour appealing to the hospitality of
another.  But I imagine these impulses were announced beforehand and
that the list of guests at Invercauld was known at Balmoral.  During
one week there was among them a lady who, for purely technical
reasons, was never received at Court though she went almost
everywhere else in London and had, and has, a position almost unique.
But so long as this lady remained at Invercauld House the Queen found
herself too much occupied with business of State to come to tea.

{347}

Royalty knows, or knows about, almost everybody.  The late King was
always the best informed man in his dominions.  It was rare that he
met a man or woman whose face and history were not familiar to him.
He did once at Dunrobin Castle.  This was not many years ago, when
the King and Queen were circumnavigating this island-part of their
Empire in the royal yacht.  The yacht anchored for some days in the
bay off the castle.  The King or Queen, or both, came ashore during
the day and returned to sleep on board.  As the King, the Duke of
Sutherland, and Captain Hedworth Lambton, commander of the yacht,
were walking up from the pier through the gardens to the castle, a
man passed them.  "Who is that?" asked the King.  The Duke had to
admit he could not tell.  "Oh, sir," said Captain Lambton, "don't you
know the castle is full of people whom the Duke doesn't know and the
Duchess never sees?"  The King took this pleasantry as it was meant;
aware that there was beneath it just that evanescent adumbration of
fact which made it plausible.

Captain Lambton, then the Hon. Hedworth Lambton, brother to the
present Earl of Durham, is now Admiral the Hon. Sir Hedworth Lambton,
K.C.B., the youngest man of his rank in the service; or was when he
was made admiral.  Noted for the quaint felicity of his sayings,
sometimes with an edge to them; noted for his service with the Naval
Brigade in South Africa and the relief of Ladysmith; noted as a
skilful seaman who had {348} commanded the cruiser division of the
Mediterranean fleet and afterward the China squadron.  The Lambtons
are a family apart, and Sir Hedworth is a man apart, even amid his
own family.  There are few men who give you a stronger impression of
having made their own that rule of life which consists in taking
things as they come.  Struggling through the watercourses of the
veldt with his 4.10 gun, or on the quarter-deck of the royal yacht in
harbour with only duties of ceremony to perform, he is the same man.

He came to Dalmeny House for the week-end while the _Victoria and
Albert_ was lying at Queensferry.  On the Sunday morning he asked
Lord Rosebery and his house-party to go with him to the yacht for
morning service.  We drove through the charming park to the Leuchold
Gate and so to Queensferry pier, whence a launch took us on board.
The yacht has a displacement of something more than five thousand
tons.  Those external lines of beauty which you expect in a yacht had
been omitted by the Admiralty designers responsible for this vessel,
but once on board everything is admirable.  The ship was lying in the
Forth, above the bridge, waiting for Queen Alexandra to embark for
Copenhagen.  Nothing could be smarter than the decks and the crew
except the officers; all in full uniform.

It was August, and though some Americans say the sun never shines on
these islands, there are moments of exception and this was one.  It
was burning hot.  Captain Lambton read the service, {349} his
officers and guests about him, the men in front, all amidships on the
upper deck.  He came to the Lord's Prayer, the sailors all kneeling
and all caps off.  In the very middle of it, without a change of
intonation or accent, he said to his men: "If anybody feels the sun
they may put their caps on."  I suppose a super-devout churchman
might have been shocked, but the reader was captain of the ship and
he had no idea of allowing one of his men to have a touch of
sunstroke.  It appears they were in no danger for not one of them put
on his cap.  Nor did any one seem to think his captain's
interlocutory sentence out of place.  I have seen often enough both
in the navy and in the army that the most rigid disciplinarian may be
of all others the most careful of his men's health and comfort.

In these Dreadnought days nothing of the pre-Dreadnought period
counts.  But I was once on I believe, the first Dreadnought, of a
type long since antiquated, with a low freeboard forward and the
whole expanse of the forecastle deck so arranged as to be, with
reference to the rest of the vessel, a lever on which the Atlantic
might pile itself up.  I asked the captain what might happen in a
heavy head sea.  "The chances are," he answered coolly, "she would go
down head foremost."  However, at the moment she was comfortably
anchored off Queensferry.

That danger exists no longer for the model is obsolete, and this
particular ship no doubt went long since to the scrap heap.  But the
unsolved {350} problems of naval warfare are still numerous.  A
fighting admiral in the British navy will tell you strange things if
he happens to be in a talkative mood.  Nothing is better worth
listening to than the discourse of a man who has command of a great
fleet or of a great ship, whether of war or commerce.  I quote one
sentence:

"You want to know what is likely to happen when two modern battle
fleets meet at sea, equal in fighting strength and under equal
conditions.  No man knows.  It has never yet happened.  But the
chances are both would go to the bottom."

Out of many Highland incidents I choose one, for brevity's sake.

Invermark.  A place renowned for many kinds of sport, salmon fishing
included.  It belonged, when I knew it, to the late Lord Dalhousie,
who generally let it and confined himself to Brechin Castle, with
excursions to Panmure House.  Invermark was a lodge and nothing more;
just room for half a dozen guests and their guns and servants.  Lord
Dudley and the late Lord Hindlip had it together one year.  Lord
Hindlip was the head of the great brewery firm of Allsopp & Co.  He
announced to us one night at dinner that he must go to London next
morning on business.  He went, returning two days later.  He had
spent twelve hours in London.  Somebody said "I hope your business
turned out all right."  Lord Hindlip answered: "I don't know about
all right.  I bought £750,000 ($3,750,000) worth of hops a price
which makes it impossible there should {351} be any profit in the
next twelve months' brewing."  Nobody asked but everybody looked
another question: "Then why buy?"  Lord Hindlip continued his
sentence as if he had not noticed our curiosity.  "But if I had not
bought yesterday there would have been no brewing of beer at all for
the next twelve months, nor perhaps ever."

This was one of the houses--perhaps only those belonging to the great
brewers--where beer was served with the cheese instead of port.  But
not the kind of beer known to the ordinary mortal.  Beer specially
brewed, long kept, tenderly cared for, and somehow transformed into a
transcendental fluid, transparent, golden in colour, nectar to the
taste, strangely mild on the palate, but swiftly finding its way to
the brain if you were ensnared into drinking a tumblerful.  There was
nothing to warn you unless your host warned you, which he generally
did not.  He perhaps rather pressed it upon you as they do the Audit
ale at Trinity College, Cambridge, with a hospitality not free from
guile.  That I knew through the late Mr. Justice Denham, who was my
host, and when I resisted he told me how Lord Chancellor Campbell had
praised the mildness of the ale, and had a second drink, and then a
third; and upon emerging from the buttery into the fresh air found
himself embarrassed; he, the hardest head at the Bar of his time.  A
story which I hand on as a warning to the next comer.




{352}

CHAPTER XXXVII

FAMOUS ENGLISHMEN NOT IN POLITICS

I

There are, perhaps, a few names of to-day which it is possible to
mention without becoming involved in the politics of to-day.  The
English, it is true, draw a broader line between what is purely
political and what is personal than we do.  They can give and take
hard knocks, whether in Parliament or on the platform or even in the
Press, without animosity or resentment.  But since in America it
seems to be supposed that any reference to these encounters may have
its danger side I avoid them for the present.  I turn away from the
Revolutionary present, of which one's stock of Memories increases day
by day, to the more peaceful past or to a more peaceful world in the
present; a world unravaged by political passions.  True, the past was
not always a peaceful past while it lasted.  We do not always
remember how fierce were the storms which have subsided.  But where
Death has made a solitude we call it peace.

In two, at least, of the great contests waged these periods of peace
I had a share, which {353} I must mention again for the sake of
another story I have to tell.  One was the conflict about Irish Home
Rule which became critical and revolutionary in 1881 and 1886; when I
was allowed to state my own views, unpopular as they were in America,
in _The Tribune_ week by week or day by day; a policy of generous and
far-sighted courage on the part of that journal; honourable to its
editor and I hope in the long run not injurious to the paper.

The second was in 1895 and 1896, in _The Times_ of London.  When
President Cleveland flung his message of war upon the floor of the
House at Washington in December, 1895, I necessarily had much to say
about it in _The Times_.  There again I was given a free hand.  It is
sometimes said that the correspondents of this journal frame their
news dispatches in accordance with orders issued to them from the
home office.  I can only say, if indeed I may say so much without
violating obligations of secrecy, that during a service which lasted
ten years I never knew of or heard of any such orders.

Coming to England in the summer of 1896 on a holiday, I had some
slight illness and asked a friend whom I should consult.  My own
doctor was by that time attending patients, I suppose, in another and
better world.  My friend said he had lately seen fourteen physicians
about his son and each of the fourteen had given a different name to
his son's disease.

"Then I went to Dr. Barlow, who said, after a {354} long examination,
'I do not know what is the matter with your son nor what to prescribe
for him.'  Then I felt I had found a doctor whom I could trust."

So I went to Dr. Barlow, without an introduction.  At the end of a
rather long consultation and a definite opinion and a settled
prescription, I asked what his fee was.

"Nothing."

I thought he had misunderstood my question, and repeated it.

"Nothing.  I can take no money from a man who has done as much as you
have to keep the peace between the two countries."

When I next saw the manager of _The Times_ I told him of this
incident, which he seemed to think interesting.  He said:

"Such evidences of good feeling from a man so distinguished as Barlow
and so far removed from politics do indeed make for good feeling on
both sides.  I hope you will tell all your own people."

It is difficult, for I cannot tell it without more or less directly
paying a compliment to myself.  But many years have since ebbed away.
Modesty is at best but an inconvenient handmaiden, from whom I would
part company if I could.  Let her keep to her proper place.  An
obligation of honour is peremptory; and this, perhaps, is one.  I did
tell a certain number of friends at the time, and now I repeat the
anecdote to a larger number.  I set it against Mr. Price Collier's
mischievous dictum that English and Americans do not like each {355}
other.  The dictum already seems to belong to a distant and misty and
mythical past.

Since that year of 1896 Dr. Barlow has become (in 1902) Sir Thomas
Barlow, Bart., and Physician to the King's Household; about as high
as anybody can go in the medical profession.  A Lancashire lad to
begin, with, he has had a vast hospital experience, and still keeps
up his hospital work; he has a vast private practice; Harvard and two
Canadian universities have given him their LL.D.; he is an F.R.S., a
K.C.V.O., and other parts of the alphabet pay him tribute.  All these
and many other titles and distinctions have their value, though the
late Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, who had more than most men, did say:
"They give me every kind of letter to my name except L.S.D."  But the
essential thing in Sir Thomas Barlow's case is that he has the
confidence of the public and of his profession.

One thing, it seems to me, the great surgeons and physicians I have
known had in common.  They were great men, first of all.  They had
great qualities outside of their profession.  Two years ago last
September, a time when the big men are mostly away, I wanted a
surgeon and knew not where to find one.  A chemist finally gave me a
name, Mr. Henry Morris, and an address; name wholly unknown to me,
though the address, Cavendish Square, implied at least professional
prosperity.  I had had a fall at the Playhouse, as Mr. Maude calls
his little theatre, the night before, leaving a box by what I
supposed {356} to be steps and in the absence of steps coming down on
the floor, bruised, and I knew not what else.  My surgeon made his
examination.  What struck me was that he wasted never a word nor a
gesture.  The touch of his hands, of his fingers, had a mathematical
or instrumental precision.  So had his questions.  In five minutes or
less he had covered the ground and delivered his opinion.  Anything
might have happened, but nothing had, bar the bruised muscles.
"We'll attend to those for you."  He asked if I was leaving town and
when I said I was sailing for New York on Saturday he remarked:

"If you were a working-man I should send you to the hospital and you
would be kept in bed till you were well.  But if you choose to sail
on the _Lusitania_ you must bear the pain.  Now, as you are here, you
might as well let me overhaul you."

Then, as before, the same precision, the same delicacy of touch, the
same rapidity, nothing hurried, nothing missed; his examination a
work of art as well as of science.  Then he began to talk of other
things; and again, and even stronger, was the impression of being in
contact with a master mind.  Seldom have I spent a more stimulating
hour.  He was, I found later, Mr. Henry Morris, Consulting Surgeon to
the Middlesex Hospital and President of the Royal College of
Surgeons.  In other words, Mr. Henry Morris, about whom I ought to
have known, but did not, was, and is, in the very front rank of his
profession.  His eminence has since been recognized and {357}
rewarded by the King, and he is now Sir Henry Morris, Bart.  I
suppose even a Republican may admit that if titles are to be
conferred they are well conferred on men eminent in science.



II

Sir Thomas Barlow has since been elected President of the Royal
College of Physicians in succession to Sir Douglas Powell.  This is
the Blue Ribbon of the profession, perhaps a greater honour than a
knighthood or baronetcy, though the knighthood or the baronetcy is
from the King, the source and fountain of all such distinctions.  But
the Presidency of the Royal College of Physicians is conferred by the
Profession itself.  The Fellows of the College, who number some three
hundred, are the choosing body.  They vote by ballot and the man whom
they elect is the man by whom they wish to be represented before the
public; the man by whom they are content to be judged.  They say, in
effect, of him whom they choose: "This is the Head of the Medical
Profession for the time being."  The public, which really and rightly
has much more confidence in the judgment of the doctors upon each
other than in any lay reputation, accepts that.  When you say of a
physician, "He is a doctors' doctor," you have said about all you can.

The President of the Royal College of Physicians has, no doubt,
duties which are not medical.  He has executive, administrative,
consultative {358} duties; and the very important duty of dining with
the Lord Mayor, the Corporation of the City of London, and the City
Companies.  In discharging these latter functions he incurs, I
suppose, less risk than most men incur.  But risk or no risk these
feasts have to be faced.  Between all Corporations, Guilds, and
Colleges there is a kind of freemasonry.  They have points of
contact, of sympathy, and are likely to stand by each other in
difficulties.  Whether dinners were invented as a test and standard
of friendship, I cannot say.  But go to which of them you like, you
will find a collection of the Heads of other Companies, Colleges,
etc.; not all, perhaps, dinner-giving, but all willing victims of
others' hospitality.

The Royal College of Physicians is also a Senate or Parliament; with
powers of legislation and of professional guidance and discipline.
The Fellows of this College are Trustees for the whole Profession.
The President has an authority of his own, depending in part on
statutes and on custom, in part on his personal authority.  In the
latter Sir Thomas Barlow will not be found wanting.  It is not the
less, it is perhaps the greater, for the genial good nature which
accompanies it.  I said to him once:

"Sir Thomas, you have one quality which must be a great drawback to
your success."

"Dear me, what is that?"

"When you come into a room your patient at once thinks himself
better, and even doubts whether he need have sent for you at all, and
so {359} gets well much quicker than he ought.  It's taking money out
of your pocket."

"Very good.  I'll take care you don't get well too soon."

There was an electioneering story--oh, no politics in it--the other
day with an equally serious but not more serious, side to it.  Men
were discussing the system of plural voting still prevailing in this
country and certain to prevail so long as votes, or any votes, are
based on property qualification.  Said a well-known doctor:

"I have sixteen votes, all of which I am going to poll."

"But how?"

"Oh, I have two votes of my own and I have fourteen patients who are
of the wrong party and not one of them will be well enough to go out
till after election."

Think how completely non-political must be a profession of which an
eminent member can tell a story like that and run no risk of being
misunderstood.  The traditions of honour are indeed high among
English doctors, nor could they be in better keeping than now in Sir
Thomas Barlow's.

One of his predecessors, Sir William Gull, was also not merely
fashionable and popular but recognized by his associates as a
scientific practitioner.  Sir William Jenner was perhaps reckoned by
the medical profession the best all-round man ever known.  Sir
William Gull was not far off, yet there is an anecdote of him which
suggests that he put a very high value on the average capacity {360}
of doctors.  He was asked to go a long distance into the country to
see a patient.  He declined.  He was told that any fee he liked to
name would be gladly paid.  Still he declined, saying there were
cases he could not leave, and when he was pressed further the great
man burst out:

"But why do you want me?  There are five hundred doctors in London
just as good as I am."

Which perhaps was not quite true.

Sir William Broadbent said almost the same thing to me, twenty years
ago and more, when I asked him to see Mr. Hay whom I had just left in
his rooms, in Ryder Street, St. James's, to all appearance extremely
ill.  Hay said in his emotional way:

"Broadbent is the only doctor I believe in.  If you don't bring
Broadbent bring nobody.  Let me die."

But Broadbent said no.  He was starting to catch a train for a life
and death consultation in the country.  He must not miss his train.

"But there's time enough.  See Hay on your way to the train.  Give
him five minutes and let somebody else do the rest."

"I shall let somebody else do the whole."

"Hay will see nobody unless he sees you first."

"There are plenty of men as good as I am.  I will give you half a
dozen names."

"I want none of them.  I want you.  You know you can stop your
carriage for five minutes as you drive to the station."

"My carriage has not come round."

{361}

"My hansom is at the door.  Drive with me and let your carriage
follow."

Finally he did.  When he came out of Hay's bedroom he was a very
angry man.  He said:

"Your friend has a bad attack of indigestion.  He will be all right
in an hour."

And away he went.  An angry man is not always a just man.  Hay--God
bless his memory--thought himself suffering from a heart attack.
There is, I believe, a medical analogy between the symptoms of heart
disease and violent indigestion.  I had left him lying on the floor
almost in convulsions.  How was he to know it was not heart disease,
to which he believed himself subject?  Hay was not then, to the
English, so great a man as he afterwards became.  He had not been
Ambassador, nor Secretary of State, nor dictated to the European
Powers a new policy in the East.  I ought not to use the word
dictated.  It is not descriptive of Hay's methods, which were
persuasive.  Nor does one Power dictate to another.  Let us say he
had secured by the adroit use of accepted diplomatic methods the
adhesion of the European Powers to his proposals in respect of China.
No American Secretary of State had ever made so original or
beneficent a use of his power.  He had brought his country once for
all into the great world-partnership of great Powers the world over.

Sir William Broadbent did not foresee that.  He could not.  If he had
he might have been less angry, for he was thought to be considerate
of greatness in all its forms or in many of them.  He {362} liked
patients of distinction, which is no reproach.  He had many of them.
But the odd thing was that he seemed never quite able to overcome his
awe of rank and title.  In a company of persons of rank his manner
was not that of an equal.  He used to address persons of rank as a
servant addresses them; or it might be kinder to say as inferiors in
position used to address their superiors two or three generations
ago.  And always with embarrassment.

Another celebrated man of medicine, Sir Andrew Clark, had an almost
factitious renown as Mr. Gladstone's doctor, and Mr. Gladstone was a
very good patient, in one sense.  One thing this famous physician
had; he had absolute confidence in himself.  Or, if no doctor has
that, he had enough to give his patient confidence, which is perhaps
not less important.  Old Abernethy used to say: "The second best
remedy is best if the patient thinks it best."  And I suppose that is
as true of doctors as of remedies.  If Sir Andrew doubted, he never
allowed you to see that he doubted.  Like all these great men, he had
a social as well as medical popularity and he was very good company
at dinner and after.

One evening I met him at a pleasant house where there was a good cook
and the company, including the host, did not exceed six; all men.  We
all noticed that Sir Andrew drank champagne.  Presently one of the
men said:

"You don't allow us champagne, Sir Andrew, but you allow it to
yourself."

{363}

"Oh, I have had a long day, and I am very tired, and I must have it.
Besides, when I get home there'll be thirty or forty letters to
answer."

So the champagne flowed on, like the water, as Mr. Evarts said, at
one of President Hayes's White House dinners.  Sir Andrew drank no
more than anybody else.  It was only because of his habit of
prohibiting it to others that we noticed whether his glass was full
or empty.  As we went upstairs I said to him:

"Do you mean that after all that champagne you are going to answer
thirty or forty letters when you get home?"

"No, certainly not."

"Then what did you mean?"

"What I meant was that after my champagne I should not care whether
they were answered or not."

It was Sir Andrew Clark who said of Mr. Gladstone, some fifteen years
before his death at eighty-eight that there was no physiological
reason why he should not live to be 120.  If that was meant as a
prophecy it had the fate of most prophecies.




{364}

CHAPTER XXXVIII

LORD ST. HELIER--AMERICAN AND ENGLISH METHODS--MR. BENJAMIN

If you care for a clear view of English life and of Englishmen you
need not always go to the mountain tops in search of it.  If you can
find a man who stands for what is typical, who is in the front rank,
but not among the very foremost, who has, in a high degree, the
qualities by which the average Englishman, having them in a much less
degree, succeeds, he is as well worth studying for this purpose as
the most illustrious of them all.  I could name many such men.  I
will take one whom I knew well for many years; to whose kindness I
owed much; whom I saw often in London and stayed with often in the
country; for whose memory I have that kind of affection which
survives even a sense of many obligations.  I mean Lord St. Helier.

He was Mr. Francis Jeune when I first knew him, and when he married
Mrs. Stanley.  Later he became Sir Francis Jeune, and finally found
his way into that House of Lords which it is now the fashion among
one set of politicians to decry.  I suppose nobody would deny that,
whatever {365} be the merits or demerits of the hereditary principle,
this House contains more distinguished and supremely able men than
any other body that can be named.  For such a man as Francis Jeune it
was the natural and pre-ordained abode when his honourable career
reached or approached its climax.

Sir Francis Jeune was a man who made the most of his abilities and
opportunities.  He was a good lawyer, a good judge, and, after his
marriage with Mrs. Stanley, a considerable social force.  It is among
the peculiarities of English life that the Presidency of the Divorce
Court should be one of four great prizes at the English Bar.  The
Lord High Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, and the Master of the
Rolls hold the other three most coveted places, and are rewarded by
appointments such as the legal profession in no other country can
hope for.  The dignity of all these positions is very great, and the
pay corresponds to the dignity.

If we contrast the splendid figures with the salaries of the Judges
of the Supreme Court at the United States, the motto of the Republic
would seem to be Hamlet's "Thrift, thrift, Horatio."  But if the
levelling doctrines of the present day were to prevail, the British
judges would soon descend to the money level of the American.  I do
not imagine they will.  The illiberal treatment of public servants
has never been popular in England.

There is nevertheless something in these high legal posts which
attracts men to whom the pay, high as it is, can be no attraction.
But that {366} again only sharpens the contrast.  The average income
of the magnates at the American Bar being greater than at the
English, and the salaries of the American judges being less than half
those of the English judges, why should an American lawyer of the
first class ever accept a judicial office?  Clearly there are other
and higher motives than mere money.  There are Americans, we are
told, who recognize in American life no motive higher than money.
But are they Americans, or are they of the true American type?  You
might have asked Mr. Roosevelt when he was here last May.  He is the
most famous of living Americans and he certainly did not become so by
the worship of money.

I have strayed far from Sir Francis Jeune, but the law and the things
of the law must ever have an attraction for any one who has at any
time, no matter how long ago, been in contact with them; otherwise
than as a client.  And I will stray further still in order to add
that one of the greatest names at the English Bar, and now one of the
greatest memories, is that of an American.  I mean, of course, Mr.
Benjamin.  He had no superior.  It is doubtful whether he had an
equal in those duties of his profession in which he most cared to
excel.  I knew him a little.  He sometimes talked to me of his
career; surely the most remarkable at the English or perhaps any
other Bar, since he was fifty-three when he came to this country.  He
always acknowledged heartily the kindness shown him, the facilities
given him, the aid even of men {367} who foresaw in him a dangerous
rival, to make his path smooth.  I said to him once:

"But you came here as the representative of a Lost Cause which the
English had at one time almost made their own.  That may have helped."

"Oh, no; the friendship of the governing classes in England for the
Confederacy had passed into history.  They had discovered their
mistake.  As they would say, they had backed the wrong horse.  It was
still some years to the Geneva Arbitration but they had begun to be
aware they would have to pay, as others do when they put their money
on a loser.  However, I don't think that counted one way or the
other.  What did count was the good-will of English lawyers to
another lawyer.  That you can always depend on.  They shortened the
formalities.  They opened the doors as wide as they could.  And never
once when I had gained a foothold did I find that anybody remembered
I was not English; or remembered it to my disadvantage."

Taking his place as he did at the very head, he was a memorable
illustration of Daniel Webster's well-known reply to the young lawyer
who asked him if the profession was not overcrowded:

"There is always room at the top."

Mr. Benjamin passed swiftly from penury to affluence.  He told me
once what his highest earnings in any one year had been.  The amount
was larger by many thousands of pounds than the income of his chief
competitor.  It was larger, I think, than any English lawyer now
makes except {368} at the Parliamentary Bar, where the figures are
almost fantastic.  This is a money test but apply any other you like
and you would still see the figure of Mr. Benjamin standing out from
among the crowd and high above it; and above even the highest of that
day.

I dined lately at the Inner Temple as the guest of a great and
successful lawyer.  There was a company of other successful lawyers
and of judges.  I asked a question or two about Benjamin.  In that
perfectly rarefied legal atmosphere there could be none but a purely
legal opinion.  And there was but one opinion.  Most of these men had
known him, though Benjamin died in 1884.  Whether they knew him or
not they knew all about him.  His greatness was admitted.  Eulogies
were poured out on him.

"Did his American nationality hinder him?"

"It neither hindered nor helped.  He was at the English Bar and that
was enough."

I come back to Sir Francis Jeune.  He was the friend and legal
adviser of Lord Beaconsfield, whose will he drew.  A Conservative, of
course.  His practice at the Bar was never of a showy kind.  But if
you put yourself into his hands you felt sure he would do the right
and wise thing.  His mind was of the sort known as legal.  When he
came to the Bench it was seen to be judicial also.  I suppose the
general public has never understood why Probate, Divorce, and
Admiralty should be united in one division of the Supreme Court.  No
two subjects could be more unlike {369} than Divorce and Admiralty.
But a judge is supposed to have taken all legal knowledge to be his
province, and to be equally capable of dealing with all the mysteries
of the law in all its relations to all parts of life.  It is true
that on the Admiralty side assessors are called in.  An assessor is a
kind of expert.  A retired sea-captain, for example, who has never
commanded anything but a sailing ship, is supposed to be competent to
advise on the most intricate questions of modern steamship
navigation.  The result is sometimes astounding, as in the case of
the _Campania_, condemned by Mr. Justice Gorell Barnes to pay for the
loss of the bark _Embolton_, by collision, solely because she was
steaming nine knots.  It was proved that this was the safest speed
for her and for all comers; that she was under better control at nine
knots than at any less speed.  But the court said: "If people will
build ships which are safest at nine knots they must be responsible
for the consequences."

Sir Francis Jeune had no part in the trial of this famous cause and I
am sure had too much sense to agree with the judgment.  Good sense
was, perhaps, the predominant trait in his character.  He showed it
pre-eminently in the Divorce Court.  There he was helped, no doubt,
by his social experiences.  He knew London as few men know it.  He
had, in such matters, almost feminine instincts.  But he ruled in his
court as all strong English judges rule, and as strong American
judges do not.  In America we say of an advocate: "He tried such and
such a case."  In England the phrase is {370} never used of the
barrister.  It is the judge who "tries" the cause, as it ought to be.
Sir Francis "tried" the causes that came before him.  He knew the
law.  He mastered facts easily.  He was not easily misled and he had
the sagacity which led him quickly to right conclusions.  Since his
death there have been contrasts on which I will not dwell.




{371}

CHAPTER XXXIX

MRS. JEUNE, LADY JEUNE, AND LADY ST. HELIER

The interesting people are the exceptional people; not those cast in
a mould common to others, not those whose lives run in a groove but
those who fashion their own lives in obedience to the dictates of a
nature which is their own.  Among the women of London it would be
easy to choose those of higher rank or greater position than Lady St.
Helier, but I choose her because she is Lady St. Helier.

Whether the marriage of Mrs. Stanley to Mr. Francis Jeune, in 1881,
was or was not considered a social event of the first importance I
cannot say.  I was not then in London.  But that it became important
in no long time is clear.  It was first as Mrs. Jeune and then as
Lady Jeune that the present Lady St. Helier achieved her great
distinction as a hostess.  She was not content to do what other
ladies of position were in the habit of doing.  She struck out a line
for herself.  I said lately that London was a world in which
everything of the first rank in many differing ranks and professions
met at times beneath the same roofs.  That was not always true.  It
was very far from being true.

{372}

If you go back no further than the eighteenth century you find in
England a society consisting of perhaps three hundred or four hundred
persons.  If we may judge by the memoirs and memories that have come
down to us it was a very brilliant society, perhaps more brilliant,
though less varied, than the society of to-day.  But it was not
comprehensive, still less was it cosmopolitan.  It was a caste.  The
hereditary principle prevailed.  It was a society into which you had
to take the precaution to be born.  If you were not born into it you
never found your way in.  There was no effort to keep people outside
of it.  None was required.  The people who were outside did not dream
of forcing themselves in.  There was no reason why this little clique
should be on the defence.  The Climbers did not then exist, as an
aggressive body, or as a force of any kind.  If you read Boswell's
Life, or Walpole's Letters, or the Life of Selwyn, or any political
memoirs of the time, it is clear that the dividing line between those
who were in society and those who were not was a broad one, and was
all but impassable.

It has long ceased to be, and the steps by which it was worn away can
be traced.  But if we come at once to the 'eighties of the last
century we see a condition of things which, a hundred years before
that, would have seemed to the social leaders of that day fantastic.
The revolution had gone far; it had already become an evolution; and,
of course, the end was not yet.  It needed a Mrs. Jeune to carry it
on to its full development.  And {373} since the individual is but
one expression of those natural forces which are, in such cases, the
operative forces, there is no reason why Nature should not supply the
individual as she does the other energies needed for the work she has
in hand.  At any rate, she supplied Mrs. Jeune, and London is to-day
a different place from the London we should have known had there been
no Mrs. Jeune.

For Society, in the mixed form now prevailing, is supposed to be not
only a compromise between conflicting forces but the result of much
careful diplomacy.  Lady Jersey was a diplomatist.  Lady Palmerston
was a diplomatist.  The late King was pre-eminently a diplomatist.
Whether from temperament or calculation I know not, but Mrs. Jeune
cast diplomacy to the winds.  The one gift which stood to her in the
place of all others was courage.  She brought together at the same
table, or under the same roof at Arlington Manor, people the most
unlike.  Each one of her guests had some kind of distinction, or some
claim to social recognition.  They might or might not have anything
in common.

Mrs. George Cornwallis West, whom we still think of as Lady Randolph
Churchill, once gave at her house in Connaught Place, by the Marble
Arch, looking out on Hyde Park, what she called a dinner of deadly
enemies.  It was thought a hazardous experiment.  It proved a
complete success.  They were all well-bred people.  They all
recognized their obligations to their hostess as paramount for the
time being.  They were Lady {374} Randolph's guests.  That was
enough.  As guests they were neither friends nor enemies.  There were
no hostilities.  The talk flowed on smoothly.  When a man found
himself sent in to dinner with a woman to whom he did not speak, his
tongue was somehow unloosed.  It was a truce.  In some cases ancient
animosities were softened.  In all they were suspended.  The guests
all knew each other, and as they looked about the table they all saw
that Lady Randolph had attempted the impossible and had conquered.  A
social miracle had been performed.

What Lady Randolph did for that one evening Mrs. Jeune did night
after night and year after year.  There was not on her part, I
presume, any conscious intention of bringing irreconcilables into
contact with each other.  What Mrs. Jeune did was simply to take no
note of the fact that they were irreconcilables.  Her policy, if
policy it were, had therefore the kind of validity which comes to a
man or to a woman from not appearing to be aware of the obvious.
That is a great resource in debate, and a great resource in that
larger debate which broadens into human intercourse.  The average man
is rather apt to do what he sees is expected of him.  As a guest he
has hardly a choice.  When he enters a front door he puts himself
under the dominion of his hostess.  If he is a man of the world, his
philosophy is to take what is offered him.  If he is not, he is
chiefly concerned to do as others do whom he supposes to be more
familiar than himself with the manners {375} and customs of Society.
Very rarely therefore does anything like a collision occur and almost
never so long as the company is of two sexes.

Mrs. Jeune may or may not have thought this out, or she may have
acted from those intuitions which in women supply the place of reason
and are, for all social purposes and some others, more useful than
reason.  People who did not like her used to say that all she cared
for was to get celebrities together.  They professed to think she was
a Mrs. Leo Hunter and her collections of guests so many menageries.
If that had been so they would soon have been dispersed, nor would
Mrs. Jeune, or the Lady Jeune of later days, or the present Lady St.
Helier, ever have attained to the rank she did as hostess.  She
offered Society what nobody else offered, novelty, which is the one
thing Society craves beyond all others.  Said a man who went
everywhere:

"I go to Lady Jeune's because I never know whom I shall meet, but I
know there will always be somebody I shall like to meet."

By the side of which I will set an anecdote not unlike it.  At a
dinner I was next a lady who knew everybody, and there was a man at
table whom she did not know.  She asked:

"Who is that?"

"Mr. Justice Stephen."

"Why have I never seen him?  He looks a man everybody ought to know.
But it is a rare pleasure to meet somebody you do not know."

I will give the other side in another anecdote.  {376} A smart party.
A stream of guests coming up a famous staircase.  Two in a balcony
looking down on the arrivals.

He: "Who is that?"

She: "I don't know."

He: "But you know everybody."

She: "Nobody knows everybody."

There spoke the voice of authority.  Society in London is now so
multitudinous that even a bowing acquaintance between its less
conspicuous members is not universal.  It was Lady Jeune's mission to
bring together those who stood apart.  She swept into her net many a
foreigner who but for her might have remained a foreigner.  I will
venture to guess that Lady St. Helier's invitation was one of the few
unofficial invitations which Mr. Roosevelt accepted for his brief
stay in London.  They met twenty years ago or more when Mr. Roosevelt
was in London, and made friends.  He used to make friendly inquiries
about Mrs. Jeune, as Mrs. Jeune did about him, year by year, and I
often carried friendly messages from each to the other.  She will
surround him with delightful people, among whom there will be one or
two or three he had never heard of; and when he has met them will
wonder he had not known them always.

Lady St. Helier has published a book of Reminiscences which I have
not yet read.  I am therefore borrowing a little of her courage in
giving my own account of some matters which she may have dealt with,
and perhaps from a different point of view.  But I must take that
risk.  I prefer taking {377} it.  If my testimony, or anybody's
testimony, is to have any value it must be from its independence.

Mrs. Jeune lived for many years in Wimpole Street; then moved to
Harley Street, and then, after Lord St. Helier's death, in 1905, to
Portland Place.  Their place in the country was Arlington Manor, near
Newbury, in Berkshire, the scene of the battle, in 1643, in which
Lord Falkland, despairing of peace, says his biographer, threw his
life away.  There stands a monument on the battlefield erected not
many years ago with an inscription by the late Lord Carnarvon,
himself a kind of nineteenth-century Falkland, who threw away his
political future in an impossible attempt to come to terms with Mr.
Parnell, Lord Carnarvon also despairing of peace.  The inscription is
a piece of literature for ever.

At Arlington it was Lady Jeune's delight to gather about her some of
the men and women she really liked, and who really liked her.  The
house was not large, and was devoid of all other splendour than such
as the beauty of its position and view and park and gardens gave it.
But it was the home of comfort and charm.  Now it has passed into
other hands and Lady St. Helier has built herself another house,
known as Cold Ash.  But the memories of Arlington will never pass.

Perhaps it was in Arlington that Lady Jeune's gifts as hostess were
to be seen at their best.  It is one thing to take charge of a
dinner, another to handle a difficult team from Saturday to Monday,
or often longer.  Freedom of choice is a thing {378} which has to be
paid for.  But to her this was no task.  She had good hands, and a
touch so delicate that you were guided without knowing you had a bit
in your mouth.  It was a skill which all depended on kindness and
sympathy; and these belonged to her in overflowing measure.




{379}

CHAPTER XL

LORD AND LADY ARTHUR RUSSELL AND THE "SALON" IN ENGLAND

The recent death of Lady Arthur Russell diminished by one the number
of accomplished women of this generation who were distinguished in
the last generation also.  And it closed one of the few drawing-rooms
in London which have been _salon_ as well as drawing-room.  I suppose
Lady Arthur herself might have said as she looked about her and
looked back, "_Tout passe_."  The French phrase would have come
naturally to her tongue, for she was French: daughter of that Vicomte
de Peyronnet who was Minister to Charles X.  Yet one was not often,
at any rate not too often, reminded of her French origin.  So long
ago as 1865 Mlle. de Peyronnet married Lord Arthur Russell, brother
of the ninth Duke of Bedford and of the more famous Lord Odo Russell,
afterward the first Lord Ampthill, long British Ambassador at Berlin,
where he managed to be on good terms both with Prince Bismarck and
the present Emperor; a feat of diplomacy almost unique.

It is eighteen years since Lord Arthur died.  {380} He was
indisputably of the last or an earlier generation, having little in
common with the present.  People thought of Lord and Lady Arthur as
one; of itself enough to identify them with earlier times than those
when husband and wife are as likely to be met separately as together.
If there was a distinction it was at the breakfast hour, at
breakfasts in other houses.  There was no rule which excluded ladies
from these breakfasts, but there was a custom which held good in the
majority of cases.  The host's wife, if he had one, might or might
not appear.  But the group of men who were in the habit of
breakfasting at each other's houses included Lord Arthur Russell, Sir
Mountstuart Grant-Duff, Lord Reay, Mr. Charles Roundell, Mr. Albert
Rutson, sometimes Mr. Herbert Spencer, and many more.  You will
recognize Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff's name as that of the most
voluminous diarist of his time, and when you have read his six or
seven volumes the map of his life is spread out before you; an
honoured and useful life, a career of real distinction.  Lord Arthur
had not Sir Mountstuart's ambitions; he was content with his home and
his kin and his books.

His brother, the Duke, had a habit of referring to himself as
Hastings Russell.  An alteration at Woburn Abbey was proposed to him.
"It will not be made in the lifetime of Hastings Russell," his
answer.  He had a sense of humour, which Lloyd-George must think a
rare thing in a duke.  I drove once from Mentmore to Woburn {381}
Abbey with Lady Rosebery and her little girl, Lady Sibyl, then eight
or nine years old, with a gift of humorous perception rare at any age
in her sex.  The child had a balanced mind and a mature view of
things which might have belonged to eighteen as well as eight.  The
old place interested her and she asked the Duke to show her the
whole.  He was delighted and took us through room after room, each
stately and each a museum.  Presently we came to a rather bare,
scantily furnished, unhandsome room, and Lady Sibyl asked:

"But what is this?"

"This, my dear, is where I earn my living writing cheques for six
hours a day."

All three brothers, the Duke, Lord Odo, and Lord Arthur, had a quiet
humour in common.  Lord Odo had, besides humour, wit.  It was he,
while Ambassador in Berlin and during a visit of the Shah, when that
great potentate practised a less strict abstinence at dinner than his
religion demanded, who said to a neighbour: "After all, it's nothing
wonderful.  You must remember the proverb, '_La nuit tous les chat
sont ris_.  And Berlin used to echo with his caustic, good-natured
speeches.  Nor did Berlin, nor perhaps London, ever forget Prince
Bismarck's saying:

"I never knew an Englishman who spoke French well whom I would trust
except Lord Odo."

After which I dare not name two or three others whose French was not
less perfect than that which Prince Bismarck praised.  The Prince was
a good judge, as well he might be.  French had {382} become to him
almost a second mother tongue; as, indeed, it must be to a European
diplomatist.

To the list of men who were to be met in those days at breakfasts the
name of Mr. George Brodrick ought to be added.  He was a scholar, a
writer, a journalist, and one of those men who never could understand
why the world would not come round to his way of thinking and to him.
He had real abilities, which survived a university education.  He was
born into a respectable place in the world, of good family, with good
opportunities, but was never a man of the world.  To be of the world
in the true sense of the phrase a man must, I take it, have a fairly
accurate notion of his relation to the world.  That Brodrick had not.
His ambitions were political, and most of all parliamentary; but they
remained ambitions.  He could not understand how to commend himself
to a constituency; nor would he ever have conformed to the inexorable
standards of the House of Commons.  He expected the House and its
standards to conform to him.

Struggling with a fine courage for the unattainable, Mr. Brodrick
meantime occupied himself with journalism, and was for many years a
leader-writer on _The Times_.  The story which points his intense
self-concentration as well as any other connects itself with that
period.  He was a guest in a house in Scotland, and while there
continued composition of those more or less Addisonian and rather
academic essays which, when printed on the leader page of _The
Thunderer_, became {383} leaders, and very good leaders of their
kind.  He saw fit to write them in the drawing-room and in the
morning when men are commonly supposed to be elsewhere.  There were
ladies and they talked.  Presently Mr. Brodrick rose, marched over to
his hostess and said to her: "Lady X., I really must ask you to ask
these ladies not to carry on their conversation in this room.  I am
engaged upon a most important article and my thoughts are distracted
by talk which has no importance at all."

His appearance and dress were those of a man who gave no thought to
either.  He was rather tall, angular, uncouth, a stoop in the
shoulders, and his figure consisted of K's.  He had the projecting
teeth which French caricaturists used to give to English "meesses,"
in whom it is extremely rare.  Some person of genius untempered with
mercy called him "Curius Dentatus"; and the nickname lasted as long
as Brodrick lasted.  With his teeth, and his knees and elbows sawing
the air, and his umbrella, and his horse all ribs, he was the delight
of the Row.  Everybody liked him but everybody laughed at him.  In
the end he renounced journalism and renounced politics and became
Warden of Merton.  It was thought he would not be a good Head of a
College nor get on with his students, but he falsified all
predictions, governed wisely and well, won the affection of the boys
under him, and died lamented.  I suppose the explanation is that he
had at bottom a genuine sincerity of nature.

{384}

But I am wandering far and I return to Lady Arthur and her house and
her guests.

The form of _salon_ which Lady Arthur Russell preferred was a _salon_
preceded by a dinner.  It was never a large dinner.  Except in a few
houses, the banquets of forty or fifty people or more so dear to the
New York hostess are not given in London, nor is mere bigness
reckoned an element of social success.  In the biggest capital of the
world, where society far exceeds in numbers the society of any other
capital, people are content with moderation.  A dinner of forty
people is a lottery in which each guest has two chances and no more.
His luck and his hopes of being amused or interested depend wholly on
his right- and left-hand neighbours.

Lady Arthur, being by birth a Frenchwoman, had French ideas on this
and other subjects.  She did not choose her guests alphabetically,
nor by rank, nor for the sake of a passing notoriety.  Lions you
might meet at her house but they were not expected to roar; nor did
they.  Neither at dinner nor after dinner were more people asked than
could be managed.  Large parties are, of course, given in London but
they do not constitute a _salon_.  It is of the essence of a _salon_
that people shall not be left wholly to themselves, as in a large
party they must be, but shall be looked after.  Affinities do not
always find themselves.  They have to be brought together.  Others
have to be kept apart.  No authority is needed.  Intuitions, a quick
eye for situations, and a gentle skill in {385} distribution are the
gifts which go to the making of a good hostess.  These Lady Arthur
had.  By mere smartness she set little store.  I suppose the house in
Audley Square which Lord Arthur Russell built never passed for a
particularly smart house.  Of houses which are called and which are
"smart" there are scores in London.  Of _salons_ there are very few.
Herself the daughter of a French viscount, and with her husband
brother to a duke, Lady Arthur had no particular need to concern
herself about mere smartness.  That is a reputation not altogether
difficult to acquire.  The King's smile may confer it.  Not, perhaps,
the late Queen's of whom one more than usually brilliant butterfly
remarked:

"But the Queen, you know, never was in society."

Which perhaps, in the sense intended, was true.

If there were one note more marked than another in these Audley
Square assemblies it was a note of culture.  Ease and good breeding
and distinction may all be taken for granted.  It is of the things
which may not be taken for granted that I speak; and culture
certainly may not.  There are many houses in London in which it is
neither expected nor desired.  In New York, as we all know, it is
discouraged.  It would be discouraged anywhere if it were obtrusive
or pedantic.  Neither in a _salon_ nor anywhere else is it to
supersede good manners, but to blend with them.  To make a _salon_
possible there must be varied interests, play of mind, flexibility,
adaptability, and an unlimited supply of {386} tact.  Perhaps the
last includes all social gifts except those of the intellect.  It
covers a multitude of deficiencies.  Nay, there was Miss Ada Reeve, a
clever actress who last year was discussing on the stage questions of
costume (elsewhere than on the stage), and announced:

"If a woman has tact and diamonds she needs nothing else."

Most of the generalities which you have been reading are really
particulars and are descriptive of Lady Arthur Russell's receptions,
of which I have spoken as a _salon_.  I don't know that Lady Arthur
herself ever used the word, nor does it matter.  The thing, not the
name, is what matters.  There was culture, of a very unusual kind, on
both sides of the house.  There was, on Lady Arthur's side, her
French blood.  A _salon_ in Paris is no rare thing, and the reason
why it is not rare is because the society of Paris is French.  In the
Faubourg St. Germain, if nowhere else, the social traditions of the
old monarchy in its most brilliant days still survive.

One of the noticeable things about this house in Audley Square was
the presence of distinguished foreigners, and another was that they
seemed no longer to consider themselves foreigners.  They were at
home.  Nor was this true only of men and women of rank who might be
of kin to the Peyronnets, and at any rate were of their world, but of
artists and men of letters.  I will take M. Renan as an example.  He
had come to London to deliver the Hibbert lectures and a lecture on
Marcus Aurelius {387} before the Royal Institution in Albemarle
Street, of which the ever lamented Tyndall was then at the head.  I
had met Renan twice at other houses.  He seemed a little _dépaysé_.
In Audley Square this exotic and troubled air had disappeared.  He
had no English--at any rate, he spoke none--and his conversation, or
the conversation of the English with him, was therefore limited.  But
when he talked, and often when he did not, he was surrounded by a
crowd of listeners or, as the case might be, of lookers-on.  Hence it
was that he was so often kept, or left, standing, and his physical
frame was of such a kind that long standing was irksome to him, and
even painful.  I noticed one night that he seemed ill at ease, and
said to him I hoped he was not suffering.

"Yes," he said, "that is exactly it; I am _souffrant_, and if I have
to stand much longer I don't know what will happen."

"But why don't you sit down?"

"Oh, do you think I might?"

So I took him to a comfortable sofa and, once seated, an ineffable
sweet peace stole over his features.

A more tragic incident happened in Count von Arnim's case, the end of
whose career was all tragedy.  At this time he was still German
Ambassador in Paris, but Prince Bismarck had become distrustful of
him and the end was not far off.  The public, however, knew nothing;
least of all the English public, whose acquaintance with occurrences
on the Continent is apt to be remote.  For {388} aught that was known
in London, Count von Arnim was still the trusted representative of
Germany.  He bore a great name, he held a great position.  The
personal impression was a little disappointing.  He did not look like
the man to stand up to Prince Bismarck, who was a giant in stature as
well as in character; nor was he.  Slight, rather short, lacking in
distinction, meagre in face, with no hint of power in the shape of
his head or in his rather furtive expression, or in his carriage, he
seemed, on the whole, insignificant.  The eyes had no fire in them;
he looked older than his years, and unequal to his renown.

It was the custom in those distant days to serve tea in the
drawing-room after dinner.  Count von Arnim was asked if he would
take tea, left the lady by whom he was sitting, crossed the floor to
the tea-table, took his cup of tea from Lady Arthur's hand, and
started on his return.  The floor was of polished oak, with here and
there a rug; just the sort of floor to which he must have been used
to all his life.  But he slipped, his feet flew from under him, and
down came the Ambassador on his back.  It was an awful moment.  Men
went to his rescue, he was helped up, evidently much shaken, and
slowly found his way back to the sofa and to the lady who had been
his companion.  There were almost tears in his eyes.  When, a little
later, the news of his disgrace became known, a man said: "Well, if
he could not keep his feet in a drawing-room, what chance had he
against Prince Bismarck."




{389}

CHAPTER XLI

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY--QUEEN ALEXANDRA

When the Radical rages against the House of Lords he commonly selects
as the most deserving object of his wrath the Lords Spiritual.
Wicked as the Lords Temporal are, their episcopal comrades are more
wicked still.  This is, or was, more peculiarly the Nonconformist
point of view.  A Dissenter exists in order to hate a Bishop.  He
hates him as a rival in religion; a successful rival.  He hates him
as the visible sign of that social ascendancy of the Church which is
to the Dissenter not less odious than its political and
ecclesiastical primacy.

He hates him also because he is rich, or is supposed to be so.  The
Archbishop of Canterbury's £15,000 a year, his Palace at Lambeth, and
his Old Palace at Canterbury are all alike to the true Dissenter so
many proofs of the Devil's handiwork.  The Archbishop of York is a
sinner of less degree only because his Devil's pension is less by
£5000 a year.  The Bishop of London has the same salary as the
Archbishop of York, and his iniquity, though he is only a Bishop, is
therefore {390} the same.  There is, then, a descending scale of
financial depravity.  Beginning, next after London, with the Bishop
of Durham at £7000, we come to the Bishop of Ely with £5500, the
Bishops of Oxford, of Bath and Wells, and of Salisbury with £5000
each, and so, by easy stages of lessening vice, to the pauper Bishop
of Sodor and Man who gets but a pittance of £1500 a year.

Our Dissenting friend waxes hotter as he reflects that one Archbishop
is paid three times as much as a Prime Minister, and the other twice
as much, while three or four more Bishops receive stipends larger
than the present colleague of Mr. Lloyd-George and Mr. Winston
Churchill.  These episcopal salaries are even higher than is that of
Mr. Lloyd-George, or that of Mr. Winston Churchill, who has to
content himself with £5000 a year while discharging not a few of the
duties of the Prime Minister, on the platform and, if all reports be
true, in the Cabinet itself.

This, perhaps, is rather incidental.  I was explaining why the
Dissenter hates the Bishop.  The attitude of the Bishops to the vital
question of Education augments the animosity of the Dissenter.  Their
conservatism in general politics inflames their opponents still
further.  To the Nonconformist orator they are an unfailing target,
and he ought to be very much obliged to them for supplying him with
ammunition, but is not.  Mr. Bright thundered against them and their
"adulterous origin."  Mr. Bright's wrath, whether rightly directed or
{391} not, was in itself a noble thing; the passion of a great soul
greatly stirred.

Just at present the Bishops are a little less obnoxious to the
Radical than usual, because they followed the Radical lead on the
Licensing Bill.  That Bill evoked animosities not less bitter than
the Education Bill.  The Bishops made it a question of temperance,
holding that by higher licensing fees and heavier taxes on
public-houses and on liquor the consumption of spirits would be
lessened.  They argued that if there were fewer public-houses there
would be fewer drinkers and drunkards.  They applauded Mr. Asquith
when he proposed that on Sundays a man should walk six miles before
he could have a glass of beer; for that is what the _bona fide_
traveller clause came to.  If they had the influence with their
fellow-Peers they are supposed to have they could have prevented the
rejection of the Licensing Bill.  But they could not do that.  Then
the Radicals turned on them because they could not control a House
where their very presence is to the Radical a continuing offence.
"The Brewers are stronger than the Bishops!" cried the Radical, to
whose happiness a victim of one kind or another is essential.

The Archbishop of Canterbury led his brethren of the Episcopal Bench
in this matter of Temperance, as he has led them on other matters.
He is their natural leader.  He is the Primate of all England; the
Head of the Church, next after the King.  His abilities and character
are of a kind to fit him for leadership.  I suppose it may sound
{392} like a paradox if I suggest that for him who holds the highest
ecclesiastical post in the land the first requisite is that he should
be a man of the world.  But it is true, and it is equally true of all
Bishops.  It was true of the late Bishop Potter, who was not only the
most eminent dignitary of the American Episcopal Church, but almost
the first citizen of New York.  The Bishops have to administer each
his own diocese, and a diocese is a province.  They must understand
how to govern.  They must understand men and, so far as possible,
women.  They must be men of affairs.  Whether they know much Greek or
Hebrew is of quite secondary importance.  Knowledge of that kind is
ornamental; the other kind is essential.  They ought to be
diplomatists also; skilled not so much in controversy as in avoiding
controversy.

The present Archbishop is all this.  His public career proves it, and
if you come to know him he will leave a very distinct personal
impression on your mind.  It was my fortune to meet him at Dalmeny
House not many years ago, while he was still Bishop of Winchester.
His visit lasted some days, and there have not been many days more
interesting.  Except for his clothes, and perhaps for a certain
sweetness of manner, you need not have supposed him to be a Bishop.
He did not talk shop.  He talked as others talk who are not of the
Church.  At once you saw he was broad-minded.  I do not use the word
broad in its ecclesiastical sense.  There was not a suggestion of the
apostolic or missionary attitude.  That {393} was for another place
and other circumstances.  _Nihil humani_ might have been his motto,
if he had a motto.  He talked well, clearly, picturesquely, and in
the tone which any guest in a country house might use.  He did not
require you to remember that he was a Bishop, or even a priest.  He
was just himself.  His knowledge and good sense and felicity of
thought and speech were his own.

Queen Alexandra came to tea.  The Archbishop, as the Rev. Randall
Davidson, had been for eight years Dean of Windsor, and naturally had
seen much of the Royal Family.  I suppose I may say that he had in
time become a trusted friend of the Queen, perhaps her most trusted
adviser.  People who opposed his promotion called him a courtier, as
any man who lives much in the atmosphere of courts may be.  It was
easy to see from the Queen's manner how much she liked the Bishop and
looked to him for counsel.  If a point were in question, it was to
him she turned.  The Princess Victoria was with the Queen, and there
too was a friendship.

Those were days when affairs in the United States were in a critical
state, or seemed to be, and when we were beginning to think that the
good-will of other countries might be important to us; as it was, and
always will be, as ours is to them.  So I hope I shall not do amiss
if I repeat now a word which the Queen then said to me:

"I hope all the news from your own country is good.  We all hope
that."

{394}

That expressed the Queen's personal, womanly sympathy, and something
more.  Far gone were the days when English sympathies were for our
enemies.  They are now for us, and Queen Victoria was our friend and
Queen Alexandra and the late King were our friends.  They shared the
friendship of their people.  The Queen spoke for herself and for
them.  The Bishop stood by Her Majesty's side as she said it.  His
face brightened.  He knew, as well as anybody, how much it meant.




{395}

CHAPTER XLII

A SCOTTISH LEGEND

Among the recollections of Scotland which come thronging on from
other days, the supernatural always plays a part.  I admit they are
not easy to deal with.  If you believe in ghosts or in legends, a
great majority of your readers do not believe in you.  If you are a
sceptic, the credulous pass you by with an air of pained superiority.
If you neither believe nor disbelieve, you are set down as an
agnostic; and there are great numbers of excellent people to whom the
word agnostic implies reproach.  An agnostic, however, is not one who
believes or disbelieves, but who, whatever his private conviction may
be, declines either to affirm or deny the truth of the matter in
question.

But, although an unbeliever, I know of one story connecting itself
with a famous legend, which is, so far as it goes, absolutely true,
and this I am going to tell exactly as it happened.

In 1883 I was staying at Brechin Castle with Lord and Lady Dalhousie,
and Lady Dalhousie proposed one morning that we should drive over to
Cortachy Castle to lunch.  Brechin Castle and Cortachy Castle are
both in Forfarshire and {396} fourteen miles apart.  At that time
Cortachy Castle was let to the late Earl of Dudley; the seventh Earl
of Airlie to whom it belonged having lately died.  There's a tragic
atmosphere for the eighth Earl was killed at Diamond Hill in South
Africa in 1900; one of the many men of rank and position and fortune
and everything to live for who, in the early disastrous days of the
Boer War, gave up everything to fight for the flag and for their
country and sovereign.

The family name is Ogilvy, and the family name and title are both
old, going back to at least 1491.  They were Ambassadors and great
officers of State, and the seventh Lord Ogilvy was made an Earl.  Two
acts of attainder are testimony to the active part they took in those
troubled times, and to their capacity for holding fast to the losing
side.  They were in the Earl of Mar's rebellion in 1715, and fought
for the Pretender at Culloden.

Besides all that, the Ogilvys carried on for generations a feud with
the Campbells.  On both sides there were burnings and harryings and
much shedding of blood.  There's no need to ask which of them was the
more in fault.  The standards of those days were not as the standards
of ours; and there was a good deal less of that homage which vice now
pays to virtue.  So it happened that one day early in the seventeenth
century the Ogilvys found themselves besieged in Cortachy Castle by
the then Earl of Argyll or his lieutenant.  The besiegers sent in a
herald with a drummer-boy to demand the surrender of the castle.  The
{397} Ogilvy people took the drummer-boy and hanged him over the
battlements, his mother looking from the camp outside.  As the
fashion was in those days, she launched a curse, or more than one, at
the Ogilvys, and a prophecy.  She foretold that whenever, through all
the ages to come, death or disaster should visit them they would
first hear the beating of the drum by the drummer-boy.

Such is the story as it was told to me.  It is a well-known
tradition, and you are told also that her prophecy has been strictly
fulfilled.  The beating of the drum by the drummer-boy has been heard
at least once in each generation during the centuries that ever since
then have witnessed the varying fortunes of this family.  That is a
matter as to which I neither affirm nor deny.  How could I?  I was
not there.  But the narrative is a necessary preface to the account
of the day when the events I set out to describe did actually occur.

At luncheon Lady Dudley, known then and still as the beautiful Lady
Dudley, told us that when Lord Hardwicke, one of the guests staying
with them, came down to breakfast that morning he asked her whether
the drummer-boy legend applied to the tenants of the castle for the
time being or only to the Ogilvys.

"Oh, only to the Ogilvys, of course."

"Then you won't mind my telling you that I heard the drummer-boy
beating his drum last night."

And Lady Dudley added:

"I did not mind in the least.  Whether I believe {398} in the menace
or not, I never heard that it had anything to do with anybody but the
Ogilvys.  If it could effect anybody in this case it would be Lord
Hardwicke, who heard it, and not us who did not hear it."

With which we naturally agreed.  We finished our lunch peacefully and
pleasantly, and at three o'clock Lady Dalhousie and I drove back to
Brechin Castle, where there were in all twelve guests.  We dined as
usual at a quarter past eight, and shortly before ten the ladies left
the dining-room.  Just after ten the door opened again.  Lady
Dalhousie sailed in, her face brilliant with excitement, but her
manner serene as usual, and said to her husband:

"Dalhousie, Cortachy Castle is burnt to the ground; the Dudleys are
here and you must come at once."

At the drawing-room door stood Lady Dudley, pale and beautiful, and
warned us that her husband knew as yet nothing of what had happened,
and asked us to be careful to say nothing which should alarm him.  He
was at that time very ill, and his mind was affected.  The rest of
the evening after we went into the drawing-room passed without any
mention of the disaster to Cortachy.  Lord Dudley sat down to his
rubber of whist, won it, and went to bed not knowing that the house
in which he had expected to sleep had been destroyed by fire.  When
he was told next morning he said, "Very well,"  and turned again to
his newspaper.

The explanation was this: After Lady Dalhousie {399} and I left
Cortachy Lady Dudley took her husband for a drive, as usual.  As they
were returning, late, they were stopped by a messenger who handed
Lady Dudley a note from the factor, saying the castle was on fire and
there was no hope of saving it.

"What is it?" asked Lord Dudley.

"Oh, nothing much," answered his wife.  "The kitchen chimney has been
on fire and the place is in a mess.  I think we had better drive over
to Brechin and ask the Dalhousies to give us dinner."

This ready wit carried the day and saved Lord Dudley the shock which
his wife dreaded.  But the whole company of guests at Cortachy were
also left homeless, and they also came to Brechin and slept there.  I
never quite understood how, for Brechin Castle can put up, in a
normal way, fourteen people, and we slept that night fifty-six.  But
Lady Dalhousie besides being a reigning beauty, had practical talents
and managed it all as if an inundation of unexpected guests were an
everyday affair.

There is one thing to be added.  Past Cortachy Castle flows a shallow
stream with a stony bed.  It was early in September.  The water was
very low, and what there was rippled and broke over the stones with a
noise which, at night and amid uncertain slumbers, might easily be
mistaken for the beating of a drum by a man whose mind was full of
the drummer-boy story.  After I had heard about Lord Hardwicke at
luncheon I had walked along the banks of this burn, and the faint
likeness {400} of the waters beating on the stones to the beating of
a drum occurred to me.  Perhaps a mere fancy on my part.  I don't
press it.  If anybody prefers to believe in the legend I don't ask
him to believe in my conjecture.  By all means let him nourish his
own faith in his own way.

He may like to know, moreover, that Lord Hardwicke, now dead, was one
of the last persons in the world to conceive or cherish an illusion.
A well-known man of the world; in his way a celebrity, if only known
for his hats, which were the glossiest ever seen outside of the stock
Exchange.  He had gone the pace; "climbed outside of every stick of
property he possessed," said one of his friends, and had acquired a
vast and varied stock of experience in the process.  On the face of
it, not at all the kind of man to believe too much; nor to believe in
anything, as was said of Mr. Lowe, which he could not bite.

He came into the dining-room that night at Brechin and stayed on the
next day.  Among Lady Dalhousie's guests was Mr. Huxley.  Certainly a
man of the world was Mr. Huxley, but of a different world from Lord
Hardwicke's.  They had never met.  You might have said they had not a
subject in common.  But they talked to each other, and to the
surprise of the company it presently became evident that they got on
together.  I said as much to Mr. Huxley afterward.  He answered in
his decisive way:

"Don't make any mistake.  Lord Hardwicke has powers of mind for which
even his own set, so {401} far as I know, has never given him credit.
We did not talk about the weather.  He was a man who would put his
mind to yours no matter what you talked about, and it would take you
all your time to keep up with him."

Years afterward I reminded Mr. Huxley of this, and asked him had he
ever met Lord Hardwicke again.

"No, never; and I regret it.  But we did not move quite in the same
orbits.  I have hardly seen anybody since who made such an impression
on me.  It's not a question of orbits, it's a question of men."

I asked Lord Hardwicke about the same time whether he remembered
meeting Mr. Huxley.

"Remember?  How many Huxleys are there in the world that you should
suppose I could forget this one?"

It is one of the distinctions of English life in general, and of
London, to which New York will perhaps some day attain, that sooner
or later it brings together men and women, each of the first rank in
his or her own department and each unlike the other.  They have long
understood here that a society which is not various ends in monotony;
and of all forms of dulness that is the dullest.




{402}

CHAPTER XLIII

A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE OF THE LATE EMPEROR FREDERICK

It used to be said that English sympathies were given to Austria and
not to Prussia in the war of 1866 because the Austrian railway
officials were so much more polite than the Prussian.  Of the fact
that the English wished Austria and not Prussia to win there is no
doubt.  The railway reason was perhaps a reason, if not the reason.
The organization of Prussia was at that time, as the organization of
Germany, civil and military, now is, the finest in the world.  But
flexibility is not one of its merits; still less is it distinguished
by consideration for the rights of the non-military and non-official
German world.  The English were then, as now, a travelling people;
and their authority, if I may use such a word, on the Continent was
greater, or seemed greater, then than now, because the competition
was less.  Americans had not then begun to swarm across the Atlantic
as tourists, nor was the American language heard on every hill-side
of the Tyrol and on the battlefields of Silesia.  It was all English,
and the English beyond question found Austria a more agreeable
pleasure-ground {403} than the wind-swept plateaus of her grim
neighbour to the north.

In those days and for many years to come the English had taken and
kept possession of Homburg, the pretty watering-place near Frankfort.
As in so many other matters, the fashion was set by the late King,
then Prince of Wales, whom his fellow-subjects, and presently not a
few Americans, followed in a loyal spirit.  They followed him not
less loyally when he forsook Homburg and journeyed further afield to
Marienbad.  For the truth is the Germans, and especially the North
Germans, had rediscovered Homburg, and the streets where for so many
years the English accent had been heard, and almost no other, grew
suddenly hoarse with Teutonic gutturals.  I don't say that this
invasion drove him elsewhere.  He was himself as much German as
English.  But when his yearly visits in August ceased the English
surrendered Homburg to its real owners, albeit they rather resented
what they called their usurpation.

There was, however, one English woman who clung to it, the Empress
Frederick, the late King's eldest sister and Princess Royal of the
United Kingdom.  Her Royal Highness had married the Crown Prince of
Prussia, afterward the Emperor Frederick, in 1858, being then just
over seventeen years of age.  For many years she spent part of each
summer in the old Schloss, just outside the little town; then later
built herself a showy villa on the other flank, and died there in
August, 1901.  {404} I don't think the late King had ever revisited
Homburg after that date.

She liked the place; liked its pure air, its scenery, the hills, and
woods amid which it lay embosomed; its pleasant walks and the
pleasant life its visitors led, and some of its residents, though,
except the Princess herself, and the hotel-keepers and the garrison
for the time being, I hardly know who the residents were.  It was,
moreover, a great resort of invalids who were not ill enough to be
sent to a serious cure.  Many a doctor, in London and elsewhere, had
for a maxim: "When in doubt, choose Homburg."  Its waters could do
you no harm.  Its climate was sure to do you good.  And its
animation, its gaiety, its brilliancy even, during the six weeks'
season were all so many tonics for the _malade imaginaire_.

Such acquaintance as I had with the Crown Princess I owed to the late
King, who one day asked me if I knew his sister.  When I said no he
answered, "Oh, but you should; I must arrange it," and proposed that
I should come to tea the next afternoon at his villa, then the Villa
Imperiale, when the Crown Princess would be there.  Arriving, I found
myself the only guest.  I was presented to the Princess.  In figure,
in face and manner, she was very like her mother, the late Queen.
The figure was not so stout, the face not so rubicund, the manner
less simple, and therefore with less authority; but the resemblance
in each particular was marked.  There was even a resemblance in
dress; or it might be truer to say that both the late {405} Queen and
her eldest daughter showed an indifference to the art of personal
adornment.  Certain terms have become stereotyped in various worlds
of art.  Early Victorian, mid-Victorian, or merely Victorian--are
these labels now used by way of compliment or even of mere
description?  I am afraid they are one and all terms of
disparagement.  But it was said truly of the late Queen that it did
not matter what she wore.  Robes did not make the Queen.  Whatever
she wore she was Queen, and looked the Queen.

The Princess had, however, a much greater vivacity than her mother.
At moments it became restlessness, and the mind, I thought, could
never be in repose.  There was no beauty but there was distinction;
and in this again she resembled the Queen.  After her marriage and
down to the day when the Emperor Frederick's death extinguished her
ambitions, the Princess had lived in a dream-world of her own
creation, of which I will say more in a moment.  Her beliefs were so
strong, her conviction that she knew what was best for those about
her was so complete, that to these beliefs and this conviction the
facts had to adjust themselves as best they could.

Even for the purpose of this audience that necessity became evident.
I had been presented, of course, as an American.  Almost at once Her
Royal Highness plunged into American affairs.  She was keenly
interested in educational and social problems, and explained to me
the position of women in the United States with reference to these
{406} problems.  It appeared she had a correspondent in Chicago, as I
understood, a lady who had been presented to Her Royal Highness in
Berlin, and from this lady had derived a whole budget of impressions.
They were extremely interesting, if only because they were, to me,
altogether novel.  But as I was not asked to confirm them, I of
course, said nothing.  Now and then a question was put which I
answered as well as I could, but for the most part the Princess's
talk flowed on smoothly and swiftly during the better part of an
hour.  She talked with clearness, with energy, with an almost
apostolic fervour, the voice penetrating rather than melodious.  I
said to myself: "All this may be true of Chicago, but of what else is
it true?"  The Princess had indeed given Chicago as the source of her
information, but it seemed to me that she generalized from the Windy
City to the rest of the United States, and of such part as I knew I
did not think it a good account.

After a time Chicago was dismissed and the talk drifted away into
less difficult channels.  But the position was always much the same.
The Princess talked and I listened; the most interesting of all
positions.  I had heard--everybody had heard--a great deal about her
views on politics and on Anglo-German relations and on the internal
affairs of Germany.  On some of these matters she touched briefly; on
all she threw a bright light, for no matter what the immediate topic
of her discourse, her attitude of mind toward other topics and toward
higher matters of State became visible.  {407} Never for a moment did
this stream of talk stop or grow sluggish.  Carlyle summed up
Macaulay, for whom he had no great respect, in the phrase: "Flow on,
thou shining river."  He might, in a sardonic mood, have done the
same for this Princess.  After a time I found myself in a dilemma.
An hour and a half had passed; agreeably and brilliantly, but it had
passed, and I had been for some time expecting the signal which would
indicate that my audience was at an end.  It did not come.  The
Princess talked on.  I knew Her Royal Highness had a dinner
engagement, and I knew I had, and it was already half-past six, and
Homburg dinners are early.  Finally I said I was afraid I had abused
Her Royal Highness's kindness, and might I be permitted to withdraw.
The permission was given, the Princess held out her hand, and I went.

It was an illuminating interview.  It threw light on events to come
as well as on those of the past.  Here was a great lady, full of
intelligence and gifts, yet taking views of great public questions
which she held almost alone.  She had made many enemies.  She was to
make many more.  In Berlin I had heard much.  Prince Bismarck's
distrust of the Crown Princess, and of the Crown Prince on her
account, was known.  It was shared by multitudes of Germans.  They
believed, rightly or wrongly, that she wanted to Anglicize Germany.
Her ascendancy over her husband was believed to be complete, and
because it was complete the day of the Crown Prince's accession to
the throne was expected with dread.  During his short reign of {408}
three months--March 9th to June 15th, 1888--these gloomy forecasts
could be neither confirmed nor dispelled.  But they existed, they
were general, and they modified the grief of the German people at the
melancholy ending of what had promised to be a great career.

I suppose it must be said that the Crown Princess had furnished some
material for German forebodings as to a German future shaped by her
or by her influence.  She talked openly.  She told all comers that
what Germany needed was parliamentary government as it was understood
and practised in England.  Against that the German face was set as
flint.  In little things, as in great, she made no secret of her
preference for what was English over what was German.  When the rooms
the Crown Prince and Crown Princess were to occupy in the Palace of
Charlottenburg, outside Berlin, were to be refurnished, she insisted
on bringing upholsterers from London to do the work.  Naturally the
Berlin people did not like that.

Judgment was not her strong point, nor was tact.  If I am to say what
was her strong point I suppose it would be sincerity.  Her gifts of
mind were dazzling rather than sound.  Her impulses were not always
under control.  Her animosities, once roused, never slept, as Prince
Bismarck well knew.  Her will was so vehement as sometimes to obscure
her perceptions.  But hers was a loyal nature and whatever one may
think of her politics, it is impossible not to regret that the
promise of a great ambition should have come to so tragic an end.




{409}

CHAPTER XLIV

I

EDWARD THE SEVENTH AS PRINCE OF WALES--PERSONAL INCIDENTS

Everything, or almost everything, has been said about King Edward the
Seventh, every tribute paid him from every quarter of the world; and
the mourning of his people is the best tribute of all.  I should like
to add an estimate from a different point of view and a tribute, but
I suppose they would have no proper place in these papers, and I
confine myself therefore to memories.  I will go back to the period
when he was Prince of Wales, and to the place where he put off most
of the splendours belonging to his rank, and where most of the man
himself was to be seen; not once nor twice, but for years in
succession.

Homburg was to the Prince of Wales a three weeks' holiday.  I do not
think he took the medical side of it very seriously.  He drank the
waters and walked, as the doctors bade him, but with respect to diet
he seemed to be his own doctor and his prescriptions were not severe.
But then nobody, the local physicians excepted, ever did take Homburg
{410} very seriously as a cure.  What the Prince liked was the
freedom, of which he was himself the author.  On occasions of
ceremony and in the general course of his life at home, strict
etiquette was enforced.  At Homburg the Prince used his dispensing
power and put aside everything but the essentials.  He lived in a
hired villa.  He wore lounging suits in the daytime--sometimes of a
rather flamboyant colour--and a soft grey hat.  In the evening a
black dining jacket, black tie, black waistcoat, black trousers, and
a soft black Homburg hat.  The silk hat and the dress coat and white
tie or white waistcoat were unknown.  Most of the officers of his
household were left at home, but General Sir Stanley Clark was always
with him.

His way of life was as informal as his dress.  He was there to amuse
himself and it was an art he understood perfectly.  Homburg is a
village, but it had, or had at that time, many resources.  The three
or four streets of which the place consisted were so many rendezvous
for the visitors.  The lawn-tennis grounds were another.  The walks
in the woods were delightful.  There were drives over the hills and
far away, in the purest air in Germany.  If you tired of the little
watering-place or its guests, there was Frankfort, only eight miles
distant, with resources of a more varied kind.  But in Homburg itself
the Kursaal, though there had been no gambling since 1869, and the
hotels, were always open and sometimes lively.

What the Prince liked was society, in one form or another.  The
open-air life suited him.  It was {411} sufficiently formal but less
formal than indoors.  He liked strolling about and meeting
acquaintances or friends.  When you had once seen His Royal Highness
leaning against the railings of a villa--the villa stood each in its
own ground--and talking to a lady leaning out of the first floor
window, and this interview lasting a quarter of an hour, you felt
that the conditions of life and the relations of royalty to other
ranks in life had taken on a quite new shape in Homburg.

But the attitude of respect was maintained.  Certain formalities were
never forgotten.  The Prince was always addressed as "Sir" or as
"Your Royal Highness."  But these observances were not irksome, nor
was conversation restricted or stiffened by the obligations of
deference or by the accepted conventionalities which, after all, were
more matters of form than of substance.  And in his most careless
moods the Prince had a dignity which was the more impressive for
being apparently unconscious.  Nobody ever forgot what was due to
him; or ever forgot it twice.  It was an offence he did not pardon;
or pardoned only in those who could not remember what they had never
known.  A foreigner, an American, who erred in pure ignorance might
count on forgiveness.

The Prince gave many luncheons and dinners, almost always at Ritter's
or at the Kursaal.  I should think there was never a day when he did
not play the host.  The dinners at the Kursaal were given on the
terrace, always crowded with other dinner-parties.  At Ritter's they
were on the {412} piazza.  This open-air hospitality was the
pleasanter because it was so seldom possible in England.  He had
brought the art of entertaining to perfection.  He put his guests,
even those who stood most in awe of royalty, at their ease.  The
costume perhaps helped.  When a company of people were in dining
jackets and the men wearing their soft black hats, even at table, by
the Prince's command, etiquette became a less formidable thing.  The
Prince talked easily, fluently, and well.  He might ask a guest whom
he liked to sit next him, ignoring distinctions of rank, but during
the dinner he would talk, sooner or later, to everybody.  There might
be a dozen guests, a number seldom exceeded.  I will give you one
example of the dialogue which went on, and no more.  The late Duke of
Devonshire, at that time the Marquis of Hartington, was sitting
nearly opposite the Prince, but at some distance, and this colloquy
took place:

"Hartington, you ought not to be drinking all that champagne."

"No, sir; I know I oughtn't."

"Then why do you do it?"

"Well, sir, I have made up my mind that I had rather be ill now and
then than always taking care of myself."

"Oh, you think that now, but when the gout comes what do you think
then?"

"Sir, if you will ask me then I will tell you.  I do not anticipate."

The Prince laughed and everybody laughed.  And Lord Hartington, for
all his gout, lived to be {413} seventy-four, one of the truest
Englishmen of his time or of any time.

Among the Americans who were presented to the Prince at Homburg were
Mr. Depew and Mark Twain.  I was not in Homburg when Mr. Depew first
came, but I asked one of the Prince's equerries to arrange the
presentation for Mr. Depew, and I wrote to Lady Cork begging her to
do what she could for him.  So the formalities were duly transacted.
The Prince took a liking to the American, asked him to dine, put him
on his right hand, and listened to his stories with delight.  He told
me afterward that Depew was a new experience.  He asked him again and
again, and the next year also; I believe several years, or as long as
Depew went to Homburg.  The Prince said:

"Depew's stories were not all good, but he told the bad ones so well
that they were better than the good."

My letter to Lady Cork had a fate I did not foresee, though I ought
to have foreseen.  When she told the Prince that I had written her
about Depew she had my manuscript in her hand.  "Is that Smalley's
letter?  May I see it?" asked the Prince; took it and read the whole.
It happened that I was staying at the time with one of her married
daughters, and there was a deal good of family gossip in the letter.
When the Prince handed it back there was in his eyes a gleam of that
humour so often seen there, and he said:

"Now I know some of the things I have been wanting to know."

{414}

And Lady Cork answered:

"Sir, we have nothing to conceal from Your Royal Highness."

There was, of course, an intimacy which put the Prince on his honour.

Mark Twain was staying at Nauheim, some twelve miles away.  He had
driven into Homburg and was wandering about the place when he was
pointed out to the Prince, and was presented.  Mark Twain had at the
time no very great care about his personal appearance, and was very
shabbily dressed.  He was the "Tramp Abroad."  At first I don't think
he much interested the Prince.  His slowness of speech and his
unusual intonations were not altogether prepossessing.  However, when
he had taken his leave the Prince seemed to think he wished to see
him again and said:

"I should like to ask him to dinner.  Do you think he has a dining
jacket?"

The risk, whatever it might be, was taken, the invitation was sent,
and Mark came to dinner, dining jacket and all.  But he did not care
to adapt himself to the circumstances; considering, perhaps, that the
circumstances ought to adapt themselves to him.  The meeting was not
a great success, and, so far as I know, was never repeated.  Socially
speaking, the Mississippi Pilot was an _intransigeant_ at times, and
this was one of the times.  He could not, I suppose, overcome his
drawling manner of speech nor reduce his interminable stories to
dinner-table limits.  He had the air of usurping more than his share
of the conversation and of the time, which {415} he certainly did not
mean to.  Intentions, unluckily, count for little.  Men are judged by
what they do, and the general impression was not as favourable to
Mark on this occasion as it would have been if he had been better
known.  Among all Princes and Potentates there was never one more
willing to make allowances or less exacting in respect to trivial
matters than Mark's host.  But, after all, he was Prince of Wales and
the future King of England, and if you were not prepared to recognize
that, it was open to you to stay away.

Mark Twain, at any rate, was not one of the Americans who followed
the Prince to Homburg.  He met the Prince almost by accident, and
returned from Nauheim by the Prince's invitation for this not very
successful dinner.  His Republicanism was perhaps of a rebellious
kind, and possibly, though without desiring to, he gave the Prince to
understand as much.  Some of Mark's compatriots went far in the
opposite direction, especially one or two American women.  There was
a handsome American girl who had found means to be presented to the
Prince; no difficult matter for a pretty woman at any time.  Then she
sent him a photograph of himself and begged him to sign it.  As I was
passing the Prince one afternoon in the street he stopped me and
pulled a parcel out of his pocket, saying:

"This is a photograph Miss X. sent me to sign, and I have signed it,
and I was just going to leave it for her at the hotel.  But I am
afraid to.  I {416} don't know what she may not ask me next.  Would
you mind leaving it for me?"

The Prince did not see, but as I went in I saw, on the porch, the
girl herself.  She must have looked on at what happened and I am not
at all sure she did not hear what the Prince said.  None the less,
she accepted the signed photograph joyfully, and it always had a
place of honour in New York.  "Wasn't it kind of His Royal Highness
to give it to me?" queried this beautiful being, not knowing that the
true story had been told me.  When I made my report to the Prince I
remarked casually that Miss X. had been sitting on the veranda and
might have seen what took place.  "I hope she heard also," exclaimed
the Prince.  But he did not quite mean that.  At any rate, he
relented afterward and was seen to be talking to the girl, whose eyes
he could not but admire.



II

PRINCE OF WALES AND KING OF ENGLAND--THE PERSONAL SIDE

I need not say much about the public life of the late King nor about
the part he played in the Empire of the world.  But there are certain
passages in his private life and in his relations with the late Queen
which had an effect on his career, and may be related in whole or in
part.

The greatness of this reign is the more remarkable because experience
of public affairs came to the {417} King late in life.  He was in his
sixtieth year when he came to the Throne, and during the forty years
when he might have been acquiring invaluable experience he had been
sedulously excluded by the late Queen from all share in the business
of State.  So much is known, and so much is sometimes stated in the
English Press, though stated with caution.  It is the truth, but it
is not all the truth.  I believe it to be also true, that after the
death of the Prince Consort, in 1861, the Queen desired the Prince of
Wales to take up some portion of the duties of his father, and
offered him a place as her private secretary.  The Prince, for
whatever reason, declined it.

He was not much over twenty years of age, and never in any man,
perhaps, was the desire of _la joie de vivre_ stronger.  Some years
later a truer sense of his position and duties and opportunities came
to him.  He offered to accept, and besought the Queen's permission to
accept, the post she had first offered him.  Her Majesty made answer
that the post had been filled, and never from that time onward did
she open to the Prince of Wales the door she then closed.  She left
him to amuse himself, to choose his own associates and his own
occupations.  She herself spent six hours a day--never less, and
often much more--in reading dispatches and State papers of all kinds.
The Prince saw none of them, was present at no interviews with
Ministers, knew nothing at first hand of the conduct of affairs.

Yet the Prince had, in the face of these {418} discouragements, an
appetite for public business.  He was well informed about it, but
only as an outsider is well informed.  Naturally, the opinion had
grown up that not much was to be expected of the Prince as King.  The
death of the late Queen was thought to close an era.  It had not
occurred to any one, except perhaps to his nearest friends, to think
of the new King as well equipped for his Kingship.  True, Lord
Salisbury, than whom there could be no higher authority, speaking in
the House of Lords, had said of the new King upon his accession that
he had "a profound knowledge of the working of our constitution and
conduct of our affairs."  Lord Salisbury had had his exceptional
means of knowing, and he expressed his own opinion, a true opinion,
but not a general opinion.  I suppose Lord Rosebery, long intimate
with the Prince, might have said as much.  But to most men such
expressions came as a surprise.

I met Sir Francis Jeune at dinner on the evening after the first
Privy Council held by the King, which Sir Francis had gone down to
Osborne to attend.  He began at once to describe the scene:

"The King astonished us all.  We had all known him as Prince of
Wales.  It became clear we had yet to know him as King.  His air of
authority sat on him as if he had worn it always.  He spoke with
weight, as a King should speak.  It was plain he had come to the
Throne to rule."

Ask the Ministers and other great personages who stood to him in
official relations.  Mr. Asquith has answered for them all:

{419}

"I speak from a privileged and close experience when I say that,
wherever he was or whatever may have been his apparent
preoccupations, in the transaction of the business of the State there
were never any arrears, there was never any trace of confusion, there
was never any moment of avoidable delay."

In the opinion of the King their time and his belonged to the public,
and neither was to be wasted.

The whole truth about the late King's mission to Paris has, I think,
never been told.  It was not expedient that it should be told at the
time, nor was it generally known.  But until it is known full justice
cannot be done to the King's courage and wisdom, or to his direct
personal influence on the course of great affairs.  For it was the
man himself, the King himself, who won this great victory; not by
diplomacy, not by statecraft, but because he was the man he was.  I
tell the story briefly, but the outlines will be enough.

When the King went to Paris to lay the foundations of a new
friendship between France and England the feeling of the French
against the English ran high.  They had not forgotten nor forgiven
the sympathies of England with Germany in 1870.  They had not
forgotten their own retreat from Egypt in 1882, and they scored up
their own mistake against England.  They had not forgotten Fashoda.
The King was warned not to go.  The French Government warned him.
They could protect him, they said, against violence but not against
insult.  His own Government thought his visit, {420} in the
circumstances, ill-advised.  Against all this he set his own
conviction that the moment had come to make an effort for a better
understanding between the two peoples.  Danger did not deter him.
For personal danger he cared nothing, and against the danger that any
discourtesy to himself might embitter the two nations he set the hope
of success.  Like the statesman he was, he calculated forces and
calculated wisely.  He knew that the French, and especially the
Parisians, had always liked him personally and he resolved to risk it.

Neither his courage nor his sagacity was at fault.  At first things
went badly.  When he reached the railway station he was received in
silence.  When he drove from the station to the Embassy there was not
a cheer.  As he went about Paris the next day the attitude of the
Parisians was still sullen, if not hostile.  But the presence and
personality of the King began after a time to soften hardness.
Before nightfall a cheer or two had been heard in the streets, and
next day all Paris was once more all smiles and applause.  The King
had conquered.  He had won over the people.  He had convinced
Ministers.  He had conciliated public opinion.  He had laid a gentle
hand upon old and still open wounds.  He had shown himself for the
first time a great instrument and messenger of peace, and had begun
the work to which all the rest of his life was to be devoted.

Long before that ever-memorable visit, in France as in England, the
Prince knew all sorts of people, {421} and was popular with all, and
did not mind being of service now and then to the people whom he did
not know at all.  Dining one night with the Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia in the Faubourg St. Germain, he was asked by
his host to go with him to the opening reception at the house of a
banker in the Boulevard Haussmann.  The banker had made a great
fortune and had great social ambitions.  The Prince knew very well
why he was asked, but good-naturedly went.  His going was chronicled
and blazoned next day in every one of the seventy daily papers of
Paris; and the banker's ambition was satisfied.

That was one incident.  Another was his presence of course in the
Prince of Wales period, at a supper given by the _Figaro_ in its new
offices.  Celebrities of all sorts were there, and the Prince had to
sit still while a too well-known actress from the Bouffes proposed
the Queen's health.  He raised his glass drank the toast, and said
nothing.  It was no fault of his.  This also found its way into the
French papers; not into the English.  He had many friendships among
artists, men of letters, soldiers, statesmen.  Between the Prince and
the late Marquis de Galliffet, the Marshal Ney of this last
generation, there was a close tie; two chivalrous souls who
understood each other from the beginning.  He was often to be seen in
studios--M. Detaille's, M. Rodin's, and many others.  He knew the
theatres in Paris as well as he knew the theatres in London; perhaps
better.  He went to the theatre primarily, I think, to be amused, and
the theatres {422} in Paris are more amusing than the theatres in
London.  The most patriotic Englishman may be content to admit that.

If the Prince had any politics abroad they were kept for his private
use.  To the French Republic, as Republic, and to successive
Presidents of the Republic, he showed nothing but good-will.  To
French statesmen the same; to Gambetta, to Waldeck-Rousseau, and to
M. Clemenceau, whose originalities and courage interested him long
before that energetic individuality had become Prime Minister.  They
all liked the Prince, but not one of them ever guessed that from him
when King would spring the new impulse of friendship which was to
make France and England in all but name allies, and so impose peace
upon the restless ambitions of another great sovereign.  Gambetta, it
is true, foretold a splendid future for the Prince, without
explaining how it was to be splendid.

I think if you moved about among Englishmen one thing would impress
you more than all others in their tributes to their late King.  Not
their full testimony to his greatness as King.  Not their admiration
of his capacities.  Not their pride in him as a Ruler.  Not their
sense of the incalculable services he has rendered.  Not their
gratitude for these services, deep as that is.  Not the Imperial
spirit and the new value they set upon the Unity of the Empire.  Not
his virtues of any kind, though to all of them they bear witness.

The one thing which would impress you beyond all this is the
affection they bore to him in his lifetime {423} and now bear to his
memory.  He had known how to establish new relations between King and
People, relations which had a tenderness and a beauty unknown before.
They belonged to an earlier period of history.  They were not quite
patriarchal, as in really ancient days, but were like the relations
which exist in an old family: ties of blood and of long descent.
They did not exist in the last reign.  There was immense respect for
Queen Victoria; not much sentiment.  She had withdrawn herself too
much from general intercourse, and even from the ceremonial part of
her royal duties.  But this King, her son, went among the people,
lived among them, lived for them, gave them his constant thought, won
their hearts.  His loss is to them a personal loss.  They mourn for
him as for a King, and they mourn for him as for a Friend who is
gone.  That seems to me the finest tribute of all.



III

AS KING--SOME PERSONAL AND SOCIAL INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS

I met at luncheon one of the King's friends, in some ways one among
the most intimate of the innumerable friends he had; a man, however,
not readily yielding to emotion nor likely to take what is called the
sentimental view.  We began to talk of the King.  Suddenly he broke
off:

"I cannot say much.  I loved him."

I don't know that I can tell you anything more {424} characteristic
or illuminating than that.  It is the kind of tribute the King
himself would have liked.  And there are millions of Englishmen
to-day whose hearts are full of the same feeling.

The King--the late King--was a great master of kingly graces.  He
knew, I suppose, more men and women than any man of his time.  He
knew the exact degree of consideration to which each one of them was
entitled, and exactly how to express it.  If you desire to form to
yourself a conception of the interval which divides a king, with the
inherited traditions of a thousand years, from the elected Chief
Magistrate of yesterday, you might do worse than watch the ceremonial
customs of personal intercourse.  We know what the indiscriminate
handshakings by the President are.  We know that the custom, aided by
the incredible stupidity of the police about him, cost one of them
his life.  We read the other day that a President, after enduring
this exaction for a time, had to stop it.  His right hand was all but
paralysed.  We have all listened to the Presidential, "I am very glad
to see you," repeated to all comers.  It may be unavoidable but it
all detracts something from the dignity of the office and the man.

This King who is gone gave his hand more often than any other; but at
his own choice and discretion.  It was thought abroad he went great
lengths, and some of the Continental sovereigns and the courtiers
about them criticized him.  They also after a time imitated him, and
sometimes at once.  The present German Emperor was one of those who
took the {425} hint from his uncle as soon as it was given.  I told
long ago how the Emperor and the then Prince of Wales in 1889 came on
board the White Star steamship _Teutonic_ lying at Spithead, with a
great company of naval guests, there to witness the great naval
review which never took place.  The First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr.
Chamberlain, Lord Charles Beresford, Mr. Ismay, Mr. Depew, and many
other persons of distinction were grouped on the main deck.  The
Emperor came up the steps first, and by way of acknowledging their
salutations raised his white cap.  The Prince of Wales shook hands
with all those I have named and with some others, the Emperor looking
on astonished.  Then came a prolonged inspection of the _Teutonic_,
the finest passenger ship then afloat, the pioneer of all modern
comfort and splendour on the Atlantic, Mr. Ismay's creation.  There
had been much talk in which Emperor and Prince had both taken part,
and by the time they were ready to leave, the great German sovereign
had learned his lesson.  He shook hands cordially with Mr. Ismay, in
whom he had recognized a kindred spirit of greatness, other than his
own but not less genuine, and with others.  The faces of his staff
were the faces of men amazed, perplexed, almost incredulous.

At drawing-rooms and Courts and levees; in private houses where he
was a guest, whether in town or country, on the turf, in the theatre,
at a public ceremonial, at a Marlborough House or Windsor
garden-party, the same habit prevailed.  Prince of Wales or King of
England, he met his {426} friends as a friend, and for acquaintances
with any title to recognition he had a pleasant welcome.  It added
immensely to his popularity among those who knew him, and among the
millions who never saw him, but heard.  They thought of him as a man
among men, which he was in every sense, and as one who thought
manhood an honourable thing.  Ask, moreover, any of the equerries or
others of his household.  They will all tell you he was considerate.
He expected each officer to do his duty, and it was done.  It is
often an irksome duty; but he made it needlessly so.

The human side of him was never long hidden.  It is a remark one is
tempted to repeat again and again.  It came out in the services he
was for ever doing; public in their nature, but from a private
impulse.  He met to the full the expectation of the public, and
discharged to the full the obligation of the Crown in respect of all
charities and ceremonials; and always with a kindly grace which made
his presence and his gifts doubly welcome.

With people whom he knew well and liked he was glad to lay aside
etiquette.  I could give you, but must not, the names of friends to
whom he would often send word in the afternoon that he was coming to
dine that evening and to play bridge after.  Even a king, and a great
king, must sometimes relax.  He cannot always appear in armour.  His
hostess would meet him at the door with a curtsey, and then welcome
him as a friend; and the talk all through dinner was intimate and
free.  Those were delightful hours.  So were the days in country
{427} houses where the King was a guest.  Always, no doubt, a certain
hush in the atmosphere, a certain constraint if the party was large,
but so far as the King was concerned, if people were not at their
ease it was their own fault.  Everybody knew where the line was
drawn.  Nobody in his senses over-passed it.  One flagrant instance
there was, not in the country, but at a house in London, at supper--a
large party.  The hour grew late and the Prince still sat at his
table.  A guest who had found the champagne to his liking staggered
across the room, steadied himself by a chair and stuttered out:

"I don't know whether Your Royal Highness knows how late it is, but
it's past two o'clock, and I am going home.  Good-night, sir!"

The Prince sat still and answered not.  He saw the man's condition.
Nobody knew better the rule that such a company did not break up till
the Prince gave the signal.  He was a man with a great social
position, and not social only.  When he had departed the Prince
finished his interrupted sentence and the talk went on as before.
Not an allusion to the offence or the offender.

His sense of social responsibility showed itself in an unexpected
form during the Boer War.  There grew up among the aristocracy a
passionate patriotism which sent heads of great families and elder
and younger sons into the field.  The King thought this feeling
threatened to have grave consequences.  He approved it, of course,
and encouraged it, but he thought limits ought to be set to a fervour
which {428} seemed not unlikely to extinguish an important part of
the nobility.  He sent for a number of men in great position who had
resolved to go and advised them to wait, saying, with his usual good
sense:

"Enough men of your class have gone already to show your devotion;
more than are really needed for the purposes of war.  Wait a little.
If matters go badly it will be time enough then for you to depart."

One secret of the extraordinary social power of both Prince and King
lay in his knowledge of social matters.  Nobody was so well informed.
He had about him numbers of men, and of women, who took pains to send
him, or bring him, the earliest account of any social incident or
gossip.  It was known that he had these sources of information, and
that whatever was known to any one was known to him.  Such knowledge
as that was a weapon.  It was not one of which he made use, or needed
to use.  The fact that he had it was enough.

He liked news also, and took pains to get it.  If there were a
political or Ministerial crisis, you might be sure that Marlborough
House knew all about it.  He had a certain number of men in his suite
or of his acquaintance from whom he expected, and generally got,
early intelligence.  There was a sort of competition in supplying
him.  If you were first you were thanked.  If you had been
anticipated, he remarked dryly and with a good-humoured twinkle in
his very expressive eyes: "Oh, yes, very interesting but I heard it
an hour ago."

{429}

When I was leaving England in 1895 for America the Prince gave me his
cipher address and asked me to cable him as often as there was news I
thought might interest him.  That may serve to show us Americans how
much he cared for American matters, and how completely he returned
the good-will we have always borne him since his visit to the United
States in 1860.  I told the Prince my first duty was to _The Times_,
since I was going home as their correspondent.  Subject to that, I
should be glad to send him what I could.  The difference of time was
such that he might well enough get a dispatch before midnight at
Marlborough House, which could not appear in print till next morning.
"But you know that's just what I should like," said the Prince.

From beginning to end the late King has lived his life, ever a full
life, possibly not always a wise life.  Who can be wise always?  Who
likes a man who is always wise?  His faults in youth were of a kind
which were recognized as belonging to men.  The blood which flowed in
his veins came down to him through centuries of ancestors to whom the
restrictions and pudencies, often hypocritical, of modern days were
unknown.  And if we look at the result, at the crown of all, at the
matured character which made him one of the greatest servants of the
State, of any State, ever known in history, need there be any
criticism or any regret?  Not perhaps the white flower of a blameless
life, but was there ever one?  But a great human life, compact of
good and ill, and so flowering into the {430} greatness of a great
King.  Perhaps the best summary is Pascal's:

"_Qu'une vie est heureuse quand elle commence par l'amour et qu'elle
finit par l'ambition._"

For the King's ambition was never for himself; he had no need to wish
to be other than he was.  It was an ambition for the good of his
people.




INDEX




NDX

A

Aberdeen, Lady, influence of, in Canada--her zeal for Irish Home
Rule, 279-280

Aberdeen, Lord, Governor-General of Canada, 279; succeeded by Lord
Minto, 281

Abolitionists, the, counsels of, governed by Phillips, 104; desire to
adopt legal measures, 108; meetings held by, 33-35, 85; unprotected
by police against the rioters, 99, 100

Adams, Charles Francis, American minister in England, 49; his
services to his country, 194-5; introduction to, 196

Adams, John, rank of, as a diplomatist, 194

Agassiz, Professor, influence of, on thought in Massachusetts, 11, 212

Airlie, Earl of, remarkable legend in family of, 396-401

Alaskan Boundary Question, 260-276

Alcott, Mr., attempt of, to enter Boston Court House during the riot,
35

Allibone, Mr., on writings of R. W. Emerson, 67

Allingham, Mr., poem of, _The Talisman_, recited by Emerson, 70

Alverstone, Lord, British fairness of--settles dangerous
controversy--speech on arbitration, 270-271; distinguished career of,
271-272; Canadian attacks upon, 272-273

Ampthill, Lord, diplomatic feat performed by, 379

Andrew, Governor, 1, 4, 121; declines to act against the rioters,
101-102; compared with Gambetta, 106; Phillips's opinion of, 90

Anti-Slavery Society, riot at meeting of, 99-103

Arnim, Count von, Bismarck's distrust of, 387; anecdotes, 387-388

Arnold, Matthew, discourses of, on Ralph Waldo Emerson, 51, 67-69;
death of, 64

Asquith, Mr., his eulogy of King Edward, 419; supported by the
Bishops in his temperance legislation, 391

Astor, Mr., 322



B

Balfour, Mr., Leader of House of Commons, 333

Banks, Mr., elected Speaker in Congress, 84

Barlow, Sir Thomas, consultation with, 353-355; honours conferred
upon, 355-357; duties of President of Royal College of Physicians,
357-358; electioneering story, 359

Barnes, Mr. Justice Gorell, 369

Barrymore, Lord.  _See_ Smith-Barry

Bachelder, James, killed during attack on Boston Court House, 35, 38;
Judge Loring charged with responsibility for death of, 39

Bath and Wells, Bishop of, emoluments of, 390

Bathurst, Countess, control of, over _Morning Post_, 340

Bedford, Duke of, 379-382

Beit, Mr., 290

Benjamin, Mr., position of, at English Bar, 366-368

Bennett, James Gordon, ideas of, on methods of news organization, 223

Beresford, Lord Charles, 154; meets Prince of Wales and Emperor
William on board _Teutonic_, 424-425

Bernhardt, Mme. Sarah, friendship of Lord Glenesk with, 342

Bismarck, Prince, conflict with Count von Arnim, 387-388; relations
with Lord R. Churchill, 324-325, 327; epigram of, 117; before
Franco-German War, 230; distrust of Empress Frederick, 407-408;
mastery of French language, 381-382; conflict with King of Prussia,
187-191; my first meeting with, 121-123; message to J. Lothrop
Motley, 202; confidence in Lord Odo Russell, 381; after Sadowa,
170-174; Sumner's interest in, 125; a talk with, 178-193

Bismarck, Princess, 183-185, 186, 193

Blaine, Mr., 84

Borthwick, Miss Lilias.  _See_ Bathurst, Countess

Borthwick, Oliver, successfully conducts _Morning Post_, 340-341;
flattering reception of, by President Roosevelt, 343-344; early death
of, 341

Bright, John, conversation with, 125; thunders against the Bishops,
390; speaks in honour of Garrison, 114; resentment of Sumner's
"Claims" Speech, 125

Broadbent, Sir William, story of his attendance upon Mr. Hay,
360-362; his awe of rank, 362; "Broadcloth mob," the, 85, 92, 95

Brodrick, George, at Lord Arthur Russell's breakfasts, 382; sobriquet
of--writes leaders for _The Times_, 382-383; becomes Warden of
Merton, 383

Bromley, Isaac, writes for _New York Tribune_, 16

Brooks, Preston, Senator Sumner assaulted by, 84

Brown, John, of Osawatomie, effect on public feeling of imprisonment
and hanging of, 14, 85-87, 98

Browning, Robert, 119

Buchanan, President, 85

Bücher, Herr Lothar, 179

Buckle, Mr., 327

Burke, Mr., 255

Burns, Anthony, arrest and surrender of, 29, 36, 42; effect of
surrender of, on popular feeling, 36, 37, 84; Theodore Parker's
sermon on surrender of, 38

Burnside, General, 155

Butler, General Benjamin, anecdotes of, 27-28; his announcement as to
negroes being "contraband of war," 132-133; reputation of, at
American Bar, 27-28; rancour of, against Dana, 41-42,48



C

Campbell, Lord Chancellor, Mr. Justice Denham's anecdote of, 351

Canada, Alaskan Boundary dispute, 260-291; bitterness against Lord
Alverstone in, 270-273; talk of annexation, 277-283; two
Governors-general, 284-291; immigration of Americans into, 277-278;
Roman Catholicism in, 261; sensitive feeling in, 284

Canterbury, Archbishop of, emoluments and palaces of, 389-390;
position and career of, 391-393; impressions of 392-393; friendship
of Queen Victoria for, 393-394

Carrington, Lady, 282

Cavendish, Lord F., 255

Chamberlain, Mr., skirmish with Lord R. Churchill, 318-319;
Imperialism of, 281; meets Prince of Wales and German Emperor on
board Teutonic, 424-425

Chandler, Zach, defeat of Dana engineered by, 49

Chelmsford, Lord, 247

Choate, J. H., Minister to England, 50; qualities of, as a Minister,
210-211

Choate, Rufus, 96; anecdotes of, 27

Churchill, Lady Randolph, social miracle performed by, 373-374

Churchill, Lord Randolph, an appreciation of, 332-333; friction with
Prince Bismarck, 324-325; skirmish with Mr. Chamberlain, 318-319;
letter to Lady R. Churchill, 333; drive with, 322-323; his views of
Mr. Gladstone, 324-325; Gladstone's remark on, 333; "I forgot
Goschen," 322; as a host, 325-326; last meeting with, 331-332; his
indifference to money, 327-331; his conception of the political
future, 319-320; his use of the Press, 327-328; his investment in the
Rand mines, 331; speeches of, 321; contest with Lord Salisbury, 321;
his opinion of the working man, 328-329

Churchill, Winston, his biography of his father, 329; compared with
his father, 319; position of, in political life, 253, 319; stipend
of, 390

Clark, Sir Andrew, anecdote of, 362-363; physician to Mr. Gladstone,
362

Clarke, General Sir Stanley, constant attendance of, on Prince of
Wales at Homburg, 410

Clay, Henry, 5

Cleveland, President, anecdote of, 16; political pressure on, 208;
part played by, during Venezuela crisis, 75-79

Cluseret, "General," 133

Coleridge, Emerson's friendship with, 59

Collier, Price, mischievous dictum of, 202, 289, 354

Collins, Patrick, enmity of, to E. J. Phelps, 208

Curzon, Lord, epigram of, 131



D

_Daily News, The_, formerly mouthpiece of Nonconformist Liberalism,
229; exploits of Archibald Forbes in service of, 247-250; connection
of, with _Tribune_, 235, 236, 245, 246; news alliance formed with
_Tribune_, 224-227; I bring Mr. White's account of Spicheren to,
232-234

Dalhousie, Lady, visit to, 395-401

Dalhousie, Lord, 350, 395-401

Dana, Charles A., influence of, 131, 279; journalistic relations
with, 129-130; connection of, with _Tribune_, 153

Dana, Daniel, 41

Dana, Francis, 41

Dana, Paul, editor of Sun, 279; founds society to promote annexation
of Canada, 279

Dana, Richard, 41

Dana, Richard Henry, 41

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., ancestry, 41; anecdotes of, 45-48; my
acquaintance with, 43-48; introduces me to Adams, 196-197; part
played by, in trial of Anthony Burns, 30-33, 41, 42; Butler's enmity
to, 41, 42; unfounded charge against, 48; visits House of Commons,
46; lampooned by Phillips, 108; qualities of, as a lawyer, 28, 46,
47; his letters to me, 42-43; works of, 42, 216-219

Davidson, Rev. Randall.  _See_ Canterbury, Archbishop of

Davies, F., 15

Davis, Governor, sobriquet of, 3

Davis, Lieutenant-Governor, 3

Delane, Mr., 48-49

Denham, Mr. Justice, story of Lord Chancellor Campbell, 351

Depew, Mr., presentation of, to Prince of Wales, 413

Desclée, Aimée, histrionic gifts of, 9

Detaille, M., 421

Dickens, Charles, 119

Draft Riots, the, 161-162

Dudley, Lady, 397-399

Dudley, Lord, 350, 398-399

Dufferin, Lord, anecdote of, 214

Dupont, Admiral, 132

Durant, Mr., 81-83

Durham, Bishop of, 390



E

Edward, VII., King, Americans presented to, 413-416; an appreciation
of, 429-430; quarrel with Lord R. Churchill, 333; at Dunrobin Castle,
347; his friends in France, 421; his share in creating the _Entente
Cordiale_, 419-420; conversation with Lord Hartington, 412; national
feeling towards, 421-422; his desire for news, 428-429; incidents of
visit to Paris, 420-422; causes of popularity of, 425-427; cause of
his late experience of public affairs, 416-418; presents me to Crown
Princess of Prussia, 404; public men's opinions of, 418-419; his
sense of social responsibility, 427-428; example set by, to foreign
royalty, 425; stories of, 414-416, 427; effect of inherited
traditions on, 424; visits of, to Homburg and Marienbad, 403, 410-416

Edwards, Jonathan, 2, 213

Ellis, C. M., counsel for Anthony Burns, 31, 32

Ely, Bishop of, 390.

Emerson, Ellen, 61, 65

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 64, 104; Matthew Arnold on, 51; in Boston,
71-72, 212; personal characteristics of, 54, 55; pride of Concord in,
60-61; in England, 62-71; his friends, 58-60, 65; Huxley on, 62;
beloved by London, 218; as an orator, 69-70; replaces Theodore
Parker, 69; from pulpit to platform, 52; his praise of Sumner, 1;
visits to, 53-60; on Daniel Webster, 5; works of, 52, 66-67, 216

Emerson, William, 51, 53

Emmons, Rev. Dr., pastor of church in Franklin, 1; personal
characteristics of, 2

Endicott, Mr., 4

Evarts, Mr., 363

Everett Mr., 1, 4; speech of, quoted by Phillips, 94



F

Fay, Richard S., attempt of, to crush anti-slavery agitation, 37, 85;
breaking up of Anti-Slavery Convention by, 92; Phillips's contempt
for, 93

Felix, Elizabeth Rachel, at Boston Theatre, 9; friendship with Lord
Glenesk, 342

Field, Cyrus, director of Anglo-American Telegraph Company, 166

Fish, Mr. Secretary, 205

Follen, Charles, part played by, in anti-slavery riots, 95, 111

Forbes, Archibald, 225, 241, 247; adventures of, in Russian and
Turkish lines, 247-249; journalistic exploits of, 246-250; interview
of, with Czar, 248-249; narrative of surrender of Metz wrongly
attributed to, 246

Forster, John, 129

Frederick, Emperor, 403, 405, 407-408

Frederick, Empress, Bismarck's distrust of, 407; at Homburg, 403-404;
presentation to, 404-408

Frémont, General, nomination of, by Republican party, 85; foreign
adventures on staff of, 133



G

Galliffet, Marquis de, King Edward's friendship with, 421

Gambetta, comparison of, with Governor Andrew, 106; friendship of
Prince of Wales with, 422

Garrison, William Lloyd, 1, 104; character and career of, 113-115; on
Constitution, 116; position of, in history, 118-120; _Liberator_
founded by, 113, 116-118; Phillips on certain impatiently expressed
opinion of, 114-116; risk of assassination incurred by, 39

Gay, Sydney Howard, connection of, with _Tribune_, 129-130, 162:
sends me back to the Army, 153; report to, 158-160

Gibson, Randall, character of, 18; parallel with Earl Spencer, 19

Gladstone, W. E., 119, 254, 256, 320; on Austrian rule, 200;
oratorical powers of, 45, 70; remark of, about Lord R. Churchill,
333; Lord R. Churchill's views of, 324

Glenesk, Lady, 338-340

Glenesk, Lord, 293-295; acquires _Morning Post_, 335-338; review of
"Lord Glenesk and the _Morning Post_," 341-342; the late Queen's
regard for, 342; friendship of Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt with, 342

Gourko, General, 247-248

Grant, President, nominates Dana as Minister to England, 48; recalls
Motley, 204-205; Sumner's warfare with, 126

Grant-Duff, Sir Mountstuart, Diary of, 380

Granville, Lord, 230

Gray, Horace, wonderful memory of, 80-81

Greeley, Horace, founds _New York Tribune_, 117; his management of
the _Tribune_, 130; remains at his post during the Draft Riots, 162;
Stedman's monody on, 14-15

Greenwood, Frederick, 226

Grey, Lord, in Canada, 282; presents portrait of Franklin to
Philadelphia, 289-290; speech at Waldorf Hotel, 288-289; reception at
White House, 290-291

Grey, Sir Charles, 289

Gull, Sir William, anecdote of, 359-360



H

Hadley, Professor, Hellenism of, 20-21

Halleck, General, 134

Ham, Deputy Chief of Police, 107, 112; dexterous handling of Boston
mob by, 96-97

Hammond, Lord, 230

Hancock, John, 4, 33

Hardwicke, Lord, 397-401

_Harper's Magazine_, my statements in, 226, 247

Harriman, Mr., 309, 310

Hartington, Marquis of, 412

Harvard University, 12-13, 23-28, 51, 213

Hay, John, Mr., Minister to England, 209-210; foreign policy of, when
Secretary of State, 209-210; Queen Victoria's high opinion of, 210;
United States Secretary of State during Alaskan Boundary dispute,
260, 267; talk with, on the Boundary question, 268-270; attended
medically by Sir W. Broadbent, 360-361; adroit diplomatic methods of,
361

Hayes, President, 363

Hayne, Senator, Webster's reply to, 8

Herschell, Lord, ultimatum of, 275, 276

Higginson, Colonel, 35, 216

Hill, Mr. Frank, editor of _Daily News_, 225, 233

Hindlip, Lord, hop-buying on a gigantic scale, 350-351; the beer at
Invermark, 351

Hinton, Mr. Phillips protected against Boston mob by, 95-96

Hoar, Rockwood, opposing counsel, 79-80; Emerson's friendship with, 60

Hoar, Senator, abilities and learning of, 3; read law with, 24, 29

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, a Bostonian, 1, 212; personal popularity of,
amongst Englishmen, 218; popularity of works of, in England, 216

Hooker, General, make acquaintance of, 145-146; carry order for, at
Antietam, 146; conversation with, after Antietam, 148-149; fights
battles of Chancellorsville, 155; comparison with McClellan, 141-142;
sobriquet of, 141-142; stories of, 157-158; wounded, 147; offers me
place on his staff, 156

Howe, Murray, attack of, upon Anti-Slavery Convention in Boston,
86-87, 92

Howells, Mr., leaves Boston for New York, 213; interpreter at times
between England and America, 214; story told of, 219; works of, 215

Hughes, Thomas, author of _Tom Brown's Schooldays_, 65; founder of
Working Men's College, 66

Huntington, Rev. Dr., Rector of Grace Church, N. Y., 3

Huxley, T. H., meeting of, with Emerson, 62-63; visit of, to Lady
Dalhousie, 400



I

Ireland, Alexander, biography of Emerson, 64

Ismay, Mr., meeting of, with Prince of Wales and Emperor William on
board Teutonic, 425



J

Jackson, Stonewall, death of, 155

James, Henry, bracketed with Mr. Howells, 219; popularity of, in
England, 219; works of, 216-217

Jenner, Sir William, place of in medical profession, 359

Jerome, Mr., Lord R. Churchill's difference with, 329-330

Jersey, Lady, 373

Jessel, Sir George, judicial greatness of, 308

Jeune, Mrs., _See_ St. Helier, Lady

Johnson, President, 126, 164

Jowett, Dr., epigrams of, 312



K

Kitchener, Lord, administrative capacity of, 296; "if he were a
Frenchman," 298; German opinion of, 292-293; Gordon College, 294-295;
personality of, 298; traits and incidents, 292-300



L

Lambton, Admiral Sir Hedworth, commands royal yacht, services abroad,
story told of, 347-349

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, Alaskan Boundary dispute, 260-282; criticism of
Lord Alverstone, 272-273; talks on American immigration into Canada,
278-279; personal characteristics, 261-264; statesmanlike views of,
274-275; a "Warden of Empire," 260

Lawrence, Amos, hostility of to anti-slavery agitation, 37, 92

Lawrence, William Beach, 48, 49

Le Barnes, Mr., protects Phillips against Boston mob, 95-96

Lee, General Robert, battles of Antietam and South Mountain, 138-143;
generalship of, at Chancellorsville, 155

Leinster, Duchess of, 326

Leopold, Prince, 230

Lewis, Charlton, studies at Yale, versatility of, 15

Lewis, Sir George, engaged in famous cases, 301-304; honours
conferred upon, 302; friendship with King Edward, 302; law reforms
advocated by, 307; principles of conduct, 304-307; Lord Russell of
Killowen's eulogy of, 301; social secrets entrusted to, 305-307

Lincoln, Governor, 3

Lincoln, Mayor, 99

Lincoln, President, 90, 126, 253; draft enforced by, 37, 161;
election of, followed by secession of Southern States, 107; esteem
of, for Grant, 158; Gettysburg speech of, 218

Lloyd-George, Mr., 380, 390

Lodge, Senator, English criticism of, 273

Loewe, Herr, opposition of, to Bismarck, 125, 179

London, Bishop of, 390

Longfellow, in Boston, 212; popularity of works of, in England,
216-218

Loring, Judge Edward Greeley, attempt of, to crush anti-slavery
agitation, 37; Anthony Burns tried by, 29-39, 42; charged with the
death of James Batchelder, 38

Lowe, Mr., 400

Lowell, Mr., attainments of, qualities of, as a Minister, 205-207; in
Boston, 1, 212; popularity personally and as an author, in England,
216-218

Lucas, Reginald, author of _Lord Glenesk, and The Morning Post_,
341-344



M

McClellan, General, generalship of, 138-143, 148, 149; indecision of,
149; his military reputation, 137; succeeded by Burnside, 155

Macdonald, Sir John, services to Canada, 264; compared with Diaz,
264; political corruption organized into a system by, 264-265

McDowell, General, impressions of, 133-134

McGahan, Mr., 241

McKinley, President, 260, 265, 267; talks with, on the Alaskan
Boundary question, 268-270; recalls Mr. Hay, 209

MacMahon, Marshal, 234

MacVeagh, Wayne, offices held by, 16; conversational power of, 16-17

Manning, Cardinal, speech to dock strikers, 327-328

Marlborough, Duchess of, 322

Marlborough, Duke of, 322

Meade, General, interview with, 159-160

Méjanel, M., correspondent for _Tribune_ in Franco-German War, 231;
news of Sedan brought to Tribune London office by, 243-245

Minto, Lady, 262; tact and felicity of, in performance of social
functions, 282

Minto, Lord, Governor-General of Canada, 260, 262; relations with Sir
W. Laurier, 281-282; organizes Canadian contingent for South African
War, 285-288; Viceroy of India, 284

Moltke, General von, return of, to Berlin, after Sadowa, 173-174

Moran, Mr., interview with, 196

Morgan, Pierpont, 309

Morley, Lord, on President Roosevelt, 343

_Morning Post, The_, acquired by Lord Glenesk, 335; control of, by
Countess Bathurst, 340; history of, 334-338; successfully conducted
by Oliver Borthwick, 340-341

Morris, Sir Henry, consultation with, 355-356; masterly skill of,
356; honour conferred upon, 357

Morris, Robert, 30

Motley, John Lothrop, Bismarck's friendship with, 201-202; qualities
and defects as a diplomat, 201; recall of, by President Grant,
204-205; at the Athenæum Club, during Civil War, 203; works of, 200

Müller, Gustav, writes account of surrender of Metz for _Tribune_,
246-247; story of disappearance of, 247



N

Napoleon III, Emperor, 230, 236

Newman, Cardinal, 118-119

_New York Tribune, The_, founded by Horace Greeley, 117; offices of,
attacked during Draft Riots, 161-162; introduction to, 129-130;
experiences as correspondent in the Civil War, 129-136; free
expression of unpopular views in, 353; the search for a general, a
fragment of unwritten history, 153-160; poems of Stedman published
in, 14-15: causes of success at beginning of Franco-German War, 168;
conversations with Bismarck reported in, 121-122, 182-183, 186; a
revolution in international journalism, 220-234; arrangement with
_Daily News_, 224-227; European news-bureau, 252; cabling important
news, 164-165, 167, 242, 245, 251; vexatious restrictions on cables,
165-167; ultimatum to Mr. Weaver, 167-169; account of surrender of
Metz first published by a correspondent of, 246-247; how Holt White's
story of Sedan reached, 235-242

Northcliffe, Lord, 229; creative genius of, 339



O

O'Brien, William, 256

_Observer, The_, 335

Ollivier, Emile, 230

Olney, Richard, part played by, during Venezuela crisis, 75-79

O'Rell, Max, 29

Otis, 4, 33

Oxford, Bishop of, 390



P

_Pall Mall Gazette, The_, contract of _Tribune's_ war correspondent
with, 226-227; part of White's story of Sedan published in, 241

Palmerston, Lady, 373

Palmerston, Lord, 195

Parker, Judge, revises General Statutes of Massachusetts, 26

Parker, Capt. John, 39

Parker, Theodore, discourse on death of Webster, 8; speech at
Abolitionist meeting at Faneuil Hall, 33-34; sermon on surrender of
Anthony Burns, 38-39; attainments and training of, 39-40; replaced
during illness by Emerson and Phillips, 69; quashing of indictment
of, 108; greatest force in American pulpit, 212

Parsons, Theophilus, colleague of Judge Parker, 26

Pattison, Rev. Mark, 310

Pauncefote, Lord, 210

Perkins, Mr., 331

Peyronnet, Mlle. de.  _See_ Russell, Lady Arthur

Peyronnet, Vicomte de, 379

Phelps, Mrs., 207

Phelps, E. J., American Minister to England, English regard for, 49;
effect of enmity of Pat Collins on career of, 208

Phelps, W. W., friendship of Bismarck's family with, 184-185

Philip, Admiral, memorable saying of, at Santiago, 142

Phillips, Wendell, 1; leader of Anti-Slavery Party in Boston,
104-106, 113, 121; risks assassination, 39; defends Anthony Burns,
31; on "Broadcloth mob," 86; letter to, and interviews with, 87-91;
experiences with, during Boston riot, 96-103; on Butler's "Contraband
of War" phrase, 132; lampoons Dana, 108; rebukes impatiently
expressed opinion of Garrison, 115; oratorical power of, 213;
replaces Theodore Parker, 69; on religious influences, 11-12;
speeches of, 8, 91-93, 107, 110-112; arguments inducing him to
support the war, 108-112; on George Washington, 7

Pierce, Franklin, 84

Plimsoll, S., 203-204

Poe, Edgar Allan, 216

Poole, Mr. Reginald, 303

Pope, General, demoralization of army of, 137; conversation with,
134; personal characteristics of, 134; qualities as a leader,
134-135; a surprise when reconnoitring, 135-136

Porter, Professor, character and influence of, 20-23

Potter, Bishop, 392



R

Rachel.  _See_ Felix, Elizabeth Rachel

Ralli, Mr., 293

Reay, Lord, 380

Redpath, Mr., 95-96

Reid, Whitelaw, 217, 309

Remond, Charles Lenox, 7

Renan, M., lectures of, in London, meetings with, 386-387

Robinson, Sir John, reluctance of, to exchange news with _Tribune_,
225-226; Mr. White's account of Spicheren, 232-233; gives me first
news of French catastrophe at Sedan, 236; does not explain his
indebtedness to _Tribune_ for account of surrender of Metz, 246

Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia, Duc de la, entertains Prince of Wales, 421

Rodgers, Captain Raymond, 132

Rodin, M., 421

Roon, General von, 173-174, 179-180

Roosevelt, President, 265; friendship of Lady St. Helier with, 376;
reception at White House of Oliver Borthwick, 343-344; of Lord Grey,
289-291; Lord Morley's remark on, 343

Rosebery, Lord, remark of Lord R. Churchill to, 332; intimacy of,
with King Edward, 418; his opinion of oratory of E. J. Phelps, 208

Rothschild, Lord, 332

Roundell, Charles, 380

Russell, Lady Arthur, French origin of, 379; her _salon_, 384;
distinguished people at receptions of, 386-388

Russell, Lord Arthur, 379-385

Russell, Hastings.  _See_ Bedford, Duke of

Russell, Lord John, 195

Russell, Lord Odo.  _See_ Ampthill, Lord

Russell, W. H., 134, 241; exposes mismanagement of War Office, 227

Rutson, Albert, 380



S

St. Helier, Lady, anecdotes of, 375-376; at Arlington Manor, 377-378;
friendship of Theodore Roosevelt with, 376; distinction of, as a
hostess, 371-373; influence of on Society, 372-378

St. Helier, Lord, 364-365; friendship of Lord Beaconsfield with, 368;
on King Edward, 418; President of Divorce Court, 369

Salisbury, Bishop of, 390

Salisbury, Marquis of, on King Edward, 418; part played by, during
Venezuela crisis, 77

Sanborne, Frank, 86

Schenck, General, 48

Scudamore, Mr., 168-169

Sedgwick, General, battles fought by, 149-150, 157, 159; character
of, 149-150

Seward, Mr., 195

Shadrach Case, effect of, on opinion in Massachusetts, 30, 36

Shaw, Chief Justice, at trial of Anthony Burns, 31, 47; head of
judiciary of his state, 212

Sherman, General W. T., 132

Shiras, Mr. Justice, 15

Sims Case, effect of, on opinion in Massachusetts, 30, 36

Smalley, Rev. Mr., colleague of Dr. Emmons, 2; passes to First
Presbyterian Church at Troy, 2; death of, 2; liberalism of, 12

Smith, George, owner of _Pall Mall Gazette_, 226

Smith, Goldwin, 263

Smith, Dr. William, 64

Smith-Barry, Mr., plan of campaign, visit to, police protection,
257-259

Spencer, Earl, character of, compared with Randall Gibson, 19

Spencer, Herbert, 120, 380

Stanley, Dean, on J. L. Motley, 204

Stanley, Mrs.  _See_ St. Helier, Lady

Stanton, E. M., 134, 138

Steadman, Commodore, 131

Stedman, poet and critic, writes _John Brown of Osawatomie_ and
_Monody_ on death of Horace Greeley, 14

Steevens, G. W., 241

Stephen, Mr. Justice, 375

Sumner, Charles, one of the leaders of the Anti-Slavery Party, 121;
assaulted by Preston Brooks, 84; effect of the assault, 126-127;
conversations with, 121-122, 126-128; Emerson's eulogy on, 1; high
ideals of, 128; journey to Paris, 127-128; Motley recalled because of
his relations with, 205; characteristic speech of, 122-123 cause of
unpopularity in England, 125

_Sun, The_, annexation of Canada preached by, 278-279

Sutherland, Duke of, 347

Suttle, Colonel, Anthony Burns surrendered to, 29, 36



T

Taft, President, what he accomplished as Civil Governor of the
Philippines, 296-297

Taylor, Zachary, political relations of Daniel Webster with, 4, 5

Thacher, Professor, influence of in Yale University, 20

Thomas, Judge, anecdote of, 74-75; takes Richard Olney into his
office, 75-79

Thoreau, friendship of Emerson with, 59

_Times, The_, appeals to a special class, 335; George Brodrick,
leader writer for, 382-383; Lord R. Churchill gives first news of his
resignation to, 327; a free hand in treating Cleveland's message of
war in 1895, 353; Dr. Russell exposes blunders of War Office in, 227

Tocqueville, author of _De la Démocratie en Amérique_, 66

Trevelyan, Sir George, meetings with, 254-256

Turner, Senator, 273

Twain, Mark, presented to Prince of Wales--impressions made by, 364-5



V

Victoria, Princess, 393

Victoria, Queen, life in the Highlands--etiquette at Balmoral,
345-346; resemblance to Empress Frederick--indifference to dress,
404-405; national feeling towards, 423; visits Invercauld House, 346;
relations with Prince of Wales, 416-418



W

Waldeck-Rousseau, M., relations of, with Prince of Wales, 422

Ware, Fabian, editor of _Morning Post_, 340

Washburn, Governor, 3

Weaver, Mr., manager of Anglo-American Telegraph Company, 165-166;
uncertain transmission of cabled news under régime of, 237, 239-240;
ultimatum to, 167-169

Webster, Daniel, leader of the American Bar, 27; Emerson on, 5;
effect of his support of Fugitive Slave Act, 7; comparison with
Gladstone, 6; influence of, 213; his eulogy of Massachusetts, 1, 2;
his masterpieces as an advocate and orator, 8, 9; Wendell Phillips on
pro-slavery views of, 8; personal magnetism of, 9, 10; his political
support of Taylor, 4, 5; "room at the top," 367

Welles, Mr., 131

West, Mrs. George Cornwallis.  _See_ Churchill, Lady Randolph

White, Andrew, public offices held by, 16

White, Holt, correspondent of _Tribune_, 231-234; brings story of
Sedan to _Tribune_ London office, 236-242; his story of Spicheren,
232-234

Whiteside, Solicitor-General, 46

Whitman, Sidney, 185

Whitman, Walt, 216,218

Wightman, Mayor of Boston, action of, during Boston riot, 99-102;
incompetency of, 103

William II, Emperor, visits S.S. _Teutonic_, 424-425

Wilson, General, conversation with, 147-148

Wilson, Henry, effect of his election as Governor of Massachusetts, 84

Winthrop, connection, of with Boston, 4

Wolff, Sir H. D., intimacy of Lord R. Churchill with, 326

Wolseley, Rev. Dr., President of Yale University, 13



Y

Yale University, distinguished alumni of, 13-19; rigid discipline at,
24; eminent professors in, 20-28; sectional antagonism in, 25-26;
theological atmosphere of, 13

Young, John Russell, succeeds Gay as managing editor of _Tribune_,
163; adopts suggestion to establish _Tribune_ office in London,
220-221

ENDX









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