Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 55

Among the pa.s.sengers was Joseph Coolidge of Boston, father of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, late Minister to France. Mr.

Coolidge had been a great traveller in his day; had had some commercial occupations in the East, and was very pleasant company. His wife was a granddaughter of Mr. Jefferson.

He told me that two of Mr. Jefferson's daughters--or granddaughters, I am not now absolutely sure which--had kept school and earned money, which they had applied to the payment of Mr. Jefferson's debts. The story was highly creditable to these Virginia ladies, who might well have thought that their ill.u.s.trious ancestor's service might excuse his family from making sacrifices in discharge of such an obligation, if his countrymen at large did not feel its force.

I went over pretty much the same ground in 1868 with three ladies. I made both these journeys as an ordinary sightseer.

I took few letters of introduction. I did not deliver those, except in one or two cases to American gentlemen living abroad.

One experience in this latter journey, however, it may be worth while to tell. I had a very pleasant friendship with Henry T. Parker, a Boston man and a graduate of Harvard, who had a comfortable property and had married an English lady and had settled in London. He found an occupation, congenial to his own taste, in buying books, as agent of some of the great libraries in the United States, including the Harvard Library and the Boston City Library. He was an intimate friend of Mr. c.o.x, the accomplished Librarian of the Bodleian, to whom he gave us letters.

Mr. c.o.x treated us with special courtesy and showed us many treasures of the Library, especially some wonderful illuminated ma.n.u.scripts. One of them, the Duc de Monpensier, who had been at Oxford shortly before and who was an authority in such matters, felt confident was ill.u.s.trated by Raphael. Mr.

c.o.x had discovered, just before I was there, in some crypt where it had lain unknown for two hundred years, a touching letter from Clarendon, who was Chancellor of the University, which I think will move the heart of every man who loves the college where he was educated. The letter was written by Lord Clarendon just after he had landed at Calais, a hopeless exile, on his last flight from the country to which he was never again to return. The great orator, statesman, historian, lawyer, judge,--counsellor, companion and ancestor of monarchs,-- flying for his life, in his old age, into a foreign land, from the court of which, for a generation, he had been the ornament and head, soon as his feet touch a place of safety, thinks of his University. See the n.o.ble heart through the simple and stately rhetoric:

GOOD MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR;

Having found it necessary to transport myselfe out of England, and not knowing when it shall please G.o.d that I shall returne againe, it becomes me to take care that the University may not be without the service of a person better able to be of use to them than I am like to be, and I doe therefore hereby surrender the office of chancellor into the hand of said University, to the end that they may make choyce of some other person better qualified to a.s.sist and protect them, than I am. I am sure he can never be more affectionate to it. I desire you as the last suite I am likely to make to you, to believe that I doe not fly my country for guilt, and how pa.s.sionately soever I am pursued, that I have not done anything to make the University ashamed of me, or to repent the good opinion they had once of me, and though I must have no mention in your publique devotions, (which I have always exceedingly valued,) I hope I shall always be remembered in your private prayers, as

Good Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Your affectionate servant, CLARENDON.

CALAIS, this 7-17 Dec., 1667.

In 1871 I went abroad alone. I spent the whole time in England, except for a brief visit to Scotland. My purpose in going away was to get a vacation. I meant to do some studying in the British Museum, especially to make a thorough study of the conditions and economic principles affecting the strife between capital and labor, which then threatened both this country and England. I got a collection of the authorities and the references. But I did not find that I got a great deal of light from anything that had been written or said so far. I made a few very agreeable acquaintances. I had a letter to Thomas Hughes, and visited at his house. I found George W. Smalley, who had been a pupil in my office, established in a delightful house near London. He seemed to be on terms of intimacy with the famous Englishmen who were the leaders of both political parties, and with many eminent men of letters.

I spent a delightful evening with Mr. Hughes at a club which I think was called the European Club, or something like that, where the members smoked clay pipes and drank beer. There seemed to be no other provision for the refreshment of the body or soul. But the conversation was very pleasant. The members sat together about a table, and the conversation was quite general and very bright. The talk turned, during the evening, on Scotsmen. The Englishmen present seemed to have something left of the old prejudice about Scotland with which Dr. Johnson was possessed. They imputed to the modern Scotsmen the same thrifty habit and capacity for looking after himself that prevailed a hundred years before, when Dr. Johnson and John Wilkes, who quarrelled about everything else, became reconciled when they united in abuse of their Northern neighbors.

Sir Frederick Pollock cited a marginal note from the report of some old criminal case, to the following effect: "Possession of property in Scotland evidence of stealing in England."

I was guilty of one piece of stupid folly. Mr. Hughes kindly proposed to take me to see Carlyle. This was not very long after our war, when our people were full of indignation at Carlyle's bitter and contemptuous speech about us, especially his "American Iliad in a Nutsh.e.l.l." I was a little doubtful about what sort of a reception I should get, and declined the invitation. I have bitterly regretted this ever since.

My brother visited Carlyle about 1846, bearing with him a letter from Emerson. Carlyle was very civil to him, and liked him very much, as appears by a letter from him to Mr. Emerson.

During the visit I heard a great debate between Gladstone and Disraeli. A brief account of it will be found in the chapter on "Some Famous Orators I have Heard."

A friend in Worcester gave me a letter to Mr. Wornum, the Director of the National Gallery, with whom he had been a fellow-pupil at Kensington. Mr. Wornum received me with great cordiality. He asked me to come to the Gallery the next day, when it would be closed to the public. He said he would be glad to show it to me then, when we would be free of interruption.

He was the author of what I understand to be an excellent history of painting, and was regarded as the most competent judge in Europe of the value and merit of paintings. I suppose Parliament would at any time, on his sole recommendation, have given ten or twenty or perhaps fifty thousand guineas for a masterpiece. I shall never forget the delight of that day. He told me the history of the great paintings in the National Gallery, some of which had belonged to monarchs, popes, n.o.blemen or famous merchants of almost all the countries in Europe. He said that while there were many larger galleries, the National Gallery was the best in the world as affording the best and most characteristic examples of every school of painting. I cannot remember much that was said in that long day, interrupted only by a pleasant lunch together. But it was a day full of romance. It was as if I had had in my hand the crown jewels of every potentate in the world, and somebody had told me the history of each gem. For this picture Francis the First, or Charles V., or Henry VIII. had been bidders. This had belonged to Lorenzo de Medici, or Pope Leo X. This had come from the famous collection of Charles I., scattered through Europe on his death; and this had belonged to some n.o.bleman whose name was greater than that of monarchs.

Mr. Wornum spoke of his treasures with an enthusiasm which no worshipper at the throne of any Saint or Divinity could surpa.s.s. That day was among the few chiefest delights of my life.

CHAPTER XX VISITS TO ENGLAND 1892

My next visit to England was in the spring of 1892. The winter before, I had a severe attack of iritis, which left my eyes in a very demoralized condition. I did not find much relief in this country, not, I suppose, because of want of skill in our ophthalmic surgeons, but because of the impossibility of getting any rest anywhere where I could be reached by telephone or telegraph. To a person who can bear an ordinary voyage there is no retreat like an ocean steamer. Telephone, telegraph, daily paper; call or visit of friend, client, or const.i.tuent; daily mail--sometimes itself, to a busy public man, enough for a hard day's work--all these are forgotten. You spend your ten days in an infinite quiet like that of Heaven. You sit in your deck-chair with the soft sea breeze on your forehead, as the mighty ocean cradle rocks you, and see the lace of an exquisite beauty that no Tyrian weaver ever devised, breaking over the blue or purple waves, with their tints that no Tyrian dye ever matched. Ah! Marconi, Marconi, could not you let us alone, and leave the tired brain of humanity one spot where this "hodge-podge of business and trouble and care"

could not follow us and find us out?

On this journey I visited England, France and Switzerland.

It so happened that I had had a good deal to do with the appointment of our Ministers to these three countries. Colonel John D.

Washburn, a very accomplished and delightful gentleman, now dead, had been a pupil of mine as a law student. He lived in Worcester and had been a very eminent member of the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature. I think he would have been Governor of the State and had a very brilliant career but for a delicacy of organization which made him break down in health when under any severe strain of responsibility, especially such as involved antagonism and conflict. He was of a very friendly, gentle disposition, and disliked to be attacked or to attack other men. I told Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State when Mr. Harrison's Administration came in, that I had but one favor to ask of it; that was, that he should send Washburn as Minister to Switzerland. I had two or three very pleasant days with him at Berne. But he had sent his family away and was preparing to resign his place. So I had not much opportunity of seeing Switzerland under his guidance.

Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, then Minister to France, had also been appointed on my very earnest recommendation. He was a great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, a very able business man, highly esteemed throughout the country. His guidance was implicitly followed by many people in important business transactions. He had had the charge of the financial affairs of some large manufacturing corporations, and was understood to have extricated the Northern Pacific Railroad out of some serious difficulties, into which it fell again after he left its control. He had been a Democrat. But he had seen the importance of the protective policy to American interests, as would naturally be expected of a descendant of that high protectionist, Thomas Jefferson. He had no sympathies with any measures that would debase or unsettle the currency, and set his face and gave his powerful influence against all forms of fiat or irredeemable paper money, and the kindred folly of the free coinage of silver by this country alone, without the concurrence of the commercial nations of the world.

Soon after Mr. Harrison's Administration began, I received a message about nine o'clock one evening, asking me to go to the White House at once. I obeyed the summons. The President said he desired, if I had no objection, to send in the name of Dr. Loring of Ma.s.sachusetts, as Minister to Portugal. I told him that I had no objection whatever; that Dr. Loring was an able man of agreeable manners, and had performed admirably every public duty he had undertaken. I said that the Doctor had felt a little disturbed, I thought, that I had refused to call a meeting of the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation to press his name upon the President for a Cabinet office, to which President Harrison replied, "I put my foot on that pretty quick." Dr. Loring had been a great friend and supporter of Mr. Blaine, the Secretary of State. I conjectured, although the President did not say so, that the choice of Dr. Loring had been made at the Secretary's instance.

The President then said that he wanted to talk with me about the English Mission, which had troubled him a good deal. He mentioned the names of several prominent men in different parts of the country, including Robert Lincoln and Mr. Jewett, an eminent lawyer in Chicago, whose name was earnestly pressed upon him by the Senators from Illinois. I said that I had known Mr. Lincoln pretty well when he was in President Garfield's and Mr. Arthur's Cabinet, and thought very highly of him.

He was a very modest man indeed, never pressing any claim to public consideration or office, either on his own account or as his father's son, and never seeking responsibility.

But I had noticed that when he had anything to say or anything to do, he always said or did the wisest and best thing to be said or done under the circ.u.mstances. I do not know how much influence what I said had, but it seemed to gratify President Harrison exceedingly, and he stated that he was strongly inclined to appoint Mr. Lincoln.

I was told the next morning he sent for the two Illinois Senators, and told them that he had made up his mind to nominate Mr. Lincoln, and that one of them, Senator Farwell, was exceedingly offended. He was also much disturbed by President Harrison's att.i.tude in regard to the appointment of the postmaster at Chicago. The result was that when President Harrison's name came up for another nomination, Mr. Farwell was opposed to him, and when he was with difficulty nominated for reelection, the State of Illinois voted for Cleveland. Senator Cullom, though not liking very well to have his opinion disregarded, was more discreet. He did not see fit to make the exercise of the President's rightful and Const.i.tutional prerogative a reason for breaking off his friendly relations with the Administration, with whose principles he was in full accord.

This is an instance of President Harrison's want of tact.

I have little doubt that if, before finally announcing his intention, he had sent for the Illinois Senators--as Abraham Lincoln would have done, or as President McKinley would have done--gone over the whole ground with them, and told them his reasons and desire, they would have cheerfully acquiesced in the conclusion to which he had come, and their friendship with him would have been strengthened and not weakened.

After saying what was to be said about the English Mission, I said to President Harrison: "We have a gentleman in Ma.s.sachusetts, whom I think it is very desirable indeed to place in some important public service; that is Thomas Jefferson Coolidge.

He is a great-grandson of Mr. Jefferson." I said to the President the substance of what I have just stated above, about Mr.

Coolidge. I added that while Mr. Coolidge would be an excellent person for the English Mission, which his uncle Mr. Stevenson had held, yet, of course, I did not think, under the circ.u.mstances, that it would be proper to make another important diplomatic appointment from Ma.s.sachusetts just then; but I hoped that an opportunity might come later. President Harrison seemed to be much impressed with the suggestion, and said that he would bear it in mind.

When I went back to my room, it occurred to me that I had better speak to Mr. Blaine about it. If he first heard of it from the President he might think that I was trying to deal with the President about matters in his Department over his head and without consulting him. So I went round to the State Department early the next morning, and told Mr. Blaine what I had said to the President. I found that he knew all about Mr. Coolidge. I inadvertently spoke of him as grandson of Mr. Jefferson. Blaine immediately corrected me by saying, "great-grandson." He seemed to like the plan very well.

Nothing came of the matter at that time. But later, when the Pan-American Commission was appointed, the President, of his own motion, appointed Mr. Coolidge as one of the American representatives. Later, I happened to be one day at the White House, and President Harrison told me that Whitelaw Reid had announced his intention of resigning the French Mission before long. I reminded him of our conversation about Mr. Coolidge, and urged his name very strongly on him. He hesitated a good deal. I got the approval of every New England Senator but one to the proposal. The President still hesitated and seemed inclined to appoint Mr. Andrew D. White. But he finally yielded to the urgency for Mr. Coolidge. I should have been sorry if anything I had done had resulted in depriving the country of the service of Andrew D. White. I suppose him to be one of the very best representatives we ever had abroad.

But an opportunity came soon after, to send him first to Russia, and then to Germany, where he has represented what is best in the character, ability, desire, interest and scholarship of the American people.

So we had two first-rate representatives abroad instead of one. Mr. Coolidge discharged his functions to the satisfaction of the Administration, and to the universal approval of his countrymen.

He received me when I visited Paris with a very cordial and delightful hospitality. I had the pleasure of meeting at his house at dinner M. Ribot, then Prime Minister of France and afterward President of the French Republic, and several others of the leading men in their public life. But I spoke French very imperfectly indeed, and understood it much less, when spoken by a Parisian. The conversation was, in general, in French. So I got very little knowledge of them by being in their society.

My visit in England gave me a good deal more to remember.

Mr. Lincoln also received me with great cordiality. He gave a dinner at which several of the leaders of the Liberal Party were present; among them, Sir William Vernon Harcourt. I had letters to Sir William Vernon Harcourt, and to Lord Rosebery, and to Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England. Sir William Vernon Harcourt and Lord Rosebery each called on me, and spent an hour at my room. But Parliament was dissolved just at that time, so the Liberal leaders had at once to begin the campaign which resulted in Mr. Gladstone's victory. So I had no opportunity to make an intimate acquaintance with either of them. I owed to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes an introduction to John Bellows, a Quaker, a most delightful gentleman, the first authority in his time on the Roman antiquities of Great Britain, a fine cla.s.sical scholar and learned in old English literature and in the languages from which came the roots of our English tongue. I formed with him a close friendship which ended only with his death, in 1902. A year before he died he visited me in my home at Worcester, and received the degree of Master of Arts from Harvard. Mr. Bellows is the author of the wonderful French Dictionary.

I spent a few days with Lord Coleridge in Devon. His house at Ottery St. Mary's is close to the spot where Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born. I met there several of the race. I do not know whether they were living in the neighborhood or happened to be there on a visit.

I found in the church, close by, the tomb of John Sherman, one of my own kindred, I have no doubt, of the race which came from Colchester and Dedham in Ess.e.x, and Yaxley in Suffolk.

The Lord Chief Justice was much distressed lest he had done wrong in complying with General Butler's invitation to visit him at Lowell. He said that many of his American friends had treated him coldly afterward, and that his friend Richard Dana, whom he highly esteemed, had refused to call upon him for that reason.

I told him he did absolutely right, in my opinion. I said that General Butler was then Governor of the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts, and that an eminent person, holding a high official character, from a foreign country, could not undertake to question the personal character, or the t.i.tle to be considered gentlemen, of the men whom the American people put into their high places.

Lord Coleridge said he received fifty guineas every morning for his services in the Tichborne trial. "But," he added, "my general practice in my profession was so much interrupted by it that I could not have got along that year but for my salary as Attorney-General."

He spoke with great pride of his cross-examination of the Claimant. He said one of the papers had complained that his cross-examination did no good to his case whatever. "But I made him admit that he sent his photograph to some person, as the photograph of Arthur Orton." He said the common people in England still held to the belief that the Claimant was the genuine Sir Roger Tichborne, and, by a curious contradiction, this feeling was inspired largely by their sympathy with him as a man of humble birth. I said, "Yes, I think that is true.

I heard somebody, a little while ago, say that they heard two people talking in the cars, and one of them said to the other, 'They wouldn't give him the estate, because he was the son of a poor butcher.'" This very much amused the Lord Chief Justice.

I asked him about the story I had heard and had verified some time before, of the connection, in the person of Lady Rolle, between two quite remote periods. Lady Rolle was alive until 1887, maintaining her health so that she gave dinner parties in that year, shortly before she died. She was the widow of Mr. Rolle, afterward Lord Rolle, who made a violent attack on Charles James Fox in 1783. He was then thirty-two years old. From him the famous satire, the Rolliad, took its name. When he went to pay his homage to Queen Victoria at her Coronation in Westminster Abbey, he was quite feeble, and rolled down the steps of the throne. The young Queen showed her kindness of heart by jumping up and going to help him in person. Some of the English told the foreigners present at the ceremonial that that was part of the ceremony, and that the Rolles held their lands on the tenure of going through that performance at every coronation. Lady Rolle was married to her husband in 1820. He was then sixty-nine, and she a young girl of twenty years old. He was eighty or ninety years old when he died, and she survived as his widow for many years.

Something came up on the subject of longevity which induced me to refer to this story and ask Lord Coleridge if it were true. We were then riding out together; "Yes," said he, "there,"

pointing to a dwelling-place in full sight, "is the house where she lived."

His Lordship asked me about an American Judge with whom he had some acquaintance. I told him that I thought his reputation was rather that of a jurist than a Judge. "Oh, yes," said he, "a jurist is a man who knows something about the law of every country but his own."

Lord Coleridge had a good reputation as a story-teller. It was pleasant to get an auditor who seemed to like to hear the stories which have got rather too commonplace to be worth telling over here. He had a great admiration for President Lincoln, and was eager to hear anything anybody had to tell of him. I told him the famous story of Lincoln's reply to the man who had left with him his poem to read, when he gave it back. "If anybody likes that sort of thing, it's just the sort of thing they'd like." I overheard his Lordship, as he circulated about the room, a little while afterward, repeating the story to various listeners.

He thought Matthew Arnold the greatest living Englishman.

He spoke with great respect of Carlyle. He said: "Emerson was an imitator of Carlyle, and got his thoughts from him."

I could not stand that. It seemed to me that he had probably never read a page of Emerson in his life, and had got his notion from some writer for a magazine, before either of these great men was well known. I took the liberty of saying, with some emphasis, "Emerson was a far profounder and saner intellect than Carlyle." To which he said, "Why, what do you say?"

I repeated what I had said, and he received the statement with great politeness, but, of course, without a.s.sent.

During this summer I paid a visit to Moyle's Court, near Southampton, formerly owned by Lady Alice Lisle, whose daughter married Leonard h.o.a.r, President of Harvard College. Leonard h.o.a.r was the brother of my ancestor, John h.o.a.r of Concord, and the son of Charles h.o.a.r, Sheriff of Gloucester. There is a statement in an old account of some Puritan worthies that I have seen, to the effect that John h.o.a.r and Leonard married sisters. If that be true, John h.o.a.r's wife, Alice, was a daughter and namesake of Lady Alice Lisle. Although I should like to believe it, I am afraid that the claim cannot be made good. Lady Alice Lisle was a lady of large wealth and good lineage. Her husband was John Lord Lisle, who was Lord Justice under Cromwell, and one of the Judges in the trial of Charles I. He drew the indictment and sentence of the King, and sat next to Bradshaw at the trial, and directed and prompted him in difficult matters. He was murdered one Sunday morning on his way to church when in exile at Lausanne, Switzerland, on the Lake of Geneva, by three ruffians, said to be sent for that purpose by Queen Henrietta. Lady Alice Lisle was a victim of the brutality of Jeffries. After Monmouth's rebellion and defeat, she gave shelter and food to two fugitives from Monmouth's army. The report of her trial is in Howell.

There was no proof that she knew that they were fugitives from Monmouth's army, although she supposed one of them was a Dissenting minister. There had been no conviction of the princ.i.p.als, which the English law required before an accessory after the fact could be found guilty. She suggested this point at the trial, but it was overruled by Jeffries. He conducted the case with infinite brutality. She was a kindly old lady, of more than seventy years. She slept during part of the trial, probably being fatigued by the journey, in which she had been carried on horseback from Moyle's Court to Winchester, and the sleepless nights which would naturally have followed.