My Memories of Eighty Years Part 16

I called on Hay one morning just as Ca.s.sini, the Russian amba.s.sador, was leaving. Ca.s.sini was one of the shrewdest and ablest of diplomats in the Russian service. It was said that for twelve years he had got the better of all the delegations at Pekin and controlled that extraordinary ruler of China, the dowager queen.

Ca.s.sini told me that from his intimate a.s.sociations with her he had formed the opinion that she was quite equal to Catherine of Russia, whom he regarded as the greatest woman sovereign who ever lived.

Hay said to me: "I have just had a very long and very remarkable discussion with Ca.s.sini. He is a revelation in the way of secret diplomacy. He brought to me the voluminous instructions to him of his government on our open-door policy. After we had gone over them carefully, he closed his portfolio and, pushing it aside, said: 'Now, Mr. Secretary, listen to Ca.s.sini.' He immediately presented an exactly opposite policy from the one in the instructions, and a policy entirely favorable to us, and said: 'That is what my government will do.'" It was a great loss to Russian diplomacy when he died so early.

As senator I did all in my power to bring about the appointment of Whitelaw Reid as amba.s.sador to Great Britain. He and I had been friends ever since his beginning in journalism in New York many years before. Reid was then the owner and editor of the New York Tribune, and one of the most brilliant journalists in the country. He was also an excellent public speaker. His long and intimate contact with public affairs and intimacy with public men ideally fitted him for the appointment. He had already served with great credit as amba.s.sador to France.

The compensation of our representatives abroad always has been and still is entirely inadequate to enable them to maintain, in comparison with the representatives of other governments, the dignity of their own country. All the other great powers at the princ.i.p.al capitals maintain fine residences for their amba.s.sadors, which also is the emba.s.sy. Our Congress, except within the last few years, has always refused to make this provision. The salary which we pay is scarcely ever more than one-third the amount paid by European governments in similar service.

I worked hard while in the Senate to improve this situation because of my intimate knowledge of the question. When I first began the effort I found there was very strong belief that the whole foreign service was an unnecessary expense. When Mr. Roosevelt first became president, and I had to see him frequently about diplomatic appointments, I learned that this was his view. He said to me: "This foreign business of the government, now that the cable is perfected, can be carried on between our State Department and the chancellery of any government in the world. Nevertheless, I am in favor of keeping up the diplomatic service. All the old nations have various methods of rewarding distinguished public servants. The only one we have is the diplomatic service. So when I appoint a man amba.s.sador or minister, I believe that I am giving him a decoration, and the reason I change amba.s.sadors and ministers is that I want as many as possible to possess it."

The longer Mr. Roosevelt remained president, and the closer he came to our foreign relations, the more he appreciated the value of the personal contact and intimate knowledge on the spot of an American amba.s.sador or minister.

Mr. Reid entertained more lavishly and hospitably than any amba.s.sador in England ever had, both at his London house and at his estate in the country. He appreciated the growing necessity to the peace of the world and the progress of civilization of closer union of English-speaking peoples. At his beautiful and delightful entertainments Americans came in contact with Englishmen under conditions most favorable for the appreciation by each of the other. The charm of Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid's hospitality was so genuine, so cordial, and so universal, that to be their guest was an event for Americans visiting England. There is no capital in the world where hospitality counts for so much as in London, and no country where the house-party brings people together under such favorable conditions. Both the city and the country homes of Mr. and Mrs. Reid were universities of international good-feeling. Mr. Reid, on the official side, admirably represented his country and had the most intimate relations with the governing powers of Great Britain.

I recall with the keenest pleasure how much my old friend, Joseph H. Choate, did to make each one of my visits to London during his term full of the most charming and valuable recollections.

His dinners felt the magnetism of his presence, and he showed especial skill in having, to meet his American guests, just the famous men in London life whom the American desired to know.

Choate was a fine conversationalist, a wit and a humorist of a high order. His audacity won great triumphs, but if exercised by a man less endowed would have brought him continuously into trouble. He had the faculty, the art, of so directing conversation that at his entertainments everybody had a good time, and an invitation always was highly prized. He was appreciated most highly by the English bench and bar. They recognized him as the leader of his profession in the United States. They elected him a Bencher of the Middle Temple, the first American to receive that honor after an interval of one hundred and fifty years. Choate's witticisms and repartees became the social currency of dinner-tables in London and week-end parties in the country.

Choate paid little attention to conventionalities, which count for so much and are so rigidly enforced, especially in royal circles.

I had frequently been at receptions, garden-parties, and other entertainments at Buckingham Palace in the time of Queen Victoria and also of King Edward. At an evening reception the diplomats representing all the countries in the world stand in a solemn row, according to rank and length of service. They are covered with decorations and gold lace. The weight of the gold lace on some of the uniforms of the minor powers is as great as if it were a coat of armor. Mr. Choate, under regulations of our diplomatic service, could only appear in an ordinary dress suit.

While the diplomats stand in solemn array, the king and queen go along the line and greet each one with appropriate remarks.

n.o.body but an amba.s.sador and minister gets into that brilliant circle. On one occasion Mr. Choate saw me standing with the other guests outside the charmed circle and immediately left the diplomats, came to me, and said: "I am sure you would like to have a talk with the queen." He went up to Her Majesty, stated the case and who I was, and the proposition was most graciously received.

I think the royalties were pleased to have a break in the formal etiquette. Mr. Choate treated the occasion, so far as I was concerned, as if it had been a reception in New York or Salem, and a distinguished guest wanted to meet the hosts. The gold-laced and bejewelled and highly decorated diplomatic circle was paralyzed.

Mr. Choate's delightful personality and original conversational powers made him a favorite guest everywhere, but he also carried to the platform the distinction which had won for him the reputation of being one of the finest orators in the United States.

Choate asked at one time when I was almost nightly making speeches at some entertainment: "How do you do it?" I told him I was risking whatever reputation I had on account of very limited preparation, that I did not let these speeches interfere at all with my business, but that they were all prepared after I had arrived home from my office late in the afternoon. Sometimes they came easy, and I reached the dinner in time; at other times they were more difficult, and I did not arrive till the speaking had begun. Then he said: "I enjoy making these after-dinner addresses more than any other work. It is a perfect delight for me to speak to such an audience, but I have not the gift of quick and easy preparation. I accept comparatively few of the constant invitations I receive, because when I have to make such a speech I take a corner in the car in the morning going to my office, exclude all the intruding public with a newspaper and think all the way down. I continue the same process on my way home in the evening, and it takes about three days of this absorption and exclusiveness, with some time in the evenings, to get an address with which I am satisfied."

The delicious humor of these efforts of Mr. Choate and the wonderful way in which he could expose a current delusion, or what he thought was one, and produce an impression not only on his audience but on the whole community, when his speech was printed in the newspapers, was a kind of effort which necessarily required preparation. In all the many times I heard him, both at home and abroad, he never had a failure and sometimes made a sensation.

Among the many interesting characters whom I met on shipboard was Emory Storrs, a famous Chicago lawyer. Storrs was a genius of rare talent as an advocator. He also on occasions would make a most successful speech, but his efforts were unequal. At one session of the National Bar a.s.sociation he carried off all honors at their banquet. Of course, they wanted him the next year, but then he failed entirely to meet their expectations.. Storrs was one of the most successful advocates at the criminal bar, especially in murder cases. He rarely failed to get an acquittal for his client. He told me many interesting stories of his experiences.

He had a wide circuit, owing to his reputation, and tried cases far distant from home.

I remember one of his experiences in an out-of-the-way county of Arkansas. The hotel where they all stopped was very primitive, and he had the same table with the judge. The most attractive offer for breakfast by the landlady was buckwheat-cakes. She appeared with a jug of mola.s.ses and said to the judge: "Will you have a trickle or a dab?" The judge answered: "A dab." She then ran her fingers around the jug and slapped a huge amount of mola.s.ses on the judge's cakes. Storrs said: "I think I prefer a trickle."

Whereupon she dipped her fingers again in the jug and let the drops fall from them on Storrs's cakes. The landlady was disappointed because her cakes were unpopular with such distinguished gentlemen.

Once Storrs was going abroad on the same ship with me on a sort of semi-diplomatic mission. He was deeply read in English literature and, as far as a stranger could be, familiar with the places made famous in English and foreign cla.s.sics.

He was one of the factors, as chairman of the Illinois delegation, of the conditions which made possible the nomination of Garfield and Arthur. In the following presidential campaign he took an active and very useful part. Then he brought all the influences that he could use, and they were many, to bear upon President Arthur to make him attorney-general. Arthur was a strict formalist and could not tolerate the thought of having such an eccentric genius in his Cabinet. Storrs was not only disappointed but hurt that Arthur declined to appoint him.

To make him happy his rich clients--and he had many of them--raised a handsome purse and urged him to make a European trip. Then the president added to the pleasure of his journey by giving him an appointment as a sort of roving diplomat, with special duties relating to the acute trouble then existing in regard to the admission of American cattle into Great Britain. They were barred because of a supposed infectious disease.

Storrs's weakness was neckties. He told me that he had three hundred and sixty-five, a new one for every day. He would come on deck every morning, display his fresh necktie, and receive a compliment upon its color and appropriateness, and then take from his pocket a huge water-proof envelope. From this he would unroll his parchment appointment as a diplomat, and the letters he had to almost every one of distinction in Europe. On the last day, going through the same ceremony, he said to me: "I am not showing you these things out of vanity, but to impress upon you the one thing I most want to accomplish in London. I desire to compel James Russell Lowell, our minister, to give me a dinner."

Probably no man in the world could be selected so antipathetic to Lowell as Emory Storrs. Mr. Lowell told me that he was annoyed that the president should have sent an interloper to meddle with negotiations which he had in successful progress to a satisfactory conclusion. So he invited Storrs to dinner, and then Storrs took no further interest in his diplomatic mission.

Mr. Lowell told me that he asked Storrs to name whoever he wanted to invite. He supposed from his general a.n.a.lysis of the man that Storrs would want the entire royal family. He was delighted to find that the selection was confined entirely to authors, artists, and scientists.

On my return trip Mr. Storrs was again a fellow pa.s.senger. He was very enthusiastic over the places of historic interest he had visited, and eloquent and graphic in descriptions of them and of his own intense feelings when he came in contact with things he had dreamed of most of his life.

"But," he said, "I will tell you of my greatest adventure. I was in the picture-gallery at Dresden, and in that small room where hangs Raphael's 'Madonna.' I was standing before this wonderful masterpiece of divine inspiration when I felt the room crowded.

I discovered that the visitors were all Americans and all looking at me. I said to them: 'Ladies and gentlemen, you are here in the presence of the most wonderful picture ever painted. If you study it, you can see that there is little doubt but with all his genius Raphael in this work had inspiration from above, and yet you, as Americans, instead of availing yourselves of the rarest of opportunities, have your eyes bent on me. I am only a Chicago lawyer wearing a Chicago-made suit of clothes.'

"A gentleman stepped forward and said: 'Mr. Storrs, on behalf of your countrymen and countrywomen present, I wish to say that you are of more interest to us than all the works of Raphael put together, because we understand that James Russell Lowell, United States Minister to Great Britain, gave you a dinner.'"

One other incident in my acquaintance with Mr. Storrs was original.

I heard the story of it both from him and Lord Coleridge, and they did not differ materially. Lord Coleridge, Chief Justice of England, was a most welcome visitor when he came to the United States.

He received invitations from the State Bar a.s.sociations everywhere to accept their hospitality. I conducted him on part of his trip and found him one of the most able and delightful of men. He was a very fine speaker, more in our way than the English, and made a first-cla.s.s impression upon all the audiences he addressed.

At Chicago Lord Coleridge was entertained by the Bar a.s.sociation of the State of Illinois. Storrs, who was an eminent member of the bar of that State, came to him and said: "Now, Lord Coleridge, you have been entertained by the Bar a.s.sociation. I want you to know the real men of the West, the captains of industry who have created this city, built our railroads, and made the Great West what it is." Coleridge replied that he did not want to go outside bar a.s.sociations, and he could not think of making another speech in Chicago. Storrs a.s.sured him it would be purely a private affair and no speeches permitted.

The dinner was very late, but when they sat down Lord Coleridge noticed a distinguished-looking gentleman, instead of eating his dinner, correcting a ma.n.u.script. He said: "Mr. Storrs, I understood there was to be no speaking." "Well," said Storrs, "you can't get Americans together unless some one takes the floor. That man with the ma.n.u.script is General and Senator John A. Logan, one of our most distinguished citizens." Just then a reporter came up to Storrs and said: "Mr. Storrs, we have the slips of your speech in our office, and it is now set up with the laughter and applause in their proper places. The editor sent me up to see if you wanted to add anything." Of course Lord Coleridge was in for it and had to make another speech.

The cause of the lateness of the dinner is the most original incident that I know of in historic banquets. Storrs received great fees and had a large income, but was very careless about his business matters. One of his creditors obtained a judgment against him. The lawyer for this creditor was a guest at this dinner and asked the landlord of the hotel if the dinner had been paid for in advance. The landlord answered in the affirmative, and so the lawyer telephoned to the sheriff, and had the dinner levied upon. The sheriff refused to allow it to be served until the judgment was satisfied. There were at least a hundred millions of dollars represented among the guests, packers, elevator men, real-estate operators, and grain operators, but millionaires and multimillionaires in dress suits at a banquet never have any money on their persons. So it was an hour or more before the sheriff was satisfied. Lord Coleridge was intensely amused and related the adventure with great glee.

Several years afterwards Lord Coleridge had some difficulty in his family which came into the courts of England. I do not remember just what it was all about, but Storrs, in reading the gossip which came across the cable, decided against the chief justice.

Lord Coleridge told me he received from Storrs a cable reading something like this: "I have seen in our papers about your att.i.tude in the suit now pending. I therefore inform you that as far as possible I withdraw the courtesies which I extended to you in Chicago." In this unique way Storrs cancelled the dinner which was given and seized by the sheriff years ago.

I met Storrs many times, and he was always not only charming but fascinating. He was very witty, full of anecdotes, and told a story with dramatic effect. Except for his eccentricities he might have taken the highest place in his profession. As it was, he acquired such fame that an admirer has written a very good biography of him.

XVII. GOVERNORS OF NEW YORK STATE

There is nothing more interesting than to see the beginning of a controversy which makes history. It is my good fortune to have been either a spectator or a partic.i.p.ant on several occasions.

William M. Tweed was at the height of his power. He was the master of New York City, and controlled the legislature of the State.

The rapid growth and expansion of New York City had necessitated a new charter, or very radical improvements in the existing one.

Tweed, as chairman of the Senate committee on cities, had staged a large and spectacular hearing at the State Capitol at Albany.

It was attended by a large body of representative citizens from the metropolis. Some spoke for civic and commercial bodies, and there were also other prominent men who were interested. Everybody interested in public affairs in Albany at the time attended. Not only was there a large gathering of legislators, but there were also in the audience judges, lawyers, and politicians from all parts of the State.

After hearing from the Chamber of Commerce and various reform organizations, Mr. Samuel J. Tilden came forward with a complete charter. It was soon evident that he was better prepared and informed on the subject than any one present. He knew intimately the weaknesses of the present charter, and had thought out with great care and wisdom what was needed in new legislation.

From the contemptuous way in which Senator Tweed treated Mr. Tilden, scouted his plans, and ridiculed his propositions, it was evident that the whole scheme had been staged as a State-wide spectacle to humiliate and end the political career of Samuel J. Tilden.

In answer to Tilden's protest against this treatment, Tweed loudly informed him that he represented no one but himself, that he had neither influence nor standing in the city, that he was an intermeddler with things that did not concern him, and a general nuisance.

Mr. Tilden turned ashy white, and showed evidences of suppressed rage and vindictiveness more intense than I ever saw in any one before, and abruptly left the hearing.

I knew Mr. Tilden very well, and from contact with him in railroad matters had formed a high opinion of his ability and acquirements.

He had a keen, a.n.a.lytic mind, tireless industry, and a faculty for clarifying difficulties and untangling apparently impossible problems to a degree that amounted to genius.

In reference to what had happened, I said to a friend: "Mr. Tweed must be very confident of his position and of his record, for he has deliberately defied and invited the attacks of a relentless and merciless opponent by every insult which could wound the pride and incite the hatred of the man so ridiculed and abused.

Mr. Tilden is a great lawyer. He has made a phenomenal success financially, he has powerful a.s.sociates in financial and business circles, and is master of his time for any purpose to which he chooses to apply it."

It was not long before one of the most remarkable and exhaustive investigations ever conducted by an individual into public records, books, ledgers, bank-accounts, and contracts, revealed to the public the whole system of governing the city. This master mind solved the problems so that they were plain to the average citizen as the simplest sum in arithmetic, or that two and two make four.