My Memories of Eighty Years Part 25

The government sent Mr. Hewitt abroad to purchase guns. The English gunmakers at once saw the trouble he was in and took advantage of it. They demanded prices several times greater than they were asking from other customers, and refused to give him any information about the manufacture of gun-metal.

After he had made the contract, with all its exorbitant conditions, he went to his hotel and invited the foreman of each department of the factory to meet him. They all came. Mr. Hewitt explained to them his mission, and found that they were sympathetic with Mr. Lincoln and his administration and the Union cause. Then he told them of the trouble he had had with their employers, and the hard terms which they had imposed. He asked them then all about the manufacture of gun-metal. Each one of the foremen was very clear and explicit as to his part, and so when they had all spoken, Mr. Hewitt, with his expert knowledge of the business, knew all the secrets of the manufacture of gun-metal, which he, of course, gave to the government at Washington for use in their several a.r.s.enals and shops.

"Now," he said to his guests, "you have done me a great favor.

I will return it. Your company is obliged by the contract to deliver this immense order within a limited time. They are going to make an enormous amount of money out of it. You strike and demand what you think is right, and you will get it immediately."

The gun company made a huge profit but had to share some of it with their workers. It was an early instance of the introduction of profit-sharing, which has now become common all over the world.

One of the most interesting Englishmen, whom I saw much of both in London and in the United States, was Sir Henry Irving. The world of art, drama, and history owes much to him for his revival of Shakespeare. Irving was a genius in his profession, and in private life perfectly delightful.

He gave me a dinner and it was, like everything he did, original.

Instead of the usual formal entertainment, he had the dinner at one of the old royal castles in the country, which had become a very exclusive hotel. He carried us out there in coaches.

The company of authors, playwrights, and men of affairs made the entertainment late and the evening memorable. Returning home on the top of the coach, the full moon would appear and reappear, but was generally under a cloud. Irving remarked: "I do much better with that old moon in my theatre. I make it shine or obscure it with clouds, as the occasion requires."

I received a note from him at the time of his last visit to the United States, in which he said that a friend from the western part of the country was giving him a dinner at Delmonico's to precede his sailing in the early morning on his voyage home. The company was to be large and all good friends, and he had the positive a.s.surance that there would be no speaking, and wished I would come.

The dinner was everything that could be desired. The company was a wonderful one of distinguished representatives of American life.

The hours pa.s.sed along rapidly and joyously, as many of these original men contributed story, racy adventure, or song.

Suddenly the host arose and said: "Gentlemen, we have with us to-night--" Of course, that meant an introductory speech about Irving and a reply from the guest. Irving turned to me, and in his deepest and most tragic Macbeth voice said: "G.o.d d.a.m.n his soul to h.e.l.l!" However, he rose to the occasion, and an hour or so afterwards, when everybody else had spoken, not satisfied with his first effort, he arose and made a much better and longer speech. He was an admirable after-dinner speaker as well as an unusual actor. His wonderful presentations, not only of Shakespeare's but of other dramas, did very much for the stage both in his own country and in ours.

Those who heard him only in his last year had no conception of him in his prime. In his later years he fell into the fault, so common with public speakers and actors, of running words together and failing to articulate clearly. I have known a fine speech and a superior sermon and a great part in a play ruined because of the failure to articulate clearly. The audience could not follow the speaker and so lost interest.

Sir Henry told me a delightful story about Disraeli. A young relative of Irving's took orders and became a clergyman in the Established Church. At the request of Irving, Disraeli appointed this young man one of the curates at Windsor.

One day the clergyman came to Irving in great distress and said: "The unexpected has happened. Every one has dropped out, and I have been ordered to preach on Sunday."

Irving took him to see Disraeli for advice. The prime minister said to the young clergyman: "If you preach thirty minutes, Her Majesty will be bored. If you preach fifteen minutes, Her Majesty will be pleased. If you preach ten minutes, Her Majesty will be delighted."

"But," said the young clergyman, "my lord, what can a preacher possibly say in only ten minutes?"

"That," answered the statesman, "will be a matter of indifference to Her Majesty."

Sir Frederick Leighton, the eminent English artist, and at one time president of the Royal Academy, was one of the most charming men of his time. His reminiscences were delightful and told with rare dramatic effect. I remember a vivid description which he gave me of the wedding of one of the British royalties with a German princess. Sir Frederick was one of the large and distinguished delegation which accompanied the prince.

The princ.i.p.ality of the bride's father had been shorn of territory, power, and revenue during the centuries. Nevertheless, at the time of the wedding he maintained a ministry, the same as in the Middle Ages, and a miniature army. Palaces, built centuries before, housed the Cabinet.

The minister of foreign affairs came to Sir Frederick and unbosomed himself of his troubles. He said: "According to the usual procedure I ought to give a ball in honor of the union of our house with the royal family of England. My palace is large enough, but my salary is only eight hundred a year, and the expense would eat up the whole of it."

Sir Frederick said: "Your Excellency can overcome the difficulty in an original way. The state band can furnish the music, and that will cost nothing. When the time comes for the banquet, usher the guests with due ceremony to a repast of beer and pretzels."

The minister followed the instructions. The whole party appreciated the situation, and the minister was accredited with the most brilliant and successful ball the old capital had known for a century.

For several years one of the most interesting men in Europe was the Duke d'Aumale, son of Louis Philippe. He was a statesman and a soldier of ability and a social factor of the first rank.

He alone of the French royalty was relieved from the decree of perpetual banishment and permitted to return to France and enjoy his estates. In recognition of this he gave his famous chateau and property at Chantilly to the French Academy. The gift was valued at ten millions of dollars. In the chateau at Chantilly is a wonderful collection of works of art.

I remember at one dinner, where the duke was the guest of honor, those present, including the host, were mostly new creations in the British peerage. After the conversation had continued for some time upon the fact that a majority of the House of Lords had been raised to the peerage during the reign of Queen Victoria, those present began to try and prove that on account of their ancient lineage they were exempt from the rule of parvenu peers.

The duke was very tolerant with this discussion and, as always, the soul of politeness.

The host said: "Your Royal Highness, could you oblige us with a sketch of your ancestry?"

"Oh, certainly," answered the duke; "it is very brief. My family, the Philippes, are descendants from AEneas of Troy, and AEneas was the son of Venus." The mushrooms seemed smaller than even the garden variety.

The duke was talking to me at one time very interestingly about the visit of his father to America. At the time of the French Revolution his father had to flee for his life and came to the United States.

He was entertained at Mount Vernon by Washington. He told me that after his father became King of France, he would often hesitate, or refuse to do something or write something which his ministers desired. The king's answer always was: "When I visited that greatest man of all the world, General Washington, at his home, I asked him at one time: 'General, is it not possible that in your long and wonderful career as a soldier and statesman that you have made mistakes?' The general answered: 'I have never done anything which I cared to recall or said anything which I would not repeat,' and the king would say: 'I cannot do that or sign that, because if I do I cannot say for myself what General Washington said of himself.'"

The duke asked me to spend a week-end with him at Chantilly, and it is one of the regrets of my life that I was unable to accept.

I happened to be in London on two successive Sundays. On the first I went to Westminster Abbey to hear Canon Farrar preach. The sermon was worthy of its wonderful setting. Westminster Abbey is one of the most inspiring edifices in the world. The orator has to reach a high plane to be worthy of its pulpit. I have heard many dull discourses there because the surroundings refuse to harmonize with mediocrity. The sermon of Canon Farrar was cla.s.sic. It could easily have taken a place among the gems of English literature. It seemed to me to meet whatever criticism the eminent dead, buried in that old mausoleum, might have of these modern utterances. I left the Abbey spiritually and mentally elated.

The next Sunday I went to hear Charles Spurgeon. It was a wonderful contrast. Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle was a very plain structure of immense proportions but with admirable acoustics.

There was none of the historic enshrining the church, which is the glory of Westminster Abbey, no church vestments or ceremonials.

Mr. Spurgeon, a plain, stocky-looking man, came out on the platform dressed in an ordinary garb of black coat, vest, and trousers.

It was a vast audience of what might be called middle-cla.s.s people.

Mr. Spurgeon's sermon was a plain, direct, and exceedingly forcible appeal to their judgment and emotions. There was no attempt at rhetoric, but hard, hammerlike blows. As he rose in his indignation and denunciation of some current evils, and ill.u.s.trated his argument with the Old Testament examples of the punishment of sinners, the audience became greatly excited. One of the officers of the church, in whose pew I sat, groaned aloud and gripped his hands so that the nails left their mark. Others around him were in the same frame of mind and spirit.

I saw there and then that the men who fought with Cromwell and won the battle of Naseby had in modern England plenty of descendants.

They had changed only in outward deference to modern usages and conditions. If there had been occasion, Mr. Spurgeon could have led them for any sacrifice to what they believed to be right.

I felt the power of that suppressed feeling--I would not say fanaticism, but intense conscientiousness--which occasionally in elections greatly surprises English politicians.

Canon Farrar's sermon easily takes its place among the selected books of the library. Spurgeon's address was straight from the shoulder, blow for blow, for the needs of the hour.

One of the novel incidents of the generous hospitality which I enjoyed every year in London was a dinner at the Athenaeum Club given to me by one of the members of the government at that time.

He was a gentleman of high rank and political importance. There were twenty-six at the dinner, and it was a representative gathering.

At the conclusion our host made a very cordial speech on more intimate relations between the United States and Great Britain, and then in a complimentary phrase introduced me, saying: "I hope you will speak freely and without limit."

I was encouraged by a most sympathetic audience and had a good time during my effort. No one else was called upon. My host was complimentary and said: "Your speech was so satisfactory that I thought best not to have any more."

Some time afterwards he said to me: "Many of my friends had heard of you but never heard you, so I made up my mind to give them the opportunity, and what was really a purely social affair for every other guest, I turned into an international occasion just to draw you out. However, the fraud, if it was a fraud, was an eminent success."

No one in England did more for Americans than Sir Henry Lucy.

Every American knew all about him, because of his reputation, and particularly because he was the author of that most interesting column in Punch called the "Essence of Parliament."

At his luncheons he gathered eminent men in public life and in the literary and journalistic activities of Great Britain. These luncheons were most informal, and under the hospitable genius of Lucy the guests became on intimate terms. There was no table in London where so many racy stories and sometimes valuable historical reminiscences could be heard.

To be a guest at one of Sir Lucy's luncheons was for an American to meet on familiar terms with distinguished men whom he knew all about and was most anxious to see and hear.