My Memories of Eighty Years Part 32

There have been two occasions in Mr. Choate's after-dinner speeches much commented upon both in this country and abroad. As I was present on both evenings, it seems the facts ought to be accurately stated. The annual dinner of the "Friendly Sons of St. Patrick"

occurred during one of the years when the Home Rule question was most acute in England and actively discussed here. At the same time our Irish fellow citizens, with their talent for public life, had captured all the offices in New York City. They had the mayor, the majority of the Board of Aldermen, and a large majority of the judges. When Mr. Choate spoke he took up the Home Rule question, and, without indicating his own views, said substantially: "We Yankees used to be able to govern ourselves, but you Irish have come here and taken the government away from us. You have our entire city administration in your hands, and you do with us as you like. We are deprived of Home Rule. Now what you are clamoring for both at home and abroad is Home Rule for Ireland.

With such demonstrated ability in capturing the greatest city on the western continent, and one of the greatest in the world, why don't you go back to Ireland and make, as you would, Home Rule there a success?"

I was called a few minutes afterwards to a conference of the leading Irishmen present. I was an honorary member of that society, and they were in a high state of indignation. The more radical thought that Mr. Choate's speech should be resented at once.

However, those who appreciated its humor averted hostile action, but Mr. Choate was never invited to an Irish banquet again.

The second historical occasion was when the Scotch honored their patron Saint, St. Andrew. The attendance was greater than ever before, and the interest more intense because the Earl of Aberdeen was present. The earl was at that time Governor-General of Canada, but to the Scotchmen he was much more than that, because he was the chief of the Clan Gordon. The earl came to the dinner in full Highland costume. Lady Aberdeen and the ladies of the vice-regal court were in the gallery. I sat next to the earl and Choate sat next to me. Choate said: "Chauncey, are Aberdeen's legs bare?"

I looked under the table-cloth and discovered that they were naturally so because of his costume. I answered: "Choate, they are."

I thought nothing of it until Choate began his speech, in which he said: "I was not fully informed by the committee of the importance of the occasion. I did not know that the Earl of Aberdeen was to be here as a guest of honor. I was especially and unfortunately ignorant that he was coming in the full panoply of his great office as chief of Clan Gordon. If I had known that I would have left my trousers at home."

Aberdeen enjoyed it, the ladies in the gallery were amused, but the Scotch were mad, and Choate lost invitations to future Scotch dinners.

Few appreciate the lure of the metropolis. It attracts the successful to win greater success with its larger opportunities.

It has resistless charm with the ambitious and the enterprising.

New York, with its suburbs, which are really a part of itself, is the largest city in the world. It is the only true cosmopolitan one. It has more Irish than any city in Ireland, more Germans and Italians than any except the largest cities in Germany or Italy. It has more Southerners than are gathered in any place in any Southern State, and the same is true of Westerners and those from the Pacific coast and New England, except in Chicago, San Francisco, or Boston. There is also a large contingent from the West Indies, South America, and Canada.

The people who make up the guests at a great dinner are the survival of the fittest of these various settlers in New York.

While thousands fail and go back home or drop by the way, these men have made their way by superior ability, foresight, and adaptability through the fierce compet.i.tions of the great city.

They are unusually keen-witted and alert. For the evening of the banquet they leave behind their business and its cares and are bent on being entertained, amused, and instructed. They are a most catholic audience, broad-minded, hospitable, and friendly to ideas whether they are in accord with them or not, providing they are well presented. There is one thing they will not submit to, and that is being bored.

These functions are usually over by midnight, and rarely last so long; while out in the country and in other towns, it is no unusual thing to have a dinner with speeches run along until the early hours of the next morning. While public men, politicians, and aspiring orators seek their opportunities upon this platform in New York, few succeed and many fail. It is difficult for a stranger to grasp the situation and adapt himself at once to its atmosphere. I have narrated in preceding pages some remarkable successes, and will give a few instances of very able and distinguished men who lost touch of their audiences.

One of the ablest men in the Senate was Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama. I was fond of him personally and admired greatly his many and varied talents. He was a most industrious and admirable legislator, and a debater of rare influence. He was a master of correct and scholarly English, and one of the very few who never went to the reporters' room to correct his speeches. As they were always perfect, he let them stand as they were delivered.

Senator Morgan was a great card on a famous occasion among the many well-known men who were also to speak. Senator Elihu Root presided with his usual distinction. Senator Morgan had a prepared speech which he read. It was unusually long, but very good. On account of his reputation the audience was, for such an audience, wonderfully patient and frequent and enthusiastic in its applause.

Mistaking his favorable reception, Senator Morgan, after he had finished the ma.n.u.script, started in for an extended talk. After the hour had grown to nearly two, the audience became impatient, and the senator, again mistaking its temper, thought they had become hostile and announced that at many times and many places he had been met with opposition, but that he could not be put down or silenced. Mr. Root did the best he could to keep the peace, but the audience, who were anxious to hear the other speakers, gave up hope and began to leave, with the result that midnight saw an empty hall with a presiding officer and an orator.

At another great political dinner I sat beside Governor Oglesby, of Illinois. He was famous as a war governor and as a speaker.

There were six speakers on the dais, of whom I was one. Happily, my turn came early. The governor said to me: "How much of the gospel can these tenderfeet stand?" "Well, Governor," I answered, "there are six speakers to-night, and the audience will not allow the maximum of time occupied to be more than thirty minutes. Any one who exceeds that will lose his crowd and, worse than that, he may be killed by the eloquent gentlemen who are bursting with impatience to get the floor, and who are to follow him."

"Why," said the governor, "I don't see how any one can get started in thirty minutes."

"Well," I cautioned, "please do not be too long."

When the midnight hour struck the hall was again practically empty, the governor in the full tide of his speech, which evidently would require about three hours, and the chairman declared the meeting adjourned.

Senator Foraker, of Ohio, who was one of the appointed speakers, told me the next morning that at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where he was stopping, he was just getting into bed when the governor burst into his room and fairly shouted: "Foraker, no wonder New York is almost always wrong. You saw to-night that it would not listen to the truth. Now I want to tell you what I intended to say." He was shouting with impa.s.sioned eloquence, his voice rising until, through the open windows, it reached Madison Square Park, when the watchman burst in and said: "Sir, the guests in this hotel will not stand that any longer, but if you must finish your speech I will take you out in the park."

During Cleveland's administration one of the New York banquets became a national affair. The princ.i.p.al speaker was the secretary of the interior, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, who afterwards became United States senator and justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Lamar was one of the ablest and most cultured men in public life, and a fine orator. I was called upon so late that it was impossible to follow any longer the serious discussions of the evening, and what the management and the audience wanted from me was some fun.

Lamar, with his Johnsonian periods and the lofty style of Edmund Burke, furnished an opportunity for a little pleasantry.

He came to me, when I had finished, in great alarm and said: "My appearance here is not an ordinary one and does not permit humor. I am secretary of the interior, and the representative of the president and his administration. My speech is really the message of the president to the whole country, and I wish you would remedy any impression which the country might otherwise receive from your humor."

This I was very glad to do, but it was an instance of which I have met many, of a very distinguished and brilliant gentleman taking himself too seriously. At another rather solemn function of this kind I performed the same at the request of the management, but with another protest from the orator and his enmity.

In reminiscing, after he retired from the presidency, Mr. Cleveland spoke to me of his great respect and admiration for Mr. Lamar.

Cleveland's speeches were always short. His talent was for compression and concentration, and he could not understand the necessity for an effort of great length. He told me that while Justice Lamar was secretary of the interior he came to him one day and said: "Mr. President, I have accepted an invitation to deliver an address in the South, and as your administration may be held responsible for what I say, I wish you would read it over and make any corrections or suggestions."

Mr. Cleveland said the speech was extraordinarily long though very good, and when he returned it to Secretary Lamar he said to him: "That speech will take at least three hours to deliver.

A Northern audience would never submit to over an hour. Don't you think you had better cut it down?" The secretary replied: "No, Mr. President; a Southern audience expects three hours, and would be better satisfied with five."

Justice Miller, one of the ablest of the judges of the Supreme Court at that time, was the princ.i.p.al speaker on another occasion. He was ponderous to a degree, and almost equalled in the emphasis of his utterances, what was once said of Daniel Webster, that every word weighed twelve pounds. I followed him. The Attorney-General of the United States, who went back to Washington the next day with Justice Miller, told me that as soon as they had got on the train the justice commenced to complain that I had wholly misunderstood his speech, and that no exaggeration of interpretation would warrant what I said. The judge saw no humor in my little effort to relieve the situation, and took it as a reply of opposing counsel. He said that the justice took it up from another phase after leaving Philadelphia, and resumed his explanation from another angle as to what he meant after they reached Baltimore.

When the train arrived at its destination and they separated in the Washington station, the justice turned to the attorney-general and said: "d.a.m.n Depew! Good-night."

Such are the perils of one who good-naturedly yields to the importunities of a committee of management who fear the failure with their audience of their entertainment.

The great dinners of New York are the Chamber of Commerce, which is a national function, as were also for a long time, during the presidency of Mr. Choate, those of the New England Society. The annual banquets of the Irish, Scotch, English, Welsh, Holland, St. Nicholas, and the French, are also most interesting, and sometimes by reason of the presence of a national or international figure, a.s.sume great importance. The dinner which the Pilgrims Society tenders to the British amba.s.sador gives him an opportunity, without the formalities and conventions of his office, of speaking his mind both to the United States and to his own people.

The annual banquets of the State societies are now a.s.suming greater importance. Each State has thousands of men who have been or still are citizens, but who live in New York. Those dinners attract the leading politicians of their several States. It is a platform for the ambitious to be president and sometimes succeeds.

Garfield made a great impression at one of these State dinners, so did Foraker, and at the last dinner of the Ohio Society the star was Senator Warren G. Harding. On one occasion, when McKinley and Garfield were present, in the course of my speech I made a remark which has since been adopted as a sort of motto by the Buckeye State. Ohio, I think, has pa.s.sed Virginia as a mother of presidents. It is remarkable that the candidates of both great parties are now of that State. I said in the closing of my speech, alluding to the distinguished guests and their prospects: "Some men have greatness thrust upon them, some are born great, and some are born in Ohio."

One of the greatest effects produced by a speech was by Henry Ward Beecher at an annual dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. At the time, the Home Rule question was more than ordinarily acute and Fenianism was rabid. While Mr. Beecher had great influence upon his audience, his audience had equal influence upon him. As he enlarged upon the wrongs of Ireland the responses became more enthusiastic and finally positively savage. This stirred the orator up till he gave the wildest approval to direct action and revolution, with corresponding cheers from the diners, standing and cheering. Mr. Beecher was explaining that speech for about a year afterwards. I was a speaker on the same platform.

Mr. Beecher always arrived late, and everybody thought it was to get the applause as he came in but he explained to me that it was due to his method of preparation. He said his mind would not work freely until three hours after he had eaten. Many speakers have told me the same thing. He said when he had a speech to make at night, whether it was at a dinner or elsewhere, that he took his dinner in the middle of the day, and then a gla.s.s of milk and crackers at five o'clock, with nothing afterwards. Then in the evening his mind was perfectly clear and under absolute control.

The Lotos Club has been for fifty years to New York what the Savage Club is to London. It attracts as its guests the most eminent men of letters who visit this country. Its entertainments are always successful. For twenty-nine years it had for its president Mr. Frank R. Lawrence, a gentleman with a genius for introducing distinguished strangers with most felicitous speeches, and a committee who selected with wonderful judgment the other speakers of the evening. A successor to Mr. Lawrence, and of equal merit, has been found in Chester S. Lord, now president of the Lotos Club. Mr. Lord was for more than a third of a century managing editor of the New York Sun, and is now chancellor of the University of the State of New York.

I remember one occasion where the most tactful man who ever appeared before his audience slipped his trolley, and that was Bishop Potter.

The bishop was a remarkably fine preacher and an unusually attractive public speaker and past master of all the social amenities of life.

The guest of the evening was the famous Canon Kingsley, author of "Hypatia" and other works at that time universally popular.

The canon had the largest and reddest nose one ever saw. The bishop, among the pleasantries of his introduction, alluded to this headlight of religion and literature. The canon fell from grace and never forgave the bishop.

On Lotos nights I have heard at their best Lord Houghton, statesman and poet, Mark Twain, Stanley the explorer, and I consider it one of the distinctions as well as pleasures of my life to have been a speaker at the Lotos on more occasions than any one else during the last half century.

In Mr. Joseph Pulitzer's early struggles with his paper, the New York World, the editorial columns frequently had very severe attacks on Mr. William H. Vanderbilt and the New York Central Railroad. They were part, of course, of attacks upon monopoly.

I was frequently included in these criticisms.

The Lotos Club gave a famous dinner to George Augustus Sala, the English writer and journalist. I found myself seated beside Mr. Pulitzer, whom I had never met. When I was called upon to speak I introduced, in what I had to say about the distinguished guest, this bit of audacity. I said substantially, in addition to Mr. Sala: "We have with us to-night a great journalist who comes to the metropolis from the wild and woolly West. After he had purchased the World he came to me and said, 'Chauncey Depew, I have a scheme, which I am sure will benefit both of us. Everybody is envious of the prestige of the New York Central and the wealth of Mr. Vanderbilt. You are known as his princ.i.p.al adviser. Now, if in my general hostility to monopoly I include Mr. Vanderbilt and the New York Central as princ.i.p.al offenders, I must include you, because you are the champion in your official relationship of the corporation and of its policies and activities. I do not want you to have any feeling against me because of this. The policy will secure for the World everybody who is not a stockholder in the New York Central, or does not possess millions of money. When Mr. Vanderbilt finds that you are attacked, he is a gentleman and broad-minded enough to compensate you and will grant to you both significant promotion and a large increase in salary.'" Then I added: "Well, gentlemen, I have only to say that Mr. Pulitzer's experiment has been eminently successful. He has made his newspaper a recognized power and a notable organ of public opinion; its fortunes are made and so are his, and, in regard to myself, all he predicted has come true, both in promotion and in enlargement of income." When I sat down Mr. Pulitzer grasped me by the hand and said: "Chauncey Depew, you are a mighty good fellow. I have been misinformed about you. You will have friendly treatment hereafter in any newspaper which I control."

The Gridiron Club of Washington, because of both its ability and genius and especially its national position, furnishes a wonderful platform for statesmen. Its genius in creating caricatures and fake pageants of current political situations at the capital and its public men is most remarkable. The president always attends, and most of the Cabinet and justices of the Supreme Court. The amba.s.sadors and representatives of the leading governments represented in Washington are guests, and so are the best-known senators and representatives of the time. The motto of the club is "Reporters are never present. Ladies always present." Though the a.s.sociation is made up entirely of reporters, the secrecy is so well kept that the speakers are unusually frank.

There was a famous contest one night there, however, between President Roosevelt and Senator Foraker, who at the time were intensely antagonistic, which can never be forgotten by those present. There was a delightful interplay between William J. Bryan and President Roosevelt, when Bryan charged the president with stealing all his policies and ideas.

If the speaker grasped the peculiarities of his audience and its temperament, his task was at once the most difficult and the most delightful, and my friend, Mr. Arthur Dunn, has performed most useful service in embalming a portion of Gridiron history in his volume, "Gridiron Nights."

Pierpont Morgan, the greatest of American bankers, was much more than a banker. He had a wonderful collection in his library and elsewhere of rare books and works of art. He was always delightful on the social side. He was very much pleased when he was elected president of the New England Society. The annual dinner that year was a remarkably brilliant affair. It was the largest in the history of the organization. The princ.i.p.al speaker was William Everett, son of the famous Edward Everett and himself a scholar of great acquirements and culture. His speech was another evidence of a very superior man mistaking his audience. He was princ.i.p.al of the Adams Academy, that great preparatory inst.i.tution for Harvard University, and he had greatly enlarged its scope and usefulness.

Mr. Everett evidently thought that the guests of the New England Society of New York would be composed of men of letters, educators, and Harvard graduates. Instead of that, the audience before him were mainly bankers and successful business men whose Puritan characteristics had enabled them to win great success in the compet.i.tions in the great metropolis in every branch of business.

They were out for a good time and little else.

Mr. Everett produced a ponderous ma.s.s of ma.n.u.script and began reading on the history of New England education and the influence upon it of the Cambridge School. He had more than an hour of material and lost his audience in fifteen minutes. No efforts of the chairman could bring them to attention, and finally the educator lost that control of himself which he was always teaching to the boys and threw his ma.n.u.script at the heads of the reporters. From their reports in their various newspapers the next day, they did not seem to have absorbed the speech by this original method.

Choate and I were both to speak, and Choate came first. As usual, he threw a brick at me. He mentioned that a reporter had come to him and said: "Mr. Choate, I have Depew's speech carefully prepared, with the applause and laughter already in. I want yours." Of course, no reporter had been to either of us. Mr. Choate had in his speech an unusual thing for him, a long piece of poetry. When my turn came to reply I said: "The reporter came to me, as Mr. Choate has said, and made the remark: 'I already have Choate's speech. It has in it a good deal of poetry.' I asked the reporter: 'From what author is the poetry taken?' He answered: 'I do not know the author, but the poetry is so bad I think Choate has written it himself.'"

Mr. Choate told me a delightful story of his last interview with Mr. Evarts before he sailed for Europe to take up his amba.s.sadorship at the Court of St. James. "I called," he said, "on Mr. Evarts to bid him good-by. He had been confined to his room by a fatal illness for a long time. 'Choate,' he said, 'I am delighted with your appointment. You eminently deserve it, and you are pre-eminently fit for the place. You have won the greatest distinction in our profession, and have harvested enough of its rewards to enable you to meet the financial responsibilities of this post without anxiety. You will have a most brilliant and useful career in diplomacy, but I fear I will never see you again.'"