Chapter 23

He was nowise ashamed of his calling. On the contrary, he was proud of it. His mother had lived and died an actress. He preferred that his progeny should follow in the footsteps of their forebears even as he had done. It is beside the purpose to inquire, as was often done, what might have happened had he undertaken the highest flights of tragedy; one might as well discuss the relation of a Dickens to a Shakespeare. Sir Henry Irving and Sir Charles Wyndham in England, M. Coquelin in France, his contemporaries—each had his _métier_. They were perfect in their art and unalike in their art. No comparison between them can be justly drawn. I was witness to the rise of all three of them, and have followed them in their greatest parts throughout their most brilliant and eminent and successful careers, and can say of each as of Mr. Jefferson:

_More than King can no man be—Whether he rule in Cyprus or in Dreams._

There shall be Kings of Thule after kings are gone. The actor dies and leaves no copy; his deeds are writ in water, only his name survives upon tradition’s tongue, and yet, from Betterton and Garrick to Irving, from Macklin and Quin to Wyndham and Jefferson, how few!

Chapter the Twenty-Fourth

The Writing of Memoirs—Some Characteristics of Carl Shurz—Sam Bowles—Horace White and the Mugwumps

I

Talleyrand was so impressed by the world-compelling character of the memoirs he had prepared for posterity that he fixed an interdict of more than fifty years upon the date set for their publication, and when at last the bulky tomes made their appearance, they excited no especial interest—certainly created no sensation—and lie for the most part dusty upon the shelves of the libraries that contain them. For a different reason, Henry Ward Beecher put a time limit upon the volume, or volumes, which will tell us, among other things, all about one of the greatest scandals of modern times; and yet how few people now recall it or care anything about the dramatis personæ and the actual facts! Metternich, next after Napoleon and Talleyrand, was an important figure in a stirring epoch. He, too, indicted an autobiography, which is equally neglected among the books that are sometimes quoted and extolled, but rarely read. Rousseau, the half insane, and Barras, the wholly vicious, have twenty readers where Talleyrand and Metternich have one.

From this point of view, the writing of memoirs, excepting those of the trivial French School or gossiping letters and diaries of the Pepys-Walpole variety, would seem an unprofitable task for a great man’s undertaking. Boswell certainly did for Johnson what the thunderous old doctor could not have done for himself. Nevertheless, from the days of Cæsar to the days of Sherman and Lee, the captains of military and senatorial and literary industry have regaled themselves, if they have not edified the public, by the narration of their own stories; and, I dare say, to the end of time, interest in one’s self, and the mortal desire to linger yet a little longer on the scene—now and again, as in the case of General Grant, the assurance of honorable remuneration making needful provision for others—will move those who have cut some figure in the world to follow the wandering Celt in the wistful hope—

_Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw._

Something like this occurs to me upon a reperusal of the unfinished memoirs of my old and dear friend, Carl Schurz. Assuredly few men had better warrant for writing about themselves or a livelier tale to tell than the famous German-American, who died leaving that tale unfinished. No man in life was more misunderstood and maligned. There was nothing either erratic or conceited about Schurz, nor was he more pragmatic than is common to the possessor of positive opinions along with the power to make their expression effectual.

The actual facts of his public life do not anywhere show that his politics shifted with his own interests. On the contrary, he was singularly regardless of his interests where his convictions interposed. Though an alien, and always an alien, he possessed none of the shifty traits of the soldier of fortune. Never in his career did he crook the pregnant hinges of the knee before any worldly throne of grace or flatter any mob that place might follow fawning. His great talents had only to lend themselves to party uses to get their full requital. He refused them equally to Grant in the White House and the multitude in Missouri, going his own gait, which could be called erratic only by the conventional, to whom regularity is everything and individuality nothing.

Schurz was first of all and above all an orator. His achievements on the platform and in the Senate were undeniable. He was unsurpassed in debate. He had no need to exploit himself. The single chapter in his life on which light was desirable was the military episode. The cruel and false saying, “I fight mit Sigel und runs mit Schurz,” obviously the offspring of malignity, did mislead many people, reënforced by the knowledge that Schurz was not an educated soldier. How thoroughly he disposes of this calumny his memoirs attest. Fuller, more convincing vindication could not be asked of any man; albeit by those familiar with the man himself it could not be doubted that he had both courage and aptitude for military employment.

II

A philosopher and an artist, he was drawn by circumstance into the vortex of affairs. Except for the stirring events of 1848, he might have lived and died a professor at Bonn or Heidelberg. If he had pursued his musical studies at Leipsic he must have become a master of the piano keyboard. As it was, he played Schumann and Chopin creditably. The rescue of Kinkel, the flight from the fatherland, the mild Bohemianizing in Paris and London awakened within him the spirit of action rather than of adventure.

There was nothing of the Dalgetty about him; too reflective and too accomplished. His early marriage attests a domestic trend, from which he never departed; though an idealist in his public aspirations and aims he was a sentimentalist in his home life and affections. Genial in temperament and disposition, his personal habit was moderation itself.

He was a German. Never did a man live so long in a foreign country and take on so few of its thoughts and ways. He threw himself into the anti-slavery movement upon the crest of the wave; the flowing sea carried him quickly from one distinction to another; the ebb tide, which found him in the Senate of the United States, revealed to his startled senses the creeping, crawling things beneath the surface; partyism rampant, tyrannous and corrupt; a self-willed soldier in the White House; a Blaine, a Butler and a Garfield leading the Representatives, a Cameron and a Conkling leading the Senate; single-minded disinterestedness, pure unadulterated conviction, nowhere.

Jobs and jobbing flourished on every side. An impossible scheme of reconstruction was trailing its slow, putrescent length along. The revenue service was thick with thieves, the committees of Congress were packed with mercenaries. Money-making in high places had become the order of the day. Was it for this that oceans of patriotism, of treasure and of blood had been poured out? Was it for this that he had fought with tongue and pen and sword?

There was Sumner—the great Sumner—who had quarreled with Grant and Fish, to keep him company and urge him on. There was the Tribune, the puissant Tribune—two of them, one in New York and the other in Chicago—to give him countenance. There was need of liberalizing and loosening things in Missouri, for which he sat in the Senate—they could not go on forever half the best elements in the State disfranchised.

Thus the Liberal Movement of 1872.

Schurz went to Cincinnati elate with hope. He was an idealist—not quite yet a philosopher. He had his friends about him. Sam Bowles—the first newspaper politician of his day, with none of the handicaps carried by Raymond and Forney—a man keen of insight and foresight, fertile of resources, and not afraid—stood foremost among them. Next came Horace White. Doric in his simplicity like a marble shaft, and to the outer eye as cold as marble, but below a man of feeling, conviction and tenacity, a working journalist and a doughty doctrinaire. A little group of such men formed itself about Schurz—then only forty-three years old—to what end? Why, Greeley, Horace Greeley, the bellwether of abolitionism, the king bee of protectionism, the man of fads and isms and the famous “old white hat.”

To some of us it was laughable. To Schurz it was tragical. A bridge had to be constructed for him to pass—for retrace his steps he could not—and, as it were, blindfolded, he had to be backed upon this like a mule aboard a train of cars. I sometimes wonder what might have happened if Schurz had then and there resigned his seat in the Senate, got his brood together and returned to Germany. I dare say he would have been welcomed by Bismarck.

Certainly there was no lodgment for him thenceforward in American politics. The exigencies of 1876-77 made him a provisional place in the Hayes Administration; but, precisely as the Democrats of Missouri could put such a man to no use, the Republicans at large could find no use for him. He seemed a bull in a china shop to the political organization he honored with a preference wholly intellectual, and having no stomach for either extreme, he became a Mugwump.

III

He was a German. He was an artist. By nature a doctrinaire, he had become a philosopher. He could never wholly adjust himself to his environment. He lectured Lincoln, and Lincoln, perceiving his earnest truthfulness and genuine qualities, forgave him his impertinence, nor ceased to regard him with the enduring affection one might have for an ardent, aspiring and lovable boy. He was repellant to Grant, who could not and perhaps did not desire to understand him.... To him the Southerners were always the red-faced, swashbuckling slave-drivers he had fancied and pictured them in the days of his abolition oratory. More and more he lived in a rut of his own fancies, wise in books and counsels, gentle in his relations with the few who enjoyed his confidence; to the last a most captivating personality.

Though fastidious, Schurz was not intolerant. Yet he was hard to convince—tenacious of his opinions—courteous but insistent in debate. He was a German; a German Herr Doktor of Music, of Letters and of Common Law. During an intimacy of more than thirty years we scarcely ever wholly agreed about any public matter; differing about even the civil service and the tariff. But I admired him hugely and loved him heartily.

I had once a rather amusing encounter with him. There was a dinner at Delmonico’s, from whose program of post-prandial oratory I had purposely caused my own name to be omitted. Indeed, I had had with a lady a wager I very much wished to win that I would not speak. General Grant and I went in together, and during the repast he said that the only five human beings in the world whom he detested were actually here at table.

Of course, Schurz was one of these. He was the last on the list of speakers and, curiously enough—the occasion being the consideration of certain ways and means for the development of the South—and many leading Southerners present—he composed his speech out of an editorial tour de force he was making in the Evening Post on The Homicidal Side of Southern Life. Before he had proceeded half through General Grant, who knew of my wager, said, “You’ll lose your bet,” and, it being one o’clock in the morning, I thought so too, and did not care whether I won or lost it. When he finished, the call on me was spontaneous and universal. “Now give it to him good,” said General Grant.

And I did; I declared—the reporters were long since gone—that there had not been a man killed amiss in Kentucky since the war; that where one had been killed two should have been; and, amid roars of laughter which gave me time to frame some fresh absurdity, I delivered a prose paean to murder.

Nobody seemed more pleased than Schurz himself, and as we came away—General Grant having disappeared—he put his arm about me like a schoolboy and said: “Well, well, I had no idea you were so bloody-minded.”

Chapter the Twenty-Fifth

Every Trade Has Its Tricks—I Play One on William McKinley—Far Away Party Politics and Political Issues

I

There are tricks in every trade. The tariff being the paramount issue of the day, I received a tempting money offer from Philadelphia to present my side of the question, but when the time fixed was about to arrive I found myself billed for a debate with no less an adversary than William McKinley, protectionist leader in the Lower House of Congress. We were the best of friends and I much objected to a joint meeting. The parties, however, would take no denial, and it was arranged that we should be given alternate dates. Then it appeared that the designated thesis read: “Which political party offers for the workingman the best solution of the tariff problem?”

Here was a poser. It required special preparation, for which I had not the leisure. I wanted the stipend, but was not willing—scarcely able—to pay so much for it. I was about to throw the engagement over when a lucky thought struck me. I had a cast-off lecture entitled Money and Morals. It had been rather popular. Why might I not put a head and tail to this—a foreword and a few words in conclusion—and make it meet the purpose and serve the occasion?

When the evening arrived there was a great audience. Half of the people had come to applaud, the other half to antagonize. I was received, however, with what seemed a united acclaim. When the cheering had ceased, with the blandest air I began:

“In that chapter of the history of Ireland which was reserved for the consideration of snakes, the historian, true to the solecism as well as the brevity of Irish wit, informs us that ‘there are no snakes in Ireland.’

“I am afraid that on the present occasion I shall have to emulate this flight of the Celtic imagination. I find myself billed to speak from a Democratic standpoint as to which party offers the best practical means for the benefit of the workingmen of the country. If I am to discharge with fidelity the duty thus assigned me, I must begin by repudiating the text in toto, because the Democratic Party recognizes no political agency for one class which is not equally open to all classes. The bulwark and belltower of its faith, the source and resource of its strength are laid in the declaration, ‘Freedom for all, special privileges to none,’ which applied to practical affairs would deny to self-styled workingmen, organized into a coöperative society, any political means not enjoyed by every other organized coöperative society, and by each and every citizen, individually, to himself and his heirs and assigns, forever.

“But in a country like ours, what right has any body of men to get together and, labelling themselves workingmen, to talk about political means and practical ends exclusive to themselves? Who among us has the single right to claim for himself, and the likes of him, the divine title of a workingman? We are all workingmen, the earnest plodding scholar in his library, surrounded by the luxury and comfort which his learning and his labor have earned for him, no less than the poor collier in the mine, with darkness and squalor closing him round about, and want maybe staring him in the face, yet—if he be a true man—with a little bird singing ever in his heart the song of hope and cheer which cradled the genius of Stephenson and Arkwright and the long procession of inventors, lowly born, to whom the world owes the glorious achievements of this, the greatest of the centuries. We are all workingmen—the banker, the minister, the lawyer, the doctor—toiling from day to day, and it may be we are well paid for our toil, to represent and to minister to the wants of the time no less than the farmer and the farmer’s boy, rising with the lark to drive the team afield, and to dally with land so rich it needs to be but tickled with a hoe to laugh a harvest.

“Having somewhat of an audacious fancy, I have sometimes in moments of exuberance ventured upon the conceit that our Jupiter Tonans, the American editor, seated upon his three-legged throne and enveloped by the majesty and the mystery of his pretentious ‘we,’ is a workingman no less than the poor reporter, who year in and year out braves the perils of the midnight rounds through the slums of the city, yea in the more perilous temptations of the town, yet carries with him into the darkest dens the love of work, the hope of reward and the fear only of dishonor.

“Why, the poor officeseeker at Washington begging a bit of that pie, which, having got his own slice, a cruel, hard-hearted President would eliminate from the bill of fare, he likewise is a workingman, and I can tell you a very hard-working man with a tough job of work, and were better breaking rock upon a turnpike in Dixie or splitting rails on a quarter section out in the wild and woolly West.

“It is true that, as stated on the program, I am a Democrat—as Artemus Ward once said of the horses in his panorama, I can conceal it no longer—at least I am as good a Democrat as they have nowadays. But first of all, I am an American, and in America every man who is not a policeman or a dude is a workingman. So, by your leave, my friends, instead of sticking very closely to the text, and treating it from a purely party point of view, I propose to take a ramble through the highways and byways of life and thought in our beloved country and to cast a balance if I can from an American point of view.

“I want to say in the beginning that no party can save any man or any set of men from the daily toil by which all of us live and move and have our being.”

Then I worked in my old lecture.

It went like hot cakes. When next I met William McKinley he said jocosely: “You are a mean man, Henry Watterson!”

“How so?” I asked.

“I accepted the invitation to answer you because I wanted and needed the money. Of course I had no time to prepare a special address. My idea was to make my fee by ripping you up the back. But when I read the verbatim report which had been prepared for me there was not a word with which I could take issue, and that completely threw me out.”

Then I told him how it had happened and we had a hearty laugh. He was the most lovable of men. That such a man should have fallen a victim to the blow of an assassin defies explanation, as did the murders of Lincoln and Garfield, like McKinley, amiable, kindly men giving never cause of personal offense.

II

The murderer is past finding out. In one way and another I fancy that I am well acquainted with the assassins of history. Of those who slew Cæsar I learned in my schooldays, and between Ravaillac, who did the business for Henry of Navarre, and Booth and Guiteau, my familiar knowledge seems almost at first hand. One night at Chamberlin’s, in Washington, George Corkhill, the district attorney who was prosecuting the murderer of Garfield, said to me: “You will never fully understand this case until you have sat by me through one day’s proceedings in court.” Next day I did this.

Never have I passed five hours in a theater so filled with thrills. I occupied a seat betwixt Corkhill and Scoville, Guiteau’s brother-in-law and voluntary attorney. I say “voluntary” because from the first Guiteau rejected him and vilely abused him, vociferously insisting upon being his own lawyer.

From the moment Guiteau entered the trial room it was a theatrical extravaganza. He was in irons, sandwiched between two deputy sheriffs, came in shouting like a madman, and began at once railing at the judge, the jury and the audience. A very necessary rule had been established that when he interposed, whatever was being said or done automatically stopped. Then, when he ceased, the case went on again as if nothing had happened.

Only Scoville intervened between me and Guiteau and I had an excellent opportunity to see, hear and size him up. In visage and voice he was the meanest creature I have, either in life or in dreams, encountered. He had the face and intonations of a demon. Everything about him was loathsome. I cannot doubt that his criminal colleagues of history were of the same description.

Charlotte Corday was surely a lunatic. Wilkes Booth I knew. He was drunk, had been drunk all that winter, completely muddled and perverted by brandy, the inheritant of mad blood. Czolgosz, the slayer of McKinley, and the assassin of the Empress Elizabeth were clearly insane.

III

McKinley and Protectionism, Cleveland, Carlisle and Free Trade—how far away they seem!

With the passing of the old issues that divided parties new issues have come upon the scene. The alignment of the future will turn upon these. But underlying all issues of all time are fundamental ideas which live forever and aye, and may not be forgotten or ignored.

It used to be claimed by the followers of Jefferson that Democracy was a fixed quantity, rising out of the bedrock of the Constitution, while Federalism, Whiggism and Republicanism were but the chimeras of some prevailing fancy drawing their sustenance rather from temporizing expediency and current sentiment than from basic principles and profound conviction. To make haste slowly, to look before leaping, to take counsel of experience—were Democratic axioms. Thus the fathers of Democracy, while fully conceiving the imperfections of government and meeting as events required the need alike of movement and reform, put the visionary and experimental behind them to aim at things visible, attainable, tangible, the written Constitution the one safe precedent, the morning star and the evening star of their faith and hope.

What havoc the parties and the politicians have made of all these lofty pretenses! Where must an old-line Democrat go to find himself? Two issues, however, have come upon the scene which for the time being are paramount and which seem organic. They are set for the determination of the twentieth century: The sex question and the drink question.

I wonder if it be possible to consider them in a catholic spirit from a philosophic standpoint. I can truly say that the enactment of prohibition laws, state or national, is personally nothing to me. I long ago reached an age when the convivialism of life ceased to cut any figure in the equation of my desires and habits. It is the never-failing recourse of the intolerant, however, to ascribe an individual, and, of course, an unworthy, motive to contrariwise opinions, and I have not escaped that kind of criticism.

The challenge underlying prohibition is twofold: Does prohibition prohibit, and, if it does, may it not generate evils peculiarly its own?

The question hinges on what are called “sumptuary laws”; that is, statutes regulating the food and drink, the habits and apparel of the individual citizen. This in turn harks back to the issue of paternal government. That, once admitted and established, becomes in time all-embracing.

Bigotry is a disease. The bigot pursuing his narrow round is like the bedridden possessed by his disordered fancy. Bigotry sees nothing but itself, which it mistakes for wisdom and virtue. But Bigotry begets hypocrisy. When this spreads over a sufficient area and counts a voting majority it sends its agents abroad, and thus we acquire canting apostles and legislators at once corrupt and despotic.

They are now largely in evidence in the national capital and in the various state capitals, where the poor-dog, professional politicians most do congregate and disport themselves.

The worst of it is that there seems nowhere any popular realization—certainly any popular outcry. Do the people grow degenerate? Are they willfully dense?