Marse Henry: an Autobiography (volume 2)

Part 1

Produced by Curtis A. Weyant and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

"Marse Henry"

An Autobiography

Henry Watterson

Volume II

Illustrated

Contents

Chapter the Thirteenth

Charles Eames and Charles Sumner-Schurzand Lamar--I Go to Congress--A Heroic Kentuckian--Stephen Foster and His Songs--Music and Theodore Thomas

Chapter the Fourteenth

Henry Adams and the Adams Family--John Hay and Frank Mason--The Three Mousquetaires of Culture--Paris--"The Frenchman"--The South of France

Chapter the Fifteenth

Still the Gay Capital of France--Its Environs--Walewska and De Morny--Thackeray in Paris--A Pension Adventure

Chapter the Sixteenth

Monte Carlo--The European Shrine of Sport and Fashion--Apocryphal Gambling Stories--Leopold, King of the Belgians--An Able and Picturesque Man of Business

Chapter the Seventeenth

A Parisian Pension--The Widow of Walewska--Napoleon's Daughter-in-Law--The Changeless--A Moral and Orderly City

Chapter the Eighteenth

The Grover Cleveland Period--President Arthur and Mr. Blaine--John Chamberlin--The Decrees of Destiny

Chapter the Nineteenth

Mr. Cleveland in the White House--Mr. Bayard in the Department of State--Queer Appointments to Office--The One-Party Power--The End of North and South Sectionalism

Chapter the Twentieth

The Real Grover Cleveland--Two Clevelands Before and After Marriage--A Correspondence and a Break of Personal Relations

Chapter the Twenty-First

Stephen Foster, the Song-Writer--A Friend Comes to the Rescu His Originality--"My Old Kentucky Home" and the "Old Folks at Home"--General Sherman and "Marching Through Georgia"

Chapter the Twenty-Second

Theodore Roosevelt--His Problematic Character--He Offers Me an Appointment--His Bonhomie and Chivalry--Proud of His Rebel Kin

Chapter the Twenty-Third

Part 2

The Actor and the Journalist--The Newspaper and the State--Joseph Jefferson--His Personal and Artistic Career--Modest Character and Religious Belief

Chapter the Twenty-Fourth

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

Chapter the Twenty-Fifth

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

Chapter the Twenty-Sixth

A Libel on Mr. Cleveland--His Fondness for Cards--Some Poker Stories--The "Senate Game"--Tom Ochiltree, Senator Allison and General Schenck

Chapter the Twenty-Seventh

The Profession of Journalism--Newspapers and Editors in America--Bennett, Greeley and Raymond--Forney and Dana--The Education of a Journalist

Chapter the Twenty-Eighth

Bullies and Braggarts--Some Kentucky Illustrations--The Old Galt House--The Throckmortons--A Famous Sugeon--"Old Hell's Delight"

Chapter the Twenty-Ninth

About Political Conventions, State and National--"Old Ben Butler"--His Appearance as a Trouble-Maker in the Democratic National Convention of 1892--Tarifa and the Tariff--Spain as a Frightful Example

Chapter the Thirtieth

The Makers of the Republic--Lincoln, Jefferson, Clay and Webster--The Proposed League of Nations--The Wilsonian Incertitude--The "New Freedom"

Chapter the Thirty-First

The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs Billy Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Constitutional Shortcomings

Chapter the Thirty-Second

A War Episode--I Meet my Fater--I Marry and Make a Home--The Ups and Downs of Life Lead to a Happy Old Age

Illustrations

Henry Watterson--Fifty Years Ago

Henry Woodfire Grady--One of Mr. Watterson's "Boys"

Mr. Watterson's Library at "Mansfield"

A Corner of "Mansfield"--Home of Mr. Watterson

Henry Watterson (Photograph Taken in Florida)

Henry Watterson. From a painting by Louis Mark in the Manhattan Club, New York

"MARSE HENRY"

Chapter the Thirteenth

Part 3

Charles Eames and Charles Sumner-Schurzand Lamar--I Go to Congress--A Heroic Kentuckian--Stephen Foster and His Songs--Music and Theodore Thomas

Swift's definition of "conversation" did not preside over or direct the daily intercourse between Charles Sumner, Charles Eames and Robert J. Walker in the old days in the National Capital. They did not converse. They discoursed. They talked sententiously in portentous essays and learned dissertations. I used to think it great, though I nursed no little dislike of Sumner.

Charles Eames was at the outset of his career a ne'er-do-well New Englander--a Yankee Jack-of-all-trades--kept at the front by an exceedingly clever wife. Through the favor she enjoyed at court he received from Pierce and Buchanan unimportant diplomatic appointments. During their sojourns in Washington their home was a kind of political and literary headquarters. Mrs. Eames had established a salon--the first attempt of the kind made there; and it was altogether a success. Her Sundays evenings were notable, indeed. Whoever was worth seeing, if in town, might usually be found there. Charles Sumner led the procession. He was a most imposing person. Both handsome and distinguished in appearance, he possessed in an eminent degree the Harvard pragmatism--or, shall I say, affectation?--and seemed never happy except on exhibition. He had made a profitable political and personal issue of the Preston Brooks attack. Brooks was an exceeding light weight, but he did for Sumner more than Sumner could ever have done for himself.

In the Charles Eames days Sumner was exceedingly disagreeable to me. Many people, indeed, thought him so. Many years later, in the Greeley campaign of 1872, Schurz brought us together--they had become as very brothers in the Senate--and I found him the reverse of my boyish ill conceptions.

He was a great old man. He was a delightful old man, every inch a statesman, much of a scholar, and something of a hero. I grew in time to be actually fond of him, passed with him entire afternoons and evenings in his library, mourned sincerely when he died, and went with Schurz to Boston, on the occasion when that great German-American delivered the memorial address in honor of the dead Abolitionist.

Of all the public men of that period Carl Schurz most captivated me. When we first came into personal relations, at the Liberal Convention, which assembled at Cincinnati and nominated Greeley and Brown as a presidential ticket, he was just turned forty-three; I, two and thirty. The closest intimacy followed. Our tastes were much alike. Both of us had been educated in music. He played the piano with intelligence and feeling--especially Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn, neither of us ever having quite reached the "high jinks" of Wagner.

To me his oratory was wonderful. He spoke to an audience of five or ten thousand as he would have talked to a party of three or six. His style was simple, natural, unstrained; the lucid statement and cogent argument now and again irradiated by a salient passage of satire or a burst of not too eloquent rhetoric.

He was quite knocked out by the nomination of Horace Greeley. For a long time he could not reconcile himself to support the ticket. Horace White and I addressed ourselves to the task of "fetching him into camp"--there being in point of fact nowhere else for him to go--though we had to get up what was called The Fifth Avenue Conference to make a bridge.

Truth to say, Schurz never wholly adjusted himself to political conditions in the United States. He once said to me in one of the querulous moods that sometimes overcame him: "If I should live a hundred years my enemies would still call me a--Dutchman!"

It was Schurz, as I have said, who brought Lamar and me together. The Mississippian had been a Secession Member of Congress when I was a Unionist scribe in the reporters' gallery. I was a furious partisan in those days and disliked the Secessionists intensely. Of them, Lamar was most aggressive. I later learned that he was very many-sided and accomplished, the most interesting and lovable of men. He and Schurz "froze together," as, brought together by Schurz, he and I "froze together." On one side he was a sentimentalist and on the other a philosopher, but on all sides a fighter.

They called him a dreamer. He sprang from a race of chevaliers and scholars. Oddly enough, albeit in his moods a recluse, he was a man of the world; a favorite in society; very much at home in European courts, especially in that of England; the friend of Thackeray, at whose house, when in London, he made his abode. Lady Ritchie--Anne Thackeray--told me many amusing stories of his whimsies. He was a man among brainy men and a lion among clever women.

We had already come to be good friends and constant comrades when the whirligig of time threw us together for a little while in the lower house of Congress. One day he beckoned me over to his seat. He was leaning backward with his hands crossed behind his head.

As I stood in front of him he said: "On the eighth of February, 1858, Mrs. Gwin, of California, gave a fancy dress ball. Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, a member of Congress, was there. Also a glorious young woman--a vision of beauty and grace--with whom the handsome and distinguished young statesman danced--danced once, twice, thrice, taking her likewise down to supper. He went to bed, turned his face to the wall and dreamed of her. That was twenty years ago. To-day this same Mr. Lamar, after an obscure interregnum, was with Mrs. Lamar looking over Washington for an apartment. In quest of cheap lodging they came to a mean house in a mean quarter, where a poor, wizened, ill-clad woman showed them through the meanly furnished rooms. Of course they would not suffice.

"As they were coming away the great Mr. Lamar said to the poor landlady, 'Madam, have you lived long in Washington?' She said all her life. 'Madam,' he continued, 'were you at a fancy dress ball given by Mrs. Senator Gwin of California, the eighth of February, 1858?' She said she was. 'Do you remember,' the statesman, soldier and orator continued, 'a young and handsome Mississippian, a member of Congress, by the name of Lamar?' She said she didn't."

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