[Illustration: George Smalley]
ANGLO-AMERICAN
MEMORIES
BY
GEORGE W. SMALLEY, M.A.
AUTHOR OF "STUDIES OF MEN,"
"LIFE OF SIR SYDNEY WATERLOW," ETC.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1911
Copyright, 1911
BY
GEORGE W. SMALLEY
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
These Memories were written in the first instance for Americans and
have appeared week by week each Sunday in the _New York Tribune_.
This may be evident enough from the way in which some subjects are
dealt with. But they must stand in great part as they were written
since the book is published both in London and New York.
They are, in some slight degree, autobiographical, but only so far as
is necessary to explain my relations with those men and women of whom
I have written, or with the great journal, the _New York Tribune_, I
so long served. But they are mainly concerned with men of
exceptional mark and position in America and Europe whom I have met,
and with events of which I had some personal knowledge. There is no
attempt at a consecutive story.
LONDON, December, 1910.
Contents
CHAPTER I
New England in 1850--Daniel Webster
CHAPTER II
Massachusetts Puritanism--The Yale Class of 1853
CHAPTER III
Yale Professors--Harvard Law School
CHAPTER IV
How Massachusetts in 1854 Surrendered the Fugitive Slave Anthony Burns
CHAPTER V
The American Defoe, Richard Henry Dana, Jr
CHAPTER VI
A Visit to Ralph Waldo Emerson
CHAPTER VII
Emerson in England--English Traits--Emerson and Matthew Arnold
CHAPTER VIII
A Group of Boston Lawyers--Mr. Olney and Venezuela
CHAPTER IX
Wendell Phillips
CHAPTER X
Wendell Phillips and the Boston Mobs
CHAPTER XI
Wendell Phillips--Governor Andrew--Phillips's Conversion
CHAPTER XII
William Lloyd Garrison--A Critical View
CHAPTER XIII
Charles Sumner--A Private View
CHAPTER XIV
Experiences as Journalist during the Civil War
CHAPTER XV
Civil War--General McClellan--General Hooker
CHAPTER XVI
Civil War--Personal Incidents at Antietam
CHAPTER XVII
A Fragment of Unwritten Military History
CHAPTER XVIII
The New York Draft Riots in 1863--Notes on Journalism
CHAPTER XIX
How The Prussians after Sadowa Came Home to Berlin
CHAPTER XX
A Talk with Count Bismarck in 1866
CHAPTER XXI
American Diplomacy in England
CHAPTER XXII
Two Unaccredited Ambassadors
CHAPTER XXIII
Some Account of a Revolution in International Journalism
CHAPTER XXIV
Holt White's Story of Sedan and How it Reached the "New York Tribune"
CHAPTER XXV
Great Examples of War Correspondence
CHAPTER XXVI
A Parenthesis
CHAPTER XXVII
"Civil War?"--Incidents in the 'Eighties--Sir George Trevelyan--Lord
Barrymore
CHAPTER XXVIII
Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Alaska Boundary
CHAPTER XXIX
Annexing Canada--Lady Aberdeen--Lady Minto
CHAPTER XXX
Two Governors-General, Lord Minto and Lord Grey
CHAPTER XXXI
Lord Kitchener--Personal Traits and Incidents
CHAPTER XXXII
Sir George Lewis--King's Solicitor and Friend--A Social Force
CHAPTER XXXIII
Mr. Mills--A Personal Appreciation and a Few Anecdotes
CHAPTER XXXIV
Lord Randolph Churchill--Being Mostly Personal Impressions
CHAPTER XXXV
Lord Glenesk and "The Morning Post"
CHAPTER XXXVI
Queen Victoria at Balmoral--King Edward at Dunrobin--Admiral Sir
Hedworth Lambton--Other Anecdotes
CHAPTER XXXVII
Famous Englishmen Not in Politics
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Lord St. Helier--American and English Methods--Mr. Benjamin
CHAPTER XXXIX
Mrs. Jeune, Lady Jeune, and Lady St. Helier
CHAPTER XL
Lord and Lady Arthur Russell and the "Salon" in England
CHAPTER XLI
The Archbishop of Canterbury--Queen Alexandra
CHAPTER XLII
A Scottish Legend
CHAPTER XLIII
A Personal Reminiscence of the Late Emperor Frederick
CHAPTER XLIV
I. Edward the Seventh as Prince of Wales--Personal Incidents
II. Prince of Wales and King of England--The Personal Side
III. As King--Some Personal and Social Incidents and Impressions
Index
ANGLO-AMERICAN MEMORIES
{1}
ANGLO-AMERICAN MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
NEW ENGLAND IN 1850--DANIEL WEBSTER
My memories begin with that New England of fifty years ago and more
which has pretty well passed out of existence. I knew all or nearly
all the men who made that generation famous: Everett; Charles Sumner,
"the whitest soul I ever knew," said Emerson; Wendell Phillips;
Garrison; Andrew, the greatest of the great "War Governors"; Emerson;
Wendell Holmes; Theodore Parker; Lowell, and many more; and of all I
shall presently have something to say. Earlier than any of them
comes the Reverend Dr. Emmons, a forgotten name, for a long time
pastor of the little church in the little town of Franklin, where I
was born, in Norfolk County, in that State of Massachusetts on which
Daniel Webster pronounced the only possible eulogy: "I shall enter on
no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is.
Behold her, and judge for yourselves. {2} There is her history; the
world knows it by heart." Whether the world knows it by heart may be
a question. We are perhaps a little too apt to assume that things
American loom as large to other eyes as to our own. But whether the
world knows Massachusetts by heart or not, we know it; and the rest
does not much matter. Every son of hers will add for himself "God
bless her."
Dr. Emmons was of the austere school of Calvinists, descending more
directly from the still more austere school of Jonathan Edwards. I
cannot have been more than three or four years old when I last saw
him, but I see him still: tall, slight, bent, wasted; long grey locks
floating loosely about his head; his face the face of an ascetic, yet
kindly, and I still feel the gentle touch of the old man's hand as it
rested on my baby head. And I see the imprint of his venerable feet,
which it was his habit to rest on the painted wainscotting of his
small, scantily furnished study.
My father was first his colleague, then his successor; then was
called, as the phrase is, to the Second Congregational Church in
Worcester; whence he passed many years later to the First
Presbyterian Church in Troy, N.Y., where he died. Worcester was at
that time--1840 to 1860--a charming example of the thriving New
England village which had grown to be a town with pleasant, quiet
streets--even Main Street, its chief thoroughfare, was quiet--and
pleasant houses of colonial and later styles standing in pleasant
grounds. A beautiful simplicity of life {3} prevailed, and a high
standard; without pretence, not without dignity. The town had given,
and was to give, not a few Governors to the Commonwealth: Governor
Lincoln, Governor Davis ("Honest John"), another Lieutenant-Governor
Davis, and two Governor Washburns: to the first of whom we lived next
door in Pearl Street; in the shadow of the Episcopal Church of which
the Rev. Dr. Huntington, translated afterward to Grace Church in New
York and widely known, was rector. Later I read law for a year in
the office of Governor Washburn's partner: afterward that Senator
Hoar who in learning and capacity stood second to few in Washington,
and in character to none.
Twenty years ago, my mind filled with these images of almost rural
charm, I went back on a visit to Worcester. It had grown to be a
city of near one hundred thousand people, and unrecognizable. The
charm had vanished. The roar of traffic was to be heard everywhere;
surface cars raced through the streets; blazing gilt signs with
strange and often foreign names emblazoned on them in gigantic
letters, plastering and half hiding the fronts of the buildings;
mostly new. It might have been a section of New York--at any rate it
was given over to the fierce competition of business. Of the
tranquillity which once brooded over the town, no trace was left. I
suppose it all means prosperity, in which I rejoice; but it was not
my Worcester.
If it be still, as we used affectionately to call it, the Heart of
the Commonwealth, then I suppose {4} the Commonwealth also has
changed; for better or for worse, according to your point of view.
Boston certainly has changed, and as certainly for the worse. Where
is the old Boston we all loved? What has become of those historic
streets which the great men of more than one great generation trod?
Where is the dignity, the quaint, old-fashioned beauty, the stamp of
distinction, the leisureliness of life, the atmosphere which Winthrop
and Endicott, John Hancock and Otis, Everett and Andrew, once
breathed? The only Boston they knew is to-day a city of tumult and
uproar, amid which the State House and the Common and the Old South
Church and State Street itself seem anachronisms and untimely
survivals of other and holier days.
In the old Worcester--and, for aught I know, in the new--far up on
Elm Street as it climbs the hill and pushes toward the open country,
stood Governor Lincoln's house--square, white, well back from the
street; a fence enclosing the broad lawn, steps and an arched iron
gateway in the centre. To me ever memorable because there I first
saw Daniel Webster. He had come to Worcester campaigning for Taylor,
whose nomination for the Presidency, over his own head, he had at
first declared "unfit to be made." He arrived in the dusk of
evening, and drove in Governor Lincoln's open landau to the house. A
multitude waiting to greet him filled the street. Webster descended
from the carriage, went up the three steps from the sidewalk to the
gateway, {5} turned, and faced the cheering crowd. The rays from the
lighted lantern in the centre of the arch fell full on his face. I
do not remember whether I thought then, but I have often thought
since of what Emerson said:
"If Webster were revealed to me on a dark night by a flash of
lightning, I should be at a loss to know whether an angel or a demon
stood before me."
That night, at any rate, there was a touch of the demon. His
advocacy of the successful soldier was an act of renunciation. The
leadership of the Whig party belonged to him and not to Zachary
Taylor; or if not to Webster, it belonged to Henry Clay. He had not
forgiven his successful soldier-rival. He never forgave him. Nor
could he all at once put to sleep for another four years his
honourable ambition. His eyes blazed with a fire not all celestial.
The grave aspect of the man and grave courtesy of his greeting to the
people before him only half hid the resentment which fed their inward
fire. But he stood a pillar of state--
... deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care.
A colossal figure. We boys in Massachusetts were all brought up to
worship Webster, and worship him we did; till the Fall came, and the
seventh of March speech turned reverence into righteous wrath.
{6}
There was a certain likeness in feature between Mr. Webster and Mr.
Gladstone. The eyes in both were dark, deep set, and wide apart,
beneath heavily overhanging brows. In both the flame was volcanic.
The features in both were chiselled strongly, the lines clear cut,
the contour of the face and the air of command much the same in the
great American and the great Englishman; but Mr. Gladstone had,
before the political disasters of his later years had angered him, a
benignity which Webster lacked. In stature, in massiveness of frame,
in presence, in that power which springs from repose and from the
forces of reserve, there was no comparison. Webster had all this,
and Gladstone had not. I have before me as I write a private
photograph of Mr. Gladstone, from the camera of a lady who had
something more than technical skill, who had a sympathetic insight
into character and an art-sense. Among the hundreds of photographs
of the Tory-Liberal, the Protectionist-Free Trader, the
Imperialist-Home Ruler, this is the finest and truest I have seen.
But it is one which brings out his unlikeness to Webster far more
clearly than those resemblances I have noted. If those resemblances
have not before been remarked, there are, I imagine, few men living
who have seen both men in the full splendour of their heroic mould.
The records of those later days are full not only of admiring
friendship for Webster, but also of that bitterness which his
apostasy--for so we thought it--begot. Even friends turned against
{7} him after his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. As for his
enemies, there was no limit to their language. A single unpublished
incident will show what the feeling was. At a meeting of the
Abolitionists in the Boston Melodeon, Charles Lenox Remond, a negro,
in the course of a diatribe against the white race, called Washington
a scoundrel. Wendell Phillips, who was on the platform, intervened:
"No, Charles, don't say that. Don't call Washington a scoundrel.
The great Virginian held slaves, but he was a great Virginian still,
and a great American. It is not a fit word to use. It is not
descriptive.
"Besides, if you call Washington a scoundrel, how are you going to
describe Webster?"
Besides, again, the Fugitive Slave Law wrought the redemption of
Massachusetts; and we owe that redemption to Webster, indirectly. It
was the rendition of Anthony Burns, in 1854, two years after
Webster's death, which completed the conversion of the Bay State from
the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery faith. But what I can tell of
the unwritten history of those black days must be for another time.
Whatever Webster's faults, and whatever resentment he aroused in
1850, he remained, and will long remain, the foremost citizen of
Massachusetts in that generation. Go to his opponents if you want
testimony for that. Ask Wendell Phillips, and he answers in one of
his finest sentences, pouring scorn on the men who took up, {8} so
late as 1861, Webster's mission to crush anti-slavery agitation:
It was Webster who announced from the steps of the Revere House
that he would put down this agitation. The great statesman,
discredited and defeated, sleeps at Marshfield by the solemn
waves of the Atlantic. _Contempsi Catiline gladios; non tuos
pertimescam_. The half-omnipotence of Webster we defied; who
heeds this pedlar's empty speech?
Ask Theodore Parker, who delivered in the Music Hall of Boston a
discourse on Webster's death; half-invective, more than
half-panegyric, whether he would or no. It was, I think, Parker who
said of him that four American masterpieces in four different kinds
were Webster's. The ablest argument ever heard in the Supreme Court
of the United States, that in the Dartmouth College case, was his.
His was the noblest platform speech of his time at the dedication of
Bunker Hill Monument. His the most persuasive address to an American
jury, in the White murder case at Salem, with its tremendous epigram,
"There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is
confession." His, finally, the profoundest exposition of
constitutional law, the reply to Hayne in the United States Senate.
All these were Webster's, and to Webster alone could any such tribute
be paid.
When I heard Webster in Faneuil Hall, where he was perhaps at his
best and most at home, it seemed to me it mattered little what he
said. {9} The authority of the man was what told. Before he had
uttered a word he had possession of the minds of the three thousand
people who stood--for we were all standing--waiting for the words we
knew would be words of wisdom.
Twice I have seen a similar effect by very different artists. Once
by Rachel at the Boston Theatre, as Camille in Corneille's _Horace_,
when the mere apparition of that white-robed figure and the first
rays from those deep-burning eyes laid a spell on the audience. Not
once, but many times, by Aimée Declée, at the Princess's Theatre in
London and at the Gymnase in Paris. Of her I shall have something to
say by and by, but I name her now because she had that rarest of
gifts, the power of gathering an audience into her two small hands
while still, silent and motionless; and thereafter never letting them
go. In her it was perhaps a magnetic force of emotion, for she was
the greatest of emotional actresses. In Webster it was the
domination of an irresistible personality, with an unmatched
intellectual supremacy, and the prestige of an unequalled career.
Whatever it was, we all bowed to it. We were there to take orders
from him, to think his thoughts, to do as he would have us. He might
have talked nonsense. We should not have thought it was nonsense.
He might have reversed his policy. We should have held him
consistent. We should have followed him, believing the road was the
same we had always travelled together. He was still the man whom
Massachusetts delighted to {10} honour. The forces of the whole
State were at his disposal, as they had been for thirty years.
He stood upon the platform an august, a majestic figure, from which
the blue coat and buff trousers and the glitter of gilt buttons did
not detract. Once, and only once, have I found myself under the sway
of an individuality more masterful than Webster's, much later in
life, so that the test was more decisive; but it was not Mr.
Gladstone's.
{11}