I take it that the early steps of every man to get a footing may be of
interest when fairly told. I sought work in New York with indifferent
success. Mr. Raymond of the Times, hearing me play the piano at which
from childhood I had received careful instruction, gave me a job as
“musical critic” during the absence of Mr. Seymour, the regular critic.
I must have done my work acceptably, since I was not fired. It included
a report of the debut of my boy-and-girl companion, Adelina Patti, when
she made her first appearance in opera at the Academy of Music. But, as
the saying is, I did not “catch on.” There might be a more promising
opening in Washington, and thither I repaired.
The Daily States had been established there by John P. Heiss, who with
Thomas Ritchie had years before established the Washington Union. Roger
A. Pryor was its nominal editor. But he soon took himself home to his
beloved Virginia and came to Congress, and the editorial writing on the
States was being done by Col. A. Dudley Mann, later along Confederate
commissioner to France, preceding Mr. Slidell.
Colonel Mann wished to work incognito. I was taken on as a kind of
go-between and, as I may say, figurehead, on the strength of being my
father’s son and a very self-confident young gentleman, and began to
get my newspaper education in point of fact as a kind of
fetch-and-carry for Major Heiss. He was a practical newspaper man who
had started the Union at Nashville as well as the Union at Washington
and the Crescent—maybe it was the Delta—at New Orleans; and for the
rudiments of newspaper work I could scarcely have had a better teacher.
Back of Colonel Mann as a leader writer on the States was a remarkable
woman. She was Mrs. Jane Casneau, the wife of Gen. George Casneau, of
Texas, who had a claim before Congress. Though she was unknown to fame,
Thomas A. Benton used to say that she had more to do with making and
ending the Mexican War than anybody else.
Somewhere in the early thirties she had gone with her newly wedded
husband, an adventurous Yankee by the name of Storm, to the Rio Grande
and started a settlement they called Eagle Pass. Storm died, the Texas
outbreak began, and the young widow was driven back to San Antonio,
where she met and married Casneau, one of Houston’s lieutenants, like
herself a New Yorker. She was sent by Polk with Pillow and Trist to the
City of Mexico and actually wrote the final treaty. It was she who
dubbed William Walker “the little gray-eyed man of destiny,” and put
the nickname “Old Fuss and Feathers” on General Scott, whom she
heartily disliked.
A braver, more intellectual woman never lived. She must have been a
beauty in her youth; was still very comely at fifty; but a born
insurrecto and a terror with her pen. God made and equipped her for a
filibuster. She possessed infinite knowledge of Spanish-American
affairs, looked like a Spanish woman, and wrote and spoke the Spanish
language fluently. Her obsession was the bringing of Central America
into the Federal Union. But she was not without literary aspirations
and had some literary friends. Among these was Mrs. Southworth, the
novelist, who had a lovely home in Georgetown, and, whatever may be
said of her works and articles, was a lovely woman. She used to take me
to visit this lady. With Major Heiss she divided my newspaper
education, her part of it being the writing part. Whatever I may have
attained in that line I largely owe to her. She took great pains with
me and mothered me in the absence of my own mother, who had long been
her very dear friend. To get rid of her, or rather her pen, Mr.
Buchanan gave General Casneau, when the Douglas schism was breaking
out, a Central American mission, and she and he were lost by shipwreck
on their way to this post, somewhere in Caribbean waters.
My immediate yokemate on the States was John Savage, “Jack,” as he was
commonly called; a brilliant Irishman, who with Devin Reilley and John
Mitchel and Thomas Francis Meagher, his intimates, and Joseph Brennan,
his brother-in-law, made a pretty good Irishman of me. They were 48
men, with literary gifts of one sort and another, who certainly helped
me along with my writing, but, as matters fell out, did not go far
enough to influence my character, for they were a wild lot, full of
taking enthusiasm and juvenile decrepitude of judgment, ripe for
adventures and ready for any enterprise that promised fun and fighting.
Between John Savage and Mrs. Casneau I had the constant spur of
commendation and assistance as well as affection. I passed all my spare
time in the Library of Congress and knew its arrangements at least as
well as Mr. Meehan, the librarian, and Robert Kearon, the assistant,
much to the surprise of Mr. Spofford, who in 1861 succeeded Mr. Meehan
as librarian.
Not long after my return to Washington Col. John W. Forney picked me
up, and I was employed in addition to my not very arduous duties on the
States to write occasional letters from Washington to the Philadelphia
Press. Good fortune like ill fortune rarely comes singly. Without
anybody’s interposition I was appointed to a clerkship, a real
“sinecure,” in the Interior Department by Jacob Thompson, the
secretary, my father’s old colleague in Congress. When the troubles of
1860-61 rose I was literally doing “a land-office business,” with money
galore and to spare. Somehow, I don’t know how, I contrived to spend
it, though I had no vices, and worked like a hired man upon my literary
hopes and newspaper obligations.
Life in Washington under these conditions was delightful. I did not
know how my heart was wrapped up in it until I had to part from it. My
father stood high in public esteem. My mother was a leader in society.
All doors were open to me. I had many friends. Going back to Tennessee
in the midsummer of 1861, via Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, there happened
a railway break and a halt of several hours at a village on the Ohio. I
strolled down to the river and sat myself upon the brink, almost
despairing—nigh heartbroken—when I began to feel an irresistible
fascination about the swift-flowing stream. I leaped to my feet and ran
away; and that is the only thought of suicide that I can recall.