Charles Eames and Charles Sumner-Schurzand Lamar—I Go to Congress—A
Heroic Kentuckian—Stephen Foster and His Songs—Music and Theodore
Thomas
I
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.”
I rather think that Lamar was the biggest brained of all the men I have
met in Washington. He possessed the courage of his convictions. A
doctrinaire, there was nothing of the typical doctrinaire, or theorist,
about him. He really believed that cotton was king and would compel
England to espouse the cause of the South.
Despite his wealth of experience and travel he was not overmuch of a
raconteur, but he once told me a good story about his friend Thackeray.
The two were driving to a banquet of the Literary Fund, where Dickens
was to preside. “Lamar,” said Thackeray, “they say I can’t speak. But
if I want to I can speak. I can speak every bit as good as Dickens, and
I am going to show you to-night that I can speak almost as good as
you.” When the moment arrived Thackeray said never a word. Returning in
the cab, both silent, Thackeray suddenly broke forth. “Lamar,” he
exclaimed, “don’t you think you have heard the greatest speech to-night
that was never delivered?”