In Grover Cleveland a total stranger had arrived at the front of
affairs. The Democrats, after a rule of more than half a century, had
been out of power twenty-four years. They could scarce realize at first
that they were again in power. The new chieftain proved more of an
unknown quantity than had been suspected. William Dorsheimer, a
life-long crony, had brought the two of us together before Cleveland’s
election to the governorship of the Empire State as one of a group of
attractive Buffalo men, most of whom might be said to have been cronies
of mine, Buffalo being a delightful halfway stop-over in my frequent
migrations between Kentucky and the Eastern seaboard. As in the end we
came to a parting of the ways I want to write of Mr. Cleveland as a
historian and not as a critic.
He said to Mr. Carlisle after one of our occasional tiffs: “Henry will
never like me until God makes me over again.” The next time we met,
referring to this, I said: “Mr. President, I like you very much—very
much indeed—but sometimes I don’t like some of your ways.”
There were in point of fact two Clevelands—before marriage and after
marriage—the intermediate Cleveland rather unequal and indeterminate.
Assuredly no one of his predecessors had entered the White House so
wholly ignorant of public men and national affairs. Stories used to be
told assigning to Zachary Taylor this equivocal distinction. But
General Taylor had grown up in the army and advanced in the military
service to a chief command, was more or less familiar with the party
leaders of his time, and was by heredity a gentleman. The same was
measurably true of Grant. Cleveland confessed himself to have had no
social training, and he literally knew nobody.
Five or six weeks after his inauguration I went to Washington to ask a
diplomatic appointment for my friend, Boyd Winchester. Ill health had
cut short a promising career in Congress, but Mr. Winchester was now
well on to recovery, and there seemed no reason why he should not and
did not stand in the line of preferment. My experience may be worth
recording because it is illustrative.
In my quest I had not thought of going beyond Mr. Bayard, the new
Secretary of State. I did go to him, but the matter seemed to make no
headway. There appeared a hitch somewhere. It had not crossed my mind
that it might be the President himself. What did the President know or
care about foreign appointments?
He said to me on a Saturday when I was introducing a party of Kentucky
friends: “Come up to-morrow for luncheon. Come early, for Rose”—his
sister, for the time being mistress of the White House—“will be at
church and we can have an old-fashioned talk-it-out.”
The next day we passed the forenoon together. He was full of homely and
often whimsical talk. He told me he had not yet realized what had
happened to him.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wake at night and rub my eyes and wonder if it
is not all a dream.”
He asked an infinite number of questions about this, that and the other
Democratic politician. He was having trouble with the Kentucky
Congressmen. He had appointed a most unlikely scion of a well-known
family to a foreign mission, and another young Kentuckian, the son of a
New York magnate, to a leading consul generalship, without consultation
with any one. He asked me about these. In a way one of them was one of
my boys, and I was glad to see him get what he wanted, though he
aspired to nothing so high. He was indeed all sorts of a boy, and his
elevation to such a post was so grotesque that the nomination, like
that of his mate, was rejected by the Senate. I gave the President a
serio-comic but kindly account, at which he laughed heartily, and ended
by my asking how he had chanced to make two such appointments.
“Hewitt came over here,” he answered, “and then Dorsheimer. The father
is the only Democrat we have in that great corporation. As to the
other, he struck me as a likely fellow. It seemed good politics to
gratify them and their friends.”
I suggested that such backing was far afield and not very safe to go
by, when suddenly he said: “I have been told over and over again by you
and by others that you will not take office. Too much of a lady, I
suppose! What are you hanging round Washington for anyhow? What do you
want?”
Here was my opportunity to speak of Winchester, and I did so.
When I had finished he said: “What are you doing about Winchester?”
“Relying on the Secretary of State, who served in Congress with him and
knows him well.”
Then he asked: “What do you want for Winchester?”