“YOU know the President,” said Irving, while we were travelling from
Boston to Washington.
“Yes; I met him once or twice during the contest when he was ultimately
returned as Vice-President with General Garfield. His likeness had
become very familiar to me before I saw him. Candidates for the high
offices of state are not only photographed, but their pictures are
painted in heroic proportions. You see them everywhere,—on flags and
banners, in shop-windows, in the newspapers. But you will be in the
thick of it next autumn, since you have really decided to return this
year.”
“Oh, yes!—but tell me about your meeting with the President,—what is
he like?”
“Tall and handsome; frank and genial in manner; an excellent
conversationalist; well read,—a gentleman. I became acquainted with
him on the eve of his election to the vice-presidential chair. At his
installation hundreds of his personal friends and admirers from eastern
and western cities made ‘high festival,’ in his honor at Washington.
Two years later I saw him, with sorrowful face and head bowed down,
start for the capital, to stand by the bedside of the dying President,
with whom he had been elected. Soon afterwards the friends, who had
metaphorically flung up their caps for him on the merry day of his
installation with Garfield, went, ‘with solemn tread and slow,’ to
assist at his inauguration into the chair which, for a second time,
the hand of the assassin had rendered vacant. My recollection of Mr.
Arthur pictured a stout, ruddy-complexioned man, with dark hair and
whiskers, and a certain elasticity in his gait that betokened strong
physical health. I remember that we sat together by the taffrail
of a Sound steamer, and talked of the vicissitudes of life and its
uncertainties, and that I was deeply moved with sympathy for him in
regard to the death of his most accomplished and amiable wife, of whom
he spoke (_apropos_ of some remark that led up to his bereavement) with
a quivering lip and a moistened eye. The day had been a very pleasant
one; the bay of New York was sleeping in the sun; the air was balmy;
the time gracious in all respects; but, while doing his best to enliven
the passing hour, Arthur’s thoughts had wandered to the grave of his
wife. She was a very accomplished woman, I am told; musical, a sweet
disposition, refined and cultivated in her tastes. Friends of mine
who knew her say that she, above all others, would have rejoiced in
her husband’s victory; and, while inspiring him with fortitude under
the calamity that lay beyond, would have lent a grace to his reign
at the White House that alone was necessary to complete the simple
dignity of his administration, social and otherwise, which will always
be remembered at Washington in connection with the presidentship of
Chester A. Arthur.”
“I have letters to the President, which I shall certainly take the
first opportunity to deliver,” said Irving.
When I met Mr. Arthur again in his own room, at the Executive Mansion,
I was struck with the change which the anxieties and responsibilities
of office, entered upon under circumstances of the most painful
character, had wrought upon him. His face was careworn; his hair white;
his manner subdued. He stooped in his gait; the old brightness had
gone out of his eyes, and there was what seemed to be a permanently
saddened expression about the corners of his mouth. He did not look
sick; there was nothing in his face or figure denoting ill-health or
physical weakness; but in the course of four years he appeared to me to
have aged twenty. I had not been in Washington a day before he sent for
me and my family, with a pleasant reference to the time when last we
met. Looking back over these four years, and considering its record of
trouble and anxiety, I could well have forgiven him if he had forgotten
my very existence. That he recalled the occasion of our meeting, and
was still touched with the spirit of it, I mention to do him honor, not
myself; though, had it pleased Providence not to have afflicted me with
a never-ending sorrow, I could have felt a high sense of personal pride
in the homelike reception which the President of the United States gave
to me and my family, in his own room at the Executive Mansion, sitting
down with us and chatting in a pleasant, unconstrained, familiar way,
that is characteristic of American manners, and eminently becomes the
chief of a great republic.
Were this book only intended for English readers I would hesitate (even
with the friendly approval of my collaborator) about publishing these
few sentences, so personal to myself, lest it should be thought I might
be “airing my connections”; but a President _per se_ is not held in
such profound estimation or reverence in America as in England, where
we rank him with the most powerful of reigning monarchs, and give
him a royal personality. Moreover, I should be ungrateful did I not
take the best possible opportunity to acknowledge a conspicuous act
of kindliness and grace on the part of one who, since I last met him,
had stepped from the private station of mere citizenship to the chief
office of state over fifty millions of people, wielding an individual
power in their government that belongs to no constitutional sovereign,
nor to any prince or minister in the most despotic courts or cabinets
of Europe.