politician, and they seemed to be agreed that in the sense in which the
word “politician” is customarily used he is not a man of remarkable
ability, and there were anecdotes told to justify such opinion as that.
His nomination for governor was the result of as purely political
manipulation as New York State has ever seen, but he had no part in it.
Those who were sincerely urging his nomination permitted him to take
no part in these politics, for they had learned that he was possessed
of two weaknesses as a politician, which, unless he were restrained,
would be likely to defeat their plans: one of them the political fault
of honesty. It was displayed in Buffalo once, when, it being proposed
to nominate him for mayor, and the ticket agreed upon having been shown
to him, he declared, with expressions more emphatic than pious, that he
would not permit his name to go on the ticket upon which was the name
of a certain man whom he believed to be unworthy, although this man had
great political influence.
Another weakness, from the politicians’ point of view, is a seeming
incapacity to understand the need of organization in political work. It
is not only incapacity to understand the need, but also ignorance of
the way in which organization can be effected. It has been revealed in
all of Mr. Cleveland’s campaigns. After his election as Governor of New
York by a plurality of nearly two hundred thousand, his availability as
a presidential candidate was recognized, and, later, was strengthened
by the assurance that his messages while Mayor of Buffalo had brought
him the respect and confidence of the independent element; yet
Mr. Cleveland’s friends very soon discovered that if they were to
bring about his nomination for President, it must be done through
organization of which he was either ignorant or to which he would be
indifferent. So Mr. Cleveland had almost no part in that splendid game
of 1884. He knew almost nothing of those things which were being done
for him. Mr. Manning and the others had taken him up at first because
of his availability; but Mr. Manning soon discovered that a man might
be available and still be as ignorant of the science of politics, as
understood by those who make it a professional pursuit, as a child.
After Mr. Cleveland became President, he sometimes drove his friends
almost to distraction by his seeming incapacity to understand movements
in the game of politics, which his friends suggested to him. A number
of them went to him some time near the middle of his term as President,
to set forth the political condition in New York State. They were
men of long training and considerable achievement in politics. They
had made successes both in New York City and New York State. They
spoke to him with freedom--some of them with bluntness. They said
to Mr. Cleveland that the then Governor of New York, Mr. Hill, was
constructing with unusual cunning and consummate ability a political
machine which might not be friendly, and was perhaps likely to be
actively hostile, to him; and then, with much of detail, they showed
Mr. Cleveland how he could break down such organization, utterly
scatter it, and create and maintain in New York State one upon which
he could rely with serenity. The merest tyro in politics can easily
understand with what chagrin and astonishment these friends departed
from his presence, because he did not seem to have been impressed in
the slightest by their assertion that he was in political danger in New
York State, and did not appear to comprehend the methods which they
suggested by which the danger could be overcome.
Then again, in the spring and summer of 1892, when it seemed for a time
as though the tide was setting against his nomination, when it was
certain that the most powerful influence ever arrayed against a leading
candidate for a presidential nomination had been secured, and one
which, according to all precedent, would be successful, Mr. Cleveland
astonished and almost vexed those friends of his who were working
in and out of season to bring about his nomination, by professing
indifference to the opposition of the New York State delegation, and
of some of the most powerful politicians in the Democratic party. He
had been at the Victoria Hotel one evening, listening in an almost
perfunctory way to the plaints and warnings of his friends. He had no
suggestions to offer, no advice to give. A stranger seeing him there
would have thought that he was not one of that company holding this
consultation, but perhaps a friend, there by chance, whose presence was
not offensive, and was therefore tolerated.
At last, complaining of the warmth of the evening, he proposed a
stroll; then, taking two friends by their arms, he walked slowly up
Fifth Avenue, and astonished them by saying:
“These things which you have told me do not alarm me at all. They can
do their worst, and yet I shall be nominated in spite of them.”
And, later on, after his prediction was justified, and his name in
the Chicago Convention had triumphed over all political precedent,
and conquered the most powerful and perfect opposition ever arrayed
against a candidate, while there was still grumbling and bitter
feeling and revengeful threats of New York State, he again amazed
these friends by saying to them, when they proposed a certain form of
counter-organization to prevent treachery, “No, no, do not do it. Let
them do their worst; I can be elected without New York.”
At a time when the financial clouds were gathering last spring, a
little company of politicians, who were personal friends as well,
called upon Mr. Cleveland by appointment, and were received in that
upper chamber through which for many days a persistent procession
filed before the President asking for office. Mr. Cleveland planted
himself firmly for an instant before each supplicant, so firmly that it
almost seemed to these friends of his standing a little way off that
his determination to be persuaded by no appeal to emotion, gratitude,
friendship, or by any other thing than fitness revealed itself even in
the rigidness of the muscles of his body. Patiently listening to each
request and making perfunctory response, the President then received
the next and then the next, and no man of all that number who thus met
him knew whether his plea had met with favor or refusal. At last the
throng was gone, the doors were closed, and there came to the face of
the President a strange, hard look, tinged with something of surprise,
and turning to his friends who remained he threw himself wearily
into his chair and was silent for a moment. When he spoke there was
something of sadness, something of reproach, in his tone and manner,
and he said:
“You have seen a picture which I see every day, and you may now know
why it is that my ears must be deaf to such appeals; why I scarcely
hear the words they speak; why I almost fear that with most men who
seek with great persistence political office the sense of truth is apt
to be blunted, and why, therefore, it is imperative for me to be always
suspicious.” Then the President added, with something of indignation:
“But how any man who is a good citizen can come to me now and plead
for office, when there is impending financial calamity, I cannot
understand. Politics! Is it possible that the politicians do not see
that the best as well as the imperative politics now is that which will
bring the country back to financial prosperity?”
Some hours later, one of that company had another glimpse of the
President. Washington was still for the night. The White House was
dark, excepting for a light that burned in the room where the President
works. At his desk sat the man who had said in the morning that his
ears were deaf to the office-seekers’ appeals, and yet with patient
drudgery he was now examining the indorsements and recommendations of
the different applicants, as he had been doing for hours. Then, taking
up his pen, he began to write. The pen seemed scarcely ever to stop,
and, watching through the partly opened door that led into an outer
office, the President’s friend was reminded by it of something which
he had read or heard. “Where have I heard or seen something which that
sight brings to my memory?” he asked himself. The impression remained
with him after he left Washington, until at last, taking down from his
library shelf a biography, he read this passage:
“Since we sat down I have been watching a hand which I see behind the
window of that room across the street. It fascinates my eye; it never
stops. Page after page is finished and put upon a heap of manuscript,
and still the hand goes on unwearied, and so it will be till candles
are brought, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every
night. I well know what hand it is--’tis Walter Scott’s.”
Cleveland is not, however, indifferent to political organization. He
believes in it; he supports it. That was revealed at the conference
which he held in October, 1892, in the Victoria Hotel, with some of
the leaders of what is called the Democratic machine in New York. Some
time there will be a revelation of what was said and done there in
all detail, and it will furnish important light upon Mr. Cleveland’s
character as well as his more purely political capacity. This much
is known: that he did there and with emphasis maintain the right and
duty of party men to form associations, to submit to discipline, and
to act by common agreement--in other words, to use a colloquialism,
he “recognized the machine.” But he also made one magnificent
manifestation of that higher quality of his which is his character,
for when there was something like threatening intimation made by one
of those present, Mr. Cleveland declared that rather than do the thing
that was asked of him he would withdraw from the ticket, and the
country would know why he had withdrawn; and, after he said that, he
held those men who had dared to make such intimation of threat subdued
and supple in the hollow of his fist, from which condition they have
not strayed from that day to this.
He would have been a failure in the House of Representatives as
a parliamentary leader, probably a failure as a debater. The
parliamentary leader is for his party always, right or wrong, and
Mr. Cleveland could never have assumed command incurring such
responsibilities as that. His intellectual processes are not quick
enough for the give and take of debate. Blaine or Garfield, Randall
or Thurman, would have overmatched him. Probably no member of
either House has more greatly interested him than Mr. Reed, who in
all respects, excepting personal force, differs from him. Each has
expressed something of regard for the personal qualities of the other,
and there has come to light a keen interest in Mr. Cleveland’s eyes
as friends have described Reed, the parliamentary leader and debater,
to him. He has never seen Reed standing in the aisle just beyond his
desk, a throng of associates with hot, eager faces surrounding him, he
towering above them, his head thrust slightly forward and a little to
one side, a half-whimsical, half-defiant curl upon his lips, and the
sneer of the coming sarcasm already betrayed by suggestive swelling
of his nostrils; or else with the placid, serene, and tantalizing
composure with which he prepares to hurl an epigram, already in his
mind, at his antagonists. Nor has Mr. Cleveland seen that readiness
to deliver almost tiger-like ferocity of attack if it be needed. The
black flag--no quarter asked or given--hoisted when necessary, that
furious, all-controlling, unconquerable determination to win, to beat
down opposition at all hazards and any cost except outright dishonor,
straining even a little toward unfair advantage when that and nothing
else will win, and expecting to meet unfairness in return; bent on
winning--somehow, anyhow, but winning--Mr. Cleveland has never seen
such impressive spectacle as Reed makes when at his finest as the
champion of his party in parliamentary battle and debate. But they have
told him of these things, and he has seemed not to tire, but to delight
to hear them.
He could not do that. He would stand by a principle or fall with it.
Reed might beat him down in a turbulent body like the House, but he
would go down like Galileo, crying, “But the world DOES move!”
Mr. Cleveland has himself recognized this intellectual defect, if it be
one, for last spring, when a company of New York friends were speaking
to him about the financial condition, he said, with great earnestness,
“I do not quite see where I am; I must have time;” and then added a
favorite expression of his, “My head is in a bag now; I cannot see
clearly.” But these men, when they heard him say this, realized that
when he did see clearly, as he believed, then his convictions would
become established, and it would almost be as easy to move the earth
from its axis as to shift him from them.
When he met his first cabinet, there were gathered around the table
two men of extraordinary brilliancy of intellect, another of splendid
repute and vast experience, and all of them were men of perhaps finer
intellectual quality, and certainly had many advantages, both natural
and acquired, which he did not possess. Yet Secretary Whitney, speaking
of this meeting to an old college friend of his, some time after, said,
“When we met the President in the cabinet room, we had not been there
ten minutes before we realized that ‘Where MacGregor sat, there was the
head of the table.’” Whitney himself was the only member of the cabinet
who was younger than Cleveland, and three members of it had been active
in public life before Cleveland was admitted to the bar.
After Mr. Cleveland had been elected to the presidency the second time,
but before his inauguration, he spent an evening with a gentleman whose
political experience began with the formation of the Republican party.
They were together in Mr. Cleveland’s library in New York, until long
past midnight. The conversation touched upon public men and political
history, and it was then revealed to his visitor that Mr. Cleveland
had that order of intellect which absorbs not from books but from
personal contact with men of experience. It was evident that he had
learned far more of public men than he was believed to know, and he had
gleaned this information by persistent inquiry. It was made plain that
he got such grasp of public questions as he possessed, by searching
investigation, not of books, but of men’s minds and experience. Late
that night Mr. Cleveland asked his visitor about Lincoln, being anxious
to know everything that this man could tell him about the Republican
party’s first President; and when Mr. Cleveland put a certain question
to his friend, then it was made plain that Lincoln’s career had been
deeply studied by Mr. Cleveland, and that he anxiously sought to
learn the secret of his mastery of men and direction of events. That
question was, “How was Mr. Lincoln able to overcome the politicians, to
defeat conspiracies, to control a half-rebellious and not personally
loyal cabinet, and to maintain himself in spite of attack, open and
insidious?” And the visitor, who knew Lincoln well, said in reply,
“Mr. Cleveland, Lincoln did this because he weighed every act by his
judgment of what the estimation of the plain people of the country
would be about it. He reached over the heads of the politicians,
and out to that great body of American citizens whom he called ‘the
plain people.’ He believed that the plain people were year in and out
accurate in their judgments, and he believed that the man who had their
confidence could face the politicians with contempt even, because he
was sure to be right.”
For some moments Mr. Cleveland said nothing, and then, with great
impressiveness and something of serenity, he said, “I have long seen
that. The public man cannot go astray who follows the plain people, nor
can the politician err who respects their impulses.” In this single
remark we have probably the secret revealed of the influence which
controls Mr. Cleveland.
It has been said of Mr. Cleveland that Republicans have supported him
because he is a better man than his party, but the assertion seems a
flippant and thoughtless one. Mr. Cleveland is no better than the best
ideals of the Democratic party, although he is immeasurably better than
the false and abhorrent influences and elements which have been pleased
to associate themselves with that party. At its best the Democratic
party is a splendid force. Mr. Cleveland is esteemed better than his
party by some Republicans, because his party has not always been true
to its principles. But he is a true Democrat.
PATTI AT CRAIG-Y-NOS.
BY ARTHUR WARREN.
Two queens travel from the Paddington station of the Great Western
Railway in London to their palatial homes--the Queen of England,
and the Queen of Song. If you ask at Paddington for directions to
Craig-y-Nos Castle, the porters will inform you with not less alacrity
than they would have shown had you inquired the way to Windsor. And
you observe they delight in the duty. They make you as comfortable
as possible for your two-hundred-mile journey. You depart with the
circumstance of an ambassador. Had you been accredited to the foot of
the throne by some reigning monarch of the continent you could not be
more thoughtfully attended by the railway serving-men. You are a guest
of Madame Patti, and that, in the eyes of these honest fellows, is as
good as being a guest of Queen Victoria.
I pulled up at the end of a broiling hot day in August, at a wee
bit station on the top of a Welsh mountain. The station is called
“Penwyllt;” it overlooks the Swansea Valley, and stands about half-way
between Brecon and the sea. When a traveller alights at Penwyllt there
is no need to question his purpose. He can have but one destination,
and that is Craig-y-Nos Castle. A carriage from the castle was awaiting
me, and we set off down the steep road to the valley, a sudden turn
showing the Patti palace there on the banks of the Tawe. The place was
two miles distant, and a thousand feet below our wheels, but I could
see an American flag flying from the square tower, and there it waved
during the successive days of my visit; for it is Madame Patti’s way
to welcome a guest with the emblem of his nationality. A prettier
compliment is not conceivable.
Mr. Gladstone, in a vein of pleasantry, once told Madame Patti that he
would like to make her Queen of Wales. But she is that already, and
more. She is Queen of Hearts the world over, and every soul with an
ear is her liege. But, literally, in Wales Madame Patti is very like
a queen. She lives in a palace; people come to her from the ends of
the earth; she is attended with “love, honor, troops of friends;” and
whenever she stirs beyond her own immediate domain the country folk
gather by the roadside, dropping courtesies, and throwing kisses to her
bonny majesty.
Her greeting of me was characteristic of this most famous and fortunate
of women, this unspoiled favorite of our whirling planet. A group of
her friends stood merrily chatting in the hall, and, as I approached,
a dainty little woman with big brown eyes came running out from the
centre of the company, stretched forth a hand, spoke a hearty welcome,
and accompanied it with the inimitable smile which has made slaves of
emperors. The vivacious and charming creature was Madame Patti, or, as
we know her in private life, Madame Patti-Nicolini. Her husband is a
handsome man of fifty-eight, though he looks twenty years younger. He
is as devoted as if he were the newly accepted lover of an entrancing
lass in her teens, and though his English is rather hazardous, he
contrives to get about bravely in Wales.
My visit could not have been more happily timed. I found a sort of
family party at Craig-y-Nos, and there was no stiff ceremonial to be
encountered.
NOTE.--Our illustrations of Craig-y-Nos, interior and exterior, are
reproductions from photographs specially taken for MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE
by W. Arthur Smith, Swansea, South Wales.--ED. as the case usually is
in British country-houses. La Diva’s guests were intimate friends, and
chiefly a company of fair English girls who pass every summer with her.
When the guests, in full dinner-dress, assembled in the drawing-room,
I found that we covered five nationalities--Italian, German, French,
English, and American--and while we awaited the appearance of our
hostess, the gathering seemed like a polyglot congress.
As the chimes in the clock-tower pealed the hour of eight, a pretty
vision appeared at the drawing-room door. It was Patti, royally
bedecked. The defects of the masculine mind leave me incapable
of describing the attire of that sparkling little woman. But the
spectacle brought us to our feet, bowing as if we had been a company
of court-gallants in the “spacious days of great Elizabeth,” and we
added the modern tribute of applause, which our queen acknowledged with
a silvery laugh. I remember only that the gown was white, and of some
silky stuff, and that about La Diva’s neck were loops of pearls, and
that above her fluffy chestnut hair were glittering jewels. With women
it may be different, but no man can give a list of Patti’s adornments
on any occasion; he knows only that they become her, and that he sees
only her radiant face. Before our murmurs of delight had ceased, Patti,
who had not entered the room, but merely stood in the portal of it,
turned, taking the arm of the guest who was to sit at her right hand,
and away we marched in her train, as if she were truly the queen,
through the corridors to the conservatory, where dinner was served.
[Illustration: CRAIG-Y-NOS.]
It was my privilege at the castle table to sit at Madame Patti’s left.
At her right was one whose friendship with her dates from the instant
of her first European triumph, thirty-two years ago. I was taken into
the family, as it were. But the best of my privilege was that it
brought me so near our hostess, and made easy conversation possible.
The delight of those _déjeuners_ and dinners at Craig-y-Nos is not to
be forgotten. There is a notion abroad that these meals are held in
state; but they are not. There is merely the ordinary dinner custom
of an English mansion. The _menu_, though, is stately enough, for the
art culinary is practised in its most exquisite fashion there. The
dining-room is very seldom used, for, handsome as that apartment is,
Patti, and her guests too, for that matter, prefer to eat in the great
glass room which was formerly the conservatory and is still called so.
There we sit, as far as outlook goes, out of doors, for, in whatever
direction we gaze, we look up or down the Swansea Valley, across to
the mountains, and along the tumbling course of the river Tawe. To the
imminent neglect of my repast, I sat gazing at the wood-covered cliffs
of Craig-y-Nos (Rock-of-the-Night) opposite, and listening to the
ceaseless music of the mountain stream. Patti, noticing my admiration
for the view, said, “You see what a dreadful place it is in which I
bury myself.”
[Illustration: CRAIG-Y-NOS AND TERRACES FROM THE RIVER.]
“‘Bury’ yourself! On the contrary, you have here all the charms of
life, and you seem to have discovered the fountain of perpetual youth.
A ‘dreadful’ place? Indeed, it is a paradise in miniature!”
“But one of your countrymen says that I hide far from the world among
the ugly Welsh hills. He writes it in an American journal of fabulous
circulation, and I suppose people believe the tale, do they not?” La
Diva laughed heartily at the thought of a too credulous public, and
then she added: “Really, they do write the oddest things about my home,
as if it were either the scene of Jack the Giant-killer’s exploits on
the top of the Beanstalk, or a prison in a desolate land.”
After visiting Patti at Craig-y-Nos one need no longer wonder why this
enchanting woman sings “Home, Sweet Home” with such feeling. For she
inhabits a paradise. There is not anywhere a lovelier spot, nor is
there elsewhere a place so remote and at the same time so complete in
attractiveness, and in every resource of civilization.