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?"