The Parisian courtesan was at the zenith of her extraordinary celebrity
when I became a rustic boulevardier. She could be seen everywhere and on
all occasions. Her gowns were the showiest, her equipage the smartest; her
entourage, loud though it was and vulgar, yet in its way was undeniable.
She reigned for a long time the recognized queen of the demi-monde. I
have beheld her in her glory on her throne--her two thrones, for she had
two--one on the south side of the river, the other at the east end--not to
mention the race course--surrounded by a retinue of the disreputable. She
did not awaken in me the least curiosity, and I declined many opportunities
to meet her.
Marcus Cicero Stanley was sprung from an aristocratic, even a
distinguished, North Carolina family. He came to New York and set up for a
swell. How he lived I never cared to find out, though he was believed to
be what the police call a "fence." He seemed a cross between a "con" and
a "beat." Yet for a while he flourished at Delmonico's, which he made his
headquarters, and cut a kind of dash with the unknowing. He was a handsome,
mannerly brute who knew how to dress and carry himself like a gentleman.
Later there came to New York another Southerner--a Far Southerner of a
very different quality--who attracted no little attention. This was Tom
Ochiltree. He, too, was well born, his father an eminent jurist of Texas;
he, himself, a wit, _bon homme_ and raconteur. Travers once said: "We
have three professional liars in America--Tom Ochiltree is one and George
Alfred Townsend is the other two."
The stories told of Tom would fill a book. He denied none, however
preposterous--was indeed the author of many of the most amusing--of how,
when the old judge proposed to take him into law partnership he caused to
be painted an office sign: Thomas P. Ochiltree and Father; of his reply to
General Grant, who had made him United States Marshal of Texas, and later
suggested that it would be well for Tom to pay less attention to the race
course: "Why, Mr. President, all that turf publicity relates to a horse
named after me, not to me," it being that the horse of the day had been so
called; and of General Grant's reply: "Nevertheless, it would be well,
Tom, for you to look in upon Texas once in a while"--in short, of his
many sayings and exploits while a member of Congress from the Galveston
district; among the rest, that having brought in a resolution tendering
sympathy to the German Empire on the death of Herr Laska, the most advanced
and distinguished of Radical Socialists, which became for the moment a
_cause célébre_. Tom remarked, "Not that I care a damn about it,
except for the prominence it gives to Bismarck."
He lived when in Washington at Chamberlin's. He and John Chamberlin were
close friends. Once when he was breakfasting with John a mutual friend came
in. He was in doubt what to order. Tom suggested beefsteak and onions.
"But," objected the newcomer, "I am about to call on some ladies, and the
smell of onions on my breath, you know!"
"Don't let that trouble you," said Tom; "you have the steak and onions and
when you get your bill that will take your breath away!"
Under an unpromising exterior--a stocky build and fiery red head--there
glowed a brave, generous and tender spirit. The man was a _preux
chevalier_. He was a knight-errant. All women--especially all good and
discerning women who knew him and who could intuitively read beneath that
clumsy personality his fine sense of respect--even of adoration--loved Tom
Ochiltree.
The equivocal celebrity he enjoyed was largely fostered by himself, his
stories mostly at his own expense. His education had been but casual. But
he had a great deal of it and a varied assortment. He knew everybody on
both sides of the Atlantic, his friends ranging from the Prince of Wales,
afterward Edward VII, Gladstone and Disraeli, Gambetta and Thiers, to
the bucks of the jockey clubs. There were two of Tom--Tom the noisy on
exhibition, and Tom the courtier in society.
How he lived when out of office was the subject of unflattering conjecture.
Many thought him the stipendiary of Mr. Mackay, the multimillionaire, with
whom he was intimate, who told me he could never induce Tom to take money
except for service rendered. Among his familiars was Colonel North, the
English money magnate, who said the same thing. He had a widowed sister
in Texas to whom he regularly sent an income sufficient for herself and
family. And when he died, to the surprise of every one, he left his sister
quite an accumulation. He had never been wholly a spendthrift. Though he
lived well at Chamberlin's in Washington and the Waldorf in New York he was
careful of his credit and his money. I dare say he was not unfortunate in
the stock market. He never married and when he died, still a youngish man
as modern ages go, all sorts of stories were told of him, and the space
writers, having a congenial subject, disported themselves voluminously.
Inevitably most of their stories were apocryphal.
I wonder shall we ever get any real truth out of what is called history?
There are so many sides to it and such a confusing din of voices. How much
does old Sam Johnson owe of the fine figure he cuts to Boswell, and, minus
Boswell, how much would be left of him? For nearly a century the Empress
Josephine was pictured as the effigy of the faithful and suffering wife
sacrificed upon the altar of unprincipled and selfish ambition--lovelorn,
deserted, heartbroken. It was Napoleon, not Josephine, except in her pride,
who suffered. Who shall tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, about Hamilton; about Burr; about Cæsar, Caligula and Cleopatra?
Did Washington, when he was angry, swear like a trooper? What was the
matter with Nero?