Benjamin Howard Ridgely, short-story writer, was born at Ridgely, Maryland, July 13, 1861. In early childhood he was brought to Woodford county, Kentucky, where he grew to manhood. He was educated in private schools and at Henry Academy. He studied law but abandoned it for journalism. Ridgely removed to Louisville in 1877 to accept a position on The Daily Commercial, which later became The Herald. He went with The Courier-Journal and in a short time he was made city editor. Ridgely left The Courier-Journal to establish The Sunday Truth, of which he was editor, with his friend, Mr. Young E. Allison, as associate editor. President Cleveland, urged by Col. Henry Watterson and other leading Democrats, appointed Ridgely consul to Geneva, Switzerland, on June 20, 1892, which post he held for eight years. Being able to speak French and Spanish fluently, he was well fitted for the consular service. On May 8, 1900, President McKinley transferred Ridgely to Malaga, Spain, where he remained for two years, when he was again transferred, this time going to Nantes, France, where he also staid for two years. President Roosevelt sent Ridgely to Barcelona, Spain, on November 3, 1904, as consul-general. He resided at that delightful place until March, 1908, when he was made consul-general to Mexico, with his residence at Mexico City. Ridgely died very suddenly at Monterey, Mexico, on October 9, 1908. His body was brought back to Kentucky and interred in Cave Hill cemetery, Louisville; and there he sleeps to-day with no stone to mark the spot. Ridgely's reports to the state department are now recognized as papers of importance, but is upon his short-stories and essays that he is entitled to a place in literature. His stories of consular life, set amid the changing scenes of his diplomatic career, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The Century, McClure's, Scribner's, The Strand, The Pall Mall Magazine, and elsewhere. Writing a miniature autobiography in 1907 he set himself down as the author of a volume of short-stories, which, he said, bore the imprint of The Century Company, New York, were entitled The Comedies of a Consulate, and, strangest thing of all, were published two years prior to the time he was writing, or, in 1905! It is indeed too bad that his alleged publishers fail to remember having issued his book, for one would be worth while. What a castle in Spain for this spinner of consular yarns!

Bibliography. Who's Who in America (1908-1909); The Courier-Journal (Louisville, October 10, 1908).

A KENTUCKY DIPLOMAT[30]

[From The Man the Consul Protected (Century Magazine, January, 1905)]

Colonel Gillespie Witherspoon Warfield of Kentucky was an amiable and kindly man of fifty, with the fluent speech and genial good breeding of a typical Blue-grass gentleman. In appearance and dress he was still an ante-bellum Kentuckian, with a weakness for high-heeled boots, long frock-coats, and immaculate linen. When he said, "Yes, sah," or "No, sah," it was like a breath right off the old plantation. It should be added that he was a bachelor and a Mugwump.

Being a Kentuckian, he was naturally a colonel; though, as a matter of fact, it was due solely to the courtesy of the press and the amiable custom of the proud old commonwealth that he possessed his military title. Nor had the genial colonel been otherwise a brilliant success in life. Indeed, I am pained to recite that he had achieved in his varied professional career only a sort of panorama of failures. He had failed at the bar, failed in journalism, failed as a real-estate broker, and, having finally taken the last step, had failed as a life-insurance agent. In this emergency his relatives and friends hesitated as to whether they should run him for Congress or unload him on the consular service. His younger brother, who was something of a cynic, insisted that Gillespie was fitted by intelligence to be only a family physician; but it was finally decided at a domestic council that he would particularly ornament the consular service. In pursuance of this happy conclusion, an organized onslaught was made upon the White House. The President yielded, and one day the news came that Colonel Gillespie Witherspoon Warfield had been appointed consul of the United States to Esperanza.

It is needless to suggest that Colonel Warfield took himself very seriously in his new official capacity. It had not occurred to him, however, that his consular mission was rather a commercial than a patriotic one: he believed that he was going abroad to see that the flag of his country was treated with respect, and to protect those of his fellow-countrymen who in any emergency might have need of the services of an astute and fearless diplomat. In fact, the feeling that his chief official function was to be that of a sort of diplomatic protecting angel took such possession of him that he assumed a paternal attitude toward the whole country. Thus, bursting with patriotism, he set sail one day from New York for Gibraltar, and was careful during the voyage to let it be understood on shipboard that if anybody needed protection he stood ready to run up the flag and make the eagle scream violently.

Esperanza lies just around the corner from Gibraltar, and nowhere along all the Iberian littoral of the Mediterranean is the sky fairer or the sun more genial. The fertile vega stretches back to the foot-hills of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. Across the blue-sea way lies Morocco. It is a picturesque and beautiful spot, and if the consul be a dreamer, he may find golden hours for reverie. But I fear that neither the poetry nor the picturesqueness of the entourage appealed to Consul Warfield as he reached Esperanza that blazing September morning. He was more impressed with the shrill noises of the foul and shabby streets; with the dust that was upon everything, giving even to the palm-trees in the parque a gray and dreary look; with the flies that seemed to be hunting their prey in swarms like miniature vultures; with the uncompromising mosquitos singing shrilly for blood, and the bold, busy fleas that held no portion of his official person sacred.

The colonel was a buoyant man, but his exuberant soul felt a certain sinking that hot morning. It was a busy moment at Esperanza, and not much attention was paid to the new consul at the crowded Fonda Cervantes, whither, after a turbulent effort, he had persuaded his cochero to conduct him. He had been much disappointed that the vice-consul was not on hand to receive him at the railway station. The fact is, the consul had thought rather earnestly of a committee and a brass band at the depot, and the complete lack of anything akin to a reception had been something of a shock to his official and personal vanity. However, he was not easily discouraged, and after having convinced the proprietor of the fonda that he was the new American consul, and therefore entitled to superior consideration, he set out to find the consulate.

He found it in a narrow little street that went twisting back from the quay toward the great dingy cathedral, and certainly it was not what his imagination had fondly pictured it. He had thought of a fine old Moorish-castle sort of house, with a great carved door opening into a spacious patio, splendid with Arabic columns, and in the background a broad marble staircase leading up to the consulate. He had expected to see the flag of his country flying in honor of his arrival, and a uniformed soldier on duty at the entrance, ready to present arms and stand at attention when the new consul appeared.

As a matter of fact, there was a very narrow little door opening into a very narrow little hallway that ran through the center of a very narrow, squalid little house. Over the doorway was perched the consular coat of arms. It was the poorest, dingiest, dustiest little escutcheon that ever bore so pretentious a device.

The dingy gilt letters were almost invisible, but the colonel managed to make them out. He could also see that the figure in the center of the shield was intended to represent a proud and haughty eagle-bird in the act of screaming; but the poor old eagle had been so rained upon and so shone upon, and the dust had gathered so heavily upon him, that he looked like a mere low-spirited reminiscence of the famous HaliaËtus leucocephalus which he was originally meant to represent.

Colonel Warfield of Kentucky was not discouraged. Being, as I have said, a buoyant man, he simply remarked to himself: "I'll have that disreputable-looking fowl taken down and painted." Then he walked on into the squalid little consulate.

An old man with shifty little blue eyes; a thin, keen face; long, straggling gray hair; and a long, thin tuft of gray beard, which looked all the more straggling and wretched because of the absence of an accompanying mustache, sat at a table reading a Spanish newspaper. This was Mr. Richard Brown of Maine, "clerk and messenger" to the United States consulate, who drew the allowance of four hundred dollars a year, and was the recognized bulwark of official Americanism at Esperanza. For forty years, during all the vicissitudes of war and politics, Richard Brown had sat at his desk in the shabby little consulate, watching the procession of American consuls come and go, doing nearly all the clerical work of the office himself, and contemplating with cynical delight the tortuous efforts of the various untrained new officers to acquaint themselves with their duties and the language of the post.

In his affiliations he had become entirely Spanish, having acquired a fluent knowledge of the language and a wide acquaintance with the people and their ways. None the less, in his speech and appearance he remained a typical down-east Yankee, and it is said at Esperanza that his one conceit was to look like the popular caricature of Uncle Sam. In this it is not to be denied that he succeeded. The "billy-goat" beard; the lantern-jaw; the thin, long hair; the thin, long arms; and the thin, long legs—these he had as if modeled from the caricature. And the nasal twang and the down-east dialect—alas! it would have filled the average melodramatic English novelist's devoted soul with untold satisfaction and delight to hear Richard Brown say "Wal" and "I gaiss," and otherwise mutilate the English language.

To the Spaniards he was known as Don Ricardo. The small Anglo-American colony at Esperanza referred to him as "old Dick Brown." He was a cynical, crusty, sour old man, who had become a sort of consular heirloom at Esperanza, and without whose knowledge and assistance no new American consul could at the outset have performed the simplest official duty. Knowing this, Richard Brown felt a very well-developed sense of his own importance, and looked upon each of his newly arrived superiors with ill-concealed contempt.

There was also a vice-consul at Esperanza; but as he was a busy merchant, who could find time to sign only such papers as old Brown presented to him in the absence of the consul, he was seen little at the consulate. He generally knew when a new consul was coming along or an old consul going away, but in this instance Brown had failed to advise him either of Major Ransom's departure or of Colonel Warfield's arrival. Thus it happened that only the amiable Mr. Brown was on hand when Colonel Warfield came perspiring upon the scene on the warm morning in September of which we write.

"Come in," he said sharply, as the consul hesitated upon the threshold. "What's your business?"

Colonel Warfield gave Mr. Brown a look that would have completely withered an ordinary person, but which was entirely lost upon the old man in question, and with magnificent dignity handed him the following card:

COLONEL G. WITHERSPOON WARFIELD,
Consul of the United States of America.
ESPERANZA.

Mr. Richard Brown looked the card over carefully.

"Another colonel," he observed grimly. "The last one was a major; the one before him was a capting. Ain't they got nothin' but soldiers to send out here? Who's goin' to run the army? Are you a real colonel or jest a newspaper colonel, or are you a colonel on the governor's staff? There's your office over there on the other side of the hall. Kin you speak Spanish?"