II (7)

Previous

In Grover Cleveland a total stranger had arrived at the front of affairs. The Democrats, after a rule of more than half a century, had been out of power twenty-four years. They could scarce realize at first that they were again in power. The new chieftain proved more of an unknown quantity than had been suspected. William Dorsheimer, a life-long crony, had brought the two of us together before Cleveland's election to the governorship of the Empire State as one of a group of attractive Buffalo men, most of whom might be said to have been cronies of mine, Buffalo being a delightful halfway stop-over in my frequent migrations between Kentucky and the Eastern seaboard. As in the end we came to a parting of the ways I want to write of Mr. Cleveland as a historian and not as a critic.

He said to Mr. Carlisle after one of our occasional tiffs: "Henry will never like me until God makes me over again." The next time we met, referring to this, I said: "Mr. President, I like you very much--very much indeed--but sometimes I don't like some of your ways."

There were in point of fact two Clevelands--before marriage and after marriage--the intermediate Cleveland rather unequal and indeterminate. Assuredly no one of his predecessors had entered the White House so wholly ignorant of public men and national affairs. Stories used to be told assigning to Zachary Taylor this equivocal distinction. But General Taylor had grown up in the army and advanced in the military service to a chief command, was more or less familiar with the party leaders of his time, and was by heredity a gentleman. The same was measurably true of Grant. Cleveland confessed himself to have had no social training, and he literally knew nobody.

Five or six weeks after his inauguration I went to Washington to ask a diplomatic appointment for my friend, Boyd Winchester. Ill health had cut short a promising career in Congress, but Mr. Winchester was now well on to recovery, and there seemed no reason why he should not and did not stand in the line of preferment. My experience may be worth recording because it is illustrative.

In my quest I had not thought of going beyond Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State. I did go to him, but the matter seemed to make no headway. There appeared a hitch somewhere. It had not crossed my mind that it might be the President himself. What did the President know or care about foreign appointments?

He said to me on a Saturday when I was introducing a party of Kentucky friends: "Come up to-morrow for luncheon. Come early, for Rose"--his sister, for the time being mistress of the White House--"will be at church and we can have an old-fashioned talk-it-out."

The next day we passed the forenoon together. He was full of homely and often whimsical talk. He told me he had not yet realized what had happened to him.

"Sometimes," he said, "I wake at night and rub my eyes and wonder if it is not all a dream."

He asked an infinite number of questions about this, that and the other Democratic politician. He was having trouble with the Kentucky Congressmen. He had appointed a most unlikely scion of a well-known family to a foreign mission, and another young Kentuckian, the son of a New York magnate, to a leading consul generalship, without consultation with any one. He asked me about these. In a way one of them was one of my boys, and I was glad to see him get what he wanted, though he aspired to nothing so high. He was indeed all sorts of a boy, and his elevation to such a post was so grotesque that the nomination, like that of his mate, was rejected by the Senate. I gave the President a serio-comic but kindly account, at which he laughed heartily, and ended by my asking how he had chanced to make two such appointments.

"Hewitt came over here," he answered, "and then Dorsheimer. The father is the only Democrat we have in that great corporation. As to the other, he struck me as a likely fellow. It seemed good politics to gratify them and their friends."

I suggested that such backing was far afield and not very safe to go by, when suddenly he said: "I have been told over and over again by you and by others that you will not take office. Too much of a lady, I suppose! What are you hanging round Washington for anyhow? What do you want?"

Here was my opportunity to speak of Winchester, and I did so.

When I had finished he said: "What are you doing about Winchester?"

"Relying on the Secretary of State, who served in Congress with him and knows him well."

Then he asked: "What do you want for Winchester?"

I answered: "Belgium or Switzerland."

He said: "I promised Switzerland for a friend of Corning's. He brought him over here yesterday and he is an out-and-out Republican who voted for Blaine, and I shall not appoint him. If you want the place for Winchester, Winchester it is."

Next day, much to Mr. Bayard's surprise, the commission was made out.

Mr. Cleveland had a way of sudden fancies to new and sometimes queer people. Many of his appointments were eccentric and fell like bombshells upon the Senate, taking the appointee's home people completely by surprise.

The recommendation of influential politicians seemed to have little if any weight with him.

There came to Washington from Richmond a gentleman by the name of Keiley, backed by the Virginia delegation for a minor consulship. The President at once fell in love with him.

Mr. Watterson"s Library at "Mansfield"
Mr. Watterson"s Library at "Mansfield"

"Consul be damned," he said. "He is worth more than that," and named him Ambassador to Vienna.

It turned out that Mrs. Keiley was a Jewess and would not be received at court. Then he named him Ambassador to Italy, when it appeared that Keiley was an intense Roman Catholic, who had made at least one ultramontane speech, and would be persona non grata at the Quirinal. Then Cleveland dropped him. Meanwhile poor Keiley had closed out bag and baggage at Richmond and was at his wit's end. After much ado the President was brought to a realizing sense and a place was found for Keiley as consul general and diplomatic agent at Cairo, whither he repaired. At the end of the four years he came to Paris and one day, crossing the Place de la Concorde, he was run over by a truck and killed. He deserved a longer career and a better fate, for he was a man of real capacity.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Clyx.com


Top of Page
Top of Page