Bullies and Braggarts—Some Kentucky Illustrations—The Old Galt House—The Throckmortons—A Famous Sugeon—“Old Hell’s Delight”

I

I do not believe that the bully and braggart is more in evidence in Kentucky and Texas than in other Commonwealths of the Union, except that each is by the space writers made the favorite arena of his exploits and adopted as the scene of the comic stories told at his expense. The son-of-a-gun from Bitter Creek, like the “elegant gentleman” from the Dark and Bloody Ground, represents a certain type to be found more or less developed in each and every State of the Union. He is not always a coward. Driven, as it were, to the wall, he will often make good.

He is as a rule in quest of adventures. He enters the village from the countryside and approaches the mÊlÉe. “Is it a free fight?” says he. Assured that it is, “Count me in,” says he. Ten minutes later, “Is it still a free fight?” he says, and, again assured in the affirmative, says he, “Count me out.”

Once the greatest of bullies provoked old Aaron Pennington, “the strongest man in the world,” who struck out from the shoulder and landed his victim in the middle of the street. Here he lay in a helpless heap until they carted him off to the hospital, where for a day or two he flickered between life and death. “Foh God,” said Pennington, “I barely teched him.”

This same bully threatened that when a certain mountain man came to town he would “finish him.” The mountain man came. He was enveloped in an old-fashioned cloak, presumably concealing his armament, and walked about ostentatiously in the proximity of his boastful foeman, who remained as passive as a lamb. When, having failed to provoke a fight, he had taken himself off, an onlooker said: “Bill, I thought you were going to do him up?”

“But,” says Bill, “did you see him?”

“Yes, I saw him. What of that?”

“Why,” exclaimed the bully, “that man was a walking arsenal.”

Aaron Pennington, the strong man just mentioned, was, in his younger days, a river pilot. Billy Hite, a mite of a man, was clerk. They had a disagreement, when Aaron told Billy that if he caught him on “the harrican deck,” he would pitch him overboard. The next day Billy appeared whilst Aaron, off duty, was strolling up and down outside the pilot-house, and strolled offensively in his wake. Never a hostile glance or a word from Aaron. At last, tired of dumb show, Billy broke forth with a torrent of imprecation closing with “When are you going to pitch me off the boat, you blankety-blank son-of-a-gun and coward?”

Aaron Pennington was a brave man. He was both fearless and self-possessed. He paused, gazed quizzically at his little tormentor, and says he: “Billy, you got a pistol, and you want to get a pretext to shoot me, and I ain’t going to give it to you.”

II

Among the hostels of Christendom the Galt House, of Louisville, for a long time occupied a foremost place and held its own. It was burned to the ground fifty years ago and a new Galt House was erected, not upon the original site, but upon the same street, a block above, and, although one of the most imposing buildings in the world, it could never be made to thrive. It stands now a rather useless encumbrance—a whited sepulchre—a marble memorial of the Solid South and the Kentucky that was, on whose portal might truthfully appear the legend:

“A jolly place it was in days of old,
But something ails it now”

Aris Throckmorton, its manager in the Thirties, the Forties and the Fifties, was a personality and a personage. The handsomest of men and the most illiterate, he exemplified the characteristics and peculiarities of the days of the river steamer and the stage coach, when “mine host” felt it his duty to make the individual acquaintance of his patrons and each and severally to look after their comfort. Many stories are told at his expense; of how he made a formal call upon Dickens—it was, in point of fact, Marryatt—in his apartment, to be coolly told that when its occupant wanted him he would ring for him; and of how, investigating a strange box which had newly arrived from Florida, the prevailing opinion being that the live animal within was an alligator, he exclaimed, “Alligator, hell; it’s a scorponicum.” He died at length, to be succeeded by his son John, a very different character. And thereby hangs a tale.

John Throckmorton, like Aris, his father, was one of the handsomest of men. Perhaps because he was so he became the victim of one of the strangest of feminine whimsies and human freaks. There was a young girl in Louisville, named Ellen Godwin. Meeting him at a public ball she fell violently in love with him. As Throckmorton did not reciprocate this, and refused to pursue the acquaintance, she began to dog his footsteps. She dressed herself in deep black and took up a position in front of the Galt House, and when he came out and wherever he went she followed him. No matter how long he stayed, when he reappeared she was on the spot and watch. He took himself away to San Francisco. It was but the matter of a few weeks when she was there, too. He hied him thence to Liverpool, and as he stepped upon the dock there she was. She had got wind of his going and, having caught an earlier steamer, preceded him.

Finally the War of Sections arrived. John Throckmorton became a Confederate officer, and, being able to keep her out of the lines, he had a rest of four years. But, when after the war he returned to Louisville, the quarry began again.

He was wont to call her “Old Hell’s Delight.” Finally, one night, as he was passing the market, she rushed out and rained upon him blow after blow with a frozen rabbit.

Then the authorities took a hand. She was arraigned for disorderly conduct and brought before the Court of Police. Then the town, which knew nothing of the case and accepted her goings on as proof of wrong, rose; and she had a veritable ovation, coming away with flying colors. This, however, served to satisfy her. Thenceforward she desisted and left poor John Throckmorton in peace.

I knew her well. She used once in a while to come and see me, having some story or other to tell. On one occasion I said to her: “Ellen, why do you pursue this man in this cruel way? What possible good can it do you?” She looked me straight in the eye and slowly replied: “Because I love him.”

I investigated the case closely and thoroughly and was assured, as he had assured me, that he had never done her the slightest wrong. She had, on occasion, told me the same thing, and this I fully believed.

He was a man, every inch of him, and a gentleman through and through—the very soul of honor in his transactions of every sort—most highly respected and esteemed wherever he was known—yet his life was made half a failure and wholly unhappy by this “crazy Jane,” the general public taking appearances for granted and willing to believe nothing good of one who, albeit proud and honorable, held defiantly aloof, disdaining self-defense.

On the whole I have not known many men more unfortunate than John Throckmorton, who, but for “Old Hell’s Delight,” would have encountered little obstacle to the pursuit of prosperity and happiness.

III

Another interesting Kentuckian of this period was John Thompson Gray. He was a Harvard man—a wit, a scholar, and, according to old Southern standards, a chevalier. Handsome and gifted, he had the disastrous misfortune just after leaving college to kill his friend in a duel—a mortal affair growing, as was usual in those days, out of a trivial cause—and this not only saddened his life, but, in its ambitious aims, shadowed and defeated it. His university comrades had fully counted on his making a great career. Being a man of fortune, he was able to live like a gentleman without public preferment, and this he did, except to his familiars aloof and sensitive to the last.

William Preston, the whilom Minister to Spain and Confederate General, and David Yandell, the eminent surgeon, were his devoted friends, and a notable trio they made. Stoddard Johnston, Boyd Winchester and I—very much younger men—sat at their feet and immensely enjoyed their brilliant conversation.

Dr. Yandell was not only as proclaimed by Dr. Gross and Dr. Sayre the ablest surgeon of his day, but he was also a gentleman of varied experience and great social distinction. He had studied long in Paris and was the pal of John Howard Payne, the familiar friend of Lamartine, Dumas and LemaÎtre. He knew BÉranger, Hugo and Balzac. It would be hard to find three Kentuckians less provincial, more unaffected, scintillant and worldly wise than he and William Preston and John Thompson Gray.

Indeed the list of my acquaintances—many of them intimates—some of them friends—would be, if recounted, a long one, not mentioning the foreigners, embracing a diverse company all the way from Chunkey Towles to Grover Cleveland, from Wake Holman to John Pierpont Morgan, from John Chamberlin to Thomas Edison. I once served as honorary pall-bearer to a professional gambler who was given a public funeral; a man who had been a gallant Confederate soldier; whom nature intended for an artist, and circumstance diverted into a sport; but who retained to the last the poetic fancy and the spirit of the gallant, leaving behind him, when he died, like a veritable cavalier, chiefly debts and friends. He was not a bad sort in business, as the English say, nor in conviviality. But in fighting he was “a dandy.” The goody-goody philosophy of the namby-pamby takes an extreme and unreal view of life. It flies to extremes. There are middle men. Travers used to describe one of these, whom he did not wish particularly to emphasize, as “a fairly clever son-of-a-gun.”