My Memories of Eighty Years Part 1

My Memories of Eighty Years.

by Chauncey M. Depew.

FOREWORD

For many years my friends have insisted upon my putting in permanent form the incidents in my life which have interested them. It has been my good fortune to take part in history-making meetings and to know more or less intimately people prominent in world affairs in many countries. Every one so situated has a flood of recollections which pour out when occasion stirs the memory. Often the listeners wish these transcribed for their own use.

My cla.s.smate at Yale in the cla.s.s of 1856, John D. Champlin, a man of letters and an accomplished editor, rescued from my own scattered records and newspaper files material for eight volumes.

My secretary has selected and compiled for publication two volumes since. These are princ.i.p.ally speeches, addresses, and contributions which have appeared in public. Several writers, without my knowledge, have selected special matter from these volumes and made books.

Andrew D. White, Senator h.o.a.r, and Senator Foraker, with whom I was a.s.sociated for years, have published full and valuable autobiographies. I do not attempt anything so elaborate or complete. Never having kept a diary, I am dependent upon a good memory. I have discarded the stories which could not well be published until long after I have joined the majority.

I trust and earnestly hope there is nothing in these recollections which can offend anybody. It has been my object so to picture events and narrate stories as to illumine the periods through which I have pa.s.sed for eighty-eight years, and the people whom I have known and mightily enjoyed.

C.M.D.

MY MEMORIES OF EIGHTY YEARS

I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

It has occurred to me that some reminiscences of a long life would be of interest to my family and friends.

My memory goes back for more than eighty years. I recall distinctly when about five years old my mother took me to the school of Mrs. Westbrook, wife of the well-known pastor of the Dutch Reformed church, who had a school in her house, within a few doors. The lady was a highly educated woman, and her husband, Doctor Westbrook, a man of letters as well as a preacher.

He specialized in ancient history, and the interest he aroused in Roman and Greek culture and achievements has continued with me ever since.

The village of Peekskill at that time had between two and three thousand inhabitants. Its people were nearly all Revolutionary families who had settled there in colonial times. There had been very little immigration either from other States or abroad; acquaintance was universal, and in the activities of the churches there was general co-operation among the members. Church attendance was so unanimous that people, young or old, who failed to be in their accustomed places on Sunday felt the disapproval of the community.

Social activities of the village were very simple, but very delightful and healthful. There were no very rich nor very poor.

Nearly every family owned its own house or was on the way to acquire one. Misfortune of any kind aroused common interest and sympathy. A helping hand of neighborliness was always extended to those in trouble or distress. Peekskill was a happy community and presented conditions of life and living of common interest, endeavor, and sympathy not possible in these days of restless crowds and fierce compet.i.tion.

The Peekskill Academy was the dominant educational inst.i.tution, and drew students not only from the village but from a distance.

It fitted them for college, and I was a student there for about twelve years. The academy was a character-making inst.i.tution, though it lacked the thoroughness of the New England preparatory schools. Its graduates entering into the professions or business had an unusual record of success in life. I do not mean that they acc.u.mulated great fortunes, but they acquired independence and were prominent and useful citizens in all localities where they settled.

I graduated from the Peekskill Academy in 1852. I find on the programme of the exercises of that day, which some old student preserved, that I was down for several original speeches, while the other boys had mainly recitations. Apparently my teachers had decided to develop any oratorical talent I might possess.

I entered Yale in 1852 and graduated in 1856. The college of that period was very primitive compared with the university to which it has grown. Our cla.s.s of ninety-seven was regarded as unusually large. The cla.s.sics and mathematics, Greek and Latin, were the dominant features of instruction. Athletics had not yet appeared, though rowing and boat-racing came in during my term. The outstanding feature of the inst.i.tution was the literary societies: the Linonia and the Brothers of Unity. The debates at the weekly meetings were kept up and maintained upon a high and efficient plane. Both societies were practically deliberative bodies and discussed with vigor the current questions of the day. Under this training Yale sent out an unusual number of men who became eloquent preachers, distinguished physicians, and famous lawyers.

While the majority of students now on leaving college enter business or professions like engineering, which is allied to business, at that time nearly every young man was destined for the ministry, law, or medicine. My own cla.s.s furnished two of the nine judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, and a large majority of those who were admitted to the bar attained judicial honors.

It is a singular commentary on the education of that time that the students who won the highest honors and carried off the college prizes, which could only be done by excelling in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, were far outstripped in after-life by their cla.s.smates who fell below their high standard of collegiate scholars.h.i.+p but were distinguished for an all-around interest in subjects not features in the college curriculum.

My cla.s.smates, Justice David J. Brewer and Justice Henry Billings Brown, were both eminent members of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Brewer was distinguished for the wide range of his learning and illuminating addresses on public occasions. He was bicentennial orator of the college and a most acceptable one. Wayne MacVeagh, afterwards attorney-general of the United States, one of the leaders of the bar, also one of the most brilliant orators of his time, was in college with me, though not a cla.s.smate. Andrew D. White, whose genius, scholars.h.i.+p, and organization enabled Ezra Cornell to found Cornell University, was another of my college mates.

He became one of the most famous of our diplomats and the author of many books of permanent value. My friends.h.i.+p with MacVeagh and White continued during their lives, that is, for nearly sixty years. MacVeagh was one of the readiest and most attractive of speakers I ever knew. He had a very sharp and caustic wit, which made him exceedingly popular as an after-dinner speaker and as a host in his own house. He made every evening when he entertained, for those who were fortunate enough to be his guests, an occasion memorable in their experience.

John Mason Brown, of Kentucky, became afterwards the leader of the bar in his State, and was about to receive from President Harrison an appointment as justice of the Supreme Court when he died suddenly. If he had been appointed it would have been a remarkable circ.u.mstance that three out of nine judges of the greatest of courts, an honor which is sought by every one of the hundreds of thousands of lawyers in the United States, should have been from the same college and the same cla.s.s.

The faculty lingers in my memory, and I have the same reverence and affection for its members, though sixty-five years out of college, that I had the day I graduated. Our president, Theodore D. Woolsey, was a wonderful scholar and a most inspiring teacher. Yale has always been fortunate in her presidents, and peculiarly so in Professor Woolsey. He had personal distinction, and there was about him an air of authority and reserved power which awed the most radical and rebellious student, and at the same time he had the respect and affection of all. In his historical lectures he had a standard joke on the Chinese, the narration of which amused him the more with each repet.i.tion. It was that when a Chinese army was beleaguered and besieged in a fortress their provisions gave out and they decided to escape.

They selected a very dark night, threw open the gates, and as they marched out each soldier carried a lighted lantern.

In the faculty were several professors of remarkable force and originality. The professor of Greek, Mr. Hadley, father of the distinguished ex-president of Yale, was more than his colleagues in the thought and talk of the undergraduates. His learning and pre-eminence in his department were universally admitted. He had a caustic wit and his sayings were the current talk of the campus.

He maintained discipline, which was quite lax in those days, by the exercise of this ability. Some of the boys once drove a calf into the recitation-room. Professor Hadley quietly remarked: "You will take out that animal. We will get along to-day with our usual number." It is needless to say that no such experiment was ever repeated.

At one time there was brought up in the faculty meeting a report that one of the secret societies was about to bore an artesian well in the cellar of their club house. It was suggested that such an extraordinary expense should be prohibited. Professor Hadley closed the discussion and laughed out the subject by saying from what he knew of the society, if it would hold a few sessions over the place where the artesian well was projected, the boring would be accomplished without cost. The professor was a sympathetic and very wise adviser to the students. If any one was in trouble he would always go to him and give most helpful relief.

Professor Larned inspired among the students a discriminating taste for the best English literature and an ardent love for its cla.s.sics. Professor Thacher was one of the most robust and vigorous thinkers and teachers of his period. He was a born leader of men, and generation after generation of students who graduated carried into after-life the effects of his teaching and personality. We all loved Professor Olmstead, though we were not vitally interested in his department of physics and biology. He was a purist in his department, and so confident of his principles that he thought it unnecessary to submit them to practical tests.

One of the students, whose room was immediately over that of the professor, took up a plank from the flooring, and by boring a very small hole in the ceiling found that he could read the examination papers on the professor's desk. The information of this reaching the faculty, the professor was asked if he had examined the ceiling. He said that was unnecessary, because he had measured the distance between the ceiling and the surface of his desk and found that the line of vision connected so far above that nothing could be read on the desk.

Timothy Dwight, afterwards president, was then a tutor. Learning, common sense, magnetism, and all-around good-fellows.h.i.+p were wonderfully united in President Dwight. He was the most popular instructor and best loved by the boys. He had a remarkable talent for organization, which made him an ideal president. He possessed the rare faculty of commanding and convincing not only the students but his a.s.sociates in the faculty and the members of the corporation when discussing and deciding upon business propositions and questions of policy.

The final examinations over, commencement day arrived. The literary exercises and the conferring of degrees took place in the old Center Church. I was one of the speakers and selected for my subject "The Hudson River and Its Traditions." I was saturated from early a.s.sociation and close investigation and reading with the crises of the Revolutionary War, which were successfully decided on the patriots' side on the banks of the Hudson. I lived near Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, and his works I knew by heart, especially the tales which gave to the Hudson a romance like the Rhine's.

The subject was new for an academic stage, and the speech made a hit. Nevertheless, it was the saddest and most regretful day of my life when I left Yale.

My education, according to the standard of the time, was completed, and my diploma was its evidence. It has been a very interesting question with me how much the academy and the college contributed to that education. Their discipline was necessary and their training essential. Four years of a.s.sociation with the faculty, learned, finely equipped, and sympathetic, was a wonderful help.

The free a.s.sociations of the secret and debating societies, the campus, and the sports were invaluable, and the friends.h.i.+ps formed with congenial spirits added immensely to the pleasures and compensations of a long life.

In connection with this I may add that, as it has been my lot in the peculiar position which I have occupied for more than half a century as counsel and adviser for a great corporation and its creators and the many successful men of business who have surrounded them, I have learned to know how men who have been denied in their youth the opportunities for education feel when they are in possession of fortunes, and the world seems at their feet. Then they painfully recognize their limitations, then they know their weakness, then they understand that there are things which money cannot buy, and that there are gratifications and triumphs which no fortune can secure. The one lament of all those men has been: "Oh, if I had been educated I would sacrifice all that I have to obtain the opportunities of the college, to be able to sustain not only conversation and discussion with the educated men with whom I come in contact, but competent also to enjoy what I see is a delight to them beyond anything which I know."

But I recall gratefully other influences quite as important to one's education. My father was a typical business man, one of the pioneers of river transportation between our village and New York, and also a farmer and a merchant. He was a stern man devoted to his family, and, while a strict disciplinarian, very fond of his children.

My mother was a woman of unusual intellect bordering upon genius.

There were no means of higher education at that period, but her father, who was an eminent lawyer, and her grandfather, a judge, finding her so receptive, educated her with the care that was given to boys who were intended for a professional life. She was well versed in the literature of the time of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne, and, with a retentive memory, knew by heart many of the English cla.s.sics. She wrote well, but never for publication.

Added to these accomplishments were rare good sense and prophetic vision. The foundation and much of the superstructure of all that I have and all that I am were her work. She was a rigid Calvinist, and one of her many lessons has been of inestimable comfort to me. Several times in my life I have met with heavy misfortunes and what seemed irreparable losses. I have returned home to find my mother with wise advice and suggestions ready to devote herself to the reconstruction of my fortune, and to brace me up. She always said what she thoroughly believed: "My son, this which you think so great a calamity is really divine discipline.

The Lord has sent it to you for your own good, because in His infinite wisdom He saw that you needed it. I am absolutely certain that if you submit instead of repining and protesting, if you will ask with faith and proper spirit for guidance and help, they both will come to you and with greater blessings than you ever had before." That faith of my mother inspired and intensified my efforts and in every instance her predictions proved true.

Every community has a public-spirited citizen who unselfishly devotes himself or herself to the public good. That citizen of Peekskill in those early days was Doctor James Brewer. He had acc.u.mulated a modest competence sufficient for his simple needs as bachelor. He was either the promoter or among the leaders of all the movements for betterment of the town. He established a circulating library upon most liberal terms, and it became an educational inst.i.tution of benefit. The books were admirably selected, and the doctor's advice to readers was always available.

His taste ran to the English cla.s.sics, and he had all the standard authors in poetry, history, fiction, and essay.

No pleasure derived in reading in after-years gave me such delight as the Waverley Novels. I think I read through that library and some of it several times over.

The excitement as the novels of d.i.c.kens and Thackeray began to appear equalled almost the enthusiasm of a political campaign.

Each one of those authors had ardent admirers and partisans.

The characters of d.i.c.kens became household companions. Every one was looking for the counterpart of Micawber or Sam Weller, Pecksniff or David Copperfield, and had little trouble in finding them either in the family circle or among the neighbors.

d.i.c.kens's lectures in New York, which consisted of readings from his novels, were an event which has rarely been duplicated for interest. With high dramatic ability he brought out before the audience the characters from his novels with whom all were familiar. Every one in the crowd had an idealistic picture in his mind of the actors of the story. It was curious to note that the presentation which the author gave coincided with the idea of the majority of his audience. I was fresh from the country but had with me that evening a rather ultra-fas.h.i.+onable young lady. She said she was not interested in the lecture because it represented the sort of people she did not know and never expected to meet; they were a very common lot. In her subsequent career in this country and abroad she had to her credit three matrimonial adventures and two divorces, but none of her husbands were of the common lot.

Speaking of d.i.c.kens, one picture remains indelibly pressed upon my memory. It was the banquet given him at which Horace Greeley presided. Everybody was as familiar with Mr. Pickwick and his portrait by Cruikshank in d.i.c.kens's works as with one's father.

When Mr. Greeley arose to make the opening speech and introduce the guest of the evening, his likeness to this portrait of Pickwick was so remarkable that the whole audience, including Mr. d.i.c.kens, shouted their delight in greeting an old and well-beloved friend.

Another educational opportunity came in my way because one of my uncles was postmaster of the village. Through his post-office came several high-cla.s.s magazines and foreign reviews. There was no rural delivery in those days, and the mail could only be had on personal application, and the result was that the subscribers of these periodicals frequently left them a long time before they were called for. I was an omnivorous reader of everything available, and as a result these publications, especially the foreign reviews, became a fascinating source of information and culture. They gave from the first minds of the century criticisms of current literature and expositions of political movements and public men which became of infinite value in after-years.

Another unincorporated and yet valuable school was the frequent sessions at the drug store of the elder statesmen of the village.

On certain evenings these men, representing most of the activities of the village, would avail themselves of the hospitable chairs about the stove and discuss not only local matters but the general conditions of the country, some of them revolving about the const.i.tutionality of various measures which had been proposed and enacted into laws. They nearly all related to slavery, the compromise measures, the introduction of slaves into new territories, the fugitive slave law, and were discussed with much intelligence and information. The boys heard them talked about in their homes and were eager listeners on the outskirts of this village congress. Such inst.i.tutions are not possible except in the universal acquaintance, fellows.h.i.+p, and confidences of village and country life. They were the most important factors in forming that public opinion, especially among the young, which supported Mr. Lincoln in his successful efforts to save the Union at whatever cost.

A few days after returning home from Yale I entered the office of Edward Wells, a lawyer of the village, as a student. Mr. Wells had attained high rank in his profession, was a profound student of the law, and had a number of young men, fitting them for the bar under his direction.