XIX.CHARACTERISTICS OF MR. BLAINE.
I
IN conversation with a leading business man in Maine, the question was asked, “What are the chief characteristics of Mr. Blaine?” The man was well situated to know, and well fitted to comprehend, although he was not the man to analyze character, except in a general way, and largely from a business point of view. His answer was,—
“His immense industry; his great enlightenment, and he has always been a growing man! He has such great force of character, and such large intellectual power, and then he is such a social man. He knows so much, and is so interesting in conversation. He will talk to a peasant so that he will take it all in, and a prince sitting by will enjoy it.”
Captain Lincoln and his wife, New England people, but from the Sandwich Islands, where he had been for some five years in charge of a vessel, called to see him about the middle of June, to pay their congratulations; and it waspleasant to observe, how, without a trace of aristocracy, but with a genuine manliness, he sat down just like a brother, and talked with them of their interests, the Island and ocean affairs, and observed, “They don’t have any more roast missionary out there now”; but this was slipped into a sentence that almost gave a history of the Islands. And as he discussed ocean problems, routes to Mexico, and different parts of America, North and South, the captain’s eyes opened with admiration. And it was not a display of knowledge, but brought out in questions, as to what do you think of such a project, and in stating a few brief reasons for it, the man’s information not only cropped out, but burst forth. He seems so full of it, that when it can find a vent it comes forth in deluge fashion, much as water does from a fire-plug.
Mr. Blaine never could be a specialist, but must be world-wide in his knowledge, as he is in his sympathies. Some men are like ponds in which trout are raised,—small and narrow, serve a single purpose, and serve it well; but he is more like the ocean,—broad, and grand, and manifold in the purposes he serves, and deep as well. Mr. Blaine is not a shallow man. His has not been the skimming surface-life of the swallow, but rather the deep-delving life of reality and substance. Deep-sea soundings, both ofmen and things, have been a peculiar delight to him.
Curiosity has ever been a secret spring in him. He must know all, and he would hunt, and rummage, and delve, and search, until he did. He has the scent of a greyhound for evidence, however abstract, and he would track it down somehow, “with all the precision of the most deadly science,” as he did the telegram which Proctor Knott suppressed. This inborn faculty, which he has developed to a marvelous degree, has been a mighty weapon of defence to him, when combinations and conspiracies have been formed against him, and of the most cruel character, for his destruction. For, let it not be forgotten, that he has lived through that era of American life when the great effort was to kill off, politically, the great men of the Republican party. A rebel congress of Southern brigadiers did their worst, but the nation applauded as he triumphed.
The same knowledge seems greater power in him than in ordinary men, or than in almost any other man, because of his great intellectual force. Just as a dinner amounts to more in some men, because of greater power of digestion,—just as the smooth stone from the brook when in David’s sling went with greater precision and power, penetrating the forehead of Goliath. It is the man and in his combinations, manner, methods,and the time, and yet all of these have little to do with it. Force and directness seem to express it all. Conventionalities are merely conveniences to Mr. Blaine, and when not such are instantly discarded. Common sense is the pilot of his every voyage. Everything is sacrificed to this. This, and this alone, has been the crowned king of his entire career, and all else merely subjects.
What he has seen in the clear, strong light of his own best judgment, enlightened by a vast and varied knowledge, he has seized and sworn to. He has never plundered others of their cast-iron rules; he had no use for them. Saul’s armor never fitted him. He has delighted in the fathers’ reverences and laws, though but seldom quotes them. He has no time or taste for such easy, common methods. He is too original. And this is one of the strongest features of the man. He is not simply unlike any other man, but has no need of resemblance. He has much of the impetuosity and fiery eloquence of Clay, but then he has more of the solid grandeur of Webster. But then he is too much like himself to be compared intelligibly with others.
There are great extremes in his nature,—not necessarily contradictions, yet opposites. He is one of the most fervid men, and yet one of the most stoical at times, perfectly cool when othersare hot and boiling. He never loses his head. There is never a runaway,—but great coolness and self-possession when it is needed, and ability to turn on a full head of steam, when the occasion requires. Here is the testimony of a scholar and author:—
“One element in his nature impressed itself upon my mind in a very emphatic manner, and that is his coolness and self-possession at the most exciting periods. I happened to be in his library in Washington when the balloting was going on in Cincinnati on that hot day in June, 1876. A telegraph-instrument was on his library table, and Mr. Sherman, his private secretary, a deft operator, was manipulating its key. Dispatches came from dozens of friends, giving the last votes, which only lacked a few of the nomination; and everybody predicted the success of Mr. Blaine on the next ballot. Only four persons besides Mr. Sherman were in the room. It was a moment of great excitement. The next vote was quietly ticked over the wire, and then the next announced the nomination of Mr. Hayes. Mr. Blaine was the only cool person in the apartment. It was such a reversal of all anticipations and assurances, that self-possession was out of the question except with Mr. Blaine.
“He had just left his bed after two days of unconsciousness from sunstroke, but he was asself-possessed as the portraits upon the walls. He merely gave a murmur of surprise, and, before anybody had recovered from the shock, he had written, in his firm, plain, fluent hand, three dispatches, now in my possession: one to Mr. Hayes, of congratulation; one to the Maine delegates, thanking them for their devotion; and another to Eugene Hale and Mr. Frye, asking them to go personally to Columbus and present his good-will to Mr. Hayes, with promises of hearty aid in the campaign. The occasion affected him no more than the news of a servant quitting his employ would have done. Half an hour afterward he was out with Secretary Fish in an open carriage, receiving the cheers of the thousands of people who were gathered about the telegraph-bulletins.”
This power of self-control seems to be supreme. It is just the particular in which so many of our great men, and small ones too, have miserably failed. This enables him to harness all his powers and hold well the reins,—to bring all his forces into action when emergency requires, and send solid shot, shrapnel, or shell, with a cool head and determined hand.
Mr. Blaine has a great memory. Nearly all who know him will speak of this. He seems never to forget faces, facts, or figures.
Thirty years after he attended school in Lancaster,Ohio, he went there to speak. It was, of course, known that he was coming, and an old acquaintance of the town, whom he had not seen all these years, said, “Now I am going to station myself up there by the cars, and see if he will know me. They say he has such a wonderful memory.” Several were looking on, watching the operation. Mr. Blaine had no sooner stepped off from the train than he spied him, and sang out at once, “Hello, John, how are you!” and a murmur of surprise went up from those who were in the secret.
At another time he was near Wheeling,—my informant thought it was across the river from Wheeling,—in Belmont County; he met a man and called him by name. The man said, “Well, I don’t know you.” Mr. Blaine told him just where he met him, at a convention, and then the man could not remember. That night he told some of his friends about it, and they said it was a fact; they were with him, and saw him introduced to Mr. Blaine and talk with him, and not till then did the man remember him.
As General Connor, ex-governor of Maine, who appointed Mr. Blaine to the United States senate, said: “He could do a thing now as well as any other time.”
“Governor Connor was in Washington,” hewent on to relate, “and called upon Mr. Blaine when he was secretary of state, and he said, in his familiar way, ‘Now you talk with Mrs. Blaine awhile,’ and went into his study. In about an hour he called him, and all about his table were lying sheets of paper on which he had just written. It was his official document on the Panama canal, and which he read to the governor. It had been produced during the past hour, and appeared in print, with scarcely a change. It came out in a white heat, but it was all in there ready to be produced at any time.”
The General remarked, “This one characteristic of the man, and an element of his popularity and hold on others, is this close confidence he exercises in his friends, of which the above is an illustration.”
And this touches at once another feature, and that is his ability to read character, and so to know whom to trust. He goes right into a man’s life, when he gets at him.
While out riding, during the preparation of his volume, with his wife, two or three miles from Augusta, in Manchester township, he got out to walk, and finding a farmer in a field near by, he stopped, talked with him some time, asked him about his history, his ancestors, and found out pretty much all the man knew abouthimself, and could have told whether it would do to leave his pocket-book with the man or no. Such a thing is a habit with him, and keeps him near the people, gives him a look into their minds, a peep into their hearts, as well as a view of their history.
Character-readers usually are persons of strong intuitions. They see not so much the flesh and blood of the individual, as the soul within. Just giving one sharp, quick, penetrating look at the man in the concrete, and the abstract question is settled; the man is rated; his value written down. It is not so much a study as a look,—thought touches thought, mind feels of mind. It is power to know clearly, quickly, strongly, and certainly, with him. He does not have to eat a whole ham to find out whether it is tainted, nor drink an entire pan of milk to find out whether it is sweet.
Mr. Blaine is very obliging, and he can usually tell an opportunity from a chance. Life is no lottery to him; he keeps his feet on the granite, and gives all “fortuitous combination of atoms” the slip, being too discriminating to invest. One day he was in the oldJournaloffice, now owned by Sprague and Son,—a very kind and considerate firm, who are producing a sprightly daily,—when a citizen entered who had just been appointed clerk of the Probate Court, and askedthe gentleman to go on his bond. Mr. Blaine spoke up at once, “I will do it,” and then said it reminded him of a story, which he proceeded to tell:—
“Governor Coney lived in Penobscot, shire-town of Penobscot County, and was judge of the Probate Court. The sheriff of the County had failed, and Mr. Sewall, a citizen, met Judge Coney and said, ‘The sheriff has failed, and you and I are on his bond.’ ‘Well, that’s good,’ said the judge, ‘I guess you can fix it up.’ ‘O, but my name is on the left-hand side, as a witness to his signature.’ So the unlucky judge was left to contemplate the delightful privilege of paying what amounted to a rogue’s bail.”
This same clerk of the Probate Court of former years, but still a friend and neighbor, a man, however, with an unhappy physical disability, came upon the lawn when the large committee to notify him of his nomination were gathered there to perform that duty, and as the man told me, Mr. Blaine caught sight of him off some distance, and “notwithstanding all those men were there, he spoke right up in his old, familiar way, ‘How are you, ——?’”
It shows his genuineness and simplicity. There is enough to him without putting on any airs. It could not be otherwise than that a nature so highly wrought and intense, should be possessedof the powers of withering scorn and just rebuke, and when the occasion required, could use them. There happened such an occasion in 1868.
General Grant had been invited to attend the opening of the European and North American Railway, at Vanceboro’, in the State of Maine. It formed a new connecting-link with the British Provinces. There was a special train of invited guests, and as General Grant was then president, and had never been in the state before, it was quite an honor to be of the company. Mr. Blaine was, of course, of the number, as were the leading citizens without respect to party. A newspaper-correspondent, without any invitation, got aboard the train, and went with the party, and on his return reported that President Grant was drunk. This cut Mr. Blaine to the quick, because of its untruthfulness, and as he was a Republican president, and politics usually ran high in Maine during the palmy days, from 1861 to 1881, when Mr. Blaine was at the helm, and also because the president was guest of the state. Not long after, he met the reporter in the office of Howard Owen, a journalist of Augusta.
“And if you ever saw a man scalped,”—I use the exact language,—“and the grave-clothes put on him, and he put in his coffin, andburied, and the rubbish of the temple thrown on him forty feet deep, he was the man. I never heard anything like it in all my born days: philippics, invectives, satires, these common things were nowhere.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“What didn’t he say?” was the reply,—“‘You were not invited, you were simply tolerated; you sneaked aboard, and then came back here and lied about us,’ etc.”
But sixteen years had effaced much, and yet the impression was vivid, as the man’s very expressive manner betokened.
And a leading Washington correspondent, conversant with all the sights at the capital, says, “It would look strange to see him with the whiskey-drinking crowd at either bar in the capitol building. He does not visit them, and he does not drink.”
The great-heartedness of Mr. Blaine comes out in his book, “Twenty Years in Congress,” and shows how large are his sympathies. He devotes over fifteen pages of that great work to an historical vindication of Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone, who was the victim chosen to atone for the Ball’s Bluff disaster, in which Col. E. D. Baker, of California, a most gallant officer, lost his life. It is a deeply interesting portion of the seventeenth chapter.
Mr. Blaine is a great lover of fair play. He is too great to cherish any feeling of resentment, for he is true-hearted as well as great-hearted.
In this same chapter he presents Mr. Roscoe Conkling very handsomely, and does him the honor to quote more extensively from his speech than from Chandler, Lovejoy, Crittenden, Richardson, or Thad. Stevens, although Conkling was younger than any of them. The Republican party is like a great family to him, and he loves and cares for all, in the sense of valuing them highly for their principles’ and works’ sake, and so studies the things that make for peace,—but not peace for peace’ sake, but for the sake of principle.
He asks no quarter for himself, but will follow out the behests of his great nature in the interests of others, and the great cause through which his life has run, like a thread of purest gold. It is his great friendliness which has enabled him to take others into his very life, and live and toil for them so largely. He seems ever living outside of self,—going outside of self and entering into their cause and condition, and making their case his own. He aims to know enough about those within his reach so that he shall be interested in them, and can think and feel intelligently regarding them. His whole natureacts in unison, just as heaven designed. His mind must know, and his heart must love, and his will must act, while conscience detects and demands purity of motive.
This honor makes life a joy, a melody, a delight, and so resonant with constant notes of praise. He cannot be idle; this is against his nature; and to be vicious would give him pain. He is not mean, or low and truckling, but large and open as the day.
An old Democrat, who had known him ever since he landed in Augusta, said, when asked a point-blank question about him as a man, “He is a good neighbor and a great citizen,” and this man had had many dealings with him, but he could not escape the impressions of his work. No man, it would seem, could stand a better examination among his neighbors. If a court of inquiry were established, covering these points, right where he is best known, it would not be necessary for him to challenge a juryman, or impeach a witness.
This same old Democrat said, “A number of years ago we wanted to fix up the Baptist church, and they asked me to go and see Mr. Blaine, as they were making a general call upon the public. It was on the eve of his departure for California, but he gave his check at once for a hundred dollars, and said, ‘If that is notenough I will give you more when I return.’” He is interested in all good enterprises, and turns none empty away. As an instance of the humanity of the man, a neighbor related the following:—
“A laborer fell in a fit right out there in the road near Mr. Blaine’s house, and his sympathies were all roused for the man. He helped him what he could, and as he came out of it right away, Mr. Blaine called to his coachman, and said, ‘Fred, harness the horse, and take this man to Hallowell,’ which was ten miles away; and Mr. Blaine helped the man into his carriage, in his kindly way, and so sent him home.” He has time for all these occasions to help and cheer a fellow-man.
And Mrs. Blaine is just like him. Since their return from Washington, and since the nomination, she was returning from a ride, and when near the gate, there was a crowd. A circus was in town, and a girl had been run over and badly hurt. Mrs. Blaine did not begin to scold and blame the girl for being out in the crowd, but said, “Take her right into my parlor,” and they did, when she sent for a doctor, and had every care taken of the child. She has a mother’s heart, and a mind suited for the best companionships.
There has been a reference elsewhere to Mr. Blaine’s marked liberality as a distinguishingcharacteristic. He is not a wealthy man, as wealth is reckoned to-day, but whenever he has turned his great abilities to financial matters for the purpose of money-getting, he has succeeded, showing most conclusively that, had he served himself all these years instead of serving the nation, he would be worth reputed millions. As it is, he told a friend who asked him, about a year ago, if reports were true that he was worth several millions, as people were saying, and his answer was, “No, I am worth less than half a million.”
His great activity is very noticeable, especially in society. He has been compared to Mr. Burlingame in his ability to see and converse with three or four persons, while another is seeing but one. He moves rapidly at times, but with great care, especially in examining any document or letter requiring his signature.
He will sign nothing unless it be a common letter prepared by his private secretary, without reading every word. But out among men his activity is quick and constant. He is always in motion, not in an aimless, nervous way, but in a wide-awake, fully alive manner. His battery is ever charged with the freshest and purest electricity. It would be a thing incredible to find him asleep in the day-time.
He had a singular habit when editor, of foldingup little slips of paper and inserting them between his teeth quickly, or tearing them off from a newspaper, inserting them, and then throwing them away, so that after a few moments’ conversation, he would be surrounded with bits of paper which he had torn off and used in this way.
Long walks have been his habit, and at times he would strike off across the fields and jump the fences. “What,” I said to my informant, “jump the fences?” “Yes,” he said, and another party confirmed it. To go across lots, they say, is “the Yankee of it.”
This vigorous exercise is a part of his programme for keeping up his health. He has had a cross-bar also, for athletic sports, and made use of it, too. Life is never dull and monotonous with him, but always full to the brim.
It is this active, energetic spirit which took him to England, and for four or five months all over the continent of Europe; and in 1875 to California, and up and down the Pacific coast; and it was this same mighty energy of being, which led him to make five speeches a day sometimes when he was campaigning in Ohio. He did this one day, when the last one was to an immense assemblage in Columbus. And he generally spoke until he was quite satisfied that he had the people with him, and they were certain to vote about right when the time came.His resources of strength, at times, seems amazing. Many who have known him for thirty years, speak of his great energy, of his decision of character, of his power with an audience.
His private secretary, who has been by his side for fifteen years, says that all the time he was speaker in congress, he was never late a single moment, that just exactly at twelve o’clock, the usual time for meeting, his gavel would fall, and the House be called to order.
It is a consciousness of responsibility, and conscientiousness in the discharge of duty, great readiness for the work, and eagerness to perform it, that have made him prompt, energetic, accurate, and determined.
He has been among the broadest of men in his thinking, reading, observation, experience, travel, sympathy, purpose, motive, and activities. Truly his life has been onward and upward, and with these as his principal characteristics he has been tested as few men are tested, and not found wanting. In ten great departments,—as student, teacher, editor, stump-speaker, legislator, speaker of the House at home, congressman, speaker of the National House of Representatives, United States senator, and secretary of state,—has he been tried, and not found wanting. Only a man of transcendent abilities could have triumphed in such a career.