Mr. Winthrop's Reminiscences

To have one’s memory of other people good for much, one must have done something one’s self ; for people of distinction do not in the main display that for which they are distinguished except to those who stand on somewhat the same footing. It is true that now and then a man like Mr. Nassau W. Senior will cultivate to so high a degree the art of taking down conversation by memory as to give himself an honorable place in the society of the great, and it is true also that those who have shared the best society because they have given as good as they got are not generally very eager to hand down what has been a familiar experience ; still it remains that the best point of view from which to see greatness is a measurable equality of rank, and that to overhear the casual talk of a man of mark about his fellows is to receive a pleasure by no means dependent on the actual addition it may bring to our knowledge of the men commented on.

Some such pleasure as this may be derived by those who have access to the privately printed volume which contains Mr. Winthrop’s Reminiscences of Foreign Travel.¹ In the easy but never careless style which belongs to one who throughout a long life has been wont to respect his audience, whether that audience was one or a multitude, Mr. Winthrop sets down methodically such reminiscences as occur to him, very much as he might deliver them in talk to a friend, and passes so simply through his gallery of portraits that his companion might not stop to consider till it was over to what a collection of famous men he had been lightly introduced. When Mr. Winthrop first crossed the Atlantic, in 1847, he was in his thirty-ninth year, had been a member of Congress for six or seven years, and as a member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs had been brought into official and personal association with members of the diplomatic corps in Washington. Perhaps of more service still was his friendly relation to Webster, Everett, and Bancroft, the last of whom was Minister in England, the second having just returned from bolding the same office. Through these, as well as by his own distinction and family connections, he had at once entry into the best houses. On his very first day in London he went to see the Lyells, whom he had known in Boston, and was taken to hear Faraday, at whose lecture he met Dean Milman and Dr. Edward Stanley, the Bishop of Norwich. This was on Saturday.

“ On Monday,” he writes, “ I began to make use of my notes of introduction, and one of my earliest calls was upon Sir Robert Peel. Stopping at his door in Whitehall Gardens in a somewhat shabby equipage, I remember well the peremptory tone in which I was told by his servant, in answer to my inquiry, that Sir Robert was not at home. But I remember too how speedily that tone was changed when I handed him my card with the note of introduction, on the back of which was written, in his own clear and well-remembered chirography, the name of Edward Everett. ‘ Oh, Mr. Everett, — I beg pardon, sir ! ’ exclaimed the footman. ’If you will wait a moment, I will take in the letter and card and see if Sir Robert may not have returned.’ In another minute the welcome sound was heard : ’Sir Robert is at home, and will be very glad to see you.’

“ This great statesman, who only a year or two before had been Prime Minister, was now in retirement, if indeed the position of an active and leading member of the House of Commons can ever be called retirement. But he had no other official position, and was free from the absorbing labors and overwhelming responsibilities of a Premier. The name of Mr. Everett, for whom Sir Robert had a great regard, secured for me a reception which I could not otherwise have enjoyed, and I was soon disabused of the impression I had carried with me from hearing so often of ‘ the proverbial coldness of Sir Robert Peel.’ After a few moments’ conversation about Everett and about American affairs, he said to me: ’You find me engaged at this moment in filling out cards ’ — for he was doing this with his own pen, and had a pile of them on the table at which he was sitting — ’for an exhibition of my pictures next Saturday. I must write your name on one of them, and you must come. You will find the pictures worth seeing ; and besides, you will meet many of our best artists, and not a few of our most distinguished persons. But where are you going to-night ? Have you been to the House of Commons ? There is a debate in which you cannot fail to be interested.’ I told him at once that I had already made arrangements to go with Mr. Bancroft, who had kindly proposed to take me with him to the Diplomatic Box. ‘ I am glad of that,’ said he. ’I shall know where to find you.’ And so I took my leave, and proceeded on my round of visits.

“ At an early hour of the evening I went with Mr. Bancroft to the House of Commons, and after some preliminary business had been gone through, the Education Bill was taken up. Several of the members came out from their seats to talk with Bancroft, and one of them — Sir William Molesworth, if I remember right — took him off to their refreshment room for a cup of tea, leaving me alone. Just then I observed Sir Robert, who was at the farther end of the house, lifting his eyeglass and looking intently toward me. He presently rose, and marching in his somewhat deliberate and stately way the whole length of the chamber, came up and took the seat next to me which Bancroft had left. His conversation was charming, as he recalled some of the incidents of his long service in the Commons, and pointed out to me the seats of some of the older glories of the House, as well as some of those most distinguished at the moment. He had then been in Parliament almost as long as I had lived, having been first elected in the year I was born (1809), and having served with almost all the men best known to the modern history of England, except Pitt and Fox, who died three years before he was old enough to be chosen. During the half-hour he remained at my side several members of note had entered into the debate, among them Mr. Roebuck. But suddenly ’the Right Honorable member for Edinburgh ’ was announced by the Speaker, when Sir Robert said quietly but quickly to me, ’You must excuse me now; Macaulay has the floor, and I never fail to attend closely to what he says.’ And so he marched back to his seat.

“ A night or two afterward I was again at the House of Commons, when the debate was closed, long after midnight, by Lord John Russell and Sir Robert himself. Sir Robert spoke for an hour and a half in a masterly manner, fulfilling all my expectations, and impressing me deeply with his power and persuasiveness as a debater. With a clear and telling voice and a figure of striking dignity, without studied rhetoric or flights of fancy, simple, earnest, and at times almost impassioned, he seemed peculiarly fitted for a parliamentary leader. I know not how it may have been with him on other occasions, but on that night he exhibited hardly anything of the hesitation which was then one of the proverbial attributes of English speakers. His course upon the Corn Laws the year before had not only cost him his place at the head of the government, but had broken up his party, and made many of his old friends look coldly, and even angrily at him. But he bore himself as bravely as if he were still the idol of the hour, and commanded the unbroken attention of a crowded house.”

Mr. Winthrop went to the exhibition of Sir Robert’s pictures, and besides the pictures saw painters of pictures in Leslie, Landseer, Turner, Eastlake, Stanfield, and Westmacott; men of letters and science, as Hallam, Rogers, Faraday, Buckland, and Dickens, with such men of political fame as Lord John Russell and the Duke of Wellington. He afterward heard the duke in Parliament, and met him more than once in private. He had the distinction, even, of refusing an invitation to dinner with the duke. He gives several agreeable glimpses of the great soldier and statesman, but perhaps none has more interest than that which is incidental to his recollection of Rogers :

“ I cannot remember whether my introduction to Samuel Rogers, the poet, in connection with whom, as the author of the Pleasures of Memory, nothing ought to be forgotten, was from Webster or Everett, but he did full honor to whichever it was by calling at once and offering me the kindest attentions. Nothing could be more characteristic than one of his first notes to me : —

“ ‘ MY DEAR MR. WINTHROP, 舒 Pray come and breakfast with me at quarter before ten any morning or every morning.

‘ Yours ever, S. ROGERS.’

“ And so I breakfasted with him repeatedly : twice absolutely alone; more frequently with five or six others.

“ One great advantage to a stranger in breakfasting alone with Rogers was this : he could tell over again his oldest and best stories with the assurance that they had not been heard before. In a mixed party, on the other hand, one or more persons were certain to have heard them previously, and this restrained and disconcerted him.

“ At one of these tête-à-têtes, I remember that he dwelt almost entirely on the Duke of Wellington. He told me that, many years before, when he was dining in company with the great English hero, the duke said: ‘ I wonder why it is that nobody ever invites me to dine on Sundays. I get three or four invitations for every other day of the week, but on Sunday, after going to church ’ (for the duke was a regular attendant on public worship), ‘ I have only a late lonely dinner at home, and a desolate evening.’ As soon as Rogers reached home he sat down and wrote two or three invitations on this wise : —

“ ‘ Mr. Rogers requests the honor of the Duke of Wellington’s company at dinner on Sunday next at 7½ o’clock.’

“ ‘ Mr. Rogers requests the honor of the Duke of Wellington’s company on Sunday week ’ (giving the date of the following Sunday) ‘at 7½ o’clock.’

“ Sending them both together to Apsley House, an affirmative answer to both was received without delay ; and the duke dined habitually with Rogers for many Sundays in succession during that season, and perhaps during more than one season.

“ Rogers took care to avoid introducing strangers or ceremonious company to these dinners, asking only two or three of the particular friends of the duke, so that he should converse entirely without restraint. Of these conversations Rogers made careful record, and on one of the mornings I was with him alone he sent his confidential servant upstairs for his journals of that period, and read to me many interesting passages from them, particularly one of the duke’s account of his resigning his post in 1830, ‘rather,’as he said, ‘ than be the head of a faction.’ This was about the time of his greatest unpopularity, when his windows were broken by the mob. Rogers ended by telling me what I could not have imagined before, that the duke never saw Napoleon Bonaparte. He may have brought the focus of his field glass to bear upon him in looking at some group at Waterloo, but he never consciously saw the Emperor.”

At Rogers’s breakfasts Mr. Winthrop met Milman, Whewell, and Thirlwall, the Countess of Orford and her daughter Lady Dorothy Walpole, afterward Lady Dorothy Nevill, the Dowager Lady Lyttleton, and Lady Bulwer-Lytton. On another occasion he was lunching with Rogers at Miss Burdett-Coutts’s, when Wordsworth was announced and took his seat with the company. “ While we were at table,” says Mr. Winthrop, “ Miss Coutts chanced to inquire after a favorite servant named James whom she had seen at Rydal Mount. ‘ He is with me,’ said Wordsworth. ‘ With you! Where?’ asked Rogers. ‘ At the door,’said Wordsworth. ‘ James at the door ! ’ exclaimed Miss Coutts. ‘ Why, I must go and see him.’ ‘ So must I,’said Rogers. And thereupon the whole party hastened out to the street door in Stratton Street to greet the faithful attendant of the poet, who had won upon all their hearts by the care which he took of his aged master.

“ Wordsworth was then in his seventy-eighth year, and looked quite infirm, with a spiritual look like our Washington Allston’s. He was in the first anxiety, too, for a beloved daughter, who died in a few weeks from that time, just as I was passing along Windermere with a view of calling to see her father, agreeably to his request and my promise. I was unwilling to intrude upon so fresh a grief, and wrote him a note of sympathy and apology. The luncheon at Miss Burdett-Coutts’s was thus my only interview with Wordsworth. He died in 1850. Ten years after his death I was again among the Lakes, and as I was passing his house I saw a red flag at the gate, betokening an auction sale. I stopped, and found that Wordsworth’s library was being sold in the barn, to which it had been removed. I went in, and found quite a company of book-fanciers. I saw one parcel knocked off, but could not resist the temptation of the second parcel. I made a bid, and was successful; but on being called on for my name, I asked leave to take the hooks and pay for them at once, and to my consternation was refused. So I had to make a little speech in Wordsworth’s barn, saying that ‘ I was an American, accidentally passing by, and that my family were awaiting me in the rain at the door ; that I had enjoyed the privilege of knowing Mr. Wordsworth personally, and desired only to obtain a souvenir of one I had so much admired.’ The auctioneer at last gave a surly assent, taking my money and giving me the books, but stoutly declaring that it was the only such interruption he would tolerate. So I paid my money, and carried off my prize rejoicing.

“ The books were quite miscellaneous, and of no great intrinsic value ; but almost all of them had Wordsworth’s autograph, and had evidently been read by him. Indeed, one of them proved to be a book of which he had a high opinion. Crabb Robinson, in his Reminiscences, says of George Dyer, ‘ He wrote one good book, the Life of Robert Robinson, which I have heard Wordsworth mention as one of the best books of biography in the language; ’ adding that ‘ Dr. Samuel Parr pronounced the same opinion.’ This was one of the books which I purchased so accidentally in Wordsworth’s barn at Rydal Mount, and it has an additional interest from its quaint calico binding. Happening to show it to Lord Houghton, when he was one day lunching with me in Boston, he told me that it was probably bound by Mrs. Southey, whose habit it was to bind her husband’s books with fragments of her chintz or calico dresses, and who may have treated one of her neighbor’s books to a similar covering. The volume is thus doubly redolent of the Lake poets.”

Mr. Winthrop used his opportunities for hearing as well as meeting men of mark in the Church, as Blomfield, Bishop of London, whom Webster singled out as one of the most impressive speakers in the House of Lords; Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford ; Dr. Harold Browne, who succeeded him at Winchester; Trench, Lord Arthur Hervey, Bishop Tait, and Dean Stanley ; but he has most to say of a prelate who shines more now with a reflected light than he did in 1847, when he was a very notable figure in his own right, — Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin.

“ I met him first at a breakfast at Nassau W. Senior’s, to whom Webster had given me a letter. When I entered the room, where the other guests had arrived before me, I saw a tall, gaunt figure in a straight-bodied coat, with tightly gaitered legs and an apron appended to his waistcoat, standing with his hack to the fire, and holding up a small puppy by the nape of its neck, upon which he was discoursing most humorously. I was hardly prepared for meeting one of the great thinkers and writers of the English Church in such an attitude. But Whately had a vein of drollery which could not be controlled, and which he did not care to control. He was full of anecdote and witty repartee during the breakfast, and made me quite at home with him by his personal cordiality and kindness. He insisted on taking me to my hotel, after breakfast was over, in his chariot, and made me promise to come and see him in Dublin, if I should cross over to Ireland in the summer.

“ I met him next at a big dinner at the Marquis of Lansdowne’s (then president of the Council), where several Cabinet ministers were present. It was pleasant and sumptuous, but had a little of the coldness and formality which might be imagined in a banquet hall almost lined with antique marble statues. Whately, however, did not fail to ‘ set the table in a roar ’ now and then, until he retired with Lady Lansdowne and the other ladies, while the gentlemen remained for half an hour to try the qualities of the Lansdowne cellar. When we went up to the drawing-room, I found the archbishop, with cards and scissors in hand, lecturing on the principle of the boomerang, cutting out little semicircular strips, and blowing or snapping them so as to make them return upon his own nose or head. He was in great glee, and the ladies quite wild with merriment.”

Of statesmen and men of great affairs, Mr. Winthrop has agreeable reminiscences of Lord Lansdowne, the Earl of St. Germans, Sir Richard Pakenham, Sir John Crampton, Sir Henry Bulwer, Lord Napier, Lord Palmerston, the Marquis of Dufferin, and Gladstone, among others. On his first visit to England he was presented at court, as afterward on successive visits.

“ Mr. Bancroft, our Minister, was unfortunately taken ill a few days before the Drawing-Room, and I accompanied Mr. Brodhead and Mr. Moran, his secretaries, having been admitted by Lord Palmerston to the diplomatic circle, where Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister, took me kindly in charge. After making my bow, I was thus privileged to remain in the court circle and witness the presentations from beginning to end. The Queen was then in the full enjoyment of youth and health, and was surrounded by all the beauties of her court, — the Duchess of Sutherland, the Marchioness of Douro, and Lady Jocelyn among the most conspicuous. Prince Albert was at her side, and the young Grand Duke Constantine of Russia near him, while the old Duke of Wellington was not far off. It was a splendid scene. Soon afterward I was at a ball at Buckingham Palace ; and before leaving London I attended the Birthday Drawing-Room, and was again witness to the grace and dignity of the Queen’s manner. But the best opportunity I had of seeing and hearing her was in the House of Lords, when she prorogued Parliament in person. Nothing could have been more brilliant than that occasion, — the peers in their robes, the peeresses in all their jewels, floor and gallery crowded with all the distinction and beauty of the realm, the Queen herself in her state attire, with a crown upon her head. But more impressive than anything else was the distinct articulation and exquisite voice with which she read her speech. Fanny Kemble in Portia was not more effective. The whole scene was dramatic, and no part could have been better played than that of her Majesty ; while the solemnity and sincerity of her tone sufficiently evinced that she was not playing a part at all, but discharging a duty with simple, unconscious earnestness.”

After all, England, to most persons who would take pleasure in Mr. Winthrop’s reminiscences, means the England of literature rather than of the court, and the reader is likely to look with most interest on the mention of those Englishmen who by their writings have been naturalized in the United States, — Thackeray, Dickens, Browning, Macaulay, Walter Savage Landor, Grote, Lockhart, and Lord Houghton.

After leaving England Mr. Winthrop went to France, and as he had been presented at the English court, so he made his bow at the French court also.

“ I was presented to Louis Philippe by Mr. Martin, our Chargé d’Affaires (after Mr. King, of Alabama, had left Paris, and before Mr. Rush had arrived), at the palace of Neuilly. It was a quiet evening reception, and I was invited, out of regular course, as a member of Congress. The British Ambassador (Lord Normanby) and Leverrier, then in the first flush of his celebrity as the discoverer of the new planet, were almost the only visitors, besides myself and Mr. Martin. There were two or three aides-de-camp in uniform ; but the King was in plain clothes, and the Queen and Madame Adelaide and the Duchess of Orleans were sitting at a little table, sipping their tea, and then turning to their embroidery. Nothing could have been more simple and unaffected than the manners of them all. The Duchess of Orleans, with whom I conversed most, was particularly graceful and gracious, and gave me an impression of goodness and loveliness which was fully confirmed by her Life and Letters as published after her death. Her son, the Comte de Paris, was a little boy then, and had doubtless gone to bed ; but I have known him since in London and in Boston, and he has been good enough to send me his volume on the Trades-Unions of England, and his valuable History of our Civil War. He has always impressed me as the worthy son of so excellent a mother. Louis Philippe himself was cordial and chatty, asking after Americans whom he had known when in the United States as an exile, ‘ Did you know Tim Pickering ? ’ said he, and then went on to say more than I can remember of him and others of our old-time statesmen. He followed me almost to the door of the room, in the easiest way, when I took my leave, and told me emphatically that I must come and see him again. Mr. Martin said this was a royal command, and must be obeyed ; and so the next week I went again, this time in plain clothes, for I was in uniform before. Another conversation with the Duchess of Orleans renewed my impression of the sweetness and sincerity of her manner and character, and the King was as jaunty and as cordial as before. In seven or eight months more, he and his family were banished from France, and the palace in which I had seen them was sacked and burned.

“ My pleasant associations with the royal family of Orleans were revived and intensified thirty-five years later, in September, 1882, by being privileged, through the kind offces of M. Laugel, to lunch with that distinguished soldier and historical writer, the Duc d’Aumale, at his well-known Château of Chantilly, where he was good enough to show me in person many of the priceless works of art which it contarns.”

One other potentate is referred to by Mr. Winthrop as coining within the range of his personal experience. “ I was first presented,” he says, “to Pius IX. in 1860. The late Bishop Fitzpatrick, of Boston, had given me a friendly and flattering letter to Cardinal Antonelli, and I was granted a private audience. The American Minister, Mr. Stockton, accompanied me; and we were ushered into the Pope’s private room, where he was sitting in his white flannel or merino robe, with a beautiful crucifix and a jeweled snuffbox on the table at his side.

“ Immediately on our entrance, his Holiness said to me in French, ‘ Vous avez été Président de la Chambre et Sénateur ? ’ and on my replying affirmatively he continued, ‘ Asseyez-vous, Monsieur,’ and then launched out into a most excited discourse on the then threatened removal of the French troops from Rome, He spoke altogether in French, and talked freely and fluently on public affairs on both sides of the ocean. In the course of his remarks upon America as ‘ a great country, of great destinies, and enjoying a great liberty,’ I reminded him that he was the first and only pontiff who had ever crossed the ocean. He said it was true that as a young priest he had been in Chili, and no other Pope had gone so far; but he did not know what might happen hereafter. ‘ We are in the midst of great events, great changes. I rest tranquil,’ said he, ‘ amid them all, trusting in God. I have no ambition of earthly sovereignty, and am content to part with temporal power whenever God so wills it. But I do not wish, nor is it my duty, to accept the decrees of mortal kings or emperors as indications or instruments of God’s will.’

“ He more than intimated his belief that the Emperor of the French had already, at that very moment, given orders to Marshal Vaillant to withdraw his troops from Italy. Mr. Stockton suggested that it was probably only from the north of Italy. The Pope replied that he supposed the troops might not be removed quite so summarily from Rome ; the Emperor ought certainly to give more than two hours’ notice, — a week or two was the least that should be given. But he was not altogether at the mercy of foreign troops, and he trusted all would be safe whether they went or stayed. And then he made an eloquent and impassioned allusion to the exquisite fresco of Heliodorus by Raphael, and to the intervention of a Divine Protector portrayed in that grand picture. Nothing could have been more impressive than this part of his conversation, and I regret that I cannot recall more of it. He spoke with great approbation of a recent speech or letter of the late Archbishop Hughes, and of some manifestation which he himself had just received from Buffalo. But he seemed not to know exactly where Buffalo was, until I referred to it as being not far from the great Falls of Niagara. He spoke most gratefully of the sympathy which had been manifested for Rome, not merely by Catholics, but by Protestants throughout the world ; alluding particularly, if I mistake not, to some recent act of the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg, among others.”

We have aimed rather at giving excerpts from this agreeable fragment of autobiography, but though we have failed to mention many names that were on Mr. Winthrop’s visiting list in his occasional visits to Europe, the reader can scarcely miss noting how abundant and how rich is the storehouse from which he has drawn these memorabilia. Honorable in his own service, which has been given freely even in those years when he might fairly have been allowed to rest as emeritus, his association with men of mark abroad as well as at home for half a century illustrates that delicate network of international social relations which is not much taken into account by publicists, but is after all one of the strongest bonds which unite the peoples of Christendom.

The exigency of magazine publication has made the above to appear in the present tense. It remains only to add a word which could not so well be said here in Mr. Winthrop’s lifetime. He gave an intimation in his book that he might write another section of autobiography covering his friendships in his own country. To write of some of his associates in public life could not have been hard, for his own service had been so long that many whom he had worked with had died long before. His commemorative addresses are studded with notable encomiums on them, and not unlikely this fact deterred him, in the wearisomeness of old age, from returning to themes he had already handled. But it would be a mistake to suppose that Mr. Winthrop was merely an interesting survivor of an interesting past. His official service in politics came to an end, indeed, many years ago. Yet as he represented high principles in political life, so, continuously after retiring from office, he was in a very notable sense a public man. He stood as a signal instance of the American citizen who recognizes his duty to the community in which he lives, and the opportunities which arise in that vast network of social, philanthropic, and educational activity which happily with us is dissociated from exclusively governmental function. It is idle to assume that ardent devotion to partisan politics exhausts the capacity for good citizenship, or that the only career for an American who desires to serve his country is in the political field. Mr. Winthrop demonstrated clearly that a man of scholarship and independent fortune could, year after year, give a large part of his time to the promotion of great public ends, and do this so unostentatiously that the newspapers did not keep his name standing in large capitals. When this magazine was founded, it bore for a device on the cover the head of the first Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay. That device was supplanted by the American flag when the war for the Union came. In its recognition of the enduring elements of American character and civilization, it regards this descendant of John Winthrop as a great and worthy exemplar.